Is it “Flashback Friday” already? Here’s a post from long ago that seems appropriate today.

Something has walked out the door and my sense is it’s never coming back.

It’s never been in abundant supply to begin with and you’ve NEVER witnessed it in politics.

It’s a special phrase that you’ll occasionally hear in sports, but hardly ever in real life.

It’s as though glue forms in our mouth when our mind wants to issue these words. What comes out instead is something that sounds like a PR firm was consulted before we spoke.

These are magic words. They aren’t as magical as “I’m sorry,” but they could play the lounge in Vegas.

What is this phrase that has made a mass exodus from our culture?

MY BAD!

When did we hop off the train of personal responsibility? What stops us from pointing a finger in our own direction? This is a pandemic. If you want to make huge amounts of money in this challenging economy, start selling scapegoats. There’s no seeming end for their demand.

Thesaurus words like “Mitigate” and “Obfuscate” take the place of two words that say it all – MY BAD!

I know Facebook folks are famous for joining groups. I want to form a new one – BRING BACK “MY BAD”!

Our painted faces are so afraid of rain that “MY BAD” has become a thunderstorm that’s to be avoided at all costs. Did you ever notice how good the air smells after a thunderstorm?

MY BAD is good for what ails you.

Test it out today to be sure that I’m not making this up. Start small and work your way up, but make the commitment today to take back your personal responsibility and find a way to say, MY BAD!

All the best,

John

Listen to the recorded version.

Make sure to download a FREE copy of my ebook: INTER RUPTION: The Magic Key To Lasting Change here.

Here is the recorded version of the Grasshopper Note for the week of 02-15-21.

Read the written version here.

Make sure to download a FREE copy of my ebook: INTER RUPTION: The Magic Key To Lasting Change here.

I may have written this before but I find the hardest people to help are those who don’t think they need any.

There’s no one I know who doesn’t need help with something. We all do.

Some are just too proud to ask for it. These are not the folks I’m referencing here.

Here’s what I find: The people who need the most help are the ones who refuse taking responsibility for their actions, never apologize for anything, have a giant polarity response (meaning: if you say, “up” they say, “down”), they are upset with everyone, and can’t be depended on. In short, they are perpetually immature.

Most of us outgrow most of our immaturity. The ones who don’t cause us the most problems and are nearly impossible to help.

These folks, in order to change, need a dark night of the soul to have a prayer of that happening.

Reality has to be their teacher; you or I don’t have the skills to help them.

You may be an extraordinary people helper but you are helpless when it comes to someone who doesn’t think they need help.

Over the years, I have met many gifted, alcohol abuse counselors. The thread that runs through their stories is that their “helpless” clients, who did managed to turn their lives around, had to get to such a dark place on their own before they could see any glimmer of light.

But this post is for you, not for them. They won’t listen. The only thing you can provide them with is love, most times, tough love.

The message for you is this: You are not a savior. Once you own that realization, you’ll be ready for this message from motivational speaker Tony Gaskins: “If you can’t do anything about it, then let it go. Don’t be a prisoner to things you can’t change.”

All the best,

John

Listen to the recorded version.

Make sure to download a FREE copy of my ebook: INTER RUPTION: The Magic Key To Lasting Change here.

Here is the recorded version of the Grasshopper Note for the week of 02-08-21.

Read the written version here.

Make sure to download a FREE copy of my ebook: INTER RUPTION: The Magic Key To Lasting Change here.

Seeing as this is “Throwback Thursday,” I thought I’d repost something I wrote years ago because the message is timeless.

I remember when I discharged from the U.S. Navy. I was looking for a job in radio broadcasting. I moved back home and was sending out some audition tapes to radio stations.

My mother asked me how the job search was going and I told her not so well. She said, “You have to go out on the road and knock on doors and get in front of people to make your case.”

The next day I started a pilgrimage down the east coast and visited every radio station that would let me in the door. I remember being in Annapolis, MD on St. Patrick’s Day and all the bars along the strip were serving green beer. I visited a radio station there and got some valuable input from the program director. At each station I visited, I got to experience broadcasting being approached from a different angle – something I could never have garnered from just sending out tapes.

That trip did not turn into a job, but it turned into an experience.

My guess is whomever said there was no substitute for experience came from a position of experience. You’ll never think your way to an experience; you have to physically own it to benefit from it.

Doing outdoes thinking every time and it builds experience. Experience makes life a lot easier.

The challenge for us is this: Gain as much experience as we can in multiple areas of our lives. That means to stretch ourselves. This doing will broaden you and give you more confidence than you could ever experience by staying stationary.

Experience is the byproduct of doing. When you choose to be a doer, you build confidence and are able to answer with a resounding “YES” the question singer Jimi Hendrix posed decades ago: Are you experienced?

All the best,

John

Listen to the recorded version.

Make sure to download a FREE copy of my ebook: INTER RUPTION: The Magic Key To Lasting Change here.

We all have different ways of expressing ourselves. But when we express something that’s instantly recognized as coming from a deeper place, it’s a divine expression.

“Divine” is a creative source and can have any name you choose to give it. But whatever the name, we recognize its expression as coming not from us, but through us.

Have you ever said something you didn’t pre-think that was just plain profound? Even if we publicly take credit for it, we immediately know we weren’t the author, only the delivery person.

We all have access to this treasure trove of creativity and I’m forever amazed of all the ways it comes out through different people.

Your divine expression comes through your educational and experiential filters before it’s delivered. Whether it’s the backwoods expressions of a Mark Twain writing, a rapper’s lyric, a Mozart symphony, a Michelangelo painting, or your grandmothers’s wise counsel, you recognize their expression comes from a deeper source.

A divine expression can come from anyone at anytime. It’s not limited to a few. In fact, the next one can come from you.

We limit ourselves when we just wait for the next visit of this muse. We can act as a catalyst for more expression to come our way. It just requires getting out of our own way. That means getting out of our head.

When our mind gets clear of our thoughts, even for just a brief moment, we have access to what I refer to as our “cauldron of creativity.”

If you don’t already have one, make it your mission to find a mind quieting practice – one that works for you. Then don’t be too surprised when the floodgates open and more divine expression comes through.

All the best,

John

Listen to the recorded version.

Make sure to download a FREE copy of my ebook: INTER RUPTION: The Magic Key To Lasting Change here.

Here is the recorded version of the Grasshopper Note for the week of 02-01-21.

Read the written version here.

Make sure to download a FREE copy of my ebook: INTER RUPTION: The Magic Key To Lasting Change here.

For most of my people helping career I’ve been privy to how limiting it is to tell your story (tale of woe) over and over again. Each time we tell it, we justify our “stuckness” and simply can’t move forward. I wrote about the “powerlessness” of this type of story telling in my book: INTER RUPTION: The Magic Key To Lasting Change. It starts on page 76. Download a FREE copy of it here.

What I didn’t include in the book is the underlying reason people continue to tell their story even when they find out how doing so limits them. They’ve never had their feelings fully validated regarding their story. People and counselors may have patiently and sympathetically listened to them and even offered a shoulder to cry on and/or a strategy to move them forward. But we often miss the most important piece when on the receiving end of someone’s story: validating their feelings.

What story tellers really want to express is how much they’re still hurting, even if their story is from long ago. We need to do more than listen and advise. We have to elucidate and validate how much it still hurts. What they want to say is, “You have no idea how much this hurts me.”

When that hidden hurt is expressed, it acts as a release valve for those stored sensations.

Story teliing alone just reiterates the facts and it’s not the facts that continue to hurt us; it’s the unexpressed or unvalidated feelings.

The story teller believes that if they tell the story just one more time, that will be the salve for their wounds. That never works. What does work is finding out how much it still hurts. That’s how we validate.

I wrote about validation a few years ago when I did a post on customer service. When you receive a complaint about your product or service, the first words that are most useful to use are, “I’m sorry that happened to you.” It acts as a valadation not a refutation of their complaint.

I’m also reminded of a story an insurance agent told years ago. He said that in medical malpractice suits, the agreived party will settle for less money if they receive an apology from the physician or surgeon. They want validation more than remuneration.

The remedy to move forward is still the same, leave your story in the past. That becomes an easier task when we finally tell the full story validating the feelings that have been fueling it for all these years.

All the best,

John

Listen to the recorded version.

Make sure to download a FREE copy of my ebook: INTER RUPTION: The Magic Key To Lasting Change here.

“Getting caught up in facts and figures leads to a lack of imagination.“ So uttered The Grasshopper on Sunday.

There’s a lot to unpack in his brief statement. Facts and figures usually serve as our bread and butter strategies for coming up with solutions. That falls under the broad catagory of “figuring it out.”

But when that strategy fails, we go looking for more facts and figures and we head down a rabbit hole of additional information that may make us more informed, but less likely to solve our ridddle.

The Grasshopper reminded us years ago that when the odds are 50-50, even science goes out the window. That’s where imagination comes in.

When you get caught up in facts and figures and you feel you’re getting nowhere, it’s time to employ the magic words that spark imagination: “What if.”

Years ago, I learned a phrase in my NLP (neuro-linguistic programming) training that has gotten me and many clients off the trail to nowhere. When someone would say, “I just can’t do that,” I would respond with, “What if you could?” followed quickly by “What would you do?”

“What if” gets you out of the certainty of facts and figures and into the land of possibility by engaging your imagination.

That’s why Zen Buddhism uses koans in their teachings. A koan is a paradoxical anecdote or riddle used to demonstrate the inadequacy of logical reasoning and to provoke enlightenment. A modern day koan I remember is, “If your knees bent the other way, what would chairs look like?” Good luck figuring that out.

“What if” gets you off of facts and figures and into a frame of mind where they’re not allowed: Imagination.

What if you put this imagination inducing strategy into your kit and brought it out from time to time? It will take you out of hardened concrete thinking and into the creative realm of the sublime.

All the best,

John

Listen to the recorded version.

Make sure to download a FREE copy of my ebook: INTER RUPTION: The Magic Key To Lasting Change here.

Here is the recorded version of the Grasshopper Note for the week of 01-25-21.

Read the written version here.

Make sure to download a FREE copy of my ebook: INTER RUPTION: The Magic Key To Lasting Change here.