The Book Exercises
The Book Exercises
A quick word about these exercises:
These exercises are designed and work to guide you systematically to the place where you can reengineer your relationship with your Monkey. They are designed as a guide for you to implement your own progress. We expect the best results if you complete the exercises over a 12-week period. Those of you who have existing experience in this type of work will sensibly substitute existing practice where you can and if not bear with us as we progress over the 12 exercises outlined here. They build systematically and it’s a good idea to do them in the order we suggest as the resulting experience will let you and your Monkey progressively develop the skills and approach to successfully reengineer your existing relationship.
These written instructions are deliberately kept to a minimum and so each exercise uses a similar breathing technique* to help you consider some instructions or some questions. There is no right way or wrong way to do the exercises and the main thing to bear in mind as you do them is the objectives and purpose given for each session. It’s worth you repeating the later exercises more than once to build your skills and to gain familiarity with the process. More help is available on line which includes a simple recorded audio* to manage the breathing sequences in exercise 2 onwards..
There are 12 exercises for you to work through. As you progress from one exercise to another, we suggest that you retake the Monkey relationship survey to give you a series of scores that help you understand your progress. Our experience so far is that your initial score will dip as you get into the book and the exercises and realise the real situation your currently face. By the time you get to exercise 6 or 7 you will probably see your scores rising as your reading and the exercises work to reengineer your relationship for the better.
The exercise notes follow
Useful links:
Download this document Audio users support doc
Audio overview of exercises?
Download Book exercise free Audio Extend Breathing sequences
Looking for the Challenge? Find it here
A new set of exercises have been designed for the challenge participants and new exercise audio has been recorded.
You can also hear an overview of the challenge exercises and approach here
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Notes for 12 exercises contained in Misaligned Monkey.
- Exercise 1: Meet the Monkey
- Exercise 2: The power of a focus
- Exercise 3: A closer look at the Monkey
- Exercise 4: Asking the Monkey for help
- Exercise 5: Perspective and destinations – What do you really want?
- Exercise 6: View Point Three An outsider’s perspective
- Exercise 7: Exploring viewpoint three
- Exercise 8: The Monkey as helper
- Exercise 9: Make a list and check it more than twice
- Exercise 10: More of, less of
- Exercise 11: The first formal chat
- Exercise 12: Future pacing with the Monkey
Exercise 1: Meet the Monkey
Complete this exercise with no audio or other stimulation.
We can start to identify your Monkey’s ‘voice’ by sitting quietly with an intention to think of nothing. If you have tried this before, you know how hard it can be.
Find a quiet, comfortable place to sit where you will not be disturbed.
Set a timer for 10 minutes.
Sit down, start the timer, close your eyes, and think about nothing. Concentrate on having a quiet, empty mind.
As you sit with your intention to have a quiet mind, you open yourself to the Monkey’s contact.
Watch for the interruptions to your silence and notice what happens in your head.
Most likely, random thoughts fill your head, a mix of things designed to interest you or to get you to give up sitting quietly and go and do something else.
This exercise is for only 10 minutes but most of us struggle to last this long. We sit, either too aware of the stream of thoughts that disturb our silence or we find ourselves lost in thought only to realise what has happened when the timer goes off and the beep calls us back into the room.
What is happening? Who is responsible?
We know it is not you doing the interrupting because your intention is to think of nothing for 10 minutes. So, something else disturbs what you are trying to do.
The something else and the voice you hear in your head is what is known as your Monkey.
As before, when we say voice, you may find your Monkey may use other modalities to disturb your silence.
The objective of this exercise is for you to get first-hand experience of your Monkey so we know what we are talking about as we move forward together.
When you have finished, take a moment to consider what happened and make any notes that seem relevant to you.
It is a good idea as you progress to have a journal or diary to jot down these notes. We are going to suggest you do this at the end of each exercise and there is scope to share your findings and your scores on the website.
For this next exercise, we are going to control our breathing consciously and note how this impacts the Monkey’s communications.
Exercise 2: The power of a focus
Find a quiet, comfortable place to sit where you will not be disturbed.
Set a timer for 10 minutes. Your intention is to sit with a quiet mind but you will focus on your breathing. When thoughts appear, redirect your focus back to your breathing.
Start the timer, close your eyes and take a deep breath and just gently slow your breathing.
Take a couple more breaths like this until you feel quite comfortable.
Once you are ready, start to change your breathing.
First, try lengthening your exhales and allow your inhales to happen without controlling them. Do this for five breath cycles. After the fifth breath cycle, do the opposite, lengthen your inhale and allow your exhales to happen naturally.
Notice how you feel and notice any changes you experience.
After five breath cycles, switch back to lengthening your exhales.
Switch back again after another five breath cycles to lengthen your inhales and then keep switching back and forth between controlling your exhales and inhales until the timer is up.
You may find the extension happens by breathing for longer or by holding the breath at the top or the bottom of the inhale or exhale. Either way, it doesn’t matter since we are only interested in the effect of your focusing on something else, in this case, your breathing.
As you continue to focus on and control your breathing, notice the effect this has on the thoughts that come up. Notice the contact from your Monkey and notice how you feel as the exercise progresses.
Notice any moments of peace or total relaxation.
When the timer is up, spend a moment experiencing how you feel, what you feel and where you feel it.
Compare your Monkey experience this time with the experience you had in the previous exercise.
Consider what happened and make any notes that seem relevant to you.
Most people find redirecting their focus away from the thought flow difficult. Early attempts feel like a constant activity of realising your concentration has gone, that you are lost and engaged in thought and then putting effort into bringing your attention and focus back to the task in hand. If this, is you take heart its normal for most people to have this experience.
It might even feel like the Monkey responds to your attempts to focus elsewhere as a challenge, working to distract us from our intent. Remaining steadfast and returning our focus to our breathing means we can spend more moments free of distraction but it is usually clear from exercises like this that the Monkey is not working with us.
We may sit with a focus on keeping our minds quiet but are then distracted again, pulled away from our own intention by the efforts of our Monkey.
The objective of this exercise is for you to get first-hand experience of how focus on a secondary practice can affect your experience of the Monkey’s distraction.
Other secondary practices that work well for focus is to chant, repeat a mantra or affirmation, or to focus on something like a flame.
The point of this exercise is to notice that changing our focus can change our experience of our Monkey.
Don’t forget there is a free audio recording to help you with these breathing patterns which you can use on all future exercises.
Exercise 3: A closer look at the Monkey
This exercise uses our focus on the breath to take a closer look at the Monkey.
In Exercise 2, we kept our focus on breathing and redirected our focus back to our breathing when thoughts arose. This time we will again control the breath while we focus on the interruptions from the Monkey.
Use the same breathing pattern from Exercise 2; as a reminder it looks like this:
Set a timer for 10 minutes.
Start the timer, close your eyes and take a deep breath. Take a couple more breaths like this until you feel comfortable.
Once you are ready, start to change your breathing. First lengthen your exhales and allow your inhales to happen without controlling them for five breath cycles. Then do the opposite, lengthen your inhale and allow your exhales to happen naturally.
After five breath cycles, switch back to lengthening your exhales. Switch back after five breath cycles to lengthening your inhales. Keep switching back and forth between controlling your exhale and inhale until the timer is up.
As you sit breathing to the patterns, notice any thoughts and any moments of silence, peace or relaxation.
Continue to control your breathing but instead of redirecting your attention back to your breathing, let part of your attention focus on the nature of the thoughts.
When the thoughts appear, ask yourself these questions about the thoughts that come:
“What’s this really all about?”
“What’s this really for?”
Notice what asking these questions brings up while continuing to control your breath until the timer ends.
When you have finished, take a moment to process your experience of the interruptions and the impact of the questions on your focus and the experience itself.
Consider what happened when you controlled the breath while engaging the thoughts and asking questions.
The objective of this exercise is to begin to look at the nature of the interruptions without getting drawn in.
You are attempting to observe on your own terms rather than to blindly participate. Make any notes that seem relevant to you.
Don’t forget there is a free audio recording to help you with these breathing patterns which you can use on all future exercises.
Exercise 4: Asking the Monkey for help
Let’s start to pull some things together and test our idea that the Monkey is there to help us. What better way to do it than asking them to help with a difficult task like listing out what we could stop doing?
This is about building on the use of questions we began in Exercise 3. It builds on the emerging idea that we can influence what the Monkey talks to us about. In this exercise, we are going to see if we can start to drive the nature of the interruptions and use them to help us decide what we can stop doing.
Use the same breathing pattern from Exercise 2; as a reminder it looks like this:
Set a timer for 10 minutes.
Start the timer, close your eyes and take a deep breath. Take a couple more breaths like this until you feel comfortable.
Once you are ready, start to change your breathing.
First, lengthen your exhales and allow your inhales to happen without controlling them for five breath cycles. Then do the opposite, lengthen your inhale and allow your exhales to happen naturally.
After five breath cycles switch back to lengthening your exhales. Switch back after five breath cycles to lengthening your inhales.
Keep switching back and forth between controlling your exhale and inhale until the timer is up.
As you sit breathing to the patterns you will again notice the interruptions and the moments of peace or relaxation that occur in between interruptions.
Consider these three questions:
- If everything I do now was really unimportant, what would I stop doing now?
- If I wanted to free up some time for me, what would I stop doing now?
- If I am to be everything I could be, what could I stop doing now?
Keep one eye on the breathing, notice the peaceful moments as they occur but let part of your attention focus on what feels like the most appropriate one of these questions. Hold it in your mind as though you were actually asking the question of your Monkey.
When you have finished, take a moment to consider what happened and make any notes that seem relevant to you.
Better answers come later in the process when we brainstorm and the same is true here. We are going to suggest that you repeat the exercise every day for a week and see how your list evolves.
As we work through the exercises, you will have the opportunity to be more certain of what you want and don’t want and inevitably in turn, understand a lot more about the real you. This generally generates all sorts of benefits but for our purposes it does two critical things:
- it will really help your Monkey pick up what’s important to you and
- it will let you make more sense of your Monkeys’ efforts to help
- Don’t forget there is a free audio recording to help you with these breathing patterns which you can use on all future exercises.
Exercise 5: Perspective and destinations – What do you really want?
In Exercise 4, we looked at what we could think about giving up. It’s now time to use a similar approach to look at what we could choose to achieve. What we plan to achieve in the ‘be this’ ‘have this’ and ‘do this’ category. This will give us a sense of our destination.
Using this exercise with our Monkey allows us both to see what we are actually doing now and what we could and might like to do instead.
As before we’ll establish a focus for our breathing and d then switch back and forth for the duration of the exercise.
As a reminder:
Set a timer for 10 minutes. Start the timer, close your eyes and take a deep breath. Take a couple more breaths like this until you feel comfortable.
Once you are ready, start to change your breathing. First, lengthen your exhales and allow your inhales to happen without controlling them for five breath cycles. Then do the opposite, lengthen your inhale and allow your exhales to happen naturally.
After five or so breath cycles switch back to lengthening your exhales. Switch back after five breath cycles to lengthening your inhales. Keep switching back and forth between controlling your exhale and inhale until the timer is up.
As you sit breathing to the patterns, you will again notice the interruptions and the moments of peace or relaxation that occur in between interruptions.
Keep one eye on the breathing, notice the peaceful moments as they occur but let part of your attention focus on the idea that the interruptions could help you and consider these questions:
- What would I now attempt if I knew I couldn’t fail?
- How would I spend my time if I was using it just for me?
We like these questions as they usually stimulate very different answers.
The first is about uncovering what you currently don’t attempt because you think it can’t be done or you can’t do it.
The second helps you look more critically at how your use of time for you.
Most of us are run ragged by a hectic schedule but despite what we may believe, this is optional. When we take time and reflect on what we do we find much is not fit for our purpose. For some of us, much of it is an automatic response to the perceived needs of others.
Both questions reveal your ideas about what you would do if you thought you could. Could either as in capable, could as in allowed or both.
There is no right answer. Pick either question and just go with the one you feel will provide you with the most useful answers today.
There is no limit on how often you do this so you can always repeat the exercise with the other question later and sometimes its really interesting to see if and how your results are different.
When you have finished take your usual moment to process your experience. Think about the interruptions and the impact of the questions on your focus and the experience itself. If you have some thoughts write them down and note which question you used.
As with Exercise 4 we are going to suggest that you repeat this exercise for a week or so and see how your list evolves.
Don’t forget there is a free audio recording to help you with these breathing patterns which you can use on all future exercises.
Exercise 6: View Point Three An outsider’s perspective
Shifting perspective is what most successful people do in stressful situations. Many of our successful delegates described their most effective first response as one of stepping back or away from the situation. Doing this defuses the situation, it gives them time to think and the space to see more clearly what is happening.
Close your eyes and take a deep breath. Follow the patterns from the previous exercises to manage your breath and sense the movement of your breath as your lungs fill and then empty with each breath.
Notice that there is or could be an associated movement or feeling in your body that mirrors your breath. As you breathe in, notice movement up from your feet into your chest and then as you exhale notice the movement continue on upwards.
Continue to take gentle, deep breaths watching this secondary movement. When it feels right, imagine yourself drifting up with the movement towards the ceiling. As you drift up, continue breathing gently until you can look back down and see yourself sitting there focussed on your breathing.
The objective of this exercise is to get to the point where you can watch yourself or your situation dispassionately at will from somewhere else.
Write down any thoughts or ideas you get after doing this.
With regular practice you will find it becomes easier and will feel more natural. You will find that you will be able to just take a breath and drift up to see yourself from an outsider’s perspective at any time and in any situation. A deep breath and a shift in your attention is all you need to gain a new perspective, a new view point and a wider understanding.
Don’t worry about whether your shift in perspective is real or imagined. In either event, what matters is that it is this shift in your perspective that gives you conscious access to a bigger picture.
Do this regularly over the next few weeks to form this powerful habit. Eventually, you will be able to choose and use this greater awareness to look at your natural or habitual responses and consider whether there are better choices to be made. Part of the value of this approach is that we can use the new perspective to build a gap between any given stimulus and our habitual response and this is the key to behaviours that create change.
Don’t forget there is a free audio recording to help you with these breathing patterns which you can use on all future exercises.
Links
Expectations
Key concept overview
The Misaligned Monkey Relationship Survey
The 12 Week Challenge
Exercise 7: Exploring viewpoint three
In Exercise 6 we used our breath to drift up and look back down at ourselves, to achieve the outsider’s perspective, what we are now referring to as viewpoint three. In this exercise we will look at more of the possibilities that this viewpoint offers.
Set a timer for 10 minutes. Start the timer, close your eyes and take a few deep breaths. You can use the same breath pattern from the previous exercises if you want.
Otherwise, continue taking deep breaths, sense the movement upwards that is associated and simply ride up as you did before with the movement to viewpoint three and look down to become aware of yourself sitting and breathing.
Keep part of your focus on your breathing and then instead of looking down begin to look around you.
Notice how you can focus your attention in any number of ways.
Consider your body, how the different parts feel. Look for any tension or pain and send your breath to those parts. Notice how the tension eases when you focus your breath on those parts. Play with this and see if you can imagine yourself breathing in and out eliciting a movement from and to that body part.
Sense the possibility that you could look at the past or the future. Choose any subject from the past and look again at what happened and what you now think about it. Consider if there are alternative options or conclusions that would be equally fair.
Be aware that you could also do this for the future or the present.
Notice the space around you at viewpoint three and start to become aware of the endless possibilities this space and this viewpoint could offer you.
Continue with your breathing and exploring until the timer is up.
If you have some thoughts or ideas write them down. You may have a number of immediate options for explorations you would like to undertake. Exploring this space is something else we want to make into a habit over the next few weeks.
Don’t forget there is a free audio recording to help you with these breathing patterns which you can use on all future exercises.
Exercise 8: The Monkey as helper
Along with most people we may have seen the Monkey distractions as less than positive but are our perspectives fair and accurate? In this next exercise we are going to use a technique that can be loosely described as a reframe. Let’s use it to see if other more positive options exist.
Let’s use our new skill of looking from viewpoint three to consider what the Monkey does to help us.
Set a timer for 10 minutes. Start the timer, close your eyes and take a few deep breaths.
You can use the same breath pattern from the previous exercises to help you if you want.
As you continue taking some deep breaths, sense the movement upwards that is associated with your breathing and ride up with the movement to view point three and look down to become aware of yourself sitting and breathing.
Keep part of your focus on your breathing and then watch for the interruptions. Consider the following question:
If this contact from the Monkey was designed to help me, what would it be helping me with?
Continue breathing and consider any distraction whilst holding the question in your mind until your timer is up. Watch the interruptions as they come up and see if they now make more sense.
When you have finished take a moment to consider what happened and make any notes that seem relevant to you.
Don’t forget there is a free audio recording to help you with these breathing patterns which you can use on all future exercises.
Exercise 9: Make a list and check it more than twice
Even the wildest, frantic, most-energetic Monkeys, those most concerned with dealing with you and your behaviour, will pause in the face of a firm set of goals. They will pause or even stop and reconsider what they are doing and how it’s helping you deliver the life you want. This moment gives you both respite and heralds the possibility of greater understanding, communication and change. This exercised marks the start in us really beginning to ask you to focus on what you really want. It’s a start but well worth doing diligently as it builds in importance over the remaining exercises.
Write out what you think you want now and then review the list every night for a week. Your list will evolve and you will have lost some old things and gained some new things. Our evidence suggests this is a worthwhile activity to repeat every 6 months or so.
Exercise 10: More of, less of
We have used questions in a number of the exercises to direct our focus and shape the answers we get. You can now repeat one of these with some relevant questions in your attention to help you get a better grip on what you really want.
Typical big picture questions for this would include:
- “What do I really want in my world?”
- “What do I want my world to be like?”
- “What would my best day (week, month, year, life) look like?”
If you struggle with these big questions and many of us do. They make logical sense but are just too vague or too big for us to really deal with. This is one of the times when it can be more effective to focus on real tangible stuff and use a more detailed question to generate some responses from the Monkey.
Simple questions that really work well to start the process address the core issue:
- What do I want more of?
- What do I want less of?
If you feel up and excited and a ‘more of’ approach feels right then go for this question. If on the other hand you feel more overwhelmed or hectic it might be a good idea to start with the ‘less of’ question.
You may have already begun practising accessing viewpoint three and spending time there. If so, use this approach.
If you are still formulating your ideas, you can repeat one of the previous exercises using the breathing practice and substitute these questions to get the results we want.
If you do this, as before, set a timer for 10 minutes. Start the timer, close your eyes and take a few deep breaths.
You can use the same breath pattern from the previous exercises to help you if you want. As you continue taking some deep breaths, sense the movement upwards that is associated with your breathing and ride up with the movement to viewpoint three and look down to become aware of yourself sitting and breathing.
Keep part of your focus on your breathing and consider your chosen question.
Continue breathing whilst holding the question in your mind until your timer is up. Watch the interruptions as they come up and see if they now make any more sense.
When you have finished take a moment to consider what happened and make any notes that seem relevant to you. You can use the output from this exercise to refine or check any previous goal lists you may have.
Don’t forget there is a free audio recording to help you with these breathing patterns which you can use on all future exercises.
Exercise 11: The first formal chat
it’s now time to have your Monkey over for a formal chat.
In this exercise we want to be at viewpoint three and we are going to ask the Monkey to join us and talk with us in that space.
In this exercise we could repeat the same activities we have used for previous exercises. The repetition is to make it easy for you to get this quickly.
As always though, if you have your own process for doing this or if you have practiced enough to just take a breath and drift up then do that.
If you have downloaded the relevant recording then use this to provide background whilst you travel to viewpoint three and look down at yourself.
Notice the Monkey behind any distraction and remember that they are trying to help.
When you feel ready, reach out your awareness to them with the intention of asking them to join you.
You will feel a moment when you know your Monkey has joined you. You may sense their negative emotions, anger, frustration, fear or sadness but do not be alarmed. Send out reassurance and focus on the good to come.
Let the invitation hang in the air and ask them to come talk with you. They can read your thoughts so make sure your thoughts are positive and supportive.
As your Monkey joins you, sit quietly together for a moment, enjoying the togetherness and sensing the relationship that is now possible. You may feel an overwhelming emotion like meeting a very old friend after many years.
Take a few breaths together and then as leader gently talk about or through your welcome speech and explain what you think you would both get out of working together.
Be respectful and aware that they may need to question or even complain or accuse. Listen to what they say like you would with any other friend you value where the relationship has gone sour.
Make sure you take responsibility and accept that you must change to make your relationship work. Show them you feel like this and hold onto your vision for the future relationship.
Remember your Monkey wants a good relationship too, so let them vent if they want to, it will let off steam and you will then be able to move on together.
Control yourself. Actively look for positives and avoid reacting to anything inflammatory. Understand that you may get some anger and other reactions. Stay in Adult mode and once you have set out your stall, try to ask and hint rather than tell. Be nice but firm, you want this relationship to work and you are completely committed to making it happen.
Accept that they have probably got a point and much of what they will bring up is true. Your acceptance of this shows your maturity and your determination to make this work. On no account be tempted to argue or score points.
Focus on your future together and remember that the past is the past. Remember that their previous efforts, however painful, have been in the best interest. Use any upset as hints that the ‘best interest’ needs to be better understood.
Stick with your intention that you can and will make this relationship happen. Try to find a page you can both stand comfortably on. Your objective in this first meeting is to sit together and agree on something that moves you forward together.
When you feel, you have come to an agreement, agree to meet again and end the meeting. As before you can make some notes if it feels relevant to do so.
Exercise 12: Future pacing with the Monkey
It’s time to have another look at your future together.
In this exercise we complete the future pacing technique mentally from viewpoint three and with our Monkey. It’s a strong exercise that helps us both share a mutual understanding. It builds and cements our ideas for our purpose and our plans for getting there.
For this exercise we suggest you don’t use a timer unless you need to be elsewhere.
This suggested method provides the route to investigate your future and the associated plans required to deliver it.
It can also work to split these two elements and complete one exercise to investigate the future and then another at a later time to investigate the plans.
Take your time there is nothing you could do that is more important.
You can use the same breath pattern from the previous exercises to help you if you want and don’t forget there is an audio to help you do this without thinking.
As you begin, take some deep breaths, sense the movement upwards that is associated with your breathing. Ride up with the movement to viewpoint three and look down to become aware of yourself sitting and breathing.
As before, move your awareness towards your Monkey. When the Monkey joins you, focus on today’s task to explore options for a better future. Remember those delegates walking across a field and visualize the future stretching out in front of both of you. For example, you could visualize the future as a road across a field, hold hands with your Monkey and start walking toward the future.
There are no rules so visualize what works best for you. As you move forward, sense what the future feels like and, just as those delegates did on the field at the farm, walk until you find something that feels great and represents the future you want.
When you are ready, stop and sink into the experience to soak up what this ideal future involves.
As you sit you will begin to notice that many of the things on your lists are in this future and there may also be other things that are not on your lists but feel right to you now. Perhaps you have not thought of these things before, or perhaps you thought these things were impossible to achieve or even that you do not deserve them but now you see that here they are in your ideal future.
You may also notice things on your lists are missing in this ideal future. Consider how you feel about these missing things, if it is okay not to have them then think about changing your list and dumping them. Equally if they are on your list and you must have them imagine them taking their place in the future you now see.
When you have a clear view of the exciting future you can have, retrace your steps back towards now.
As you do this, notice the critical moments that led to the future you have just seen. Stop walking at these critical moments and see what steps you both will take to make this future your reality.
If any of the steps are unclear, take some time, sink down and see what they really entail, what really matters and what really needs to be done to ensure the future you have just seen is yours. There is no need to rush this critical task.
When you have finished, write down what happened to create the future and what steps you both can take now to begin creating the desirable future you have seen.
We suggest you play with this and repeat this exercise once a week for the next few weeks. Next time, read your notes before beginning the new session. Do this each time before you repeat the exercise.
If you need more support or just want an easier way of coordinating teh journey , then the challenge is an inexpensive way to get the job done. We provide an upgraded audio version of the book exercises over a 12 week timescale. We supply timetable, hints, tips and all the recordings you need as and when you need them. Learn more here
The Book Exercises