All the best,
John
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One of the biggest lies we have bought into is: MY STORY IS DIFFERENT.
No it’s not. It’s the same as everyone else’s.
Notice how you bristle when you hear that yours is not different.
The content of your story may be different, but the drama and pain that stems from it is the same.
Do you hurt more than another when a similar circumstance happens to you? People make a case for that position all the time. “You think that hurt, well let me tell you about the time that Bobby . . .”
The one-upmanship story telling feeds drama.
Drama comes about when you buy into the illusion that your story is better, worse, or more important than another’s. This false sense of importance is what keeps the story being retold and keeps the drama alive long past its shelf date.
“No one hurts like I do or was wronged the way I was” is the driving force that keeps the story alive and keeps us trapped by drama and keeps us hurting.
Years ago I went through a divorce that was painful. Millions of people at that very same time were going through divorces, but mine was different, or so I thought.
I remember having a conversation with a boyhood friend whose wife had also moved on. I remember thinking that he didn’t love his wife as much as I loved mine and therefore his story was not on the same level as mine. Mine was more important. The words I forgot to put at the end of that sentence were “To me.” My story was more important to me.
It’s the “more important than anyone else’s” belief that keeps us telling and retelling our story, and it keeps our drama alive.
We are attempting to alleviate our pain through our never ending storytelling and we haven’t stopped to notice that it isn’t working.
If you pay attention to the people you are telling your story to for the hundredth time, you will notice them stifling a yawn. This includes your best friend, your family members and your therapist.
It’s more productive to feel your hurt than it is to tell your story again.
Feeling your hurt begins with eliminating the word “Because” from your situation. Your situation is “I am hurting.” Please notice the period at the end of that sentence. “I am hurting, period.”
“I am hurting because” takes you back to “Story-land” and Story-land is filled with never ending drama and life-long pain.
Addressing your hurt begins by locating the sensation in your body and sitting with it – not talking it over in your head again.
When you are hurting, no matter what the cause, there is a part of your body being affected. The sensation will most often show up somewhere between your head and your bowels along the midline of your body.
When you notice the sensation associated with your hurt and keep your focus on it, you will notice something transformative happen. You will begin to metabolize your hurt. That means it begins to dissipate. When you locate the sensation in your body, the temptation is to talk about the cause of it in your head. Resist that temptation and stay focused on the sensation in your body. This is how transformation begins.
It takes more effort to sit with your hurt than it does to share your pain through story again, but the results are worth the effort.
This is not a recommendation to silently suffer in your head; it’s an action to take to alleviate pain.
You’ll never talk your way out of pain no matter how convincing you are or how important your story is. You can, however, feel yourself out of pain.
If you think you need help with your pain, by all means consult a professional counselor. Just don’t fall into the trap that constantly talking about your feelings puts you in touch with your feelings. The opposite is true; it keeps you distant from them.
Drama and pain are synonymous. If you keep telling your story, you’ll have a lifetime supply of both of them.
All the best,
John
The Grasshopper showed up between the raindrops yesterday and had this to say: “The party never ends because the party never began.”
It sounded like a riddle within a conundrum, so I just let it sit.
What is “The Party”? My sense is it has different meanings depending on the angle from which it’s viewed.
One definition is that “The Party” is a lifestyle; another is that it is life itself.
The never ending crowd is the lifestyle wing of the party; life itself is a party of one.
To continually seek the party means you have never discovered how to celebrate yourself.
You bring the party with you wherever you go when you celebrate your own party of one.
If you’re looking for it everywhere you go, you’ll spend a lifetime attempting to begin. You can’t start from there; you have to begin from here.
“Here” is an appreciation of your connection to creativity. You find that you are a conduit from which the party flows; therefore it goes wherever you go.
Party seekers feel as though they are never enough. They feel incomplete. This causes them to endlessly seek out “The Party.”
They haven’t begun to search right where they are because they are too busy looking for the party out there somewhere.
For the party to begin for a party seeker, they have to stop their outward search long enough to find their inner party.
The self image of a party seeker sits on the lowest rung of the ladder because they’re afraid of new heights. Climbing up that ladder would shatter their image of not being enough – a position they’ve grown accustomed to.
Climbing that ladder takes some risks. You have to risk losing who you think you are to stop losing. When you discover that you’re more than the sum total of your thoughts, you discover “The Party.”
The endless seeking has to end in order for the party to begin.
If you feel as though you’re not enough, I encourage you to stop seeking long enough to find that you’re deserving of an engraved invitation to “The Party.”
All the best,
John
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In general, I sense that people don’t like being told what to do.
You could say that most of us, to some degree, are allergic to authority.
I believe that the degree to which we resist authority, determines how well we play with others.
Whether you are an iconoclast who challenges tradition or a “they say black, I say white” person, you are challenging authority. We all have a measure of polarity to being told what to do or what to believe, and the more of it we have, the less appeal we have to offer.
The degree to which you are allergic to authority demonstrates how much Peter Pan
you have in you. “I won’t grow up” is the silent mantra of seasoned adults still fighting for control.
Our first taste of control came as a child and many of us have never completely lost that taste. If there is any doubt about who is running the show, just witness who’s in charge when a two year old says “No.”
As we mature, that allergic reaction calms down. For most of us it gets to a manageable level, but for some it comes out to play every day.
If you are having trouble connecting with, or staying connected to people, take a look at how often you sneeze at authority.
It’s a repellant to others.
As fun as it would be to see, you’ll never witness a meeting of the “Polar Opposites Club” because they can’t agree where to meet.
In short, polarity is being allergic to authority. If you refuse to allow that part of you to mature, you douse yourself with a dose of manure.
Bottom line: You won’t pass the sniff test with others.
All the best,
John
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It occurred to me that when you receive an idea from out of the blue, it doesn’t contain a step-by-step plan to see it through. It comes as a broad stroke.
It’s up to us to act on it and come up with a plan.
Yesterday, The Grasshopper delivered one of his broad strokes. He said, “How you broaden yourself is by including others.”
I instantly knew that there was something in there, but it wasn’t specifically apparent where to go next. It had to sit for awhile.
The first glimmer of light that came through was that others are our teachers. It’s very difficult to broaden yourself if you come from a position of self contained (that’s code for know-it-all).
We become stagnant when our learning comes to a halt. That happens when we believe no one else has anything to teach us.
I’ve been at that point many times in my life and each time that feeling took hold of me, I became an isolated island of smugness.
There aren’t any dancing girls on this island, in fact there’s no one there but you. Everyone else has left. They’re out learning something new.
The trick is to notice that you’re isolated and alone.
Others will always be our salvation. Others have experiences we don’t own and when our experience mixes with theirs, something new comes to both of us. We learn from others and this broadens us.
Many have a tendency to learn something new and then treat it as the only way there is. They shut down to anything that goes against what they’ve just adopted as the supreme position.
When we take this approach, we believe we have flattened the learning curve but in reality we have flatlined our learning.
Everyone has something to teach you but you’ll never enter their classroom if you only occupy the principal’s office. The only broadening that action brings is to get us more fatheaded.
If what you know is a closed loop, others will bore you to tears and you’ll avoid them and what they have to offer, only to be left crying alone in your beer.
In broad strokes: If your way is the only way, you’ve got a lot to learn.
All the best,
John
“The price of admission buys you freedom from being bound to the rock of denial.” That’s what The Grasshopper woke me up with early this morning.
The great Smokey Robinson wrote these lyrics: “Mistakes, I know I made a few but I’m only human, you’ve made mistakes too.”
We all make mistakes and we too often compound them by not admitting them.
Denial is a boulder around our necks that keeps us bent over unable to see the way to be free.
Freedom comes with admission. It helps clear the air so we can breathe easy again and see a way forward.
What is it you can’t admit? When you answer that question, you’ll find your personal albatross.
It’s a heavy weight that we carry with us even into our dreams. It’s a life draining force that will fall away if we dig deep and pony up the price of admission.
This is not a recommendation to buy yards of sackcloth and create a whole new wardrobe. It’s only a suggestion to get you curious about the power of admission.
Start small and begin admitting to yourself. Once you have practiced and gained a level of expertise, branch out and admit to others.
It’s a scary process. It feels like you are unraveling at the seams. You are. At least a part of you is – your illusion.
The illusion that you are incapable of making mistakes becomes threadbare and you can see through the material of concealment. There’s nothing to hide anymore.
Unraveling our illusion begins with admitting our mistakes.
Justification is too often denial in disguise. It prolongs how long we stay burdened and bent over.
The price of admission will strip away layers of denial and let us finally stand tall.
Admission is a tall order, one that will rock us to our core, and the effort is well worth it.
One of the best purchases we can make is a permit to admit.
All the best,
John
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Have you ever witnessed someone who types so fast causing them to back up and correct their multiple mistakes with just as much speed? If you put them in a typing contest, where accuracy and speed are conditions of winning, they wouldn’t do any better than the average typist.
Some people blow through life as though speed was the only criterion. I have a talented, Facebook friend who is the poster child for this approach. He would begin enjoying life more instead of fighting with it so often if he would only slow down.
The Grasshopper prompted this post yesterday when he said, “Slow down so you can catch up with yourself.”
It was instantly clear to me.
Many people are running in the opposite direction of themselves. They are running away from their life because they are afraid they won’t find anything there. And they are making lots of mistakes.
The purpose of being alive is to feel alive.
If part of us feels dead, we swiftly head off searching for aliveness to replace it. What we wind up with is one sugar high after another and we come crashing down in the same place we’ve been running from.
Feeling alive is an inward not an outward process.
There is nothing out there that will generate the aliveness we seek.
When you slow down your outward search, you discover that aliveness is where it’s always been – right there within yourself.
It’s imperative that you slow down or you will speed right past it and won’t see what’s in plain sight.
Running away from yourself suggests you have mislabeled who you are and are running as fast as you can from that scary image.
That image is an illusion – one you’ve built over a lifetime.
Who we think we are is a facade; who we really are is the aliveness we seek.
There’s a reason popular expressions stay popular; it’s because they’re accurate – SPEED KILLS!
Slow down your outward search and start reaping the rewards in the field where you stand.
All the best,
John
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Wanting is a sad place to live.
The state of want has a high poverty rate.
There seems to be a difference between wants and desires, at least for me.
My experience is that desires have a better chance of happening. The results of wanting were best summed up by The Grasshopper over the weekend. He said, “Blue: Wanting that which doesn’t want you.”
So I guess wanting is a blue state.
The mindset of wanting is that what you want is always a carrot on a stick away. Wanting and having are at two opposite ends of a continuum; desire seems to close that gap.
Wanting is a stagnant state of mind and desire produces action. Wanting produces more wanting.
I really think there is more to this than parsing words.
Wanting seems to suggest that you’ll never move closer to what you want. Desire has an engine in it.
So how do we turn a want into a desire?
I don’t think you can. I believe you have to abandon one to get to the other.
When you let go of wanting thoughts, you make room for desire to enter.
Desire contains possibility and that alone puts it head and shoulders above wanting.
There is no guarantee that you’ll get what you desire but the odds become more favorable when you quit betting on wanting.
Just try out the two phrases below and see which one feels better.
I want (fill in the blank).
I desire (fill in the blank).
To sum up, I can’t claim what I say to be true
But desires move you towards what’s in view
While wanting contains the glue of “no can do.”
All the best,
John
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What do you aspire to be, do or have?
Where did that aspiration come from?
It came from inspiration. You were inspired to aspire.
Once you had the aspiration, you needed inspiration to fulfill it – thus the circle of creativity.
We mistakenly believe we thought of the aspiration. It’s really the other way around – the thought thought us.
Our aspiration came from a creative place we call inspiration. We didn’t think it up; it came bubbling up and then we had a thought about it.
Once we get the thought about it, we have to come up with a plan to get it. The plan to be successful has to be inspired. That means we have to go back to our creative source.
If we could think our way to aspiration, everyone would have already aspired.
It’s hard to believe that our thinking is not responsible for our creative thoughts, but if you examine it, thinking travels in another circle – a loop to “Knowhere.”
When we think we know, we delay our ability to inspire our aspiration. We think we are going to think our way to a solution. It’s always a detour.
After all the thinking is done, did you ever notice where the decision comes from? It comes from a place other than your thinking.
Think of it this way: A drop of aspiration comes from a giant reservoir known as inspiration. We seal this drop in the confined space of thinking where it swims in circles. It can’t go anywhere.
In order to escape our think tank, we have to stop swimming. That means we need to float for awhile and get calm.
It’s the calming of our thoughts that allows an escape hatch to open up for our aspiration to return to bathe in the vast waters of inspiration, and then return to us with creative options.
The circle of creativity does not contain thinking.
If you are wracking your brain for a way to aspire, take a deep breath, exhale slowly and let your thinking calm down. Inspiration always enters a quiet space.
To allow our aspiration the inspiration it needs, the first step of a successful action plan is to put your thinking in the circular file.
All the best,
John
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I can’t remember a time when a debate deepened a relationship.
The ones I remember had an opportunity for one person to speak and then the other person would get their chance.
If you were an observer of that debate, you may have learned something; as a participant, you were too busy making your point and missed an opportunity to relate to another.
Many people are involved in “relationships” of exchanging sentences. There is no real relating happening – just point – counterpoint.
Have you ever been in a “conversation” with someone who tunes out when the topic material isn’t one they’re interested in? They have no intention of relating to you unless what you’re saying is in tune with what they want to hear.
The telltale sign is that you are in mid sentence about a topic that interests you and they interrupt you and go on to a completely unrelated topic. What they communicate by such behavior is no interest in you or your topic material. They think they are having a conversation.
I wrote a blog post a couple of years ago called “Conversation.” In it The Grasshopper said, “A conversation is more fruitful when it’s more about discovery and less about what you know.”
That’s another way of saying that in order to relate you have to be willing to learn something about another.
In order to learn something, you must pay attention to them, not just wait for them to pause so you can expound on your secrets of the universe.
The mistake we often make is assuming that we know all about another and stop listening to them. You can discover something new and interesting about someone you’ve known your whole life when you take the time to relate, rather than make points as in a debate.
Become an observer of your interactions and begin to notice if you are debating or relating. One will leave you with the feeling of two ships passing in the night; the other will dock you together in the same port.
All the best,
John
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