Is Christmas just another day? Is any day just another day? The Grasshopper answered those questions cryptically when he chirped, “It’s a new world every day.”

Everyday when you wake up, you wake up to a new world. The world itself hasn’t changed but the stories that happen within its sphere have.

Everyday is a new chapter – some happy, some sad, but most often the changes go unnoticed. Our sensory acuity doesn’t get calibrated often enough to see the change, so we perceive everything is the way it was when we went to bed.

Due to conditioning, we don’t adapt to change very well. We rail at reality when it doesn’t bend in our direction. Quoting my friend Craig’s motto, “Be flexible or get bent out of shape.”

No one knows what a new day brings but bet on this: It will bring something new.

Here’s hoping that Santa brings you something newer than Christmas snow: The ability to go with the flow. It’s truly the gift that keeps on giving.

Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays,

John

Since Christmas is a time of wonderment and lists, here’s a list of 10 things I’m wondering about:

1. Does Bill Gates buy lottery tickets?

2. Does cold air take away odors quicker than hot air?

3. Where is that other sock I put in the dryer?

4. Do people who put pictures of their food on Facebook, weigh more than the rest of the population?

5. Where is Waldo?

6. Does Santa have a second home in Florida?

7. Would a Greek/Italian tailor ask a customer this, “Euripides”?

8. Who really let the dogs out?

9. Is Ivory soap 99 44⁄100% Pure?

10. Why didn’t they shoot JR sooner?

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to my fellow wonderers!

John

“It’s not what you know; it’s what you act on.” So said the Grasshopper at the crack of dawn.

It sounds a bit like, “actions speak louder than words” to me, but I think it goes deeper.

“Words” reflect what you’ve done or what you’re going to do. “Actions” relate to what you are doing now. There is no action in the past or future. Action only happens now.

Some folks think because they have the knowledge to act on something, that it’s the same thing as acting. “I already know that” is a commonly used phrase of the non-doer.

You may ask, “If you already know that, how come it hasn’t happened?” And then brace yourself for the non-stop litany of excuses for not acting. I keep hearing my 4th grade teacher Miss Wagner’s pronouncement when hearing actionless justifications: “You can either have what you want or your reasons why not.”

The “why not’s” are the reasons you don’t take action. Excuses are perpetual diversions from doing.

If you know what you need to do, start subtracting your excuses one-by-one until you’re down to the bare metal of action.

We are all well lubricated excuse machines. The action needed is to drain the oil and have the excuses burn up. It’s then and only then that what you know turns into action that gets you past “Ready, Set” and on to “GO.”

All the best,

John

Call me late to the game but it just dawned on me that life is a steady stream of curve balls. You can replace the words “curve balls” with the word “Reality” and arrive at the same conclusion.

Expecting the unexpected is an approach to life that most of us do not take. We get to a point where we think all is settled and we want it to stay that way.

Life is dynamic, not static.

On the surface, this sounds like we’re at the mercy of reality. But the saving grace to a curve ball is the ability to respond.

When we resist reality, we react. That means we do the same thing we did last time. When we notice and accept reality, we create a space where we can choose a response. It’s the response that takes us down a new path – one that reaction doesn’t know about.

I wish it wasn’t the way it is, but curve balls are a staple of life. Rant and rave all you want and even shake your fist at God if you choose. But after you recognize that isn’t working, let your reaction go and seek out a response.

I’m not sure if Yogi Berra ever said the following or not: “Responding to a curve ball will increase your batting average, but if you stick with resistance, you are destined to strike out.”

All the best,

John

Dear Santa,

I know I’m a little late with my requests this year. I sure hope you find time to consider them because I have been extra good.

I have given up on one of my past ideas because you haven’t delivered it, namely getting announcers to say, “Forward” instead of “FOE-ward.” I guess that’s up there with asking for world peace.

This year I would like you to bring a handbook that teaches people how to get off the phone. Saying “ta-ta” or “goodbye” shouldn’t be that hard, but it seems people linger long after you’ve indicated the conversation has concluded.

Please bring me tolerance for people that put coats on their pets in the winter.

I’m also requesting patience with people who cannot get to the point. Apparently, there’s a sickness going around.

Less TV drug commercials for products with the letter “Z” in them. Seriously, Santa, do they put letters in a hat and use the first seven letters they pull out to name the drug?

Finally, would it be possible for guests on TV talk shows to stop answering questions with the phrase, “that’s a good question”? If there was ever a bigger stalling tactic, I have not experienced it.

I hear you and Mrs. Claus are back on gluten, so I’ve taken the sawdust out of my recipe for your cookies this year. After tasting them, you’ll be singing, “Rudolph with your nose so bright, won’t you curb my appetite?”

Thanks for reading, Santa.

Love,

LJ (Little Johnny)

Hopes and expectations dashed? According to the dictionary that’s disappointment.

Want to avoid disappointment more often? Have fewer expectations.

Quoting Robert Burns, “The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.” Or as John Lennon reminded us, “Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans.”

Planning can be fun and fruitful and is a very useful tool, except when we expect all to go according to Hoyle.

I have a book title that illustrates this point: “There’s No Such Thing As A 5-Minute Job.” Feel free to write it because I never will. I lack the technical know-how.

I find the bubble of expectation bursts quite often when it comes to human events and interactions. Have you ever planned or attended an event where things just didn’t match up with your expectations? You’re in good company. We all have our stories.

The message here is not not to plan; it’s more about trusting your response apparatus. Plan down to the minutest detail if you choose, but if you can’t respond to unexpected circumstances, you’re likely to blow a fuse.

There is a part of us that knows how to go past a reaction and get to a response – one that wasn’t planned in advance. It’s the ability to respond that irons out the kinks of expectation.

Practice responding more often and expect fewer disappointments.

All the best,

John

It seems like something Captain Obvious would say but holding on prevents us from letting go.

What prevents us from releasing our grasp? One answer I come up with is this: Holding on to the past proves it existed. What that means to me is that we are so defined by back then, that we refuse to let it go because if we do, we believe we won’t exist.

It’s truly limiting to be defined by the roles we play in life. We are so much more but we can’t find that depth by having a death grip on the memory of who we once were.

I’m not sure I have a strategy for outgrowing the past, only the realization that the past isn’t happening now.

What is going on now is your life – not what you had then or what you will have in the future, but, rather, what you have now.

Focusing on what you have now is a springboard to letting go. Holding on is holding on to an illusion – something that doesn’t exist now.

To have the past go out of focus, we have to be present to the present. It’s really the only time that exists. Now is a reality; then is a memory and the future is a fantasy.

Here’s something worth holding on to: You aren’t the roles you play, only the spirit that can create a brand new day.

All the best,

John

This probably never happened to you but I’ve made the same stupid mistake more than once.

It’s like I was trapped in a revolving door with no exit.

The only remedy for me was to evolve. That meant recognizing I was in a circular loop.

Did you ever notice that most of your thinking is circular? To use the modern day vernacular, you “circle back” to that which didn’t work the last time.

I think we all can learn a lesson from Thomas Edison. Yes, he made lots of mistakes but not the same ones. He had the presence of mind to recognize what didn’t work and mapped out another route. That’s evolving.

One of our greatest but least used assets is our ability to notice. Noticing is the key to keep the door from revolving around the same real estate.

Notice what you’re thinking while you’re thinking it and you interrupt the revolving thought loop. It’s this interruption at the time of crime that puts you on the pathway to change.

You can be a prisoner of your thoughts and experience the recidivism that goes along with that or you can notice and be set free.

Let me circle back to the title of this post: Revolve or Evolve? One takes you for a spin; the other drives you where you want to go.

All the best,

John

I’ve lived most of my adult life as an iconoclast. The downside of that approach is isolation. That means when you question or expose someone’s sacred cow, you are shunned by many.

This is not a rant that it shouldn’t be that way. It just is.

I can attest that when you travel a lonesome road, there aren’t many welcoming Inns on your journey.

If you’re being contrary on purpose, that’s not iconoclasm, that’s just being a dick.

If your iconoclasm is authentic, you will have a plethora of facts to back you up. If you’re just a blowhard, your positions will be blown away by the lightest of winds.

Iconoclasts don’t have a union. in fact, most of them are independent operators, not joiners. Some would consider them lonely, and some are. Others are so comfortable in their own skin that being on their own is a freedom that few people will ever enjoy. I’m reminded of what The Grasshopper offered many moons ago: “Alone is a fact; lonely is a state of mind.”

I readily agree with the English poet John Donne that “No man is an island.” Other people are essential to our growth and existence, but rarely the ones who worship glossy facades and fake gods. Sad to report that I find they are the overwhelming majority, which leaves iconoclasts in small company.

If you bury your iconoclasm, you are part of the walking dead. It needs to be expressed or it will eat you from the inside out.

Speak up if it’s from the heart and has legs to stand on. Not doing so will leave you alone with your thoughts which keeps you isolated from your creativity.

Just a recommendation to my non-iconoclastic friends. Going along to get along is truly a lonely existence.

All the best,

John

The short answer is to protect us. You may ask, “from what?” The answer: from the consequences of our actions.

If you willy-nilly open your car door and ding another car, what is one of your very first reactions? You may comment to yourself how stupid you are for not looking or you may blame the other person for parking too close. But it’s the next reaction that has us seek to escape the consequences. That conditioned reaction is to quickly look around to see if anyone saw us.

If you drive away after deducing that no one witnessed your act, you deny you are responsible, which is a lie.

When you see someone lie as easily as they breathe, you know they have something to hide. They are not willing to pay the consequences for their behavior.

One of the 5 signs of immaturity I have written about is the failure to take responsibility. The inveterate liar refuses to account for their actions. That not only makes them immature, it makes them unreliable – not someone you can count on.

If you want to be treated as an adult, stop lying and start accounting. If you continue to deny, your life is a lie, and no one can protect you from the weight of your fate.

All the best,

John