February 17, 2016, TGIW: Unhumping Hump Day…Monkey Vigilance
By Darrell Gurney | Blog
“The mind is a monkey, hopping around from thought to thought, image to image. Rarely do more than a few seconds go by in which the mind can remain single-pointed, empty.” –Dani Shapiro
The Chinese New Year began last week, the year of the monkey.
Those cute primates representing intelligence, activity and playfulness can also play massive games in our head.
A friend recently told me he no longer asks people “What’s happening?” but, rather, “What’s not happening?”…because he figures that what’s going on in peoples’ minds is rarely what’s actually occurring in the world.
Mark Twain said “I’ve had a lot of worries in my life, most of which never happened.”
Where can we discern for ourselves today what is really going on…vs. the monkey mind?
Got monkey vigilance?
“The hard work, you discover over the years, is in learning to discern between correct and incorrect anxiety, between the anxiety that’s trying to warn you about a real danger and the anxiety that’s nothing more than a lying, sadistic, unrepentant bully in your head.” –Daniel B. Smith