I Manifested A Purple Gorilla

Written By Bart Berkey | Founder of Most People Don't

I HAD BEEN LOOKING FOR A PURPLE GORILLA FOR ALMOST A YEAR

I had been looking for a purple gorilla for almost a year when my wife called me in the middle of a workday with an idea she could not wait to share.

The search had started a year before that, on an ordinary evening when the two of us were talking about positive thinking and wondering out loud whether there was anything real to the idea of manifestation, so we decided to test it for ourselves.

Most people who try manifesting picture a bigger house or a brand new car or a boat tied up at a dock, which always struck me as a little too easy to explain away, because those things are everywhere and you are bound to see one eventually. I wanted to picture something I had never seen in my entire life, so that if it ever showed up, I would know it.

I CHOSE A PURPLE GORILLA

For the next year I looked for it everywhere we went, in children's toy stores and museum gift shops and at the zoo, scanning shelves and bins and gift racks for any sign of one, and I never found a single one.

Then, my wife called, but a purple gorilla was the last thing on my mind.

She had an idea for a children's book that would carry the same messages we share from stage about doing what Most People Don't, and she already had a title, which was "Wiggle More, Stomp Less," and that will be book two in the series. The idea was that a child in the middle of a tantrum, or a grown-up in the middle of a bad day, would find it a lot harder to stay angry while shaking and dancing and wiggling than while stomping around the house.

I loved it right away, and before she had even finished explaining it, I had typed the title into a search bar to make sure nobody had already written that book.

I hit Enter.

Nobody had written that book, but that was not the first thing I noticed on my screen, because sitting right there, fed to me by the internet for reasons I will never fully understand, was a child's rubber toy of a purple gorilla.

You can call that manifestation, or coincidence, or an algorithm that had been listening a little too closely, and I have heard every one of those explanations by now. To me it was a sign that it was time to start writing children's books, and to help raise a few more little leaders in this world.

A PURPLE GORILLA IN A TROOP OF GRAY

That gorilla became Plum, the main character of our new children's book series, Most Gorillas Don't (But You're Not Most Gorillas). The name came naturally from the color, and it also pays tribute to Plum, the town outside Pittsburgh where I grew up.

Plum is a purple gorilla living in a troop of gray ones, which makes him easy to spot and impossible to hide, and for most of the story he is certain that being different is the thing that is wrong with him. He is also perceptive and empathetic, and he notices what the others miss, which turns out to be the very part of him most worth keeping.

So Plum does what most of us do when life gets hard, which is to run from his problems and go looking for happiness somewhere else.

THE NEXT MOUNTAIN

Along the way he meets Penny the Parrot, who squawks a line that every adult will recognize: "Happiness is over the next mountain, it always is."

So Plum climbs the next mountain and happiness is not there, and Penny points to the one after that, and then the one after that, while his problems follow him up every single slope, because problems, it turns out, are excellent runners.

That parrot lives in a lot of grown-up heads. The next mountain is the promotion, the bigger title, the new car, the house with one more bedroom, or the number in the bank account that will finally make it feel like enough, and every one of them comes with a parrot promising that happiness is waiting just on the other side. We climb and we arrive, and the view lasts just long enough for the parrot to find a new peak.

GRANDMA GRAY

What finally stops Plum is Grandma Gray, the oldest and wisest gorilla in the troop, whom we modeled on my 91-year-old mother. She teaches him what I have learned from my own mother, which is that happiness is not over any mountain at all, because it has been right where his feet are the entire time.

Plum learns that he cannot outrun his problems and he cannot chase his happiness, and that the two of them together are what make up a real life, the same way rain and sunshine have to show up together to make a rainbow. The rain is not a sign that something has gone wrong, and the sunshine is not somewhere you have to travel to find, because both of them are already falling on the spot where you are standing.

THE GORILLA WAS NEVER IN THE TOY STORE

The part I keep coming back to is where I finally found him.

For a full year I went looking for that purple gorilla over the next mountain, in the next toy store and the next gift shop and the next zoo, and he was never there. He showed up on an ordinary workday at my own desk, in a moment when I was not chasing anything at all and was simply paying attention to my wife and the idea she was so excited to share.

I did not set out to live the lesson of the book before we had written it, but that is exactly what happened. Terri's Wiggle More, Stomp Less became book two in the series, and the first book became Be Where Your Feet Are, which, given the way Plum found us, feels exactly right.

Tucked inside the story are four simple practices a child can use for any big feeling, which are to see what matters, thank what is good, do something to help solve the problem, and let go of the rest, and they work just as well in a conference room as they do at bedtime.

By the last page, Plum learns the thing we most want every child to believe, and honestly most adults too, which is that the part of you that feels different is not the part to hide, because it is the part that helps the world find you. And that happiness is exactly wherever he places his feet and his seat.

Three Things to Try This Week:

1. Name your next mountain. Write down the one thing you have been telling yourself will finally make you happy once you reach it, whether that is a title or a number or a house, and then write down one thing that is already true today that the version of you from five years ago would have given almost anything to have, because that second list is the one the parrot never mentions.
2. Stop outrunning one problem. Pick a single problem you have been carrying up every mountain with you and use Plum's practice on it today, which means doing one thing that helps solve it and then letting go of the part that was never yours to fix.
3. Look down at your feet. Before you walk into your next meeting, or through the front door of your own house tonight, stop for one breath, look down at your feet, and name one person in that room who deserves your full attention, because that is usually where the purple gorilla shows up.

Most of us spend years looking for the purple gorilla over the next mountain, when it has a way of showing up right where we are standing, in the moments we are paying attention.

Somewhere this week, a parrot is going to tell you that happiness is over the next mountain.

What would you notice if you stayed right where your feet are instead?

Most People Don't... But YOU Do!

Bart