Had this thought pop in during a weekend walk: Thoughts: Residents or guests?

It got me thinking in a new direction about thoughts.

An original thought is a guest and a recurring thought is a resident. Simple enough.

But do we take the time to notice the difference while thinking? It seems that we have to stop thinking for a moment and categorize what we just thought. Was that last thought a resident or a guest?

What you will find is that most of your thoughts are residents – ones you’ve become familiar with. You’re kind of married to them; you can finish their thought before they do.

When you take the time to stop and notice what you are thinking, you will notice the repetitiveness of thinking. Just by noticing that you are thinking the same thoughts is observation enough to create a space in your thought stream for a new thought to come in.

One way to put out the welcome mat for guest thoughts is to notice your resident thoughts. It’s as simple as observing the thought. “Oh, I’m having the thought about the tax bill coming due.” You probably had that thought at least a hundred times before you noticed it. It was residing in consciousness without you even acknowledging it.

When you notice and acknowledge the thought, you create a space in your consciousness for a guest thought to pop in – one that’s not wearing out the carpeting by repetitvely walking around the hallways of your mind.

A guest thought gets you thinking in a new direction. The key to getting more guests is to make space for them. You only have a limited amount of space in your consciousness and if it’s all being taken up by residents, there is no room for guests.

The way to make room in your thinking is to stop and notice what you are thinking. This deliberate act of attention pauses the thought machine just long enough to create a space.

Guest thoughts are polite. They won’t force themselves on you; they’ll only come when there’s room for them.

Want more guests? Let the residents know you are observing them carefully.

All the best,

John

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There are a number of beliefs out there, and in here, that just can’t hold water.

Let’s start easy. How many people do you know who believe that you can turn fat into muscle? Fat is fat and muscle is muscle and never do the trains meet.

Another twisted piece of logic . . . Luck actually exits as a thing. Luck is always a concept that we apply after the fact when we experience good or bad circumstances. Luck doesn’t exist as an entity, it’s a mental category.

Now that we’ve gotten a couple of softballs out of the way, let’s dig in to some deep do-do. Here is Funhouse Mirror Logic at its finest: If I can explain what happened, I can undo what happened.

No you can’t. What happened, happened. Please notice the period after the previous sentence.

You may be able to assess what happened and put steps in place to keep it from happening again, but you cannot undo what happened.

Some people spend almost their entire lifetime doing revisionist history expecting history to change. Notice that “history” and “happened” are synonyms.

Let’s pretend you are a cheating spouse. No amount of explanation or justification will undo what you did. Check with any marriage counselor and they will tell you that’s what their clients continually attempt to do – undo what they’ve done.

This phenomenon falls under the broad category of avoiding “My Bad.” When’s the last time you heard anyone take full responsibility for their actions? You have encountered more lime seeds in your lifetime.

The explanations go on and on and the fact remains the same – you did what you did.

The amount of time spent on attempting the impossible (undoing), is staggering. What you are attempting to undo will remain with you until you own what happened. Not doing so, keeps a heavy weight in place.

Every time you offer a justification or explanation, you make your story heavier with horse shit and you carry that heavy burden and stink with you.

You can spend the rest of your life explaining away what you did (as many prisoners with life sentences do), but that only allows you pseudo peace of mind for a brief time. Every look into a mirror outside the carnival grounds will shatter your myth and reflect your burden back on you.

If your goal is to make amends, the justifications have to end. When you own something you’ve done, you can shed unnecessary baggage and more easily move forward.

You cannot undo what you’ve done but you can own up to it and lighten your load. If you don’t, your luck will run out, and even though your brain isn’t a muscle, if you don’t use it, you’ll become a fathead.

All the best,

John

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I was having a dream this morning where I found myself counseling a total stranger. He was struggling with his performance at something and out of nowhere I offered him this: “Discover yourself through other people.” Then I woke up.

Here’s what I find when I’m offering input to other people: I’m usually offering that advice to myself.

There is a part of me that’s just like them and my sense is that I need to be exposed to my remedy as much as they do.

Other people will not only test you, they will improve you. They will help you discover a part of you that you’re keeping in hiding. These hidden parts of you are patterns that hold you back.

If you deny or don’t know they exist, they will continue to run your life into the ground. Other people show you your patterns. What you don’t like in them is what you don’t like in yourself. If you continue to only ascribe their patterns to them, you’ll miss an opportunity to bring yours out into the light of day.

It’s hard for us to admit that there is a part of us that’s just like a person with an offending pattern. That doesn’t mean that we’re just like the other person. In fact, we may be oceans apart. What it does mean is that the part of us that observes their limiting pattern is the part of us that has it too, to one degree or another. It’s like two artists or two plumbers at a crowded event who never met who wind up talking to each other. They find each other.

Every encounter with another person is an opportunity to find out more about you.

This isn’t an exercise to find out what’s wrong with you; it’s an opportunity to explore what’s hidden from view.

Have you ever been offered an observation about you from someone you respect that opened your eyes to a pattern that was holding you back? That’s the opportunity you get every time you observe something you don’t like about someone else. You find out a little bit more about what’s hiding in you.

If you avoid other people, you are avoiding the parts of you that you don’t like. In essence, you don’t like the experience of having a mirror held up to you face, especially by a total stranger.

Total strangers will teach you more about you than your closest friends. You just have to be open to what they have to show you to discover what’s holding you back.

All the best,

John

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No doubt, life has its ups and downs. Most of it, though, happens in the middle.

I remember having yo-yos as a kid. My brother Billy was a Duncan Yo-Yo competition winner. The best I could do was “walk the dog” or “rock the baby in the cradle” once in a while.

But they were my accomplishments and I pooh-poohed them. I didn’t take notice of the good feelings I experienced because I was too busy comparing my accomplishments to others.

Comparison is a head trip; feeling your accomplishment is an in-body experience.

How many things do you accomplish in a day that you don’t take time to feel? You may judge them as unimportant, yet you accomplished something.

What if you started to celebrate your accomplishments by feeling each one when it’s completed? You would begin a pattern of feeling the middle ground and by doing so, the bulk of your life becomes more pleasant.

Your accomplishment may be mundane in your mind, but if you take the time to feel it in your body, people will want to know your yo-yo tips and tricks.

Suppose one of your to-do items is to make school lunches for your children. You could turn that into a feeling of accomplishment just by taking the time to notice your achievement and let it register in your body. The same goes for filling up the dog’s water bowl.

It only takes a moment to notice and feel. It brings you back to experiencing your life rather than viewing it through the unrewarding prism of comparison.

Bottom line: You’re not using the middle ground to your best advantage if you’re just yo-yoing between the highs and lows.

All the best,

John

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I’ve heard people say they want to leave a legacy when they leave this earth, or maybe even before.

I have a different suggestion. Leave a proverb.

Look how long they last.

Aesop left us a ton of them.

• Don’t count your chickens before they are hatched

• Honesty is the best policy

• Look before you leap

• A man is known by the company he keeps

• Share and share alike

What if you could come up with one? Wouldn’t that be fun?

What’s your proverb?

What are you learning in this life that you can pass on in bite-sized form?

I’m not asking you to come up with a book, a short story, a poem or an essay. I’m suggesting that you leave a proverb – something that when digested sticks to your ribs.

It’s got to be pithy. (That word always sounds like you’re lisping when you say it aloud).

It’s got to be deeper than a mom or dad-ism or a joke you’re famous for telling. It’s got to be universal and memorable enough to cross the centuries.

Whether you come up with one or not, it’s the pursuit of this endeavor that delivers focus. You get to find out the lesson that’s most important for you to learn.

Here’s my candidate for a proverb: Know nothing; learn everything.

I sincerely doubt it’s going to be one of the most memorable ones, but it’s meaningful to me. Crafting my proverb tells me that whatever I “know” is getting in the way of me knowing more. I, like you, shut down when I know. My curiosity takes a long nap and I miss a lot.

I request that you put together a proverb. If nothing else, it will show you what’s important to you and illustrate the lesson you want to learn in this life.

Who knows, perhaps your proverb will be the one they’ll be citing centuries from now.

All the best,

John

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I’ve had a phrase pestering me for the past 3 days. It kept coming back, so I knew I would have to flesh it out. The words were, “Schedule it.”

It seems to me that when something shows up on a schedule that it is real. When it stays in your mind as unscheduled, it’s a nagging thought.

This is more than making a list; it’s making something important enough to be scheduled as an event.

Just making a list becomes a list of “shoulds,” and “should” just reflects an argument you are having in your mind.

“Schedule it” contains action. In fact, when you are scheduling things, use an action verb as the first word of your scheduled item.

• Call the plumber for an estimate.

• Plan the surprise party.

• Scan the old photographs.

On the surface, it looks like a to-do list with action verbs and that’s partly correct. The bigger part is that you’ve made the effort to get something out of your mind and into the light of day. It’s here that action is assigned, rather than remaining an idle thought in your mind.

Years ago, my wife and I did the following exercise from time to time. We sat with a note pad and went through every room in the house in our minds and put down what each of us would like to do with that room. Paint, refurnish, rearrange, tear down a wall, etc. It could easily be mistaken as a wish list, but what these fantasies became, when scheduled, was an action list.

I would like to tell you that we acted on everything on the list, but that would be a lie. But action did take place on some of them – action that would have remained dormant had we not scheduled it.

There is power in scheduling things. “Schedule it” is an action that leads to action.

Don’t take my word for it. Schedule some things. Take what’s been rolling around in your mind and schedule it for some action. Even if you tuck that list away somewhere, when you rediscover it months later, notice the number of scheduled things that got action. You will surprise yourself.

“Schedule it” is a tiny action that tricks inertia into movement.

All the best,

John

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I’ve done my share of wishing in this lifetime, and like you, I’ve found that it’s a pretty poor strategy. That, however, doesn’t keep us from continuing to wish.

I know I’ve quoted a bank slogan I heard many times growing up that points out the ineffectiveness of the wish: “Wishing won’t do it; saving will.”

But there is new hope for wishing. I have discovered a way to get what you wish for and I’m about to share this universal secret with you.

Before I reveal the secret, I have a question. Did you ever notice that you do get what you don’t wish for? That’s valuable to notice because now you have two categories for wishes – what you do and don’t wish for. That narrows things down.

Now that we know we can categorize wishes, it’s time to create a new category, and time to unveil the secret. The new category is “all wishes.” It encompasses everything in one tidy package.

Now that we have one category, it’s time to let you in on the secret. To get what you wish for, wish for what you have.

Eureka!

It’s another way of stating the Buddha’s observation on reality: “Everything is as it should be.”

What you do and don’t wish for are all in the realm of mathematical probability. The odds are the only thing at issue. The odds are always in your favor if you wish for what you have.

Wishing could be another word for noticing. If you notice what you have, you’ll be grounded in reality. It’s from a reality base that we can better chart a course for true north. If we plot a course from where we’re not, our odds for getting what we wish for remain anemic.

When you change the definition of wishing from maybe to always, you’ll start to notice where you truly are vs. where you wish you were.

It’s from this vantage point of reality that we can start building a bridge across the “abyss of wish” to our pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

All the best,

John

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The Grasshopper hasn’t been around for a while. That usually happens when I get caught up in my life story instead of experiencing my life.

But there he was on my doorstep in the quiet of the early morning with this gem: “Facts change, wisdom doesn’t.”

Facts and circumstances are always in abundance but wisdom is scarce, especially when you give too much weight to the things that will weigh you down.

I coined a phrase back in the 90s. I called it “Of this world.” It was the observation I made when I noticed someone caught in the trap of their thoughts. You could easily see the manifestation on their face. There was noticeable pain caused by the current set of facts and circumstances they were wrestling with inside their head, which eventually spewed out of their mouth for public consumption.

Wisdom arrives when there is an absence of facts. That’s because wisdom runs on a separate track from facts and figures. It’s the part of you that quietly figures stuff out. The process never changes. Get quiet and get wise.

Notice that a new set of facts can get you to go off in countless directions. Wisdom always comes from the same place.

Wisdom is not a set of 1-2-3 directions but the process that delivers actionable information.

Wisdom also delivers the ability not to act, or better put, “react.”

Wisdom is not reactive; it’s responsive. If a fact makes you predictably react, you are acting on your knowledge. If a fact causes a pause in your thought process, you’re more likely to come up with a wise response.

There is a choice point where you can decide to go to your limited container of facts and figures or delve deeper into your reservoir of responses.

It’s from this deeper place that wisdom arrives. The facts and figures of yesterday will come and go but the wisdom of right now will always be constant. You can’t get to it if you’re constantly trying to figure things out.

Take a break from your facts and circumstance today and give your wisdom an opportunity to come out and play.

All the best,

John

Years ago, my friend Paul and I taught a course in communication. I was responsible for the non-verbal portion of the class and Paul taught the public speaking section.

I remember him teaching the class about the value of a pause. A pause allows time for the message you’ve just delivered to sink in and adds emphasis to it. A well placed pause also sets up the “pay off” idea or, for comedians, the punchline.

The pause even has a greater use when you apply it to your own life.

Pausing before you speak or act has been a learning experience for me. It’s an ongoing lesson but each time I remember to apply it, it pays dividends.

Culturally we are conditioned to have an instant answer. If we don’t, we may be judged as “slow on the uptake.” Men, more than women, have been brought up with the idea that we have to know and we have to know now. That’s why there are more male than female stutterers. “Out with it” is a high volume phrase that has produced more stutterers than you can imagine.

The problem is that the instant answer, too often, doesn’t answer the problem. Take the couple driving around looking for a location. If we have a culturally conditioned “must know” man behind the wheel, he’s likely not going to stop and ask for directions. “Don’t worry, I’ll get us there” is his response to a plea to stop and ask. A half hour later they are still lost.

He didn’t take time to pause.

Not only will pausing keep you from saying or doing something stupid, it has a bigger payoff than that. The pause in a high percentage of situations delivers a much better answer – one that you wouldn’t have received unless you paused.

Recondition yourself to pause more often before jumping into action or giving your instant answer. The pause will open the door to more possibilities and directions, and you won’t have to make as many course corrections.

All the best,

John

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Who can’t recite their top 5 missed opportunities in life? Given the opportunity to think about them, notice how easily they come to the surface.

Then after we list them, we play the game of going back in time and conjuring up what we could have done differently to seize those opportunities.

We flagellate and aggravate each time we go back and play out the ridiculous to the sublime in our mind. Here’s what we don’t realize when we’re doing that: We’re missing current opportunities.

We think opportunities are as scarce as cabs on a rainy night in New York City. The opposite is true; opportunities are a continuous stream. We don’t see them because we’re too focused on a place where they don’t exist – in the past.

I will grant you this: The same opportunity you missed may never come back around again, but you’ll never see what may be a better opportunity if you don’t climb out of the past.

I’m reminded of one of my favorite missed opportunity quotes from the ancient Persian Poet, Rumi: “Don’t grieve for what doesn’t come. Some things that don’t happen keep disasters from happening.”

What if you woke up everyday with the idea that opportunity is waiting for you to wake up? How would that one simple assumption change your focus from past to present and open your eyes to opportunity?

Make that one subtle shift in attention and it won’t be too long before you see, the ever-present world of opportunity.

All the best,

John

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