It seems, at some level, we are all collectors. We have our stuff.

Reminds me of a story . . .

Back in my radio days, all the managers of our company were at a meeting in Las Vegas. The program directors had all once been on-air broadcasters and a bunch of us were sitting around discussing our careers and how we got started in radio. One of the youngest guys told us that when he was 10 years old he did a critique of the radio station he listened to in Seattle. He put it in a notebook and the notebook found its way into a box that he forgot about. He found it about 15 years later and read over his assessment with professional eyes and found that he was darn close to the mark when he was 10.

That got everyone to talking about their stuff. Finally, the young man asked, “Does everybody have a box of stuff?” and we all nodded “Yes.”

That reminds me of another story . . .

My business partner, another former radio broadcaster, was moving from upstate New York to Florida and had a dilemma. What was he going to do with all his stuff?

He had compiled quite a bit over the years from an international beer can collection to golf balls from around the globe that he collected during his many travels. He had all sorts of stuff. Then, all of a sudden, he had an epiphany. He remembers saying to himself, “If I died today, who would want this stuff?” The things he thought people would want, he gave to them. The things he deemed that those close to him had no interest in, he auctioned off. He hired a professional auctioneer and anything he didn’t sell at auction was put out on trash day.

What have you been collecting that no longer has meaning for you?

The answer may not be any list of tangible goods but a collection of things that no longer serve you. How about a long standing grudge, a prejudice that serves no one, or a position on something that just won’t stand up to the facts?

We all have our stuff and it may be time for an assessment.

Holding on to that which burdens us keeps us from traveling light. Moving your old stuff from one day to the next can turn into a lifetime of being a pack mule for pain.

Today’s thought: It may be time to unstuff your stuff.

All the best,

John

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I find that I operate best when stuff mentally flows through me rather than having it get stuck in place.

Everyone gets irregular from time to time so let me introduce you to “Mental Ex-Lax.”

Getting stuck on a thought is literally having it loop around in circles giving you the same thought and the same attendant feelings over and over again. It’s like a “Twilight Zone” adventure where you are on a beltway with no exit ramps.

The laxative that gets you moving again is recognition. Reminds me of a story . . .

I have an old business acquaintance whom I run into every once in a blue moon. The conversation is friendly enough but has always led to one upmanship until . . . I recognized it.

Up until that point, it was what he knew and what I knew and nothing new came out of it. We were competing for who had the better point with the bigger impact. For lack of a better description, we were talking past each other. Then one day I saw him at a local driving range and the old familiar pattern came out to play and then I recognized myself as stuck in this going nowhere exchange.

My remedy? Mental Ex-Lax! That simply means to stop competing and listen.

When I wait for my opening to get my stellar point across, I’m focused on when someone is going to take a break rather than on what they are saying. I miss a lot. When I listen, ideas begin to flow through me.

Reminds me of another story . . . I have a friend who is very funny and one who is not. When they get together, the one without the funny skills goes into competition with the one who is hilarious. I should just hand everyone who is in attendance a wet blanket because “Unfunny” has no sensory acuity as to what’s going on around them and jams the flow.

It takes a little practice but if you stop competing and start to listen, you’ll notice how things begin to flow through you. What you’ll find is that when it is your turn to contribute, you’ll have something more of substance to say.

To sum things up: Go with the flow!

All the best,

John

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The sad truth is that you can’t hold happiness hostage.

Happiness is a free spirit that comes and goes with the whim of the wind. No jail can hold it.

Just like you can enjoy a warm or cool breeze while it’s blowing, happiness is meant to be enjoyed while it is here. It can’t be manufactured.

We do, however, manufacture unhappiness by the truckload and it can be contained.

Take a moment and look at the backwards logic we employ about happiness. We attempt to contain that which can’t be held and we create and hold on to that which cannot be enjoyed.

Unhappiness is not the lack of happiness. It is a separate entity with its own DNA.

Unhappiness is created when we give substance to our thoughts. Happiness is not a thought; it’s a sensation that we feel.

When we spend so much time in our head and too little time in our body, we find out why happiness is such an infrequent visitor.

It’s your head that tells you that you’re unhappy. It’s your body that senses that you are happy.

Unhappiness is self contained because it’s a looped thought pattern that crowds your head and won’t let anything else in. Your body can feel happiness independent from your head.

The way to enjoy happiness, while it’s here, is to feel it, not think about containing it. You will be happier for longer periods of time using this strategy.

It’s easy to maintain unhappiness. Just keep thinking about all the things that make you unhappy. When you spend all your time in your head, you’ll miss most of the visits that happiness makes to your body.

The way to find more happiness is to visit with your body more often. That means to get out of your head and sense what’s going on in your body. It’s easy enough to do, just focus on a body part and notice the sensations going on there. Then shift your attention to another part of your body and sense what’s going on there. Move your attention through your entire body and notice what you feel.

Not only is this a great way to relax, you just may stumble upon a happy feeling or two.

You’ll have to excuse me; I feel a breeze coming on.

All the best,

John

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It’s so amazing to me how we make uninformed decisions every day.

Politics would be the easiest example to cite because the electorate rarely, if ever, votes on the facts at hand but on the emotion they are feeling at the time.

Uninformed voting is the only thing that seems bipartisan these days.

But “fact-less” decisions go on in every area of our life – the least of which is politics.

Take peoples’ rules for example. I’ve mentioned it before, but our rules are usually inherited before we know what inherited means. That means our rules are somebody else’s rules that we got conditioned to.

You can easily observe an uninformed tenet when someone states a personal rule and indicates it should apply to everyone. Two things are in play here that these folks are unaware of.

1. They don’t know they didn’t independently arrive at that rule.
2. It doesn’t apply to everyone just because it’s bible for them.

Yet, they will continue to make their uninformed case as though it is fact instead of opinion.

Exchanging opinions is the grist of conversation. Some can converse for hours without a fact entering the discussion. Listen to just about any caller to a talk show if you need examples.

The mark of us becoming informed is to have the presence of mind to fact check our opinions. That doesn’t mean to go looking for people who agree with you. That’s just putting gasoline on an out of control fire.

The first step in this procedure is to examine your beliefs and determine how factual they are. It’s an eye opening experience to find out how much of what we believe is devoid of evidence. Step two is to take that belief and put it in the opinion file. I don’t know who first said it but it bears repeating here, “We are entitled to our own opinions, but not our own set of facts.”

You become more informed and more believable when you label your position as opinion. When something is an opinion, it doesn’t need the “fight to the death” mentality that many employ when they believe they are arguing for their “facts.”

Socrates said, “An unexamined life is not worth living.” He could have easily substituted the word “Uniformed” for unexamined and the statement would have been just as relevant.

The examination’s purpose is to find out how much of you is not you. When you begin to strip away all that has been added, you become informed.

I would never want to have my opinions taken away from me because they are so much fun to have. I just want to be able to put them in the pile that works best when push comes to shove – the uninformed pile.

All the best,

John

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It may come as a shock to you that we have many beliefs we don’t believe in.

Beliefs are patterned routines that we run inside of our mind that create visible behavior. A belief (pattern) we don’t believe in is most notable when we make a claim that we aren’t a certain way that nobody else believes.

They see the evidence; we are inured to it. The same evidence makes them believe and us nonbelievers.

Your belief that you can’t possibly be that way stands in the way of you believing.

Some of us can go a lifetime ignoring the evidence that’s readily available due a belief we own that we have no evidence for. That won’t keep us from arguing for our limiting belief.

What have people, who have no connection to each other, told you time and again, over the years, about you that you continue not to believe?

They could all be wrong. If you didn’t laugh at that line, you can stop reading now because no amount of evidence will convince you. You are a “True believer.”

If you got a little smirk, there may be some hope left for you yet.

The problem isn’t looking for the evidence. It’s in abundant supply. The problem is the instant reaction we have to it. That reaction is one of opposition and denial.

If you can recognize your instant reaction and set it aside for just a moment, you will set in motion the strategy to update your belief. New information comes through when we set aside our initial reaction. It’s this new information that helps us restructure our reaction and choose a new way to respond. It’s then, and only then, that we get to see what others see and it becomes easier to believe.

You won’t get any actionable information by opposing and denying. That just gets you to believe what no one else believes. One question you can ask yourself is: Are my beliefs working for me?

If your answer is “No,” you now have the wedge you need to find the humbleness necessary to change a long standing, limiting belief.

Wouldn’t it be nice to have beliefs you can believe in? Start interrupting your denial and opposition and you’ll find a way.

Don’t believe me; I could have made this all up.

All the best,

John

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The Grasshopper woke me up with a startling premise: “Compromise isn’t temporary.”

I immediately thought of a notable exception like a “temporary compromise,” so I was a bit confused.

As I awakened more, the wisdom of dawn began to crack any befuddlement I had about the idea.

Then one of my favorite quotes came to mind from Werner Erhard: “The reason life doesn’t work is because people don’t keep their agreements.” I then heard The Grasshopper add this addendum: “Tacit or otherwise.”

What is compromise other than an agreement?

People enter compromises all the time. The trouble comes about when they don’t live up to them.

My experience is that uncompromising people run into the one sticky wicket after another because they don’t believe they have to compromise. It’s for others, not them. And even when they do, they have no intention of following through. They lay a false foundation that always crumbles beneath them.

To them, quid pro quo means only I get to say, “No.”

You certainly have the absolute right to not compromise. You also have written your epitaph in the wind: I remained alone and wondered why.

Who wants to enter a compromise with someone who’s always in reverse?

It’s not that they don’t believe in compromise, they do, but only ones that work for them and not you.

Compromise in order to work needs mutual commitment. If either party enters one with their fingers crossed behind their back, plan on eventually seeing only one of their fingers up front.

To say that people who don’t compromise are incredibly selfish only scratches the veneer. There is steadfast opposition to anything that doesn’t rigidly serve their agenda beneath the surface, driving them towards the highway of my way.

They never recognize the reason they are forever walking out is because they have never walked in without an uncompromising agenda.

Relationships will be temporary to those unwilling to bend, and they’ll wonder all the way to the end.

All the best,

John

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Do you live in a world of your own creation?

That seems like a “Yes” or “No” question but the answer is always “Yes!”

A different question is: “Do you act like you live in a world of your own creation?” That answer is either “Yes” or “No.”

It depends on what filter you have in place. Active people believe they live in a world they create and passive people believe they live in a world someone else created. I learned about this distinction between active and passive from Jerry Stocking.

What I’ve come to discover is that whether you are active or passive, you still create your own world whether you believe you do or not.

Every step you have taken to this point has created your world. You may have been dragged along a path by another for awhile which shaped your beliefs about world creation, but you are out there on your own now creating your world.

This is a powerful revelation. It helps you sidestep your beliefs about creation and dive head first into the reality that you are the creator of your world.

Here’s a world class question to reflect on that will open new vistas heretofore unseen: “What world will I create today?”

If you can grasp the concept of what you have today is of your own creation, you have taken back the reins of life from the fairy tale of fate.

Your world is a result of the patterned way you do things. There is a “Pop Psychology” phrase that states, “If you change your thoughts, you change your life.” They left out the plan on how to do that.

Real change comes when you notice your patterned way of doing things and take steps to change the pattern. Then, changed thoughts will follow suit.

Want to adjust your world view? Recognize that your world is created by your patterns – no one else’s – yours!

Now that you recognize that revelation, you can respond more directly to the question: “What world will I create today?”

All the best,

John

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It dawned on me the other day that I’m on vacation, and so are you.

I’m sure you noticed that vacations seem too short, especially so when they are winding down.

Life is a vacation. It’s a rest stop between where you came from and where you are going back to. Life, like vacations, is short.

Sometimes it takes us a bit of time to get in the groove of our vacation. Reminds me of a story . . .

I remember being on a family vacation at the Jersey shore in the 80’s. We arrived on Saturday and did a whirlwind of activities with the kids the first few days. The pace seemed like my work pace – nonstop. I remember waking up Wednesday morning and heading over to the market to replenish some food supplies. As I was walking from the car to the store, all of a sudden, I noticed that my gait had slowed down. No rush in and rush out mentality. I was leisurely sauntering into the market. I now knew I was on vacation.

It seems that most of us don’t get that vacation feel until the second half of our life. We are too busy to notice that we are on vacation and too often fail to take advantage of it.

You’ll be going back to where you came from soon enough. While you are here, it makes lots of sense to recognize that you are on vacation.

This recognition allows you to slow your pace and find enjoyment even in the simplest of things, like walking into the market.

Enjoy your vacation!

All the best,

John

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One of the buzzwords from the last couple of years that’s come from the economic challenges our country faces is “Transparency.”

Transparency’s objective is to shine a light on that which is done in private so that people cannot clandestinely weave wool to pull over our eyes. A noble endeavor.

Here is what’s really been hidden from us – our ability to see through people.

I’ve quoted him before but cowboy clad attorney, Gerry Spence‘s words bear repeating. He says that we all have a “BS detector.”

Dr. Dave Dobson not only claimed the same thing but taught a strategy on how to validate it. He called it “Other Than Conscious Communication.”

Both of these gentlemen are wizards in their own right and we may never rise to their level of sensory acuity, but that doesn’t mean we cannot corner a bit of their teachings and apply it to our own lives.

The process begins with the knowledge that there is a part of you that knows “what’s what.” We have learned to ignore that part of us and have given preference to our sophisticated intellect when making assessments and decisions about others.

Here’s an exercise to calibrate your acuity: Record and watch any TV talk show with the sound turned down for about 5 minutes. Then cue the recording up to the beginning and view it again, only this time with the sound turned up. Then notice how much of the communication you gleaned before hearing any words. You will surprise yourself.

We are all transparent. Having this knowledge pays more dividends if you pay attention to more than the words.

We get caught up in how logical words sound rather than how congruent they feel. That’s because we have been conditioned to ignore the sensations we feel. Those sensations are there for our reason. They serve as evidence when we get to the reasoning stage.

If you ignore these sensations, you’re heading into court without all the facts and your case will be “trying.”

Don’t try and outsmart people; “out-sense” them. The former strategy leads to back and forth one-upmanship and little communication; the latter opens your eyes to see through more than you’ll ever hear.

All the best,

John

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There are many answers to the question, “What Stops Me?” but one of the most significant answers is rarely explored.

Many people have taken multiple rides on the Self Improvement Train and have never reached their destination. Not only is this frustrating but, oftentimes, self defeating because, unbeknown to them, they have boarded the wrong train first.

There’s nothing wrong with self Improvement; it just doesn’t go to the destination they want, even though others have taken this same train to that desired destination.

Sounds like an episode of “The Twilight Zone.”

What stops me from getting to my destination? We rationalize it in many ways: “Stinky train,” “I didn’t try hard enough,” “I’m Lazy,” “I’m hopeless” or “my mother loved my sister more”” are just some of the answers we come up with.

It never occurs to us that this vehicle of self improvement will run out of steam quickly for us if we don’t first ride the “Train of Self Acceptance.”

A few years back it occurred to me that the often overlooked train of self acceptance is the vehicle necessary to ride before you transfer over to the train of self-improvement. It was that inspiration that caused me to release my “I Love My Body” CD set.

What I discovered was that it really doesn’t matter how much willpower you own; you’ll be stopped in your efforts to improve until you take a look at yourself, warts and all, and accept that reality.

Self acceptance is the ride you need to take before transferring over to self improvement.

The ride we normally take first is self deception. We refuse to wash the mirror and take an un-obscured look at who we need to accept – ourselves.

You can only be who you are and where you are right now. Once we accept that reality, we are then ready for a transfer to the Train of Self Improvement.

Self Deception will stop self improvement in its tracks every time.

What stops me is not accepting me. It’s only from a place of acceptance that the proper transfers are handed out. All aboard!

All the best,

John

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