The Grasshopper must be feeling the emergence of spring because he’s dropping seeds everywhere. Here’s one of his plantings from yesterday: “Actions account for your success, excuses insure your failure.”

On second blush, his message wasn’t much different from the one my 4th grade teacher Miss Wagner gave us: “You can have what you want or your reasons why not.”

Based on my experience, we live in a magic bullet society. We are looking for the shortcut or the pixie dust that makes all the work go away. It doesn’t exist. Action is your ally; armchair is your ass getting fat.

I’m reminded of a large family member whom I will describe as leading an academic life. His head is forever buried in a book. The books offer him explanations why his life is not working. He can explain away with a “prodigious” vocabulary why things aren’t coming his way.

The problem: He can easily explain the 7-Steps to Success, but he never takes one.

The answers may be referenced in a book but only actions will take you to where the answers actually live.

Knowing the answer and arriving at it’s destination is a matter of movement.

Back to my relative: I’m certain he’s read and can cite chapter and verse “Declutter Your Home: 20 Tips for Keeping Things Simple” in the latest version of the AARP Bulletin. I’m equally sure he tripped on something on his way to the magazine rack.

My family member is mythical but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t exist a bit in all of us.

Look for the evidence of any success you’ve had. Unless it was pure luck, it was a process. There were actions taken to move you in the direction of success.

Explaining away our shortcomings can go on for a lifetime. If there is a real shortcut towards success, you can bet your entire library that it’s wrapped up in one word: Action!

All the best,

John

“One of the biggest hurdles to get over in life is that your unhappiness is someone else’s fault.” So said The Grasshopper.

As long as the cause is out there somewhere, unhappiness will remain in here.

It’s quite the lesson to learn to own your own unhappiness. It’s also transformative.

As long as you assign it to a person, place or thing, your unhappiness will continue to cling. Once you have the realization that you have unhappiness within you without assigning blame, you will get ahead of the game – the game of assigning cause to something outside of you.

The transformation begins when we end using the word “because.” “I’m unhappy because . . .”

“Because” by its nature justifies whatever we’re “be-causing.” It’s much more useful to stop at the word “unhappy,” as in “I’m unhappy.” Notice the period after “unhappy.” Or use the phrase spiritual writer Eckhart Tolle recommends: “I have unhappiness within me.”

Assigning unhappiness to an outside cause will trip you up every time. Yes, you may have an unhappy response to an event that’s outside of you, but the sensation of unhappiness will linger as long as you continue to point a finger. Reminds me of a story I’ve told before . . .

Years ago, I was driving on interstate 95 at about 65 miles an hour when I was cut off by someone traveling at a much higher rate of speed. My car swerved out of the way and it was a hairy situation for the next moment or two. Thankfully, I was able to regain control of my car, but not my feelings. My body was filled with adrenaline and my head was packed with profanity.

I was issuing an out loud tongue tirade about the situation and the feelings in my body were getting worse. Lucky for me that I noticed what was happening. I immediately took massive deep breaths and audibly and forcefully expelled them with loud sighs. That action dissipated the excess adrenaline, and now I had to deal with the “because.”

I could have gone on for hours, days or weeks about the idiot who cut me off but all that would do is revivify the experience and keep the sensations inside. I had to interrupt the thoughts that continued to assign my mental state to someone who belonged in a state hospital. Once I continually interrupted the thoughts of blame, they melted and faded away and so did any lingering feelings from the situation.

Here’s something you can do when you notice unhappiness within you: Recognize that whatever cause you have assigned it will not take it away, only keep it in play. Take some deep breaths and audibly sigh them away. The final step is to continually interrupt the thoughts associated with your unhappy mental state until they move on.

Often it’s just enough to recognize that you have unhappiness within you. Just the noticing starts the ball rolling and you can then, as it says in the Declaration of Independence, pursue happiness.

All the best,

John

The Grasshopper offered this tidbit on endings: “When you’re going nowhere together, it may be time to part.”

This piece of relationship insight has too many applications to list but following are just a few that come to mind.

The biggest breakup in most of our lifetimes was that of the Beatles. One could argue that they had much further to go together but, in hindsight, there was too little togetherness to make that happen.

The mean number of years for an American marriage is eight. If you’re one of the people who has experienced divorce, you can now clearly see that at some point you were going nowhere together.

The law firm that handled your divorce may have since broken up as well. Perhaps the law partners also had a parting of the ways.

Partings, for the most part, are acrimonious. My guess is that’s because the partners are not on the same rung of the togetherness ladder. One or more of them doesn’t recognize the location blunders that are tearing them asunder.

From my vantage point, lack of communication is the main culprit. What was once freely exchanged is now hoarded in secrecy. No longer are the dreams, desires or common goals discussed, just pushed aside as we get on executing our list of “musts.”

It takes some recognition to notice that you’re moving in a different direction than your partner(s). It’s at this point of recognition that you can explore the option of whether to move in a direction together. That means bringing your collective maps of the future out from under the covers and looking at them in the light of day, together.

It’s transparently obvious that the lack of communication is the main cause of going nowhere together.

Look no further than the Congress of the United States for examples of people talking past, rather than to, each other. There are no common goals being reached because no one is communicating.

The answer to Rodney King‘s question of “Can we all get along?” is most likely “No.” That doesn’t mean that we can’t explore togetherness. Only then will we know for sure if we can go somewhere together.

All the best,

John

With apologies to Dusty Springfield fans, The Grasshopper had this to say: “Wishin’ and Hopin’ have the same success rate as Drinkin’ and Dopin’.”

How much of our time is spent on wishes and hopes? There is a point past which we deserve to be called a dope.

No one has done the arithmetic on wishing and hoping, just like National Football League coaches have never done the arithmetic on running the ball on 2nd and 10. The success rate is anemically low for both but that doesn’t stop us from jamming up the flow by employing these tactics.

I believe it’s time to bring our wishes and hopes into the light of day and see how much time we waste on action-less pastimes.

There is no action associated with a wish or a hope which is the main reason neither rarely comes to fruition.

I’m sure “Actin’ and Doin'” wouldn’t have been as big of a hit song but our results would approach the Top 10 if we acted and did again and again.

A hope without action is hopeless. A wish without doing deserves poo-poo-ing.

Only you can decide how you’re going to spend your time but this much is arithmetically provable: The time spent wishin’ and hopin’ in your head determines how full your ass is with lead.

All the best,

John

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

For those of you into Haiku, here’s one that came “out of the blue” during a windy night.

Behold the sightless wind

Hear it roar and feel its sting

Yet Tom doubts the gale

Happy Friday

The Grasshopper offered some insight towards success by giving a reverse definition: “Inertia is the handmaiden of failure.”

Failure is most often tied to failure to try.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I have been prejudiced to the word “try” by my late teacher Dr. Dave Dobson who claimed that “try” was an excuse word we learned in toilet training. When we sat and went in our pants and were admonished by our parent or caregiver, we found that saying something like “I tried to make it to the bathroom” absolved us from responsibility. We took that excuse word with us into adulthood.

Dave suggested the phrase “make an effort” indicated action that the word “try” lacked. When you say, “I made an effort,” it allows questions about what specific efforts were made. There’s more information available with “make an effort” than there is with “try.”

Inertia keeps us from making efforts or trying. It is an insurance policy to fail. Making an effort paves the road to success. It doesn’t guarantee a smooth road, but a road nevertheless. If you sit at the fork, you’re guaranteed to get “forked.”

I recently watched the PBS special on songwriter/singer Carole King where this incredibly accomplished woman had this to say:

“If you want to do something, go for it, try. Don’t tell yourself you can’t make it. Don’t let your parents tell you you can’t make it. Let the world tell you you can’t make it, after having tried. Or maybe let the world discover you, but don’t fail to try. Because if you don’t try, you can’t succeed.”

I think the purpose of this post is to get us all to start giving attention to inertia so we can metabolize it and discover that making an effort leads to results and it keeps us from making trying excuses.

All the best,

John

I came across an old Grasshopper quote that I feel the urge to re-quote: “YOU lives between the words, not in them.”

We all struggle describing ourselves with labels (words). They never seem adequate, simply because they’re not.

The “you” we attempt to describe is someone we call “me.” That boils down to a collection of our history with countless stories from that timeline to support who we claim to be.

We are not our history or our stories. We are the pause between explanation.

I often think of the old advertising line from Coca-Cola when making this case: “The pause that refreshes.”

It’s refreshing to find out we are not our history or our stories about it. There is freedom in that pause: freedom from being locked in by our labels.

Spring is not far off and that means that spring cleaning can’t be far behind. You may want to get a head start on the change of seasons by beginning the de-labeling process now.

Start peeling off any label that follows the phrase “I am.” “I am a parent, christian, atheist, speaker of truth, lover, homemaker, provider, butcher, baker, candlestick maker or AARP member.”

As the labels start to disappear, you begin to see the space between the labels: the You between the words.

You cannot be described by a label, only limited by one.

So, start letting the labels go and watch the unlabeled You begin to show. It’s quite the discovery.

All the best,

John

The Grasshopper must have been feeling his oats when he left this on my mental doorstep yesterday: “If you define aging by comparison, you’ll feel old.”

I can tell you from experience that I was offended by all the “old” references when I turned 50. The “over-the-hill cards” to the “funny” aging references gave me a peek into the psyche of others and how they viewed aging. It never matched up with my ideas on the topic.

Aging is a process; “getting old” is a mental construct.

We age every day. It seems that “getting old” is a mindset that goes on steroids when we get into using comparison as barometer.

I can’t run as fast as I could when I was 20. That’s a fact. But when you compile all the comparative facts, you paint a picture that is opposite of Dorian Gray. That picture then serves as your dim light of possibility.

Rather than compare, just be where you are. When I’m just here doing whatever I’m doing, I’m not caught up in reflection on how much I’ve aged since then. When you get immersed in what you’re doing, the farthest thing from your mind is that you’re too old to be doing it.

I’m not going to dive off an 80 foot cliff like I did when I was 18, but I’m not going to avoid the diving board at the swimming pool either. I do what I do when I can do it and that is rewarding for me, instead of lamenting that I’m not what I used to be.

If you like Eddie Murphy, you’ll readily admit that he would probably not be as good as a stand-up comic as he used to be, but he’d still be funny. Other older comedians who attempt to recreate their old routines and put them on display appear old. Those that just do what they do now still have a following. Look at Jerry Seinfeld and his internet series “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.” He’s not recreating the Seinfeld Show; he’s just doing what he does now.

You can be trite and say “age is just a number” but it’s more than that; Aging is a mindset – one that’s built on comparison.

When you just do what you do and don’t take the time to compare it to what you used to do, you feel alive in the moment and that never gets old.

All the best,

John

Here is something I wrote 5 years ago that was relevant 500 years ago and will be 500 years from now:

“The Most Prized Real Estate Contains No Land” – Grasshopper

Pure and simple, the most prized treasure is space – the one between your thoughts.

All that we seek, all that we long for is closer than our next thought which most often only tells us what we’re missing.

“If only I had money” is an impoverishing thought.

“If I wasn’t fat” will keep you hungry.

“If I could live my life over again” takes you back over barren fields.

The land of thought is overpopulated and the wise investor will begin investing in space.

The space between your thoughts is the rich land of creation. It’s here that you will find that vast expanse called “peace of mind.”

It’s in this space that all creation happens. It’s not for sale but everyone is entitled to as much as they want. This space is limitless.

Space makes room for new creations, new ideas and unlimited angles of approach. It’s in this space that what you desire takes shape.

Thinking things through is the exact opposite of creating space. You’re a smart person; how many times do you need to go over the same facts to come up with the same roadblocks to peace?

How do you create space? Begin to notice that your thoughts are thinking you. They’re the exact same ones you had yesterday, last week, last month or a zillion years ago.

When you notice your thought machine in action, you create a tiny space. It’s a mini meditation. Repeated often enough, this practice begins to automate itself and you find that you have more peace of mind and are more creative.

Repetitive thinking takes up space and crowds your mind. All you have to do to free up some space is to notice your thoughts. Once you get more adept at noticing, one of the first discoveries you’ll make is that you’ve been engaging in debate with a tape recorder all these years. Guess who won?

One of the great uses of our mind is in assessing and assembling facts. This is not repetitive thinking. It’s using your gift of intellect to arrange something from raw materials. Thinking becomes repetitive when you go over the same stale facts again. That’s when it’s time to get some breathing room.

Just notice that your thoughts are looping around again. When you notice, you find the exit ramp to the real estate of treasured space.

All the best,

John