Taming Monkey Mind: Quickstart Guide

Hey there, everybody, and welcome to this brief presentation on Five Tips for Taming the Monkey Mind. I'm your host, Dr. Donnelly Snipes. Let's start out with what is monkey mind? Well, monkey mind is a term coined, I believe, by Marsha Linehan. I could be wrong here, but when I think monkey mind, I think dbt. Anyhow, it refers to how our thought automatically often tend to jump around. Why do we have monkey mind? You know, why can't we just sit down and focus? Well, there are a lot of reasons for that. And some people are blessed with the ability to sit down and have extended focus. But for the rest of us, it's a process. It's a learning process. Sometimes we have monkey mind because we're hypervigilant. We don't feel safe in our environment for one reason or another. So our brain is constantly telling us about, you know, what's going on to the left, what's going on to the right? What was that sound? What's going on? Now, that can be one cause of monkey mind. Anxiety can be another cause of monkey mind. The what ifs or I don't know if I'll be able to cope if any of those things that feel like threats can trigger monkey mind because the monkey is saying, hey, there could be something coming up here pretty soon. You need to be prepared for it. Noisy hecklers are another reason we have monkey mind. And those voices, those tapes, whatever you want to call it, that we have in our head that tell us that we're never going to be good enough or you should have known that this was going to happen, can be deafening at times, and they contribute to monkey mind because you're trying to focus on something and that heckler is going, why are you even bothering? Remember all these times that you screwed up and finally, lack of training. Our mind is built to help keep us safe. Your brain is programmed to keep you aware of the threats in real life or irl and in your head or I Y h, I know I made that one up. Go figure. But sometimes the things that you are thinking about, sometimes the things your brain is trying to keep you aware of are simply thoughts based in prior experiences, not something that is going on right now in real life. So what do we do about it? First, get to know your monkeys. One of the activities that I encourage people to do just to try to be curious about their monkeys, is an activity called three minute thoughts. And for three minutes, guess what? You write down all of your thoughts or you record them. If you don't Want to write, write whatever. But three minutes, just free associating whatever you're thinking to figure out where does your mind go? Who are these monkeys that are jumping around in your head? When you're finished, you're going to go back through and categorize those thoughts to see what themes might emerge. Are a lot of your thoughts surrounding fears of rejection that can come from if failure, you know, if I fail, then people will hate me or I won't succeed. Isolation and abandonment. If people knew who I was, then they wouldn't love me, whatever. So you put those things under the rejection column. Then you have thoughts about loss of control or the unknown. What if this happens? What if that happens? You know, thinking about the future, things that you have no idea whether they're going to come true or not. But all of those what ifs and physical or emotional harm, if this happens, I don't know if I would be able to cope with it. It would be excruciating. And just don't forget that this will be excruciating. And sometimes we think about those things that, you know, if someone were to die or if I were to lose my job or if whatever would happen, it would be, it would be almost intolerable. And those distress, intolerant thoughts can keep us in that monkey mind place because the monkey is getting progressively agitated. It's saying, hey, I'm telling you, there's this problem and you're not doing anything about it. Another category, you have your threats category that we just talked about. Another category is balls in the air. And sometimes because we wear a bunch of different hats, we may not manage our time super effectively, start getting overwhelmed. And we're trying to keep track of all these different balls that we're trying to juggle in the air. And that can cause us to have monkey mind. So. So the first step to taming that monkey mind is knowing your monkeys. You can't tame them until you understand them. The next step is to work with your monkeys. Don't just lock them in a cage. If and please don't just lock monkeys in a cage, that would make me sad. But if you just locked a whole troop of monkeys in a cage, they're probably going to get rowdier if, especially if you're not meeting their needs, if they're hungry, if they're, they are feeling threatened, they are going to put out threat calls. That's what monkeys do. Go to any zoo, you'll see it. So let's work with the monkeys. Let's figure out how we can calm them down first. Or One of the things you can do is to let go of perfectionism and shoulda couldas. Instead of beating yourself up because you didn't make an A on something or because you made a mistake, learn from it and use rational self statements. You can identify the reasons you made a mistake. You can learn from it. But shoulda could is I should have done this. Well, you didn't. So what will you do in the future in order to prevent that from happening again? The next thing is to forgive yourself and others so you can take back that energy. If you have a lot of energy tied up in resentments, then you're going to have those resentment monkeys bouncing around. You're periodically going to get triggered and start thinking about that person that you're still angry at. Same thing for yourself. If you are angry with yourself. If you feel guilty about something, then that may continue to come up and you may continue to beat yourself up for something that happened in the past. You can't change the past, so it's important to figure out how to accept what's done is done, learn from it, make amends if necessary, and prevent it from happening in the future to the best of your ability. 3. Manage your time. It is a huge reason for monkey mind when we're trying to remember to do too many things. When you've got to do things at work and you've got to remember to schedule doctor's appointments for your kids and you've got to remember to give the dogs their heartworm medication and whatever. Manage your time. Delegate where you can, create reminders, push notifications on your phone, whatever you can do so you don't have to remember it up here, it's going to get fed back to you and let the monkeys be heard. And I know that sounds really weird, but if the monkeys are trying to tell you something, if your brain is trying to tell you something, then listen. You can decide at that point whether it's something you want to pay attention to or not. So some journaling prompts for this part of the presentation. Record your thoughts for three minutes and identify the themes. Do this anytime the troop in your head, the group of monkeys in your head, starts to get a bit too noisy. Just spend three minutes writing down your thoughts and then try to figure out, you know, is there a particular theme that is prompting them to act out today? Take what's useful and leave the rest. So of the thoughts that you had during that three minutes, which ones can be diffused by examining the facts. A Lot of times monkeys get upset based on emotional reasoning, not on facts, because they're monkeys after all. They are not using that higher order cognitive processing. So examining the facts and using fact based reasoning sometimes can diffuse the situation. Find exceptions. If you're using those all or nothing terms, those extreme words, I always fail, or every time you try to do something you, you don't succeed, then look for those exceptions and confront your monkey with those exceptions. Or find alternate explanations. Maybe somebody gave you an attitude when you were at the gym today and you're continuing to replay that in your head. You're trying to focus and that thing keeps coming back into your mind. Okay, well let's try to think of three alternate explanations for why that person may have acted that way that maybe had nothing to do with you. And all of those are tips for handling cognitive distortions. If you want to go and look at videos on addressing negative thoughts and unhelpful thoughts. And finally training that monkey mind. You know, I talked in the last slide about doing the three minute thoughts and that's just, you know, free association, writing down your thoughts. Now we're going to train your monkey mind and I want you to practice three minute mindfulness using either pictures or a partner. So if you're going to practice this mindfulness with pictures, then you take a picture of wherever you're at, whatever you're trying to focus on, and compare what you notice with what's actually in the picture to see what you missed. If you do it with a partner, you can both make lists of what you notice and then compare them gradually. Add time as you're able to stay focused. So start with three minutes. When that becomes easy, then maybe work up to five minutes or eventually even up to 10 minutes. What can you focus on? You can use your senses. You can identify five things that you see, five things that you hear, five things that you smell. You get where I'm going? You can do it with colors. You can identify as many things as you can find that are the color green or brown. Or you can do open awareness and just try to spend three minutes in the moment noticing as many things as possible and, and then compare them to either what's in the picture or what your partner noticed. Another activity is to help is to set reasonable attention goals. You're going to get really frustrated if you jump the gun. Now think about training a puppy. You know, they can sit. Initially they can learn to sit, but they may only sit for about three seconds and then they want to come give you kisses with Monkey mind, it's kind of the same way. Figure out where you are right now, how long can you focus, and then gradually add time to that, Maybe a minute, two minutes at a time. And have those micro successes as you move toward having a longer attention span. And remember, most people can't focus for a solid hour and at a time without, you know, getting distracted for a minute. And when you get distracted, that's okay. Acknowledge the monkey and turn your attention back to what you're doing. Increase your awareness of vulnerabilities and have compassion with yourself. Not every day is going to be a good focus day. And for me, for example, today is a really bad focus day. We were at the emergency vet and until, you know, really, really late last night, and I didn't get as much sleep as I usually get. I'm worried about my dog and so I am not focusing as much as I normally would. Okay. It's important for me to recognize that trying to force myself to focus as I would on a day when I got enough rest and I wasn't worried about my dog is unreasonable. Having compassion with myself, recognizing that I am. I'm tired today. The next thing you can do is thought stopping. And that's easier said than done. I know the first thing, and I want you to continue to think about these monkeys as living little beings. Go to the zoo, Watch some monkeys, visit somebody who has a pet monkey and see that they tend to be pretty active and the more stressed they feel, oftentimes the more active they get. Likewise, the monkeys in your head, the more stressed you are, the louder and more active those monkeys may get. So positive redirection can be one thing, just like you would just do to discipline a child or correct a child. If the monkeys start telling you, you need to pay attention to this, this is a problem, pay attention. You should have, coulda, woulda. It's important to talk to them and say, all right, well, thanks for, you know, giving me the heads up. However, I can't change that or I can't predict what's going to happen. How do you think I should handle it? You know, acknowledge the monkey, Purge it from your head, get it down on paper. If you lay down to go to sleep at night and your mind starts racing, or if your, you know, driving to and from work and your mind's all over the place, that's when you can purge it from your head. When you're driving, use voice to text. Please do not be texting or writing while you're driving. But at night, keep A notepad by your bed. So if something pops into your head, like, oh, I've got to remember to pick up that prescription tomorrow, write it down. As soon as you write it down, you've purged it, that monkey goes to sleep. Some people have a lot of anxiety and find it difficult to control their worry and do this all the time. One technique that some people find helpful is to actually schedule in worry time. So you can have those monkeys bouncing all over the place and you say, okay, guys, I hear you. I hear there's a lot of stress. I've got to focus on work right now. Worry. We will deal with this this afternoon at 4 o'. Clock. I will allow myself 30 minutes of worry time at 4 o' clock when, when we can focus on this. And I know that sounds weird, but it can help some people to diffuse the situation and compartmentalize until they can address that worry. And finally, guided imagery. And this is most effective for helping you get to sleep and relaxation. Guided imagery is not going to help you focus on your work, but it can be a really useful tool for quieting that monkey mind when you want to be quiet. In order to do that, you want to use as many of your senses as you can. And I use the general rule of five inputs, a minimum of five inputs from each sentence. Each sentence. So five things you see, five things you hear, five things you smell. If you're walking down a path in the woods, you know what are, what are five things you see? And then as you go down the path, you know there's five more things that you see and maybe five different things that you hear. But you want to make the experience as multi dimensional as possible, partly because it's more fun that way, but partly because when you are trying to think of all those things, your mind is using words. Your mind is using words to describe those situations. So it doesn't have the ability to also use words to focus on this other stuff. If you completely immerse yourself in that image, then your, your brain is basically going to be occupied. Journaling prompt for this slide. Create and record a guided imagery script using at least four of your senses and five inputs from each of those senses. Additional resources on mindfulness meditation and guided imagery can be found on the YouTube channel@YouTube.com allceducation and search the videos, because we have over 800 search the videos using the keywords mindfulness meditation and guided imagery.