Why you always feel conflicted when making important decisions [Three Monkey Framework]

This was me about 10 years ago and I was really torn. Whilst I had a career, I wanted to explore lots of creative ideas, but there were some problems. I had a lot of self doubt, uncertainty, fear of failure. And so what I do is I try and juggle everything. Instead I try and balance my career and explore lots of these creative ideas. But then I get burnt out. I'd have these voices in my head. One minute telling me I should drop the idea, next minute getting really excited about the idea and then in the next minute telling me they're not even worth doing. Now I can show this visually like this. There was this side of me that was really creative and had lots of ideas and wanted to explore this other side of me that wanted to challenge myself and was quite ambitious, growth oriented and really wanted to push my strengths. But then there's this other side of me, the stability seeking side which was always concerned about safety, risk, avoidance and, and staying with what was familiar. It felt like this internal tension. I had all these ideas but I didn't have the time and energy to work them through. And even when I did, I'd just be concerned about the risk and doubt. The more I tried to get excited about things, the more these voices would try and hold me back. I kept finding I ended up at these extremes. If I did it all, I'd get exhausted and burnt out. If I played safe, I'd remain stuck. If I jumped from idea to idea, I just wouldn't have any meaningful progress in anything. The result? Lots of half baked ideas and no real action. Working hard on things I didn't really care about and feeling stuck while watching others around me thrive. And this was really frustrating and it was all a bit of a mess. It left me in this chaotic headspace and I think this picture sums it up pretty well. And it was really frustrating and kind of led me to a pretty unfulfilling period in my life. But there was something about these internal voices. They always made valid points. The, the argument for risk and doubting myself. They made sense at the time, but also the excitement that I get when I could explore something. There usually was an opportunity there and ways to expand my skills always made sense. But I struggled to compartmentalize all of these different voices. And so it was really difficult to act on anything because I. I'd wake up one day thinking one thing and then the next day thinking something else. And then I had a bit of a light bulb moment where I discovered this framework that really changed everything and things started to make a lot of sense at first for me, and then I started experimenting this with hundreds of clients I've then worked with. So I'm going to go over the concept now and it won't take long. So let's get creative. I want you to imagine there are three monkeys and they are siblings on a little wooden boat on a voyage across the ocean. The boat looks like this and we've got these three monkeys. The youngest, adventurous, wants to explore all the time. The middle monkey is the one who works really hard and is really ambitious. And the eldest monkey is concerned about safety and is fairly risk averse. I want to keep these three monkeys in mind. So we'll go back to the youngest one we call explorer monkey. They are driven by curiosity and excitement. They like to play and they generally like to rock the boat on purpose because it's fun. It represents the childlike version of us. Impulsive, naughty and lives for the moment. We picked this up during our early years in life. And some other names some of my clients came up with were baby monkey, little monkey and play monkey. The middle monkey I like to call worker monkey. And again, some names that have been brought up. Middle monkey, muscle monkey and workout monkey. They enjoy being in the flow, kind of like wearing noise cancelling headphones and just getting on with the task. They like to be challenged and just get on with it. They don't question things. And we learn this during our education years. So I always like to think about this. You know, during your teenage years, if you go to college or university and in the early years of working, then you have accountant monkey, which is the eldest monkey, or cautious monkey. This is the eldest sibling, driven by stability and what others think. And there's a good reason for this. They like to avoid risk, play it safe and fit in with society to make sure that the boat, which is a family, will survive. It's the survival part of us. It involves comparison status and known paths. It's developed during your adulthood period and in early career. Again, we can visualize these three like this. You've got the youngest explorer, exciting, fun and playful. Middle monkey over here likes to be challenged. Potential seeking and growth, so represented by gym equipment here. And eldest monkey, the accountant monkey. Strategic status seeking and stability. So if you've got those monkeys in your mind, which of your monkeys has the loudest voice? Now, I'll give you a common client scenario. Sometimes as we grow older, we start to pick up these responsibilities as an adult. And your explorer monkey sometimes gets a bit too reckless and risky. So accountant monkey locks Explorer monkey in a cage. Now remember, they're on a boat. It works. The boat is cruising along now without interruptions. And worker monkey and accountant monkey on top of the deck can push the boat as fast as possible. Meanwhile, little monkey is below deck, sad tears rolling down his face. Worker monkey says, what's the point in all of this? This isn't any fun. Now, this was how I felt. I'd unintentionally locked my explorer monkey below deck. I remember being quite excited about life when I was a kid. I'd like to build things and essentially play, but I think when I went through my adult years, everything just got ultra, ultra serious to the extreme and I completely lost the zest for life. And we'll come back to why this is so important and why this actually drives lots of things like productivity later. This is something that I then started to see a lot with clients. They'd worked really hard and just lost themselves in the game of life. There are lots of unbalanced configurations. So here's some examples. I had a client, Jess, worked in finance. Her worker monkey was totally burnt out, fed up, and she'd resigned it. She'd resigned to go to the other side of the world just before we started working together. And at that point we actually. She ended up canceling it. And then she actually. And we worked through a career transition. Joe, who ran a business and was in a well paid job, wanted to explore the creative side of life, but had massive fear of judgment and self doubt, so couldn't act on that. And another client, Fran, who had worked really hard, worked their way up the corporate ladder and didn't even realize that their play monkey had been totally abandoned, was always known as the serious one and wasn't any fun amongst work colleagues and also in their social life. And it was funny because they only realized this after we started working together. How seriously, they completely neglected play monkey. So quick reflection. When you introduce yourself, which monkey leads the conversation? How do you think they are perceived? So how can we improve all of this? We need to work up harmony. The goal here is to achieve harmony on board your boat. Remember, these monkeys are a family and we want to respect each of the monkeys. What often happens is in the configurations, one monkey gets abandoned or treated really badly. And without thinking about it in this compartmentalized way, it. It's really easy to see how we can get skewed in behaving in certain directions. So you can think about it like this. We can visualize an optimal state where the boat is moving in this direction, each of the monkeys are pulling at different angles but are generally in the same direction. They are directionally aligned, they have differences, but there is compromise between them and each of the monkeys feels really heard. Now we can think about giving each monkey a score in Life out of 10. What would you score each of your monkeys about? How fulfilled they are in life? Now, in an ideal world, you'd like to have each of these feeling a 10, but that is often not the case. So a counter monkey would usually feel a 10. If they are doing well financially, they're very stable and there's. And they're feeling very safe. Explorer monkey gets to be really creative, gets to have lots of fun and is able to play. And worker monkey is able to be stretched and really push themselves and really and really lean into the potential that they know they have. So here's an example. Remember Jess? She worked in finance. Her worker monkey burnt out, fed up, resigned to go to the other side of the world. Well, what were her monkeys going through? So her explorer monkey hated life, felt really trapped and just felt like they couldn't breathe. They weren't able to do anything autonomously. There was lots of regulations in the financial world and she had lots of ideas. Her worker monkey completely burnt out, really exhausted by the work and feeling really unappreciated. This was a really, really big part of. Didn't feel much respect in that industry and so was working hard and not really feeling rewarded for it. Her accountant monkey, whilst was compensated really well financially, was out of ideas and just had a family on the boat who were really, really sad. And so that's why she wanted to, you know, to drop everything and run away to the other side of the world. And so you can see the scores here. Explorer monkey with a one, welcome monkey with a three and a counter monkey, despite having a high score for finances and safety, had to deal with two younger siblings who were really upset, sad and burnt out. So this was a starting point for resolution and we'll come back to her later. Monkey arguments. There is nearly always friction. Why? Well, you can clearly see each of the monkeys cares about different things, they have different sets of values. Explorer monkey cares about more fun in the moment and being creative. Worker monkey likes to work hard, head down and fulfilling potential. And eldest monkey wants to focus on stability and playing things safe. So as an example, explorer monkey just refuses to wake up because they are not enthused about what they get to do in the day. Joe ran a business or wanted to explore being more creative, but was Crippled with fear and self doubt, which was governed by a countermonkey. So what was the internal debate going on with each monkey? Explorer Monkey wanted to create, desperate to find his voice, but felt really held back and not able to express themselves through their current work. Worker Monkey was getting tired from working on multiple projects because he was in a. In a full time, fairly well paid job and also ran a side business that he actually didn't really want to be in anymore. An accountant monkey had initial denial about that they had a problem in the first place and just wanted to focus on building out this business that they didn't really care about much and had a really big fear of criticism if they explored this creative side of them. So with each narrative clearly defined, it is much easier to build a resolution. And we can see Explorer Monkey was only a 2 score, Work Monkey 4 and Account Monkey 6. So we needed to find a way to unlock Explorer Monkey somehow and this was like the starting canvas that we had. What's the benefit of seeking resolution? Well, one thing I try and do with people I work with at least is we try and explore ways to engineer life situations and life paths where we can get some, we can get high scores with each of these. We don't want to eliminate any one of them. So if you go crazy with the creative side and you completely rock the boat, well, you're going to lose points with a counter monkey where they're going to be really stressed and anxious about how to generate any money to keep surviving. A countermonkey has good strategy and usually is pretty resourceful and can figure out ways to make things work and doesn't want to take unnecessary risk. Explorer Monkey brings fresh ideas to the table and Worker Monkey turns these ideas into action and that's the harmonious way they can work together and you can actually come out with some pretty good solutions. So how to resolve a real life situation. I like to call it the round table discussion. It's where you get all of the three monkeys around a table and, and have a bit of a, have a bit of a workshop so you can identify a recent decision or conflict that you've had. Like trying to decide whether you should start a side project or side business. Let each monkey have the floor for a moment. A lot of problems come because you have a dominant monkey and you won't let the other monkeys speak. But this time actually give some space to each monkey to hear what they have to say. You can write this down. It works surprisingly well. The idea here is we want to find a Compromise, where each of the monkeys gets their say and we figure out a way to engineer a solution and path forward that they can all agree with because then they can all get excited about it. So what you often hear is we never try anything that comes from explorer monkey. The middle monkey will say, I'm too busy, I can't do this side project because I got my 9 to 5 job to do. And the eldest monkey will say something like, it's too risky. So this is one of the common friction points that we often have to work through. Here's a step by step example. Should we start this side business? This is a really common one I hear from working with clients. Current situation. Explorer monkey says, I've got no freedom to be creative and I've got so much energy to give. I need a way to express myself and I'm not getting that. Worker monkey. Well, I don't feel respected nor appreciated in the work I'm doing. I can put in twice the amount of work and I don't get any recognition for it. Now a countermonkey is usually happier in the situation that they're in because whatever they're doing right now is paying the bills. So there's a bit of a discrepancy here with where they are right now. So explorer monkey will say, if we try this, it could be really fun. We can build it how we want to and will learn lots. So that's their, that's their pitch for moving forward. Worker monkey will say something like, good for skills, but how much time and energy will this will this new project require? Now counter monkey is a bit more concerned about this because all they're thinking about is can we make an income from it. The idea here is we want to try and find a middle ground where the monkeys feel heard and respected. And this is what is really challenging. But it usually can be done. An example here would be deciding to start maybe running a small experiment with a smaller scope, maybe a trial period where you can start the side business for the next two months and you can balance that excitement so you can express yourself, but you're not taking the ultimate risk of quitting your job or anything. And then you can start committing to actions. Now this piece is actually quite important because if you don't commit to actions, what you're doing is you're just hearing, say explorer monkeys expression of wanting to be creative but not actually allowing them to be creative, which is pretty disrespectful to that monkey. And that monkey won't want to help you out when you're in trouble. So an example might be assigning a couple of hours every week, and it could be on a Saturday or on a Wednesday evening for your new project where you give dedicated time and energy to your project, where it doesn't interfere with. Now, you can't see this here with existing commitments. So we want to find this place. We want to try and get to the island that they all want to go to. They will have their differences, but they can find a place that they will all be excited to work toward. And this is something that you want to wake up each day for. That's a bit of an intro to this concept. There is loads more on this, and if you liked it, leave a comment below. See you in the next video.