“You don’t have to pay tuition to get intuition” is the phrase The Grasshopper opined this morning.

I had to wonder about it a little before some ideas started to surface.

We all have intuition. It’s difficult to define which is why many discard its existence.

Who hasn’t had an idea come from out of the blue to answer something you had been wrestling with or pondering?

Poof, there it was.

Intuition isn’t smarts, at least the way we define intelligence. Everybody has intuition no matter what the level of the IQ.

In fact, the amount of intuition one receives is proportional to the lack of thoughts going on in their head. You can’t think your way to intuition no matter how smart you are. Reminds me of a story . . .

My grandmother lived with us for a couple of years when I was in elementary school. I had this friend, Al who I had recently made friends with. One day my grandmother said, “Johnnie, I don’t like you hanging around with that boy. He’s bad news.” I went on to defend my new friend and asked why she didn’t like him. She just said she didn’t get a good feeling when he was around.

A couple of days later, Al and I were out and about and playing up near the railroad tracks. There was a place where they parked empty box cars near the tracks. We began to play inside the box car. Then all of a sudden Al gathered some straw that was on the floor of the train car and piled it in one corner. The next thing I knew he pulled a lighter out of his pocket and lit the straw on fire. We ran.

The good news is the fire must have burned itself out with no damage because when I went by the next day, the car was intact. I stopped hanging around with Al. A couple of years later we heard that Al was off at reform school.

Where did that piece of information my grandmother offered come from? It was intuition. She didn’t take a class at the local high school. It just showed up and she knew she could trust it.

Jerry Stocking is fond of saying that enlightenment is closer than your next thought. I think you can substitute the word intuition into his sentence and have the same level of accuracy. It seems that intuition is our first glimpse of enlightenment.

We have the tendency to dismiss it as coincidence. Dr. Wayne Dyer has a different definition of coincidence. He says, “The word coincidence does not describe luck or mistakes. It describes that which fits together perfectly.”

Intuition is perfect. It’s raw and unrefined. In fact, it’s in the refinement process that we pollute it. Intuition doesn’t require thought. It requires recognition, which comes from a different place than our thoughts. Intuition is always a sensation. Begin to recognize that sensation and nurture it. Too much discussion about it waters it down. Just feel it and trust it.

Pay attention to what your body is communicating. It’s contains a separate intelligence known as intuition. It’s quite adept at putting out fires before they start.

All the best,

John

http://JohnMorganHypnosis.com

http://GrasshopperNotes.com

http://cdbaby.com/cd/johnmorgan

http://www.cafepress.com/grasshoppernote/3580301

http://HypnosisForDogs.com

These are the three words that delay happiness – If, When and Then.

We all use them and stall happiness each time we do.

“If such and such would happen, then I’d be happy.”

“When I (fill in the blank), then I’ll be happy.”

Three little words – If, When and Then.

All these words are future based which is why you can’t be happy now.

Your language betrays you and you keep putting happiness off for another time.

If, When and Then are traps. They trap you into believing that action happens in the future, not now.

That’s because we have been conditioned to attach happiness to other people’s actions, circumstances and events. We always have to wait for those conditions to be in place before we can be happy. That can turn into a lifetime of waiting and lots of missed happy moments.

Happiness is ever present. It can show up whenever we notice that we can be happy independent of circumstances. We just have to get happiness back into the present by negating the talk of it in the future.

NOTE: No one is perpetually happy and thank God. They would never have a reference for what happiness is if they were always happy and would not enjoy how special it is.

“How can I be happy now?” is a question worth asking, especially in times of unhappiness.

“What can I be happy about this minute?” You may not get an answer each time, but it’s still worth asking the question for the times that you do get an answer.

What’s guaranteed is that no answer will come if you keep putting your happiness off to a time that doesn’t exist now – the future.

Those who keep gratitude journals seem to be a happier lot. They get themselves in the habit of noticing things to be grateful for now. This engenders more happy moments.

Happiness is a habit, one that’s worth developing.

The time to invite happiness in is right now.

If you wait for the future when things will be better, then you have insured that you can’t be happy now.

All the best,

John

http://JohnMorganHypnosis.com

http://GrasshopperNotes.com

http://cdbaby.com/cd/johnmorgan

http://www.cafepress.com/grasshoppernote/3580301

http://HypnosisForDogs.com

Did you ever look at something you did with new eyes or listen with new ears? What you wrote in someone’s high school year book may serve as a neat example. “Stay just the way you are” feels rather shallow compared to what you may write today.

We may now laugh or be shamefully embarrassed by the clothes we once wore or the ideological positions we once held but that was who we were then.

What happened between then and now?

Experience comes to mind.

We had new experiences that made us question our old views and served as a springboard towards growth.

Whoever said, “There is no substitute for experience” was a genius. Yet some people shield themselves from it. It’s usually some form of protectionism. They want to protect the status quo and not subject themselves to the reality that the world keeps evolving.

Go to any high school reunion. Notice the people who still embrace the faddish look they had back then. This is a surefire cue that what they wrote in your yearbook is probably the same thing they would write again today. These people are the easy examples.

Yet, we all have some sort of protectionism going on. They are called patterns.

We have patterned beliefs and behaviors on every topic. They run now just like they did the day they were formed. We haven’t evolved.

Patterns hate new experiences. Experience threatens their world and it threatens their life. Patterns glue you to more than an outdated hairdo. They freeze you in time to whomever you thought you were the day they started operating in your life.

This is not an invitation to get on an experience thrill ride. That just keeps you at the amusement park long after they close the doors, waiting for the sun to rise and the thrills to happen again. It’s a sugar high and keeps you going in loops.

Here’s a suggestion: Begin to notice what you resist. It’s your passport to evolution.

“What am I resisting?” is a great question to ask. Your answer will open the door to the experience that’s necessary for growth. It will be your challenge to step through.

Asking the question has the experience opportunity pick you, rather than you having to sift through all the available ones out there and being unsure as to what to pick.

Exploring your resistance gives you quite a bit of insight as to where you are stuck. Rather than doing an entire makeover, you can laser focus on the area that requires your attention. All it requires is asking the question and paying attention to what shows up.

Experience is what helps you outgrow the old way and grow into a new way. You may never find the experience you need to explore if you don’t know what you’re resisting.

You can either ask the question “What am I resisting?” or “Stay just the way you are.”

All the best,

John

http://JohnMorganHypnosis.com

http://GrasshopperNotes.com

http://cdbaby.com/cd/johnmorgan

http://www.cafepress.com/grasshoppernote/3580301

http://HypnosisForDogs.com

We use something there is no evidence for every day to create evidence to live our lives by. We call it the mind.

“Don’t be ridiculous, we all have a mind; otherwise we wouldn’t be able to think our thoughts.”

The mind and the thoughts it produces are phantoms.

There is not one surgeon who has cut into a body and found a mind or a thought. There is also no surgeon who has found an acupuncture point either. This does not mean these phantoms can’t be useful.

I do believe in ghosts but not the ones that we have come to know through TV and movies.

The real ghost is our mind. It’s not real. It cannot be found yet we have conversations with it every day.

Are you starting to believe in ghosts?

So is this ghoul a friendly ghost or an evil one? Both.

It can create a puppy kiss scenario or Armageddon and everything else in between, with huge doses of personal compliments and criticisms, plus judgements of all sorts.

The part that is so spectacular is we think the creations of this phantom are real. They are no more real than any movie that we’ve seen on screen.

Thoughts aren’t real but actions are.

“It’s the thought that counts” is one of the biggest lies our ghost has ever told. There is no lying about the actions we produce. They are there for everyone’s consumption, including ours.

Funny, we rarely look at our actions and spend the bulk of our time thinking of justifications for them. Need a justification? Ask you ghost. They never run out of them and we continue to believe in them.

If you ever scoffed at children who had an imaginary friend, you may now have a finer appreciation that they were seeing the same ghost you listen to every day.

The problem most of us have is fighting with our ghost. It seems so silly to fight with something that isn’t there.

Here’s a plan of action to deal with your ghost. Let it have its say.

Don’t join the conversation; just observe the blathering. Treat it as though you are observing a thunderstorm that will eventually run out of steam. When you let it run on without opposition it runs out of places to run. It tires itself out and takes a nap. This, like any mother will tell you, is when you can get your work done.

The minute you oppose your ghost, it will throw a temper tantrum and kick its imaginary feet on the floor. If you treat it as real, you’ll join in the struggle and arm wrestle with an apparition.

One way of using your mind is recognizing its phantom presence and allowing it to prattle on. If you don’t answer back, it eventually bothers you less and less.

Another way is to direct your mind, like a director in a movie. Set up a scenario that allows it to become busy with something to wonder about. While it’s busy playing its wondering role, you begin to get actionable data through it.

Wondering is the key to tricking your mind to give you a usable phantom idea that you can crystallize into form.

Get your mind to wondering. Ask questions like, “I wonder how I would go about (fill in the blank)? Since you talk to a ghost every day, you may as well put it to work for you.

Your mind may not be real but it can be useful.

So the only question left is: “Do I have a ghost of a chance of using my mind?” I wonder.

All the best,

John

http://JohnMorganHypnosis.com

http://GrasshopperNotes.com

http://cdbaby.com/cd/johnmorgan

http://www.cafepress.com/grasshoppernote/3580301

http://HypnosisForDogs.com

I don’t know about you but I get a kick out of learning something new. It’s especially rewarding if the new learning is in an area I care about.

I am truly amazed about the amount of things I don’t know. I am even more amazed by the people who have this incredible knowledge. You wonder how they got so smart.

It’s not envy as much as it is amazement.

The things most of us rarely focus on are the amazing things we do that we take for granted. I think of a single parent who raises children to be wonderful citizens and finds a way to educate them all. They don’t think they have a special gift but they do. How did they get it? Perspiration and persistence come to mind but adaptation seems to be the secret.

They adapt well to changing circumstances and learn something new. They instinctively know that the way they have been doing something is outdated and only will get them so far. They risk and learn something new and soar to new heights.

The Grasshopper checked in on this about a year and a half ago and you can read about it here.

The quest for knowledge for knowledge’s sake is, for the most part, an egotistic endeavor. It’s one thing to be curious and quite another to have to be the smartest person on the planet. Those that regale you with their knowledge have trouble learning something new because they believe they know it all.

If you need an example of this, look at just about any successful man in his 30’s. There is no teaching them anything. They know it all. It’s amazing what new learning shows up when they turn 40.

Is there something new for you?

I truly hope so because it is the juice that keeps you curious, growing and younger than your years.

All the best,

John

http://JohnMorganHypnosis.com

http://GrasshopperNotes.com

http://cdbaby.com/cd/johnmorgan

http://www.cafepress.com/grasshoppernote/3580301

http://HypnosisForDogs.com

I am amazed at the way people respond to requests.

I just placed an ad on a website looking for a webmaster. The ad was short, to the point, and listed 4 specific needs I have.

I have gotten 10 responses, only one of which addressed my needs. Guess who I’m going to call?

The content of the other 9 was strikingly similar. They all told me about their qualifications, who they worked for and links to examples of their work. They were so busy telling me how qualified they are that they forgot to address my needs.

This isn’t an isolated example. Back when I was in the broadcasting business, I interviewed hundreds of people for positions. The number of people who answered my questions specifically can be counted on less than one hand. They were so wrapped up in their rehearsed response that they responded poorly.

It was like interviewing politicians. Sometimes I had to be rude to get a specific answer.

Here’s a tip: If you’re going for a job interview, answer the question that’s asked. It will give you a leg up on 90% of the other applicants. People are so tangential with their responses that they miss the point and miss the opportunity.

Also, ask questions. Do some research on the place that’s going to provide your paycheck. Reminds me of a story . . .

Many years ago I interviewed for a radio job in Kansas City. I did a little research on the market and found out that a big name radio talent in Kansas City was off the air and was unavailable for 6 months due to his contract with his former employer.

During my interview, the general manager and the program director asked me many questions and I responded to the best of my ability. Then I asked them a question. I said, “Are you interested in hiring the big name talent who’s going to be available in 6 months?”

They were both taken aback by my question because no one else had asked it. If he was on their radar, this was going to be short term employment for me. I wasn’t going to commit to anything less than two years because it was a major move across country for me and my family.

There was only one job available there. When they called me back after the interview, they told me they had offered that job to someone else, but liked me so much that they were going to offer me a job in another time slot. I would have liked to believe that it was solely my on-air abilities that impressed them so much to create a job for me, but it was the question that made me stand out. They both mentioned it again the day they hired me.

When people ask you questions, respond to all that they ask. And then ask your questions. By doing so, you show interest and, who knows, you may open a door or two for yourself along the way.

All the best,

John

http://JohnMorganHypnosis.com

http://GrasshopperNotes.com

http://cdbaby.com/cd/johnmorgan

http://www.cafepress.com/grasshoppernote/3580301

http://HypnosisForDogs.com

The past/future is a mindset, not a place.

Most of us have both filed in our mind as a place. That notion dams up the flow of life into the present. We’re too busy diverting our life force (energy) into the memories of the past or the projections of the future.

The Grasshopper this morning gave this description of the past: “Holding on to what you don’t have.”

That’s sort of like holding on to stock certificates of a company that went out of business 20 years ago. What they represent does not exist and they have no worth. Check around, there are still people who believe that “Big Bands” are coming back. They live in the past – a place that doesn’t exist.

So what keeps us stuck in a place that doesn’t exist – the past, and keeps us from moving into a place that does – the present?

Answer: Fear of the unknown – the future.

I can count on having the same memories when I stay in the past, but I can’t touch them. How frustrating, yet how widespread.

Moving to the future requires letting go of your past. It all happens through the portal of the present. The fear is letting go. It’s the same fear that keeps children stuck on one bar of the monkey bars. In order to get completely to the next bar in line, you have to let go of the one you are on now. That takes trust.

We don’t trust the future because it’s a place we don’t have experience with. This keeps us stuck in a place filled with experiences – the past. But neither is a place; they are mindsets – projections away from the only place you always are – the present.

The reason most people’s future resembles their past is because they have never let go of the past. They don’t leave home without it. They have convinced themselves that they are holding on to something tangible, when in fact it’s a handful of air – a blast of which keeps them from moving forward.

The future is scary because our past can’t live there. We are afraid of living somewhere that requires us giving up our phantom possessions.

What I’m really addressing here is change. Change is scary because it requires letting go. The letting go has to happen now or the future can never arrive. By hanging on, your future remains the outdated past. You remain the same.

If you are ignoring the present, you are living in your mind and not in the world. Living in your mind keeps you away from the only place that you can touch – this moment. The past or the future are not places, but mental diversions that keep you from living now.

The fear of the future dissipates when you practice living in the moment you are in. You gain confidence that you can respond to the challenges of the future by responding to the challenges of the moment. If you pretend the challenges are not there and go back and hide in the past, you’ll never garner the experience you’ll need to deal with the future. It will always remain fearful and you won’t change.

Managing this moment is the way to let go of the past and pave the way to the future.

What are you dodging right now? Answer that question and you’ll find what keeps you from changing.

All the best,

John

Notice we all have thoughts. What we may not notice is we have the same ones over and over again – the same top 10.

It’s interesting to actually catalogue your mind at work. There are a couple of techniques worth mentioning to do this. One comes from a book called THE ARTIST’S WAY by Julia Cameron and the other comes from who my friend, Mark Ryan calls a “Spiritual Regular Guy,” Jerry Stocking.

Cameron uses a technique called “Morning pages.” Stocking recommends putting your internal auditory on external speaker. Either way, you get to observe your mind at work, and more.

The purpose is to either write down, in long hand, your thoughts as they come to you or speak them aloud. (I highly recommend if you choose the speaking method that you do it where no one can hear, otherwise men in white coats will come looking for you.)

You do this unloading without editing anything. You just record or recite what comes down the stream of consciousness. If you do this on a regular basis, you will find out two things about your thoughts.

1. They are the same ones coming back around for visit after visit.
2. Observation of them produces spaces between them where new thoughts find their way in to you mind.

Both are valuable occurrences.

Noticing that you get the same thoughts time after time puts your mind in a new perspective. You now know for sure that your mind runs you and you don’t run it. You begin to notice what an automatic record and playback device that it is. Translation: Our thoughts, for the most part, have no value and contribute very little to our life, yet we spend most of our life ascribing value to our thoughts. We define our personal identity from our thoughts – one of life’s largest mistakes.

We have assigned our personal worth to a robotic machine that can only crank out the same tired diatribe we’ve been hearing in our head for years. Once you discover the automatic pilot function of your mind, you get a new lease on life. You finally figure out that your mind isn’t you but a mechanism that you happen to have – one that works methodically your entire life.

Observing the thought process by either of the methods described has an interesting byproduct. You get bored writing down or speaking aloud the same thoughts day after day. You may say “what’s the use of writing down or saying aloud the same stuff ad nauseam?” When you have the presence of mind to ask that question, a space shows up. In this space, you make room for you.

The new novel thoughts are you, not a recording device spitting out old messages. You discover you when you observe your mind at work. It’s quite the discovery.

If you think about it for a moment, just about every suicide is a result of people mistaking their thoughts for who they are.

I intuitively did this exercise before I even knew of its existence during a dark, heavy period in my life. Things were falling apart and my mind was in overdrive. I began writing every morning until I ran out of thoughts to write. I did this for a month. The result was a peacefulness that I cannot describe in words. There was a burden lifted, and the only heavy lifting I did was write down my thoughts.

I highly recommend that you formally dedicate some time to observing your mind. It’s a commitment worth your time and the results are, as they say in the credit card commercials, priceless!

All the best,

John

http://JohnMorganHypnosis.com

http://GrasshopperNotes.com

http://cdbaby.com/cd/johnmorgan

http://www.cafepress.com/grasshoppernote/3580301

http://HypnosisForDogs.com

When I was a teenager, we went to a place to swim called the Swarthmore Quarry. It was a quarry that was filled with water and it was back in the woods and had “Keep Out” signs posted, so that made it ideal for teenage boys.

We would swim in the water and take dives off the protruding rocks on the side. One of them was about 12 to 15 feet above water level and we could all handle jumping and diving from that height. Then we noticed there was another protruding rock way up above us. We determined it was 100 feet. It was more like 80, but it was high. We climbed up there and the dare was to dive from that height.

My friend, Bob went first and I went second. The other two walked back down without diving. They called us brave. As I look back on it with adult eyes, it was stupid. Some would call it adventure, testing your limits, but it was boys being boys.

It got me to wondering about men doing boy like things and it dawned on me that it makes them feel young again. It’s like a Fountain of Youth. The only real difficulty I see is the loss of agility that men have when they contemplate doing boy things. Then The Grasshopper jumped in feet first and said this:

“Men do these things because they are afraid of dying. Women do these things because they’re afraid of not living.”

Holy Cow Wow! I think he’s on to something.

Here is some dialogue from the movie Moonstruck to underscore the male side of The Grasshopper’s observation.

Rose: Why do men chase women?
Johnny: Well, there’s a Bible story… God… God took a rib from Adam and made Eve. Now maybe men chase women to get the rib back. When God took the rib, he left a big hole there, where there used to be something. And the women have that. Now maybe, just maybe, a man isn’t complete as a man without a woman.
Rose: [frustrated] But why would a man need more than one woman?
Johnny: I don’t know. Maybe because he fears death.
[Rose looks up, eyes wide, suspicions confirmed]
Rose: That’s it! That’s the reason!
Johnny: I don’t know…
Rose: No! That’s it! Thank you! Thank you for answering my question!

My sense is that many women fear mundane more than they do death. In their minds they more than likely have it equated with death. Now “mundane” is an elastic word meaning different things to different people but in most cases it has the sense of trapped to it and the scent of death.

Following this logic, the adventuresome side of a woman is peaked when they feel they aren’t living. Men may go climb Kilimanjaro to chase away the fear of death, but women will go looking for life – often in all the wrong places.

Both men and women look outside themselves for an answer that’s not there. When you come back from the African Safari, the fear is still there. When you come back from touring the wine fields in Tuscany, you are still feeling unfulfilled.

The life that both men and women are seeking is always available – just not in the cultural form you think it needs to show up in. We have been conditioned to seeking rather than finding. Finding happens when seeking desists. When you put to rest the notion that what you are looking for is outside of yourself, you find the peace that you have been seeking. It’s always the case.

Yes, travel to all the points on the planet you can afford to visit. Have wonderful times and see wonderful things. Just don’t make the mistake of thinking “this is it” because you will be disappointed time after time.

There is a great book written by Russell Conwell called Acres of Diamonds which was based on a speech he gave over 5000 times in the 1920’s. The premise of the message is that there are diamonds present right where you are. You needn’t travel the world to seek them. Conwell was talking about financial treasures but the same message is applicable to the treasure we all seek – peace of mind.

It comes when we do a little soul searching and find our own gem within.

Happy digging!

All the best,

John

http://JohnMorganHypnosis.com

http://GrasshopperNotes.com

http://cdbaby.com/cd/johnmorgan

http://www.cafepress.com/grasshoppernote/3580301

http://HypnosisForDogs.com

How much of our lives do we spend waiting? I’m not addressing the “standing in line at the deli” waiting, but “waiting for something to happen” waiting.

The Grasshopper hopped out of the tall grass with this today:

“If you are waiting for something to happen, you’ll be left at the altar.”

“I can’t wait until the weekend gets here” is sure to cement your current mindset in place because your focus is on waiting. Whatever mindset you focus on, you’ll get more of. Waiting is a global pastime that has no upside.

“When” is the operative word of the person caught up in waiting. “When I have enough money, when the kids are grown, when I get a better job, when I hit the lottery, when the mountain comes to Muhammed” are the tactics we use to ignore the action that’s always going on around us.

When is always now. Now is the only moment that action can take place. Waiting begets waiting as we attempt to push action aside and miss the ride. Watch two passengers travelling in a car. One may be observing all that is available for view and the other is in their head cooking up another mental stew. Which one do you think is waiting?

The remedy for waiting is noticing what’s actually going on. Each moment you are focused on what’s right in front of you is one less moment you will spend waiting. It’s a formula that always works but like all formulas, you have to work at it to get results.

Now let’s move to creating.

Are you a consumer or a creator? We are actually both. If you are an exclusive consumer, you’ll always wait to be fulfilled, entertained or dazzled by someone or something out there. This usually leads to overindulgence, being unfulfilled, and the constant need to be entertained. You have ceded your creativity. You become, as Julia Cameron describes in her book The Artist’s Way, a “shadow artist.” That means you sit in the shadow of someone else’s creativity believing you have none of your own and you pay a price.

We are all co-creators. When we let the animating force of life do its job, we cannot help but create. What stops us? – getting stuck in our head with the thought that creativity is for people more talented than us. That’s hogwash to the highest power.

There will always be people with more talent than we have but that is no excuse to keep your creativity bottled up. It’s dying to pop that cork and you don’t have to wait until New Year’s Eve to do it.

When you give up your creativity, you are waiting to die. Everyone is creative at every age. There is no age bias for creativity. It’s available at all time, we just have to know it’s there and use it.

Creativity gets your life force flowing again. It gets stuck behind a dam when we only consume and need to be entertained.

The game of Monopoly best sums up today’s blog post. The game of life, as well as Monopoly, is always won by the person who takes action and creates. The loser is always waiting for something good to happen.

All the best,

John

http://JohnMorganHypnosis.com

http://GrasshopperNotes.com

http://cdbaby.com/cd/johnmorgan

http://www.cafepress.com/grasshoppernote/3580301

http://HypnosisForDogs.com