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February 23, 2009

Control

Filed under: John Morgan's Blog — John Morgan @ 8:57 am

Second to happiness, it seems the thing we chase the most in life is control. Like the blind monkey who finds a peanut once in a while, we occasionally catch happiness. We are always left in the dust when we run after control.

Control is an illusion no one has ever seen. It’s a myth more pervasive than the Jersey Devil.

I don’t have a problem believing in things I can’t see; my difficulty is wearing myself out chasing something that doesn’t exist.

If you believe in control, you are in an overwhelming majority who has never tested their faith. You can easily make me a believer again. Just control the next thought that spontaneously pops into your head and I’ll readily rejoin your house of worship.

It becomes quite apparent to anyone who’s paying attention that what we are attempting to control is reality. We inflict so much pain on ourselves and others by competing with “all that is” and trying to capture it in a jar. It’s a lifelong quest that leaves your thirst unquenched.

This doesn’t mean that we don’t take action to adjust to a situation we find ourselves in. It simply means if that action comes out of the mindset of control, it will fail. I was talking to a friend over the weekend and said, “I’m all for riding the current wherever it takes me, but there must be a reason they put paddles in the boat.”

The paddles are used to respond to reality, not to control it.

The real gift in life is our ability to respond. Reality gives us countless opportunities to practice every day. The more often you choose a response to reality, the less you are up Control Creek without a paddle.

The sooner you give up chasing control, the more time you have to enjoy the white water raft ride known as life. Reality will test you, scare you, invigorate you and throw you overboard from time to time. To pre-think (control) Reality’s every movement will burn all of your energy and you’ll have none left to respond.

Responding deftly paddles you through the currents. Control leaves you with your oars out of the water.

Which ride do you want to be on?

All the best,

John

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February 20, 2009

Solid

Filed under: John Morgan's Blog — John Morgan @ 9:03 am

“Solid as a rock” is an old expression as well as an old song. Solid is an illusion – one that helps us and hurts us.

We are hurt when we bump into “solid” things and helped when we discover that they are not real.

When they take a powerful electron microscope and view something under it, the object’s solidity all but disappears. The magnifying glass used on a newspaper picture gives us a layman’s version of looking through one of these powerful scopes. We see the picture is made up of dots and space.

I have this unproven theory that there is no solidity whatsoever. It’s an assumption that’s worth adopting even though it can’t currently be proved.

What if electrons, photons, quarks, etc. were not even remotely solid but “shadows of energetic activity” captured by the magnification of the microscope? What if everything is really nothing?

Everyone is entitled to their wacky theories, even Columbus.

So pretend for a moment that my assumption is accurate. How will it help you?

It seems that every man made thing comes from the nothingness of an idea. They haven’t built a scope to capture an idea yet. My guess is they never will. Out of nothing comes something. It didn’t exist, now it does.

We treat ideas in our head as solid. We build things with them and we also build walls with them – walls of disconnection. We postulate that if something is “this,” it can’t be “that.” Our labels won’t allow it. But underneath the label is the connection of nothingness that makes “this” and “that” the same.

Solid translates to separation and isolation. If it’s solid, it needs a separate space and it can’t live in the same space as something else that’s solid, so the two must be isolated from each other.

That’s what we do as a people. We divide and are conquered.

When we search for the solid things that make us different, we aren’t looking for the invisible things that make us the same. Our search criteria keep us separated.

Eckhart Tolle offers a powerful example of our sameness when people say they have nothing in common with someone. He points out that in a matter of years you will both be rotting corpses.

So just maybe it’s useful to come to that conclusion before you die – that you came from nothing, and are returning to nothing. This idea of nothing being the only thing there is, has us make more connections because we can make space for everything when we’re not solid.

The rigidity of solid ideas has rigor mortis set in well before you die. The stiffness that goes with solid doesn’t allow the flexibility to stretch and find life’s connections.

Solid is the “Monroe Doctrine.” Nothing is infinite law.

Here’s a scientific piece of homework that is beneficial for all of us: Take a peek inward with your own microscope and begin to notice that your idea of solid is filled with holes. The more holes you find, the more connections you make.

You’ll discover that you can make nothing out of something.

All the best,

John

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February 19, 2009

Conversation

Filed under: John Morgan's Blog — John Morgan @ 8:40 am

We all have lots of experience with conversation. It’s the method of communication used most, whether we’re talking, Facebooking, texting or emailing back and forth. Dialogue is the currency of communication.

The question becomes, Are we using Monopoly money or the real thing in conversation?

Here are the conversations I dislike the most – tit for tat, one-upsmanship, the last word, or who’s more clever? These are conversations that go nowhere, except the same place they always go – the land of no connection.

The Grasshopper showed up yesterday with this nip of nectar:

“A conversation is more fruitful when it’s more about discovery and less about what you know.”

If it’s just about what you know, put it in a book or record it on a CD and give it to somebody, rather than pretend you’re conversing when you’re simply conducting a monologue.

Each person in a conversation benefits more when they each discover something. The way to discover something in a conversation is to remain present. Most of us, when we start speaking have our attention on what we are saying rather than on the person we are talking with. This always leads to disconnection. Reminds me of the broadcasting business . . .

I can easily hear a broadcaster who’s communicating and one who’s not in a matter of about 3 seconds. When they are listening to their own voice rather than putting their attention on who they are communicating with, they are dull, boring, predictable and prone to speaking mistakes. The ones whose attention is on the people they are communicating with make a connection.

When I coach broadcasting talent, I use Barbara Walters as an example. I ask if they think she has a good speaking voice and, almost always, the answer in “No.” I then say she must be doing something well to be as successful as she’s been for all these years. What she does is communicate. The conversation goes somewhere. She isn’t focused as much on her question as she is in the response of the other person. She is in discovery mode.

Just because you are talking to someone doesn’t make it communication. The absent piece in most conversation is attention – attending to not only yourself but the other person as well.

Most peoples’ attention disappears when they begin speaking. They go into their speaking trance and pay no attention to what’s being received or not. If you know a person who blathers on, you can bet they have no attention on you and are discovering very little. Notice how empty you feel IF they ever stop talking. No communication happens when people are disconnected.

The next time you are in a conversation, pay attention and notice what happens. You’ll start to make discoveries. If you already know everything, continue not to notice while conversing and the only thing you’ll discover is that you are becoming a party of one.

You have the power of attention. Use it today and my promise is this: You’ll discover something new.

All the best,

John

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February 18, 2009

Competition

Filed under: John Morgan's Blog — John Morgan @ 9:04 am

I was listening to an interview with Tiger Woods this morning and this question popped into my mind: Are you competitive? Do you have the desire to win whenever you compete?

It could be competition in a sport, a board game, a contest at work, or anything else that gets your competitive juices to flow.

Some people are spurred on to compete when someone tells them they can’t; others generate that fire on their own without prompting. Some never compete.

What causes you to compete or not?

My sense is the cause for competition is the same for everybody – a desire to let your spirit flow into what you do.

The best competitors let their spirit play them like a concert piano. They have the ability to let their thought process go on hold while they let the creative part of them compete.

That doesn’t mean they don’t talk trash or won’t attempt to psych you out or have an ego larger than mainland China. But notice all of that goes away when they are doing what they do best. The brashness may return immediately after they complete their spectacular feat, but it was gone when they were successfully competing.

I think the desire to win is overblown. That’s a lot of mind chatter. The real desire is to let what’s on the inside, out.

Every competitor knows that it’s not their training regime, alone, that gets them to compete at a top level. They also know that it’s not the strategy and tactics they’ve studied laboriously that brings out their performer. It’s mainly the innate desire and trust to let something bigger than them, take over for that brief moment to generate a work of art.

Paul Harvey tells a great story about football great, Rocky Bleier making a spectacular catch during a Pittsburgh Steelers win in Super Bowl XIII. Harvey recounted Bleier’s tour of duty in Vietnam where he received a wound in one leg and shrapnel in the other causing the doctors to tell him he would never play football again. He was awarded the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star. He did return to football and competed at the top level, but there was no way he was able to jump in the air more than a few inches off the ground due to the lasting effect of his war injuries no matter how much he trained. Paul Harvey wondered, “What caused him to leap well over a foot in the air to catch that winning touchdown pass?”

All thoughts of limitation were suspended and Bleier’s spirit flowed through allowing him to defy doctors’ prognostications, physical limitations, and any self doubt he may have had. Everyone who played in that Super Bowl was well trained and wanted to win. Bleier let his spirit flow and helped the Steelers win what is known as “The Big Show.”

When people say, “I’m not competitive,” what I hear is someone not believing that there is something bigger than them able to flow through them and allow them to compete and win.

Everyone likes to win but not everyone is willing to open themselves up to their competitive spirit. They are mentally married to limitation and it causes them not to compete because they “know” they can’t win. This knowing keeps them from competing and they justify this position by claiming to be above all this competitive nonsense.

Your spirit is itching to get out. I wonder if you can suspend your beliefs long enough to scratch your competitive itch.

All the best,

John

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February 17, 2009

Love/Hate

Filed under: John Morgan's Blog — John Morgan @ 8:33 am

Did you ever hear the expression, “They have a love/hate relationship”? I take that to mean that sometimes they love each other and sometimes they hate each other. On the surface, it would appear that Love & Hate are opposites. My guess is they are more closely related than that.

Jerry Stocking defines love as inclusion. I haven’t heard Jerry’s definition for hate, but my sense is it’s a subset of inclusion and not an opposite.

To hate someone, we have to consider them enough to include them. If they are on our radar screen, they have our attention. If they weren’t, it wouldn’t be hate, but exclusion.

When we hate, we include only the downside for consideration. When we do that, we are miles away from the other end of the continuum where the real opposites live.

When we selectively include or hate, what we are really advertising is that we are closer to love than we are to indifference or exclusion.

Question: Do you really hate that they can’t be different than they are right now?

That is a mind made distinction that is opposed to your body’s natural inclination to include. Look at toddlers play. There is no exclusion or cliques formed. It’s all inclusion until there’s a minor skirmish, some mild hatred if you will. After it’s settled, they go right back to including without grudges. It’s a natural push pull that settles itself.

When we add the mental baggage, the rift takes on a life of its own and becomes more about the issue and less about the participants. This thought process goes against our natural inclination to include and has us focus on differences rather than inclusion. This mental focus is hate.

Hate isn’t great but it is alive and well in most of us. We’ve been conditioned to find the differences and dig in our heels when we encounter them.

No one likes living in Limbo but many spend much of their life there. Their stay is lengthened anytime they pay more attention to differences than commonality. They are mentally preoccupied with the notion of wrong that they miss seeing what’s right. They are only a few steps from inclusion, but their thoughts keep their legs bound. It’s like The Grasshopper asked many moons ago:

“How much would you bet on a grasshopper race if their legs were bound by the limitations of your thoughts?”

You may find a person’s actions detestable but what you really hate is not them, but your inability to include them. This mental struggle keeps the differences alive and keeps you hating. Your mind is at war with what your spirit wants – inclusion. The mind will never give up on its own, and your spirit will not go away. Sticky wicket.

Here’s a suggested strategy: Recognize that love and hate are not that far apart and share a lot of common ground. Next, begin to catch your thoughts about hate when they arise. Just notice them and notice how they focus on difference. When you get in the practice of noticing these thoughts about difference, they come around less often and make room for commonality.

The strategy of hating hate isn’t working and exclusion just ignores the problem. The process of noticing hate, when it’s happening, puts you on the threshold of love.

“There’s a thin line between love and hate” is an old expression which contains a lot of wisdom. The thin line is the difference we choose to hold on to. When it disappears, there is only inclusion.

All the best,

John

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February 16, 2009

Knowledge – Experience

Filed under: John Morgan's Blog — John Morgan @ 9:41 am

It seems that we are a culture entranced with knowledge and politely dismissive about experience. We build altars to one and keep the other on the church steps.

People are experienced creatures but not all of us are filled with formal knowledge. Many people of my generation had parents who didn’t finish high school. That didn’t prevent many of them from using their experience to excel in their field and provide for their family.

Somewhere along the way we got to leaning too far in the direction of knowledge and its merit badges – degrees, and too far away from experience. It costs us.

Reminds me of many stories . . .

My neighbor graduated from high school and went to work as a draftsman at a company that builds submarines. Back in the 90’s he was asked to fly to DC to consult on a submarine snafu that tons of highly trained and degreed talent could not solve. He solved the problem. He didn’t own their knowledge base, but neither did they own his experience.

My wife from another life completed high school by getting her GED after we got married. She worked as a waitress. One of her customers was a manager at a bank and asked her to come work for him. She did. Only a few years later, she became a travelling manager for that bank. She then changed banks and became the vice-president of one branch and oversight manager of two other branches. She had no college degree, nor an MBA; she had experience with people that she parlayed into being a top bank executive.

My business partner and I were travelling in Michigan about 6 years ago and were having lunch at Applebee’s. I noticed the hostess was quite gregarious and seemed likable. I said to him, “She could be on our sales force and sell our seminars.” He said, “She’s only a hostess at Applebee’s.” We struck up a conversation with her and invited her to see our seminar operation that night. My business partner was quickly convinced that she had the savvy we needed in our sales department. She was a single mother of two with no degree but a boatload of transferable life experience.

I never finished college but had quite a successful broadcasting career and created a thriving seminar business with my partner, who also is a high school graduate. In the early 90’s I applied for a part time job teaching radio programming and public speaking at a local junior college. The interview couldn’t have gone better. The interviewer said he couldn’t believe how perfect a fit I was for this job. I was an experienced radio program director and was an experienced public speaker in the seminar business. Then he asked what college I graduated from. I told him I didn’t. He became ashen. He went on to explain that he couldn’t hire me because I didn’t have a degree. It was the law.

The law would allow him to hire a degreed novice with no experience who was a chapter ahead of the class, but not an experienced professional who had a celebrated record of getting the job done.

I have no bias against education. I sent my three boys off to college and they all got degrees. I have taken many courses in my field of interest. There are many fields where a completed course of study is necessary – brain surgery comes to mind. My only point is that what we have to know oftentimes gets in the way of letting our experience flow.

Many people make it their life’s mission to get to know about themselves. They want to know what makes them tick, why they do this and that, and all sorts of other knowledge based questions. They are looking for the knowledge and avoiding the direct experience that’s always available. Quoting Eckhart Tolle:

“There is nothing wrong with psychoanalysis or finding out about your past as long as you don’t confuse knowing about yourself with knowing yourself.”

“Know thyself” is the best prescription ever written. You begin that journey with the direct experience of noticing and feeling what’s going on in your body and sending your head on a sabbatical.

The resources you need for direct knowledge are already self-contained. There comes a point where you have to set aside your education and the step-by-step, mind generated plans, and do what the situation calls for by drawing on your inner experience.

There is a wealth of answers outside of education and everyone has access to them. I’m sure the Chinese person who discovered gunpowder wasn’t degreed, nor was the cave dweller who invented the wheel. There is a great story about Andrew Carnegie answering questions for a citizenship test. He told the questioner he didn’t know the answer to this one question, but could push a button in his office and have 5 people report to him with it in minutes.

“Know thyself” begins with “Trust thyself.” Trust that you have a part of you ready to provide life’s answers more efficiently than Andrew Carnegie’s assistants. If you need the answers for the Algebra test, study the book. If you’re looking for life’s answers, look inside.

Yes, consult with those knowledgeable in the field, but when push comes to shove, consult yourself and trust the answer that fills your body before your head. You’ll know your intuition is on target when you arrive at a state of presence, an inner knowing that’s not subject to debate.

There is a world full of knowledgeable people afraid to act because they have educated their mind not to trust their body.

If that list includes you, it’s time to take the home study course and discover your wealth of inner experience that doesn’t require you to fill your head up with facts.

All the best,

John

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February 13, 2009

Wrapped Up

Filed under: John Morgan's Blog — John Morgan @ 10:07 am

I revisited a quote from my Grasshopper Journal from a few years back. It read:

“Ego: All wrapped up in whom I’m not.”

What makes us what we’re not more than our thoughts? The universal mistake we make is identifying ourselves with the thoughts we have in our head. We take ownership of them and identity ourselves by them. We don’t really own the thoughts; they own us. We get all wrapped up in them and mistake them for who we are.

Because you are thinking you are “this or that” doesn’t mean that you really are “this or that” – you just think you are.

Being bound by your thoughts, and taking your identity from them, is the ego at work. Because if you discover that you are not your thoughts, the shackles unlock and the ego begins to die – a fate worse than death itself for your ego.

Your ego driven mind will do everything in its power to stay alive and keep you believing in the illusion that you are your thoughts. It never wants you to know that you only rent those thoughts and that there are millions of other places you can rent. It wants your thoughts to own you and keep you in place because your ego is the granddaddy of control.

You are being controlled by something that is invested in keeping you stuck. It doesn’t want you to move. It hates losing a tenant because a vacant mind is its worst enemy.

So this Valentine’s Weekend begin to unwrap yourself and find out that you are more than your thoughts. When you make this discovery, I won’t promise you that it will be all hearts and flowers for the rest of your journey, but you will begin to recognize that you have been confusing the wrapping paper with the gift.

This simple awareness will free you from your thoughts more often and you will receive more gifts.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

John