No doubt, life has its ups and downs. Most of it, though, happens in the middle.

I remember having yo-yos as a kid. My brother Billy was a Duncan Yo-Yo competition winner. The best I could do was “walk the dog” or “rock the baby in the cradle” once in a while.

But they were my accomplishments and I pooh-poohed them. I didn’t take notice of the good feelings I experienced because I was too busy comparing my accomplishments to others.

Comparison is a head trip; feeling your accomplishment is an in-body experience.

How many things do you accomplish in a day that you don’t take time to feel? You may judge them as unimportant, yet you accomplished something.

What if you started to celebrate your accomplishments by feeling each one when it’s completed? You would begin a pattern of feeling the middle ground and by doing so, the bulk of your life becomes more pleasant.

Your accomplishment may be mundane in your mind, but if you take the time to feel it in your body, people will want to know your yo-yo tips and tricks.

Suppose one of your to-do items is to make school lunches for your children. You could turn that into a feeling of accomplishment just by taking the time to notice your achievement and let it register in your body. The same goes for filling up the dog’s water bowl.

It only takes a moment to notice and feel. It brings you back to experiencing your life rather than viewing it through the unrewarding prism of comparison.

Bottom line: You’re not using the middle ground to your best advantage if you’re just yo-yoing between the highs and lows.

All the best,

John

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I’ve heard people say they want to leave a legacy when they leave this earth, or maybe even before.

I have a different suggestion. Leave a proverb.

Look how long they last.

Aesop left us a ton of them.

• Don’t count your chickens before they are hatched

• Honesty is the best policy

• Look before you leap

• A man is known by the company he keeps

• Share and share alike

What if you could come up with one? Wouldn’t that be fun?

What’s your proverb?

What are you learning in this life that you can pass on in bite-sized form?

I’m not asking you to come up with a book, a short story, a poem or an essay. I’m suggesting that you leave a proverb – something that when digested sticks to your ribs.

It’s got to be pithy. (That word always sounds like you’re lisping when you say it aloud).

It’s got to be deeper than a mom or dad-ism or a joke you’re famous for telling. It’s got to be universal and memorable enough to cross the centuries.

Whether you come up with one or not, it’s the pursuit of this endeavor that delivers focus. You get to find out the lesson that’s most important for you to learn.

Here’s my candidate for a proverb: Know nothing; learn everything.

I sincerely doubt it’s going to be one of the most memorable ones, but it’s meaningful to me. Crafting my proverb tells me that whatever I “know” is getting in the way of me knowing more. I, like you, shut down when I know. My curiosity takes a long nap and I miss a lot.

I request that you put together a proverb. If nothing else, it will show you what’s important to you and illustrate the lesson you want to learn in this life.

Who knows, perhaps your proverb will be the one they’ll be citing centuries from now.

All the best,

John

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I’ve had a phrase pestering me for the past 3 days. It kept coming back, so I knew I would have to flesh it out. The words were, “Schedule it.”

It seems to me that when something shows up on a schedule that it is real. When it stays in your mind as unscheduled, it’s a nagging thought.

This is more than making a list; it’s making something important enough to be scheduled as an event.

Just making a list becomes a list of “shoulds,” and “should” just reflects an argument you are having in your mind.

“Schedule it” contains action. In fact, when you are scheduling things, use an action verb as the first word of your scheduled item.

• Call the plumber for an estimate.

• Plan the surprise party.

• Scan the old photographs.

On the surface, it looks like a to-do list with action verbs and that’s partly correct. The bigger part is that you’ve made the effort to get something out of your mind and into the light of day. It’s here that action is assigned, rather than remaining an idle thought in your mind.

Years ago, my wife and I did the following exercise from time to time. We sat with a note pad and went through every room in the house in our minds and put down what each of us would like to do with that room. Paint, refurnish, rearrange, tear down a wall, etc. It could easily be mistaken as a wish list, but what these fantasies became, when scheduled, was an action list.

I would like to tell you that we acted on everything on the list, but that would be a lie. But action did take place on some of them – action that would have remained dormant had we not scheduled it.

There is power in scheduling things. “Schedule it” is an action that leads to action.

Don’t take my word for it. Schedule some things. Take what’s been rolling around in your mind and schedule it for some action. Even if you tuck that list away somewhere, when you rediscover it months later, notice the number of scheduled things that got action. You will surprise yourself.

“Schedule it” is a tiny action that tricks inertia into movement.

All the best,

John

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I’ve done my share of wishing in this lifetime, and like you, I’ve found that it’s a pretty poor strategy. That, however, doesn’t keep us from continuing to wish.

I know I’ve quoted a bank slogan I heard many times growing up that points out the ineffectiveness of the wish: “Wishing won’t do it; saving will.”

But there is new hope for wishing. I have discovered a way to get what you wish for and I’m about to share this universal secret with you.

Before I reveal the secret, I have a question. Did you ever notice that you do get what you don’t wish for? That’s valuable to notice because now you have two categories for wishes – what you do and don’t wish for. That narrows things down.

Now that we know we can categorize wishes, it’s time to create a new category, and time to unveil the secret. The new category is “all wishes.” It encompasses everything in one tidy package.

Now that we have one category, it’s time to let you in on the secret. To get what you wish for, wish for what you have.

Eureka!

It’s another way of stating the Buddha’s observation on reality: “Everything is as it should be.”

What you do and don’t wish for are all in the realm of mathematical probability. The odds are the only thing at issue. The odds are always in your favor if you wish for what you have.

Wishing could be another word for noticing. If you notice what you have, you’ll be grounded in reality. It’s from a reality base that we can better chart a course for true north. If we plot a course from where we’re not, our odds for getting what we wish for remain anemic.

When you change the definition of wishing from maybe to always, you’ll start to notice where you truly are vs. where you wish you were.

It’s from this vantage point of reality that we can start building a bridge across the “abyss of wish” to our pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

All the best,

John

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The Grasshopper hasn’t been around for a while. That usually happens when I get caught up in my life story instead of experiencing my life.

But there he was on my doorstep in the quiet of the early morning with this gem: “Facts change, wisdom doesn’t.”

Facts and circumstances are always in abundance but wisdom is scarce, especially when you give too much weight to the things that will weigh you down.

I coined a phrase back in the 90s. I called it “Of this world.” It was the observation I made when I noticed someone caught in the trap of their thoughts. You could easily see the manifestation on their face. There was noticeable pain caused by the current set of facts and circumstances they were wrestling with inside their head, which eventually spewed out of their mouth for public consumption.

Wisdom arrives when there is an absence of facts. That’s because wisdom runs on a separate track from facts and figures. It’s the part of you that quietly figures stuff out. The process never changes. Get quiet and get wise.

Notice that a new set of facts can get you to go off in countless directions. Wisdom always comes from the same place.

Wisdom is not a set of 1-2-3 directions but the process that delivers actionable information.

Wisdom also delivers the ability not to act, or better put, “react.”

Wisdom is not reactive; it’s responsive. If a fact makes you predictably react, you are acting on your knowledge. If a fact causes a pause in your thought process, you’re more likely to come up with a wise response.

There is a choice point where you can decide to go to your limited container of facts and figures or delve deeper into your reservoir of responses.

It’s from this deeper place that wisdom arrives. The facts and figures of yesterday will come and go but the wisdom of right now will always be constant. You can’t get to it if you’re constantly trying to figure things out.

Take a break from your facts and circumstance today and give your wisdom an opportunity to come out and play.

All the best,

John

Years ago, my friend Paul and I taught a course in communication. I was responsible for the non-verbal portion of the class and Paul taught the public speaking section.

I remember him teaching the class about the value of a pause. A pause allows time for the message you’ve just delivered to sink in and adds emphasis to it. A well placed pause also sets up the “pay off” idea or, for comedians, the punchline.

The pause even has a greater use when you apply it to your own life.

Pausing before you speak or act has been a learning experience for me. It’s an ongoing lesson but each time I remember to apply it, it pays dividends.

Culturally we are conditioned to have an instant answer. If we don’t, we may be judged as “slow on the uptake.” Men, more than women, have been brought up with the idea that we have to know and we have to know now. That’s why there are more male than female stutterers. “Out with it” is a high volume phrase that has produced more stutterers than you can imagine.

The problem is that the instant answer, too often, doesn’t answer the problem. Take the couple driving around looking for a location. If we have a culturally conditioned “must know” man behind the wheel, he’s likely not going to stop and ask for directions. “Don’t worry, I’ll get us there” is his response to a plea to stop and ask. A half hour later they are still lost.

He didn’t take time to pause.

Not only will pausing keep you from saying or doing something stupid, it has a bigger payoff than that. The pause in a high percentage of situations delivers a much better answer – one that you wouldn’t have received unless you paused.

Recondition yourself to pause more often before jumping into action or giving your instant answer. The pause will open the door to more possibilities and directions, and you won’t have to make as many course corrections.

All the best,

John

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Who can’t recite their top 5 missed opportunities in life? Given the opportunity to think about them, notice how easily they come to the surface.

Then after we list them, we play the game of going back in time and conjuring up what we could have done differently to seize those opportunities.

We flagellate and aggravate each time we go back and play out the ridiculous to the sublime in our mind. Here’s what we don’t realize when we’re doing that: We’re missing current opportunities.

We think opportunities are as scarce as cabs on a rainy night in New York City. The opposite is true; opportunities are a continuous stream. We don’t see them because we’re too focused on a place where they don’t exist – in the past.

I will grant you this: The same opportunity you missed may never come back around again, but you’ll never see what may be a better opportunity if you don’t climb out of the past.

I’m reminded of one of my favorite missed opportunity quotes from the ancient Persian Poet, Rumi: “Don’t grieve for what doesn’t come. Some things that don’t happen keep disasters from happening.”

What if you woke up everyday with the idea that opportunity is waiting for you to wake up? How would that one simple assumption change your focus from past to present and open your eyes to opportunity?

Make that one subtle shift in attention and it won’t be too long before you see, the ever-present world of opportunity.

All the best,

John

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I really don’t know where this is going, so let’s take this thrill ride together. Buckle up!

I got an email from someone who wrote that he didn’t get what he ordered. I checked the order and noticed that the email address he put on the order form and the address on the email he just sent me were one letter off. A quick fix.

It got me to thinking how often we may be one letter off in life and not getting what we believe we ordered. I remember taking a computer course in college in writing computer language. You could write the simplest, coded instruction, and if it was one letter off, it wouldn’t work. Quite frustrating as I remember.

It occurs to me that the word “Scared” and the word “Sacred” are one letter off. What sacred thing are you seeking that you’re scared that you’re not going to get?

For some, it’s life after death. On my list of 500 things to be scared of, that checks in at about 498. I’m more scared that I’m not living the life I have now. After all, doesn’t one of the sacred proverbs remind us that “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush”?

Are you putting off the sacred now for a future that may not exist? That’s scary!

The only living you can be assured of is the living you are doing now. How well are you living? I’m not referring to “high on the hog” living, but the living that comes from enjoying the life you currently have. It’s the only one you know for sure that you’ll get. I hope that doesn’t scare you, unless it scares you into living now.

I’m not sure this went anywhere, but it certainly crystalized for me that the scary future can be neutralized by living in the sacred now.

All the best,

John

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The Grasshopper gave me a new definition for illusion: “The space between is and isn’t.”

A standard light switch is either on or off. There is no in-between. Binary code used in computers is made up of 1s and 0s. There is no in-between number.

In every moment, something is either happening or it isn’t. We enter the make believe world of illusion when we pretend something is when it isn’t or isn’t when it is.

There is no real estate between is and isn’t. Every time we claim there is, we get a deed to illusion.

A text book example of this phenomenon is a statement like: “This can’t be happening.” Any examination of the facts will illustrate that it either is or isn’t happening. One cannot be present when the other is there.

What’s happening in your life that you claim isn’t happening? That’s illusion and its rhyming cousin, delusion. What’s not happening in your life that you claim is? Again, Illusion & Company.

“Shouldn’t” and “Ought” are telltale signs that you have left the realm of reality known as is or isn’t.

“My students shouldn’t be acting up; they ought to be doing what I say.” They are either acting up or they are not. They are either doing what you request or they are not. There is no middle position.

“Try” is another middle ground word. “I’m trying to lose weight.” It’s either happening or it isn’t. “Try” will transport you from reality to illusion quicker than you can count from 0 to 1.

Is or isn’t are great calibration tools. They, with pinpoint accuracy, will show you where you currently are. Then you can plot a course to where you want to go. If you map out your plan from a place that doesn’t exist, your chance of getting where you want to go is someplace between 1 and 0.

Our illusions result in contusions. To become less black and blue, validate that there’s no in-between position for you.

All the best,

John

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We all know what throwing gasoline on a fire does; it fuels the fire. Thinking about an emotion does the same thing.

When you talk to yourself inside your head (think) about your emotions, you fire them up while you burn yourself down.

The Grasshopper interrupted me with this during an emotional fueling session the other day: “Feel the emotion; don’t fuel it.”

Feeling an emotion is an in-body experience. That means you have to get out of your head to feel it.

As long as you fuel the emotional fire with thought, it will continue to burn out of control.

When you begin to focus on the sensations in your body that the emotion is producing, you extricate yourself from the flames of thought and the mental fire starts to burn out. This practice will not only calm you, it keeps your brain from getting fried.

Answer this question: What makes you feel worse, being physically tired or mentally tired? I’m betting you answered mentally tired. Mental tiredness is a direct result of inflammatory thinking. It takes its toll.

When you’re upset and notice yourself fueling that upset with thoughts to justify it, stop the train of thought by locating the sensation in your body. I guarantee you it’s there. The sensation usually registers somewhere along the midline of your body – from your throat to your bowels and everywhere in between.

When you find the sensation (tense throat, constricted chest, tight stomach, gurgling bowels or whatever sensation that goes on with you), take the time to feel it in your body, not talk about it in your head.

This one direct action on your part will begin to metabolize the emotion and its flames will die out.

When you catch yourself thinking about how bad things are in your head, feel the sensations in your body instead. When you focus on the fire in your belly, you snuff out the causative flames in your mind. It’s not too long afterward that the smoke clears and you can see your way through.

Practice this technique when your dealing with just a small campfire so you can see its effectiveness. Then when your own the practice, you’ll have the training to deal with a 4-alarm fire.

All the best,

John