21 April 2018

The Monkey Mind

Screenshot-Headspace-app

Photo credit: Julian Goh, 2018

Meditation was always one of those things I knew were probably good for me. Just like how people say eating enough vegetables can be good for me. Or getting regular exercise in. Or spending less time staring at a screen. But I just never got around to it, because I had other 'more important' stuff to do or so I told myself.

So recently I changed things around by making meditation a priority. I challenged myself to start a daily practice about 5 weeks ago and what this ended up looking like was getting up 10 minutes earlier every morning so that I would have that block of dedicated time just for this. Just 10 minutes a day, every day, left pretty much no room for me to make excuses because it's really a tiny chunk of time compared to all the hours we all have in a day.

Actually, the entire story behind how meditation got only my personal list of Things Worth Doing recently was because I stumbled upon Headspace somewhere on the internet and enjoyed the minimal and straight to the point user experience so much so that I decided to delve even further by setting up a daily routine. Headspace is a very well known guided meditation app developed by meditation and mindfullness expert Andy Puddicombe.

I think it's also worth mentioning that I have had a tiny amount of meditation experience in the past, which looked like 10 minute guided sessions with a family friend which happened once a week for about 6 months. So that was my first dip into the water, so to speak, and even with such limited practice it perked my curiosity at the time.

“ The idea that the mind is malleable and adaptable, that all it takes to learn something new or challenge yourself through new experiences is the will to want to do it. ”

OK. Back to the story.

So as you saw in the photo at the very start of this blog, my morning routine has been working out very consistently for myself with 40 straight days of meditation under my belt. Now, I'm going to skip past the actual mechanisms and techniques of meditation because, especially in recent times, there's been an explosion of information and attention into meditation practices so they're readily accessible elsewhere and I'll use this space instead to share the personal impact it has had on me. And for this to start, I have to rewind the clock a bit.

In the past 8 years since Year 11 in high school (a specific and very personal point in time where I experienced significant personal growth and understanding), the experiences I've been through since have led me to build upon this idea of being able to do anything you set your mind to. The idea that the mind is malleable and adaptable, that all it takes to learn something new or challenge yourself through new experiences is the will to want to do it. It sounds easier said than done of course because this desire is not something anything or anyone can give you (even if they tried), it has to come from a place of authenticity within yourself. I believe that it takes a substantial amount of self convinction to do the big things we all want to achieve but as well as the simple and day-to-day stuff.

“ ...the mind in it's day-to-day, hour-to-hour, minute-to-minute state can actually be a very noisy, chaotic and unfamiliar place, something which I have never really paid any real attention to. ”

Looking back, what stands out to me the most is how the development of my personal understanding of 'how things should work' has clearly been influenced by this principle of:

Work ethic + Desire = Results

This is as relevant to me today and to Julian sitting in the classroom 8 years ago.

Inevitably, I learnt over time that Life could never be condensed and simplified into anything close to resembling to an A + B = C equation and that I needed to be in the right environment in order for my work ethic and desire to produce the results that I was actually looking for but I have still clung onto the idea that the mind can be controlled in a way that you want it to behave and again, from the simple day-to-day all the way to the complex and life altering.

You want to pick up a cup to drink some water? Sure.

You want to hike up some mountain to see what the view is like at the top? Sure.

You want to become rich and retire young? Sure, let's get to work.

This can be powerful in many ways. It can empower someone with curiosity and initiative in unfamiliar situations, producing a mindset of "I don't know how to do that right now, but I can try and learn how to do it". It can allow someone to push through challenging situations by having a high tolerance for discomfort and forcing the mind to push through a particular difficulty. To sketch this out even more, it's like making the decision to make time every day to exercise. One of the major barriers stopping you from picking up this new habit that is probably good for you in the long run is likely to be yourself and your mind, making the conscious decision of choosing "no" over the "yes". Right? Is it this simple? Is the final decision actually yours to make?

If it was this easy for everyone, personal trainers would be in financial ruin.

The past 40 days of meditation has showed me that the mind in it's day-to-day, hour-to-hour, minute-to-minute state can actually be a very noisy, chaotic and unfamiliar place, something which I have never really paid any real attention to. It was a surreal experience for me, noticing for the first time that there actually was all this noise going on in my monkey mind. It didn't matter what time of the day it was or what day of the week it was or what mood I was in during the 10 minutes, without fail there would be all these random thoughts flying around in my head about what I'm going to have for lunch tomorrow or what videos on Youtube should I click on next and the list goes on and on and on. There doesn't seem to be a time or topic limit either when the mind is doing its own business and is completely untethered. And it's not like the jumbled and unfocused thoughts, feelings and emotions emerge because I sit down to pay attention to it but instead that it is always there with me all day every day. It is within the 10 minutes that I actually get to 'see' it for what it is.

“ It can empower someone with curiosity and initiative in unfamiliar situations, producing a mindset of "I don't know how to do that right now, but I can try and learn how to do it". ”

I think a useful analogy would be standing in a crowded and noisy train with no headphones on and trying to read an intense book that demands a lot of close attention and brain power. On a particularly good day, you'll open up the book and slip right into a good flow where you're able to zone in and read the content on the pages despite all the noise and chaos going on around you. This is made possible because you probably built up a tolerance over time to ignore the noise and to create that ability to focus intently - all in the effort of blocking off the world around you. And it works, of course, but it doesn't make all that stuff go away.

The fact remains that the world around you is still there and the mind is still being bombarded with all the noise and distractions but it no longer takes as much focused and conscious effort to block it away. And there also might be some days where you try to focus but the mind runs off completely and making it impossible to read. Maybe it is also on one of the days where you look up from the page and notice your surroundings for the first time in awhile. You notice the young parent reading to her child, the buildings flowing past just outside the window and the noise the train makes as it runs along the tracks. And it is in this brief moment of awareness where you actually find peace, the quiet you were looking for all this time...

Noticing the noise for the first time, it's as if I've been walking around with my senses dulled all this time.

“We dedicate time, money and effort towards training our bodies, our careers and our bank accounts but rarely do we train our minds.”

The daily practice has been a useful tool in showing me that it's easy to not see what you don't want to see (even if you might consciously think that there's nothing in yourself or in your life that you don't want to see). It has given me the first (tiny) step towards developing a better understanding of what actually happens up here. Just with any first step, having the right tools for the job makes it easier to start off on the right foot and sustain the effort over time; like how a hammer and a nail go hand in hand, meditation and mindfulness become tools that can be used to train ourselves to become more conscious of what actually floats around in our minds day in and day out.

At the end of the day, from what I've learnt so far it doesn't actually come down to having more control, removing thoughts that you don't want around or suppressing whatever else that goes on in the mind but instead cultivating the skill of being aware of the thoughts, feelings and emotions that are actually happening in the first place. It is through training this awareness of the mind that we can choose to become more responsive than reactive to all of the things we encounter in our lives.

We dedicate time, money and effort towards training our bodies, our careers and our bank accounts but rarely do we train our minds.

I now challenge you to be curious, try doing a simple 10 minute sit down no matter where you are in life and see whether it changes you in any way. I can only see this delivering the good stuff that you might not have known that you wanted.

Self portrait

Photo credit: Julian Goh, 2018