One of my clients said to me, “Matthew, if I get too spiritual, then I’m going to find that I don’t want to work anymore, and I don’t want to be with my family, and you know I’m not gonna live up to my responsibilities.” But that is just not true! The exact opposite is true. As you develop your spirituality, the belief in the unseen forces of life and the meta physical understanding and appreciation, your fear starts to disappear. And when your fear starts to disappear, you become incredibly responsible, effective, and powerful.

I highly recommend that you take on spirituality and fostering your beliefs in your spirituality because it is going to make you a more productive and effective person in our society.

That’s a recipe for a disaster relationship. If you are in a relationship thinking that someday the person’s going to change and then they’re gonna become better, you’re going to be in a relationship where you’re miserable. The game for you is to learn to accept who that person is now, exactly as they are, with no need for them to change. And when you do that, everything will start to change. They will completely begin to shift.

I was speaking to a client today, and she was saying, “Ah, my husband, he’s so lazy and he’s this, that” etc. So, I told her, “all I want you do is; every single day, I want you to make a list of five things that you really appreciate about him.” So, she did that for a week. Well, guess what happened? Suddenly his whole attitude changes. His behavior changes. He begins to shift. He’s more interesting. He’s more exciting. He’s more productive. He’s more all the things that she wanted him to be, he started becoming when she shifted into a state of acceptance.

True positivity and optimism comes from being in a state of appreciation, understanding; taking on an initiative of kindness; being someone who is completely releasing judgment. True positivity comes when you see that the drunk monkey in your head is not even really on your side. When all of those kinds of things start to occur, you experience an inner quality. This energy just starts to take over you. This optimism that you cannot even stop begins to take over you. That is true positivity, and that occurs from a new frame of reference versus taking on positive behaviors.

I call the ego The Drunk Monkey. The Drunk Monkey believes that enlightenment is something to be achieved and will some how be “its” ultimate accomplishment. When in fact it is only the total surrender of The Drunk Monkey itself.

I recommend that people do quarterly intentions. This is where you write out for the quarter what you want to accomplish in every area of your life. I recommend that people write out daily goals for themselves. And any or all or none of those disciplines is necessary. I mean if you just to write your goals out that’s great, but what it will provide for you is an opportunity to understand what you truly want. It will clarify what your true goals and dreams are, so I recommend you write out your goals ASAP, so you can start to get the benefit of that clarity.

I notice with some of my clients are visioning, visualizing, writing out their goals and affirmations, but they’re not taking any action. They aren’t getting the results that they want.

Now, I notice that also there’s another truth here. Some of my clients do no visioning, do no goals, do no dreaming, and I’d like to propose that the visioning, the goals, the affirmations, the dreaming- those are modern day ways of connecting to God.

The clients that don’t do any of that accomplish things, but they accomplish with great struggle. Everything is a struggle. Everything is hard.

Then I have other clients who are doing all the visioning, all the affirmations. They are writing the goals. They’re dreaming. They’re doing the inner work, all of that, but they’re taking no action. And they are experiencing some happiness, but they’re also experiencing a lot of doubt and uncertainty. They’re fighting against the fact that things aren’t happening the way that they want, and the mistake is that God helps those who help themselves.

You can’t just do the visioning. You gotta do the action as well. And you can’t just do the action. You gotta do the visioning as well. You gotta do the inner work and the outer work. When you do both, everything begins to work very, very rapidly, and your life starts to happen quickly and in an easy, effortless, and enjoyable way.

A lot of my clients come to me and they’re just like the rest of us; they have a big life. They’re up to things and they’re taking things on. When you get a lot of projects going, it’s so easy to get stressed.

There are physical ways to combat stress. There’s exercise, diet, meditation, things like that. 100 percent, yes. Do all that. But I’m not going to focus on those. The most effective way to combat stress is just to realize that stress is an illegitimate response to danger that doesn’t even exist in your life.

See, the drunk monkey in your head is trying to keep you safe, trying to keep you alive. How’s it doing that? Well, it’s examining the situation. It’s saying, “That’s wrong. That shouldn’t be like that. This needs to change.” The drunk monkey is insane. The drunk monkey thinks that your life is broken. So, what it’s doing is it’s pumping your body full of adrenaline, and adrenaline gets your body tense, gets the muscles moving, and we experience this as stress.

If you can just begin to recognize that your life is not broken, implement some attitudes of gratitude. Maybe start doing the 10/10 visualization process, or using the gratitude intention and delegation process. You can find both of those on my blog if you type in 10/10 visualizationor or gratitude intention. You’ll find the process there.

You want to get the mind into a mode where it’s not relating to the world like, “Everything is broken. You’re going down the tubes.” If you can start to see that none of that is truth, then your stress is going to go away and you’re going to go back to a state of bliss again. And that’s what I want for you. I want to help you do that, okay?

I think that it really comes down to making sure that that person has done what it is that you want to accomplish. For example, if you want someone to help you start your business, you should pick someone who has built businesses before.

But if you want someone to help you have an effective life, then you want to pick someone who literally has an effective life. They have great relationships with their kids, great relationships with their spouse, their mothers, their fathers. They have good health. They have effective finances. They do well in their business. They have a great social life. They are being effective in the area of contribution. Look for that person who is well-rounded in the areas that you want to take on.

The thing that I love to coach people on is the thing that I have spent my life working on mastering, which is getting into a state of ridiculous, unbelievable bliss, joy, supreme happiness. That’s the thing that I have been spending my life on. And if you’re looking for a coach to do something like that, I’d love to help you.

If you’re looking for somebody to help you with something else, then I’m not the right guy for you.

I completed my first marathon back in 1999 and I remember calling my mom and saying to her, “Oh my gosh! I completed my first marathon! It’s such a victory! It’s so amazing!” And she’s like, “It is! It’s huge! It’s so amazing, congratulations!” And I said, “Yes, especially since my knee has been hurt ever since I was a young kid.” And she’s like, “Really? Your knee was hurt? How was your knee hurt?” And I’m like, “Mom, my knee, remember? I hurt it, and then I had to go to the hospital and then I couldn’t do PE anymore, remember all of that?” And she said, “I don’t think so.” And I was like, “My knee didn’t get hurt when I was little?” And she said, “No, your knee was not hurt when you were little.”

I literally had been living like I had hurt knee since I was, I don’t know, as long as I could possibly remember. I wonder what limitations you’re holding onto about yourself and about your life that aren’t even the truth. What if you begin to question everything, push the boundaries, and start to say to yourself, “Hmm. Maybe that isn’t true.”

I’ll give you another one. When I was 12 years old, I had a operation done in my right ear, and the man who completed the operation said, “You need to wear an earplug when you go in the water so you don’t hurt this ear that we just fixed.” And so I wore an earplug. Well, I wore an earplug until I was 36 years old. At 36 years old, I went back and I had some ear problems and I had the ear doctor check it out again and I said, “You know, I really would love to go do scuba diving, but I’m afraid. I have this earplug, would that work?” He looked at my ear and he literally said, “You don’t need to wear an earplug.” And I was like, “What? But I thought I needed to wear earplugs, I had the operation,” he just said, “Maybe you needed to wear an earplug for six months while it was healing, but that’s about it.” I wore an earplug from age 12 to age 36 because of this misinterpretation, this belief that isn’t truth. How about you? What have you been holding onto?

But both of those things keep you out of the joy of this moment. See, right now, there’s nothing to fear. Right now, there’s nothing to regret. Right now, there’s no ego to admonish, to correct. There’s nothing that needs fixing. There’s nothing that needs bettering right now. All of that is nothing more than you estimating, or the mind estimating, that now isn’t right.

When you begin to say, “Shut up, mind, I’m not interested in the future.” When you say, “Mind, look, I don’t need to think about the past anymore.” When you start to literally talk to it in that way, it will shut up. And when it shuts up, you get into the now, right in this moment! It feels so good, so happy, so joyous. I want that for you, okay?