More Monkey And Less Mind?

In 2017 a completely new species of great ape was discovered high in the Sumatran treetops.

And on the same day became the newest and most at risk great ape anywhere in the lands. Unlikely to survive a generation.

Quite a day.

We’ve been travelling a dubious road.

Consumption, growth; a desperate hunger to consume, procure, to fill an empty void.

The Covid lockdown is an invitation, an initiation, some might say.

We can continue along the same lifeless road, consuming a finite world. Killing almost everything in our path.

Or pause, step out and create anew.

There is a whole lot of talk of new normal, new ideas dawning and spawning.

The truth is likely to prove harder, more sticky, to realise.

We are servants of our mind.

And our minds are a bundle of very old habits, which will die very hard.
They are the sum of grooves, deeply laid
They are a mass of behaviours, feelings, emotions, habits, brimming and bubbling on an auto pilot of sorts, laid down over days, weeks, months, years - and generations.

Our mind is like a tanker.

Take time to check yours out.

What you will find isn’t pretty.

It’s lazy and crazy and greedy and needy.

And wired to protect itself.

I spent nearly 15 years wrestling with my mind. Attempting to meditate it or learn or teach it to behave in a more useful, preferable way. Behave better, please!

News alert: you can’t outfight your mind. 

Back to those monkeys living in the trees. Or any monkey anywhere.

Fundamental to our success is our ability to cooperate, to work together. 

Cooperation keeps our monkey cousins warm in Siberian winters. It keeps our monkey cousins fed on the sun baked African plain.

Cooperation = a kindness.

There is a softness to it, a hopefulness, a warmth. It is a hand reaching out, in service. A powerful gesture.

And what works for our monkey cousins, works for their monkey cousins too: us.

We might not swing in trees with quite the same gusto, but monkeys we are.

And with that we share the same building blocks of success.

Kindness, cooperation, are key to our success too. And not just with each other.

No Need To Outfight Your Mind 

It’s a fight you will not win. Give up now. 

You need a little more guile. 

Be more judo wise. 

In fact, you don’t need to fight it at all. 

What do our monkey cousins teach? 

That the source of our success is cooperation, working together, not against. 

The same is true with our minds. 

Left to its own devices, your mind will call your shots. How you run your business, manage your teams, how you respond, the problems you encounter (and encounter and encounter; know the feeling?!) all a symptom of your mind. 

And those disappearing rainforests, chronic stress, over work, kids on opioids, you on Facebook/Linkedin? Yep, these too a function of our minds. 

There can be no new normal without a new relationship to our minds. 

And the key to unlocking this new relationship? 

Cooperation. Kindness. 

Don’t try and out fight your mind, learn to love it instead. Be its friend, learn it’s moves, its ticks, its quirky behaviours. Befriend it. Love it. 

And in this loving you’ll crack open a landscape rich with new opportunity for your work and how you do it. 

And you’ll open something bigger too. 

All the talk of new normal, of a new kind of work, of companies regenerating not extracting, of people happier and at home, of chasing kids round the garden not just our financial tails, of species thriving not dying, this all starts with you. And your mind.

Be kind to your mind.