The Grasshopper offered this nugget over the holiday weekend: “Should, ought and must are opinions, nothing more.”

Who hasn’t ever been caught up in a “should, ought or must” conversation? You could be having it with someone else or with yourself and the result is the same: opinions are being offered as truths.

“I/You should, ought, must (fill in the blank). The blank is an opinion based on a rule, not reality. Anytime we utter should, ought or must, we are putting our rules on display.

The more rules you have, the less life you live.

The more time we spend with should, ought and must, the more time we spend on how things should be, and less time with how things really are. How things really are is where life happens, not where they ought to be.

You are one step removed from life when you engage in should, ought and must. In fact, if you inspect those opinions, they are some very old rules that are very “musty.”

Should, ought and must aren’t going away anytime soon. The real question is: How soon will you notice how often they show up in your life? Just by noticing, you give yourself a little space from your opinions and begin to live a little bit more.

If you need a new rule, you “must” try this one on for size: My opinions “shouldn’t” keep me from living.

All the best,

John

Have you ever had the occasion to envision the “perfect day”? It’s a day that goes exactly as you gloriously planned.

I have daydreamed about that day as well but, for me, it’s never gone according to plan. That’s because other people and reality are involved and neither got the memo about my perfect day. Even if they did, they have their own plans.

Perfection becomes an exercise in bending reality to our will – Control.

Here’s a little known secret: every day is a perfect day – one that’s out of our control and never goes according to plan.

Perfection is what happens; imperfect is what we plan.

Does that mean to stop daydreaming and stop planning? No, both are tools that help shape your efforts. The key is to have another tool in your toolbox – Response. It’s the one tool that can smooth over the bumps of planned perfection.

Reminds me of a story . . . Had the occasion to talk with someone on the phone the other day about a position in our company. There were many questions that went back and forth and things were going as “planned.” Then the person on the other end received an answer that was unexpected. You could hear the disappointment in their voice at the answer. There was lots more ground to cover about the position and we did, but the life did not return to their voice. They were not able to respond to a piece of unplanned information. The job requires someone who can respond to the moment, not get caught up in it. The same is true for life.

If you are caught up in your plans, you will encounter even more unplanned circumstances lying in wait. I’m reminded of what my friend Doug O’Brien told me about space rockets on their way to wherever: they are off course over 90% of the time. Part of the plan is course correction. It’s the necessary tool for every successful launch.

Whether you’re planning on going to the moon or planning the perfect get-to-gether, leave room in your tool kit for response. It’s the perfect tool for a “perfect day.”

All the best,

John

I passed by a church the other day and their street-side marquee read: “Mediocrity is a well worn path.”

After reflecting on this offering, I was reminded of one of my favorite sayings: “If you always do what you always did, you’ll always get what you always got.”

The revelation was: if we’re always producing mediocrity, we’re on the wrong path.

If you bake, are the cakes you make mediocre or stellar? If you’re not being asked for the recipe quite frequently, your cake may as well be stale.

Mediocrity is a stale path. Our mediocre cake will be the last one sold at the bake sale, if at all.

Whatever you’re putting in the oven on a daily basis is either getting awards or it’s just doing the job. Mediocre is just doing the job. The results mediocre gets are neither nourishing nor tasty.

We’re probably all familiar with the computer phrase, “Garbage in, garbage out.” We may not be aware of this lesser known truth: “Mediocre in, mediocre out.”

The illusion we’re under is that marvelous results can come from mediocre efforts. It’s never been the case. Too often we experience disappointment with our efforts but, sadly, that doesn’t get us to up our game. We’re too busy complaining that our hard work isn’t getting us what we want.

The recipe for success is available; just find someone who’s getting the results you want and follow their lead. Reminds me of a story I’ve told before . . .

My neighbor, Barbara makes world-class brownies. I’ve never had better. Many people have attempted to make Barbara’s brownies, but they never come out like Barbara’s, even though she’s given them the recipe. No one ever went in the kitchen with Barbara and witnessed the process from start to finish. Had they done that, they would never make a mediocre brownie again.

If you want top-notch results, “get in the kitchen” with someone who’s top-notch and do precisely what they do. If you cut corners, you’ll find yourself back on the path to mediocrity in a hurry.

Mediocre is ladened with shortcuts. If you want much better results, you have to walk the more challenging, less traveled path. It’s the pathway out of mediocrity.

All the best,

John

The Grasshopper woke me from a dream and offered this: “A thought may spark your dream but only behavior fulfills it.”

There are many people who have more dreams than me but, like you, I have my fair share of them. I’m only guessing here but my sense is the ones that don’t get fulfilled are either highly improbable fantasies or our behavior doesn’t match the fervor of the dream.

Dreaming is a creative release and we release any hope of it gathering steam when both feet are in the clouds. A return to earth is required to get “boots on the ground.”

The journey leaves dreamland the minute you begin your march.

I may have offered this before but I believe dream fulfillment would be better served by putting together a “behavior list” rather than just a “bucket list.”

I abhor the word “try.” It’s the excuse word of the unfulfilled dreamer. Show me your “behavior journal” on the things you “tried” and your lack of entries will reveal why your dreams remain a dream.

We are world class in making excuses for our behavior or lack of it. We haven’t taken the time to notice how much time we spend on justifications that only reduce our chances of fulfilling our dreams.

I promise you this: Only behavior will get you to the Promised Land.

Please continue to dream your dreams, but do yourself a service: Stop justifying not fulfilling them. All that does is keep your behavior on hold, and behavior is the only pathway toward your dream.

Do yourself this favor: Inspect your behavior. If you’re honest, you’ll find it to be the missing ingredient that’s making your life a boulevard of broken dreams.

All the best,

John

The Grasshopper warned of a stickup the other day when he said, “When you rob yourself of this moment, you rob yourself of life itself.”

Are you forever looking back over your life? Are you continually musing on what your life should be? Whether looking back or projecting forward, you are robbing yourself of the only time life can happen – right now!

Life happens in every moment but if we’re not there to witness it, the past or future has picked our pocket again.

A moment doesn’t need to be momentous to feel life. Just stop at any portion of your day and honor the moment you happen to be in. Do that by feeling the sensations in your body the moment has to offer. That’s the feeling of being alive.

We deaden ourselves to our aliveness and open the door to robbery by being anywhere but where we are.

If you seek to feel your aliveness, it can’t be felt in the past or future. It can only be felt now. Your body is a “right now” feeling apparatus.

Right now there is aliveness in you. Every moment of every day, your aliveness is available. If you are shopping in the past or future looking for the “real deal,” your aliveness will be shoplifted while you’re looking for a “steal.”

Protect yourself from falling victim to robbery by noticing this moment and the sensations it has to offer. Your reward will be an aliveness the past or future cannot offer.

All the best,

John

The Grasshopper had some traveling advice to offer: “Going through is the way out.”

Imagine that you are driving into an unfamiliar, scary looking, remote town that’s in a canyon. There is impassible, mountainous terrain to your left and right and the only way through is straight ahead. Your only options are turning back or going through. What do you do?

I don’t think I’m alone in admitting that, in the past, turning back was my default choice.

Now imagine the name of that town is “Pain.” How many times have we turned back when we came upon pain? The result is we stopped ourselves from getting through it again.

Avoiding pain takes many forms. There are many ways we attempt to deaden it – denial, drugs, alcohol and overeating are some of the pain killers of choice. But they’re not really choices but conditioned reactions that keep our painful condition in place.

What painful reality are you choosing not to look in the face? Each time your turn back and look the other way, you have guaranteed your pain an extended stay.

Going through pain is the way out. Please don’t confuse going through pain with drama. They both cannot occupy the same space. Drama is acting out your condition for the whole world to see. Going through is a private journey with just you and your pain.

Most pain demands to be acknowledged and fully felt before it will release you from its grasp. Pain is a sensation in your body whether your pain is emotional or physical. It must be felt to be transformed. I would be the first in line for a deadening drug for severe pain. That just makes sense. What doesn’t make sense is denying our recurring pain is there or attempting to “self medicate” it away.

Your pain registers somewhere in your body. If you stop for a moment and explore the sensations associated with your pain, you now have the strategy for going through. Save the “woe is me” chit-chat and just sense where the pain shows up in your body and sit with it. This is the quickest way I know of to get to the other side of pain.

It takes some bravery to travel through pain. Emotional cowardice just won’t get you through. It will have you stop on the outskirts of town and turn back towards a deadened existence.

If you continually deny or deaden pain, it may be time for you to explore going through. Once you get a glimpse of what’s on the other side, there’s no turning back.

All the best,

John

What are we arguing for when we lay claim to being superior?

We are arguing for our conditioning. It’s really that simple.

We have been conditioned to believe that we are superior to another – a belief that reality can’t validate.

Yes, we may have a superior skill set at something (smarter, faster, more flexible) and, yes, facts will back us up. That’s not what’s under the microscope here. It’s the mindset of superior that I’m asking us to take a closer look at.

Are you superior to another race, ethnic group, gender, political party or religious group? If you even thought “yes” for a split second, you are a victim of your conditioning.

Your superiority is ingrained and self proclaimed and if you can get another like minded set of people to agree with you, you can all act out being superior together.

Have you ever been treated by a doctor who thought they were better than you? (They must teach superiority in medical school). Do all doctors act superior? No, they don’t, but there are enough of them practicing medicine to get you to answer “yes” to the question at the beginning of the paragraph.

My guess is that we take something we value and assign it a superior value. Let’s take intelligence as an example. Someone who has superior intelligence to us is a rung up on our evaluation ladder. We then extrapolate that skill to the whole person and treat them differently. I don’t know about you but I truly admire someone who has a superior skill that I don’t own. Anyone who can play a musical instrument instantly gets my admiration, simply because I can’t play. They play the piano better than me but, in reality, they aren’t better than me.

When we treat someone differently because they have a superior skill set, we affect both our and their beliefs. We both come to believe that they are better.

Just because we believe something doesn’t make it true. Our conditioning makes it a false reality. We have all been conditioned by someone – parents, peer groups and attitude shapers of all sorts. it’s that conditioning that feeds superiority.

One key to outgrowing superiority is to recognize the difference between our conditioning and reality. Conditioning has few, if any, facts to back it up. Reality is the sum total of all facts. You can’t win a debate with reality and the reality is this: no one is superior to another. It’s our conditioning that has us believe that we or they are.

Superiority is a limitation, one that we argue for every day. The telltale sign that we are acting superior is if we are looking down our nose at someone. It just doesn’t pass the smell test.

You can argue without the facts all day long. People do it all the time. But if you’re arguing for superiority, all you are doing is making a myth your priority.

All the best,

John

I have to admit that I’m not a big fan of hope. It just doesn’t work that well for me.

I do have more affinity for expectation. It seems to have more facts to back it up.

I don’t know where I first heard it but I’ve used this question often: If you hope in one hand and spit in the other, which hand will fill up first?” I guess you could say that the expectation of expectoration works better than hope.

I’m not out to dash your hopes; I’m just laying the groundwork to consider expectations because they have a greater chance of happening.

I’ve noticed that I’ve began the last 5 paragraphs with some form of the pronoun “I.” That must mean that what I’m offering here is a personal opinion.

Evaluate my opinion for yourself. Look back on the times you hoped vs. expected and see which one came through for you more often. My guess is expectation is the hands down winner.

Hope seems to come out when the odds are low; expectation beats the odds more often. Management Theory expert, Fernando Flores puts it this way: “Hope is the raw material for losers.”

I haven’t completely given up on hope, I just have a different perspective on it. That perspective is this: Hope doesn’t contribute anything to the final outcome. It may make you feel better while you’re waiting, which highlights the real and only benefit of hope.

My hope is this: That you’ll try my perspective of hope on for size. If you do, you’ll expect more out of life by waiting less and doing more.

All the best,

John

If I ever write a memoir, I know its title: “It Snowed on My Birthday.”

My birthday is in April and I have lived in the northeast most of my life. I have seen snow in April, but never before on my birthday, until this year.

This really isn’t about birthdays or snow, it’s about the downside and it’s proper place in our lives.

It seems to me that we spend a goodly portion of our lives attempting to escape or ignore the downside. That’s like wishing it won’t ever rain.

The downside is as much of a reality in life as the upside, and pretending it’s not there is theatre. Watch the amount of drama you create when you pretend that there’s no down.

Just take the perfunctory and patterned response you offer when someone casually asks, “How are you?” You outwardly say, “Just fine.” Inwardly, you countermand your pronouncement and have a emphatic conversation about the litany of things that aren’t “fine.”

This isn’t a suggestion to regale everyone you meet with a detailed list of what’s going on with you when they’re just being social; it’s more of a wake-up call to get you to notice how you attempt to cover over the downside.

There is no escaping pain. Ask anyone who’s gone through labor or passed a kidney stone. To pretend it’s not there is folly. The same is true for the downside.

I will always have a preference for the upside but I know it’s not a perpetual state. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow reminded us: “Into each life some rain must fall.” As profound as that statement is, it’s one of his lesser known quotes that contains instructions on how to handle it: “The best thing one can do when it’s raining is to let it rain.”

You may have heard me say before that I believe all addictions point to emotional cowardice – not wanting to feel the underlying sensations that drive one’s addictions. Being addicted to the upside will cause the downside to be more potent and last longer simply because we won’t acknowledge it.

Up and down are twins. The sooner you stop dressing them alike and stop making one appear as the other, the sooner you will experience the differences they have to offer. Their gifts are complementary – one really can’t be truly appreciated without the presence of the other.

I’m not suggesting to celebrate the downside, just begin to acknowledge it when it arrives. It’s my experience that its stay will be shorter when you shovel the walk together.

All the best,

John

It occurred to me that there are three possible positions in a moment: Win, Lose, Be.

Win and Lose are judgements and Be is just like Switzerland – Neutral.

Taking the time to consider whether you are winning or losing in a moment brings to mind the old Satchel Paige line: “Don’t look back. Something might be gaining on you.”

When you get preoccupied with whether you are winning or losing, you miss out on where you really are – here and now or “Be” for short.

It is helpful to triangulate from time to time. It’s an assessment of where you are in relationship to where you want to be. But when that becomes your default mindset, you trade the moment you’re in for one that doesn’t exist. We miss a good portion of our lives by doing so.

Take a moment not to judge a moment and just see what happens. I’m not sure what will happen for you but when I do it, winning and losing go out of focus and what’s right in front of me becomes tack sharp.

Every moment has something to offer but we may miss receiving its gift if we’re off winning or losing in the past or future.

Rather than taking some “Me” time, try taking some “Be” time. You’ll spend less time thinking about, “Yay me” or “Woe is me” and more time experiencing what’s really happening.

It’s in these moments that we feel real. The minute you begin to judge a moment rather than live it, you lose the moment and all it has to offer. It becomes like an incredible dream whose richness fades when we reenter the world of win or lose.

Win and Lose will always be be there for the taking, but Be is only here now. Take advantage of its visit and find the real magic this neutral position has to offer.

All the best,

John