Originally posted February 23, 2009
I was just noodling on the web and ran across someone’s slides on how to create your future. He goes on to tell us the classic way to create your future is to think about life from this perspective… What if there were no limitations? The problem with this approach is that it does not honor The Drunk Monkey!
The Drunk Monkey’s job is to keep you alive by changing, fixing, avoiding or killing anything that might be potentially threatening. The very fact that you and I have that machine running in the background insures that we can NOT think or operate from the mindset of no limitation. Yes, I might be able to come up with a no limit thought. But actually implementing it is a nightmare. Why?
The Drunk Monkey’s job is to run in the background of my life and silently steer my body away from danger. New, different, amazing, mind blowing, out of the box and no limit all represent the unknown which The Drunk Monkey naturally avoids. So my no limit thinking is overridden by my body’s natural aversion to the unknown.
You must illuminate The Drunk Monkey and it’s motives if you are going to be able to make drastic changes. After you can spot The Drunk Monkey trying to protect you from your new future, then you can really make radical changes with minimal fear. If you don’t see The Drunk Monkey running your life, then you are stuck. You are The Drunk Monkey’s puppet.
To learn more about the The Drunk Monkey, Play This Video
Check it out… I’ve added 6 of The Drunk Monkey’s personalities to my Facebook fan page. Come tell me which one is your favorite.
Matthew’s Fan Page
Originally posted on March 7, 2011
The world you see out there, is just your opinion. There is no such world. Apparently there is something out there but science doesn’t seem to know what it is. Regardless of what science tells us, what you experience is completely unique and based on your perceptual filters.
For example: One of my clients has been upset with his daughter for not cleaning up after herself. I proposed to him that what he didn’t like about her is something he was unwilling to accept about himself. I told him that once he accepts it within himself, her messiness will no longer bug him. He didn’t agree.
So I asked, “Scale of 1-10 how organized are your finances?” He replied, “2″. I asked him if he was happy with that. He wasn’t. I asked a similar question about his closet and got a similar response. I asked him about his office, his car, his database. All were not as organized as he wanted. Within 2 minutes he realized that his life was a “mess” compared to what he wanted. He had been making himself wrong.
He’s stopped being bugged by his daughters messiness and started sorting out what blocks him from being as organized as he wants.
Originally posted on June, 18 2008
The Drunk Monkey, your mind, is committed to keeping you alive. Therefore, it spends time proving its’ conclusions. All of your conclusions about life, your opinions about how life is, are just observations filtered through all of your other observations. Which means, our opinions are very skewed and off-base.
Let’s say your partner, lover, or significant other does something that contradicts your opinion. In your family you never yell at people. In your partner’s family they yell and scream when they feel anger. This yelling and screaming contradicts your opinion about how things “should” be. The Drunk Monkey deems it a threat and next thing you know you are operating like your partner is bad and wrong!
From that point on, this perception becomes self-reinforcing. Any time your partner reacts in a way that contradicts your opinion, The Drunk Monkey says “See! I told you he/she is wrong!”
Today, just notice how you say you love this person in your life, yet you have a laundry list of things that are wrong about them. That what you really are thinking is that if your partner were to be perfect, they would do everything the way you deem right.
Originally posted on October 27, 2010
You are in a perpetual state of now. And I know that a lot of people think “but what does it mean exactly?” Well, it basically means that the drunk monkey in your head is constantly fantasizing about what’s coming up in the future. It’s obsessed with controlling the next minute, the next second, the next hour, the next day, the next year. And I want you to notice that there’s not much the drunk monkey can do about it.
The wisest thing to do is to ignore it and to say, “You know what, monkey, what is going to happen will be perfect. I have things I am committed to. I’m not being irresponsible. I do set goals and have objectives. But obsessing and going over and over and over it in my head right now really is not doing us any good.”
Another thing that the drunk monkey does that keeps you out of the present moment is it’s constantly thinking about the past. It’s regretting. It’s trying to re-write your past to make you look more favorable and it’s saying, “Well, that guy was wrong and he shouldn’t have been like that and that was really stupid and blah blah blah!” Just notice that you have so little control over this babbling and rambling in your head and that lack of control ultimately kills your bliss.
What you want to learn to do is ignore it. Try to constantly catch it and just say, “Shut up, monkey, I’m not interested.” Be right here, right now in the present moment. It’s very, very powerful. Lots of energy. Lots of joy. Lots of ecstasy available and waiting for you. But you have to learn to see or recognize the rambling in your head as completely irrelevant and then stop listening. And in that moment, you’ll be higher than you’ve ever been.
Originally posted December 22, 2010
If you want to be happy, then you need to stop pretending that you’re psychic. You need to quit pretending that you can look at the outside of people and see who they are. You can’t. You have no idea who people are. You look at someone and you think, “Oh, that’s what that person is.” And then, they do something different, it breaks your expectations.
When your expectations get broken, you feel anxiety, and stress, and you may even feel anger and hostility. It messes with your emotions. You need to quit pretending that you’re psychic. You’re not psychic. You can’t tell who people are. You also can’t tell what the future is.
And yet, so often, you are thinking, “Well, the future’s going to be like this.” And then, when it’s not like that, you’re depressed, disappointed, upset, and angry. You’re not psychic. You don’t know how the future is going to be. However the world turns out is how it turns out.
And your opinion about it isn’t going to change it. All your opinion will cause you is suffering. If you want to begin to experience more happiness, more joy, more peace in your life, consider giving up that you know how it’s all going to turn out. Consider giving up that you know how people are supposed to be. You don’t.
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