I have a confession to make.

I suffer from monkey mind. WTF?  Monkey mind?

I first learned about monkey mind in a book by a famous American author and writing coach Natalie Goldberg. She tells us to imagine that we are under a big sky and to imagine that sky is our wild mind.  Now straight over our heads someone puts one dot with Magic Marker in the sky. That dot is what Zen philosophy calls monkey mind.

 “We give all our attention to that one dot,” Natalie says. “So when it says we’re no good, are failures, we listen to it.”

Sound familiar?

A red ring on your report card and you’re never gonna pass Matric? Overlooked for a promotion and your boss hates you? (Wait. The world hates you.) One wrong look from your wife and your marriage is over? A spider in the bath and you relive your every last fear and phobia?

Natalie Goldberg’s book Wild Mind is a life changing experience for those of us who cling to our need for control, for colouring inside the lines. She explains that monkey mind is what psychology calls part of the conscious mind – always aware, awake, controlling – while wild mind is seen as the unconscious mind, that part of our being that connects us to our dreams, the underlines our behaviour without us even being aware of it.  That’s where we should write from, she says. To sink into the big sky, to sit down in the middle of our wild mind and lose control and write from a raw, uncensored place.

That’s real, that’s authentic.

Even if you’re not creative writer, I think we can all benefit from going into our wild mind now and then. At work, it could be when you’re brainstorming a new pitch, coming up with a fresh angle or hook for a press release or dealing with a client problem. At home, finding new ideas for decorating a room, coming up with a new recipe or even a way of mending a cracked relationship.

Here’s what you can do today. Grab a notebook, go to a nearby coffee shop, order a cappuccino. Without pause or inner-censure, write about what your wild mind is telling you. Write about your dreams. Write about the cars you see riding past. Write about the sound of someone’s voice. Write your fears or wishes or your deepest anger, but write.

What I’ve found is that when I give up my need for control – when I let go of my frustrated ideal of perfection - I access my creativity in a meaningful and liberating way.  I write better. I’m a nicer person to be around. I live in that big sky, either in its clear untrammelled blue or in its star-spattered mystery.

Natalie Goldberg’s book Wild Mind: Living the Writer’s Life is published by Bantam.