Chapter 7 Monkey Chatter

Eric came into our session one week looking very stressed. He described an incident he’d had with one of his employees a few days before that was upsetting him. The employee had made a careless error that cost the company a customer, and it was the second time this had happened. What made this more upsetting to Eric was that this employee was the wife of a good friend of his and Eric was the one who originally suggested she come and work for his company. Eric hated the idea of confronting the employee and was worried that if he did he would lose his friend. He’d slept very little the previous two nights, worrying about what to do.

Eric was hijacked. His anxious thoughts were all based on perceptions of primordial threat. If I fire her everyone in the office will hate me! I’ll lose my friends! I’ll lose my business! I’ll be alone! No wonder he couldn’t sleep. When you are hijacked by the monkey you simply can’t think straight. All your thoughts are like monkey chatter, all based on the perception of a primordial threat. To help Eric sort through this I asked him to chart his cycle.

Looking at Eric’s chart helped him see that he was overestimating the primordial threat. Would everyone turn against him for simply doing his job? Probably not. He also saw that he might be underestimating his ability to cope if some people, including his good friend, got angry.

This was helpful. However, even though the situation probably wasn’t a primordial threat, Eric did have a problem that needed to be solved. Anxious thoughts can be a signal that something really is wrong and that action is required. But with all the monkey chatter in his head, Eric was having difficulty deciding what action he should take.

To help Eric determine that, I introduced him to the following exercise. It is designed to help you sort through the noise so you can act on the signal. (You can download a worksheet for it from http://www.newharbinger.com/35067.)

Five-Step Problem Solving

Identify the problem.
List four possible actions to solve it.
Review short- and long-term consequences of each possible action.
Choose the best action and do it.
Evaluate how it worked. Pat yourself on the back for trying something new!

Beginning with step 1, I asked Eric to state his presenting problem in the simplest terms. Here’s what he said: “The employee I hired is alienating customers.”

Step 2 was to think of four possible actions he could take to address the problem. During this step it is good to think freely, not trying to find the best solution, just brainstorming what comes to mind. Eric came up with four that covered his options pretty well. He could fire the employee, put the employee on probation, talk to his friend (the husband of the employee) about the problem, or simply not do anything.

Next, step 3. I asked Eric to evaluate these possible actions, looking at what both the short-term and long-term consequences of each might be.

Eric said that not doing anything would be the easiest now, but without intervention of some kind, the employee could lose him more customers in the future. Firing her would certainly prevent future mistakes, but it would feel extremely uncomfortable and would put a strain on his friendship with her husband. Talking to his friend, the husband of his employee, without talking to his employee did not make sense for the short run or the long run. He couldn’t outsource his responsibility, burden his friend, and expect the problem to be solved.

The last option, giving his employee a formal warning that included consequences for future mistakes, would certainly make him feel uncomfortable in the short term, but if she repeated her mistake in the future, firing her would be easier, and at least he would have his justification for the firing documented in her personnel record. Eric decided that probation for the employee was the best option, especially if he combined it with more training to help prevent future mistakes.

With an action plan in place, Eric was ready for step 4 of the Five-Step Problem Solving exercise, which was to take action. But he still felt uneasy. He had hoped that he would be able to come up with the perfect solution that would not threaten his friendship with the employee’s husband, nor cause any further loss of customers for his company. This was Eric’s perfectionist monkey mind-set at work. When problem solving there is never a perfect solution. If there were, it wouldn’t be a problem!

If the action Eric chose to take didn’t solve the problem, I explained, he could go back to step 4 and pick another action. Until then it wouldn’t be useful to think about the others. For now, he should focus on the action he’d chosen to employ.

Eric said he felt a little better, but he was concerned that he would continue to worry. Having decided on a course of action did not mean Eric’s monkey would not continue to chatter away; in fact we were both sure it would. So I introduced him to my favorite all-purpose tool to answer monkey chatter.

Thank the Monkey

Like all my clients, when dealing with anxious thoughts, Eric’s instinct was to block them out. When that didn’t work he’d argue back, coming up with rationales for why there was no need to worry. And like all of us, Eric seldom had much success.

The monkey is a force of nature, and like with all irrepressible forces, what we resist persists. You cannot ignore, suppress, or debate with the monkey! To the monkey, your attempts to not think about the perceived threat will only confirm the threat, guaranteeing more chatter. To send the monkey the message you want to send it, that I am aware of this problem and I can handle it, you must give it full voice.

Giving the monkey full voice, of course, does not mean following its lead. Simply notice the chatter without judging it or reacting to it. Notice the monkey like you notice the announcement at the airport warning you not to leave your baggage unattended. No matter how troubling or repetitive a thought is, just keep noticing it, over and over again.

By simply noticing, you are allowing yourself to have negative thoughts—yes, even big bad scary ones you’d be embarrassed to share with anyone—and training yourself not to treat them as a call to action. You are creating a healthier distance between you and the monkey, becoming an observer rather than a participant in the worry process.

Therefore, when monkey chatter becomes loud enough to distract you, which it most certainly will, your practice will be to observe the anxious thought and move on. To remind yourself that you are declining to engage with your monkey’s chatter rather than trying to shut it up, I suggest you acknowledge these thoughts with a simple thank you.

That’s right, be polite! The little critter, misguided as it is, is just trying to do its job of keeping you safe. Like a tantrum-throwing toddler, the monkey will not be quieted with reason. Like a fire alarm, it cannot be ignored. So acknowledge the monkey politely and move forward. Here’s what it sounded like for Eric when he got a barrage of chatter about his upcoming talk with his employee.

Monkey chatter: She may have made an honest mistake. Confronting her will be unfair!

Eric: Thank you, monkey.

Monkey chatter: If you confront employees, they will hate you and you’ll be a pariah in your own company!

Eric: Thank you, monkey.

Monkey chatter: You can’t threaten to fire the wife of a friend. That would be an unforgivable betrayal!

Eric: Thank you, monkey.

Remember that it is only a thought you are observing, a thought that is the product of a hijacked brain. Every time you observe it and decline to act on it, the distance between you and that thought grows, and the more you regain control of your cognitions. Each repetition of observing chatter, acknowledging chatter, and letting go of chatter will, like any exercise, make you stronger and more skillful at reclaiming your own brain.

If you find yourself countering the monkey’s chatter with arguments of your own, stop. The monkey does not learn from reason or debate. The monkey mind learns by either 1) receiving confirmation of its perception of threat, or 2) not receiving confirmation of its perception of threat. You’ve been teaching the monkey the wrong lesson your whole life by confirming its perceptions with resistance. It’s time to stop. The clearest message you can send a chattering monkey mind is to observe it, thank it, and return—over and over again—to your new expansive strategy and mind-set.

Your goal is to override the monkey’s call to action, not to drown it out or undermine it in any way. You are building immunity, so that no matter how loudly or how often the chatter strikes, you can continue to move purposely toward your personal goals and expand your world.

Worry Time

The next week during my session with Eric, he reported that due to scheduling conflicts, his meeting with his employee was still several days away. This had given his monkey lots of additional time to chatter in anticipation of the confrontation.

Eric was able to observe, acknowledge, and let go of his anxious thoughts with a Thank you, monkey fairly consistently, at least during the day. But at night when he was tired he fell back into a worry cycle. Lying alone in the dark, thanking the monkey seemed silly to him and it did not help him get sleep. Eric was ready for the industrial strength anti-chatter tool, Worry Time.

Hopefully you’ve become accustomed to paradox in this book. Worry Time is just what it sounds like, a time for you to worry, on purpose no less! The difference is that Worry Time is your time. You decide when to worry and what to worry about, not the monkey.

This makes a bigger difference than it sounds. Worry is a mental action we take in response to a perceived threat. As such it is a safety behavior, designed to forestall the negative emotions that accompany the thoughts. When you decide on your own, without any monkey input, to designate a time to allow the anxious thought to be expressed—without trying to fix or problem solve anything—you are setting the agenda. You are taking a different stance towards worry.

With this new stance you level the playing field. It’s a little like standing up to a bully. The message is, This is my neighborhood. Bring it on! I can handle it.

Worry done this way, with a plan and purpose, is transformed from a safety strategy to an expansive strategy. You bring up the anxious thought yourself and don’t try to resist it. And the monkey goes hungry.

Worry Time

Designate a block of time in your day that you will devote to full-on worrying. Set your alarm or mark it on your calendar just like you would for any other important commitment. Since, as you’ve already guessed, it won’t be something you’ll be looking forward to, I suggest you plan a block of time shortly before you expect to do something fun, like meeting a friend, watching a movie, or some other form of entertainment.

When your appointment with worry arrives, find a spot where you won’t be disturbed, set your timer for 10 to 20 minutes, and go to it. Worry your head off. Don’t stop until the timer rings.

Remember not to argue against or suppress the thoughts and feelings that emerge. You are in charge and this is what you asked for. You’ve chosen to open the gates, letting everything you are thinking and feeling pass freely through you, resisting nothing. You’ll be tempted to problem solve some of your worries, but don’t go there. No fixing, just feeling!

Conversely, your mind may stray away from anxious thoughts and you’ll find yourself thinking about benign things that have no emotion attached. Refocus on an anxious thought. This is Worry Time, when your intention is to worry. The more often you return to worrying, the better!

To maximize the effectiveness of your Worry Time you may find it helpful to make a script to read aloud or record and listen to. That’s what Eric did. To make the script I asked him two questions and I had him answer them as specifically as possible, with no sugarcoating.

What is the worst that might happen?
If it comes true, what would it mean about me, my life, and my future?

I told him to really let go, as if he were writing a horror movie—his worst-case scenario. Here’s what he wrote:

My employee will offend another customer and we’ll lose the customer. When I confront her she will become angry with me. She’ll cry and deny everything, saying it wasn’t her fault. Everyone in the office will side with her. She’ll go home and tell her husband what a jerk I am. He’ll get angry too and confront me in person, telling me that I’m unfair and out of line and that our friendship is over. Then he’ll tell everybody we know what a jerk I am, and they will all turn against me. Everyone I work with as well as my friends that I care about will hate me and I’ll be alone.

When Eric read what he’d written, he could see that it was a little far-fetched. “But that won’t stop me from worrying about it,” he said. “Good,” I told him. As long as it provokes the monkey into sounding the alarm it will be great to use at Worry Time.

Like all tools, Worry Time will be most effective if practiced often and regularly. With my clients I recommend scheduling a Worry Time daily for at least a week. Remember that resilience builds with repetition. For a downloadable worksheet version of this exercise, visit http://www.newharbinger.com/35067.

In addition to the resilience you will accrue from the exercise itself, you will have the added benefit of another kind of expansive strategy to use when you get blindsided by monkey chatter. You can say to yourself, I will worry about this during Worry Time tomorrow. Postponing worry until you are in control works because you’ve stopped feeding the monkey.

When you don’t feed the monkey, you get the banana. You get new experience and learning that creates new neural pathways in your brain. You are learning that the content of anxious thoughts is not important and you don’t need to act on them. Those pressing what ifs and what abouts that once echoed in your head are beginning to sound more like what they are: Woo-woo-woo! Monkey chatter. You can tolerate them. You are expanding!

Mix and Match

Dealing with worry isn’t just a brain exercise, it’s a full body workout. When you use the monkey chatter tools in this chapter, the necessary feelings I described in the last chapter will rise up in force. You’ll need to employ the tools in that chapter, Welcoming Breath and Ask for More, in conjunction with Thank the Monkey and Worry Time.

What’s more, the tools in these two chapters can not only be used individually and collectively, but also interchangeably. For example, you can respond to monkey chatter with Welcoming Breath. You can Thank the Monkey for negative feelings and you can Ask for More uncomfortable physical sensations during Worry Time. Mix and match these tools freely. The more you use them, and the more situations you use them in, the more resilience you will eventually develop.

Note the word “eventually” in that sentence. New tools require a new skill set. Processing necessary feelings works muscles that have long atrophied for most of us, and since your present monkey mind-set influences every situation in your life to one degree or another, you have a lot of expansion practice ahead. Any change you make in how you think and behave will take plenty of repetition to become your default.

While that may seem like bad news, it’s really good. Remember what we’re practicing here—expanding your life! The more you expand, the more freely you can pursue your goals and the more flexible and resilient you will be when you encounter obstacles.

In the next chapter I will talk about two more tools for your expansion practice, each very different in nature. One is conceptual, the other concrete. One will inspire your practice and the other will ground it. Individually they are powerful; together they are unstoppable. Once you understand their synergetic strength, you won’t want to practice without them.