The Drunk Monkey generalizes. In other words, The Drunk Monkey makes things up. Generalizing is a survival tool. And a good one at that! Touch the stove and that animal part of your physiology will direct you to not do it again. Step into traffic and a car screeches to a halt. Now your nervous system directs you to look both ways. Hip hip horay for The Drunk Monkey!
Only problem is, most of your life is not dangerous. Yet, The Drunk Monkey will associate anything that stresses you with danger. Then it will begin to speculate that anything like the times you were stressed should be avoided.
When you are in Survival mode you spend enormous amounts of energy avoiding fantasies. When The Drunk Monkey Generalizes you become hypnotized by a fantasy.
In other words Generalizing = You make things up!!
If you listen to the Drunk Monkey in action you will hear it Judging, assessing, quantifying, categorizing and generalizing.
The Drunk Monkey is not in the business of going for it, taking action, getting excited and living the dream! The Drunk Monkey doesn’t care about creating pleasant experiences. It could care less if you feel good. It could care less about achieving your goals.
If you set a goal, then The Drunk Monkey will go to work inventing a fantasy about how it will all happen. It will create a set of generalizations to anticipate the future. In the mean time… The Universe/God/Source Energy/Life Force will conspire upon your behalf, stuff will start to happen, results will start to be produced…BUT…results will be produced in a way that looks different from what The Drunk Monkey anticipated.
EMERGENCY!!!!! The Drunk Monkey gets scared because its expectations where broken.
When your expectations are broken, you’ve entered the unknown. The Drunk Monkey hates the unknown and believes that it is a survival situation. Your body gets pumped full of action chemicals. You know these chemicals as emotions. Fear, anger, upset, frustration, doubt… Your body will either attack or run away. Either response will shoot you in the foot and stop you from achieving the results you want.
The Drunk Monkey wants to survive. But you know the problem. You are definitely going to die, someday. Going for your goals is not dangerous. Just different then what you do now.
One Comment
The first time i read about the drunk monkey and realized that that wasnt me. i told it to shut up a over and over until i felt the relief that i have been searching for. I have felt scared for along time somtimes not knowing what for. This isnt going to be easy because i have been in default mode for so long. Maybe the drunk monkey can go on vacation and send me a txt if it has somthing important to tell me. Good Work and Thanks.