I’m speaking for FREE today at 5pm PST, don’t miss it.

My topic: Ridiculous Bliss With Your Kids. Doesn’t that sound fun?

Grab your free online pass here

My answer:
Self importance is just the drunk monkey feeling insecure. The drunk monkey (the talking in your head) wants to look good, be right, be powerful, rich ect for one very simple reason. It mistakenly believes that being any of those things will ensure the perpetuation of your genes. Get a mate, have status and be powerful. All this is a feeble attempt to win salvation and live for ever through your spawn. Of course your are already eternal, infinite and valuable. Each person is a whirling vibrating swirl of energy that is organized into this body. Energy never dies. Your salvation is guaranteed. Tell the drunk monkey to stop burdening you with the demands of proving to the world that you are good enough to have sex with and propagate the species. Just start living and enjoying each day exactly as it is. Any way there are nearly 7 billion of us these days so your spawn is not needed

Those formulas certainly have their momentary hit, but long-term happiness is really just a skill. It’s a shift in the way that you’re thinking about yourself and about your circumstances in life. Nothing needs to change to make you happy.

So here are three actions that you can take that will make you happy. The first action is called devotion. What exactly does devotion mean? It’s a way of being. It’s about being in the moment, and doing what you’re doing in that moment to the very best of your ability. When your operating from that standpoint of really focusing in and doing your best, it will create an extreme sense of happiness for you. If you’re doing the dishes, walking the dog, playing with the kids, hanging out with your spouse, with your friends, whatever it is that you’re doing, focus on that and do your best. You’ll be surprised how much happiness you feel in that moment.

The second is to take actions of service. This is about taking your attention out of your own head. Help others, contribute, make a difference, support something. Anytime that you are able take your focus off of you and out of your head, and move it out there into the world, you will experience a sudden rise in happiness. In other words, consider the following. Your unhappiness is just a self-centered focus. So, by getting your focus out there and serving others, your happiness is going to go through the roof.

The last action to take is appreciation. Look at things in a new way, find what you like about people, find what you like about situations, and find things you like about yourself. This is really the anti-mind. The mind, all that talking in your head, is not focused on what’s right, what’s working, what you like, and what you’re happy about. It’s not focused on that. It’s a survival mechanism, so its job is to look for what doesn’t work and then focus on those things. And that, of course, makes you unhappy. So, work to appreciate your situation, the people around you, and yourself, and your happiness will grow exponentially.

But the majority of us do not have the patience, tenacity or the persistence it takes to make these huge changes. You know, it can take two, three, four hours a day sometimes to sculpt your body into the shape that you want it to be. And you know what? For most people it doesn’t actually even lead to happiness. Some of the most miserable people that I’ve coached are some of the most beautiful that I’ve ever met. And yet, they’re holding themselves accountable to standards that don’t exist.

I request that you release your body fascination, that you realize that your body is just a part of the earth, that your body is just an animal. It’s really your tool for experiencing this particular event that you call your life. Just take care of it!

Here’s what I wrote down. These are part of my intentions that I have for myself and my body. I wrote down, “I’ve befriended my body, and I enjoy it like a childhood pet. I accept my body’s efficiencies and deficiencies, and I allow it to play out my own genetics. I’ve befriended my body.” See, I treat this hunk of meat like it is a pet. You know, I walk it, I move it, I stretch it. I do all the things. I feed it correctly, because it’s my tool, it’s my apparatus for experiencing the world.

I wrote down, “I move, stretch, stress and stimulate my body every day in some way.” I’d like to invite you to do the same thing. “I honor my body’s impulses and signals and I let it guide me to what it needs.” See, so often I have tried to force my body into some regiment, and it was counter to what the impulses were that my body was sending me. And, ultimately, it led to unhappiness. I was unhappy with my body. I was unhappy with the reactions I was having. I was unhappy that I couldn’t discipline it. I wasn’t going with the flow of the body.

I wrote down, “I am totally free of body fascination and have let go of the need to have my body measure up to standards created by my mind’s fascination to survive and fit in.” See, ultimately, where do these standards come from that you’ve been holding yourself to? They don’t exist in the world. You don’t have to be anything. You get to be what you are, and the perfect aspect of you is exactly what you are. Your mind is judging, assessing and evaluating you based on standards that don’t exist.

Begin to catch what I call the drunk monkey in your head beating you up and holding you to standards that don’t exist. And when you do, you’re going to get much happier.

Happiness, my friends, is for those who are committed to moving beyond the rational and moving into the experiential.  I’d like to invite you there.  It’s pretty amazing.

If you don’t acknowledge your conditioning, then happiness will not be your response to many, things. So the question is, how do you begin to condition yourself to make happiness your response? I think the easiest way to do that is to practice asking yourself questions that will get you back to a place that you want to be. I like to ask these questions: “How am I creating this? What good can come of this situation? What would be a more effective response? What do I want?”

See, when I ask questions like that, it pulls me back to what I’m doing rather than me reacting to what’s out there in the world. And I say happiness is not a choice. It’s a skill and you have to practice it.

The truth is that no matter how much surgery you get, how many treatments you get, your body is going to deteriorate and your beauty is going to wane. There is a short period in which we all experience that sort of youthful beauty. Many of you get stuck in the place where the drunk money says, “Well, you know, that is my value.”

If you’re thinking “I am happy when I am beautiful, and I am not happy when I am not beautiful.” you’re screwed! That’s because there’s going to be a tremendous amount of your life in which the drunk monkey in your head is going to declare, “You are no longer the beautiful creature that you were before.”

You’re going to have to take on tactics that bring you happiness and fulfillment now without having some external event be in a particular way. In other words, if your circumstances have to be a certain way in order for you to be happy, then you’re in trouble. There’s only one thing we can count on, and that is change.

Everything is going to change. Everything is shifting, so the more valuable thing to do is to take on learning how to be happy now.

The problem is that we actually believe that the mind is reality. It’s not. The mind has no idea what reality is. Often, your expectations of reality are broken. Why? Because you premeditated that life would be one way, and it turned out another way. That is the source of most of your suffering.

They key for you is to stop believing what the mind has to say. Start noticing that it has a job, biological function, similar to your bowels. Your bowels are processing waste, and excreting it out of the body. Your mind is observing what’s going on in the world, and identifying potential threats, and moving towards pleasurable things.

That’s the mind’s job. That’s what it’s doing. But that’s not the truth. And if you put all of your reality, all of your life, all of your world into your thoughts, you’re going to be miserable. You need to learn to move beyond your thoughts.

You’ve got to notice that your mind, the drunk monkey in your head, does not like life being the way that it is. It wants life to be different than it is. And so, you need to learn exactly how to get your mind under control. One great way to do this is to work on appreciation.

So this week, what if you focused on appreciation the whole week? What if next week you focused on acceptance, accepting people, accepting yourself, accepting life, accepting the situation? What if the week after that you focused on gratitude? If you would focus on appreciation and gratitude you will go into an incredible state of happiness. To be unhappy is just ignorant.

So every time I work with someone, and they start to talk like, “Well, I don’t like this, and I don’t like that. He’s a jerk…” I ask them to start to examine themselves – who they are. Who is the person that is making the complaints? We find out that the person making the complaints actually has those same complaints, in some way, about themselves.

It’s usually an issue about themselves, but they’re unwilling to admit it. There are no jerks in the world until you show up. You’re the one that declares them a jerk, and you can declare them anything you want. Your resistance is what causes you to suffer, and your suffering is caused, ultimately, by your opinion. So why not change your opinion so that you can feel good? You change your opinion, you change your life.