Taming Monkey Number 7 – At Leisure

It’s time for my monthly taming monkey report. If you don’t know what is that taming monkey thing, I suggest to read the introductory post. To make a long story short, I ditched my new years resolutions and replaced them with monthly challenges. During these monthly challenges, I intend to tame an inner monkey. Like in a “monkey type” behavior, not a real monkey, of course.

At Leisure

The July monkey was to deliver a few astrological readings to people I promised that, but never got the chance to actually deliver. I do this astrology thing on a regular basis for myself and it proved to be a really reliable companion. I won’t go into details about this now. From time to time, I also do this at social gatherings or parties, just for fun. Every time I do it, I end up with at least a dozen of requests to do extended readings.

I don’t consider myself a professional astrologer and I do not intend to “become” one. I just learned this the same way I learned Objective C. Out of curiosity, that is. In fact, pretty much everything I learned so far was out of curiosity. So this challenge didn’t have any “work” or “professional” pressure, it was just a casual thing.

Out of 10 charts I only delivered two. One must say that the monkey was not tamed. And one must be right about that. But I don’t feel any negative emotions about that. No guilt, no frustration, nothing like that. In fact, I feel pretty relaxed and happy.

The whole month was more like a leisure break. In the Northern hemisphere, where I am right now, it’s holiday season. Many of my friends were out on holiday, and I myself spent like almost half of the month outside work. Almost a week in Switzerland and a few days at the Black Sea seaside (each time with one of my kids). And the rest was more like keeping afloat some of my projects instead of pushing them. One of the closest projects at this moment is WPSumo (expect to hear more about it soon). But even WPSumo was more like waiting for something to happen than pushing things to actually happen.

Results?

I said it before and I will say it again: this taming monkey challenge is one of the best thing that I did this year. The benefits are so deep and extended, that I can hardly believe where I am right now, compared to where I was at the beginning of the year.

And the most interesting part of the entire experience is the fact that the effects are not direct. They’re not like a direct consequence of what I do. Instead, there are places inside my life that gets activated almost magically, when I apply some pressure on a very different spot. For instance, in July, by trying to deliver some astrological charts, I activated that part in me that was ready to enjoy holiday.

Believe it or not, that part was drastically underdeveloped. I worked since I finished school, and always took a lot of pride in it. Work was one of my most frequently used social masks. Who are you? I’m a radio anchor. Who are you? I’m a self-made entrepreneur. And so on, and so forth…

Being so melted down with my work I always had a very hard time to relax. I only understood the whole process during the last few years. Until then, all I knew was that I don’t feel good on holiday. Now I know it was an identity crisis. And fear that if I leave it unsupervised for just a second, my universe will collapse. Taking my social mask with it.

But during this month I didn’t experience this at all. On the contrary. I felt light and relaxed. Joyful and balanced. Believe me, the outside world wasn’t like that. Business went on as usual, had to solve all sort of blocks, tense situations or just ordinary, day to day chores. But I did it without too much hassle. Even smiling at times.

Is there a direct connection between the July monkey and my ability to enjoy long breaks in my work? Most likely not. But the whole process of “taming monkeys”, of getting out from the mud of my exploding subconscious all the things that I never lived up to, putting them into the light and start to manage them, well, that’s for sure at the root of my improved living ability.

In fact, I am so relaxed that I even had a bit of a hard time writing this post. Like I was just staring at the walls instead. 🙂

August Monkey

The August monkey will be “straighten up my finances”. I know it sounds fuzzy and hard to measure, but I have this need for a long time, so I will make it a monkey.

What exactly do I mean by “straighten up my finances”? Well, after I sold my company and gave up my life as a busy manager, I embraced a digital nomad lifestyle. Basically, it means I can make my own schedule, work my own projects and make an office out of a bench on a park, if I want. Cool, isn’t it? But it also means I have a wider spread of my interests, projects and activities. I feel I’m spreading too thin.

If you want to have a glimpse of how I make money right now, have a look at my work with me page. Besides that, I also have a few other revenue sources, like affiliate programs, iOS apps and ebooks selling on Kindle and iBookStore. All this has become a little bit hard to understand, even for me. So I’ll try to make it clearer during August.

That means I can ditch some of my projects, put more energy in others or enforce my presence in some of the partnerships I already started.

We’ll see.




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