Your Head – So they are Your Thoughts Right ?
Our thought life matters
Our work with thousands of people convinced us that what goes on inside us – our thoughts and thinking, is the most important factor in determining our success or lack of it.
Most of us have found this out the hard way
We all know and understand that our thinking and our thoughts profoundly affect our state and our results.
How many of your thoughts do you generate or like many of us do you watch a stream of seemingly random stuff float across the eye of your mind?
Thoughts have consequences – they:
- Can limit or enhance our ability to get more of what we want or less of what we don’t want.
- Can determine if we can be happy with our life as it is now or whether we need to chase ‘more, bigger, better, different for ever.
- Can determine how easily we can sit in silence, in contemplation or in meditation.
- Are not something most of us can easily control.
Change
We have found two things to be true –
Firstly we all have thoughts.
Secondly when we stop long enough and watch we see patterns in what they represent.
When we take some time and distance to stop and look at our thoughts without getting lost in them we see patterns.
Sometimes these are supportive, positive, loving patterns that can maintain or generate peace and contentment – sometimes the patterns seem less positive, less supportive and less helpful.
We all have experience of thoughts and thinking but very few of us see ourselves as the leader, the one that chooses or shapes which thoughts to play with today.
For many of our delegates this was a new idea.
For most of us dealing with thoughts is a process of trial and error, we do the best we can with what we have often sucked. in to the latest pattern or thought stream that appears in our minds eye.
Our eduction system gives few clues on how to treat our thoughts and thinking, how to use them and get the best from them and yet our findings suggest this very thought flow acts at the cause of any performance positively or negatively.
Most popular explanations give us few clues as to how to move on. The resulting advice suggest that we should rise above these thoughts and do the best we can to ignore them; is all very similar and usually generates mixed results.
Stepping back and looking more cleanly, surely it’s very unlikely that evolution or a divine design would have included thoughts and thoughts streams on a whim – as a distraction with no potential value?
Meet Your Monkey
Traditional thinking brands the architect of these thoughts and thought streams as the ‘Monkey’ .
A ‘chattering fool’ that sits inside us disturbing our focus by throwing random “should woulda coulda” and ‘told you so content’ and confusing us by offering alternative ideas and options even after we have chosen our path.
Not sure about you? Most people we speak to find that it’s relatively easy to just accept this traditional diagnosis and the associated thinking that concludes that our Monkeys and our thoughts are something we should put up with, ignore or rise above if we can and generally manage our lives despite the internal distraction.
When it’s hard to meditate or focus or when our thought streams are in full flow and disturb us, it is easy to go with the traditional diagnosis.
However, many of us have had considerable success with concepts like manifesting, goal setting and the power of expectation or positive thinking; all methods that involve us shaping what we think about, replacing random thoughts, setting direction focus and making it clear to every part of us and the universe what we would like to happen.
For many of us it is hard to treat our thoughts as low value, it is our thinking that has delivered the success we have and the idea of treating our thoughts and the associated Monkey, as just a nuisance, is hard to accept conceptually and even harder to achieve in practice. We end up blaming ourselves if the traditional techniques don’t work.
The story goes that the Monkey causes Distraction and interruption as some sort of cruel sport or fun pastime. They do it to us for no reason and yet often seem to peak their activity just when we need all our power to deliver something that’s important to us.
Many of our sales programmes included a presentation element and many clever and talented delegates were reduced to a gibbering wreck by the internal thought flows that happened ‘to them’ as they stood up to speak.
For most of us it’s easy to experience the noise in our heads and simply agree much of it is unhelpful interruption and from there it’s but a small step to see the situation as a problem orchestrated by an unnecessary, unhelpful and chattering Monkey. The doesn’t help us much!
The resulting fixes stemming from these type of conclusions don’t seem to give quick or effective results. If anything the opposite is true and they provide a long, exacting and hard path to a peaceful head and/or a strong internal focus. Positive thinking or self talk requires constant attention, as does ‘ignoring’ the internal noise to remain focussed on our chosen path.
That book – The Misaligned Monkey is a tale of someone taking a different view, someone treating the Monkey as someone who could and would help if the circumstances were right. You can read the story and see what it takes to make the circumstances right here on Amazon Misaligned Monkey
In the book we explore the idea that :
Lessons in success and change could work with our Monkey too?
In our business world, we were paid on results. This meant we needed to be pragmatists, interested only in results and not precious about this or that theory approach or solution.
In our world success usually involved two things:
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- Firstly people in partnership or ‘win win’ arrangements that made sense to all and enhanced individual performances .
- Secondly new assessments of what was really going on and as result new ideas about what the real fix might look like
Suppose we applied this to the Monkey situation ?
We can see that the traditional routes to meditation success often provide long difficult paths which can be near impossible to achieve for normal integrated people in our modern world.
We can also see that whilst the traditional assessment of the Monkey meets our experience – it is what most of us experience, torrential thoughts seemingly at random and usually at the wrong times BUT and it is a big BUT isn’t it really more likely that we as the ‘pinnacle of evolution’ are gifted with lots of goodies to help us on our way and that in this case we have one high value component that we just. don’t know how to use.
We started to wonder if the problem was all a misunderstanding – if our Monkeys had had a bad rap and that something else was going on.
This led to a better question –
What if there was a better explanation that would yield faster and more sustainable results?
- Suppose our hard working Monkeys have been trying to help us?
- Suppose we just don’t understand how to work with them?
- What if it was possible to use a different approach, create a partnership with your Monkey ?
- What if our Monkey was an under-utilised asset we could turn to our advantage?
Comments from readers :
“I just feel different, better, more in charge, more ‘aligned’. ”
“Who’d have known you could do this”
“Like you said in the book, my Monkey has now become my cheerleader and a great resource”
“I hoped that my scores would change and yes they did. I now have a clarity and focus I never experienced before.”
“I hope your book is helping others in the same way it helped me. ”
“For a better practice people need to let go of more traditional views of dealing with thoughts and with the Monkey. This is not engagement as we know it. The exercises in the book helped me to understand what is required and what I needed to do to set up this new way of working and achieve the changes I experienced.”
“A little effort targeted in the right way will reengineer your relationship with your Monkey to provide a quieter more peaceful inner environment that will allow you to excel in ways you never thought possible”.
Find the Misaligned Monkey here on Amazon Misaligned Monkey
Our Mission
We’d like to help change the way the world thinks about our Monkeys –
- What they are
- What they are for
- and most importantly – how best to use them
Examine the case for this new approach and find out how to try it and test it here on Amazon Misaligned Monkey
Background 4 minute audio – right click to download