A lot has been written about quietening down or taming the “monkey mind”. Meditation is perhaps the most common approach people take to achieve this. Though meditation isn’t the right path for everyone. For some, the timing to take on such a discipline isn’t ideal.
But what does it even mean to quiet the mind?
Understanding the Monkey Mind
Often people aren’t even aware of the monkey mind. They have a constant stream of thoughts without interruption. Those thoughts could be an interval voice or images or movies or any combination of them. The main thing is that they persist without interruption and you are reacting off of them.
Before you take on a discipline like meditating, it’s best to have a point of reference for what you are trying to achieve. A taste of the end goal.
Well here is a simple little hack to give you that taste. It’s simple and quick but it may not feel good if you are not used to it. Stick with it for a few days and it won’t be so bad.
Hacking the Monkey Mind
The next time you take a shower before you turn the water off, switch to taking a cold shower. If you have never done this before, you may experience a system wide revolt to even the thought of this. This revolt may intensify as you get ready to do it the first time. And the moment you do turn on the cold water and it starts hitting your body, you may start hearing some screaming and yelling (internally at least).
The key here is to keep breathing!
At first you may either hold your breath or take quick shallow breaths. But move into taking deep breaths and feel your feet on the ground and drop your shoulders so they relax. After your system stops revolting, you will find it gets immensely quiet inside. Now this may happen after a minute or two, or it may happen after you do this for a few days. It does happen though.
However, after doing this for a while, your body normalizes to it and it doesn’t have the same affect. But that’s okay because the goal of this hack is to only help you establish a baseline reference point for the stillness inside that is possible to experience. You can certainly pursue cold shower and cold exposure for its own benefits. But that’s not the focus for this hack.
Get a taste for quietening the monkey mind and decide if you want to pursue experiencing this more often. There are many strategies like meditation to go about achieving this.
