I have a monkey mind! But so do most of the strongest women I know!

I have been reading "Eat, Pray, Love" by Elizabeth Gilbert (the woman whose life Coyote Ugly is based on. No, really!) recently and it has touched me in ways I can't even begin to explain. The main character essentially gets divorced, then falls in love immediately just to have that collapse and so goes traveling for a year exploring Italy, India and Indonesia looking for pleasure, spirtuality and love. She is an amazingly introspective and honest woman, who admits things about herself that you are certain most of us have thought or felt but would never, ever say out loud.
There is an amazing section of this book that just made me laugh out loud as I identified with every single word and I can think of a few of my friends who this applies to as well (I am looking right at you, Joann):


"Like most humanoids, I am burdened with what the Buddhists call the monkey mind - the thoughts that swing from limb to limb, stopping only to scratch themselves, spit and howl. From the distant past to the unknowable future, my mind swings wildly through time, touching on dozens of ideas a minute, unharnessed and undisciplined. This in itself is not necessarily a problem; the problem is the emotional attachment that goes along with the thinking. Happy thoughts make me happy, but - WHOOP - how quickly I swing again into obsessive worry, blowing the mood; and then it's the remembrance of an angry moment and I start to get hot and pissed off all over again; and then my mind decides it might be a good time to start feeling sorry for itself, and loneliness follows promptly. You are, after all, what you think. Your emotions are the slaves to your thoughts, and you are the slave to your emotions"

I tried to explain, though not nearly so eloquently, what it's like to think like this to my husband earlier today. I think he was in turns amused and bewildered at the fact that anyone could worry about so many relatively inconsequential things in a day.

I know that I have got to learn to relax and probably give myself a break, but unlike the author, I do not think I can head to an Ashram in India to chant for several hours a day. Nor do I think this would be a particularly successful outlet for me! How do the rest of you do it? Baths? Meditation? Knitting? No, really, I think I would try anything! Then I will write about how I failed at it for your entertainment!