Withholding is a deduction. It’s a very practical business practice to keep back some money for future financial obligations such as taxes. And with our complicated tax structure in the U.S., it’s prudent to look for allowable deductions so you don’t give away what is rightfully yours.

If you withhold too much, you don’t have the use of that deducted money. It doesn’t earn any interest for you in the withholding account. So you may look for professional guidance to ensure you have optimum use of your money. This all makes sense.

What are you withholding from your life? Are you deducting too much? And is it in your best interest?

It’s always been interesting to me that memorable messengers, whose ideas have stood the test of time, came to the same conclusions independent of each other.

You will always find the threads of commonality amongst the ancient sages and prophets – Lao Tzu, Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad, et al.

So I consulted the works of a couple of modern day messengers, Jerry Stocking and Eckhart Tolle to see if they had a common message on today’s blog topic and here’s what I found:

“What do you want from another that you are withholding from yourself?” – Jerry Stocking

“Whatever you think the world is withholding from you, you are withholding from the world.” – Eckhart Tolle

Aside from my amazement that people can come to the same core nibbling at the apple from different ends, what can we learn from their words?

Here’s my interpretation: You will never get what you are seeking from another until you recognize that you already have it in yourself.

Most of us never go deep enough to find our core wellspring. We are controlled by the pronouncements of our patterned thinking and continue to thirst.

This keeps us looking outside for answers. “If only this, that, or the other thing would happen, then I will be happy” seems to be the common conversation at the copy machine.

Take a step back and notice for a moment that that logic has never worked.

What you have been seeking is already present. Make the effort to get your intellect out of the way for a few moments each day and drink from the communal well that will give you full access to your wealth. After your meditative time away, you will return to your activities with a refreshed and calmer mind and earn interest on your investment.

All the best,

John

http://www.johnmorganhypnosis.com

Are you in the process of deciding something? Chances are the pros and cons think they’re at the company picnic and are playing Tug of War.

This internal game can take a toll on you and needlessly deplete your energy.

So who’s competing? Is it the good cop/bad cop? Is it the angel and the devil? Perhaps it’s your reasoning and daydreams of fancy going back and forth.

The ego is battling itself.

The ego is all about dichotomy. It will chat on inside you about one thought and just about the time that you think that’s a grand idea, in pops the exact opposite thought. It’s the game the ego plays to stay in control of your mind.

You ego doesn’t even want you to get a sniff that there may be another way – a way that isn’t dependent on ground rules that keep you in a state of flux.

Here’s an exercise I learned from Jerry Stocking that has the decision make you.

Look at one side of the choice and completely convince yourself that this is the way to go.

Next, take the opposite position and do the same thing – completely convince yourself that this is the way to go.

Then go back and forth between the choices in your mind as fast as you can until you can go from one convincing position to the other in less than a second.

Do the one second back and forth drill for a couple of minutes and then just let it go. Go about your business and let this process gestate. More often than not, you will get a clear direction from your mind that needs no debate.

My guess is the ego can’t move as fast as the exercise and has no time to comment on the choices.

It’s a little piece of magic that will fit well in your kit and caboodle. Make sure to bring it out and use it from time to time and save yourself from an arduous afternoon at the company picnic.

All the best,

John

Screen doors let the air in while keeping the flies out. What a cool invention.

What if you could install a screen door in your mind? It could let in the air but keep out the pesky gnats.

Criticism is a stimulus we all receive and the responses to it vary with every individual. What if you could let the criticism in and keep out the piece that causes a conditioned response? The piece to screen out is the solid meaning that we attach to the criticism.

When someone criticizes you, they are giving you an assessment based on their angle of view. We tend to take it personally but when you think about it, it’s only a burst of air. Criticism is a stimulus and whatever happens inside of you is a response.

Between the criticism and response is meaning. The diagram would look like this:

CriticismèMeaningèResponse

Meaning is something we add automatically due to our conditioning. This automatic addition robs us of “free will.”

Free will is something that most people rarely demonstrate though they will jump up and down and claim that they have it. If someone calls you a name and you immediately retaliate with a name of your own, where was the free will in your response? It was side stepped by the lightning quick meaning that you attached to the name you were called.

So let’s pretend that someone calls you a “fuzzy bellied lint licker.” Your normal response may be to respond in kind. What would happen if you threw in the clutch, and transformed the meaning of what they said to be just a burst of air? What meaning does a burst of air have? None! It’s just a burst of air. My guess is you would have a different response to a puff of air than you would to a name you have added meaning to.

This practice is a conditioning exercise. Condition yourself to have the free will that is always available but hardly ever used.

Think of your screen door as a meaning converter. It takes something that seems solid and turns it into something that isn’t. It’s like the transformation of an ice cube to steam.

You do have a choice. You can take the automaticity out of your response and move the conversation to a more productive outcome OR you could escalate it to Hatfield & McCoy proportions. You do have a choice.

Choosing takes practice and flexibility and it’s worth it. Remember this:

The person who is more flexible has more options.

All the best,

John

I remember a couple of years ago asking my daughter-in-law what a blog was. She said it was a shortened form of the word “weblog.” It could be a record or listing of anything that is deemed important to the writer or recorder of this log. I was familiar with logbooks from being on board ships in the Navy. I was also in the radio business for a million years and we were required by FCC regulations to keep a couple of logs – one for documenting commercials played and another for documenting measurements of our signal strength.

When you come right down to it, blogs are cyberspace’s version of the back fence. You get to exchange points of view with your neighbors. It’s like having your own op-ed column in the newspaper or having your own talk show on the radio or TV.

I asked my friend, Paul Perry of WROR Radio in Boston what he would do if he didn’t do a radio show. He said whatever he did; his desire for accenting the humorous side of life would surface at the water cooler somewhere else instead of coming out of the speakers of the radio.

So blogs are mostly a representation of your personality. If you don’t blog, you may go down to the corner bar and regale everyone with your opinion or commandeer the gazebo in the town square and just start orating. Both can be rather annoying. Many years ago, I did a radio talk show and was attending a family event out of town. My brother-in-law’s father came over to me and offered his opinion on talk show callers. He said, “You know that guy in the bar who talks to everyone? He goes from person to person and each one sloughs him off. After the last person tells him to ‘get lost,’ do you know what he does next? He goes home and calls you.”

The good news about blogs is they can only affect you if you read them. And if they don’t interest you, they’re much easier to ignore than drunks in a bar.

I’m delighted that my pal, Mark’s main squeeze, Kathy, who designed my website (http://GrasshopperNotes.com) mentioned that she could include a blog with it. It’s a way to reach people with a message or musing I think would be beneficial. I fall under the broad category of what I call “people helpers.” And blogging helps me reach people who may have never have come across these points of view otherwise.

I thank you for reading my blog and if you find something of value here, pass it along to a friend. I would encourage anyone who has a point of view they would like to express to begin blogging. My friend, Hali Chambers, Labyrinth Gal tells me anyone can start blogging for free with Blogspot.

All the best,

John

What got you curious that there was more to life than what was going on inside your head?

For me, it was reading a copy of Broadcast Magazine in the Spring of 1975. In there was a profile on some broadcasting executive who cited 2 books as being instrumental in his success. They were Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz and Three Magic Words by U. S. Andersen.

I found theses books and read them voraciously. Never in my life had I been exposed to these angles of approach to life. It began a life-long curiosity into how to know myself better and how to overcome obstacles for myself and others. May I say, for me, it’s always a work in progress and the fun part is never arriving because there is always something else to look forward to.

Both books were about knowing yourself. Psycho-Cybernetics is about the self image that you carry around inside your head that dictates what is and isn’t possible and some strategies for updating that image. I am eternally grateful to the late Dr. Maltz for introducing me to the concept of Self Image Psychology. I cite him as a contributing influence to my best selling CD – Improve Your Self Image.

The other book Three Magic Words was not an easy read AND the payoff for me was life changing. I can still remember anticipating what the last chapters would hold and guessed correctly as to the revelation it presented. When I actually read the Three Magic Words in the final pages, I had chills throughout my entire body. It was an enlightening moment that has stayed with me and provides continuous curiosity each day. I won’t spoil the ending for you but it changed my thinking and my approach to life.

My friend, Mark Ryan turned me on to ho’oponoopno and I subsequently read Joe Vitale’s book Zero Limits which details the work of Dr. Len and the ho’oponopono approach to changing your life. Dr. Vitale questioned the validity of his previous self-help books in Zero Limits after being exposed to Dr. Len’s work. Dr. Len told Joe that his previous works were stepping stones to where he is now. The books were like his children. When I read that, I sent an email to Joe Vitale. Here is an excerpt from that email:

“. . . the stepping stones comment from Dr. Len about your previous books was right on target. There are several books and practices that I’ve discovered and benefited from that I would have never been ready for had I not been schooled in some stepping stone philosophy. These helpful life guides would have been dead ends for me unless the way had been previously paved.

We probably would have all brought our children up a bit differently if we had the knowledge then that we possess now.

Thanks again for another Joe Vitale creation.”

I have a list of recommended books to read on my Hypnosis Website. I would have never been ready for some of the messages that are contained in them had I not awakened to a different approach to life many years ago.

The old adage is still apt –

“When the student is ready the teacher will appear.”

Additionally, an ancient, anonymous Far Eastern saying suggests that learning is a participatory process. It reads:

“The teacher and the taught together create the teaching.”

Let your curiosity lead you to something that opens your eyes.

All the best,

John

“You can lead a mule to water but remember what a wet mule smells like.” The Electric Weenie

Stubborn can be defined as inflexible, obstinate, immovable and a host of other synonyms. Stubbornness most often is a fear – a fear of being found out. Many people who display stubbornness have something to hide. The problem is they have hidden it where everyone can see it if you’re willing to look.

When someone won’t cop to what everyone else, including them, knows, it is a desperate attempt to keep them from receiving ridicule – a fate worse than death for them.

They have so much invested in their public persona (ego), that admitting to something that doesn’t fit the image is a crippling fear. The defense mechanism is to be stubborn. No amount of effort by you is going to move that mule. Denial is the offshoot of stubbornness – another defense layer to keep ridicule at bay.

We have all been stubborn and have encountered others who are stubborn. So, as my old friend, Terry Butler would say, “What’s your real question?”

How do you get a stubborn person to come clean? The answer is: You can’t.

It is always a personal discovery. You can continue to box them into logical corners, but their escape hatch is usually an emotional outburst that has nothing to do with the topic that was being discussed. Oftentimes, that conversation will contain a red herring to put the onus on you. Even if you get them on the witness stand, your facts can expose them even more but their dramatic denials make O.J.’s look like puppy chow.

For a stubborn person to see the light, they must, as Eckhart Tolle says,

“Die before you die.”

That means that our image of ourselves has to dissolve before the light of life can shine through. Our ego is the most stubborn thing we will encounter in our lives. It keeps us propping up the cardboard cutout of ourselves and passing it off as the real thing. Stubbornness dissolves naturally when we finally realize that no amount of denial will keep this hand puppet alive.

When we finally surrender to life, we find out that our dirty little secret can be cleansed and that forgiveness flows effortlessly in our direction.

All the best,

John

This morning while out walking through the neighborhood and observing the colorful Fall foliage and breathing in the crisp air, I was thinking about RCV. I thought I would write a blog post about it because it’s humorous, it’s universal and it needs to be eradicated. I was thinking of what I could use to illustrate RCV and came up with the following line:

“If you expect to win the lottery and you don’t buy a ticket, you have RCV.”

I got busy doing other things and forgot about writing the blog post. The universe moves in mysterious ways. I checked my email and found the following joke from Michele with One “L” in there:

God Loves Blondes

A blonde finds herself in serious trouble.
Her business has gone bust and she’s in dire financial straits.

She’s desperate so she decides to ask God for help.

She begins to pray . . . “God, please help me. I’ve lost my business and if I don’t get some money, I’m going to lose my house as well. Please let me win the lottery.”
Lottery night comes, and somebody else wins.
    

She again prays . . .”God, please let me win the lottery! I’ve lost my business, my house and I’m going to lose my car as well.”
  

Lottery night comes and she still has no luck.
  

Once again, she prays . . . “My God, why have you forsaken me? I’ve lost my business, my house, and my car. My children are starving.     

I don’t often ask You for help, and I’ve always been a good servant to You.  PLEASE let me win the lottery just this one time so I can get my life back in order.”
    

Suddenly there is a blinding flash of light as the heavens open.

The blonde is overwhelmed by the Voice of God, Himself . . .
“Sweetheart, work with Me on this…. Buy a ticket.”

So, after this cosmic nudge, I decided to do my part in wiping out this planetary scourge called RCV.

So what is RCV? It’s something Dr. Dave Dobson discovered some 20 years ago. Think of it as a medical malady. Most people have it yet don’t recognize the symptoms. It’s easier to spot in others than it is in you. Perhaps a few more examples illustrated by quotes from the ancient Chinese Sage, Lao Tzu would be helpful.

You have RCV if you think a plan is going to come to fruition without you taking any action.

“An ant on the move does more than a dozing ox.”

You have RCV if you’re playing full contact sports after the age of 40.

“Born to be wild – live to outgrow it.”

You have RCV if you’re trying to culturally keep up with your neighbors.

“When you are content to be simply yourself and don’t compare or compete, everybody will respect you.”

There is good news. There’s a cure for RCV. It’s called self inspection. Catch yourself in the middle of it and you are on the doorstep of discovering the cure. You can’t buy the cure at a pharmacy or at GNC but it’s available with a dose of recognition.

RCV is an acronym. It stands for:

Rectal Canal Vision.

All the best,

John

I have a few bonsai trees. I’m not very adept at shaping them but I enjoy having them and tending to them. It got me to thinking about the notion of having to be “good” at something in order to enjoy the experience.

I wonder how many people suspend their enjoyment of a process because they don’t think they’re good enough. Another case in point: I am a lousy singer – always have been. This doesn’t keep me from belting out my favorite songs in the shower or when I’m putting something together in the kitchen, or walking Snuffy, the black-nosed beagle. I’ve had enough people request that I not sing to know I sound like a foghorn. I’m careful to not offend someone’s sensibilities with my balladeering but I don’t think the shower walls mind.

There is the other side of this situation where someone, who metaphorically has my singing skill set, continues to annoy or harm others by pretending to be something they aren’t. My parents had an expression they used when encountering someone like this. They called them a “shoemaker.” The best definition I could come up with for their term is someone with fake credentials.

My expression is “pretender.” Someone who purports to be someone they’re not. Often, one of the telltale signs is someone giving you their verbal resume a few minutes after you meet them. They usually turn out to be a pretender. Hyperbole is another warning sign.

I had a guy pitch me on some landscaping a few years back. He had installed a retaining wall on my driveway and suggested he do something with the surrounding weed infested ground. The area needed attention and I didn’t have the desire to do it myself. His exact comment was, “I’m gonna’ make this place look like a palace.” I should have paid attention to my gut but I didn’t. It was screaming that this guy was a horticultural hack. I didn’t listen. You had to hear the resume material exploding out of his mouth – “I was the talk of my class,” “I make it my business to satisfy my customers,” “there’s nobody like me in this area,” blah, blah, blah.

Weeks later, the ground where he put the grass seed down, looked like Sy Sperling‘s head before he bought the company. It eventually became overgrown with weeds. Did the guy ever return my phone calls? No, he was too busy plying his craft to other gullible homeowners.

Pretenders don’t usually get better at what they do. They’re too busy pretending to be something they aren’t. To quote Ralph Waldo Emerson:

“Who you are speaks so loudly I can’t hear what you are saying”

My guess is not too many pretenders read this blog. So, does this information just go to the choir members or is it just a rant? I think there is a bigger game here.

It’s discovering that we are not who we pretend to be. We pretend to be a bunch of labels that we made up, or someone made up for us, and we got comfortable with them – “Indian Chief,” “Candlestick Maker,” etc. When you confuse your role in life with who you really are – a divine expression – that’s when it’s hard to live up to the hype. Be gentle on yourself and start peeling away the labels and see what shows up. I think you’re in for a wonderful surprise.

Some of the wisest advice ever offered was to leave the conversation of religion and politics out of social situations. How many of us have blindly pushed past that warning sign many times? If you’re a talk show host, religion is always great grist for the mill but for the rest of us it’s a pathway to poisoned communication. If you want to deepen the divide and chip away at a relationship, keep talking about religion.

I think it’s easier and more productive to talk about God. God is a word I have had trouble with in the past. Let me give you an example:

When I was in elementary school, my Aunt Janet went into the convent. She felt a calling to serve God and acted on it. She soon discovered that this wasn’t the pathway for her. She left the convent and eventually met a wonderful man whom she married and they had 5 wonderful children together. They raised their 5 children in their religion but Aunt Janet’s focus was not so much on religion but on God. When her family struggled financially, she would always say, “The Lord will provide.” I can remember as a young man rolling my eyes at that pronouncement and thinking what a Pollyanna approach to life. The interesting thing is they leapt over hurdle after hurdle when logic indicated they were doomed. Something always came along and ironed out the wrinkles in the road.

“God” can be a polarizing word because most people equate it with their religious training and so it means different things to different people. I think the common ground is that just about everyone agrees that their version of God makes the grass green and is the life force of every creature– whether we call our God “Mother Nature,” “Universal Force,” “Divinity,” “God the Father,” “Allah” or some other name. God is in everything – even the things and people we don’t like. We shy away from using the term God because of the reference it triggers in different human beings. God is not a “politically correct” term. That’s very sad.

It seems as most people get older, they start warming up to the idea of God – the common life giving force that we all share. When people are struggling, they usually look outside themselves for answers. That methodology has a dreadful rate of failure. The best answers come from within – from God.

I think the telltale sign of a major crack in the ego is when very successful people find God. Even with all their trappings, they hadn’t found the peace beyond all understanding – God. This new found revelation usually leads them into more life nurturing enterprises vs. offering us more cultural carrot sticks.

If God is not in your vocabulary, I recommend you take a giant leap of faith and pretend God exists. This is a no risk proposition. If you try it on and find it’s not working for you, you can drop the notion and move on to something else. After all, you were just pretending. But this acting as if has a high rate of conversion and leads to peaceful feelings and a calming of the mind. This mind calming, peaceful state will bring you more gifts than Martha Stewart or Donald Trump could buy for you.

Aunt Janet had it right a long time ago – The Lord Will Provide.

All the best,

John

The Patriots beat the Colts over the weekend and we celebrated in our household. I can sympathize with the Colts’ fans. We dealt with those sensations in January when the Patriots let a 21-3 halftime lead slip away and Colts beat them and went on to win the Superbowl.

My mother used a common expression that I’ve heard many times. She said, “Don’t get mad; get even.”

I can only align myself with the wisdom of half the expression – “Don’t get mad.” (see associated Grasshopper Note)

Anger clouds your judgement and rarely works because it gets you locked into a stewing pot inside of your head. The steam coming from that caldron clouds your vision and may cause you to strike out into areas where you cannot see clearly, hurting innocent bystanders and causing yourself irreparable harm.

I always liked the TV show The Incredible Hulk. It was a family event that I would watch with my 3 boys. Aside from Lou Ferrigno’s macho muscles that we all wanted, I was curious why I was attracted to the show. It hit me one day. I had the thought that if someone filmed us when we were angry, we would become angry less often if we got to see our ugliness on film. I thought the same film viewing technique could work with someone who denies they have a problem with alcohol. Show them the film of them being unable to put their words together and it could serve as a stepping stone to sobriety.

Being angry is like being drunk – your personality changes. You have limited access to the life force that is you when you numb your mind with alcohol. The same limitation is true when you are angry. You jam up the limited amount of conscious awareness available to you with your angry thoughts, leaving no space for a calming thought to enter your mind.

The anger I’m addressing here is the flash anger that is an instant response to a scary stimulus. The prescription for keeping this type of anger from getting out of hand is recognition. You can train yourself to recognize anger when it first hits. Just this recognition factor, alone, is often sufficient to put a wedge between the stimulus and the conditioned response, getting you to a clearer frame of mind much quicker.

People who appear angry all the time are really not angry at all. They are sad. The sadness sits below the apparent anger and fuels their angry behavior. This is most often apparent in men. Men are conditioned not to pay attention to sadness. “It’s not manly to be sad” is what our culture teaches us. But sad is what they are. The sooner they employ the recognition that they are experiencing sadness, the sooner they can address the issues causing it. The metamorphosis from angry to calm is lightning quick when sadness is confronted and expressed.

Regarding getting even: It’s kind of like The Grasshopper said, “Revenge is a Sugar High.”

All the best,

John