Shame is something we bury in the dark corners of our mind with regularity. We don’t bring it out into the light of day where it can soak up the antiseptic rays.

We think our shame is secret because we keep it hidden, but it’s transparent to anyone who’s paying attention.

If someone else besides us dares to notice, our emotions become raw and we feel bare at the ball.

My apologies to Shakespeare but “Holding a candle to someone’s shame can make their temper flame.”

Shame is a delicate area to address as an outsider. Just put yourself in their shoes. Your secret turf has just been invaded and your private parts are now exposed. OMG!

Besides being a warning to those about to tread into a field filled with land mines, let this serve as an opportunity for us to make our shame less volatile by bringing it to the light.

This is a personal project where we view our shame in the light of day where it isn’t as scary as things that go bump in the night. It’s a process, not a one-time intervention. Exposing your shame to the light all at once can be blinding, and if someone else does it, it can send us into a blind rage.

Buried shame keeps us defensive and less open to letting people in. We don’t want them to see our deep dark secret so we deplete our energy by running two lives – the one for public consumption and the one we have to live with.

Getting acquainted with your own shame gives you the courage to move forward and live one life – where one’s candle will be enlightening rather than frightening.

All the best,

John

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I had an interesting idea over the weekend: Living and dying are both happening at the same time, so living is a matter of focus.

We begin to live and die the day we are born. We spend a huge amount of that time paying attention to living and a small portion of time dedicated to dying.

Are we really living, or are we existing for the major portion of our life? I submit that we are existing and the way to morph into living is to die.

Existing is a concept in our head; living is a feeling in our body. The concept has to die in order for us to live.

We return to real living when we exit our head and return to our body. Watch a toddler. They are living. Paraphrasing the Bible: “Unless you become like children, you’ll never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

Living in your head is an existing hell.

You can think about, but not experience a concept. The experience happens when the concept disappears. To experience living more often, we have to die a thousand little deaths. That means to notice that we are attempting to live in our head and shift our attention to our body. Take a moment to focus on the sensations your body is feeling. Every moment spent with what you are sensing allows the concept of living to die.

What does it feel like to be alive for you? Don’t think about it; feel it!

When you contemplate what life should be like, you are just existing. When you shift your attention to the sensations your body actually feels, you start to live again.

Are you living or dying? It’s a simple matter of focus.

All the best,

John

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The Grasshopper’s messages are as abundant as falling leaves these days. Yesterday he invited me to rake this one up: “Growth is outside your comfort zone.”

Comfort zones, no matter how cozy, when rarely left, lead to stagnation and should be labeled what they actually are – Ruts.

What is your comfortable rut?

If you truly want to grow, it won’t be comfortable, at least at first. It may not seem abundantly obvious to someone comforting themselves in a rut, but the antidote to inertia is action.

Growth requires us to step outside of our comfort zone.

There is a man I follow on Twitter – Robert Brault. I started to follow him because of this profound message I saw: “If you don’t decide what your life is about, it defaults to what you spend your days doing.”

If you spend your days inside your comfort zone, your life is decided for you.

Constant comfort leads to atrophy and attrition. You can’t grow when you are bottle fed on comfort; the natural growth nutrients are just not there.

Growth can be scary for someone who has grown accustomed to comfort, but sometimes we have to get scared to get going. The trick is to recognize that taking up permanent residence in our comfort zone has frightening results, and growth leads us away from the haunted house.

Here is a final thought to get comfortable with: Decide to take a step towards growth.

All the best,

John

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I believe we have a misplaced idea about addiction. It’s common thinking that addiction is to something physical – alcohol, drugs, fill in your addiction here ________.

I don’t doubt that there are addictive substances but the more widespread addiction is to an unchangeable ideal. This addiction sits underneath any physical addiction we may have.

Look at two major addictions for evidence – drugs (prescribed or illegal) and alcohol. What are abusers attempting to escape? Pain is the universal answer. A deeper question is: What is causing the pain? The answer is clinging to a seemingly unmovable ideal that there should only be happiness in our lives.

Addicted people have bought into the illusion of sunshine, lollipops and rainbows being the ever-present norm – one they can never reach. No one can.

The Grasshopper reminded us long ago that happiness is not a permanent place of residence when he stated, “If happiness were a town, it would be filled with transients.”

The happiness ideal doesn’t exist and constantly shooting for it will cause us to miss, causing lots of pain that we want to escape from. The addiction is first to the ideal and then to the substance.

Addressing the underlying source of any problem has a much better record of success than addressing only the surface symptoms.

Quoting from a previous blog post: “Everyone feels unhappiness. It’s a state of internal unrest. You wouldn’t be human if you didn’t experience unhappiness. That being said, it’s time to claim ownership of our unhappiness instead of pretending we’re renting it from an evil slumlord.”

Quoting Eckhart Tolle: “The truth is that you need to say yes to suffering before you can transcend it.”

We need to say “No” to the elusive ideal and embrace the poetic reality of Longfellow: “Into each life some rain must fall.”

We are addicted to the ideal of happiness and it causes us undue pain.

Also, ask yourself this: How many times are you happy and you don’t notice? I would offer, more than you think. Reminds me of a story . . .

I was in the pet store picking up some stuffed squeaky toys for Snuffy the Black Nosed Beagle. I have this practice of naming any toy I buy for him with an alliterative name like, “Dino the Dinosaur” or “Carla the Cow.” This day I bought him two – a lion and a dog. I began to name them in my head as I was heading to the checkout. They were “Lenny the Lion” and “Denny the Dog” – Lenny and Denny. The cashier asked me why I was smiling. I didn’t realize it. I just thought I was buying toys for the dog; I had no sense how happy that made me until it was pointed out. I suspect we have many moments like that that don’t make it onto our happiness radar.

So, we shoot for eternal happiness that doesn’t exist and often miss feeling happiness when it makes an appearance. Both practices will keep us in pain longer than is necessary, keeping happiness at arm’s length.

Dismantling the ideal of happiness will have us experience more happiness, as will taking the time to notice and feel happiness when it’s present. These are personal interventions that will help lead you away from addiction.

All the best,

John

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We’ve all heard the axiom “The teacher will be there when the student is ready.” What may not be as obvious is that the teacher’s idea will also be there when we’re ready for it.

I got a musing from The Grasshopper recently that I wouldn’t have been ready for years ago. It wasn’t the validity of the idea that was at issue; it was the readiness of the receiver that was in question. He said, “The things that you do aren’t you.”

Having heard that before I was ready, I would have said that statement flew in the face of personal responsibility. That’s because I had a major misperception about the concept of “you.”

The things that we do, good or bad, are not us; they are our actions. Since our actions emanate from us, it seems like they are us; they aren’t.

“You” is the part of us that observes our actions, not the part of us that participates in the actions.

Think of it like this: We are the person sitting in the theater observing the character who plays us up on stage. We have no idea what they will do or say in advance, but we see and hear everything they do and say. We are observers of our patterns at play.

When we get in the habit of observing our questionable behaviors, as they are happening, we begin to outgrow our habits. “You” is an agent of change, not a collection of conditioned patterns.

This is in no way an absolution from our actions; we are responsible for what we do. It’s a way of allowing the part of us that can effectuate change to notice.

The real you is the observer of behavior, not a participant in it. Once you know there is a part of you that can create change just by noticing, you will be ready for the idea of “The things that you do aren’t you.”

All the best,

John

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The Grasshopper was out walking with me yesterday and offered this observation: “Freedom is giving up control.”

It was eye-opening for me. We often look at freedom exclusively as escaping the control of others, but we rarely look at it from the perspective of giving up control ourselves.

When we let go of the illusion of control, we are free – free to be who we can be, rather than relegated to the narrow options that control offers.

What are we attempting to control? The answer will show you the folly of control. We are attempting to control reality. If you didn’t just laugh at that idea, control has a strangle hold on you, and freedom isn’t even on your radar.

Freedom makes an appearance when we start laughing at the notion of control. Life starts to show up when we loosen our grip on control. Real life doesn’t come to us through a prism of control; we add that prism.

A real life event is something you have the freedom to respond to rather than giving control to an automated reaction.

Attempting to control life is a conditioned, automated reaction that holds freedom hostage.

Real freedom is allowing reality to happen without adding the illusion of control.

If you really want freedom – free to be who you are – gather up your illusion of control and store it away in an imaginary jar.

Real freedom is the ability to respond to reality, not escape it.

Final thought: You can’t control freedom.

All the best,

John

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Outside of being a defendant in a court case or a politician entering a debate, how much time do you spend preparing your defense?

The more time you spend on prepping a defense translates into less time working on what you’re defending yourself against.

What are you preparing your defense against? My guess is it’s the way you handled something that didn’t turn out as well as you would have liked.

You are likely to offer the “if you were in my shoes, you would have done what I’ve done” defense.

My suggestion is to take responsibility for your actions and find a way to move forward to a better outcome.

“It didn’t work out the way I had initially envisioned and here’s my plan to get the desired outcome.” If you make that sort of statement, you can now debate the merits of the plan instead of defending actions that divert attention from taking action.

Listen to your internal conversations as an observer rather than as a participant, and notice how much time you spend defending yourself. You sound like a character from a Law & Order episode.

We are more defending our self-image than we are our actions. We are attempting to defend against what others think of us. Here’s a secret: They are going to think what they think no matter what our defense.

When you catch yourself defending yourself inside your head, just stop the spin and, instead, look for a way to win.

Up until now, you may not have been aware how much time you spend defending yourself, but now that you know, you have an opportunity to choose between “Stop” and “Go.”

You stop action on a solution when you’re in defense mode, and solutions begin to flow when you let your defense go.

All the best,

John

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Thank you for reading my blog. I don’t know who most of you are but sincere thanks to you for reading my stories.

Today marks 5 years of getting insights and putting them down for public consumption.

“Insight” is the operative word about these writings because all but a handful of them are about me.

Gaining insight and sharing it is a very personal experience. I haven’t gained insight into the world until I’ve gained insight into myself.

When I do a self critique of my work, I sometimes get the impression that it sounds “preachy.” In defense, I can tell you, with certainty, that I am preaching to the choir. I am leveling any charge at myself before I offer it to you.

I truly believe that you can’t be right for others until you are on the road to being right with yourself. That is always a journey and never an arrival; that’s why I’ll always have something to write and offer insight about.

I’m looking inside at me and trusting that there is a part of you that can relate to that observation.

When I write “you,” I mean “me.”

I encourage you to write about your insight. It’s soul cleansing of the highest order and if others benefit by it, it’s an added bonus.

Thank you for reading about me and perhaps finding some insight into you that you didn’t previously see.

All the best,

John

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I believe there is a battle going on between “self-righteous” and “getting right” and one is the hands-down winner. Can you guess which one?

Self-righteous is defined as having an unfounded certainty that one is correct or morally superior. Getting right is the absolute certainty that we’re doing it all wrong and acting to counter that certainty.

Self-righteous wins most of the time and, yet, the victories feel hollow because we know we’ve cheated to get the win.

Please don’t begin to count the times you’ve avoided getting right in order to remain self-righteous, because you would spend the rest of your waking days counting. It would be better to notice self-righteous the next time it shows up and interrupt it. That way, we have a chance for getting right to get a few more wins.

Getting right begins with us. We have to get ourselves right before we present ourselves with certainty to others. Too often we let self-righteous pretend to be us and we present a distorted view of the person known as you.

Getting right is based in verifiable certainty. Quoting famed astronomer, Carl Sagan, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”

Self-righteous, by definition, lacks evidence.

Getting right is noticing that we’re playing dodge ball with the evidence, and each time we avoid getting hit, it makes us more self-righteous.

Shifting metaphors, we’ve got to right our own ship before we can sail with any certainty.

Getting right doesn’t mean getting perfect; it means heading in a direction of verifiable certainty.

Getting right requires steps; self-righteous is staying stuck in the smug.

I don’t know what getting right is for you, but you do. If you don’t takes steps in that direction, you’ll remain in a pile of self-righteous do-do.

All the best,

John

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How often do we spend time reinforcing what we know? That’s not learning; that’s practicing what we currently believe.

We are unlikely to learn something new when we postulate what we already know. Reminds me of a story . . .

I listen to a golf analyst on TV who asks the reporters following the players on the course questions he already knows the answers to. In my opinion, he does it in an attempt to appear more knowledgeable in the eye of the viewer. He asks the question as though he doesn’t know the answer and when the reporter validates his observation, he gets his kudos. “Does that putt have about 1 foot of break in it, Bill?’ “Right you are Harry, 1 foot of break.” He does it all the time.

You could argue that he is letting the viewers in on his knowledge of the golf course and adding to their experience, but he’s not learning anything new.

A teacher telling you only what they already know is like a parrot. When they set the environment to one of discovery, you both learn.

Every moment with another living creature can be a learning experience if we shed the mantle of what we know.

What we know gets in the way of what can be known.

When we only impart what we know, it’s a one-way communication – top down, if you will. We are so focused on what we have to say, we miss half of what’s being communicated.

Other people are a learning laboratory. They can teach us so much if we’re willing to become students of human nature.

Know-it-alls are done learning and it’s hard to learn from them because the environment they set has the feel of a long, drawn out sermon. If someone’s making you snooze, you both lose.

If you truly want to learn something new, pay attention to who’s in front of you, then every encounter can be a teachable moment.

All the best,

John

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