My computer dictionary describes “Remarkable” as worthy of attention; striking: a remarkable coincidence.

I have a more literal definition that I would like to explore.

Remarkable: To re-mark.

It’s not a recommendation to say it again, but to mark it again. It’s very much like Santa’s list – checking it twice.

How often have we read or said something profound which offered us a clear direction to true north and then just let it pass by without moving in that direction?

We may have marked it in our journal or memory but we didn’t re-mark it in our lives.

You can’t live on profound quotes, only the actions they suggest.

Taking action is re-marking in my book.

The refrigerator strategy doesn’t work. That’s when you put pithy sayings on your “ice box” that never thaw. We think if we post it, it will come. To quote my sainted mother, “Don’t hold your hand on your ass waiting.”

Here’s a suggestion: Cull through your meaningful sayings collection and pick your top 3 favorites. Then select one of them for action. Take some small, repeated action on that saying every day for a month. That’s re-marking.

In the overwhelming majority of cases, the well read person can only talk about the things they’ve read; the remarkable person can cite the things they’ve done.

All the best,

John

“Resistance justifies you from making the change you desire.“ So said The Grasshopper on a hot Friday in July.

A surefire way to keep things around that you don’t want is to resist the methods of change. Are you resisting making a change in your life? The resistance won’t attract the change, only magnetize the things that keep you from changing.

There is a ton of justification in resistance. Just look at what you justify and you will find what you resist. Making excuses for yourself or others is resistance on parade.

Don’t beat yourself up for resisting; we all do it. Just begin to start noticing what you’re resisting and then stop offering justifications for your resistant behavior. Noticing and stopping is a one-two punch that, when delivered consistently, puts resistance flat on its back.

Side note: Hesitancy is not resistance. It’s a prudent look at the options before you. Or as Davy Crockett reminded us, “First make sure you’re right, then go ahead.” Resistance is a plan to stay in place.

Some want to explore “why” they are so resistant. That’s just another avenue that leads toward justification. It’s a delaying tactic. Having a historic reference for why you resist makes for interesting conversation but it’s just another way to delay doing.

Building a bridge from where you are to where you want to go is always the most direct route. Harkening back to why you never went will keep you in “Never-Never” land.

You know what resistance feels like for you. Notice that sensation when it arrises and then “resist” the temptation to justify it. This is a way to notice the fire without fueling it. It will burn itself out as long as you don’t keep adding justification to it.

Noticing and stopping will accomplish two things:

1. You’ll personally discover a secret that’s been kept from you – the causal relationship between justification and resistance and how it holds you back.

2. You’ll be too busy moving forward to look back on what was dragging you down.

All the best,

John

The Grasshopper was on vacation for a few days but came back all tanned and refreshed yesterday and offered this: “You’re the best at being you.”

It seemed more than the quote I remember from Dr. Robert Anthony: “You always do the best you can do in accordance with your present level of awareness.” That is a reminder that our frame of mind contributes highly to executing our best behavior.

“Being you” seems deeper.

You are a unique expression of life. No one else can be you, not your twin, not your understudy – no one. It seems obvious to say that only you can be you, but I don’t believe we’ve fully explored how purposeful that being you is to living our life.

No one else can live your life for you – only you. You don’t get a stand-in and as the old axiom goes: Life is not a dress rehearsal.

Have you ever asked yourself what it means to be you? No one else can have that realization, only you.

No one but you can express like you. The question then becomes: “What am I expressing?” and then, “What can I express?” When you answer those two questions, I submit that you begin to find your purpose – what you are here to do.

No one can express your purpose as well as you. “What am I expressing?” helps you find your patterns – your conditioned way of doing things. “What can I express?” leads you away from your limiting patterns towards purpose.

Your purpose may not be grandiose or on the order of world peace but something only you can do the best. Perhaps it’s being the best parent for your children. No one can parent like you and when that notion is infused with purpose, you are the best at being you.

Being you is not someone else’s idea of who you should be; it’s a self discovery of the purposeful you.

Don’t mistake being you with the old show tune, “I’ve Gotta Be Me.” “Me” is just a collection of patterns that we defend, many of which lead us astray.

Being you is richly imbued with guidance and will only head you towards true north.

Final thought: No one can do what you can do when you are being you.

All the best,

John

Are you part of the “special rules” club? I know that, at one time, I was a card carrying member. Here’s one of the things I learned: I’m not exempt.

There are hard and fast rules that apply to all of us for our entire lifetime, but a part of our conditioning is that they don’t apply to us. When we believe that, we suffer.

For example, if you eat more calories than you can metabolize, the excess will find its way to fatten you up. There is no special exemption. That’s a fact. There are many ways to make sure that excess fat doesn’t happen and they all take work, work that many of us are unwilling to do because we delude ourselves that the rules don’t apply to us.

Whatever behavior you want to outgrow takes some work. You cannot wish it or pray it away or think that you are entitled to a special dispensation. It doesn’t matter how “special” you or someone else has convinced you that you are, the rules apply to you too.

I have a people helping friend who is miserable. He offers all the appropriate advice to the people he’s helping but doesn’t believe those things apply to him; therefore he suffers.

My hypnosis mentor Dr. Dave Dobson described people looking for an exemption as “jumping from one hot tub to another.” It was a reference to looking for the latest “cure.” The cure in this case was a way around the rules.

The real shortcut is to recognize that most shortcuts are diversions – diversions away from the doing what’s necessary.

If you want your cake to taste just like the the one you bought at the bakery,you have to follow the recipe. If you don’t think you have to add that much sugar or flour or that you’ll use a substitute, your cake will never taste like theirs.

“It doesn’t apply to me” is a prescription for suffering, no matter how dressed up your exemption appears to be.

All the best,

John

The biggest lesson I am in the process of learning is letting go of “know.” The text book has yet to be written but the opening chapter is quite revealing.

I cannot think of something more put offish than someone displaying that they know. This is not displaying your knowledge; it’s displaying an attitude of “I know and you don’t.”

“Smug” would be too kind to describe knowing, yet I can’t come up with a better word.

It’s OK that you know; it’s just obnoxious when you crow.

The attitude of superiority that accompanies knowing is a deterrent to getting closer to people. They mentally walk away from you long before they’re physically able to.

This doesn’t mean to hide your knowledge under a rock; it’s just a reminder that people want to throw rocks at you when they’re looking up at your nose.

A dead give away that “you know” is when a sneer appears. Just try this on for size right now. Pretend that you know something that someone you’re interacting with doesn’t know. Add a dash of superiority for knowing something they don’t, and feel the sneer spread across your face. That facial expression is on every person who “knows” and it doesn’t look good on anyone (kinda’ like Spandex).

To let go of know, notice that you’re knowing. Just catching yourself being smug is often enough to keep you from going more in that direction. I find that when my smug filter kicks in, that’s the time for me to start asking questions of another with genuine curiosity. This practice helps me to really find out rather than pretending I know.

Like any process of change, it begins with recognizing your unwanted behavior while you’re doing it. It’s the first step in “letting go of know” and will put you on a more pristine path not littered with smug.

All the best,

John

In the spirit of full disclosure, this will be a mini rant – my version of tilting at windmills. Somebody has to do it.

There is a pat phrase in self improvement circles that goes like this: Change your thinking, change your life. I really have no argument with the premise. If your thinking changes, your life WILL change.

My rant is against the people who put the directive out there without any direction. They never go any deeper than the bumper sticker. My guess is they have no idea how to assist someone to change their thinking. “Oh, just think positive.” When you hear that from someone, you now have a clue that they have no clue as to how to help you.

In order to change your thinking, you first have to notice what you’re thinking while you’re thinking it. Judging your thinking as “negative” has no effect on changing your thinking. Evaluating your thinking after the fact has no effect on changing your thinking. Telling yourself to “think positive” has no effect on changing your thinking.

Noticing your thoughts about something while you are having those thoughts is how you change your thinking. When you become an observer of your mind, you remove yourself from the automatic thinking process. When you take a moment to observe yourself thinking, you make a space for some fresh, new, unrehearsed thinking to emerge. Interrupting your automatic thinking machine with observation is the way to change your thoughts and, thus, change your life.

You will have to be diligent with this strategy. You can’t do it once and expect instant results. Remember, you are dealing with a pattern of thinking that’s been going on just about your entire life. You’ll have to interrupt that pattern often to get the change you seek.

Your thinking will not change on its own. That would be like expecting a train to decide to run off its tracks. As long as the tracks are properly in place, the train will run on them until it finally runs out of steam – in other words, for a lifetime.

To change tracks, you have to notice that you’re on one. When you observe your train of thought, while it’s running, you become the engineer rather than the passenger.

You can ride your current train ’til the end of the line or you can notice your thinking and change tracks now.

Develop the habit of interrupting your thinking and you will begin to think new things, and these new things will change your life.

You now have a directive with direction. Follow it and you’ll be the little engine that can change their thinking.

All the best,

John

Here’s another great title for a book I’ll never write: Getting The Logs Out Of Logjams.

What causes logjams? Let me answer that with a story . . .

Years ago, my neighbor, Ed, who was an air traffic controller and a pilot, told me that 99% of airplane crashes were caused by human error.

So back to logjams. A lot of traffic doesn’t cause a traffic jam – a few people driving erratically causes the flow to slow. It only takes one act of attention-less driving to jam things up.

But this isn’t about cars or trains and boats and planes. It’s about lack of ATTENTION.

Look at any logjam in your life and you can trace it back to lack of attention at some point. It’s easy to point to someone else’s lack of attention as the cause, but this is an exercise in self-inspection. What logjams have you caused or are causing due to a lack of attention?

It can be in your job, your personal life or in your relationships.

I have never knowingly interrupted a pharmacist when he/she’s filling a prescription. They are paying careful attention to make sure the customer’s life isn’t put in jeopardy due to their mistake.

Logjams occur when we are attempting to pay attention to many things vs. the one thing that needs our attention.

What one thing needs your attention? You are causing your own logjam by keeping it way down on your to-do list.

There is no mystery as to what needs our attention; it’s just our inattention to what needs to be done that causes our own personal pile-ups.

Here’s as close to the truth as I can get: Based on my experience, we all know what our problems are and we all know the solutions, but there is a logjam preventing a resolution. The fog causing the backup is the lack of focused attention.

Attention is a mighty tool that lies at the bottom of our tool box gathering dust and rust. Perhaps today is the day to spray some WD-40 on your attention and finally use the one tool that can get you out of a jam.

All the best

John

The Grasshopper offered this consumable tidbit over the weekend: “Your life situation can always be better; your life needs no improvement.”

One of the questions my friend, Terry Butler used to ask when on a sales call was: “How can you be happier?” He was searching for the area he needed to zero in on. He knew everyone could be happier.

Life is a constant chase for happiness for most. Advertisers know that, marketers know that, politicians know that. I call this phenomenon “Chasing the horizon.”

There is no permanent state of happiness. Yes, you can always be happier but there is never an everlasting arrival at happy. Perpetual happiness is a lure away from reality.

Would you rather be happy or feel peace?

Our conditioning has us answer in favor of happiness when what we are really looking for is peace.

Your life situation has you seek the temporary solution – happiness. Your life is peace itself. The life force that courses through every living thing is pure peace and it just sits there waiting for us to discover it.

A state of peace needs no improvement. There are no levels of peace; it’s one size fits all.

Enjoy happiness when it arrives and celebrate it as long as it stays. Just don’t chase it or you’ll be like a dog chasing its tail.

Your time will be better spent experiencing the peace that you already own. It’s what shows up when you stop chasing the horizon.

You’ll be happier than most when you discover that peace is what you really want. It’s closer than your next happy moment.

All the best,

John

Is there a real secret sauce? I believe there is. It’s passion.

When you have passion, struggles aren’t struggles, just necessary steps to get what you desire.

Struggles happen when there is no passion. You are fighting the war on two fronts – You are pursuing something you tepidly want with the lack of desire that keeps you grinding. That combination has the struggle continue.

“He’s struggling in school.” “She’s struggling in her marriage.” What’s missing? The secret sauce.

I don’t have a secret formula for you to develop passion; I just know that without it you won’t get where you’re going. And even if you do arrive, it won’t feel satisfying without passion.

There will be struggles in life and that’s not a bad thing. Struggles can make us stronger and more savvy about how to handle future ones. But we insure that our struggles will continue, unabated, when we lack passion.

Have you ever noticed that successful people who lack passion are miserable?

There is a difference in simply using the know how and the clout for getting something done and having passion for it. Look at moguls in any field and you will find your share of driven, yet passionless people.

Most of us are not at the point where we can only do what “excites” us, but we must schedule time for those things or we’ll become the dust of the grindstone.

Make time for the things you are passionate about. Don’t put them off as a reward; include them in your daily rituals and let those attendant feelings flood your body. It not only feels teriffic; it serves as a pick-me-up that makes the struggles go more smoothly.

Put a little secret sauce in your day, and you won’t be all work and no play.

All the best,

John

A few years ago The Grasshopper offered up this nip of nectar: “The purpose of being alive is to feel alive.”

It immediately brought up the contrast between existing and living. I’ve done both and living is the hands-down winner.

This goes past upside and downside; they are facts of life – yin and yang – push and pull. Like the poor, they will always be with us.

But both rich and poor have a choice to feel alive no matter what side of up or down they happen to be experiencing.

Feeling alive is feeling. Notice the period after the previous sentence.

We can feel when we are up and we can feel when we are down. Some people bypass their feelings whether up or down. They rarely celebrate even when the upside is present, and they do a lot of talking (complaining) when the downside has the floor. But in neither case do they feel. That’s why they feel dead.

Take time to notice what your body is feeling and you have tapped into your aliveness. We’re alive when we exalt and we’re alive when we cry. We are in limbo when we dismiss or attempt to overpower those feelings with the stoicism of logic or the escapism of denial.

You can’t think your way out of a feeling. It will always be there ready to let you know you are alive. You just have to give it some attention instead of pretending it’s not there.

Remember this: Thoughts are often illusions but feel is always real.

Take the time to feel. It has the Lazarus Effect; it brings you back from the dead.

All the best,

John