By Anton McCarthy
You wake up, and your mind spins.
I’m never going to hit that deadline!
I forgot to clean the cat’s litter tray! (Poor Kitty).
Argh, my boss just messaged — it’s not even 8 am!
Or, you just have those surfacing thoughts about how you might not love your husband after all. Or how you know your friends are laughing at that new business idea you shared last week (trust me, they’re not).
The monkey mind
In his incredible book The Untethered Soul, Michael Singer talks about how we all have an “inner roommate” who never stops talking.
This inner roommate (our narrator) talks for the sake of talking. Nothing it says is of inherent value; it just wants to be heard. Its job is to watch out for and protect you.
It just wants to stay in touch!
Like a remote employee flicking their chat messenger to green while they put their feet up, it wants you to know they are “on it.” No worries there.
The “trouble” with the monkey mind
As we know, it’s not always plain sailing. The trouble is, instead of discounting the voice of the monkey mind, we take it oh, so seriously.
In our Western culture, we are conditioned to listen to it. We believe we ARE the voice inside. But like Michael Singer also says:
There is nothing more important to true growth than realizing that you are not the voice of the mind — you are the one who hears it.
There is nothing more fundamental to spiritual growth than seeing this truth for yourself.
The habitual thought machine is the source of countless wars, conflicts, troubles at home, misunderstandings and anxiety and depression — more than anyone could quantify.
We don’t have to pay the mind’s chatter so much attention
But let’s not confuse things.
It’s not that your habitual thought machine is a problem to be grappled with.
As we said, it’s just doing its thing and providing what it sees as helpful suggestions.
That DOESN’T mean we have to pay it so much attention though!
If we must act, we’ll know about it. It will be a matter requiring immediate attention, and we won’t even be listening to it then.
We’ll be busy acting, getting out of the way of a speeding bus or making sure we hit that deadline we were about to miss.
Have you ever decided something without thinking about it all that much?
In those moments, I bet you FELT it was the right call with every fibre of your being.
That’s because you weren’t lost in your thoughts, hanging out with your trusty thought machine.
Instead, a feeling kicked in. Instinct kicked in, and you just knew what to do.
No thoughts were required.
How do you pay the thought machine less attention?
I read another great book several years back: The Inside Out Revolution by Michael Neill, an international best-selling coach.
I highly recommend picking up a copy after you grab The Untethered Soul!
But something he said about enjoying a calmer feeling inside has always stayed with me:
There is no better way I know to still the mind than not trying to still the mind.
That may be a slight paraphrase, but that’s the gist of it.
If you shake a snow globe and you want it to stop, do you keep shaking it or leave it be?
And so, with the mind, you can leave it be — let it do its thing.
You will come back to balance if you allow for it.
And if the feeling stays, stay with it. Acknowledge it. Allow it. Don’t try to change it.
Simply observe it, as best you can in each moment – and watch what happens.
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