Welcome to my monkey mind.
Here is an incomplete list of my accomplishments in the first hour of sitting down to write this missive:
Make lunch
Lunch photoshoot
Add final layer to ice cream cake
Eat lunch
Research monkey mind
Make tea
Shop for books online
Cut watermelon for corn salad
Trim hang nail
Polish my nails
Research specific hashtags
Text sister about organic cleaning product sale.
Here is an incomplete list of activities I thought about, but did not attempt:
Shower
Comb my hair
Brush my teeth
Cut tomato and mint for corn salad
Find bowl for corn salad
Find serving platter for ice cream cake
Research custom cheese platter for nephew birthday gift
Find stronger probiotics
Research hydration powders
Edit pictures from lunch photoshoot
Both lists are actually a bit longer, but I think you get the idea. You probably recognize yourself a little. Maybe not in the specific activities, but perhaps in the flurry of activity—the doingness and diversion. I’m sharing this raw, true-to-my-life experience with you in a wee moment of vulnerability to illustrate my daily battle. It would be impossible to inventory all of the actual distractions and research trails I branched off into during the course of writing this entire piece. Some of it was legit examination, exploration and inquiry. Some led me down paths exposing images I’ll never unsee; I wanted to scrub my eyes clean so desperately that I brushed my teeth. The second cake at the eleventh hour was necessary and isn’t even for me. The huge break in the middle was planned weeks ago.
This distraction and interruption cycle isn’t my struggle alone. It isn’t a new phenomenon ushered in by our culture that worships busyness, praises multitasking, is obsessed with social media and overwhelmed by the little supercomputers in our pockets with the ability to access the sum of all human knowledge.
This is part of the human condition.
Over 1500 years ago, the Buddha referred to this jumping-all-over-the-place brain as “Monkey Mind” or “Mind Monkey.” In Chinese it is xinyuan , shin'en in Japanese. The words mean any combination of unsettled, restless, capricious, whimsical, fanciful, inconstant, confused, indecisive, uncontrollable.
Sound familiar?
Picture your attention and ability to focus as a little monkey. Don’t make your monkey too cute—this sensory simian is not your friend. Also, please, resist the temptation to google image annoying monkey, or angry monkey, THAT’S WHAT THE MONKEY WANTS YOU TO DO. The monkey’s jungle is the landscape of your thoughts. Monkey is swinging from thought limb to thought limb, screeching, laughing, picking nits, peeing, and stealing your (metaphorical) ice cream bar. Because that’s what monkeys do. Monkeys are assholes. They’ll band together and attack your car. They’ll pull your hair.
They’re mocking you.
You want to sit down and write something?
Monkey says HA HA HA
How about instead you fix a snack? Or maybe do the dishes?
Which is pretty funny, because as soon as I start to do the dishes, Monkey wants me to check my email. When I’m responding to emails, Monkey gets really curious about that natural deodorant company someone told me about. As soon as Monkey gets online, there are so many websites to drop into: radar weather, daily horoscope, news updates, has somebody already invented ambrosia pavlova, are there any Lucky Brand floral hoodies on eBay, do people still go to eBay for vintage clothes or are there better sites, why is a size 10 from 50 years ago a size 0 now.
Monkey is an insatiable asshole. The more it gets their way, the more it wants.
(And monkey wants lots of snacks.)
So how to quiet Monkey?
You could try screaming SHUT THE FUCK UP MONKEY at it. Monkey usually retreats to a corner sulking for approximately 30 seconds before bouncing back with greater fervor.
Monkey is your opponent, forever trying to psyche you out. You can’t give in to their whims, you have to ignore them. Easier said than done, Monkey is very seductive (for this part, picture monkey impersonating Jessica Rabbit—Monkey can do that, they’re talented shape-shifters as well).
So, how to ignore Monkey?
When I want to learn how to do something, my first step is research. In this case I google “how to ignore something.” Wikihow does not disappoint.
The site offers three different techniques to ignore something that is bothering you.
The first of these is distraction. In a self-fulfilling instruction, Wikihow’s visuals present plenty of distractive fodder, including an illustration of a man from the waist up, showering—presumably to take his mind off of whatever is bothering him, but also, and undeniably, pleasuring himself.
The point of this exercise is to stop distracting ourselves, so perhaps method one isn’t our best plan. Let’s move on to the second tactic for ignoring something:
Staying Present.
Aaand here we are, back at being present with ourselves and in our life.
But how?
Wikihow breaks it down very simply in a few simple steps: meditation, grounding, balance poses, making lists and creating routines.
BOOM!
That’s it. You’re done. You got this. Just do those five things and you’ll quiet that raucous monkey mind.
Ima give Wikihow a big shout out for such an easy-peasy list.
They nailed the driving force behind this project and the currently-valued-at-one-billion-dollar mindfulness industry.
Why have we spent over a billion of our hard-earned dollars on trying to become more present and mindful?
Because it’s so hard. So much more difficult than Wikihow would lead you to believe.
We’re working on it, all of it. That’s why we’re here, trying to crack the code of the trillions of chemical and electrical signals firing wildly through the three-ish pound meat lump inside our skulls.
Which brings us to their third proposed method for ignoring distractions:
Reframe Your Thinking.
Their first step towards reframing your thinking is acknowledging the thought. In our case, the “thought” is our monkey.
Finally, an actionable step. I think we got this one. This is so very doable.
Here’s the plan:
Let’s acknowledge our monkey(s). Let’s really dig in and pay attention to them. What do they want? What do they look like? How do they talk to us? Where do they hide? When do they rest? When are they most active?
Let’s be observers of our monkeys, like researchers in the field. We won’t interact with them just yet, for now we’re just watching them, learning their game, tracking their course, spying on their activity at the watering hole.
Over the next couple of days, pay special attention to your monkey and their m.o. I’ve got some cool stuff planned for us on our mid-week snack break.
Watch out, monkeys, we’re coming for you.