Recently I had a client who had a rather unusual BaZi – unusual in that it was complex and at the same time, the self element was extremely weak. The client was at something of a crossroads in life and was facing some important decisions about work-life balance and also, finding the right job after many years working with a great company with excellent corporate culture. In short, he needed to find his next springboard and it was proving difficult in order to reconcile his personal needs and expectations with what the BaZi was saying.

Typically we approach a BaZi consultation by thinking about what the client needs in order to get what they want. So the focus always is what elements they need, what elements are helpful, what is the key to achieving goal x or goal y.

Now sometimes you get a very easy one-sided chart so it’s a slam dunk answer. For example, element X is unfavourable, and that is exactly what they are trying to achieve. Or element Y is favourable and they are after that particular objective/goal. The consultant’s job is made manifestly easier by a yay or nay approach. The tricky situation is when the chart is both complex and loaded, meaning, the person has a highly sophisticated thought process (remember, more Stars = more complexity and sophistication of personality, esp if it is a preponderance of thoughtful/thinking driven stars) but yet one element is missing or extremely weak, making the chart also one sided.

After going around in my head a few times on the solution, I decided to use an opposite solution. I decided to approach the issue from a different tact and to ask myself: what is it that this person should IGNORE? What are the elements that are NOT HELPFUL? And then instead of couching the advice in terms of ‘Do This’ or ‘Do That’, I couched the advise in terms of what I call the Surrender Monkey.

When an element dominates/is very strong and yet there is an element that is really needed but difficult to obtain by proxy or is simply not present, these elements will dominate for attention. The needed element and the unneeded element compete for attention. In such an instance, you have to simply focus the person on what element is the USEFUL GOD, hammer that endlessly, and get the person away from the irrelevant elements, namely the overly strong and the needed but not present: the surrender monkeys.

So for this client, I identified the element he didn’t need, which was Wealth (he had enough of that but it weighed on his mind as a concern, as it would with any pragmatic individual) and told him to make money the last consideration in his life, or on any matter related to his work. Of course, this is not akin to say, work for free. But what it means is that set remuneration as a low priority criteria. A Surrender Monkey.

He was also concerned about working with the right people – understandably, it is integral to be able to get along with the people that you are going to be staring at for five days of the week. But, as this chart has a weak Day Master with no Rob Wealth, there was never going to ever be a right or wrong or ideal answer in this department.  So, colleagues whilst important, needed to be something that didn’t matter as much in the grand scheme of things, since there is no Rob Wealth Star, indicating no real affinity to colleagues and co-workers anyway. So another Surrender Monkey.

The idea behind thinking in terms of the Surrender Monkey in your chart is to basically remind yourself to avoid chasing something which you either can’t use (but need, but can’t use because it just isn’t there) or to chase after something which is so dominant in your chart that you don’t even need to work at it to get it because it will always be there in your life.

Find the Surrender Monkeys. And then throw bananas at them.