My response was as follows:

None of these things are weird. This is your life. You resist. The word you use for your resistance these days is “Weird Energy” It’s not weird energy. It just contradicts The Drunk Monkey’s opinion of what “Should Be” The Drunk Monkey still believes it is the all mighty, all knowing supreme being that dictates how life and people “should be”

Your friends marriage collapsing is perfect. Your opinion about it only causes you to suffer.

College being promoted is perfect. Your opinion about it only causes you to suffer.

4 day bender… perfect!

Life is just lifing along. Your opinion of it determines weather you enjoy it or resist it. Your opinion of life lately has been that “different then I expect” is not right. You are in a new place. New things are happening. Life no longer fits your old mold. People are changing. What was fortified is now breaking down. What was crumbling is suddenly sprouting new life. The world is in movement around you. Nothing is static. You have the tools now to dance with life as it comes.

Be the scientist. “Hmm? Interesting? Isn’t life surprising, intriguing, and challenging? I wonder how is this perfect?”

Bottom line: Good things keep happening everywhere in your life and The Drunk Monkey keeps you focused on how that one thing is wrong and if it wasn’t that way, I’d be happy.

Cut it out!!

What they want is usually success, and what they keep getting is failure. And what it comes down to is probably the most breakthrough ideas that I’ve come across.

It’s called the fundamental misperception. So consider this. Years ago, you accepted false conclusions as correct. You began to live your life as if those warped ideas about your potential were true. And you completely killed off the experiment called life and you started to live within a hallucinated set of boundaries, boundaries that don’t even exist.

Now what happens is you will only manifest and create within those boundaries, and so your goals and dreams are outside of the boundary. But you keep coming up against this lid, this invisible barrier, and the invisible barrier is a foundational belief that you have about yourself that is not true. Fundamental misperception.

For example, no matter how smart you get, you feel stupid. Other people have this feeling like they’re ugly, so they try to be glamorous and look good and show the world how beautiful and amazing and wonderful they are. Yet no matter how much stuff they have, no matter how much they do with themselves, they still feel ugly. These are the people who get addicted to doing plastic surgery and getting a new wardrobe and shopping and all of that.

I want to help you get away from this and avoid it. By being aware of this, you become flexible. The flexibility reveals new options, and those options give you power. The power to create your own life.

But were they in a state of bliss? No. They weren’t in a state of bliss. Positivity doesn’t work because when people talk about being positive, what they’re talking about is the affect of a particular point of view. An affect. In other words, I am positive when I view the world in this way.

So when I view the world in a non-resistant way, when I am in a state of total and complete acceptance of all people in all situations at all times, including myself, I’m naturally positive. I’m naturally upbeat. I’m naturally in a state of joy and feeling good.

When I am resisting and making things wrong, making people wrong, being upset, being annoyed and being agitated, then, I’m naturally not positive. It doesn’t matter how many affirmations I do. If I am looking in the mirror saying, “I am powerful. I’m unstoppable. I’m the best.”, I’m not dealing with the real issue.

Maybe I am upset with myself for being in the job that I’m in. I am scared about my finances. My kids are pissing me off lately. I look at myself in the mirror, and I think to myself, “What are you doing, fattie?” All of those things are occurring, and I’m saying, “I’m powerful, I’m unstoppable. I am the best.” You have the drunk monkey swinging out of the jungle and saying, “Shut up, stupid. You’re fat. You’ve got problems, etc, etc.”

See, saying positive affirmations is nothing more than trying to be something other than what you are. I know that the old saying is “fake it ’til you make it.” But, my friend, I can tell you I have faked it and I didn’t make it because I was successful, succeeding, affective, powerful, but still frustrated and annoyed. I kept wondering when I was going to reach actual positivity. I just kept wondering why I was not really happy. I had the Mercedes, the nice house, a beautiful wife, and I received the accolades and the success. But where was the happiness?

I realized that you have to deal with the stuff inside. You need to understand that you have a brain that wants to survive in a world where you’re definitely going to die. You have to understand that there is an operational procedure going on in your head that doesn’t care about you, doesn’t care about your goals and dreams, doesn’t care about the people in your life. It is making you wrong and everything else wrong, in the spirit of trying to survive. It is only trying to survive. You need to use the game-changer formula, which is to see the mind for what it really is so that you can suddenly become flexible, which will then reveal a whole new set of options and give you power.

I want you to practice total and complete acceptance of all people in all situations at all times including yourself. No matter what. No matter what people do. I want you to see it from their perspective, see it from their opinion, see it from their point of view.

When you’re in an honoring, appreciating, accepting, and understanding mode, you’re literally in a state of fearlessness. And when you’re in fearlessness, you’re automatically positive. You’re automatically positive. You’re automatically optimistic. You’re inspired, and you’re in action. This is my goal for you. Try it on.

When you see that your energy is really low, consider that the reason may be that you think your future is not all that exciting. In fact, consider that your energy gets low because you think it’s not going to turn out the way you want. You may be thinking “why bother”, or “it’s just the same old thing” or “there’s no light at the end of the tunnel.”

Your energy is affected by the future that you see in your mind. So I highly recommend that you work on creating enormous, big futures for yourself that really turn you on, even though in this moment they might not be exactly realistic. A big future will get you to start to take actions that begin to prove that that big future can come.

And the little tiny victories, those little nuggets, they will launch you into energy like you have never experienced before!

The second thing that gives you energy is the degree to which you are accepting the situation. So, if you are accepting very little of the situation, that resistance is like a nozzle, clamping down on your energy. And the energy is trying to get out of you, but it’s being clamped down.

The negative thoughts such as, “this shouldn’t be this way” and “I don’t like that”, “Why are they doing this?” and “I don’t want it this way”. Those thoughts kill your energy. As you accept more, appreciate more, honor more, your energy expands and grows. You can do more. More happens. I highly recommend that you create a big future for yourself and that you get into a state of nonresistance so that your journey towards the accomplishment of your goals and dreams is filled with joyous moments now and not some day.

And I said to her, “Whoa. Whoa, whoa. I want you to be ballsy right now. I want you to create a huge future that gets you excited, that brings your energy up, so you can experience the joy of it now knowing it’ll be irrelevant in three to six months, because it’ll be irrelevant for everybody in three to six months! I don’t care who you are.”

Whatever vision you create today will ratchet you up a couple notches. And from that new point of view, when you look out into the world, you’re going to say, “Wait a second. I want something totally different. I want to change it, or I want to adjust it.”

See, a plan is a working, living, breathing document. It’s not set in stone. Goals are not set in stone. Your goals are nothing more than devices to create new experiences for you. Your goals and dreams are about creating experiences for you, whether you accomplish them or not, who cares? It’s who you become in the process that counts.

She said also, “In work, I choose jobs that are not very lucrative because it’s easy for me to be over-qualified, and liked as a consequence.” And then she said, “I rented this house, because my mom thought that would be the good place for me to rent. And then not only did I not like the house, but on top of that, I spent my own money maintaining the house that I rented. How do I get out of this vicious cycle, Matthew?”

Well, it begins with what I call the game-changing formula. And that game-changing formula will change the whole game in your life. Start by gaining awareness. When you have awareness of something, it makes you more flexible. Flexibility leads to new options, and new options can lead to power.

What I would want for this client is to begin to notice that there is some hidden benefit or value that you are trying to gain out of making these choices and decisions. And I would imagine that the hidden value, that thing that you’re trying to gain, is manipulating others into believing that they should like you.

I’d like you to consider that you have a mistaken understanding that people don’t like you, that you don’t fit in. And I’d like you to just begin to look at this little thought: what has it cost you, accidentally believing that you don’t fit in? Accidentally thinking that people don’t like you? What has been the negative consequence of this throughout your entire life?

I want you to look back at yourself when you were five to ten, then in your teens, then in your 20’s and 30’s and 40’s and so on. What has this mistaken understanding cost you? You have been accidentally believing that you don’t fit in, that people don’t like you. None of it is the truth.

I’d like you to also take a look at how much it’s done for you. For my client, obviously, she’s gone to MIT, for example. So that was an accomplishment that she have created for herself. I imagine that you’ve also gained a lot from this mistaken thought that people don’t like you.

Begin to just be aware of it. And when you do, new things will open up. You’ll become flexible. And as soon as you start to get flexible, new options will arise, and those new options will literally create power for you.

They tried to tie it together to some socio-economic factor, but the truth is – whether you have kids or not will not determine if you are happy. How you perceive the situation is going to make you happy or not happy.

If you are feeling dominated by your children, then you are not going to be happy about it.

How do you feel dominated by your children? You feel like they have control. You feel like they are deciding what the mood and what the actions are in the family. When you have struck some equilibrium where everybody gets to play, everyone gets to decide, you feel fulfilled and satisfied, you feel expressed, then guess what – you are going to feel happy.

Your happiness depends on you, not external factors.

Where you stand in this moment is the bridge to that ultimate thing that will bring you the fulfillment. In other words, you need the contrast of now to bring about that incredible inspiration that will lead you to the work that is your ultimate work, that work that will bring incredible fulfillment and desire.

I like the way that Napoleon Hill says it. He says there is the seed of equivalent benefit in every adversity. And the mind is often thinking, “Well, this particular job that I’m in now is a bit of an adversity. I don’t like it. It doesn’t feel good. I’m not happy about it.” But it is bringing you to that thing that you want.

So, here’s the trick. Make a list of all the things that are great, wonderful, that work, that you’re excited about, that you’re happy about. In the current position/job/ask that you’re taking on, get connected to the fact that there are good things occurring right now.

Get connected to what is working. Then make a list of all the things that you want it to be, additionally. What else do you want it to be? So yes, these are the things that are good, but there’s more to be good. What else do you want it to be?

If you get connected to what works, you’ll find that more of it works for you. You’ll find that it leads to greater opportunity. If you then identify what else you want it to be, you’ll find that those things that you want it to be will start to come to you. Where you are now is perfect.

It’s leading to where you wanna go. The contrast that you’re experiencing in this moment is leading you to that next level of joy, self-expression and fulfillment that you desire in this endeavor. Do the 10-10 visualization. That’s all this is.

Ten things you love about it, ten things you want it to be. And watch what happens. What you want is coming when you focus on it.

There’s so much to your success that you’re already used to so you don’t notice it. Therefore, you’re not grateful. And there’s a reason for that. We’re not grateful because the mind’s job is to find things about us and about the world and about life that are potentially dangerous.

And so your mind is constantly saying, “Okay. I’m glad you’re successful. But what about that? What about this? That’s wrong. And this is wrong.” If you really pay attention to the drunk monkey in your head, it is totally focused in on how you are wrong.

So in order to get back to that renewed, rejuvenated place, you must get grateful. Now, what I recommend is that you do the 10 – 10 visualization process. Every night before you go to bed, I want you to just close your eyes and envision 10 things that you love about your life, and then 10 goals and dreams that are exciting to you.

Success is a progressive realization of a worthwhile goal. So success is not an outcome. You don’t get there. The moment you’re there, you already want something else.

So what you want to do is get grateful, get happy now. Every night before you go to bed, envision all the things you’re grateful for. Feel that gratitude. And then I want you to think about the things you want to create, your goals and dreams. And when you do that, it will blow you away how much happier and fulfilled you’ll be with today, which gives you energy to make tomorrow better.