“Follow the Leader,” like many maxims, can cut both ways. If the leader you are following is heading off a cliff, it’ll be the last old adage you’ll ever utter.

The Grasshopper offered this alternative this morning when he said, “Follow in the fruitful steps of those who came before you and you will lead by example.”

So how do you know who to follow? In all cases, you initially have no choice. We follow the shapers of our beliefs – our early care givers, and we adopt their beliefs as our own. And all of this is done without our permission. We are like little apes and we mimic what we see and hear until it becomes who we are.

That means we were exposed to all the “good” and “bad” our leaders had to offer.

There comes a point, if you’re paying attention, when you discover that many of your beliefs aren’t serving you; you are serving them. That means if you continue that belief, you will walk off the same cliffs some of your leaders did.

Suppose for example that your leaders had a “there’ll never be enough to go around” mindset, or one that communicates that people with a lot of money have character flaws. What do you think the chances of your bank account dropping into the ravine are? Pretty good would be my guess.

Choice is always an option. You can choose to play follow the wrong leader, which are your beliefs that aren’t working, OR you can begin to notice those beliefs when they rise up and interrupt them in midstream.

Here is your first clue that you are blinded to choice: When you say any form of “That’s the way I am.” Sad to admit that there’s a part of me that wants to throw that person off the cliff myself. A more accurate statement would be, “That’s the way I was conditioned.” The second statement is not as concrete as the first and allows for choice.

You can choose a response to any given stimulus instead of going with your conditioned reaction. You open the door to choice when you notice you are running conditioned behavior. Just noticing the behavior in action gets the behavior to slow down long enough for us to notice there is another path. That’s the choice point.

Fruitful footsteps are the ones you take when you recognize that the current path you’re on will soon have you “walking on air,” and not in a good sense.

Fruitful footsteps are a result of choice, not chance. Chances are you’ll become more of the leader you would like to follow when you offer yourself a choice.

All the best,

John

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Is there something that can set you off – a word, a gesture, a sound, a sight, a smell? These are referred to as stimuli or triggers because they stimulate or trigger a reaction.

We’ve all fired off our triggers at the most inappropriate times, most often without any pre-thought; they just went off.

I wish I could tell you I had a foolproof way of that never happening again. I don’t. If it’s valuable to you, I do know a way to get them to fire less, so we don’t shoot off our mouths or shoot ourselves in the foot as often.

Oftentimes, we don’t know the trigger to our behavior. We could spend a lot of time looking for it or spend lots of money with a therapist to help us find it. The problem with that approach is that some behaviors have multiple triggers, and trying to find them all would take longer than a lifetime.

The more triggers a pattern of behavior has; the less likely you are to find them all, and it’s more likely that pattern will stay in place. For example, there are thousands of triggers for eating and some appeal to each of the senses: Sight smell, hearing, taste and touch. For some, the smell of bread baking can trigger the desire to eat a whole loaf. They weren’t born with that trigger, it was conditioned.

So if we can’t consciously find all the triggers, how do we get a trigger guard on them all?

Here is a technique that I use when I conduct a Smoking Cessation or Weight Loss seminar: I guide people into a more relaxed frame of mind and offer them a “one-size-fits-all” suggestion. The suggestion is this: “Whatever those things are that triggered you to (fill in the behavior) in the past, those very same things begin now to trigger feelings of being calm and collected. And when you’re calm and collected, you make much better choices.”

Your subconscious knows all the triggers because the subconscious is where all the reactions to them are stored. When you non-specifically address them all (“whatever those things are”), your subconscious knows exactly what you are referring to. The next suggestion, “those very same things begin now to trigger feelings of being calm and collected,” throws a switch in your mind to have a different reaction to those triggers – to be calm and collected. The final suggestion, “and when you are calm and collected, you make much better choices,” alerts your mind not only to all the better choices, but to the fact that you have a choice.

I am forever grateful to Dr. Dave Dobson for teaching me this technique which he called a “Subjective Reversal.” The subject (or trigger) reversed the automatic response and opened us up to choice.

It’s a powerful exercise, but it’s only powerful if you use it.

Think of the behavior you would like to change; just don’t burden yourself with trying to find out why it happens. Then offer yourself the suggestion “That whatever those things are that triggered this behavior in the past, those very same things begin now to trigger feelings of being calm and collected.” Then use any mind quieting method you know to enter the “Cauldron of Change” known as a quiet mind.

Like all developed skills it takes a bit of practice. Each time you do it, you apply mental calamine lotion to an itchy trigger finger.

All the best,

John

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Best as I can tell, anger is an emotion and angry is a mindset.

Anger has a short shelf life and angry can last a lifetime. Our challenge is to prevent one from turning into the other, or if that’s already happened, how to outgrow being angry.

If you haven’t experience anger, you haven’t lived. Anger invades your whole body and plays havoc with all your body’s functioning – heart rate, blood pressure, fight or flight response, etc. Anger is an unmistakable feeling that will let you know you’re alive, but if it hangs around too long, it’ll kill you.

This is a totally unscientific observation but it’s my experience that angry people have a more pain filled life and die younger. I don’t see a lot of old, angry people. I’m sure they exist but they are too small a sector to qualify as a minority group.

You may ask the question: Does being angry cause their demise or are they angry because they are in pain? Both.

My experience is they were angry long before the pain took over, and the pain acts as a catalyst to keep being angry alive.

Anger takes you over, but you have to work at staying angry. Staying angry involves entertaining the same thoughts day after day about incidents that caused you anger. Your body had sense enough to let the anger go, but your mind wants to hold onto being angry.

You may have never looked at it this way before, but you being angry is a self perpetuating event. You cause your own pain and demise by allowing this mindset to go unchecked. In fact, you feed it more fuel when you fire yourself up with justifications for being angry.

Every story you tell justifying you being angry, keeps that mindset in place and insidiously gnaws at your body causing it to wear down more quickly.

So what’s the remedy? It’s the same remedy for every pattern of behavior. Notice that you have it and interrupt it while it’s happening. It’s the continual noticing and interrupting that will allow you to grow into a new, supportive mindset.

Being angry is not going away on its own. It needs an assist from you; otherwise you’ll stay in your own stew.

Being angry is suicide on the installment plan. If you are sufficiently angry, I wonder how soon you’ll come up with another plan – one that allows for anger but won’t let you stay angry about it.

All the best,

John

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I had a visit from The Grasshopper yesterday during my daily, morning dog walk, or as we like to call it, “The Puppy Prance.”

He said, “Rely less on faith when facts are available.”

I had to let it sit for a day before I could offer any interpretation.

I believe we have to take many things on faith. For instance, we take it on faith that our car will start up when we turn the key. If we don’t have faith that will happen, we will deal with doubt more often than is necessary. So faith plays a valuable role in our life. It saves us from changing our name to “Thomas I. Doubt.”

We often rely too much on faith when facts are available, and it can be the cause of lots of avoidable angst.

There is a reason that one of my favorite quotes is “The reason life doesn’t work is because people don’t keep their agreements.” It comes from the founder of EST, Werner Erhard. My experience is that a huge majority of people who agree to do something, don’t follow through. If I take them at their word, I’m going to be disappointed more often than not. This causes me to sidestep my faith and call on the facts, especially early on in any sort of relationship.

Reminds me of a conversation I had with my teenage grandson . . . “Poppy, why do you ask for things more than once? I hear you on the phone asking the same question lots of different times during your calls.” My response to him was, “When I die and you are at my funeral and people ask, ‘What was your Poppy good at?’, your answer should be, ‘He checked on shit.'”

It is at the beginning of any agreement where facts best take the lead. After the facts are established and there is a track record of them being adhered to, then let faith back in the door.

We humans are flawed and, more often than not, we don’t keep our agreements. Don’t take that on faith; check your life experience and you can verify it as fact.

Having this knowledge will have you play the odds more often, and will result in you getting played less.

Bottom line: When you check on the facts, you can have more faith.

All the best,

John

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The Grasshopper went “Annie” on me this morning when he said, “Sun in the morning, angels warning.”

It took me a few moments to process his offering and “Illumination” was the overarching message.

Whether the sun is visible or not, it’s always present. It may be obscured by a cloud, or shining on another part of our world, but it’s there.

The angel’s warning is not to fall into the trap that when illumination is not shining on you that it’s not available. It is.

Sometimes it gets clouded over by too much thinking, or gets crowded out by envy of others who we perceive live in a sunnier environment. You have as much access to illumination as anyone currently on earth, or who has ever lived.

Once you know it’s available, it’s just a matter of finding ways to sun yourself.

A quiet mind is the quickest portal I know to endless sunshine. When your mind gets quiet, you bask in the golden rays of illumination. As the Grasshopper reminded us in the past, “Serenity is the birthplace of creativity.”

There are many routes to a quiet mind and if you haven’t pursued one yet, I’m betting your disposition is less than sunny. Allow me to amend the words of one of the most famous sunshine sayings, “A day without orange juice is like a day without sunshine.” If you substitute the word “quiet” for the words “orange juice,” you have a proper warning.

If you are living under a dark cloud, I heartily recommend finding a way to a quiet mind. There are countless ways to get quiet; you just have to step off in the direction of your choice.

One of the easiest ways to begin is to take a few moments to notice what’s going on in your body. The more you focus on the sensations in your body, the less focus you have for the thoughts in your mind. Do my Relax in 2 Minutes routine which requires doing an inventory of your body parts and noticing the sensations going on in each of them. It’s just one of the ways to spread your blanket out on the beach and catch some rays.

Let any glimpse of sunshine act as a reminder that illumination is one less thought away.

All the best,

John

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You can’t see it on the horizon, so I’m asking you to take it on faith that it’s there. If you’ve already experienced it, you know I’m not making this up. If you haven’t experienced it yet, this warning sign may seem like it’s for someone else, certainly not you.

You will approach this fork in your life. The easiest way to know you are there is the attitude you have when you approach it. The telltale sign you are at the fork is finding yourself constantly asking the question: “Is this all there is?”

There aren’t road signs telling you where each fork goes, but you will head down one of these roads. Since I’ve been down both, I will label the destinations for you – Superficial and Substance.

It’s my experience that people rarely make Substance their first choice; it certainly wasn’t mine. It’s the road less travelled. Superficial is the one we most often pick. It’s like the main drag into Vegas – glitz everywhere you look. It looks like the Promised Land, but the road to Superficial is littered with broken promises.

The road to Superficial leads away from reward, or more accurately stated, away from a rewarding existence. It certainly looks like it will fulfill all our hopes and dreams, but at the risk of sounding sarcastic, “Dream on.”

Superficial simply put is: “The search out there.” It’s where the horizon lures you to, yet, one more grab for gusto and, again, you come up with a handful of air.

It’s really not our fault that we willingly travel this road. We’ve been conditioned to do so our entire lives. You can’t live in our culture and not be affected by the ever present promise that what you need is “out there.”

Sadly, it may take many crashes on the road to Superficial to convince you that you’re in a never ending bumper car race – a loop to nowhere.

It takes a lot of courage to say the following: “Stop the ride; I want to get off!” Your whole world view is at risk and you have to face the fact that you’ve been chasing your tailpipe.

Recognition that you are stuck on the road to Superficial is the first step to opening your eyes to the exit ramp for Substance.

The road signs for substance will lead you back home – “in here.”

“Out there” is filled with tasty treats and trinkets but lacks the substance you can only find “in here.”

You may not know you are stuck on Superficial Highway, so let me offer you this landmark: You’re there if, at the end of each day, you find that you’re still lost. Being lost takes many forms – Depression, drugs, detachment, divorce, denial, drowning your doldrums and many other things that don’t begin with the letter “D.”

When you end the search for superficial, substance finds you. You no longer attempt to fill a hole in your soul, but rather find out you were whole all along.

Substance feels better than superficial. It makes you comfortable in your own skin, and keeps you from continually skinning your shins to feel alive.

It’s not my intention for you not to choose Superficial, because the chances are good that you will. My request is that you keep this post in your glove compartment and use it as a roadmap where you get tired of being lost.

All the best,

John

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I’ve met special people along the way who have uncanny abilities of knowing something without knowing how they know. That list includes everyone I have ever met. We are all psychic.

When you have a flash of something that’s about to happen before it happens, you may label it coincidence, a hunch, a feeling, a vibe or something else. Some would call that experience psychic.

Regardless of the label, how does it happen? I don’t know “the” answer, but I do have a suspicion based on experience.

Perhaps a story would be helpful . . .

Years ago, I was a program director for a few radio stations and a consultant for a couple of others. There were a lot of people who reported to me over the years. One day while reflecting back on those days, it occurred to me that I never fired anyone I ever hired. I certainly had to let people go for a variety of reasons, but never anyone I ever hired. It wasn’t out of loyalty that I kept these people on; they were truly earning their keep. How did I know who to hire?

I also had the ability to know who was or wasn’t performing well in other departments at the stations, departments that I had no expertise with. At one station, they even sent the new sales people to me and asked for my evaluation.

Was I given some special gift? The answer is “Yes.” It’s the same gift we all have – The gift of attention.

I didn’t realize how I accessed this “psychic” ability until years later. It seems when you place your attention on another human being, you find out things about them without these things ever being vocalized.

Reminds me of another story . . . I was conducting a seminar in Burlington, Vermont about 7 years ago and was greeting people in the room before the seminar began. I came upon three young women who were clad in business attire. We were just exchanging hellos and pleasantries and out of the blue I asked, “Is one of you a really good dancer?” Two of the woman laughed and the third one turned a bit red. I asked what was so funny. It turns out that one of the women danced at a topless nightclub.

Her garb and her appearance were no different than that of her two friends, so there was no visual clue as to how I was clued in. If this was an isolated example, I would discount it. It happens frequently.

Placing your attention on someone means that when you interact with them, whether in person, on the telephone or via Skype, that you get out of the commentary in your own head and place all of your attention on them for a time. You can always reel your attention back in. When you are “all inside” with your attention, you have to rely on only the facts. And we all know that facts only tell part of the story. If you want to go deeper than the headline, have your attention move to another.

When you interrupt the commentary in your head and place your attention “over there,” you have access to information that you would never get in a tit-for-tat conversation or just by judging the facts.

If you have more insight into other humans than the average bear, I would place a large bet that you get your attention off of you and on to another more often than not.

It’s easy enough to practice. You can do it with any interaction you’re involved in. Just take a moment to stop evaluating what’s going on in your head and place that attention on another. Just listen and observe without judging or evaluating. With a little practice, you will open up a conduit between you and them that allows “other than conscious” information to flow. Don’t act too surprised if they express knowing something about you too.

The gift of attention attracts a wealth of information. It’s another application of the biblical phrase, “You get back what you give.”

All the best,

John

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Eureka! I have found the secret formula. “Of what?” you may ask.

I have found the tried and true, works every time, secret formula for frustration.

Anytime you want to guarantee frustration, follow this formula: Pretend that things shouldn’t be the way they are.

The gap between where things ought to be and where they are exists almost always. The way we approach spanning that gap will determine our level of self-induced frustration.

The more we focus on the enormity of the gap, the more frustration we get. The key is to recognize the gap and then form an incremental plan for closing it.

To prove the premise, think back on a time when you experienced prolonged frustration. If you examine that time carefully, you will find that your mind was focused on what shouldn’t be rather than what was actually happening. The language you used contained some of these words: Should, shouldn’t, ought to, must, have to, and the like. These are words that keep you locked in frustration.

A helpful way for assessing the gap is to assign a number to it on a scale of 1 to 10 – 1 being the worst and 10 being the best. Suppose you assess the gap as a 5 and you want to jump to 10 in one step. You have now insured more guaranteed frustration into your life. A less frazzled approach is necessary. The plan that closes the gap quicker and with less frustration is figuring out how to get from a 5 to a 6. It’s a much more manageable piece. Once successful with that step, you can go on to the next step, one step at a time.

But before you can formulate a plan, you have to recognize how you keep yourself stuck. Here is a strong dose of medicine that’s hard to swallow but extremely effective: You are the cause of your frustration; no one else, just you. It’s not your parents, your spouse, your teacher, your job, your boss, your lover, your friend, some family member or your enemy. Your biggest obstacle is you pretending what is shouldn’t be.

The longer you hold that position, the longer you remain frustrated. Action is frustration’s biggest foe and will defeat it every time, as long as it follows a detailed, step-by-step plan.

If you are frustrated about your relationship, job, lot in life, or anything else, find out where you are on the scale, not where you ought to be, and then put together a workable plan. What needs to happen to get to the next number? Find out and then take the step if you truly want to step away from frustration.

Here is my unofficial assessment: The bulk of the population will choose to stay in never-never land where “should and ought to” are the operative words preached in the daily gospel. Piss and moan will rule the day inviting frustration in for an extended stay.

Got frustration? Get real!

All the best,

John

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I claim there is a difference between burning the candle at both ends and taking it to the limit. One saps your energy; the other increases it.

We are a candle burning society that rarely gets to our limits. Candle burning is busy work that seems important, but isn’t. Going to the limit seems risky until you see the rewards it delivers.

Candle burning language is filled with “shoulds, ought-tos, musts” and other such imperatives. Going to the limit only contains the language of possibility.

Candle burning is a lifestyle of fear; going to the limit neutralizes a fearful existence.

Taking it to the limit is a visit to the edge, a place candle burning will never take you. The edge is where you hone your skills. It’s a place of learning and deep discovery. It’s where you test yourself.

It’s easy to predict the results of candle burning – soon there will be no light. Going to the edge provides a light at the end of the tunnel – something to propel you forward.

When’s the last time you tested yourself? Testing not only shows our strengths and weaknesses, but it also delivers an aliveness that we’ll never discover reading by candlelight.

What keeps you from moving towards the edge? It’s a blob of wax known as the fear of failure. Here is one of life’s hidden secrets: It’s better to fail than to fear.

You won’t know if you’ll fail or succeed until you test yourself. That test can only happen at the edge.

Start with baby steps. Attempt to do something small that you think you can’t do. Notice the aliveness you feel when making such an attempt. You will generate energy, not deplete it.

Whether you succeed or fail is irrelevant. It’s the action itself that delivers the reward of aliveness. Burning candles is a dead end job where you never learn anything new about you.

Schedule a trip to the edge and find out what’s possible for you; otherwise your aliveness will drip away.

All the best,

John

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I assert that even Mother Teresa had an ugly side. It’s not a pretty opinion, and it’s not about her as much as it is about us.

We’ve all witnessed the ugly side of someone, even someone we love, but our observational skills become justifications when the ugly person in the mirror is us.

I will readily admit that I turn from mild mannered David Banner into the Incredible Hulk when I watch my favorite, professional football team perform like high school cheerleaders. I’m not so ready to admit the venom that I’m capable of using on an everyday basis. It’s called prejudice.

We attempt to hide our ugliness when we label our prejudice as “discernment” and put it under the banner of fact. It’s easy to spot prejudice in someone else, but we pretend the spotlight only shines one way. The fact we rarely look at is that our own prejudice is alive and well and is secreted on a daily basis.

The remedy is not to eliminate our prejudice but to notice it. Noticing and interrupting are transformative actions that can turn an ugly toad into someone a bit more regal.

Outgrowing our prejudices will always be a work in progress, but each time we notice and interrupt our own prejudice, we get a little prettier.

Back to my Hulk reference . . . My contention is that if we ever saw a video recording of our ugly side, it would give us pause and give us cause to become less ugly.

Become your own videographer and start to notice in yourself what you so easily notice in others. Once you notice your own shortcoming, interrupt the behavior. With each interruption, you step in the direction of growth.

The mirror will not listen to a justification speech. Your true self will disappear from sight and the only thing left to look at is an ugly you.

You can’t put lipstick on prejudice and make it pretty. You can notice your attempt to camouflage it and stop it in its tracks.

You may never get to change someone else’s ugliness but you can go to work on you, and discover that “To thine own self be true” is less about others and more about you.

All the best,

John

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