How to trap a monkey (video)

There’s an old story called “How to trap a monkey” which is a great metaphor for life and for working with your obstacles. It’s one of those stories you can apply to your life and that you’ll remember for many years. Spider Monkey
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Video transcript:

Hey everybody, this is Seth with SethPerler.com and I’m glad you’re here. I’m here today to tell you a quick story called “How to trap a monkey.” It’s a great story with a great moral at the end of it. So here’s what happened: there’s this village of people a long time ago and there are monkeys that lived all around the village. One day, the village people decided that they wanted to figure out how to track a monkey. They started trying anything and everything they could possibly think of. They threw rocks at the monkeys, but the monkeys were too fast and they dodged the rocks. They shot arrows at the monkeys, but the monkeys were even too fast for the arrows and they would dodge them and get away completely unscathed. They took rope and tried to trap the monkeys, but it didn’t work. They made nets and tried to trap the monkeys, and that didn’t work either. The monkeys were just too fast and too smart. Finally, a little girl decided she had an idea that she thought might work. And here’s what she did: she took a log, a big log, and she hollowed out the log completely. Then, she drilled a hole into the top of the log, and then she filled the sides of the log so that, basically, it was an empty container with the hole on the top. Now the hole was a very special size. The hole was exactly the size of a monkey’s arm. Then, she decided to take these nuts and drop them down into the hole. And the monkeys love these nuts. They’re delicious and they couldn’t get enough of them. So these were what she used as the bait for her trap. So how did this trap work? Here’s what happened. One of the curious monkeys came over after the girl left and started to investigate. He looked in the hole to figure out that the nuts were in fact there. He decided, well, he’s going to steal them! So he takes his arm and he sticks it into the hole and he grabs the nuts. As he tries to bring his arm out of the hole, he now has a fist full of nuts, but his fist wouldn’t fit through the hole. So he was trapped. The girl walked over, picked the monkey, and she had now trapped a monkey. She caught the monkey! It couldn’t get away, it didn’t even let go until she grabbed it. Now, why is this story so important? It’s because we get trapped by our own minds. We get trapped by our own thinking. I work with students, anywhere from elementary school through graduate school, and we all have the things that we grab on to and we trap ourselves. We become prisoners ourselves by our own self defeating thoughts. Thoughts that we can’t do something or something is too hard. Or thoughts that we don’t want to start on something because it’s just not fun. Things that block us. I don’t know what it is for you, but we all have our kryptonite. We all have things that we hold onto. If we don’t let go and pull our hand out, we’re trapped. So my question to you: what are the thoughts that you need to let go of? What are the thoughts that keep going and going and looping over and over again in your head that are not serving you, and that are holding you back from actually being your best? Or from actually accomplishing what you need to accomplish? So, that’s all I have for you today. A very short story. I hope this is helpful to you, and I hope that you can figure out what it is that you grab onto that you should let go of to help you. Have an awesome evening, and I’ll talk to you soon. Take care. Please CLICK below to share.