Chapter 5

The World Is Round

For the majority of human history, most people believed the world was flat, and that when you reached the edge you’d drop off into space. No one, of course, had ever been to the edge. This perception of threat was a property of the collective monkey mind, which operates under the principle, What you don’t know might kill you.

The prevailing mind-set among ship captains was, “If there is an edge, I must be certain not to sail off.” Their strategy of choice was to stay close to shore. When Europeans wanted to reach the Orient they sailed east, following the African shoreline, and vice versa. Every time a ship returned from a shore-hugging voyage this perception of threat was confirmed. Collective monkey logic concluded that because you stayed close to the shore, you returned safely.

Each of us has an ocean of possibility and discovery directly in front of us—the rest of our lives. If your concessions to the monkey have kept you hugging the shoreline, your choice is clear. Keep maintaining the cycle and your options remain limited. Break the cycle and expand your world. In that infinitely expanding world all things are possible. In the words of Dr. Seuss, “Oh, the places you’ll go!”

Breaking the Cycle

To break your cycle of anxiety the first step is to turn the monkey mind-set on its head. Assumptions like I must be certain, I must be perfect, and I am responsible for everything and everybody must be flipped to I am willing to be uncertain, I can make mistakes, and I am responsible for myself.

Easier said than done, of course. Like all of us, I’ve tried to change my thinking in the past and I know how difficult it is to make it stick. One can easily decide to adopt a new way of thinking within the sanctuary of a therapist’s office, while meditating at the top of a mountain, or while reading a self-help book. Maintaining that new way of thinking is another matter. The first time something comes along that triggers a perception of threat, we’re slammed with anxiety and our resolve is shattered.

You’ve spent your lifetime feeding and reinforcing your present mind-set. Any new one you adopt—without a new expansive cycle to maintain it—will last about as long as a New Year’s resolution.

What I’ve found in my practice, both professional and personal, is that before your new mind-set can become the default, it needs to be informed with new experience. Experiential learning blazes new trails in the brain, that with additional new experience can widen into superhighways. There is no substitute for actually “doing it.” You may dream of running a marathon, but you won’t actually start to believe you can until you’ve put some serious mileage on your Nikes.

So how do we get new experience to support our new expansive mind-set? We stop feeding the monkey! When we replace strategies that keep us safe with strategies that help us expand, we disrupt the cycle of anxiety and make new things happen. Strategies that help us expand—expansive strategies—are not intended to reduce anxiety, but rather to override it: to trump your monkey’s trump card.

An expansive strategy is the active ingredient in your recipe to break the cycle of anxiety. Expansive strategies enable you to have new experiences that counter the perceptions of the monkey mind and solidify a new mind-set. And, as an added bonus, strategies that build or strengthen a cycle of expansion will teach you how to override anxiety, which will eventually lead to actually feeling less anxious.

Expansive strategies are easy to come up with because they are usually the mirror opposite of safety strategies. For example, one safety strategy popular with shy people at social gatherings is to position themselves in one spot and wait for others to approach them in conversation. This strategy ensures that whomever you talk with is interested in you and thus not likely to reject you. Every time someone else takes the initiative and you are not rejected, your monkey gets fed and your cycle is maintained.

To break that cycle, your new, expansive strategy at a social gathering might be to simply approach someone and say “Hello.” You could follow up by asking her a question about herself, or by sharing something about yourself. Do you need to be smart and funny, the life of the party? No! That would be a bull’s-eye. By simply putting yourself out there you are right where you belong, on the target.

Be aware that if you employ a new strategy with an old mind-set—I need to sound confident, show no signs of anxiety, in other words be perfect—you will not make progress. You must create an expansive mind-set to go with your expansive strategy. Something like, I can sometimes be boring or sound stupid. I don’t need to hit the bull’s-eye; I just need to be on the target.

Will you really believe this? Not at this point. You’ve been thinking with the perfectionist monkey mind-set for most, if not all of your life. You can, however, adopt a mind-set that seems truer, even if you do not trust it yet. The gardener who faithfully waters and weeds will see the seed sprout and grow into a lush plant. In the same way you, as you repeat your expansive strategy, will come to believe the mind-set you’ve been cultivating.

The beautiful thing about expansive mind-sets and strategies is that they maintain cycles of expansion. Not having to hit the bull’s-eye every time opens up the whole target. There’s no limit to where you’ll be able to go. There’s a big world out there!

Of course, thinking about a bigger world is going to mean greater anxiety. If you are feeling anxious right now, good! That means you are getting it. Yes, you will be more anxious when you drop a safety strategy and replace it with an expansive strategy. But in the short run, becoming more anxious is exactly what you need. You are standing up to your monkey mind by saying, I choose to be more anxious. I am willing to be imperfect. You are discrediting the perception of threat, something your monkey mind definitely notices because it means your monkey gets no banana!

When you do this over and over again, your anxiety alarms will decrease and you will become more comfortable being yourself in social situations. You will also learn how to deal with occasional rejection, which makes you much more resilient.

While all this may sound challenging, be assured that even my most anxiety-ridden clients have changed their strategies. So can you. I’ll be addressing the issue of handling anxiety through this transition in more detail in the next chapter. Right now, I want to present to you what some common expansive mind-sets and strategies can look like and how they work.

The rule of thumb is that expansive mind-sets and strategies are, for the most part, the opposite of what you have been thinking and doing. You’ve been playing it safe; now you’re going to look for trouble. Let me demonstrate by starting with Maria.

Beyond Certainty

Maria’s most obvious safety strategy was looking up physical sensations on the Internet to see if they might be a sign of a serious disease. After some discussion she decided on a new expansion strategy. She would refrain from Googling any symptoms for one week.

Another safety strategy Maria regularly employed was asking her husband for reassurance. He wasn’t a doctor, but hearing his sensible opinion had a temporarily calming effect on her fears. The expansive strategy she chose was to stop reporting any physical sensations she might be having to him.

Maria considered dropping some of her other safety strategies, like not calling her doctor and asking for tests, but decided she was not ready to tackle those yet. This is fine. It is wise to start small, knowing that you can tackle the bigger challenges with time. My clients get less overwhelmed when they set clear and realistic expectations for themselves.

The strategies Maria did choose were still ambitious. I was careful to review with her the expansive mind-set she would use whenever she noticed any sign of, for example, a headache: I am choosing to live with uncertainty.

Remember that the mind-set and strategy go hand in hand. Your mind-set enables your strategy and vice versa. If either one is biased toward safety, you won’t disrupt your anxiety cycle. If Maria approached this weeklong trial clinging to the monkey mind-set, I must be certain, the practice would fail.

Although Maria’s anxiety problem was acute, her challenge was by no means unique. Everybody with the intolerance of uncertainty mind-set, when faced with an unknown, assumes there is danger. We cannot relax until the situation is proven safe.

With the invention of cell phones, many of us have developed what I consider a checking compulsion. We tell our loved ones to “call when you get there,” and if they don’t call us when we expect them to we get nervous and call them. Although this may make us feel less anxious is the short run, we are feeding the monkey and maintaining an intolerance of uncertainty.

If your family is going hang gliding, of course it’s reasonable to check on them, but if you notice that your texts and calls have increased in frequency and that without them you get very anxious, an expansive strategy such as limiting the number and times you can check may serve you.

Whether you are over-checking your own safety status like Maria, or the safety status of others, simply reverse the monkey mind-set. Tolerate uncertainty and assume safety unless there is clear evidence of danger. Eventually, after much practice this will allow you to feel more comfortable, even when you’re not sure what will happen.

Do you attempt to control outcomes by being overly cautious and prepared? Funny how that approach still makes us feel anxious. That’s because it feeds the monkey. Turn the strategy on its head and plan to be flexible, taking minimal precautions. For example, when you go on your next trip, whether it is a picnic at a park or a vacation to another country, underplan and under-pack. Choose to deal with any adversity that may crop up as an opportunity to practice resilience and creative problem solving. Your new expansive mind-set will sound something like, I choose not to plan every detail. I choose to not know how everything will turn out. I choose uncertainty and spontaneity.

Here are some examples of I must be certain mind-sets and some alternative expansive beliefs to counter them.

To help you change your mind-set into something more expansive, visit the website for this book, http://www.newharbinger.com/35067, and download the Intolerance of Uncertainty Mind-set chart.

Beyond Perfect

Eric’s most common safety strategy at work was to postpone completing any project or finalizing any decision until he was sure it couldn’t be criticized. With his I cannot make a mistake mind-set, anything less than universal approval would be complete failure. Although he was unsure how he would do it, Eric decided, as a weeklong experiment, to set firm time limits on one of the decisions he was working on. He chose a decision that, while stressful, would have fewer negative consequences than the others if he got it wrong. He promised himself that when the predetermined time came, he would make the decision whether he felt ready or not.

Eric also wanted to do something about his social perfectionism. He felt self-conscious about his weight and shyness, and was avoiding situations that might expose him to the judgments of others. He was in a cycle that kept him alienated and alone. Eric decided on a new strategy: to accept any invitation or opportunity to spend time with others. His coworkers had an ongoing lunch together on Thursdays, which he’d always avoided, so he put it on his calendar.

We both knew that unless he was willing to risk making mistakes—being seen as a failure—Eric wouldn’t follow through with his self-imposed work deadlines or social commitments. For those of us with the perfectionist strain of the monkey mind-set, fear of failure is the motivation for much of what we do. We don’t see fallibility as a normal part of the human condition, but as a personal shortcoming. If we do something poorly it defines us completely as unworthy, “less than” everyone else. Eric needed a new expansive mind-set to support his new strategies.

What would an expansive mind-set for a perfectionist look like? You could say, Making mistakes, and allowing others’ judgments and criticism, are reasonable risks to take and opportunities for growth.

Or, as Eric put it so succinctly on his way out of the office, I am willing to screw up.

Here are a few examples of the I cannot make a mistake mind-set, coupled with alternative expansive ways of thinking to replace them.

Use the Perfectionist Mind-set chart available at http://www.newharbinger.com/35067 to help turn your own perfectionist mind-set into a more expansive way of thinking.

Beyond Over-responsible

Samantha’s primary safety strategy was calling to check on her alcoholic son. Her new expansive strategy was simple: Don’t call and check.

In order to follow through with her plan, Samantha would need to change her default mind-set. She had always operated under the assumption that If something bad happens to him and I didn’t do anything to prevent it, it would be my fault. Her new way of thinking would have to be, I cannot prevent my son from hurting himself.

Naturally this was challenging for Samantha to contemplate. As a mother, the stakes felt overwhelmingly high. If she didn’t check on him and something happened, her pain and guilt would be enormous. But Samantha’s present mind-set and safety strategies were seriously affecting her mental and physical health. She knew she had to change.

Together we came up with an expansive strategy she could try: to check up on her son no more than once daily. This may not seem significant, but for Samantha it would be a challenge. She was in the habit of calling or texting him three or four times a day.

Even if she carried this through, she would likely have to face other challenges. What if her son called her, as he often did, with a request for another “loan” to keep him afloat? Samantha decided that she would offer to pay for a treatment program for substance abuse, but would not give him money he needed as a result of his substance abuse. Although it sounded cold and heartless, she knew her over-responsible mind-set and strategy were helping neither of them in the long run. But if she did refuse him money, she knew it would upset him, which would be a challenge for her. Samantha’s monkey mind-set held her accountable whenever anyone got upset with her.

After much deliberation Samantha decided to commit to both expansive strategies. They would support an expanded mind-set that she envisioned for herself, one that said I am responsible for my own actions and not the actions of others, and If someone becomes upset with me, it does not mean I have done something wrong. I am not responsible for other people’s emotions.

Expansive strategies for those with an over-responsible mind-set can sound selfish, especially in a culture that values loyalty and family. But being responsible for your own health and well-being is not being selfish. In fact, it is your primary duty. In an airplane emergency you put on your own oxygen mask first, before your child’s, for good reason. If you are depleted, you will be unable to help those you love even when they genuinely need and deserve your help.

Other traps that over-responsible mind-sets pull us into are pointing out others’ poor choices to them, stepping up when there’s a task nobody’s willing to do, and failing to set limits with those who disrespect or take advantage of us. While these strategies may make you feel better in the short run, you cannot grow by continuing to use them.

Employing strategies that take responsibility for yourself first will reinforce a healthier, more sustainable mind-set, one that will help you cultivate health and peace of mind regardless of how others are doing. When you stop trying to control others, and offer them compassion instead, they will feel the difference. In time they will be more likely to accept the support you have to give them.

Here are a few examples of expansive alternatives to some common over-responsible beliefs of the monkey mind-set.

To gauge how over-responsible your mind-set presently is, and how you can turn it into an expansive one, complete the Over-responsibility Mind-Set chart, available at http://www.newharbinger.com/35067.

A Bigger World

The first rationale for choosing expansive strategies over safety strategies is that it breaks the cycle of anxiety. When you stop feeding the monkey you are showing the monkey that you can handle the situation, and in the future there is no cause for alarm. Over time the monkey mind will learn to perceive that particular situation as nonthreatening.

The second rationale for using expansive strategies is just as, if not more, important. Expansive strategies create new experience, experience that will actually transform your mind-set. The more expansive your mind-set is, the better you’ll be able to handle all situations. You’ll be able to approach new people, places, and things with more confidence. Your options widen. Your world grows bigger.

Just imagine what your life would be like if you actually believed you could handle things whether or not they turned out like you planned, if you didn’t have to be 100% perfect in every action you took, and if you didn’t have to fix everyone else’s problems.

If you’re with me this far, great! You understand how your behavior has been reinforcing a mind-set that not only isn’t serving you, but actually maintains your anxiety. With this new insight you have the capability to disrupt a system that your monkey has spent years refining but that is getting you nowhere. In its place you can discover a bigger world where the sky is the limit.

As you read this, can you hear some chatter and howling in the background? The monkey is not about to give up on its mission of 100% safety. In the next chapter we will look at the powerful tool the monkey uses to implement that mission, and the equally powerful means you have to counter it.