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July 15, 2013

Doctrine

Filed under: John Morgan's Blog — John Morgan @ 5:52 am

C139915 m There are countless numbers of religions, all with their own doctrines. There are political organizations, also with countless doctrines. It seems that the set of beliefs they have each settled in on sets them apart from each other. And therein lies the main difficulty.

I am truly amazed when I pass a house of worship and they have a marquee out front with some pithy saying. What amazes me is how exclusionary these phrases can be. The sayings often espouse a portion of their doctrine, and the underlying suggestion is that this way is the only way. I find the same exclusionary practice in many pieces of political literature.

Yes, I know you’re not supposed to talk about religion and politics, so let’s just focus the conversation on doctrine. When each side sets doctrine aside, progress sets in.

When your focus is principally on your principles, a solution remains out of focus.

I would love to see a sign like this at the entrance way of an ecumenical gathering: “Let’s set doctrine aside and just experience God.”

Capitol buildings could have a sign that reads: “The people we serve deserve more than our dedication to doctrine.”

Do you really care if the person giving you life saving, mouth-to-mouth resuscitation believes the same way you do, or do you just want the mission completed?

Whether it’s politics, religion or your own family, doesn’t it make sense to get past the doctrine and get something done?

If you are dictated to by doctrine, you can only say the same things over and over again. There is no room for something new to emerge that would serve others and you, no matter what hymn book you sing from.

You could spend your whole life defending your doctrine or you could have it there simply as your guide. The latter choice gives you the flexibility and option to accomplish something by periodically setting it aside.

All the best,

John

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July 11, 2013

ABCs

Filed under: John Morgan's Blog — John Morgan @ 7:07 am

C456367 m “If I can only teach you what I can do, I put limits on what you can accomplish.” That’s the gist of what The Grasshopper offered on yesterday’s walk.

If I can only teach you A, B and C. like most schooling, I will keep you in a “Parrot Prison.”

Reminds me of a story I may have told before . . .

I have an old acquaintance who is quite successful at what he does but I have trouble finding “him” there. That’s because he constantly references others while engaging you in conversation. He is a quote machine. He’s forever telling you what someone else said. I have no idea what he thinks. If I wanted to know what Benjamin Franklin thought, I would read his writings. This person is successful but not original. He’s formulaic, which is a fancy term for cookie cutter.

You can easily learn his formulas, which are quite helpful, but they will only take you so far. At some point, you have to realize that the alphabet is just the beginning. Even after you get to “Z,” there is an infinite world of possibility.

I have never been a big fan of the phrase “Outside the Box.” I certainly believe in the concept, but generally what I find is that people who espouse that maxim have not learned what’s inside the box yet. That’s where formulas are helpful, like “Measure twice; cut once.”

Once you have the basics down to second nature, it’s time to explore past what the formulas get you.

At some point, it’s useful to encourage others to learn on their own. I’m not sure that curiosity can be taught, but anything you can do to move another in curiosity’s direction is more helpful than giving them another lesson of what you already know.

Curiosity will take you to the edge where all new learning takes place. I’m not suggesting that you live on the edge, just to visit it more often. That’s where you learn to accomplish things past what you can already do.

Curiosity will stretch you out of your rigidness and give you the flexibility to learn something new.

There is no new Latin to learn, but learning Latin may stretch you. “sedit qui timuit ne non succederet.” He who feared he would not succeed sat still.

People can learn much more than you can teach them if you encourage them to expand on that knowledge and get curious how to create new boxes that they can eventually teach themselves and others to think outside of.

All the best,

John

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July 10, 2013

Secrets

Filed under: John Morgan's Blog — John Morgan @ 6:37 am

C165667 m “Secrets can’t help but to be secreted.” So said The Grasshopper when I awakened this morning.

A common notion is that some people take secrets to the grave with them. That may be true but it does not mean they didn’t offer them up to you while living.

Secrets by their nature fester. They are like a musical piece looking for a resolving chord. Everyone has secrets and if you pay enough attention to them, their secrets become transparent.

There are enough experts on body language to give you plenty of clues as to what to look for, but the clues, alone, are often not enough. Those methods have you pay attention to the clues, which are helpful, but there is another way to find someone’s secret – give all your attention to them. When you do that, you, in effect, become them and their secrets are now yours.

I don’t really know how it works; I only know that I have unearthed secrets that I had no business knowing when I chose to give my full attention to someone, rather than just to their facade.

People want to reveal their secrets but they never will give them to someone they don’t trust. When you give your full attention to someone, you give up your judgements of them and become welcome. This welcoming affords you the opportunity to be present to what’s there, not what you “think” is there. That’s when secrets flow between the two of you.

I don’t know what psychic is and I’ve never claimed to be one. I do know this: Peoples’ secrets are no longer secret to me when I give up knowing what I know about them (judgements) and just choose to give them my full attention.

It’s hard to let go of what you know, but when you do, there’s no secret that’s unavailable to you.

All the best,

John

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July 2, 2013

New Beginnings

Filed under: John Morgan's Blog — John Morgan @ 3:13 am

Old New Borrowed Blue The Grasshopper reflected on old and new when he delivered this gem from out of the blue: “Contained in every successful new beginning is the absence of old baggage.”

It seems we rarely start out fresh. We tend to take stale with us. This practice keeps new beginnings to a minimum.

One reason it is difficult to start over is because we keep covering old territory. The old terrain causes us pain and it’s hard to move when hobbled by history.

The best athletes are the ones with the poorest memories about their slumps. Even the greatest ones have their ups and downs, but the ones that put their shortcomings in the rear view mirror the quickest, put new in view.

Your past can only drag you down if you keep carrying it around. Getting past the past is the first step towards a new beginning. This is not a wholesale dropping of your history that I refer to because there is merit in the classic wedding rhyme – “Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue.” Taking the past forward is problematic only when the past pretends to be the present. That’s only possible in our mind.

Leaving the past in the past is the proper place for it and the only way to successfully move forward.

If you are having consistent trouble turning over a new leaf, chances are the past is your thief.

All the best,

John

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July 1, 2013

Whose Job?

Filed under: John Morgan's Blog — John Morgan @ 4:53 am

C513911 m Here is one of life’s hard learned lessons: It’s no one’s job to make you happy.

The sooner we learn this, the better our chances to experience more happiness.

We have to take our reins of happiness out of the hands of others and return them to where they rightly belong – to us.

When we put the onus on others for our happiness, it will always be a crap shoot. Sometimes you’ll win but most often you will lose. It reminds me of a saying I remember from long ago: If you don’t want to be let down, stop leaning on people.

Depending on others to make you happy is like waiting to hit the big jackpot in Powerball. It could happen, but what are the odds?

We burden other people when we expect them to be the source of our happiness. Happiness is an internal state, not generated from an external force. To prove this to yourself, think of something that someone did that “made you happy.” Then think of another time they did the exact same thing and it didn’t make you happy. Your happiness comes from you.

Waiting for someone to arrive with your basket of happiness is an illusion we all have, until we don’t. The sooner we get to don’t, the sooner we discover our source of happiness.

Honest Abe was on to something when he said, “People are just as happy as they make up their minds to be.”

Make up your mind that it’s no one’s job to make you happy.

All the best,

John

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June 28, 2013

Pressure = Patterns

Filed under: John Morgan's Blog — John Morgan @ 6:24 am

C609120 m We are most likely to act poorly under pressure. When someone is pressured, they will revert back to conditioned patterns of behavior.

Think back when you fell down and skinned your knee as a child. There may have been someone there with comforting words and a touch, and a touch of anti-bacterial ointment or spray and, perhaps, a Flintstone’s band-aid. Then there was the payoff – candy, cookie, lollipop, etc.

Is it any wonder that when we get hurt as an adult (pressured), that we reach back for conditioned behaviors – patterns that we’ve learned that are indelible. The nervous system doesn’t know the context of hurt; it only registers hurt from the senses and responds with the patterns it learned.

When you are pressured, it’s helpful to pause and notice that you are about to give a patterned reaction. Just the sheer noticing of your automatic behavior about to kick in, gives you the option to choose another way to go.

Like many people, I get ornery when I get tired. If I am pressured during that time frame, it is highly likely that I’m going to offer a patterned reaction that won’t serve me well. It’s just so automatic, unless . . . I notice.

Noticing may cause me to say something like, “Can we take this up in the morning because I’m not feeling very resourceful now?” Noticing that I’m about to give a patterned reaction is often enough to kick in a different response – one that will keep me from kicking myself the next day.

We often make excuses for people close to us when they respond poorly to pressure. “Oh, he’s just tired.” “The job has really gotten her down.” What we don’t say is what is really happening: They are reacting with past patterns rather than updated ones.

It’s helpful to know that choice is available to you, even under pressure. You just have to stop and notice that pressure is about to reveal your conditioned patterns and interrupt that reaction before it comes out to play and ruins your day.

All the best,

John

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June 27, 2013

A Block of Everything

Filed under: John Morgan's Blog — John Morgan @ 6:22 am

C417932 m The Grasshopper had an interesting observation the other day: “Knowing everything can cost you everything.”

Like most of his spontaneous morsels, this one needed time to marinate.

I don’t think he meant “know-it-alls.” They’re just people who are afraid they don’t know enough and overcompensate. They remind me of the expression I remember from the military: “He has an alligator mouth and a hummingbird’s ass.”

Knowing everything has a ring of superiority to it. Here was an eye-opening characterization leveled at me in the past. The person said, “You approach everything like this: I know everything, you know nothing; let’s begin from there.”

I can tell you from long experience that that’s quite a repellent. People move away from someone with that mindset.

Knowing is solid; learning is porous.

You need porosity in order to mingle with others, so that you have common areas, otherwise you’re just a block over in the corner only able to share your knowing with yourself.

Other people know lots. You’ll never get what they know if you pretend you know everything about them. That mindset will get them to move away in a hurry and all you are left with are impressions that impress no one.

Learning is always a journey and never a destination. You stop learning when you are all-knowing and the acceptance you seek will remain hidden because a block of knowing is hard to hug.

All the best,

John

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June 25, 2013

Dense

Filed under: John Morgan's Blog — John Morgan @ 6:30 am

C113861 m How dense are you? It sounds like a pejorative question, but upon closer inspection it is requesting a factual assessment.

One dictionary definition of dense would be “tightly packed.” “How tightly packed are your ideas and beliefs about something?” is a question that’s asking you to reflect and inspect rather than cornering you into a defensive posture.

Tightly packed ideas leave little room for the metaphorical sardine that’s going to make some wiggle room.

When your ideas are dense, there’s no room to learn something new on that topic because your notions are as hard as cement. You then become, to quote Lucy van Pelt, a “Blockhead.”

“That’s how it is” is a tightly packed idea, especially if there is an abundance of information available that suggests it isn’t. But when we are dense on a topic, we lose our ability to use the critical thinking we all possess because it can’t get between the sardines.

There must be a solution to create space in a densely packed area. Surprisingly, It’s not more facts. Reminds me of a story . . .

I had some workmen in my house recently who were listening to a conservative talk show on the radio as they worked. I mentioned that I had done a talk show on the radio during my broadcasting career. They began asking me about different talk show hosts and my opinions on them. Rather than give them my opinion on a specific host, I broadened the discussion about why one brand of talk show is more popular than another.

“The most successful talk shows are conservative talk shows,” I said. Any ratings survey will back up my assertion. I went on to say that progressive or liberal talk shows don’t fare as well because they rely on the facts too much and don’t do what conservative talk show hosts do best – tug at your emotions.

The formula is simple. If you are a liberal talk show host, you line up all the disparate facts and you, like a prosecutor, walk your listeners through a timeline and expect them to come to the conclusion you logically expect. The conservative formula is to take a small corner of large picture and get you to focus only on that. They are like defense attorneys who ignore evidence that doesn’t support their case and focus on the pieces that will affect you emotionally.

My talk show experience had me come to this conclusion: Most people don’t want to work hard at coming to a conclusion. They want it handed to them in a densely packed form with no room for opposing opinions.

So what is the solution to creating more space? Firstly, you have to recognize the density of any belief or idea that you own and then make an assessment if it’s getting in the way of you enjoying life more. If you find that your density is causing you pain (having to be right is a major self-infliction of pain), your job is to observe your mind at work.

What we normally do is join the discussion in our mind and have a back and forth argument – much like the daily fare on a talk show. The key to making more room is to observe the arguments being made as a spectator and not a participant. You then get separation from the ideas because you discover that your ideas are not you. You are the observer, not the idea.

Once you discover that you are not the ideas in your mind but the observer of the ideas, the ideas and beliefs become less dense. The more you observe, the more open you become. The more open you become, the more options you have.

If you want to remain dense and right, keep making arguments for your limitations and you will insure two things:

1. Your pain will stay in place.

2. You won’t learn anything new about you.

Observe your density and increase your propensity for more pleasure.

All the best,

John

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June 19, 2013

Intention

Filed under: John Morgan's Blog — John Morgan @ 6:48 am

C412327 m “What are your intentions, young man?” is a well worn line from old movies, but our intentions today are as essential to successfully living as they ever were.

The Grasshopper awakened me with this: “Intention: Giving flow somewhere to go.”

Intentions give our creative juices a groove to follow to a specific destination rather than too many canals that lead to petered out and watered down.

When your creative juices are channeled, you have an intention that has a prayer, rather than passively praying that it will come to pass.

How do we channel our intentions?

One secret is to give up the notion that there is no work involved. The set-it-and-forget-it approach makes for great theory but as my late teacher Dr. Dave Dobson said: “Theory is bullshit and defending your theory is bullshit squared.”

Your intention needs a plan of action otherwise it remains a wish.

Additionally, the number of intentions we have on our active list would benefit by being pared down and prioritized.

The hallmark of someone struggling to have their intentions come to pass is a wish list that even makes fairies weary.

If your flow has too many places to go, you have scattered focus and scattered results. You can’t have it all and you can’t do it all, and the longer you hang on to those notions, the longer you delay your intentions.

When I see lack of specific intention, I find a person in love with the idea of being a “Renessaince Man or Woman.” They have fallen in love with a fairy tale and believe that fruition is just another magic apple bite away.

“Today I’ll paint; tomorrow I’ll write; Friday I’ll read more on how to achieve world peace, and the weekend will be dedicated to finding the magic bullet for everything.” Your flow has too many places to go which is why you are going nowhere.

Hang on to your dreams; just don’t turn them into scattered nightmares by leaving them unprioritized and neglecting to dig a groove.

Focus your intentions and watch your fairy godmother’s wings begin to flap. If you are tired of watered down results, give your flow somewhere to go.

All the best,

John