Many years ago I saw an animated version of Jack and the Beanstalk.
Actually it was more than six decades ago.
There is one scene I remember vividly.
Jack sold the family cow for some ‘magic beans’ and his mother was so annoyed that she threw the beans out of the window.
The beans grew immediately. Tendrils came out and each gave rise to many other tendrils and the stalk became thicker and thicker and leaves appeared, and the roots went deep into earth. Soon there was a massive beanstalk that reached all the way to the sky and Jack could not see the end of it from where he was.
All of this happened in seconds.
That is exactly what happens to you with your mental chatter.
Something happens – say you get fired. Instantly you visualize all the ways in which you can be affected. You default on your mortgage and are foreclosed and become homeless. Your spouse sues for divorce. Your children are forced to leave college and disown you and you try and try to find another job and fail and…you get the picture.
Mark Twain made a very funny remark that is also very profound. He said, “I have suffered a great many tragedies in my life, most of which never happened.”
Think about a situation, any situation, that is troubling you right now.
See how your mental chatter about that situation is making it at least an order of magnitude worse. Probably many orders of magnitude worse. You create stories about the situation and these lead to other ‘possible’ scenarios and you find ‘evidence’ that this is happening and soon you are anxious and tense or even a nervous wreck.
And this mental creation happens in seconds. Sometimes faster than the beans became that giant beanstalk.
The only solution to this is constant vigilance. You need to watch your mental chatter like a hawk. And the moment it starts spinning its web of consequences you have to stomp it out. Refuse to engage with it. Become the observer immediately.
The problem you run into is that while it is easy to become the observer of your mental chatter it is deuced hard to remain there. Sometimes you lose the observer status in seconds.
When you lose the ‘observer’ you become your mental chatter, and it promptly drags you into dark regions you have no wish to inhabit.
Any time when you are depressed or feeling low or lonely or angry or nervous or fearful or worried or whatever, notice how your mental chatter is feeding the negative emotion and making it worse. Now observe this happening. Tell a story about it in third person. “Joe is beating up on himself because he had a third slice of pizza after he decided he would eat healthy this week.”
See how your experience of life improves when you do not allow your mental chatter to drag you into the dark corners of your mind.
Peace!
