As a life coach, my job is to support my clients in getting inspired and empowered to take action on their most cherished dreams. A problem that we all face is that fear gets in the way. You know what you want.
In fact, most of the time, you even know what to do to get what you want, but you get stopped by fear, doubt, uncertainty. These are emotions that tell you that you’re listening to, or you’re allowing your mind to control your life. Your mind, which I call The Drunk Monkey, is nothing more than a survival tool. It’s a fantastic device that has developed over time for human beings. Its job is to steer us away from danger. Its job, of course, is to steer toward propagating the species, but that’s about it.
No goals and dreams are achieved via the mind. Goals and dreams are achieved via inspiration. How do you get the inspiration, when what you want seems so big? Seems too unattainable. Maybe you feel like you’re not enough or you don’t know what to do. You have to begin with the Game Changer Process.
The Game Changer Process begins with the word Awareness. There are four words in total: awareness, flexibility, options, and power. Let’s take them one at a time.
- With awareness, you start to see that your mind is not your friend. You begin to see that The Drunk Monkey in your head is really focused in on what isn’t working, what you don’t like, what might hurt you. I’ll be embarrassed. I won’t look good. I won’t be enough. I’ll feel stupid. I’ll feel like an idiot. My family will leave me. These are the kinds of thoughts that The Drunk Monkey in your head is going to spin for you, when you ask it to do things you don’t normally do, which is what your goals and dreams are, things you don’t normally do, expansion, where you want to go. With awareness, you can start to see that your mind is not on your side. It’s not helping you achieve your goals. It’s just this biology. It’s operating independently of you and it’s doing what it’s doing. That awareness will lead to the second part of the empowerment process, which is flexibility.
- Once you are aware that your mind is running the show, that you are literally The Drunk Monkey’s puppet, you can begin to make choices. This flexibility that you have now, leads to the third part of the process, which is options.
- As soon as you recognize that your mind is running the show, that The Drunk Monkey is holding the puppet strings of your life and pulling those puppet strings with fear, anxiety, doubt, uncertainty, anger, frustration, as soon as you realize that, a new set of options open up. Well, what if I took the action? What if I went this direction instead? How about if I ask for help? On and on you go, with all these new options popping into your head that weren’t there. Once you realize that your mind is not a goal achievement vehicle or a goal achievement organ, as so many personal developments gurus have espoused in the past, that leads to number four, which is power.
- When you’re aware of what your mind is doing, you become more flexible. When you are flexible, you see more options. You have optionality in your life. Those options empower you to take new actions. This action is what I call inspired action. Inspired and empowered to take action on your dreams. An energy inside of you, pulling you forward and having you actually feel confident in the face of what you would normally feel fearful of.
Awareness makes you Flexible, which reveals new Options and gives you Power. When you begin to see The Drunk Monkey’s fears are just a survival response to a non-survival situation, you can take inspired action towards your biggest dreams.
Author
Matthew Ferry