Letting my monkey mind crawl

The “Monkey Mind,” originally a Buddhist term meaning “unsettled/restless,” has really fascinated me as of late. Particularly, I am interested in understanding how this instinctive mind lives within all of us. Better yet, I would love to understand how to best tame / train my monkey mind into being a cooperative part of my existence.

It sounds deep and philosophical but I find a lot if quite rational. The idea is simple. We are all animals at our core. In our brains, there is a bit of wild left in us in the form of this “monkey mind.”

For many of us, this monkey mind can take over our lives.

Facebook/Social media broadly abuse this monkey mind into going wild.

Money does the same thing.

Taming it is very challenging and I see it as a continual challenge.

I saw this tweet that I thought was interesting:

Give your monkey brain a pen and paper to write down thoughts and it stops running in loops.

— Muneeb Ali (@muneeb) January 1, 2018

It effectively summarized one of the major reasons I write. Writing is a tool I use to let my monkey mind crawl. I give it space to go out and do it’s thing on a plain canvas.

This exercise, over hundreds and hundreds of days, have proven to be very valuable for me internally.

Originally published at gonen.blog.