After months of preparation, I gave my first post-publication presentation about Shut Your Monkey: How to Control Your Inner Critic and Get More Done. I spoke to a packed hall in Atlanta, GA at the HOW Design Live conference.
I was joined on the podium by my old pal, the Monkey.
He told me that people were bored, that my fly was open, that they saw through my fake expert pose, that this was surely the end of the road for me. Despite all that, the talk went very well and afterwards, I received lots of positive response —of course, the monkey told me that the applause just came from toadies and second-raters with nothing better to do.
Sigh.
This week’s podcast is all about the tapes that play in our heads that were recorded in a by-gone era. 78s that became LPs that became cassettes, CDs, MP3s, and now stream live from Spotify, but always the same old song: “You suck, you are in danger, you better watch out lalala!”
Sometimes that song was recorded before we were born, the trauma that molded a great-grand parent or an even more distant ancestor. A war, an economic crisis, a death, can mold a world-view that gets passed on through a family. We end up hearing those distant echoes long past their sell-by date and are screwed up by their reverberations.
Joining me on this podcast is Patti Digh. She’s a wonderful and wise woman, a best-selling author who has recently been studying post-traumatic stress. We talked all about our ghosts and how to exorcise them. It’s a really useful discussion.
Do you have a ghost story? Share it with me. I am collecting Monkey Tales, stories from all sorts of people about the challenges the monkey brought them and how they dealt with them. Real stories, real moving. If you have a monkey tale you’d like to share, just go here and click the red tab on the right to record it. That would be great.
All the episodes of the Shut Your Monkey Podcast are on iTunes and will soon be on all the other places you subscribe to podcasts (as I figure out what they all are).
To hear them, you can can either:
- Subscribe directly from your podcast app by searching for ‘Shut Your Monkey’.
- Or you can click this link and it will take you to the iTunes page.
- Or you can visit monkeypodcast.com and listen to the episodes right in your browser.
I hope you like this episode. I hope your monkey and his/her grandparents do not.
Danny Gregory 
“You suck, you are in danger, you better watch out lalala!” –
LOL 🙂 hahaha … that’s SO typical Danny! I know that record for decades (I know it since I was born!!!), it’s an “evergreen” although it never became an “number one hit”! – For instance: one of my newest interests is to try to create comics. I get an idea for a cute story, I’m enthusiastic and start to write a script but after few words the monkey pops up: “Stop that bullshit, that’s boring, weird, stupid… and after all: Your drawings… it looks ugly, childish…silly… you’re unable, you are a BUNGLER !…better go home…better go off-line, even better: Stay in bed! etc. etc. etc.” –
Now I”ll listen to the new podcast (iTunes) 🙂 – Matthias
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Hello Danny. When you announced that your new podcasts were on I tunes I was in the beginning stages of moving. I was excited for you yet I felt abandoned because I do not have apple products. The monkey had a blast with all kinds of stories about missing out and being second rate. Luckily for me your podcasts became available and am following them. I just finished my sixth reading of “Shut Your Monkey.”
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Sixth reading! I wish I’d read it that many times! Out of interest, M, how do you get podcasts? Id like to know where SYM gets distributed as I’m new to all this.
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Well, everyday is a ghost story! I’m from Argentina, but most of the people that I usually talk to on internet are from english speaking countries. So, when I started my blog, not so long ago, I made an english section.
But I don’t know how to shut up the monkey! He says its really fake, that if someone in my country reads my name (Loren would be Lorena here. I like it better on english) will laugh and that self translating my works is not professional. I don’t know anyone who writes like I do and you start to forget if you are writing for yourself or for others.
Do you have any advise?
Anyway, loved your article. Congratulations for the conference, and I’m not a monkey, I know you deserved every applause! Keep on the good work.
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Have you read my new book? Or subscribed to my podcast? It’s a good place to start!
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