Page 25 - Jeff the Monkey

Our story starts in an imaginary grove of banana trees where life is quite easy. This is analogous to preschool years and sometimes beyond, when demands and expectations are few. As adults, we frequently enable this condition to continue by removing life difficulties from the path of our children and minimizing the negative consequences of their failure to deal effectively with
a life difficulty.
The irrational self-message that can develop because of this can be something like, “Life should be easy or it is not fair.” Another irrational belief that can be developed in this environment is “Anyone who makes me uncomfortable or demands that I do something I don’t want to do is just being mean and should
be ignored.”
In our story, you see that as time goes by, the adult monkeys try to get all of the young monkeys to learn to climb but Jeff refuses because he has already developed irrational self-messages. Unfortunately for Jeff, he is able to survive by the luck of a few bananas, which fall from the trees.
Happenstance allows for the development of an additional irrational self-message; “Things will work out to my benefit without any effort on my part.” Thus allowing him to ignore the suggestions of others that he should learn to climb.
When the availability of the bananas lessens, he resorts to annoying and bullying others to get his way. Since others do not address these behaviors, he develops the additional irrational self-message, “Others should do what I want regardless of what they want.”
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