Dated:
July 12, 2009 – 7:03 am
As a life coach, my job is to help people see the truth so that they can accept it, transform it and move forward. This is difficult for most positive people. Why? Because positive thinking has been taught to so many of us as “the way” when in fact, it is the impact of a particular perspective.
Meaning, when you adopt positive modes of thinking, you are practicing the effect of something else. This makes it inauthentic. Most positive people, when pressed, admit that there are a lot of things they are unhappy about. “But I shouldn’t talk about them Matthew because that is negative!!” they tell me.
Not true. To have a host of areas of your life that you are unhappy with and then be positive about them is like putting your head in the sand. I call it the Rose Garden with the Sewer underneath.
Okay. Positivity is important, powerful and life transforming. But it is the natural affect of being able to accept and effectively dealing with all that doesn’t work in your life. That’s where myself and my coaches come in for most people.
Even more importantly, negativity is really good. Negativity creates desire. Negativity is the seed of creativity. Negativity is the fountain of innovation and change. Without negativity we would all be sitting around doing nothing.
Negativity is not so good when you resist it and can’t allow it to exist in your life.
Posted in Featured, Inner Peace
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Tags:
breakdown, Drunk Monkey, Life Coach, Life Coaching, Mindset, negative emotions, Peace of Mind, Positive Attitude, truth, unhappy
Dated:
June 28, 2009 – 10:54 am
It’s hard to be happy when you forget that your life is temporary, transient and basically meaningless. Profound happiness can not be achieved by speculating about the future or contemplating the past. Yet The Drunk Monkey spends endless time on the past and future.
Your life you will go up, down, all around and then you die. When you die the people in your life will throw dirt on your face and have a party. In 100 years, it’s likely your life will be completely forgotten and irrelevant.
“Seriousness is a disease of the ego.”
That’s what my mentor, Stewart Wilde, told me in my 20’s. I didn’t understand what he meant until my late 30’s. I was so rapped up in succeeding, getting ahead and showing the world that I am valuable. Sometimes it worked, other times it didn’t. My emotions were yanked from positive to negative based on the external events. My experience of life was messed up by my expectations.
Today I see my clients making their lives miserable by judging and comparing this moment to the elusive “Should Be”. By focusing on what should have been or what might be they make themselves miserable. It took me a long time to realize that breakdowns lead to breakthroughs and therefore worrying about it is irrelevant. To worry, stress and freak out messes with the point of this life. The Now. That is where the profound sense of happiness and fulfillment lies.
No matter how much you try, you will die. Life is not serious or important. To believe that this life is important leads to all sorts of negative experiences. Rest assured, life will contradict your opinion and if you think it should be other then it is… you will be unhappy. Life is doing what ever it is doing regardless of your opinion. Let it go and enjoy today, okay?
Posted in Featured, Inner Peace
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Tags:
breakdown, Drunk Monkey, ego, fulfillment, Happiness, Life Coach, Life Coaching, stewart wilde, stress, unhappy
Dated:
June 1, 2009 – 12:54 pm
Bad luck is just another way of saying, “My expectations were broken.” There is no bad luck, in reality. There are just occurrences that The Drunk Monkey notices and has an opinion about.
Do you want good things to happen? Yes. You are a survival machine designed to move towards pleasure as well as away from potentially dangerous things. The problem is that you believe the hallucinations of The Drunk Monkey more then you believe that you are blessed.
For most people, the best thing that could ever happen to them is a big breakdown. The Dalai Lama said it well, “Sometimes not getting what you want is the best of luck”.
If you step back and look at all the really meaningful and important aspects of your life, you will discover that most of it came out of a breakdown or some sort of bad luck. Creation is destructive. I wish bad luck upon you and the awareness to transform it into the good luck as fast as possible. Breakdown is the beginning of breakthrough.
Dated:
February 19, 2009 – 3:43 pm
Panic! No. Just kidding. Life goes up and life goes down. There are no straight lines in the universe. This is a wiggly wobbly ride you are on, my friend. The key is to just relax into the down times. Cut expenses, examine all of your promises and eliminate guilt and obligation. Stop doing things that feel bad. Take more naps. Go for more walks. Meditate. Pray. Go within. When you do that, the answers come, the energy returns and the surge of new energy begins again. What goes up, must come down. And in life cycles, if you practice the techniques I give you, what does down will come back up again.
In the Inspired Action Coaching process we advise our clients that breakdown is the beginning of breakthrough. The key is to celebrate that the bad stretch is the beginning of a new good stretch. It’s hard to get that when you are in the middle of it. But when you think about your life as a whole you will see that you have gone up and down countless times. That the down time leads to an up time.
Success is a series of well-managed breakdowns. Success is not a destination. Success is a process of managing the destruction that new ideas create in your life. Sometimes the bad stretch that people go through is the result of your life adjusting to the new ideas, thoughts, process and creates you are putting into place. Just relax and know that all will work out. Just keep moving forward one day at a time, taking life as it comes.
