The Grasshopper was poetic this morning.

If your headlines are mainly sizzle and your story leaves others confused
They will probably look elsewhere for friendship
Rather than re-sift through your pile of clues

People like a good mystery but will tire of it quickly when there are too many twists and turns.

One of the best questions I was ever asked was: “Is it hard to be you?”

If it’s hard to be you, your life is a mystery with too many self imposed plot turns keeping you from finding an answer.

The clues are always there. My friend, Jim was with the L.A. County Sheriff’s office for 28 years and says that criminals bring clues into a crime scene and take clues away with them. You just have to know where to look.

The clues of your mystery are in plain sight. They probably have been brought to your attention many times, but you ignored them and moved on to another plot twist rather than solve what’s right in front of you.

You’re not alone. We all ignore clues to some degree which cause us to utter: “It’s hard to be me.”

What makes it harder to be you is a refusal to work with the reality that’s present rather than escaping to the fantasy that isn’t.

The curse of creativity is that many of us use it to evade rather than address. The evasion leaves us like an unresolved musical chord – a song filled with tension.

If you really want to solve your puzzle, the pieces are all on the table. You just have to expend some effort putting them together.

Mysteries don’t solve themselves. The process begins when you get a clue.

All the best,

John

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“Give what you want to receive” is an operative strategy in human relations. From personal experience, I believe it is flawed.

I have mentioned before that I worship at the altar of consistency. It’s an aphrodisiac for me. It’s the one thing that I make an effort to give but I rarely see it reflected back.

The second thing I cherish is someone having my back. It’s one of the things I go out of my way to provide to others, but again I don’t see a lot of it on the return visit.

So, I could easily deduce that the people I am expecting something in return from are flawed. That’s not the case. The flaw is that they are under-informed by me.

One of the larger mistakes we all make is to think that people think like us. They don’t. We assume that they make the same assumptions with the same set of facts. They don’t.

Giving has nothing to do with receiving. There is no quid pro quo.

Giving is expecting nothing in return, other than the warm feeling you get from doing it.

When you expect something in return, you set yourself up for disappointment. What mother breast feeds her child thinking that I’m doing this for you so that someday you will provide for me when I can’t provide for myself?

Give what you give because it’s part of your character, not for an ulterior motive. Giving is giving and receiving is receiving. They run on separate tracks. When we believe it’s a two way street, we are mistaken.

Expecting to automatically get back what you give goes against the grain. If you want what you give, you have to ask.

The answer to getting what you give is in the asking, not the expecting.

We rarely ask for what we want. We expect it. Every time we don’t get what we expect, we assign the blame outward.

There is an old NLP axiom that reads: “The meaning of the communication is the response that you get.”

If you desire what you are giving and not getting it, your communication skills are lacking. That means you are not asking for what you want; you are having people guess. There are low odds on that strategy working.

Just as fat never turns into muscle, giving never equals receiving.

The magic is in the asking. When you make a specific request, you will get instant feedback, no more guesswork about your relationship with the other person. Either you will get what you ask for or you won’t.

If you are expecting without asking, you will continue to live unrequited in your own world where no one else knows the rules.

Here’s an acronym you can use to remind yourself of the biblical prescription on how to get what you give: A.S.K.

“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.”

All the best,

John

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I am amazed at all the ways we learn to block out something that’s ever present – Fear.

We fight with it, suppress it, deny it, sugar coat it – anything to chase it away.

It seems we rarely, if ever, cooperate with it.

Sometimes an enemy becomes a friend when cooperation becomes an option.

How do we cooperate with fear? We give it what all of us want – recognition.

Recognizing that you feel afraid is one of the best ways to give acknowledgement to that which you’ve been hiding from.

Fear’s power is anticipation. Its muscle comes from what’s yet to come. That’s the mental part of fear. You can’t cooperate with fear in your mind, because it multiplies into a thousand thoughts. The place to cooperate with fear is in your body where there is only one feeling to cooperate with.

Cooperating with fear means to feel it.

The temptation when we feel fear is to talk about it. That’s an attempt to make it go away. The minute we get tired of talking, it attacks us with full force.

Fear like any other feeling wants to be felt. It’s not going to go away until it gets its way. It’s darn persistent.

Rather than arm wrestle with it and lose again, cooperate with this sensation by feeling it fully. That means to notice what goes on in your body when you are feeling afraid. Keep your attention on the feeling and not the story that’s producing it.

Cooperating with fear is like giving it warm milk at bedtime. When we put our attention on the feeling of fear, it begins to metabolize itself and drift off to sleep.

If you would like to tuck in fear for the evening, allow yourself to feel it in your body.

The way to keep fear permanently in place is to keep doing all the things you’ve been doing. The remedy for giving it a rest is to cooperate with it.

Fear will always be with us. Sometimes it serves us and sometimes it gets in the way. If fear is getting in your way too often, keeping you from doing what you want to do, it’s time to fully experience the feeling in your body.

Ask yourself this: Why do people abuse things like drugs, alcohol, food, and other people? Answer: To make the fear go away.

It really doesn’t go away, only you do. In case you haven’t noticed, your attempt at numbing yourself isn’t working because your fear never rests. That’s because you run from it rather than feel it.

Undigested fear will poison you and take its toll. It’s time for a new approach.

When you feel fearful, let yourself fully explore the feeling in your body – not you head. Keep your attention on the feeling. The temptation is to stop feeling and start talking. Resist that temptation and stay with the feeling.

We’ve been asked over the years to face our fears. That’s only a partial solution. Feeling them fully makes them less of a bully.

All the best,

John

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One of the older homes on our block is undergoing a facelift. They’re having an addition built on and all of the old siding has been removed from the old part of the house. The roof has been re-shingled, new windows installed and new siding has been applied. They’ve done a wonderful job, with one exception – the chimney.

It’s a brick chimney that’s been in place over 30 years. Being the son of a bricklayer, I couldn’t help but notice that the chimney was in need of acid washing so as to match the new look of the house.

The problem for me is I’ve noticed it every day for the last 10 days and had the same conversation with myself. “If you’re going to spend all that money and have your house remodeled, why would you neglect a simple thing like acid washing the chimney to remove old stains and add new luster? Doesn’t the contractor see that? I’ll bet the homeowners never even thought to ask.”

That’s a perfect inquiry – once, maybe twice, but 10 days in a row?

Finally, yesterday, it hit me like a ton of bricks. No one is benefiting by my observation – not the builder, not the homeowner, and especially not me.

I already knew what I knew. Reinforcing it 9 additional times didn’t increase my knowledge or have any effect on the outcome.

A repeated thought without action remains a stuck thought. It takes up our mental real estate blocking any new thought from coming in.

By noticing a repeated thought in action, like I did yesterday, it opens a door to let the thought escape and makes room for some new thoughts – thoughts that have action plans attached. My observation of my stuck thought presented me with three action options:

1. Suggest it to the contractor.
2. Suggest it to the homeowner.
3. Mind my own business.

The stimulus (the stained chimney) only gave me one thought – to be a know-it-all neighbor without an action plan.

By observing my repeated thought, I received new options that had actions attached.

What repeated thought is taking up space in your head that’s benefitting no one? Take time to notice it the next time it comes around. Just by observing the thought, rather than participating in it, again, you receive an action plan.

Thoughts don’t create anything without some behavior attached. The surefire way to keep your behavior stuck in cement, is to let the same thought go on and on without observation.

Your repeated thought may be right, but right has never washed a chimney.

All the best,

John

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The word “Intimacy” has taken on a sexual persona over the years. That’s too bad because it’s so much more.

“Closeness” has been so overshadowed by its sensual sibling that we forget what it’s like to be really intimate.

Intimacy creates a bond and it engenders trust even after the volume has been turned down on lust.

Intimacy has transparency as one of its major ingredients. You trust your secrets to someone you are intimate with, no matter how dark.

I think very few people experience intimacy in this lifetime because they are too caught up on the surface to capture the depth of it.

People fear intimacy. It’s hard for most to let people see into their glass house that they keep nestled in the woods. The fear is being found out. That fear keeps our façade in place so no one else can explore our depth.

You would think you would become intimate with your mate. The evidence points in the other direction.

There’s a reason that 50% of marriages fail. It’s not because people found out too much about one another; they found out too little. They feared going deep with another because of the underlying fear that said, “If you really knew me, you wouldn’t like me.” Therefore that part of you stays clothed.

It’s fascinating to witness a person tell a total stranger their intimate secrets rather than share them with their partner. It happens every day.

There is too much work going on in relationships – work to keep your secrets hidden. When both of you do the same kind of work, you erect your castle on a foundation of sand. It’s only a matter of time before a big wave hits and exposes your relationship’s weakness – the failure to become intimate.

Intimate relationships survive storms; façades fall to the ground.

How hard are you working to keep your secrets? Here’s the arithmetic: The more you keep hidden, the less intimacy you experience.

How open can you be? It’s truly the key to intimacy.

All the best,

John

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Today is Yom Kippur – the holiest day in the Jewish Religion. It’s known as the Day of Atonement. The day is spent by many religious Jews fasting, attending services and atoning for their sins against God and man.

It’s a day of reflection and we can all learn from it.

How do we best atone? I believe it’s when we attune ourselves to the universe – which literally means “One Song.”

When we are attuned, we enter the realm of forgiveness where there is nothing or no one to be at odds with. It’s easy to feel forgiveness when you are attuned, not only for yourself but for others.

This one song the universe is singing is that we are all notes on the same score and that we best harmonize when we are attuned to each other.

In the holy place of forgiveness, we become whole and recognize the melody – the one song that proves the equation: I = You.

We find that we want to do no harm to others because it’s doing harm to us. We realize that it’s like setting fire to the part of the airplane where people we don’t like are sitting. It affects us all. Buddha said it best:

“Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.”

Begrudging is a mental exercise; Forgiveness is a feeling – the feeling of being attuned to all that surrounds you.

Express your atonement and then practice attunement. It’s a one-two combination that cleanses your mind and body and allows you to feel the unifying power of forgiveness.

All the best,

John

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We’ve all attended funerals, told stories about the deceased and listened to a heartfelt eulogy by a family member or dear friend. But the most revealing things said probably came when some people went out back for a smoke.

That’s when things surface that would never be said inside.

It would be a great use of our imagination and a working compass for our lives if we could listen in now to what will be said about us outside.

We meet too few people who will share their real feelings about our behaviors, and what a pity that is. It gives us a false sense of acceptance and insulates us from finding a more workable way.

It seems that some authentic thoughts about us sneak out when another unleashes a moment of pent-up upset. That rarely works because it’s usually filled with accusatory vomit.

We tend not to listen when being attacked.

The real truth has no words, but our relative truths do point to this place of authenticity. Your feeling about someone and their behaviors is your relative truth. When we sugar coat or withhold it, we gulp down another dose of a universal drug called “mediocre relationships.” Life becomes your sugar coating interacting with their sugar coating and it has the sickenly sweet taste of saccharin.

WARNING: Please don’t confuse this with “speaking your mind.” That is just us telling the world how it should be. That’s a head trip that just feeds our sense of being right.

Telling the truth isn’t about right or wrong; it’s just communicating what is. It seems when we have all the information, we make better decisions. Hidden agendas bury the truth and keep us from truly connecting in this lifetime.

Any conversation that starts off with “you did” will mask the truth in anger. When you talk about another’s behaviors and how you feel when you encounter them, you’re communicating a personal truth and not a judgement.

The truth is about you, not them. Your verifiable truths are your feelings. If you don’t tell another about them, you are living a lie.

Deep connection can seem scary at first because we feel our vulnerability surface. If you’re not willing to show your underbelly to another, your relationship will stay mired in mediocrity. Vulnerability is the price of admission to see if we can make a true connection. If you’re not willing to ante up, all bets are off. Nobody wins.

You really decide how you relate to another. The only question is: “Will you offer another sugar cube or an authentic serving of you?”

All the best,

John

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There’s a Bill of Goods we’ve been sold that doesn’t match up with the way things really work.

There is an ebb and flow quality to life and when we ignore that fact we get smacked down by an oncoming wave. This false Bill of Goods would encourage us to go out when the tide is coming in and vice-versa. That always has predictable consequences that we continually ignore.

When we force things in life, we go against the tide.

Nowhere is this truer than with our feelings. Everyone would intellectually agree that we cannot force feelings, yet we do it all the time.

How many times have you said, “I shouldn’t feel this way”? Then you make monumental efforts to feel some other way than you do. This is ignoring the tide of life known as reality. The unpainted truth is you DO feel this way.

Feelings, like tides, are meant to flow. One false bill of goods is that we can keep the tide we like in place for as long as we want. The oil that’s being sold with that philosophy has a little hiss to it.

The corollary is we can force the tide that we don’t like to go away. What’s that hiss I hear over in the dune grass?

The approach that we ignore is the one that works best – dig for clams when the tide is out and wax up the surfboard when it’s coming in.

You cannot legislate or negotiate tides or emotions. They are what they are and they crush all resistance.

Trying to force your feelings to be other than what they are is the largest cause of self-induced pain. The radiating pain you cause for others when you continue to entertain emotional denial is equally destructive.

Feelings are meant to be felt. That’s one of life’s truths occluded by society’s lie which is: You don’t have to feel your feelings. That’s like claiming there is no such thing as low tide.

If you are attempting to force or deny your feelings, you are drowning in your own fairy tale. It’s time for a re-write.

The new chapter of your life has you feel the feelings you have. Fully experience any feeling that shows up. Don’t have conversation with it, just sit in silence with it and allow it to flow where it naturally wants to go and keep your attention on it. Here’s the result: When you stop trying to force the tides, you get to calmer seas quicker.

I never got the logic that hiding under a thin bed sheet protected you from lightning, but that didn’t keep me from doing it.

No one yet has talked their way out of a feeling, but we continue the practice. It’s time to feel the storms that roil our emotional seas.

Take a dip into your emotions and feel them to the fullest. There are two benefits:

1. You know what it feels like to be human.
2. You can never again be sold a false Bill of Goods.

All the best,

John

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We’ve all seen enough “Cops & Culprits” shows to have witnessed this plot line: A race against the clock to save some poor innocent soul who’s buried alive with only so much air left to breathe.

Most often they get found in time; sometimes they don’t.

Are you running out of air?

You are if you’ve buried your aliveness by smothering on superficiality.

How many of your highs lack depth?

Have you ever noticed that superficiality lacks an afterglow?

That causes us to seek another hit of it again, never noticing that the effects of it are so short-lived. This leads us to string together back-to-back moments like these and call it a life. It’s called being buried alive.

It’s searching for your aliveness through superficiality, which is a choking agent.

Every time you add another layer of it, it’s harder to breathe.

There comes a time when it’s time to get out your shovel and dig deeper. When you dig past superficiality, you find an escape tunnel filled with fresh air that gives you an opportunity to breathe deep – an action that provides an ongoing glow.

Notice that superficiality is a lousy bedfellow. It’s tossing and turning keeps you restless and searching for a breather.

The fear of those hooked on superficiality is that depth is dull. It’s anything but. Depth is rich with choice and not subject to the one destination that superficiality leads to – a magic carpet ride to nowhere that eventually runs out of air.

If you’re hooked on the idea that it’s the “next” thing that will rescue you, you’re buried alive and slowly smothering on superficiality.

You have to rescue yourself. It seems counter-intuitive but the way to dig out is to dig in.

When you get past the surface layer, you’ll find the air.

This search operation is called “Finding You.”

All the best,

John

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I like the TV Show HOUSE. Last night was its season premier. The theme of the episode, for lack of a better term, was introspection – taking a visit inside.

I loved the episode because it demonstrated no matter how smart we are; we can’t figure it all out.

My observation is that we spend too much of our lifetime trying to figure it all out and we always come up short. Our goal seems to be on the end game and not the game itself.

It seldom occurs to us that we can’t get to the next moment without experiencing the moment we’re in.

Think of each moment as having its own little windstorm kicking up a bit of dust. We become covered in dust before too long because we carry it from one moment to the next, never taking time to dust ourselves off.

Dusting ourselves off is dealing with the debris that any current moment may bring. We hardly ever take time to process the moment. It becomes baggage we carry into each succeeding frame of our life’s movie.

We become covered in outside crud and rarely take the time to cleanse ourselves. Just like outside health begins from the inside so, too, does cleaning up your life.

It may be time to take a look inside.

It’s a quiet place filled with solvents of all sorts. Inside works its magic by first emptying the trash from our mind, and then it gently nudges us to apply elbow grease on the outside in places where we never did before. Before too long, we’re clean as a whistle.

If you haven’t already done so, find a mind quieting practice that takes you inside. There are so many to choose from and they’re all effective.

A note to the busy beavers: It’s not a one-time proposition. It takes regular visits inside to cleanse our accumulated rubbish.

We all get caught up in life’s dramas. This is just a reminder that from time to time we have to go inside and clean house.

All the best,

John

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