We all have a dancing monkey and a king inside us. The role of the dancing monkey is to generate silly antics and the role of the king is to express the amusement that comes from focusing on the dancing monkey.

Why is it that we think of being a dancing monkey as bad?

That’s because of who we tell our dancing monkey to be silly for. When we tell our dancing monkey to dance for the king of the person we are talking to, 2 things happen.

  1. We want our dancing monkeys efforts to be validated in the form of a good reaction (the persons king expresses amusement)

  2. Because we are neglecting our king, we want their dancing monkey to generate silliness for our king because we want to feel good emotions too.

Both are communicating, give me, give me, give me. Both are communicating, “Like me because I don’t know how to like myself”.