How's Your Monkey Mind?

Today on the show we’re bringing an end to Season One and to be honest we feel pretty proud of ourselves. When we started this show we were told most podcasts fail after three episodes and we’ve managed to complete twenty-two of these after today. That feels pretty cool.  To celebrate, we’re going to talk games and strategies one more time. The summer is full of opportunities for both and to follo...

Today on the show we’re going back to basics and bringing you into how we play. Skills only get stronger when we practice. Not once, not twice, but as often as we can find space to, so that a good habit develops and becomes a way of life. Atomic Habits Author James Clear advocates for making a habit obvious, attractive, easy, and rewarding. To us that means finding opportunities to play.  We get t...

  Today on the show we’re going back to basics and returning to why we do what we do, which is intentional practice of social emotional skills through play and engaging activities. Mental health gets talked about a lot, but the skills to find strong mental fitness can feel out of reach or confusing with where to start.  When we started Monkey Minds, we knew we had the tools to help students, famil...

Today on the show we’re going to go back to basics. As it is with any skill in life, the fundamentals are where you start and the most important thing to go back to. Successful athletes and musicians the world over are often seen practicing the same the same skills they learned as beginners right before a big game or concert and so we’re taking the advice of Kobe Bryant, Paul McCartney, Yo-Yo Ma,...

Today on the show we’re going to try to be open minded, which is much harder than any of us give it credit for. We human beings tend to think that we see it all, understand it all, and know it all. But the philosopher Socrates said it best, the man who knows most, knows he knows nothing.  We here at Monkey Minds are strong believers in dialectics - or the understanding that there is more than just...

Today on the show we’re going to fidget. If you’ve got a kid in school, you’re probably sick and tired of all the gadgets and gizmos aplenty, not to mention all those whoozits and whatsits galore. Even if you don’t have kids, chances are you’ve been exposed to the endless stream of things to play with, flick, spin, click, and clack, but do any of them actually do anything to help our focus and att...

Today on the show we consider resilience. The world is a hard place these days…but really it’s been that way for a while…maybe forever. So how do people now or people who came before us deal with hardship? From what we can tell, the answer is pretty straight forward. Resilience. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy to do.    In today’s episode we explore what resilience is, how to figure out if you’ve...

Today on the show we consider communication. In our increasingly polarized world, nothing can seem more difficult than to communicate with another human being. When faced with a difficult topic, many of us would rather shrink away from the opportunity than to risk conflict, but we’re going to make the argument that if you know how to communicate skillfully, there’s nothing that’s off the table.   ...

Today on the show we consider persistence and bring in some special expert guest stars to help us explore it in more detail. Persistence is commonly considered as continuing firmly or obstinately on a course of action in spite of difficulty or opposition. But Mirriam Webster isn’t the only one with an opinion.    In today’s episode we ask our expert panelists about their definition of persistence,...

  Today on the show we consider impermanence. The philosopher Heraclitus famously said “no one steps in the same river twice”, arguing that the universe is in a constant state of fluctuation and that nothing stays the same, putting extra emphasis on staying in the present moment, which we believe in immensely.    In today’s episode we talk through what Heraclitus meant, how he influenced others li...