“The price of admission buys you freedom from being bound to the rock of denial.” That’s what The Grasshopper woke me up with early this morning.

The great Smokey Robinson wrote these lyrics: “Mistakes, I know I made a few but I’m only human, you’ve made mistakes too.”

We all make mistakes and we too often compound them by not admitting them.

Denial is a boulder around our necks that keeps us bent over unable to see the way to be free.

Freedom comes with admission. It helps clear the air so we can breathe easy again and see a way forward.

What is it you can’t admit? When you answer that question, you’ll find your personal albatross.

It’s a heavy weight that we carry with us even into our dreams. It’s a life draining force that will fall away if we dig deep and pony up the price of admission.

This is not a recommendation to buy yards of sackcloth and create a whole new wardrobe. It’s only a suggestion to get you curious about the power of admission.

Start small and begin admitting to yourself. Once you have practiced and gained a level of expertise, branch out and admit to others.

It’s a scary process. It feels like you are unraveling at the seams. You are. At least a part of you is – your illusion.

The illusion that you are incapable of making mistakes becomes threadbare and you can see through the material of concealment. There’s nothing to hide anymore.

Unraveling our illusion begins with admitting our mistakes.

Justification is too often denial in disguise. It prolongs how long we stay burdened and bent over.

The price of admission will strip away layers of denial and let us finally stand tall.

Admission is a tall order, one that will rock us to our core, and the effort is well worth it.

One of the best purchases we can make is a permit to admit.

All the best,

John

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Have you ever witnessed someone who types so fast causing them to back up and correct their multiple mistakes with just as much speed? If you put them in a typing contest, where accuracy and speed are conditions of winning, they wouldn’t do any better than the average typist.

Some people blow through life as though speed was the only criterion. I have a talented, Facebook friend who is the poster child for this approach. He would begin enjoying life more instead of fighting with it so often if he would only slow down.

The Grasshopper prompted this post yesterday when he said, “Slow down so you can catch up with yourself.”

It was instantly clear to me.

Many people are running in the opposite direction of themselves. They are running away from their life because they are afraid they won’t find anything there. And they are making lots of mistakes.

The purpose of being alive is to feel alive.

If part of us feels dead, we swiftly head off searching for aliveness to replace it. What we wind up with is one sugar high after another and we come crashing down in the same place we’ve been running from.

Feeling alive is an inward not an outward process.

There is nothing out there that will generate the aliveness we seek.

When you slow down your outward search, you discover that aliveness is where it’s always been – right there within yourself.

It’s imperative that you slow down or you will speed right past it and won’t see what’s in plain sight.

Running away from yourself suggests you have mislabeled who you are and are running as fast as you can from that scary image.

That image is an illusion – one you’ve built over a lifetime.

Who we think we are is a facade; who we really are is the aliveness we seek.

There’s a reason popular expressions stay popular; it’s because they’re accurate – SPEED KILLS!

Slow down your outward search and start reaping the rewards in the field where you stand.

All the best,

John

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Wanting is a sad place to live.

The state of want has a high poverty rate.

There seems to be a difference between wants and desires, at least for me.

My experience is that desires have a better chance of happening. The results of wanting were best summed up by The Grasshopper over the weekend. He said, “Blue: Wanting that which doesn’t want you.”

So I guess wanting is a blue state.

The mindset of wanting is that what you want is always a carrot on a stick away. Wanting and having are at two opposite ends of a continuum; desire seems to close that gap.

Wanting is a stagnant state of mind and desire produces action. Wanting produces more wanting.

I really think there is more to this than parsing words.

Wanting seems to suggest that you’ll never move closer to what you want. Desire has an engine in it.

So how do we turn a want into a desire?

I don’t think you can. I believe you have to abandon one to get to the other.

When you let go of wanting thoughts, you make room for desire to enter.

Desire contains possibility and that alone puts it head and shoulders above wanting.

There is no guarantee that you’ll get what you desire but the odds become more favorable when you quit betting on wanting.

Just try out the two phrases below and see which one feels better.

I want (fill in the blank).

I desire (fill in the blank).

To sum up, I can’t claim what I say to be true
But desires move you towards what’s in view
While wanting contains the glue of “no can do.”

All the best,

John

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What do you aspire to be, do or have?

Where did that aspiration come from?

It came from inspiration. You were inspired to aspire.

Once you had the aspiration, you needed inspiration to fulfill it – thus the circle of creativity.

We mistakenly believe we thought of the aspiration. It’s really the other way around – the thought thought us.

Our aspiration came from a creative place we call inspiration. We didn’t think it up; it came bubbling up and then we had a thought about it.

Once we get the thought about it, we have to come up with a plan to get it. The plan to be successful has to be inspired. That means we have to go back to our creative source.

If we could think our way to aspiration, everyone would have already aspired.

It’s hard to believe that our thinking is not responsible for our creative thoughts, but if you examine it, thinking travels in another circle – a loop to “Knowhere.”

When we think we know, we delay our ability to inspire our aspiration. We think we are going to think our way to a solution. It’s always a detour.

After all the thinking is done, did you ever notice where the decision comes from? It comes from a place other than your thinking.

Think of it this way: A drop of aspiration comes from a giant reservoir known as inspiration. We seal this drop in the confined space of thinking where it swims in circles. It can’t go anywhere.

In order to escape our think tank, we have to stop swimming. That means we need to float for awhile and get calm.

It’s the calming of our thoughts that allows an escape hatch to open up for our aspiration to return to bathe in the vast waters of inspiration, and then return to us with creative options.

The circle of creativity does not contain thinking.

If you are wracking your brain for a way to aspire, take a deep breath, exhale slowly and let your thinking calm down. Inspiration always enters a quiet space.

To allow our aspiration the inspiration it needs, the first step of a successful action plan is to put your thinking in the circular file.

All the best,

John

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I can’t remember a time when a debate deepened a relationship.

The ones I remember had an opportunity for one person to speak and then the other person would get their chance.

If you were an observer of that debate, you may have learned something; as a participant, you were too busy making your point and missed an opportunity to relate to another.

Many people are involved in “relationships” of exchanging sentences. There is no real relating happening – just point – counterpoint.

Have you ever been in a “conversation” with someone who tunes out when the topic material isn’t one they’re interested in? They have no intention of relating to you unless what you’re saying is in tune with what they want to hear.

The telltale sign is that you are in mid sentence about a topic that interests you and they interrupt you and go on to a completely unrelated topic. What they communicate by such behavior is no interest in you or your topic material. They think they are having a conversation.

I wrote a blog post a couple of years ago called “Conversation.” In it The Grasshopper said, “A conversation is more fruitful when it’s more about discovery and less about what you know.”

That’s another way of saying that in order to relate you have to be willing to learn something about another.

In order to learn something, you must pay attention to them, not just wait for them to pause so you can expound on your secrets of the universe.

The mistake we often make is assuming that we know all about another and stop listening to them. You can discover something new and interesting about someone you’ve known your whole life when you take the time to relate, rather than make points as in a debate.

Become an observer of your interactions and begin to notice if you are debating or relating. One will leave you with the feeling of two ships passing in the night; the other will dock you together in the same port.

All the best,

John

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“You cannot not create,” so said The Grasshopper this morning.

Each one of us creates every day. We are creators who can’t help but create.

Many of our creations are slight variations on a theme of what we’ve already created. That’s the result of our creativity flowing into previously formed patterns.

Think for a moment of your patented move. (You know you have one). You re-create it for personal and public consumption on a regular basis, even when it’s no longer working for you. That’s when your creativity gets stuck in gear.

It’s not that you’re not creative; it’s more a case of your creativity being confined.

For our atheist readers, think of creativity as the God you don’t believe in. It’s the part of you that gives you ideas and actions that simply can’t flow from a noisy, confined and patterned conscious mind.

Every time you create something new, you are expressing your divinity. Every time you re-create something, you are relying on your patterns.

Re-creation makes up the bulk of our life. That’s quite useful. That means we don’t have to figure out a door knob every time we approach a door. We’ve automated that skill.

It’s when the automation isn’t working that we need to get curious about creativity.

Here’s a prescription for limiting our creativity: Think that our personal database is the only one available to us. That’s like believing that Google is the only search engine.

Did you ever find something online that Google couldn’t produce? That’s not a knock on Google; it does the bulk of our searching. It becomes problematic when we continually use it to search for the thing it can’t find.

That’s when it’s time to get curious about creativity.

Getting access to the creative database begins by knowing it’s always available. And it becomes more available when we quiet the debate that it’s unavailable to us.

Please don’t mistake this for positive thinking. You can affirm “I’m creative” until the cows come home and still have an empty barn. This is more of a positive action. When we take action and find a way to quiet our “know-it-all” mind, we are granted access to the creative database.

Caution: There is a difference between numbing and quieting our mind. Numbing won’t allow us to perceive our surroundings, while quieting gives us a panoramic view.

Bottom line: A quiet mind is the prescription for creativity confined.

All the best,

John

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A few years ago my sister bought me something at my request. She bought me a Navy SEALs t-shirt.

My sister is the proud mother of four children, two of whom are Navy SEALs and she had access to the shop on base to buy me the shirt. The motto on the shirt reads: “The Only Easy Day Was Yesterday.”

This phrase serves as a reminder to me that what you did yesterday may very well be exceptional, but life is all about this moment.

Yesterday may be rewarding to reminisce about and tomorrow may be worth dreaming about, but the only moment action takes place is in the moment you’re in.

Navy SEALS on a mission can’t get caught up in moments that don’t exist now and neither can we. It will rob us of our life.

Our lives are made up of the moments we are in. If we spend too much time in a moment that either no longer exists or doesn’t exist yet, we are missing our life.

Today, get curious about how many of your moments are about harkening back to, or waiting for another moment to arrive.

If you do this personal time management study, you’re likely to discover that you are living much of your life in your head rather than in the moment that’s here.

It’s a focusing exercise that we can all benefit from. The result of doing this assessment takes us to the same place each time – this moment.

Getting out of our head and inhabiting our body also brings us back to the only time there is – Right Now!

Our bodies live in this moment, even though our heads may be in the clouds. Bringing your attention back to your body will bring you back to this moment.

You can discover the secret of a Navy SEAL on a mission; just immerse yourself in the moment and feel the aliveness of being focused on the only time that matters – Right Now!

All the best,

John

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A simple point of logic: A bridge between a lie and the truth is built with facts.

Facts are realities that are made of nondestructive material, yet we often won’t walk in their direction when someone is attempting to build a bridge between our illusion and the firm footing of reality.

We won’t cross that bridge because we fear what’s on the other side. It’s a bridge too far.

The worst person to get into an argument with is a true believer. These are people who ignore facts. When you present them with irrefutable proof, they ignore what you just showed them and move the goal post. In other words, each time you meet their burden of proof, they expand the criteria they need to be convinced. If you play their game, you are building a bridge to nowhere.

There is nothing scarier than walking away from your illusion. It’s a bubble bursting moment. Many of us won’t even take the first step and walk towards the edge. We deem our illusions as safe havens.

Reminds me of a story . . .

I remember being about 5 years old and playing hide-and-go-seek with a group of friends. My belief was that if I closed my eyes, they wouldn’t be able to see me. When they announced that they had found me, I refused to believe them and argued that if my eyes were closed, I couldn’t be seen.

Because I refuse to see doesn’t mean that others are blind.

Think of our safe haven in these terms: With the explosion of the internet, blogs and 24 hour cable news, there is lots of information available to us. If we pay attention only to our handful of computer bookmarks and only watch the Food Channel, we will starve ourselves of reality.

The reality we are truly afraid of is that the truth we’ve been defending is a lie.

Our cocoon keeps us sheltered from reality and the only way out is to bridge the gap towards the edge where more vistas can be seen.

Open your truth up to inspection and quit defending it. Truth doesn’t need a defense.

Once you quit using your energy to stay in the dark, you let in enough light to see the bridge to reality.

It’s not necessary to leap towards reality; that may be too jarring. One step at a time is all that’s necessary to move away from a confining illusion.

I’m not claiming that what’s been presented here is the full version of this reality strategy; just consider it the abridged edition.

All the best,

John

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We’ve heard enthusiastic people say that “Anything is possible,” and perhaps we scoffed. That’s because we deemed the probability of that possibility to be south of remote.

Speaking of remote, back in the 1930s there was a comic strip detective named, Dick Tracy who had a two-way radio wristwatch he used to contact police headquarters. What kid wouldn’t want one of those?

Toy companies made plastic replicas of that watch and sold them by the truckload to Dick Tracy dreamers.

The probability of a working model of that watch was next to impossible. I’m sure you’ve noticed that today’s technology makes that improbability obsolete.

What’s possible is based on what’s probable, and if our probability quotient is too low, odds are we won’t arrive at what’s possible.

Reminds me of a story . . .

I remember talking to a dearly departed friend back in the early 90s and we were lamenting about being stuck. It was your standard, run-of-the-mill, “piss and moan” conversation until I said, “You know what our problem is, Dick? We’ve stopped dreaming.”

What I discovered that day is that our notion of what’s probable has to increase before we can even think about doing the impossible.

Thomas Edison was a dreamer. You’re idiot brother-in-law is a dreamer. What’s the difference?

Your brother-in-law just piles one dream upon another and never takes action.

Dreaming is a way around the logic of statistics. A cynical logician may state, “If people waited until they had enough money to get married, there would be less divorce.” The lyrics from an old song aptly point out that dreamers forge ahead.

“Fools fall in love just like schoolgirls, blinded by rose colored dreams. They build their castles on wishes, with only rainbows for beams.”

Upon inspection, it seems the secret formula for achieving the impossible has little to do with statistics and more to do with dreaming past logic.

Increase your possibility quotient by taking some time to dream. Make “What if?” your daily mantra and “What step in that direction can I take now?” your daily action plan.

Finally, let me leave you with a dose of logic: It’s highly improbable that you’ll attain what’s possible if your dream machine has left the scene.

All the best,

John

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When you have the option of choosing, which of these do you choose: Good, Better or Best?

We all want the best, but the conundrum is: Sometimes better is better.

And if we are ever deemed the best, it’s quite an achievement worth taking a bow for, but don’t get frozen in that position or you will miss seeing what’s really going on.

Even though “Best” is a superlative term, it’s really comparative when we examine it in the light of day, because there is always somebody better, and that someone is often us.

It reminds me of a saying I use quite often: “You always do your best in accordance with your present level of awareness.”

For example, if you berated someone and made them feel insignificant, that was the best you could have done from the mindset you had at that moment. This knowledge won’t absolve you of the consequences for your actions, but, if applied, it will shine a light on a pathway to better your best.

How we improve is by becoming aware that our best can be better.

When we fine tune our awareness, the quality of our best automatically gets better.

This simply means to become aware of your reactions. Notice that some stimulus gets the same reaction every time. That reaction becomes the best we can do until we notice there are some better choices.

How we find better choices is by interrupting our best reaction.

When you “throw in the clutch” you can shift into a different gear, one that’s better suited for the situation at hand. But to shift into a new gear, you have to, first, be aware that the gear you’re in isn’t working.

Take a moment and mentally review your standard reactions and see how they are working for you. They are on automatic pilot and just kick into gear when presented with a certain stimulus. You won’t be able to control all the stimuli you encounter in life, but you sure have a choice when it comes to your reactions.

My mother used to say, “It only costs 10 cents more to go first class.” If you want to make better choices, there is a small price to pay – become aware that your best isn’t good enough.

All the best,

John

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