Hi Santa,

This year I’m going against my normal routine of asking you for what I want. Just for fun, here’s a list of what I don’t want:

– The company of people who always complain.

– Drug ads on TV that promise to keep people alive longer.

– Calls from strangers who read scripts to me.

– A conversation with anyone that ends with “have a good one.”

– A Fruitcake.

– Another dieting tip from Oprah.

– Yet another “Sitcom” with canned laughter.

– To hear pro athletes using the word “myself.” As in, “We won the game – the team and myself.”

– To associate with anyone with manufactured sincerity.

Santa, I know you won’t be able to not bring me everything on my list, but every effort by you and the elves is appreciated. As always, your low-fat milk and gluten free cookies will be waiting.

Thank you,

LJ (Little Johnny)

I’m a checker. My dad was a checker and it just got passed along osmotically.

Here’s the rub: I still make plenty of mistakes even though I check.

My observation is this: There are people who don’t believe they have to check. My experience with many of them is as follows: They’re not lazy. They believe they have superior memories and consider that checking is a waste of time.

They’ve never taken the time to do the arithmetic on how many times their memory has failed them.

I believe that today’s instant communications (email, texts, IMs) illustrate the memory myth. Add in Apple’s auto correct and the mistakes get even more compounded.

We can get a pass for sending a mistake filled message to a friend or family member but here’s what I notice: This practice of thinking you don’t need to check carries forward and creates far more errors than need be in things more weighty than a Facebook posting.

Fact: Your memory is not as good as you think it is.

If you don’t think you need to check, check on what hubris precedes.

Take this holiday tip from Santa and you’ll go from “haughty” to “more precise”: Check it twice!

All the best,

John

What is the story of your life? It’s like a Jacqueline Susann novel: You made it up!

We didn’t make up the facts of our story, only how we present them.

It’s the telling of our story that has us go into the imaginative world of illusion. And it’s there that we get trapped by our own narrative.

We are held captive by our stories but we continue to tell them in hopes that one more iteration will be our salvation.

The great author Byron Katie asks us this question: “Who are you without your story?”

We would be well served to answer Katie’s question for ourselves and discover the life beneath our life story.

A telltale sign you are trapped by your story is when you say something like: “I’m this way because . . . ”

“Because” is a story telling word that has you make up zillions of reasons why things are the way they are. Rather than get sidetracked by the why and wherefore, just notice how things are without assigning a cause. This Joe Friday “just the facts” approach keeps our focus on “what is” rather than taking us into the made up world of what isn’t.

Every time you tell your problematic story, you go in the opposite direction of a solution.

How powerful is our make believe story? Powerful enough to hold you in place for an entire lifetime, unless you notice.

I have this notion that goes against the Hollywood version of deathbed confessions. My sense is people who are highly invested in their stories don’t know they made them up and take them to their grave. They die not noticing they’ve been handcuffed to an illusion.

Perhaps, while we’re still here, it’s time for us to start noticing that we aren’t our stories. The life we discover without our story is a lot more peaceful and a lot more open to seeing opportunities that story telling prevents us from noticing.

Dropping your story is like dropping a 50 pound backpack that you’ve been carrying around your whole, story telling life. The lightness alone is reason enough to retire your illusion.

If you’re hellbent on telling your story again and again, you’re setting yourself up for a lot of unnecessary pain.

This holiday season, rather than adding another chapter to your life story, give yourself the gift of life by giving up what you’ve made up.

All the best,

John

In the category of “‘Most Losses,” denial wins!

We keep winning the denial argument and losing the war.

What are we denying? Just about everything that’s happening in our life that we don’t want happening.

Denying that it’s happening just keeps it happening.

We have become experts at the game of denial. I remember playing hide-and-seek when I was 5 years old and thought that if I closed my eyes the other person wouldn’t be able to see me.

We can easily give a pass to an imaginative 5-year old but what about now?

The game we play now is thinking that if we deny it long enough, people will stop noticing what we’re in denial about. We lose even more when we play that game with ourself.

Denial is a pattern that we’ve learned that we believe absolves us of responsibility. It’s never the case. We’re always responsible for that which we deny.

The first objective is to notice that denial isn’t working. Yes, you may have shouted someone down and temporarily chased them off with your denials but arguing for your limitations just keeps them in place. Notice that denial = loss every time. It’s a surer bet than death, taxes and gravity rolled into one.

Just noticing that you’re denying is often the first step in any recovery model. Here’s a very personal example:

I was in denial for over 10 years that my wife left me. The game I played was that she really didn’t want to leave and would be coming back at some point. Refusing to recognize her departure as real kept me in denial and kept me in pain. Finally noticing my denial opened the door to reality and I stopped losing at that game.

If you’re looking for more wins in life, notice what you’re denying. Noticing will open the door to unseen opportunities that were previously blocked from view by the blinders of denial. Now that the door is open, all you have to do to get a win is to walk through and leave denial behind.

All the best,

John

The Grasshopper visited yesterday and brought this gift: “Myth: Believing something will change if you don’t change.”

What have you been hoping for, dreaming about, waiting on for countless days, months and years? If it hasn’t happened, it’s either a pipe dream, a delusion, or belief in the myth that you don’t have to change to make it happen.

I marvel when I watch the antacid commercials that let you know that if you take one of these you’ll be able to eat the food that aggravates your condition. Nowhere in there does it suggest that you change the behaviors that cause the condition in the first place. Advertisers know you believe in the myth that you don’t have to change.

Are you unhappy, lonely, bored, overweight, unloved, a sot? If it’s been going on for a while, it will go on for a lifetime if you expect it to change without you changing.

Waiting for change to happen is like waiting for The Great Pumpkin. It’s always a waiting game.

What can you do to accelerate change? First, you can stop hoping for change. After that, you can stop praying for change. After all this time they haven’t worked, so let’s set them aside. Next, begin to notice the behaviors that contribute to your current condition. There is a recipe.

Notice how good you’ve become at baking that cake. It’s second nature now. You’re caught in the loop of continually baking a cake that’s making you sick.

If you can come up with that recipe, you are clever enough to come up with another – one that puts you on a path forward, rather than one that led to Marie Antoinette’s demise.

In short, what you’ve been doing isn’t working. The answer: Do something else.

Change requires action, not more thought. If you’re thinking about changing, you’re caught up in the myth that thinking will do it.

I’m reminded of the opening line from a hymn that is a favorite: “Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me.” You could easily substitute the word “change” for “peace” and get the same result.

Change begins with you changing. It’s that simple.

The only question you have to answer now is: Am I willing to put a pin in a ballooning myth?

All the best,

John

I wonder what it’s like to enter an interaction with no agenda? It’s something we rarely do but I wonder how much more deeply we would affect each other if we did it more often.

Try it out in low risk situations and see what happens. My guess is you will get out of your head for a bit (which is always a good thing) and have more welcome sensations in your body.

Your “no agenda” interaction can begin with “Hi” and then see where it goes from there. Let the experience guide you rather than you guiding the experience.

I realize we have to give up the illusion of control to have this “no agenda” approach do its magic, but the end result casts a spell over our mental quell (which comes from the German word for torture).

Make it a “No Agenda Thursday” and see what you get. My guess is you’ll find a lot less things about which to fret.

All the best,

John

“Liars and angels both tell the truth.” So said The Grasshopper this early morn.

I propose we excise truth from our language and stop wasting breath on that which we can’t claim.

There will always be shades to what we call the truth. It’s in that shade we will hide from the light someone else is attempting to shine on our truth.

To my eyes there is only one truth that you can depend on – Reality.

When we start interpreting reality, we get to subsets of the truth – our truth – which cannot be proven, only argued about.

I was at the gym the other day and two men in the locker room were disagreeing about one of the hot button issues of the day. Both of them argued that they had the truth. What they failed to realize was they had an opinion and both mislabeled theirs as “the truth.”

Did anyone win? Was anything settled? Not to this observer’s eyes and ears.

Do we stop having discussions about what we believe in? I hope not. My only request is to stop labeling your point of view as the truth. I will do the same.

“The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth” doesn’t exist when it comes to our beliefs.

When someone says, “It’s my truth,” what they are really saying is that it’s their belief – their opinion that they’ve dressed up in righteousness and call it the truth.

When you argue for truth, you will remain arguing and nothing will get settled.

If you want to remain unsettled for the rest of your life, keep arguing for the truth.

Here’s my opinion: Most people who claim the truth is on their side are living a lie.

All the best,

John

We’ve all heard this old axiom: “Variety is the spice of life.” I’m not sure you’ve been exposed to this next one because I just made it up: “Variety is the staple of life.”

You would have two very different lifestyles if you picked one over the other.

Seems we all seek some level of variety; it’s only the amounts that are different.

Here’s what I find: People who fall into the “Spice” category seem to be more comfortable in their own skin. Those that seek “Staple” are always seeking and never finding. They belong to the “out there” crowd.

“I’m seeking something that’s out there” seems to be their mantra and mission. For the “Staplers,” it’s a lifelong quest for zest – one that’s never fulfilled.

The “Staple” crowd rarely looks “in here” because they’ve been conditioned that it’s “out there.”

The next new thing is forever on their menu, forgetting that the last new things had them experience all spice with no staples. That’s a recipe for a lifetime of heartburn.

Want some organic variety? Stop seeking and find what you already know. Find out that the peace and satisfaction you think is “out there” is already present – “in here.”

The spice of life is available right where you are right now. No need to travel or seek, just surrender to its presence. That means you have to get out of your head which is swimming with a variety dead fish that won’t feed you for a day.

Give yourself a mini vacation from your thinking and your quest for perpetual variety will start shrinking.

One way to calm your thoughts is to notice them. How much of your thinking goes unnoticed? When you take the time to notice what your mind is thinking, you create a break in the action, what I call “a pause of peace.”

String a few of the pauses together and you’ll discover the genuine spice of life and experience a variety of peaceful moments.

All the best,

John

I’m playing with something I’m finding most helpful and offer it to you to see if you find it useful.

I call it “Clear the Screen.”

Imagine for a moment that there is a small screen inside your head where all your thoughts appear, whether as images or words. That thought just shows up on your screen. In most cases you don’t invite the thought in, but there it is.

Now further imagine that you have access to a button or key (like on a keyboard) that reads: “Clear the Screen.”

Once you notice the thought and decide that it’s not a productive one to continue thinking, mentally press the “Clear the Screen” key.

This much I can tell you: the thought will go away from your screen if only for a moment. The key is to press the “Clear the Screen” key each time the thought appears. After repeated clearings, the thought will come back less frequently and may completely go away.

Here’s a real life example:

I came up with this idea at the swimming pool at the fitness center I belong to. I swim a certain number of lengths of the pool as my workout. I swim three sets of 20 lengths for a total of 60. It’s just under a mile.

What I noticed was a running dialogue in my head going on as I began my first set. It went something like this: “Am I really going to swim 60 today? I was up late last night watching the debates and I may tire myself out too much by doing all 60. Maybe, just for today, I’ll cut it back to 40.” Then I answered my own thoughts with some counter-thoughts: “You’re just looking for a way to get out of your workout. Suck it up and swim the amount of laps in your routine.” And so it went.

When I noticed the thoughts, I also noticed the lane marker on the bottom of the pool was made out of small square tiles. They reminded me of keys on a keyboard. I see these tiles through my goggles about every 2 seconds when I’m face down in the water.

I set it up in my mind that every time I saw these tiles, they would represent a “Clear the Screen” command for unwanted thoughts floating across the screen of my mind. I set up an automatic trigger.

It’s something I learned from Dr. Dave Dobson. He called it a “Subjective Reversal.” I use it when I conduct stop smoking seminars. The suggestion goes like this: “Anytime you see cigarettes, whether in a rack at a convenience store or when you see someone else smoking, or you see a cigarette ad in a magazine or on a billboard, that will immediately reinforce in your mind your desire to be smoke free.”

You have taken the subject – cigarettes – and reversed your thought process about them. In the past the sight of cigarettes caused the desire to smoke. Now, with practice, the sight of cigarettes automatically reverses your thought pattern to that of being smoke free.

It’s a powerful technique. But like with all powerful techniques, it’s only powerful if you use it.

Uninvited thoughts are going to show up on your screen every day of your life. The key is to notice them and then start pressing the “Clear the Screen” key. The more often you get in the habit of doing this, over time, the process will happen automatically – resulting in less unwanted thoughts per day. After a time, I suspect you’ll report that things are going swimmingly.

All the best,

John

The Grasshopper had this to say in the wee hours of this morning: “You are your own best friend.”

What an eye-opener! Tough to go back to sleep with that tidbit rolling around in your head.

After reflection, it didn’t seem to mean that you can’t have outside best friends; it just communicated that inside your skin, you have to be the person you rely on the most.

It goes much deeper than narcissism. That’s just idolizing the person you made up and pretend to be. Being your own best friend is knowing there is a part of you that you can always count on to:

1. Be there for you.

2. Offer you the wisest counsel.

I remember Dr. Dave Dobson telling us over 25 years ago that we were our own best counselors. That didn’t mean we shouldn’t seek outside help; it just meant, when evaluating their input, we had a part of us we could trust to know if it was or wasn’t useful.

You have access to your best friend 24/7. To contact them all you have to do is calm the surrounding noise in your mind, so their guidance comes through clearly and unambiguously.

Your best friend won’t abandon you in time of trouble or need. They’re just hard to hear when your surrounding thoughts are like overgrown weeds.

There are a zillion ways to quiet your mind. Find a few that work for you and when you do, your best friend will always come through.

All the best,

John