I was in a public place when the Tiger Woods address came on TV on Friday. I had missed it but the announcers were doing a wrap-up of the event. Then I heard the words that captured my attention. The TV announcer said, “Tiger should have apologized to us long before this.”

I looked at the woman behind the counter and asked her if Tiger Woods owed her an apology. She said, “Honey, I’m 67 years old and they were doin’ that kind of stuff long before I was thought of and will be doin’ it long after I’m gone. Ain’t nobody’s business.”

Amen!

The only apologies that I believe are necessary are to his wife, his family, his business associates and to me. The rest is PR.

I’ve watched Tiger play golf and I’ve seen many of his press conferences since he came on the pro tour in 1996, and there was a marked difference when I saw the replay of this address. His confident, assured demeanor was absent and he appeared sincere in his remarks. I felt for him.

I was interested in what he had to say but as hard as I listened, I didn’t hear his apology to me.

I thought for sure he would have included me but he left me disappointed.

I envy the other people who received his heartfelt sorrow and can only hope that my apology is forthcoming.

You hate to tell people what to put in their apology because when they say what you just spoon fed them it doesn’t ring true. But in Tiger’s case I’m going to make an exception. Here’s the apology I want:

“John, I apologize for taking excitement away from your Sundays when you normally follow me on the back nine and I will try and make it up to you when I come back after I put my life back in order.”

That’s the apology I want. Anything else, “Ain’t nobody’s business.”

All the best,

John

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Got a quick visit from The Grasshopper this morning and he dropped this in my lap: “Superiority is a belief, not a condition.”

No one is superior to another except in their mind.

You may have a superior intellect or superior skills when comparing yourself to others. You may even be paid to be someone’s superior, but you are not superior to them.

The belief of superiority is a drug – one that keeps you looking down your nose and smelling something bad.

Superiority boils down to this – NOT LIKE ME.

Investigate that for a moment . . . how could anyone be like you? You are unique. The corollary is true, so are they, not inferior or superior.

Reminds me of a story . . .

Years ago I was attending a seminar where I got into a philosophical “dust-up” with another person attending the seminar. I truly believed I had the superior position and, in fact, thought I was better than this person. What added to my illusion of superiority was the fact that this person was a lousy debater and I had them boxed into corner after corner, revealing their stupidity and my superior skills.

After the person left in a huff, I was reminded of a similar situation I was involved with many years before. I was doing a radio talk show and was debating a forgettable issue with an older woman who was clearly not in command of the facts. I, again, boxed her into corner after corner and easily won the argument. I was feeling quite superior until . . . I listened to a tape of the broadcast on my way home. I heard the exchange, not as a participant, but as a third party. I remember saying aloud, “You just beat up on an old woman.”

So back to the seminar . . . the person came back to read me the riot act about my behavior and in this exchange, I stopped debating and started listening. When I dropped my superiority, I discovered something that has stuck with me ever since – “If I grew up in your house when you did, I’d be just like you.” The opposite is also quite on point.

The discovery of the uniqueness we all develop helped me recognize that I wasn’t superior, just different.

I wish I could tell you that I’ve completely outgrown my notion of superiority; I can only say it’s a work in progress.

The key for me is to notice that I’m displaying my belief of superiority and interrupt it before it has me win another battle and lose the war.

Every time I notice and interrupt, I have a much more productive exchange of ideas and a greater appreciation of the uniqueness we all develop.

This much I can tell you from experience: Sitting on your high horse makes you a sitting duck.

All the best,

John

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How often do we get caught up in the minutia and miss the message?

I must admit I have been one of the biggest offenders. For example, I could easily be labeled a spelling and pronunciation snob.

I could easily blame it on my broadcasting background or my mother, who easily rivaled the character, Mrs. Malaprop by her misuse of words.

For example, she once referred to a man who injured his back and then returned to his job part time as “working spasmodically.”

Another time she bought this elegant tureen and called it a “soup latrine.”

Of course, I would correct her, usually to no avail. Then one day she got angry with me and asked, “Do you understand what I’m saying?”

I knew exactly what she meant but I got caught up in the minutia.

When you get sidetracked by the minutia, you often derail the communication by getting wrapped up in what doesn’t matter. It’s productive to correct a broadcaster who pronounces “awry” as AWE-ree when that’s your job. It’s another thing to be the world’s arbiter of spelling and pronunciation.

That doesn’t mean you don’t notice; it just means to notice when it’s not going to make a difference, and interrupt your penchant to interrupt the flow of communication.

This goes past spelling and pronunciation. If you have a prejudice against people who are uneducated, you’re going to get caught up in knowing better and miss out on what they know. Everybody has a piece of the puzzle you don’t have, but you’ll never get it if you stop listening.

This skill may have made me a great continuity director for movies. For example, if you’ve ever seen The Godfather, you may have missed this small piece of continuity. At Vito Corleone’s funeral, there is a quick shot of his headstone and it reads that he died in April. If you remember, he died in his garden in New York. No one has full grown tomatoes in their outside garden in New York in April.

Did this oversight prevent this from being one of the classic movies? No.

Yes, it’s fun to notice, but if the conversation becomes all about the flaws rather than the substance, we are rolling in the minutia. Translation: Dog shit.

So the next time you’re about to show someone your superiority, you may want to first notice if it’s going to matter. This keeps the communication flowing and you smelling better.

All the best,

John

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When asked the question, “How do you know?” people will demonstrate their strategy for how they know. They will use a specific sense (visual, auditory, kinesthetic) to access how they know.

It may be a picture they see in their mind, a conversation they are having inside their head or a specific sensation in part of their body that indicates how they know.

Now, what they know may not be actual knowing, but conjecture, conditioning or mild-to-wild hallucinating. For example, the spouse who “knows” their partner is having an affair may be looking at pictures they’ve created in their mind of that liaison even though there is no actual infidelity.

They don’t know.

Real knowing is not about specifics. Real knowing is not fact based. Real knowing comes from a peaceful place of unformed consciousness.

Real knowing isn’t about being right; it’s more about being in the right place.

Knowing isn’t born in your head; it comes from your heart.

Real knowing, when it arrives, is a universal salve; not a specific potion for a personal pain. A piece of real knowing benefits everyone, not just you.

Real knowing is inclusive and has no opposite.

How do you know when you have real knowing? You won’t have to make an argument for it.

Please don’t mistake real knowing with a belief. Real knowing was present before your beliefs were formed.

Real knowing, like love, can’t be described in words. We can only consciously know what it’s not.

We can only experience real knowing when we suspend having to know how we know.

You don’t have to explain real knowing because it doesn’t need a justification.

You can share the fruits of real knowing with others through your thoughts, words and deeds, but you’ll never know how you know.

Real knowing doesn’t have an agenda, just like a mountain stream has no agenda. It can be used to quench a thirst or float a boat, neither of which is its care – it’s just there.

Real knowing doesn’t come in flavors and one size fits all. It serves all who find it even though you can’t define it.

Here’s to not knowing how you know; it’s the clearest path to real knowing.

All the best,

John

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The Grasshopper had an elegant quote this morning – “Adversity shows you me.”

The definition of “me” in this case is a collection of conditioned patterns. When someone runs up against confusion or adversity, they will show you their preferred, conditioned strategy. This patterned way of handling things is often out of our awareness.

The recent snows on the East Coast of the United States, presented a lot of adversity for those of us that had to deal with the different situations the storms presented.

For instance, I found myself going into information seeking mode. It wasn’t very clear to me until just this morning that information gathering is my patterned way of reacting to adversity.

It seems that information presents me with options – options that wouldn’t have been clear unless I sought the information.

This isn’t an argument for me having the best option; it’s more of an invitation to find out what your patterned way of dealing with adversity is.

This recognition may show you an aspect of you that you didn’t realize before. Your strategy, whether workable or not, gives you some perspective about what’s worthwhile holding on to and what isn’t.

How do you handle adversity? Here’s a sure bet: You do it the same way every time.

The next question is: How’s that working for you?

It’s this workability assessment that gives you clear insight as to which of your patterns that may need attention.

So let me adjust The Grasshopper’s quote just a bit so you can gain some personal insight. “Adversity shows you, you.”

All the best,

John

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The Grasshopper* cleared up one of life’s mysteries over the weekend when he said,

“One of the bigger mistakes you make is to misconstrue your behaviors with you.”

We are judged on our actions, so it logically follows that since we produced those behaviors, they must be who we are.

A person who spews hateful thoughts and does dastardly deeds must, indeed, be those thoughts and deeds.

Not so.

You inhabit the vehicle those words and actions come from, but you are not your car.

You are sitting in the driver’s seat but most of what is done behind the wheel is done on auto pilot. You have been programmed to drive the way you do.

You are not your programming, no more so than Harrison Ford is Indiana Jones. You are acting out a script that has the whole world believing that’s you.

Even though you are not your behaviors, you still have to pay the consequences for your actions. Doesn’t seem fair, but as The Grasshopper also reminded us, “Fair is for fairy tales.”

Recognizing your behaviors, while they are happening, is the moment of discovery that they aren’t you. When you catch yourself in a behavior, you realize that behavior came from your conditioning. You are executing a stimulus/reaction connection that’s programmed to automatically fire.

Catching yourself in midstream is how you discover you. You are the part that does the noticing. The real you is the noticer of behavior, not the executer of it.

If you truly want to discover who you are, begin to notice your behavior, while it’s happening.

Noticing has two immediate benefits:

1. It dispenses with the useless diversions of guilt and recrimination.
2. It helps you outgrow the behavior.

Noticing lets you know that you really have a choice, one that’s been hidden from you by the automatic nature of behavior. When you notice a behavior in action, you finally get to use that free will you’ve been hearing so much about.

Many have willpower confused with free will. They think if they are strong enough they’ll be able to overcome their conditioning. That works for a time and then the behavior returns.

Noticing and interrupting a behavior, while it’s happening, weakens the conditioning. The more often you do it, the weaker the behavior gets and eventually it goes the way of all good flesh.

When you notice, you’ll never again misconstrue you with what you do.

*The Grasshopper is the part of you that lets the truth slip out from time to time. Not the relevant truth but the truth that can only come from the one source of everything.

All the best,

John

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Here is the obvious piece of wisdom we overlook on our way to failing to do something – We must start before we stop.

The opposite is the norm – We stop before we start.

Failure’s biggest contributor is inertia. We don’t start on a path because we’ve already judged in our head that we will fail.

But here’s the rub . . . it’s really not the act of failing that scares us; it’s the perception of how we’ll be viewed if we aren’t successful. It’s that view that prevents us from starting. Again, we stop before we start.

The fear of failure boils down to this: It’s the fear of what other people will think.

Let’s pretend you are a lousy bowler. You went once or twice when you were a kid and now you are in mixed company as an adult and find yourself at a bowling alley.

Your first ball is a gutter ball; you miss everything. The same is true of your second. You now announce that you don’t want to play anymore and you’ll just watch the others. Why did you stop?

If no one else was there and you had the bowling alley all to yourself, you probably would have continued rolling balls down the lane until you saw some improvement. No fear of failure because there was no one there to witness it.

There’s no secret as to why golfers perform much better on the driving range than they do on the course – lack of witnesses.

The amount of things we don’t attempt due to other peoples’ opinions is staggering.

Why doesn’t the shy kid ask the girl to dance? It’s not so much that she’ll say “No,” it’s more about others witnessing his unsuccessful request that keeps his action at parade rest.

What’s really at risk? Your image – the thing that you made up and got comfortable with. It’s the perceived tarnishing of the imaginary vision you hold about yourself that prevents you from starting.

Failing is an everyday occurrence in everyone’s life. We have lots of experience with it, so we’re not really afraid of it.

The fear of people finding out that we aren’t who we think we are is what stops us from starting.

The people who find out that they aren’t the image that they’ve been trying to protect are the ones who start with much more regularity. And here’s the math: Those who start succeed more than those who don’t.

So here’s a thought starting question for the weekend: What would you start if you let go of your imaginary image?

The answer you’ll get is this: There’s no stopping me now.

All the best,

John

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Being a hypnotist, you may think that my next statement is peculiar.

“There is no power in a suggestion.”

Yesterday, I was doing one of the hundreds of radio interviews I do each year on the topic of hypnosis and one of the hosts asked me if I ever used my “power” to influence someone to do my bidding.

My response was that I have no power to make anyone do anything. He said, “But you have the power of suggestion.” I said there is no power in a suggestion itself. The real power of a suggestion is the timing of its delivery.

How many times have you offered valuable advice at the wrong time?

There was no power in that suggestion. All suggestions are inert, unless they come with proper timing.

The old axiom of “The teacher will be there when the student is ready” aptly explains this phenomenon.

You can have the best suggestion a person will ever hear in their lifetime but it will die on the vine if given to an unfertile mind at the wrong time.

The key is to prepare the soil so your suggestion is received without resistance, so you can use what is also the key component of telling a joke – timing.

The mistake we all make is throwing up on people. That means we offer unsolicited advice without any sensory acuity as to whether that person is in a frame of mind to receive it. We just want to have our say when we want to say it and we wonder why they don’t follow our sage advice. Reminds me of a story I’ve told a few times . . .

Suppose a wife wants her husband to take her to a new movie on a Friday night. She hasn’t said anything yet and it’s Friday. She looks out the window and sees her husband coming to the door. She also notices that he has steam coming out his ears. She guesses he’s had a rough day at work. But nonetheless she wants him to take her to the movies tonight so she asks him as soon as he enters the door. How effective is her suggestion?

Perhaps you just laughed at how stupid her strategy was but may not recognize how often you use a similar strategy.

What if upon noticing the steam, she joined the conversation going on in his head and said something like, “Honey, it looks like you’ve had a bear of a day, please tell me about it.” She lets him launch into his story as she prepares him his favorite beverage and leads him to a comfortable chair. Possibly a soothing shoulder rub is involved. When she notices the steam has subsided and he’s back to his normal self, she says, “There is this new movie I’ve been dying to see and I would really like you and me to see it tonight.” What are her chances for that suggestion taking hold now versus a half hour before? Much better!

That’s the real power of suggestion.

You must pay attention otherwise you are scattering seeds on hardened soil.

Now this may seem like pure common sense to you, and it is. The reality is how uncommon the practice is.

I don’t know if you’re ready to hear this suggestion or not, so put it on ice until it makes sense to you – Become aware or you’ll be talking to thin air.

All the best,

John

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One of the biggest complaints we make is that of being stuck. We treat it as though it’s a physical condition, which is rarely the case, unless you’re stuck in snow.

Stuck is having our thoughts stuck in place. It’s the second cousin to being bored. Reminds me of a story . . .

It comes from my old radio days when we actually played records. Every now and then, at the most inopportune time, the record you were playing would get stuck in a groove. It would play the same phrase over and over again. Whenever I hear “Philadelphia Freedom” by Elton John, I think back to when I was in Syracuse, New York in the world’s dirtiest, radio bathroom. I was playing that song on the air and it got stuck. I’m sure it was comical to others seeing me running down the hall adjusting myself to get back into the studio to remedy the situation, but it wasn’t fun at the time.

Being stuck is never fun. It’s being possessed by a repeating thought.

The reason it’s paralyzing is because there is no room in your mind for a remedy. Your mind is fond of playing broken records.

You can’t do anything about it unless you become observant of your thoughts.

If you are stuck in life, you are stuck with the same thoughts. It’s really that simple. I know there’s a mantra that says, “Change your thoughts; change your life,” but that always suggests to me that we have some control over the thoughts to put in our mind. We don’t. Think of the last time you “thought positive” and failed.

Rather than select the thoughts you want to think, which only lasts as long as the life of a fruit fly, become like a cop on a stakeout listening to a wire tap. If you’re in that situation, you can’t participate in the conversation, you can only listen. When you passively listen to your thoughts, without engagement, your thoughts begin to flow because they are not meeting any opposition.

When you attempt to cut off your thoughts, it has the same success rate as attempting to stop a thunderstorm – none. Just observe them as they pass by and you keep movement in the equation.

Becoming aware of your thoughts doesn’t change the situation you are in but it keeps your thoughts flowing. Do the arithmetic. What’s most likely to get you to a solution – stuck thoughts or ones that are flowing?

The law of averages suggests that a flow of thoughts is more likely to produce a solution than one that’s stuck.

Train yourself to observe your mind. It’s always looking for an argument. If you engage in the debate, your new thoughts will have to wait as you busy yourself staying stuck on point.

The quickest way to get unstuck is stop arguing with your thoughts. It’s always a stalemate. Let them flow and you have a better chance of finding a solution downstream.

All the best,

John

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We all create something every day. Whether it’s a creation that benefits mankind or just plain ill will, the creative spark comes from the same source.

We may consider our creations paltry or say we have none at all. That’s just not accurate. If you are a living, breathing, thinking human being, you create.

Most of our creations come through the filter of conditioning, making them re-creations. Most often we are like the bored, stage actor doing HAMLET for the 735^th time. We keep parroting the same lines.

Sometimes we break out of our predictable patterns and put a new twist on an old dance step. That’s creativity seeping under the door.

Creativity is neither good nor bad; it’s like Switzerland – it’s neutral.

The question is: “How do you use it?”

You can use electricity to light a city or electrocute yourself. The source is never accountable for its use, we are.

Are you using this commonly available resource to recreate yesterday and turn it into tomorrow, or are you open to creating something new?

No one has more creativity than you. At the beginning of this game of life, we are all given the same amount of Monopoly money. How well we use it determines the quality of our creations.

Using creativity to create something new begins with knowing we have unfettered access to it. The only thing that stands in our way are the canals we’ve dug to channel it to the same place every time.

So how do we get our creativity to flow in a new direction? For starters, notice the direction it’s flowing in now.

We get so used to living on automatic pilot that we don’t see that we’ve created the life we’re living. Once you notice that you are the creator, rather than a victim, that’s when you are at the doorstep of creating something new.

The old expression of “When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging” comes to mind. That means to notice where you are and also notice that you’ve taken part in the digging. These are the beginning steps of reconditioning.

Once you’ve noticed and taken responsibility as to where you are, you’ve made a space for creativity and it begins to flow in.

Instead of “Poor Me” being the foundation of your life, the act of noticing transforms it into a creative command called “Pour Me,” and a new foundation begins to pour. The active ingredient that comes out of becoming aware is creativity.

The eye opening piece is that we have created the life we have. The transformational piece is to acknowledge that. That’s when you begin using your allotment of creativity to renew rather than re-do.

All the best,

John

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