I don’t know if anyone else does this, but almost every Christmas I buy myself a gift. It’s usually something I wouldn’t want others to go out of their way or price range to buy for me. It’s a holiday treat I treat myself to.

There is another gift I’ve come by in recent years and as the saying goes, “if I had known about this years ago, I would have made much more progress than I have.”

This gift is one you also give to yourself. It pays dividends right away, and it’s only a few thoughts away.

The gift is “waiting.”

I learned to wait late in life and it pays off every time.

Sidebar: Men have been conditioned to have an answer at the ready immediately when asked a question. Culturally, men are expected to know and know now! Most often we don’t know, but we answer anyway because to do otherwise makes us look unknowing in the asker’s eyes. It’s also why most stutterers are men. They often had an impatient parent who demanded an answer well before they were ready to give it. “Out with it, out with it” may have been the mantra shouted at them while they were hesitating. They started to haltingly speak even though they didn’t know and the cat nibbled on their stuttering tongue.

I was talking to my friend Hali the other day and she was referring to someone who claimed to have “writer’s block.” I said, “writer’s block” is nothing more than a conversation in your head. It’s talking to yourself about not having an idea of what to write. That internal chat often turns into paralyzing fear. The comedian Sarah Cooper recently tweeted this: “Today I’m doing what I like to call “circulatory writing” which is where you don’t write at all but you think about writing and then you beat yourself up for not writing and then you start to write but you can’t write and it’s torture.”

Waiting is the remedy for writer’s block or any other answer you’re looking for. When you get to a sticking point, just put on the brakes and wait for traffic to start moving again. They key is to not rant internally or exrternally while you’re waiting. The answer is there, it just needs a moment of silence or two to come through.

Train yourself to wait. Some might say, “Have patience,” but that phrase has a ton of parental baggage attached to it and your mind doesn’t respond well to that directive. Waiting is an actual action you take, while patience is a mental construct that doesn’t bring you a lot of luck.

Start waiting with little things at first. For example, if you’re doing a crossword puzzle or Sudoku and you run up against a wall, resist the temptation to bang your head against it and give your mind a breather instead. It’s interesting how that quiet space you create fills up with the answers when you just wait.

It’s a one-size-fits-all present and it’s free. Take the time to practice waiting and you’ll have the perfect gift under your tree.

All the best,

John

Listen to the recorded version.

Make sure to download a FREE copy of my ebook: INTER RUPTION: The Magic Key To Lasting Change here.

Dear Santa,

My list is posted early this year in case you need extra delivery time because of the elves having to social distance.

As always, I’ll keep my list short and realize you may not be able to fulfill all my requests.

I don’t think my perennial request will ever come true: to have all broadcasters pronounce the word “forward” correctly. I’ve tried to alert some of them by text, and illustrated my request in a story. I suggested that if they were going to vote for Beaver Cleaver’s father in an election, they would be “FOR WARD.” If they were against him, he would be known as “FOE WARD.” I would consider this a Christmas Miracle if it ever happens, but quoting my sainted mother, “Don’t hold your hand on your ass waiting.”

Here’s something I really don’t want: to ever meet anyone who describes themselves on their dating profile as “Angel Eyes.”

Now for my requests:

* Less political posts on Facebook.

* More dog videos on YouTube.

* Less plastic gloves thrown on the ground in supermarket parking lots.

* Gift certificates for Sweetwater or Amazon

And finally, another broadcast request: Can you have TV interviewers stop saying “we’ll have to leave it there” when wrapping up an interview? They could just as easily say, “I want to thank our guest(s) for coming on today, and coming up next, a gerbil salesman tells us why he wants them stopped being called ‘desert rats’.”

I hope you and Mrs. Claus have a healthy and stress-free holiday and that Rudolph’s nose doesn’t turn blue.

Love,

LJ (Little Johnnie)

Here is the recorded version of the Grasshopper Note for the week of 11-30-20

Read the written version here.

Here is the recorded version of the Grasshopper Note for the week of 11-23-20

Read the written version here.

I’m sure someone has said it before: that we all live on borrowed time.

When we borrow money, we do so for a purpose, not so much so with borrowed time.

Many of us use our time waiting for something fortuitous to happen, and, for just about everybody, that’s a long wait. Usually time runs out and that gift from “out of the blue” never comes through, but our bill eventually comes due.

Quoting The Grasshopper: “You came from nothing; you’re returning to nothing. So while you’re here, do something!”

This old adage is also spot on: “Tomorrow is promised to no one.” You can’t borrow time in a tomorrow that may not be there for you.

This isn’t meant to be morose. It’s more of a reminder that our debt will one day be collected, and if all we’ll have to show for it is an unchecked list of wishes, we’ll have cheated ourselves out of a purposeful existence.

If you haven’t already done so, find your purpose. It’s your life’s fulfilling mission. You’ve already spent too much borrowed time hoping’ and wishin’.

Chances are, your purpose is not some fanciful, pie in the sky dream, but more likely it’s something that makes you sing. What’s the thing in your life that always has you croon a happy tune? That’s your purpose – the thing worth borrowing for.

All the best,

John

Listen to the recorded version.

Make sure to download a FREE copy of my ebook: INTER RUPTION: The Magic Key To Lasting Change here.

Here is the recorded version of the Grasshopper Note for the week of 11-16-20.

Read the written version here.

Make sure to download a FREE digital copy of my book: INTER RUPTION: The Magic Key To Lasting Change here.

Words have different meanings to different people. Sometimes people argue about words, thinking that their version of the word is the gospel truth. And the other person has equal conviction about their version of the word.

Words are fluffy. Many of them, especially adjectives and adverbs, don’t lend themselves to having concrete meaning.

Words are the currency we use to consciously communicate, but they are a poor substitute when we’re searching for a deeper meaning.

I first read that words are pointers towards meaning, not actual meaning when I read THE POWER OF NOW by Eckhart Tolle. Meaning that they point you in a direction without giving you directions. That does sound like a conundrum, doesn’t it? It’s not.

I read the aforementioned book 23 times. Each time I read it, I was pointed in a different direction when reading the same words that lead me in another direction on a previous read.

“The direction is between the words” means that the direction you receive comes out of the spaces between your thoughts. When your mind is jam packed with words, nothing new comes through. It’s when spaces show up between your words that you open yourself up to your depth – a place where words don’t exist, allowing inspiration to fill in the spaces.

Many speakers use the utterance “uhm” to fill up the space in their speech. If they would train themselves to pause there rather than say “uhm,” the next words out of their mouths are quite likely to point you towards meaning. That’s because all creative direction comes from within that pause.

This is not “reading between the lines.” That’s just applying logic to what’s being said. It’s what is not being said that gets us into a creative mode. That means the space gets us out of our head.

Read anything you consider to be a spiritual or inspirational writing and notice that it’s not the concept being written about that brings you the “aha.” The writing points you inward where it’s pin drop quiet, and that’s where you receive direction.

Here’s a little exercise you can do to cultivate spaces in your thinking. Just start noticing the spaces in your environment. You can simply look at the space between pieces of furniture, spaces between household noises, and the space between the words when someone’s speaking. Just by noticing the spaces will get you in the habit of creating spaces between your thoughts.

Looking for direction? Look between the words.

All the best,

John

Listen to the recorded version.

Make sure to download a FREE copy of my ebook: INTER RUPTION: The Magic Key To Lasting Change here.

Here is the recorded version of the Grasshopper Note for the week of 11-9-20.

Read the written version here.

Make sure to download a FREE digital copy of my book: INTER RUPTION: The Magic Key To Lasting Change here.

Seeing as it’s “Flashback Friday,” I found this blog post I wrote 10 years ago.

Ask any gambler, professional or casual, about the mindset they enter when they start to lose. The progression goes something like this:

“My luck is just about to turn,” “I still have a chance to win big,” “I hope I can win back just enough to get even.”

Then they recognize they’ve lost.

Losing in life follows the same progression; some people just move through the steps more quickly than others.

Watch any football player who just lost a hard fought game and you’ll witness that loss has a progression and takes some time to set in. Those who process it more quickly are the ones who are ready to play again; the others go into a slump, sometimes a career ending one.

Denial allows a losing feeling to hang around much longer than is productive.

Even though it’s clearly evident to anyone watching our game that we’ve lost, it’s not so clear to us. That’s because our emotion isn’t matching our reality and the illusion that we’re still in the game remains.

Hanging on to a loss never gets less painful. Time may pass but the loss remains in the present.

The popular prescription is: Just let go. If it were that simple, anyone wearing Nike’s would be in shape.

So is there a way to end your losing streak?

My sense is the first step is recognizing the game is over. I remember writing years ago, “The projectionist has gone home but my heart remains in the theatre.” That was me recognizing the facts and knowing that I had to process the pain.

Processing the pain is not rehashing the game. It’s sitting with the unsettled sensations and feeling your own pain. By doing so, you are taking action on what your body has been attempting to get you to do – deal with your loss.

The more you think about it, the more it hurts. Denying that it happened is just more thinking. Talking to yourself about acceptance is just more thinking. Thinking is like the friend you have who is always talking about what they’re going to do, but never doing it.

Feeling your own pain is the only way to process your loss. That’s the shortcut that’s always available at every turn.

I wish I could tell you that processing your pain isn’t painful; it is.

It really comes down to this: How long do you want your pain to last?

If you want to keep it around for a lifetime, keep talking about it. If not, feel your pain and watch it go down the drain.

All The best,

John

Listen to the recorded version.

Make sure to download a FREE copy of my ebook: INTER RUPTION: The Magic Key To Lasting Change here.

Common theory is that there are three directions we can head in: forward, backward, and standing still.

Upon closer inspection, it appears to me there really are only two directions: forward and backward.

Standing still really doesn’t exist. The universe only moves forward, never backward. As humans, when we deny reality, we move backward, and standing still is a middle ground mirage – something we’ve made up. Status quo is really moving backwards because the universe is always moving on.

So the one question we want to ask ourselves is: Am I moving forward or backward?

It’s productive to assess our direction from time to time, to get a glimpse of what our future holds for us if we remain on our current path.

The old axiom comes to mind: “If you don’t know where you are, you can’t get to where you want to go.”

Too often, we use fuzzy logic and assess ourselves as being somewhere where we’re not. This magical thinking labels our direction as forward, rather than looking at the facts on the ground, that when ignored, tether us to the past, not the future.

Just like an investor reviews their portfolio from time to time, it’s productive for us to have an un-fogged “look-in-the-mirror” moment with ourselves, to get an accurate reflection of our current reality.

Final question: Are you evolving or devolving? To move forward, knowing your current location needs solving.

All the best,

John

Listen to the recorded version.

Make sure to download a FREE copy of my ebook: INTER RUPTION: The Magic Key To Lasting Change here.