Question: Are you happy with your own company? This isn’t a business question.

Can you spend time alone with yourself and not get bored or scared? The answer to that question seems to be a LOUD “NO!”

That’s truly a shame. Most people I know feel compelled to fill up their free time with some sort of activity – exercising, TV watching, web surfing, book reading, busy work and the like.

It seems that most people refuse to spend some of their free time just with their thoughts. That’s because they don’t like what they’re thinking, so they plan an escape.

Your mind is going to be with you around the clock, so it only makes sense to learn how to make peace with your mind so that you can enjoy peace of mind without having to resort to a temporary diversion.

“I have to keep working to keep my mind off of it” is something we’ve all heard or said, or both. That’s like burying a camel under the rug and not expecting to see the hump.

“It” will be there until you spend time with “it.” “It” is like the proverbial bad penny – it’s coming back.

Spending time with “It” and letting it have its say, keeps the repeat visits to a minimum allowing you more peaceful thoughts or no thoughts at all. There’s no reason for a diversion because you are at peace with your mind.

Observing your mind at work, like an onlooker rather than as a participant, is a step towards a more peaceful you – a you you’ll want to spend time with.

The secret to peace of mind is discovering that your thoughts are not you. They pretend to be you. In fact, there are so many of them pretending, it’s like being at an Elvis look-alike convention.

Take time to observe the show going on in your mind. It’s pretty entertaining once you realize its not real.

Once you observe your thoughts at play, they take the show on the road rather than stay. This frees you up to spend pleasant time with you, and not scurrying around looking for something to do.

All the best,

John

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It dawned on me that there are traditions worth holding on to and those that would be useful to outgrow. How do you tell the difference?

Answer the question with this question: Is a tradition holding back your growth?

There are rites of passage and rites we need to get passed. Getting stuck in the “right” way of doing things can lead to a life of resisting rather than one of living.

It’s worth recognizing that a tradition is a rite that may not be right for you.

Do you always vote a straight ticket? – not one with gays on the ballot 😉

Do you have to date or marry someone of your Faith? Race? Ethnic Background? Culture?

Do you worship the “one true” God?

It’s difficult to grow when you exclude so many options.

Growth is an uncomfortable passage that leads to a more comfortable existence because so many things no longer require your resistance.

It takes energy to resist an evolving world and the outcome is always the same; you’re left behind looking for someone to blame.

A final thought on “should, must and ought”: You don’t have to give up your principles; just examine them and find out if they’re really yours, or just an inherited rite that may be dead wrong.

All the best,

John

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Back in my radio days, we used to have a feature called “Battle of the Bands.” We would play two songs and ask you to call in and vote for which one you liked better. Then the winner of that round would compete against another song. After several rounds, we would declare the song left standing as the winner.

There are two competing ideas out there now and the one with the better PR is winning peoples’ minds but not their hearts. The ongoing battle is between “You are what you think” and “Your thinking is not who you are.”

The one that has won over peoples’ minds is “You are what you think.” The problem is that your heart is not happy with that choice. Yes, you’ve given it lip service but in your heart you know differently.

There is a compelling argument for the “think” crowd and this is it: You are if you think you are. “If you think you can’t, you can’t” is a popular placard at the “Think” parade.

The hole that can easily be poked in that argument is this: “If you think you can’t, you can’t – until you stop thinking about it.”

When you interrupt the thinking of whether you can or can’t, your heart gets a say as to whether you will.

Thinking will keep you arguing for your point and suspend action on any endeavor.

We have been conditioned to think things over. That means we have been conditioned to delay moving forward.

If you examine decisions you have made, you will discover that there is a part of you that makes decisions independent of your thinking. Let’s call it your heart. We have been brainwashed that our ritual of thinking is responsible for our decisions. Thinking and deciding are two different trains running on independent tracks.

Here’s a BIG secret: Thinking won’t affect your deciding, but what you decide will affect your thinking. You’ll finally be struck with the thought that your thinking is a side show that diverts your attention away from deciding.

You may have to be weaned away from thinking things over, so here’s a strategy: Set aside X amount of minutes dedicated to thinking things over. When the buzzer goes off, off comes your thinking cap. Then go do something that requires all your attention. (cutting onions with a very sharp knife comes to mind for me).

When your attention is dedicated to something other than your thinking, your heart can do its work and set the decision machine in motion.

“Thinking leads to deciding” is a superstition that’s no different than the schoolyard refrain: “if you step on a crack, you’ll break your mother’s back.”

You may have thought yourself into the idea that you are what you think, but notice there is a part of you that’s totally uncomfortable with that notion. It intuitively knows that your thinking is masquerading as you and has nothing to do with what you decide to do.

All the best,

John

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One of the best lessons I’ve learned so far is about fluidity. “Go with the Flow” fits well on a bumper sticker or motivational poster but like most platitudes, it lacks direction.

The alchemy for flow is more complicated than changing whine into water; it’s changing solidity into fluidity.

Here are the directions:

Notice the solidity of any idea, pattern or belief that you have. “I’m a whig, I come from a long line of whigs and, by God, I’m not flipping my wig and changing now.”

Now that you’ve noticed your rock solid belief, look for the porosity it contains. Look at it from the angle of someone who owns a different perspective. What you’ll see is what you see when you examine a picture in a newspaper with a magnifying glass – a bunch of dots surrounded by space. That’s noticing porosity.

If you’ve ever had a stopped up sink, it was probably due to a build up of solids – stuff that solidified at the bend in the pipe. There is no flow in that situation. You may have reached for something like Drano to permeate the porosity of the solid and transform it into smaller pieces so that it could break up and flow away.

Noticing the porosity of your position is an agent of change. Spoiler Alert: The noticing needs more than one application to change solidity into fluidity.

But before you notice the porosity, you have to have the realization that your ability to flow is clogged with solids. You are clogging your own drain with solids that have collected in your brain.

Look at the physical rigidity of someone who has a lot of rules. The solidity of their beliefs is playing havoc with their body. The remedy is noticing the porosity of each rule by examining it a bit more close up. But before you can do that, you have to notice that you’re stiff as a board.

Noticing is the agent of change when it comes to removing the solids in your drain.

Notice, first, that your way isn’t working, and then notice the porosity. With repeated application, this practice changes solidity into fluidity.

All the best,

John

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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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