One of the great things about learning is that you get to experience all different sorts of teachers. Each one has a style unique to them.

I have had the good fortune of being exposed to a few teachers that weren’t in the mainstream. They had messages to convey that weren’t conventional, yet extremely powerful.

But even among these gifted teachers, there was a distinction worth noting. You learned from them or you learned by being in their presence. Let me explain.

Most teachers fall into the category of people you learn things from. They have a style, technique or formula to impart. This is a valuable method. We follow their instructions and learn to do what they’re teaching.

Then there is the rare teacher that has nothing to teach other than to get you to learn.

The word “Educate” comes from the Latin word, “Educare” which literally means to bring out. It’s the rare teacher that will get you to a place where you can tap in to your resources and bring out something you didn’t know you had.

They perform this magic by being present. They set aside any agenda they may have about you and are just there with you. I like to call it teaching without judging.

These special people know you have something worthwhile to learn and they’re smart enough to know they can’t teach it to you. Their main gift is leading you to a place where you can learn it yourself.

If you’ve ever read a passage from a book that just stopped your stream of thinking for a moment and gave you a sense of knowing, you have experienced this type of learning.

Any teaching that stops your thinking is a pathway to learning. Think back on something you saw that was so beautiful that it took your breath away. That moment of breathlessness was a moment of learning.

All teachers aren’t people. We can learn from anything – a flower, a mountain, a landscape, an animal or an inanimate object. We just have to be present with it and we will learn.

Presence leads to learning. The teacher who is present learns as much as the student he/she’s leading. The funny thing is neither one of them knows where specifically they are going or what they will learn. They only know they will discover something new and worthwhile by being present.

Presence takes practice. It begins by noticing the stream of thought going on in your head while attempting to teach or learn. Each time we take the time to notice our stream of thought, we slow it down, until it eventually becomes a trickle. That’s when we become present – when there isn’t an agenda or syllabus in the way. That’s when we learn and that’s when we lead others to a place of learning.

If there is one thing worth learning, it’s learning to be present.

All the best,

John

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I am being drawn to draw a distinction between “Complete” and “Completed.”

The first distinction is that we are all complete. That means we have all we need to be whole right now.

The second distinction is that we have uncompleted missions that help us discover that we are already complete.

It’s one thing to say we’re complete; it’s another thing to know it without reservation.

Knowing we are complete takes a bit of completeness boot camp.

There are certain things that need to be completed before we know we are complete.

Here is a partial list:

1. Know you are not your thoughts.
2. Know you are deeper than anything you claim to be.
3. Stop arguing for your limitations.

The biggest obstacle to uncovering our completeness is divorcing ourselves from the thoughts in our head. That doesn’t mean eradicating and not visiting with those thoughts; it just means to live in separate houses now, just like you did before you were married.

At one time, we had no thoughts in our head, yet we were perfectly functioning human beings, albeit a bit smaller and smellier. Then we collected a bunch of thoughts and concepts that started to shape who we have come to believe we are. You are no more your thoughts than you were before you had them. Who were you before you had thoughts? You were complete.

Thinking is a wonderful thing; we just aren’t the things we think about. We are separate and apart from those thoughts.

Finding the depth beneath your thoughts will have you lay claim to a new identity – one that doesn’t have parameters shaped by thoughts. You can think from now until the time that you can no longer think and never figure out who you are. That task takes an absence of thinking. You can’t think your way to being complete.

We need a time out from our thinking in order to discover our depth, our completeness. To reshape a phrase from the orange growers: “A day without mind calming is a day without sunshine.” Find a way to calm your mind and make it a daily ritual. It helps you complete your path to completeness.

Finally, stop telling people who you aren’t. That’s just another way of attempting to be your thoughts. Even when you define yourself as not being something, you limit yourself by being that label. Thoughts about who you aren’t, are thought about limitation, which just keep you in the thinking mode and incomplete.

Above is a list of things to complete, and when you do, you’ll have three less things to think about and know you are complete.

All the best,

John

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Walking around with an open wound invites infection. Ask any physician.

Emotional wounds are the same. Close them or they will infect your life as long as you draw breath.

Some people walk around with open wounds for years, decades and even for a lifetime. They never consider stitches.

It got me to wondering.

What causes a person to keep that wound open?

I’m sure there are many answers but here is one that pops for me: They want their hurt acknowledged.

They don’t necessarily want you to fix it, but they want you to acknowledge the depth of their wound and how badly it hurts.

Until they get acknowledgement regarding their pain, their life is an open sore and it infects everything they do.

In the past, I would judge people harshly who constantly walked around with open wounds. It seemed like a lot of drama to me. I didn’t get the acknowledgement piece until I became wounded.

I couldn’t close the wound. Everyone was helpful with advice on how to close the wound, but none offered acknowledgement of how badly I was hurting.

Then I discovered the salve didn’t have to come from others to begin the healing process. Acknowledgement had to come from me.

It’s one thing to know you’re angry, frustrated, dissatisfied or unhappy; it’s an entirely different process to acknowledge hurt. You can be all of the aforementioned things in your head; you can only acknowledge hurt in your body.

Feeling your hurt, without discussing it in your head, is the overlooked way to suture an open wound.

You can talk about your hurt forever without ever addressing it.

If you’re wounded and want to heal, you have to be willing to feel.

That doesn’t mean to talk to yourself or others ad nauseam about your feelings; it means to engage your feelings silently. Feel them in your body.

I’ve written on this topic many times and each time I do, I’m reminded of the healing power of feel.

It’s not easy to do, but highly effective. It’s the storm before the calm.

Acknowledgement can begin at any time and now is always the best time to close the wound.

All the best,

John

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Here are just a few notable quotes on what we say and what we do:

French writer Michel de Montaigne: “Saying is one thing and doing is another.”

Saint Francis of Assisi: “Preach the gospel at all times; use words if necessary.”

Confucius: “I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson: “Who you are speaks so loudly I can’t hear what you are saying.”

Here’s a little poetic question from The Grasshopper: “How often do we attempt to get away with what we say and remain in glue about what we do?”

There is enough food for thought here to chew on for the entire weekend.

So let’s not talk about a picnic. Let’s have one.

All the best,

John

P.S. I would like to pay tribute, on Father’s Day Weekend, to my departed father who was a world-class doer of stated deeds.

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Here’s a sobering reality The Grasshopper presented yesterday: “Many of our beliefs are misinformation etched in stone.”

It’s somewhat challenging to one’s ego that much of what we believe cannot be substantiated and/or is downright inaccurate.

Do you have a good luck charm or a lucky ritual? If you ever investigated the amount of good luck they have brought you, you’d trade them in for new models – ones that work equally inefficiently.

You would truly be amazed at the number of times St. Christopher has fallen asleep during a traffic accident, or how un-holey your lucky golf socks are.

Most of the misinformation that forms our beliefs got in there by accident. That means they were someone else’s beliefs handed down from generation to generation to us without any vetting being done.

They are the commandments we live our life by.

So how does misinformation etched in stone go away?

Erosion is one method, but that can take more lifetimes than a Hindu has.

Again, it’s recognition to the rescue. Recognition of misinformation is like sandblasting your stone tablet of beliefs, giving you a clean slate.

Here’s an interesting phenomenon associated with beliefs that are jam packed with misinformation: Sometimes they give us hope. Forget for a moment that it’s false hope. This hope got us over humps that we couldn’t have scaled without it. Hope can get us to a point where our emotions are less unpacked allowing us to take on the job of recognizing what doesn’t work.

Some people aren’t ready for the reality of recognition yet. It’s too scary for them. They need to hope a little more that what they believe in will come true. Once in a blue moon they get lucky; most often they suffer.

“The unexamined life is not worth living” is a piece of wisdom left to us by Socrates. He could have just as easily substituted the word “Belief” for “Life” and the message would be just as powerful.

Examination leads to recognition of misinformation, and it is our saving grace.

If your hope is working overtime and not getting compensated, it may be time to change jobs. I hear recognition is hiring.

All the best,

John

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It may sound odd to you, but the opposite of losing for me is not winning.

It used to be until I examined it more closely.

Winning and losing are culturally joined at the hip, which means they seem as though are the only two options on the continuum. They’re not.

In the past, winning for me was about being right, and as The Grasshopper reminded us many moons ago, continually staking your claim to being right leaves you left out.

The opposite of losing for me is getting through. That’s my win.

Getting through is not getting people to see it my way. That would be too much like being right.

Getting through is getting them to see that their way isn’t working. Getting through to yourself also follows the same guideline.

It’s amazing to me the number of times we retreat back to a position that doesn’t work. We have a history of our way not working, yet we cling to that rock as though it’s a life preserver.

There is something eerily comfortable about that which doesn’t work. That’s why getting through is so hard.

My livelihood depends on me being able to get through. It’s what I make an effort to do. I attempt to lead people to paths away from their grooved path, often called a rut. I don’t offer step-by-step instructions because that suggests there is a right direction to go. What I find is this: Once people finally discover their ingrained ways won’t work, they find their own path.

There are some people you and I will never get through to. Again, it’s not selling them on our position, but rather having them notice that their position is on shaky ground.

That ground shake makes them feel alive. It’s why they are unsettled. It’s as though they have to stick themselves with pins to prove they exist. Their main problem is that the pain has become all too familiar, so getting through it is highly unlikely.

They cannot shed being right, even though right feels so wrong. Their win is a loss.

If winning is the only goal, losing will be your destiny.

One thing I know to be true, we all lose when we can’t get through.

All the best,

John

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“Some deals are not offered to some customers,” so said The Grasshopper this morning.

It reminded me of a story . . .

Yesterday I was in Borders Books waiting in line at the information desk to see where they moved the Photography section. This annoying woman came to the front of the line and started asking the man at the desk, who was assisting another customer, if she could get an additional discount on an already, on sale item because the cardboard box it came in was ripped in places. The merchandise inside was fine but the box, which likely would be discarded upon opening, was ripped.

The man told her the merchandise was fine and there was no additional discount. It was a clearance item. This did not stop her from butting up in line, but also continuing with her pitch. She said it looked awful and there should be an additional discount. The man said he wasn’t authorized to lower the price. That would have been it for most folks, but not this person. She continued, “You couldn’t knock off an additional 10%?” The clerk then said, “O.K., I can take off another 10%, but only 10.”

How many morals can you come up with for this story? The squeaky wheel gets the grease? Annoying customers will not be denied? Pushy people will always be pushy?

I had a different take away. Some people won’t get offers that others receive because they don’t ask.

You may argue as I did that there is a better way of asking, but you can’t argue with the results. She was going home with her Burt’s Bees Balm, saving an additional 10%.

So why don’t we ask?

We’re afraid about how we’ll be perceived and/or assume that the answer will be “No.”

Years ago, I learned something from Jerry Stocking that has stuck with me since. He said, “You can ask anything of anyone if you’re not invested in what their answer has to be.”

It’s the investment in the answer that keeps us from asking. We would be better served being invested in the question.

I’ve written before that I’m not a big proponent of hinting. It certainly has its place, but its batting average is in the basement when compared to asking. Asking has deeper applications than getting discounts at Borders. It applies to every area of our lives.

Here’s a recommendation for today and beyond: Ask and ask often. It will get you access to offers others will never receive.

All the best,

John

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These two words have been occupying space in my head for some time now and seem to be begging for some sort of explanation. I have no idea where this will go, so let me explore them.

There seems to be a correlation between predictable and predictability. One seems more fact based and the other more like a weatherman – hit and miss.

The correlation goes like this: Seasons are predictable but the predictability of early June being this hot on the east coast isn’t.

But it gets more complicated when you’re not talking about the weather.

For example: Human nature is predictable; but the predictability of a specific storm isn’t.

I’m always sadly amused when someone tries to explain why someone did something awful, like a mass shooting. When we see the back story on the individual, most of us could have predicted they were an accident waiting to happen, but the predictability of when they would self destruct is a guessing game, like the weather.

You may have a better guessing mechanism than others when it comes to predicting future events that are unpredictable, but even you get the unexpected wind blowing in your face.

So what’s the best use of predictable and predictability?

When you have the recognition that something is about to happen but you don’t know when, that’s the time to plan for contingencies.

Life insurance is one of those plans. You know you’re going to go, but not when.

Planning for contingencies will never happen when we buy into the illusion that predictable events will only happen to other people. It’s a game of denial we all play to some degree. When you see dark clouds on the horizon, that’s time to seek shelter, not bet against the odds.

When we don’t consider contingencies, we are at the mercy of the elements.

This applies to all areas of our lives – family, business, careers, relationships, etc.

The great musical poet, Bob Dylan wrote these words: “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.”

We are all pretty adept at predicting the predictable, but we come up short preparing contingencies.

The old advice is pretty apt here: If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, you would be well served to have a plan to duck, especially if these wild ducks look like they are about to fly overhead and make a deposit on you.

When you hope against hope, you hang yourself with your own rope.

If contingency is currently not in your dictionary, may I highly recommend that you buy an up-to-date volume. That way, you become like a savvy sailor and can move out of harm’s way no matter which way the wind blows.

All the best,

John

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There is a lot of equivalence in the news and in the world; it acts as a distraction and delays a solution.

Our equivalence comes out when we are defending something that’s not defensible.

Take the current news story of congressman, Anthony Weiner. Weiner has engaged in some questionable behavior. The news media initially castigated him for lying to them about it, and now some are defending him with equivalence.

They are asking, “If congressmen of the other party have done such deeds and were not asked to resign, why is Anthony Weiner being asked to resign?”

The argument has shifted to resignation via equivalence. The main issue is no longer the issue – questionable behavior.

My guy with questionable behavior should be able to stay in office because your guy with questionable behavior was able to. Is anyone missing the fact that they’re defending the behavior in the name of fairness?

The argument is basically this: My guy is no worse than you guy, therefore he should be allowed to remain in office. The issue of whether they’re fit for office gets buried in the equivalence argument.

Equivalence just changes the argument from what the issue is to another issue. It’s fun theatre, but it’s a diversion and it keeps the main issue buried under a mountain of equivalence.

I don’t care about congressman Weiner’s situation, other than it points up how we get caught up in equivalence and obscure the foundational issue.

Have you ever been involved in an argument and got so engrossed with winning that you forgot what you were arguing about? You can bet that equivalence was there cheering you on to escalate it to another level.

If you are looking for a solution, equivalence will not get you there. It will only extend the argument.

You are being sidetracked by equivalence when you buy into the myth that there is an argument that will end the argument. There isn’t.

Take a breath today and find out if equivalence is alive and well in your life. If so, let it act as a reminder that you are moving away from a solution each time you use it.

To find a solution we must first call for the resignation of equivalence.

All the best,

John

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The Grasshopper made me scratch my head this morning when he left this on my doorstep: “You’re accountable even though you’re not responsible.”

It didn’t make immediate sense, but after a morning cup of tea, it became apparent to me.

Parents are accountable for the sins of their children. Mom or Dad didn’t throw the rock through the neighbor’s window but they’re going to have to go into their bank account to pay for it. They’re being held accountable for something for which they weren’t responsible.

That’s an easy one to understand.

Where it gets a bit more dicey is when you’re held accountable for other things you’re not responsible for, and that you’re totally unaware of.

Patterns come to mind. How many of our patterns are we unaware of, not responsible for, yet pay the price for every day?

The answer is: Too many to count.

We all have a certain way of behaving that we had nothing to do with acquiring. Furthermore, we are unaware that we are running that behavior, and are being held accountable for that which we are not responsible.

Has anyone ever nastily said to you, “You’re just like your mother, father, older sister or brother?

That type accusation is rarely met with a question like: “In what way?” It’s usually met with resistance of some sort.

Chances are a portion of their observation was accurate but in the heat of the moment you didn’t take time to consider it.

We inherit mannerisms and patterns of behavior from those who came before us even though we haven’t read their will. These are little routines that we run that we are totally oblivious to; much like that most people don’t recognize they speak in the accent they grew up around.

Reminds me of a quick story . . .

We were doing a seminar in Macon, GA a few years back and were checking out the meeting room early in the day to make sure all was set up properly for that evening. The hotel manager said he would meet us at 1 PM and we would go over the details. He was an Indian-American who was born and raised in Bombay which is now Mumbai. He said in his distinct Indian accent, “I would do it now but I’m fixin’ to go to lunch.”

He had nothing to do with acquiring an Indian accent but he was accountable for making us laugh when he cross-pollinated cultures.

We are paying for things we don’t know we bought.

Here is something most people won’t do. They go on a series of job interviews with the same employer and then find out that they didn’t get the job. Most will be disappointed and take it in stride, a few will call up and complain that they should have been hired, but few to none will inquire about what they were missing not to be the final selection.

If you’re being held accountable, it’s in your best interest to know what you are paying for.

Reminds me of another story . . .

Years ago, I was invited in for an interview for the position of program director for a radio station. I was meeting with the person who would make the decision and he told me I was the 32^nd person he had interviewed for the job. I asked him where I stacked up. He said, “Number 2.” I then asked, “What do I have to do to be number 1?” He laid out two things that I would have to do in order to move up to the number 1 position. As it turned out, I was unwilling to do one of the things.

I could have guessed forever why I didn’t get the job, but I took the time to inquire, in advance, about my potential shortcomings. I knew what I was paying for.

We’ll never figure out all our patterns but it’s helpful to discover the ones that are getting in our way. One way to find them is to look at an area of your life where you consistently don’t get the results you’re going after. The house money is betting there is a pattern of behavior there of which you are unaware.

You absorbed some behavior along the way that is thwarting your efforts at every turn. Even though you weren’t responsible for being a sponge, you’re the one who’s getting squeezed to pay the price.

Once you entertain that there’s a pattern of behavior that’s sitting beneath the surface causing you harm, then it becomes easier to find it. Too often we just won’t entertain the idea that it’s something we’re doing. And like any other shortcoming, it’s easier to spot in someone else.

It’s the pursuit of the unknown pattern that starts the discovery ball rolling. Just get curious about what you may be doing to hold yourself back. If you’re really brave, ask someone close to you. They’ll know.

You may have gotten this way by accident, but your feet will be held to the fire until you inquire.

If you’re paying the piper, it’s helpful to find out what you’re paying for.

All the best,

John

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