If you’ve ever raised children or taught children, you are familiar with the “Look what I can do” stage. It’s the child seeking attention and the vehicle they use is showing you what they are capable of.

I contend that “Look what I can do” extends well past childhood and the objective is the same – to seek attention.

In an adult, it may be referred to as “Showing off,” “Bragging” or “Holding Court.”

If you are forever seeking attention, you have not placed enough attention on yourself. You haven’t yet made the transition from “Look what I can do” to “Look what can be done.”

When you place enough attention on yourself, you don’t need as much from the outside and this allows you to go from performer to teacher.

The great teachers don’t advertise “Look what I can do;” that’s just a great showman.

Great teachers put the emphasis on what can be done, and the greatest of the great teach this: “Look what you can do.”

There is a stage in life where you need to capture peoples’ attention. It’s a way of getting them to notice you in a crowded field. But if attention seeking becomes a way of life, you will never find enough to fill you up. You’ll always go from one audition to another seeking a stage on which to perform until you reach the closing act.

The sooner we make the transition from “Look what I can do” to “Look what can be done” or better, the sooner we get to pay something forward, rather than take it to our grave.

We have sufficient attention on ourselves when we effortlessly use our skills to help others find out what they can do. We have discovered that seeking attention solely for ourselves is a one-way street to feeling incomplete.

If you don’t feel you’re getting enough attention, make the effort to help someone else find what they can do. It will generate enough attention to fill the both of you.

All the best,

John

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When I was in broadcasting, I had numerous opportunities to go backstage with many musical stars. It gave me a richer experience of the performer and their performance.

In our life, we have the opportunity to go backstage every day, but we don’t because we have forgotten we have a backstage pass.

We get to experience the performance, but we miss out on the whole experience which makes our performance possible.

Our life story is like a collection of songs we sing. The songs define who we are, just like our collection of memories defines who we are.

But when you go backstage, you get to see the performer from another angle. They don’t have to be “On” all the time and you get a glimpse of them past their ability to perform.

It’s a lot quieter backstage and this atmosphere is the breeding ground that allows the performance to be filled with energy.

Reminds me of a story . . .

A number of years ago, I was up late and saw the David Letterman Show. His musical guest was Todd Rundgren who played one of his biggest hits, “I Saw The Light.” It was clear to me that Todd was just going through the moves. I hallucinated that he had sung this song hundreds of times and the verve for it was gone, yet he continued to sing it because that’s what people wanted.

Compare that to a song the late Ricky Nelson sang in the early 70’s called, “Garden Party.” Ricky had a TV and musical career in the 50s and early 60s and had a string of hit songs. The song “Garden Party” was autobiographical in nature. It recounted a personal revelation he received after a performance at Madison Square Garden in New York City. The show featured all his hit songs and some of the new material he was working on. The crowd only wanted to hear the hits. A line from “Garden Party” sums up his experience nicely: “If you gotta’ play at garden parties, I wish you a lotta’ luck, but if memories were all I sang, I rather drive a truck.”

Singing our greatest hits has its place, but if that’s all we do, we’re always on stage. We miss the backstage experience which is richer and fuller than any performance we are likely to give. It also imbues that performance with more energy than we are likely to have without spending time backstage.

Think of backstage as a safe haven you can always go to when your performance is stale. It’s the quiet, creative space that will give old and new material new life. It allows old songs to contain the energy they had the first time you performed them, and it lets new songs into your repertoire so you can continue to grow.

To reclaim your backstage pass, you have to get quiet; then the big bouncer (resistance) will let you pass.

Remember that during the hustle and bustle of your everyday performance, you have the opportunity to get quiet, go backstage and take a break and recharge your energy. Not only that, but this backstage experience gives life to new songs.

If your life has become a garden party, it’s time to bring out your backstage pass.

All the best,

John

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Of all the liberties and freedoms we celebrate today, let us remember the freedom most forgotten – The freedom to choose our response.

Happy July 4^th!

John

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When I woke up this morning The Grasshopper was waiting on my pillow with these words: “If you look at life through a rear view mirror, your biography has already been written.”

Wow! what a time saver. No need to write an auto-biography. Just find someone who was always looking back and read their story; then change their name to yours.

It reminded me of two time tested axioms:

1. If you want to know where you are going, look where you’ve been.
2. If you always do what you always did, you’ll always get what you always got.

When forging ahead, it’s a distraction to be looking back. Reminds me of a story . . .

The other night I took Snuffy the Black Nosed Beagle for a late evening walk. Just as we walked out the door, there was a rabbit sitting in the middle of our front lawn. I figured Snuffy would go into howling mode and drag me at lightning speed to chase after it. He didn’t. He went onto stealth, stalker mode.

The micro-movement of his muscles was a thing of beauty to watch. He crept closer and closer keeping his laser focus on the bunny in front of him. His patience was admirable. Then it happened. A car came down the side street and he shifted his focus ever so slightly to see the car, and the rabbit took off like a shot. NOW I was being dragged at lightning speed by a howling hound.

Looking back can only give you perspective, not a directive. It can tell you what not to do, not what to do.

Looking forward is a discipline, one that requires that your focus stays on what’s in front of you.

Every time you look back, you take your eye off the ball and strike out in the wrong direction.

If you are looking to write a different auto-biography, your back story is irrelevant. Your front page headline has to be in BIG, BOLD type and read: LOOKING FORWARD!

I don’t have a step-by-step strategy to offer, only a suggestion: Focus on what’s right in front of you. This will give you the presence of mind to stop looking back and letting your prey get away.

All the best,

John

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Are you due for a software update? If you have a computer, you are reminded to perform that function regularly.

As humans, I believe we have software updates confused with wholesale change, so we avoid them. Updates are more subtle than that.

We are not required to change our operating system, just make some adjustments to it so it performs better.

I’m pretty certain this confusion is why diets don’t work long term. People look on dieting as making a wholesale change. They go along with that idea for awhile until a part of them rebels and then they go back to their old sluggish operating system.

I haven’t met the person yet who has changed operating systems; I have met many people who have made successful software updates to that system.

So how do we perform a software update?

Actually, the update happens, in the background, without us knowing how; we just have to begin the process.

So what’s the beginning step?

Warning: It’s a difficult but life changing one.

That first step is recognizing that our way doesn’t work.

That seems simple on the surface but you would be astonished how often we avoid noticing.

We are so invested in who we are that we have difficulty seeing that one of our comfortable, conditioned routines is a dead end. That routine has become a revered part of us, even though it’s lying on the couch and out of work.

If you intentionally put someone under stress, they will show you their patterned way of doing things. They revert back to the old operating system time and again with the same results they got last time – none – and they don’t notice.

When you are stressed, it’s important to notice what you resist. Recognizing what we resist is the starting point to update our way that doesn’t work.

Legendary psychiatrist, Carl Jung reminded us: “What you resist, persists.”

If you’ve ever lost money in the stock market, you have a finer appreciation of this resistance dynamic. It goes something like this: You invest in a stock that you believe in. it has its initial ups and downs, but then the downs start to take over. At this stress point, we resist getting out. We reassure ourselves that the market is going through a correction and we’ll be back up in no time. It continues to drop. We continue to resist. We keep assuring ourselves it will turn around. (By the way, it’s the same mind set many use when losing at a casino). Finally, the stock is in absolute free fall and we remain in denial that our way isn’t working.

Bottom line: We lose.

We’ve resisted taking a look at what we resist. We resisted noticing that our way wasn’t working.

Once you feel resistance, that’s your opportunity to notice. The software update of recognition separates the losing action from who we think we are, so that it can be evaluated on its own merit. As long as our way of doing things is married to who we are, we will continue making losing bets.

It takes courage to notice that a life-long pattern that we’ve heavily invested in isn’t working.

It’s that act of inspection that begins the update.

What are you heavily invested in that’s not working? What are you resisting with every ounce of your ego? Notice it. That’s when your update will begin and, before too long, your operating system will run smoothly again.

Are you in need of a software update? Here’s an easy way to tell: If you are losing a lot more than you’re winning, your way isn’t working. You’d be wise to recognize.

All the best,

John

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One of the great things about learning is that you get to experience all different sorts of teachers. Each one has a style unique to them.

I have had the good fortune of being exposed to a few teachers that weren’t in the mainstream. They had messages to convey that weren’t conventional, yet extremely powerful.

But even among these gifted teachers, there was a distinction worth noting. You learned from them or you learned by being in their presence. Let me explain.

Most teachers fall into the category of people you learn things from. They have a style, technique or formula to impart. This is a valuable method. We follow their instructions and learn to do what they’re teaching.

Then there is the rare teacher that has nothing to teach other than to get you to learn.

The word “Educate” comes from the Latin word, “Educare” which literally means to bring out. It’s the rare teacher that will get you to a place where you can tap in to your resources and bring out something you didn’t know you had.

They perform this magic by being present. They set aside any agenda they may have about you and are just there with you. I like to call it teaching without judging.

These special people know you have something worthwhile to learn and they’re smart enough to know they can’t teach it to you. Their main gift is leading you to a place where you can learn it yourself.

If you’ve ever read a passage from a book that just stopped your stream of thinking for a moment and gave you a sense of knowing, you have experienced this type of learning.

Any teaching that stops your thinking is a pathway to learning. Think back on something you saw that was so beautiful that it took your breath away. That moment of breathlessness was a moment of learning.

All teachers aren’t people. We can learn from anything – a flower, a mountain, a landscape, an animal or an inanimate object. We just have to be present with it and we will learn.

Presence leads to learning. The teacher who is present learns as much as the student he/she’s leading. The funny thing is neither one of them knows where specifically they are going or what they will learn. They only know they will discover something new and worthwhile by being present.

Presence takes practice. It begins by noticing the stream of thought going on in your head while attempting to teach or learn. Each time we take the time to notice our stream of thought, we slow it down, until it eventually becomes a trickle. That’s when we become present – when there isn’t an agenda or syllabus in the way. That’s when we learn and that’s when we lead others to a place of learning.

If there is one thing worth learning, it’s learning to be present.

All the best,

John

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I am being drawn to draw a distinction between “Complete” and “Completed.”

The first distinction is that we are all complete. That means we have all we need to be whole right now.

The second distinction is that we have uncompleted missions that help us discover that we are already complete.

It’s one thing to say we’re complete; it’s another thing to know it without reservation.

Knowing we are complete takes a bit of completeness boot camp.

There are certain things that need to be completed before we know we are complete.

Here is a partial list:

1. Know you are not your thoughts.
2. Know you are deeper than anything you claim to be.
3. Stop arguing for your limitations.

The biggest obstacle to uncovering our completeness is divorcing ourselves from the thoughts in our head. That doesn’t mean eradicating and not visiting with those thoughts; it just means to live in separate houses now, just like you did before you were married.

At one time, we had no thoughts in our head, yet we were perfectly functioning human beings, albeit a bit smaller and smellier. Then we collected a bunch of thoughts and concepts that started to shape who we have come to believe we are. You are no more your thoughts than you were before you had them. Who were you before you had thoughts? You were complete.

Thinking is a wonderful thing; we just aren’t the things we think about. We are separate and apart from those thoughts.

Finding the depth beneath your thoughts will have you lay claim to a new identity – one that doesn’t have parameters shaped by thoughts. You can think from now until the time that you can no longer think and never figure out who you are. That task takes an absence of thinking. You can’t think your way to being complete.

We need a time out from our thinking in order to discover our depth, our completeness. To reshape a phrase from the orange growers: “A day without mind calming is a day without sunshine.” Find a way to calm your mind and make it a daily ritual. It helps you complete your path to completeness.

Finally, stop telling people who you aren’t. That’s just another way of attempting to be your thoughts. Even when you define yourself as not being something, you limit yourself by being that label. Thoughts about who you aren’t, are thought about limitation, which just keep you in the thinking mode and incomplete.

Above is a list of things to complete, and when you do, you’ll have three less things to think about and know you are complete.

All the best,

John

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Walking around with an open wound invites infection. Ask any physician.

Emotional wounds are the same. Close them or they will infect your life as long as you draw breath.

Some people walk around with open wounds for years, decades and even for a lifetime. They never consider stitches.

It got me to wondering.

What causes a person to keep that wound open?

I’m sure there are many answers but here is one that pops for me: They want their hurt acknowledged.

They don’t necessarily want you to fix it, but they want you to acknowledge the depth of their wound and how badly it hurts.

Until they get acknowledgement regarding their pain, their life is an open sore and it infects everything they do.

In the past, I would judge people harshly who constantly walked around with open wounds. It seemed like a lot of drama to me. I didn’t get the acknowledgement piece until I became wounded.

I couldn’t close the wound. Everyone was helpful with advice on how to close the wound, but none offered acknowledgement of how badly I was hurting.

Then I discovered the salve didn’t have to come from others to begin the healing process. Acknowledgement had to come from me.

It’s one thing to know you’re angry, frustrated, dissatisfied or unhappy; it’s an entirely different process to acknowledge hurt. You can be all of the aforementioned things in your head; you can only acknowledge hurt in your body.

Feeling your hurt, without discussing it in your head, is the overlooked way to suture an open wound.

You can talk about your hurt forever without ever addressing it.

If you’re wounded and want to heal, you have to be willing to feel.

That doesn’t mean to talk to yourself or others ad nauseam about your feelings; it means to engage your feelings silently. Feel them in your body.

I’ve written on this topic many times and each time I do, I’m reminded of the healing power of feel.

It’s not easy to do, but highly effective. It’s the storm before the calm.

Acknowledgement can begin at any time and now is always the best time to close the wound.

All the best,

John

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Here are just a few notable quotes on what we say and what we do:

French writer Michel de Montaigne: “Saying is one thing and doing is another.”

Saint Francis of Assisi: “Preach the gospel at all times; use words if necessary.”

Confucius: “I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson: “Who you are speaks so loudly I can’t hear what you are saying.”

Here’s a little poetic question from The Grasshopper: “How often do we attempt to get away with what we say and remain in glue about what we do?”

There is enough food for thought here to chew on for the entire weekend.

So let’s not talk about a picnic. Let’s have one.

All the best,

John

P.S. I would like to pay tribute, on Father’s Day Weekend, to my departed father who was a world-class doer of stated deeds.

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Here’s a sobering reality The Grasshopper presented yesterday: “Many of our beliefs are misinformation etched in stone.”

It’s somewhat challenging to one’s ego that much of what we believe cannot be substantiated and/or is downright inaccurate.

Do you have a good luck charm or a lucky ritual? If you ever investigated the amount of good luck they have brought you, you’d trade them in for new models – ones that work equally inefficiently.

You would truly be amazed at the number of times St. Christopher has fallen asleep during a traffic accident, or how un-holey your lucky golf socks are.

Most of the misinformation that forms our beliefs got in there by accident. That means they were someone else’s beliefs handed down from generation to generation to us without any vetting being done.

They are the commandments we live our life by.

So how does misinformation etched in stone go away?

Erosion is one method, but that can take more lifetimes than a Hindu has.

Again, it’s recognition to the rescue. Recognition of misinformation is like sandblasting your stone tablet of beliefs, giving you a clean slate.

Here’s an interesting phenomenon associated with beliefs that are jam packed with misinformation: Sometimes they give us hope. Forget for a moment that it’s false hope. This hope got us over humps that we couldn’t have scaled without it. Hope can get us to a point where our emotions are less unpacked allowing us to take on the job of recognizing what doesn’t work.

Some people aren’t ready for the reality of recognition yet. It’s too scary for them. They need to hope a little more that what they believe in will come true. Once in a blue moon they get lucky; most often they suffer.

“The unexamined life is not worth living” is a piece of wisdom left to us by Socrates. He could have just as easily substituted the word “Belief” for “Life” and the message would be just as powerful.

Examination leads to recognition of misinformation, and it is our saving grace.

If your hope is working overtime and not getting compensated, it may be time to change jobs. I hear recognition is hiring.

All the best,

John

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