Science Explains Why I Failed at Love, Money and Satisfaction

Last week my ex-wife and I gave a science experiment kit to our six year old daughter, and I wasn’t expecting enlightenment.

Here’s The Experiment

Get three glasses, and fill each with different temperature of water.

⇢ ➀ Glass number one has water heated to 40°C

⇢ ➁ Glass number two is room temperature water 20°C

⇢ ➂ Glass number three is near freezing, 1°C

In the experiment you put your fingers into glass number one and glass number three and hold them there for 20 seconds.

After the twenty seconds are finished, put both fingers into glass number two, and observe the sensations.

Of course, I ‘knew’ what the results were going to be, and yet, as we completed the simple steps and I watched my daughter experience the results, a new enlightenment began to grow in my mind as well.

Here’s What My Daughter Experienced

The finger from her right hand felt warm because it just came from the cold water.

The finger from her left hand felt cold because it just came from the warm water.

Each finger is giving was give her a different reading from the same temperature water because of its recent acclimatization.

Watching the realization dawn on her face was a real treasured moment!

I just love to watch her learn.

Perhaps it was her sense of wonder that made the lesson stick with me…

I began to reflect on the different experience we can have in a good situation, depending on what we are comparing it to.

The ideas began to surface in my own mind and I’ve become more aware of several examples in my own life.

These three simple glasses of water revealed to me how my own monkey mind has disrupted my success, distracted me from satisfaction and robbed me of a love for life!

If you find this resonates with you, I’d love to hear your experience in the comments below.

Here’s how the monkey mind 

• disrupted my success,

• distracted me from satisfaction and

• robbed me of a love for life.

Here’s How The Monkey Mind

1.) Disrupted My Success

I began to think about these three glasses of water as I was experiencing the emotional roller coaster of building towards a sustainable passive income online.

In one glass of water have the long-term vision and the other glass of water is the daily grind of work that is required to get that long term vision in place.

While my efforts to create content and my efforts to build my audience can be measured from day to day, the results that I get back are like the middle glass in the experiment.

How I feel about the results I am measuring will be determined by what I am measuring against.

My monkey mind will make those slow results the measure of success for the day, rather than my steady production — and that makes me feel discouraged and undermines my progress.

Actually, my monkey mind will do the same thing as I am walking my way toward success in almost any long term goal… but it’s supposed to, as I’ll explain below.

For example it may seem natural that I expect that my efforts will create a measure of results.

Therefore, greater effort should result in a greater measure of success… no?

And yet, if I measure my success by the short term results then I may expend a bunch of valid, quality, required effort, and, because I do not get the measurable results in the short term, the monkey mind will use this comparison as an excuse to stop working on the project!

Using Mindfulness To Expand Our Perspective

Knowing the skewed perspective that one finger gives me in the temperature reading, I can mentally step back and gain a larger perspective of my progress.

The idea is to keep myself focused on feeling the success of the completed goal while I’m working on the steps towards the goal, rather than feeling the immediate short term results.

My monkey mind is especially adept at slipping in self doubt when there is a large shadow of time between the effort and the rewards.

Instead, I need to overcome the short term perspective of my monkey mind by reflecting back on a similar post that I did a year ago, tally up the results, and use these facts to encourage even better content for October this year!

Here’s How The Monkey Mind

2.) Distracts Me From Satisfaction

I was watching Ed from Film-Booth explain how a new YouTube channel owner will go through emotional highs and lows as they grow their channel.

My experience was very similar because I didn’t have a long term plan to work with as a step-by-step guide forward, I was just trying everything I could think of.

I was very excited about getting 100 views per video when first starting.

Then I worked my way up to 1000 views for pretty much every video and things were going well — I was feeling good and on a roll.

Yet later still, just like the new channel owner who’s views goes down to 600 views per video, my views were declining and I was feeling discouraged by my ‘small’ viewership.

Even though my views were five times higher than when I was first starting out (500% improvement), my monkey mind was very sad and depressed because I had gone down from my 1000 view ‘standard’.

It was pretty great to mix the perspective of these three glasses of water with the experience that I also have in growing any number of projects online.

This will certainly help me in the years to come.

Yet the greatest work and the most challenging arena for combating my monkey mind may always be — measuring love.

Here’s How The Monkey Mind

3.) Robbed me of a Love For Life

The water glass experiment reveals the same perception experience is true when it comes to measuring of love we are anticipating.

Consider these two relationship progressions:

If we go from being an acquaintance to a good friendship, it may seem wonderful and we are very delighted by it.

After a deep and wonderful loving relationship where the relationship changes and a good friendship remains, the friendship will feel like a very cold comparison.

Going from a ‘passionate love-of-my-life’ to being ‘good friend who is important to me’, can be an excuse for endless suffering, according to my monkey mind.

The monkey mind is suffering for the lost moments of intimacy and connection and suffering for all the moments that will be lost…

The monkey mind rolls in self pity. (And kind of delights in the grandeur.)

Left alone as the only finger that we measure reality from, it becomes a narcissistic need for the approval of others.

It’s really cringe-worthy to step back as a third person and watch how my monkey mind is only responding to the perception of love from the one finger… and it’s clearly missing the full data. (facepalm)

🛑 Five Decades Of Monkey Mind

For someone who has lived five decades as their monkey mind, I can now realize how my mistaken perception of victimhood is explained by the Three Glass Experiment.

So how do we overcome the monkey mind?

The monkey mind isn’t all bad of course. And we actually need our Monkey Mind. It’s job is to keep watch for danger and to protect us from threats.

The monkey mind looks at everything as though it’s a threat and the monkey mind is best suited to combat threat when the fight or flight reflex is initiated.

The monkey mind always scans the environment looking for comparisons in preparation for danger.

It is always ‘sensing’ the world with just one finger. The Monkey Mind always feels like it has just come from the hot water into colder water!

The untrained monkey mind feels vulnerable, or weak, when the fight or flight reflex is turned off.

In order to turn on the fighter flight reflex when there is no threat present, the monkey mind will imagine negative comparisons and recall historical grievances and parade those before us in order to generate that fight or flight reflex.

First Step Is Awareness

If the story in my head is being narrated by the my monkey mind, it will be visible in meditation tracker brain scans.

It doesn’t matter what the specific story is, the brain state of fight-or-flight reflex encompasses all the negative survival emotions.

I think of the collection of these emotions as the monkey mind.

Guided Yoga To The Rescue

When I become aware that my monkey mind has me pinned down, I sit down with my meditation tracker or a guided meditation.

However, if I’ve let myself get into a yoga-deficit,

I will find myself ruminating and frustrated and resentful in a way that I’m not able to calm on my own.

When I become aware that my ‘old personality’ is running the show again, I realize that I need a guide to help me break the fight-or-flight brain state.

60 Minutes of Hot Yoga

Hot Yoga is not a fair fight for my monkey mind.

I have a tag-team of my yoga guide and all the other yogis who are attending in the silent room.

We move together in a flow with breath and music.

The monkey mind is ‘yoked’ to the subconscious and it becomes still.

The Sensation Of The Other Finger

Listening only to my monkey mind explains why I failed at love, money and satisfaction for most of my life.

My perception was naturally focused on lack and loss because I was only measuring the world with the one finger that is calibrated to look for lack!

At the end of yoga class I can feel both fingers again and I am not deceived.

• I know that a love for life will bring love into my life.

• I know that satisfaction comes from completing what I started.

• I know to imagine the feeling of success while I work toward success.

Are You Feeling Both Fingers In Life?

I would love to hear your story! Share your example of this shift in perspective within your life experience!