Please Dont Feed the Monster

At first, the fledgling monster begins as a small parasitic intruder inside your brain. When you are not paying attention, this clandestine creature finds a dark corner within your mind where he looks to settle in and make himself at home. Soon thereafter, the monster reveals his voracious appetite for his favorite form of sustenance: your negative emotions such as: anger, shame, frustration, anxiety, depression, and disappointment.

The monster may seem frightening on the outside but he is actually timid and fearful and therefore does not like to come out of the darkness. As he hides in waiting, he carefully plants subtle thoughts into your stream of consciousness as a form of bait to draw out your negative feelings that serve as his cherished food for survival. The monster has several ways to bait you into experiencing the negative emotions that he feeds on in order to grow and flourish. For example:

> The clever monster loves to feed on your shame and guilt so he plants messages of self-hate and self- doubt into your head such as “I can’t do this”, “I’m a failure” and “I’m not good enough”

> He devours your feelings of sadness, disappointment and depression by tricking you into contemplating thoughts of helplessness and worthlessness such as “What’s the point of even trying any more” and “No matter what I do I always fail”

> This calculating beast in your head has an almost endless array of traps and tricks to draw out your anger, hate and frustration by carefully deceiving you into ruminating on nagging ideas of paranoia, revenge, mistrust, irritation, impatience, resentment and self-righteousness that drain you of inner peace yet keep him thriving and growing stronger.

As one would expect, the more that you fall victim to the monster’s subtle treachery, the more your negative emotions take over and the more the monster grows. The larger he becomes, the greater influence he has on your psyche, thereby making you even more miserable and making himself stronger and all-consuming as he steals your power and energy.

There is hope if you fall victim to this perilous situation as the monster’s greatest strength is also his greatest weakness. His survival completely depends on you and what you choose to focus on. Thus, when you sense yourself perseverating on that which brings you down yet builds him up, simply remember that when you give attention to these negative thoughts you are just feeding the monster. Hurry instead to do whatever positive things you can to let go and fill your head with positive reflections of hope, determination, courage and gratitude as well as a steady flow of affirmations, faith, goals, and dreams. Negativity surely is a monster in your mind, but he can only survive if you feed him, but starve him and he will die.

www.takingtheescalator.com