What do you Feed your Mind Monster?

This month I want to talk about the ‘Mind Monster’ – that body of energy that is comprised of our most negative thoughts, and is all too often the nagging narrator of our life.

   All it takes is a simple slip up, a misspoken word or a response we don’t like from someone we may not even know, and suddenly the Mind Monster is out of the cage, puffing up and demanding to be fed. And feed it we do, spending days doggedly pursuing what makes us angry or fearful or stressed, but cancelling out a positive emotion or thought (especially about ourselves) within minutes of it forming. When the Mind Monster is in control, our energy and sense of self is splintered and we feel powerless to control our responses to the challenges of living. 

   Mirroring the individual Mind Monster, we have the global version incessantly twittering away. Through social media we have created a massive monster with a voracious appetite, which has convinced many of us that it is our best source of validation. Yet what it all too often encourages is the most vicious and critical of voices, whilst carelessly causing a teenager’s self-esteem to be based on how many ‘likes’ they get within the first 2 hours of uploading a new profile pic. Social media is in many ways anything but sociable. It may give us the illusion of being connected and part of something important, but most of the time it is feeding our individual Mind Monsters and, as such, keeping us small, whilst distracting us from the true source of connection, the Soul.

   Unlike the Mind Monster, the Soul has no need to feed pain to itself or others. It has no interest in defining itself through those external to us, because it knows itself intimately. It is compassion, it is wisdom, it is the source of love, it is our most perfect self.

  So make a pledge today to starve your mind monster. And make no mistake it is your mind monster.  It stands between you and your greatest self, between you and strength, clarity and happiness…….and you definitely don’t deserve that.

Things you can try

• Instead of grumbling and rumbling on for days about how some loved one annoys you, whilst “liking” the innocuous activities of someone you barely know, take the time to like the person sitting across the dinner table from you. Ponder their strengths and the place they fill in your life. Contemplate the things they do that make you smile, for at least as long as you fixate on their less favourable habits. 
• When you notice your Mind Monster starting to awaken, dragging you to a place of negativity, anchor your feet into the ground, breathe slowly and rhythmically into the lower part of your lungs, and with each out-breath visualize the Mind Monster deflating bit by bit, like a hot-air balloon after it has landed. Then crumple it up, chuck it in the bin, and grab a rainbow instead to pin on your lapel.
• If we think of our interactions in terms of a city, then social media represents the busy market square, noisy, frenetic and draining. While it’s fun to visit occasionally and people watch, it's not where we'd choose to live. We need to balance its distractions with other opportunities to find the silence and space our souls crave. We find that solace when we do something creative, play a game, sit under a tree watching the clouds or work in the garden.
• Several of my clients are enjoying this website which for a small fee emails 10 minute meditations to your inbox every morning. These come from all over the world in different styles and traditions and recipients report feeling much more uplifted and positive for the day.