The Grasshopper came out from quarantine this morning and had this to say: “The sooner you stop defending it, the sooner you’ll own it.”

It reminded me of the comic strip “The Family Circus.” When the mother or father asked the children who did it, there was a depiction of a ghost off in the frame named “Not Me.”

I think it’s valuable to review our excuses from time to time just to see how full of shit we really are.

We are reasoning machines and we often reason our way away from responsibility. That’s not even “renting” it.

When we own up, we clear away the fog that has been occluding our vision as to what we need to see and go to work on.

I lived in the New England area during the Larry Bird era of the Boston Celtics. One thing I noticed was that if Larry had a weak suit, say, like going to his left, all off-season he would practice going left. The next season when defensive players would make him go left, he would burn them with a basket.

Making excuses is a weak suit. Owning up and going to work makes us more accountable, more believable, and most important, more reliable.

Think of people you hold in the highest esteem. Notice that these are people you can count on. They do what they say they’re going to do, and when they don’t come through, you won’t hear excuses.

Quoting The Grasshopper from many years ago, “Excuses are like bad checks; you can’t cash them.“

It may be time to buy some reliability real estate and then you’ll own it.

All the best,

John

It dawned on me that there is a benefit to social distancing beyond the “stay healthy” recommendations.

What if we committed to staying not 6 feet, but just 6 inches away from our thoughts? The outcome would preserve our mental health.

More scary than the constant media bombardment of Covid-19 news are your thoughts that are close to you even when the TV is off.

Get some distance from your thinking and watch your fears melt and fade away.

One of the best antidotes to thinking is doing. When you’re engaged in doing, your thinking self-distances itself from you. Quoting The Grasshopper from years ago, “Doing diffuses fear.”

Doing is an active meditation. It has you focus on what’s right in front of you rather than mentally creating scenarios that freeze you in a fearful place.

Doing, like the longest journey, begins with the first step. Step in the direction of doing and experience a healthy distancing from your thoughts.

All the best,

John

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I’m all for saying, “Yes” more often because it opens us up to more possibilities. I also say, “No” quite often, not because I’m adamant, but because I’m not yet sure if I would follow through on a “Yes.”

It’s been my experience that it’s easier to go from a No to a Yes than it is to go from a Yes to a No.

If you go from Yes to a No, the disappointment you deliver is palpable. Saying, “No” may also deliver disappointment but it seems the feeling doesn’t last as long.

I’m fond of the Werner Erhard quote: “The reason life doesn’t work is because people don’t keep their agreements.”

If I say, “Yes” to you, I plan to follow through. Sure, I’ve missed the boat a few times but, by and large, I keep my agreements. Please don’t think I’m setting myself up as a pillar of the community. I have enough flaws to fill a concert hall, but saying, “Yes” and not following through is not one of them.

I find that many people say, “Yes” just so they don’t hurt your feelings. What they don’t realize is the pain they ultimately deliver is far worse when they stiff you.

Here’s a suggestion: Say, “Yes” to life more often than you do, but consider saying, “No” a little more frequently too, especially if you have a history of not following through.

All the best,

John

I was out walking yesterday and I overheard two guys having a conversation about working from home during the pandemic. One said, “They think that working from home is a vacation; it’s no vacation.” The other guy succinctly said, “Life is a vacation.”

Their conversation continued as I walked out of earshot, but the words “Life is a vacation” stuck in my mind.

To me, life is a vacation between where we came from and where we are going. I don’t know what vacation season of life you are in – spring, summer, fall, or winter, but you are in one of them. The question I have is similar to the one my fourth grade teacher Miss Wagner asked us on the first day of class: “What did you do on your summer vacation?”

My question is: What are we doing on our vacation?

One of my favorite quotes is an old Chinese aphorism: “Talk doesn’t cook rice.” To me, it signifies all talk and no action. “Doing” is the operative word in my question.

The bigger question is: “What is your purpose?” I’m pretty sure it’s not sitting around thinking about what you want to do, or whiling away the day seeking diversions that keep you from taking action. But, sadly, I think that’s what many folks are doing during this vacation season.

Perhaps it’s time to make this a working vacation by committing to doing something – something with purpose.

Only you can determine what your purpose is, but you won’t find it among your diversions.

Here’s a suggestion: Ask yourself, “What is my purpose?” Then find a quiet space, quiet your activity, and quiet your mind. Once the diversions are out of the way, you make room for the inspiration you are asking for.

So what will you do on your vacation? Perhaps a Grasshopper quote from long ago will give you a nudge. “You came from nothing; you’re returning to nothing; so while you’re here, do something.”

All the best,

John

Two Announcements:

1. For the last 12 1/2 years, in addition to my blog, I have written a weekly essay based ideas that come to me from out of the blue. I call them Grasshopper Notes. It occurred to me that some people would rather listen to rather than read them, so I decided to record these musings and post them from time to time. This week’s Grasshopper Note recording is below. It’s titled: Your Name Is A Label You Put On Your Conditioning.

2. A year and a half ago, I self-published my book. It’s called, “INTER RUPTION: The Magic Key To Lasting Change.” I have decided to offer it as a FREE download to anyone who would like a copy. It’s in PDF form. It’s available here on the home page at https://grasshoppernotes.com

Happy reading and listening.

All the best,

John

We’re caught in a trap of our own making when we believe we had nothing to do with how we got to our current station in life. It’s a blind spot.

It’s so easy to blame circumstance or someone else. I remember reading this James Allen quote from his 1903 book “As A Man Thinketh“: “Circumstances do not make the man, they reveal him.”

To quote The Grasshopper, “When someone is hiding a jackass, they send out a scapegoat.”

The mantra of the blind spot belief system is this: “It’s not my fault.”

Where you are now is the result of a recipe. If you retrace your steps, you will find the exact way you baked your cake. Whether it’s moist and delicious or has a burnt crust, it was your actions or inactions that produced your current circumstances.

We enjoy taking credit for the “good” things we’ve produced, but for the “bad” things, not so much.

We have conditioned ourselves to blame. It’s a coping mechanism we have learned to use when we don’t want to take responsibility for our actions. We’ve deflected so often that “this is not on me” becomes a fervent belief.

The quickest way to remove the blinders is to pretend that it is your fault. Sidebar: In most cases, you won’t be pretending. Just try on the mantle of responsibility more often than you do and you’ll recondition yourself to know “it’s on you.”

We all get ourselves into jams. The way out begins with acknowledging we had a hand in it. That admission keeps us from forever stalling with denials, and moves us more quickly to possible solutions.

You can continue to play the childhood game “Blind Man’s Bluff” and stay stuck, or recognize that it’s the mark of an adult to play the hand you dealt yourself.

All the best,

John

The Grasshopper came up with a new description of fear: “Reacting to ‘what ifs’ instead of what is.”

There’s certainly enough fear going around these days but much of it is generated by reacting to what isn’t happening vs. what actually is.

Fear is almost always future based. “What will happen if . . . ?” is the operative mindset.

We project ourselves into the future but feel the fear now. That means even if what we fear does happen, we feel it way more than once.

We all fear but we can mitigate the frequency by focusing on what’s happening with us right now.

When we pay attention to what’s right in front of us, it keeps us from skipping over the present to fear the future.

Get in the habit of staying present. Even when doing routine things like washing you hands, pay attention to the experience: the feel of the soap in your hands, the warmth of the water, the feel of the drying towel, the sound of the water going down the drain.

When you give more attention to the present, you leave your future in the future and leave fear nothing to feed on.

Fear is a signal to pay attention and take some action. The action most needed is staying present.

There’s enough scary stuff to keep us fearful for a lifetime. But if you want to turn down the internal noise, pay more attention and you’ll regain your poise.

All the best,

John

I had an eye-opening revelation while out walking yesterday.

Since my health club has closed up, I can no longer swim, so I walk. I walked my regular route that I established years ago, but not in the same direction as usual. I almost walk it backwards now. There’s a freshness to it.

The revelation was about doing things the same way I did them in the past. I noticed lots of resistance when attempting to walk my route the regular way. It had a “past” feel to it and part of me did not want to relive that past.

I then thought about about a mythical band that broke up and went their separate ways. But, for whatever reason, they decided to get back together. There were reasons that they broke up back then and those reasons still exist at some level today. If they go back to doing things the way they did then, chances are they will break up again.

If you are reentering an old part of your life, may I suggest that you approach it from a different angle.

The newness in the old situation will fade quickly. One way to make it last is to reevaluate your role and give yourself a wider berth. In other words, be more open than you were in the past. The word “flexibility” comes to mind.

You don’t have to be different, just more pliable like a new branch of a tree in spring. If you bring back the old, hardened branch, it won’t be too long before you’ll be packing your trunk, again.

There is a comforting factor about old shoes, but if you walk the same route in them, chances are you’ll be singing the blues, again.

All the best,

John

Do you want something you’re responsible for to change? Change your way of life. It’s the only way that works.

Many people don’t believe they had a hand in getting to where they are. They’ve divorced themselves from responsibility. Their silent mantra is “Why me Lord?” This is “fun house mirror” logic on steroids.

Your current way of life is the patterned way you do things. Take eating as an example. You have a patterned way of consuming. If you’re too heavy for your liking, you may go on a diet. Chances are you will lose weight, but the odds are even greater that you’ll gain it all back. Why? Because you thought that a temporary change was going to be a permanent fix.

You would need to redefine the word “diet” to mean “way of life,” and follow it for life to get lifelong results.

We have too many patterns to list, so let’s go after just one and watch changes in others happen automatically. My friend Jerry Stocking years ago said, “The way you do one thing is the way you do everything.” So just change one unproductive pattern and watch the dominos fall on many others.

You can begin small and change one little thing you regularly do that’s not working for you. When that way of life is outgrown, other like patterns will follow in lockstep. Think of it as “Birds of a feather.”

If you want to go BIG, go to work on your patterned way of thinking. To change your thinking, start observing your thinking at work. Your mind has a mind of its own and its thoughts will own you until you recognize that the thoughts in your head are not you. They are a collection of patterns that take up space in your mind. Take a few minutes a day and just sit and observe your mind at play. You’ll soon discover that there is the thinker and the observer. When you become the observer, your thinking begins to change. Your mind gets quieter as your observational skills increase.

Make observing your thinking a way of life and watch your life automatically change without you having to seek out one temporary fix after another.

In closing, here is a “way of life” suggestion from the ancient Chinese Sage Lao Tzu who introduced us to the “tao,” which means “the way”: “Stop thinking and end your problems.”

All the best,

John