While drinking a cup of tea the other day, it became apparent to me that “Perfectly Balanced” is a temporary condition.

It got me to wondering how we spend so much time seeking something that’s temporary.

I wish I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard someone say they need balance in their life as though it was something that was stationary.

Even a rocket going to the moon is off course better than 90% of the time.

What would really be useful is not perfect balance – there’s too much tension in holding that position, but a course correction mechanism that brings us back towards balance.

There is certainly a wonderful feeling attached when all the planets are aligned, but seeking that euphoria on a permanent basis makes us no more than a junkie needing a fix or a sot seeking their sauce.

The correction mechanism is recognition.

Recognizing that you are out of balance is often the only step needed toward stasis.

Balance is a state that we pass through – not one where we set down roots and settle.

You can’t build on balance because it’s a shifting foundation. Think of balance as perfection – an ideal to shoot for, but be prepared for the low score from the Russian judge.

When you recognize you are off balance, you activate a built-in guidance system that brings you back towards the center. Chances are you aren’t going to stay there long, so enjoy the visit.

Also, enjoy the ride. If the only purpose of your trip is getting to a destination, then it will be a tension filled ride.

Noticing you are out of balance brings the goal back in sight. They key is to continue to notice. Gravitating back towards balance is a life-long job. The more often we recognize we’re off course, the more often we get closer to the gravitational pull of balance. When we are in the orbit of balance, life goes more smoothly.

No one has it all together. No one is in perfect balance. The person to emulate is the person who recognizes they’re off course and then course corrects.

You can become your own role model. All you have to do is recognize you’re off balance.

All the best,

John

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It’s the thing that makes most advertising work – LCD.

It’s a math term many of us have forgotten, until we remember – LCD.

It’s the thing that allows most people to be lead – LCD

It’s why Rush Limbaugh & Glenn Beck have such huge followings – LCD.

What makes inane sitcoms with stereotypical characters and tired, predictable, old jokes so appealing? LCD!

Is Jay Leno the funniest comedian you’ve ever seen? Probably not, but he makes the most money. LCD.

LCD – LOWEST COMMON DENOMINATOR

There was a TV General Manager in Rhode Island who got in trouble for telling the truth to a class of college journalism students. He said that TV and TV news is programmed for the lowest common denominator. The public took offense. Why? Because they didn’t want to be associated with that group.

We are all part of that group no matter how much we believe we’re above it.

The lowest common denominator is that we’re all humans – focused on our imperfections and easily led.

What are we being led to? To the part of us we believe we are missing.

That’s why we buy the products and become followers. It’s rarely out of need; it’s mostly driven by desire. “Be all you can be.”

I don’t fault the marketers or panderers. The gold mine is there, so why not mine it?

The secret the LCD manipulators don’t want you to know is that there’s nothing missing.

You are a complete package. You arrived complete and the only thing that has changed is that you’ve forgotten.

Forgetting your completeness is much like awaking from a dream and having the details fade away with each eye blink.

Completeness has nothing to do with your intellect or your skill set. Completeness is a sensation that everything is taken care of. It’s not the mental concept of “everything will be all right.” Completeness is more of a sensate knowing that you’ll be able to respond to life.

You don’t need someone’s 6-step plan to respond to life; you just need to remember that you already own that skill. It’s part of the package you came with.

Did you ever have someone show you something useful on your computer that was always there but you never knew it? Completeness has always been there.

You’ll never be complete in your head because completeness is not an intellectual knowing. In fact, your head will argue with you until your dying day that something’s missing.

What if you just chose not to participate in the argument anymore? Every time you make that choice, you open a space for your completeness to show up. It happens every time.

Discovering that you are complete and have the ability to respond to life is the highest common denominator.

All the best,

John

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The Grasshopper* pops up at the oddest times. I was cooking dinner last night and while I was dicing onions he said, “There’s no turning corners if you’re going around in circles.”

I had to chew on that for awhile but I knew there was something to it.

Patterns of behavior are circular. They keep coming around and they take us to the same place. Sometimes it feels like being stuck in a revolving door.

“Déjà vu! I’ve been here before.”

Patterns are like clockwork. They are such a consistent part of our existence and woven into the fabric of our life that we just don’t notice them.

You can’t turn the corner with circular patterns in place. It’s just not possible.

It’s time for an intervention.

We need a crash course in NOTICING or the debris from our mishaps will keep piling up and keep us stuck on the beltway.

Noticing means we have to STOP for a moment and become a witness to our patterned way of doing things. We need to pause and pay attention to what we automatically do or don’t do.

In these moments of pause, we get to step out of our life and view it as though we are a stranger – someone who’s not involved. Did you ever notice how much easier it is to solve someone else’s problem? That’s the beauty of being an observer.

When you stop and notice, you pause your automaticity. In that pause, lies the strategy for turning the corner. That exit has always been there, we just haven’t stopped to notice.

All the best,

John

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*The Grasshopper is the knowing part of you that lets the truth slip out from time to time. Not the relevant truth but the truth that can only come from the one source of everything.

While I watched a bit of the Academy Awards last week, it occurred to me that we’re all actors.

Our skills equal theirs, except ours never make it to the Silver Screen.

Their roles are varied, unless they’re Steven Seagal; ours seem to be the same day in and day out.

Who is this person we are playing?

We’ve taken years to develop it and it goes by many names – Personality, ego and character to name a few.

Did you ever meet a performer who’s always on? They just can’t seem to shut it off. That’s most of us.

We take this character we’ve developed and walk them to every corner of life’s stage in full costume and we even have dreams about them when we sleep.

We have come to believe we are the person we made up. Imagine for a moment that Tobey Maguire wears his Spiderman suit beneath his street clothes everyday so that he’s ready to scale the side of a building, and you’ll start to see the silliness of it.

You know that you are really locked into character when you begin to defend it. There are no defenses for illusions because illusions do not exist. The part you are defending only exists in your mind – the biggest illusion of them all.

It’s time to retire your character. It’s time to let your hair down. It’s time to inspect your illusion.

We have taken a collection of patterned behaviors and called it us. That’s like calling a strip of film a projector. Those film strips, no matter how action packed or colorful, can’t make them a projector.

You are a projector, not a film strip.

What are you projecting? If you let your hair down, you’ll only project your light. If you keep it tied up in a bun or wear a powdered wig, you remain in character and are limited to the role you play.

It’s not about changing roles; it’s about letting your hair down so there is no more role to play.

Acting is tiring. Projecting your light is effortless.

It begins when we stop pretending that we’re anything other than our light. Our light doesn’t need two thumbs up to make us feel wonderful. It doesn’t need any feedback to keep shining brightly. It just needs us to remove the filmstrip from the projector.

It’s a bit confusing when we find out we’re not the role we’ve been playing. We discover that most of our life has been a dress rehearsal and that all it amounts to is “All dressed up with no place to go.”

It’s a wrap when we discover our light.

All the best,

John

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The only accurate barometer by which to measure yourself is your behavior.

All else is rationalized PR.

When you boil it all down, it all comes down to what you do.

What you say, intend or defend can never contend with the only thing that matters – what you do.

Our focus rarely falls where it would be most useful – on our behavior.

Behavior, productive or not, always produces results. Intentions rarely do.

The results you have in your life can be traced back to one thing – your behavior.

Notice how we can easily ascribe our lot in life to someone else’s actions or inactions. That just underscores that behavior is the culprit or the savior. The problem with focusing on others’ behavior is that we rarely, if ever, look in our own direction.

What actions have you taken to get to where you are now?

What set of steps take you to the same, undesired place every time?

If you want to see how you measure up, start measuring your behavior.

Start to notice what you do. You have a recipe for the results you get. It’s your behavior.

Once you begin to focus on what you do, the components of the path you’ve been walking reveal themselves. It’s at that point you can begin to tinker with the paving stones and build a path to somewhere else.

What you intend isn’t going to happen unless you engage the appropriate behavior.

Here’s a poetic thought for the weekend:

If you’re stuck in a way of life that you rue,
Adjust your behavior and remove the glue

All the best,

John

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I saw my neighbor helping his pre-school daughter into his car this morning. You didn’t need to be psychic to know this guy was carrying around the weight of the world on his shoulders.

The way his body was positioned and the look on his face were dead giveaways that he was caught up in something inside his head.

What he didn’t realize is what we all forget to remember: There is something ever-present that we have at our disposal that we rarely use – Choice!

The amazing thing to me is how often we defend our unresourceful frames of mind. Some even wear them as a badge of honor. “If you had what’s going on in my life, you’d be this way too.”

Maybe so, but defending that way of reacting negates the one thing that will free you from it – Choice!

My neighbor wasn’t recognizing that he had a choice. He’s not alone; we all have that blind spot.

It’s helpful to remind ourselves, when we recognize that we’re caught up in something, that choice is always available. It’s as omnipresent as oxygen.

Our initial reaction to something is often chosen for us through conditioning. That’s choice silently at work. You don’t have to make those choices; they make you.

Your ever-present choice is this: “Are your choices going to choose you OR are you going to pick them?

Either way, a choice will be made.

Even making no choice at all is a choice. In that case, you are allowing whatever automatic choice that takes place to decide how you’ll react.

My purpose in writing this post today is to remind us all of something we too easily forget – Choice is ever-present.

When you recognize you have a choice, you have released your free will from the prison of conditioning. The only thing left to do after that happens is to choose.

Choose to remember that you have a choice.

All the best,

John

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It occurred to me recently that a large part of getting a meal ready to serve involves back timing.

It never really dawned on me that I was using a skill I honed in the broadcasting industry to cook diner, but such is the case.

You roughly have to know how long things take to cook and start the longest thing first, followed by the second longest thing etc. Everything takes a specific temperature for a certain amount of time to cook properly. Let’s say the baked chicken takes 33 minutes and the string beans almandine take 17 minutes. You preheat the oven to the desired temperature and set the timer at 33 minutes when you put the chicken in. When the timer reaches 17 minutes, you start cooking the string beans on the stove top. Everything is ready at the same time and you just serve.

I’m sure that’s Home Economics 101, but I missed that class.

I also missed the class on back timing for life. Maybe you did too.

There’s enough actuarial data to approximate how long you’ll live. Yes, you could trip over a Dixie Cup lid and shorten your time or be the anomaly and have Willard Scott wish you a “Happy 100^th,” but you have a general idea.

So you take that approximate age and then factor in the age you are now and you have successfully back timed your life.

That’s the easy part. Now the question is: “How do I best spend that time?”

Many people when they come to this realization concoct a “Bucket List” – things I want to do before I die.

I believe that’s quite natural but the focus is somewhat misplaced.

The focus on things takes us away from what we all really want – the ability to feel alive for every one of our remaining moments.

If you have to rely on a thing to make you feel alive, you’ve not only missed the point, you’re missing your life.

If you need something outside of you to feel your aliveness, you have bought into the concept of “It’s out there somewhere.”

Imagine for a moment that a tree, in order to feel its aliveness, has to go to the “Rain Forest Café” every Friday night. His thought process may be, “If I don’t show up there, I’m just dead wood.”

Ain’t nothing wrong with hanging out on Friday night, but if your aliveness depends on it, you’re already dead – dead to the aliveness that permeates every human being.

How do you reincarnate that aliveness and feel it wherever you are? Stop the chase!

The mindset seems to be “If I stop running I will die.” It’s just the opposite; you’ll find your life.

The aliveness of life is there regardless of what your life situation is. You just have to stop all the noise in order for its soft voice to be heard.

Your bucket has a hole in it if you expect to find your life in there.

Take the time to back time your life and find out how really alive you can be, otherwise you can’t see the forest for the trees.

All the best,

John

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I’ve had a new phrase creep into my vocabulary when people ask me how I’m doing.

In the past, I would say something like “swell” or “peachy.” Those words seemed antiquated enough to get peoples’ attention. I’ll admit, those answers aren’t as colorful as the one my friend, Kenny gives who says, “Fair to partly cloudy.”

But one day this answer came out and it seems to cover all the bases. I said, “I’m evolving.”

If nothing else, it will get peoples’ attention.

It’s become more than a pat answer. It is a trigger for a mindset – one that suggests what we all are: A work in progress and moving forward.

It’s a reminder that we never arrive. Arriving and staying in one place is an illusion not supported by reality. The old expression that “change is the only constant” comes to mind.

Like most people I have reverie about the “Good old days.” The operative word in there is “Old.” There is something fun about walking down memory lane but you never want to build a house there. The foundational material is quicksand. You quickly get enveloped by something that won’t allow you to evolve – the past.

Recognizing that your natural drive is to evolve keeps your side trips to the past and your regrets to a minimum. You get more focused on the drive to be alive that’s going on right now.

Life cannot be captured in a jar and preserved. It’s always evolving.

You can never start from where you were. The starting point is always where you are now. It’s the key to evolving.

This is not an argument against tradition and preferences. You may have found a style that works for you and that’s to be celebrated. It’s when you refuse to recognize that your way isn’t the only way is when you put your evolvement on hold.

Please don’t confuse evolvement with the penchant to chase the horizon and find your missing piece out there somewhere. That’s just another drive to arrive. You’ll know you aren’t evolving when you notice that “one step forward and two steps back” is the constant in your life.

Evolvement requires shedding baggage, not acquiring more of it.

In order to grow, you have let go of the past and plastic pursuits.

Evolvement doesn’t have a destination in mind, just the pure drive of being alive. It’s the recognition and appreciation of that aliveness that keeps us progressing.

It’s easy to stagnate, just decide that you’re not enough or attempt to find who you are by pretending everything you need is outside yourself.

Evolvement begins when you discover you are not defined by your possessions or pursuits or by what you have or don’t have.

You also begin to grow when you find out you don’t know all there is to know. It’s this realization that opens you up to progression because you find out there really is lots of room to grow.

It’s the day that you discover that you are enough that you begin to evolve. Everyone is enough; it’s just our conditioning that tells us otherwise.

If you pay careful attention you will see the word “Love” in evolve. Love yourself enough to know you have everything you need to evolve.

If your life has become a revolving door, it may be time to look for an exit point – evolving.

All the best,

John

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I’m happy that you’ve found happiness.

It really doesn’t matter which direction it comes from, happiness is to be celebrated.

If you just won the Super Bowl and I lost, I’m happy for you.

Yes, I may be sad for me, but as I said, “Celebrate happiness.”

When you celebrate happiness, you are celebrating a feeling inside, not a set of events. Every time you spot happiness, it’s the happiness in you that recognized it.

When you celebrate happiness, you cultivate that feeling within you. Happiness belongs to everyone, not just the others you see enjoying it.

If you’re at the airport and you see family members or lovers gleefully greet each other at the baggage claim, take a moment to silently celebrate with them. When you take time to notice, you are calibrating your “Happy Meter.”

The side trail you want to avoid is the internal conversation about happiness. “Look at those people; they are so happy. If only I could be like them, but that will never happen for me.” That’s envy and dejection, neither of which leads to happiness.

Get in the habit of noticing happiness.

Another pitfall to happiness is dictating the direction from which it’s to come. (A formal sentence not ending in a preposition).

“I can only be happy if such and such happens.” That’s a life sentence of waiting which postpones happiness indefinitely.

Everyone’s happiness belongs to you if you notice it and celebrate it.

There is not a lack of happiness; we’ve just convinced ourselves that it can only happen if a certain set of circumstances are in place.

You may be unhappy about something and it’s useful to notice that as well. Many never feel their unhappy feelings fully, so they can never metabolize them. They keep pushing it away and it just patiently waits and comes back another day.

Unmetabolized unhappiness is drama which always stands in the way of feeling happy.

Yes, we will have many unhappy moments in our life. Feel them fully and they will let go of you much sooner.

We also keep our unhappiness around much longer when we fail to celebrate happiness.

Nothing is true unless it’s true for you. Don’t believe what I’m saying; put it to the test. Celebrate happiness wherever you see it and notice how quickly more of it comes your way.

All the best,

John

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The Grasshopper hopped right onto my bed late, last night and said: “Truth is a one-way street.”

I had to sleep on that.

Seems we all claim to have the truth about something, when, in fact, all we have is an opinion or a preference.

If you and I have a different truth about the same thing, it can’t possibly be the real truth because the real truth has no opposite.

In fact, the real truth can’t be described in words we can argue with.

You can know the truth but you can’t explain it – only what it’s not.

The truth is never about being right.

There is no smugness attached to the truth. There are no tit-for-tat arguments about the real truth because it’s never a set of facts.

You’re not going to find truth in the legal system or the political system. That just gets you a consensus of opinion.

The closest we come to defining truth is attempting to explain reality. What shows up on a moment to moment basis is the result of truth.

Reality is the child of truth.

Truth is the backdrop to our lives. It’s always there in its unformed essence ready to wear the uniform of reality as it shows up in our daily lives.

Unlike our version of the truth, real truth has no agenda.

My sense is that real truth is our life force – whatever it is that animates us. That life force goes by many names and the one that seems to get the closest for me is truth.

No one has cornered the market on truth because it’s impossible to corral it. That doesn’t mean we can’t use it to our best advantage.

To get access to the truth we have to let our thoughts calm down and make a path for it to show up in our mind. And even though we get thoughts about it, we can’t fully explain it. It’s like the vivid dream that fades away with each waking moment – the details become fuzzy. But we know that feeling.

So you have to go inside for the truth to come out. That means that your thoughts about it have to calm down so you can experience the real thing. When you experience the truth on a regular basis, there is no more need to win the argument about truth.

The one-way The Grasshopper was implying is that truth doesn’t go in; it comes out. We don’t tell ourselves what the truth is and then it forms. It’s the other way around. The truth forms and shows up in our reality when we make a space for it by letting go of our preformed notions about it.

You’ll never hit anyone over the head with the real truth because truth is not a weapon. It’s more of a quiet knowing that can be trusted. Catalogue the feeling you get when you experience the life force known as truth so that you’ll be able to distinguish it from a set of facts with which to attack.

No one will ever adequately define truth; we can only feel it infuse our lives.

All the best,

John

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