It may seem obvious to you but it recently dawned on me that curiosity leads to creativity.

I will admit there are many who are more curious than me. I admire them, but up until recent years, I haven’t emulated them.

If you want creativity to show up, it’s quite useful and, dare I say, downright necessary to get curious.

It seems to me that curiosity is the fuse that ignites creativity or causes you to create things.

I think of my father who was always curious about how things worked. He built everything from cabinets to skyscrapers. I was much less curious. I sought information but never delved deeply into it. It hampered my ability to create. I was at the hand holding stage with curiosity; my father, on the other hand, was married to it.

I don’t know how the switch happened but I’m much more curious these days and a lot more creative than I’ve ever been. They seem to go hand-in-hand.

When you’re curious, you open up a lot more circuitry in your brain. You add possibility to uncertainty. The opposite is also accurate. When you aren’t curious, your ability to create gets stuck and your lack of thirst to know won’t allow you to grow.

When we think we know enough, we close off our curiosity and, thus, our creativity.

The good news is that curiosity is a transferable skill. That means that you can get curious about anything and the creative benefits stream into all areas of your life, not just what you were curious about.

You become more creative in areas where creativity previously was absent.

If you aren’t feelng very creative in your life, may I recommend a dose of curiosity. A small amount will get you started. Once you get a taste of the advantages it delivers, you’ll schedule more time for curiosity.

If I put bumper stickers on my car, this would be the one I’d affix: GET CURIOUS!

All the best,

John

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I am writing this on a Friday and TGIF popped into my head. It seems to have more meaning than the traditional usage today. Perhaps it’s an alternate acronym.

TGIF – The Gut Isn’t Fallable.

Sensations lose their meaning when they are subject to interpretation. A raw sensation is reality which has no opposite, no spin or no alternate meaning.

Gut feelings (sensations) are not debated before they are expressed – only opinions and theories go through that process.

What is your gut communicating that you keep ignoring while your head is busy weaving a story?

We know immediately when something’s not OK, but we often debate that feeling in an attempt to make it go away.

We also know when something is “right without rules” – translation: OK. If you need a rule to validate a gut feeling, you are about to pollute the raw sensation that’s being sent.

Whether you are reading this on Friday or not, make the effort to calibrate your own “Cold” and “Hot.”

Then you’ll be able to separate your sensations from your thoughts about them. It short-circuits endless debate, and you can move more quickly to a solution, rather than living in fear of retribution.

All the best & TGIF,

John

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Have you ever played the “What would you do?” game?

What would you do if you won the big lottery jackpot?

What would you do if your mother and your girlfriend were drowning and you could only save one?

What would you do if you if you found out your boss was stealing money from the company, but if you told, you’d have to give back the giant raise you just received?

I’m sure your questions could be more creative than the ones I’ve offered, but what is the point of the game? It’s to have you envision yourself in an unlikely situation and predict what you would do.

You may think you know what you would do, but that is only theoretical. What you would actually do when actually faced with those circumstances may be a lot different than you think.

So what?

It’s my assertion that we too often think our way through life rather than live our lives.

That means we are dancing in our imagination and not stepping out on the dance floor.

What have you been daydreaming about for decades that you’ve never made one attempt at? That’s escapism of the highest order. You are postponing living waiting to hit the big jackpot. You have a better chance of seeing the “Great Pumpkin” on halloween.”

I think daydreaming is a wonderful thing to do to bring moments of pleasure our way. If it becomes a way of life, you have no life.

Like The Grasshopper told us earlier this year, “Life is a contact sport.” That means you actually have to rub up against life to feel alive.

The question isn’t “What would you do?”; the question is “What are you doing?”

What are you doing to make that dream come true? What steps are you taking right now?

If you’re not moving in the direction of your dream, it’s a pipe dream, and continuing to play “What would you do?” is a surefire way to make sure it never comes true.

All the best,

John

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Are you the next thing on the schedule? Is someone next on your schedule?

Scheduling is an organizing tool that gets things done but can also remove the feeling of importance from you or someone else.

When you are on a schedule, there is a time constraint put on you or another, and the ability to explore whatever is scheduled more deeply is missed.

Scheduling serves a wonderful purpose. It keeps our trains, buses and planes on time and it allows businesses and households to function more smoothly. Where scheduling gets in the way is when you feel you are being squeezed into someone’s day.

The formula for failure seems to be: Treating X like it’s the next thing on the schedule rather than X being the schedule.

It’s a matter of attention. If you are scheduled, your attention is more on your schedule than it is on the person who is scheduled.

Physicians are accused of this all the time and, frankly, many I’ve experienced are guilty as charged. But this isn’t a rant on doctors.

The ability to have your attention on whom you are with when you are with them keeps your focus on them and scheduling becomes invisible. It’s still there in the background, but it doesn’t get in the way of a connection. The interesting thing is that when you give your full attention, the interaction often comes in ahead of schedule.

This works with tasks as well as it does people. Giving your full attention to the task at hand has it happen in less time than it would if you’re also focused on the next scheduled event.

If you’re looking for a good example of task focus with people who have a busy schedule, I invite you to watch a pharmacist work. Most of the ones I’ve witnessed have laser focus when filling a prescription. It must be something they’re taught in school. It results in fewer mistakes and they stay on schedule.

Here’s my final thought on today’s schedule: If you are doing important work or you want to convey importance to someone you are working with, give it or them your undivided attention. Translation: Make attention the only thing on your schedule.

All the best,

John

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It seems to me that there is a lot of waiting in life – waiting for something to happen.

What are you waiting for?

It may not be the case with you, but generally what I find is that when I say, “I’m waiting for _____,” it’s often an excuse for me not to take action.

Let’s pretend you want to paint a room and you have ordered a special paintbrush you want to use but it hasn’t arrived yet. “I’m waiting for the paintbrush” is a legitimate thing to say. But there are countless other things you can do to make this project go smoothly in the meantime – Tape the ceiling, assembling the drop cloths, paint cans and rollers, etc.

We wait to do those things and when the paintbrush does arrive, the project is a mountain to climb rather than just some walls to paint.

The paintbrush is a metaphor for what you’re waiting for.

What are you not doing while you’re waiting for something to happen?

Have you noticed that “not doing” takes on a life of its own and we justify that life by saying “I’m waiting.”

Here’s a secret others may not share with you: The thing you’re waiting for may never happen. That means that you have suspended living until what you are waiting for arrives. That means you are merely existing.

Being patient and waiting are not the same thing. There is a knowing behind patience – knowing that what you want will happen if you’re willing to give it the time that’s necessary.

Waiting, on the other hand, is just a giant pause with no guarantee. It’s a maybe at best.

What you’re waiting for may truly be worth it, but what you do while you are waiting either contributes to you or it doesn’t. If you’re “on hold” during this time, so is your life. I can tell you from experience that it’s not a pleasant feeling. A life spent in waiting is a life waiting to die.

What can you do to live?

I don’t know the answer for you, but I suspect it’s the same one I found: Do anything other than wait.

If you’re waiting for the paintbrush, your life may be dead, or, in the meantime, live a little and paint the town red.

All the best,

John

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The words, “Need to know” popped into my head when I opened my word processor this morning, so I haven’t a clue where this goes. Buckle your seatbelt and let’s take an off-road adventure together and see where we go.

My sense is that “Need to know” is sensitive or privileged information that is given to only a few.

The question I have is: Why was I kept out of that loop?

Am I too dense to comprehend the information? Am I a blabbermouth? Does it not concern me in the least? Am I not to be trusted with it?

Those are all thoughts that get in the way of me knowing what others already know. If I’m too focused on my thoughts about why I was left out, I’m ignoring the actions that others are taking who got this secret information.

Perhaps you never got the money memo. You know, the one that tells you how to make money. Since you were not on the need to know list, there is another way. Find the people who are making money and find out what they do and do it.

It also works in reverse. Suppose your parents were overweight and you are overweight as well. You did get the overweight memo, but you don’t want to be heavy. Reverse the role modeling – See what your parents do/did and don’t do that.

There are no secrets to success; there are plans and actions that will get you to a specific destination. You just have to find and follow them.

The finding is easy. Find someone who has what you want and find out their formula. Autobiographies are filled with such information. Informational interviews with successful folks is another avenue. Most successful people I know are willing to share their strategies. You just have to ask.

Following is where our efforts fall apart. Look at the typical gym membership. You found the neighbor who is in the shape you want to be in. You got their formula directly from them and you headed off to the same gym. The difference? You may not have followed through.

Follow-through is a quality of all successful people. It’s the secret formula in all the “need to know” memos.

Now you know. So every excuse you make from this point forward just shines a spotlight on your failure to follow through.

Plans without follow-through are dreams that die.

Following through is a habit. It’s one worth developing. It’s a transferable skill, so you can practice it in any area of your life and it will transfer over to other areas as well.

That means to find something small and follow through on it. Then find another small desire and follow through on that too. You are developing the habit of following through. It may seem that you are working on something too small to make a difference until you do it often enough that it begins to show up in bigger areas of your life.

Success sneaks up on you when you follow through. This is something I thought you needed to know.

All the best,

John

It can easily be argued that you are the sum total of your patterns. Your behavioral routines determine what you do and you are an amalgam of those repeated deeds, indeed.

But just like there are different ways to score your credit, there is another way to add up who you are – Subtraction.

Patterns are addition. Many of them are no longer useful or productive, yet we still run them every day.

We and our collected patterns are one in the eyes of the beholder. They can’t see the difference between the authentic you and the conditioned you. That’s because they too have summed up that they are their patterns.

We learn addition first so it’s quite natural to assume it’s the most important piece of life’s math. It’s more foundational than it is important. We cannot appreciate subtraction without first learning addition, sort of like not knowing “down” until we have a sense of “up.”

Once we learn that we are not what we have added to ourselves, it’s time to begin the process of subtraction. Subtraction takes you back to basics – back to an unadulterated you.

Subtraction begins by noticing what is no longer working for you. Just like a comedian who made you laugh with jokes he told 20 years ago, those same jokes now make you cringe. If he doesn’t notice and keeps telling them, the joke’s on him.

What collected pieces of behavior are defining you? It’s prudent to do an inventory. Some of those pieces are essential to functioning well in life, hang on to those. Other pieces are just additional baggage; those need a minus sign in front of them.

Subtraction leads you back to you – a beacon of light that wants to shine through.

Too much addition keeps the window to the soul covered over. Notice what additions are adding to your darkness and get curious about what no longer adds up.

It seems counter-intuitive at first, but subtraction adds to life’s score.

All the best,

John

One thing you will know for sure if you hear someone offer the platitude, “Forgive and forget” is that they are swimming upstream.

One of my pet peeves is that many people, some who should know better, offer advice without direction. “Forgive and forget” falls into that category.

Forgiveness is not something that you can consciously do. You can set an intention to forgive yourself or someone else, but you can’t just make it happen by saying so. Forgiveness, as I’ve written about before, is like the Christian concept of grace. It comes to you when it comes, not when you consciously decide.

How many people have you stated you’ve forgiven but haven’t? That’s because the feeling of forgiveness hasn’t arrived yet. If you could aver your way to forgiveness, there would be a lot more of it present. From my vantage point, that is not the case.

Forgetting is also not possible unless you are mentally impaired.

You are not going to forget something, especially something that caused you any sort of pain. The memory will be there as long as you have a memory.

So what are the directions to forgive and forget?

Willingness and updating your response.

Willingness is the catalyst that sets a process in motion. Once you are willing for something to happen, it has a much better chance of happening. You just can’t state willingness; you have to be open to it.

It’s like trying something new. “Ugh, I’ll never eat sushi” is an unwillingness. If you ask, “What’s the harm in trying?”, you have experienced the act of being willing.

Willingness is necessary to open the door to forgiveness. It’s not a guarantee, but you have just exponentially increased the odds of forgiveness walking into your life.

Again, regarding forgetting, you’ll never forget, but you can update your response to that unforgettable event.

The moment is a stimulus and “not forgetting” is your reaction to that moment. What if you could choose a different response? Would that be helpful? You bet.

Our mind updates things all the time. Look back on some pictures of you in high school and notice the clothing, hairstyle or adornments you had going on. You laugh. Those things were very appropriate for you then but not now. You didn’t forget them; You outgrew them. You’ve updated your response to those memories.

Not forgetting is living now like it’s still then.

Updating your response begins by noticing that it’s now, not then.

Ask any therapist about the number of clients still reacting to long dead parents as though they are here now.

That memory contains pain. There is a way to outgrow the pain. I learned the following technique from Dr. Dave Dobson. He would ask a client to rehearse themselves over and over again in a sensation that was pleasant to them so they could produce that sensation at a moment’s notice. Then he would ask them to retrieve the unpleasant sensation that went along with the problematic memory. The second they felt the unpleasant sensation, they were to call up the pleasant sensation. He would have them do this over and over again.

The results were amazing. After some practice, the pleasant sensation replaced the unpleasant one automatically. By doing the exercise, they updated their response or, as I like to say, “they outgrew it.”

If, after reading this post, you still choose to live in past pain, please be willing to forgive me for offering a strategy to try, and forget that I mentioned it.

All the best,

John

“Good, Better, Best” discussions will always be arguments without winners because all those terms describe opinions.

But we DO deem people as better than us in certain areas and our opinion is backed up by lots of other opinions and it almost seems like the truth.

What makes someone better in our opinion? There are lots of answers to that question – education, skill, know-how, intelligence, practice, stick-to-itiveness, etc. We can go down a number of paths to pursue an answer.

The answer I continually come up with is passion. When I judge someone better than me at something we have relatively equal skills and knowledge about, I find passion at the core of their “betterness.”

My hobby is photography. I’ll never be as good as some people I’ve encountered with more, equal or less skills than me because I lack their passion. They eat, drink and sleep photography, but for me it’s just something I like a lot.

Passion will make you better.

So the objective is to find your passion and you’ll find that you get better.

As Robert Frost offered in his poem, “Two Tramps In Mud Time“:

My object in living is to unite

As my two eyes make one in sight.

Passion is a uniting force and provides focus to your skill set.

If you’re the competitive type, passion, over time, will lead you to more wins than skill ever will. Skills will diminish but passion has staying power. Pursue your passion and watch yourself leave others with more skills in the dust.

But in the end, it’s not about winning per se, it’s about feeling better about yourself at the end of the day. Passion is the elixir that makes that happen.

All the best,

John

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The Grasshopper introduced me to a new Latin phrase: “Quid Pro NO.”

It didn’t take long for me to catch on to his message. We all know people whom we do lots of things for and when we ask them for something, they are too quick to say “No.”

If you are a parent, you implicitly appreciate this concept, especially if you have a 2 year old or teenagers. It’s next to impossible to get them to do things that you want done. It’s easier to get a bill through congress.

Simply put, they have no appreciation for your efforts on their behalf. The good news is most of us outgrow this behavior, but some of us don’t and just don’t reciprocate to others that often.

Reminds me of a story . . .

Years ago, I went out of my way to hire a person for a radio job. I had to lobby heavily to get them the position. There was lots of resistance from my boss to add to the payroll. I was persistent because I knew this person was a perfect fit for what we were doing. Their salary instantly doubled and they got raises each year. This broadcaster had all the raw personality to excel in this position and was coached heavily to succeed.

The story has two endings. One, this person was a great hire and turned out to be all that I expected and then some. The second ending had me being downsized (fired) from that position 3 years after that hire. When the news spread throughout the building, people I only knew casually came by and offered their words of consolation. When this person dropped by, the only thing they said was, “I just heard the news; that sucks” and then went on their way. If it was 15 seconds, it was a long time.

It bothered me.

I got to wondering about what it is that blinds adults to express gratitude and reciprocate to people who do much for them. I must not have been the only one who was wondering, otherwise we would never have gotten Mother’s Day as a holiday.

I’ve found that reciprocation is a two-way street but not for one-way people.

I guess the message is to notice “Quid Pro NO” in ourselves because we all do it from time to time. Perhaps it comes from some sense of entitlement that we’ve acquired along the way, or maybe it stems from not being taught the art of reciprocation. The origin of our behavior isn’t important; the expression of gratitude and the act of reciprocation is.

Each time we fail to reciprocate or express gratitude, we throw salt in the wound of unacknowledgement – a fate worse than death.

In closing, here’s a sublime rhyme: If someone has put something nice on your plate, remember to reciprocate.

All the best,

John

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