We often confuse math and meaning. We often apply math in an area where it doesn’t belong.

In math, you can have a provable equation where A=B-C. You can defend and prove that B minus C equals A. In life it doesn’t work that way but we operate as if it does.

How often have you taken a set of thoughts in your head and added some form of “this means that”? What you are attempting to prove is that a set of circumstances that you are intellectually entertaining, has a provable, universal meaning. The formula would be Circumstances = Meaning I Ascribe.

Trouble brews quicker than instant coffee when we attempt to give meaning a solid value.

Meaning is always an afterthought and never part of the real equation. It’s an effort to explain a set of facts. The difficulty arises when we discover that there are countless interpretations of the unscientific equation, Circumstances = Meaning I Ascribe.

You only have to poll one jury to convince yourself that meaning has a mind of its own and is divorced from the facts. The O.J. Simpson trial of the 1990’s is a prime illustrator of how meaning gets molded regardless of the facts. Just take one fact from the trial and see how different meanings acquitted O.J. At the crime scene they found a size 12 Bruno Magli shoe print in the blood. This was a specific model of the shoe with limited sales. O.J. owned a pair of these, limited edition, size 12 Bruno Magli shoes that matched the shoe print found at the crime scene. One of the investigators admitted to having used a racial epithet in the past. The jury turned math into meaning.

William Shakespeare said it best in Hamlet:

“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

He could have easily substituted the word “meaning” for thinking and not skipped a beat. Meaning is what we think it means and rarely does that equate to the facts.

Let’s take a real life example from the therapist’s couch. “My husband cheated on me because he has an enormous sex drive that I cannot possibly accommodate and I know he is not attracted to me anymore after the baby was born because I haven’t lost all the weight I gained during the pregnancy. He claims it was a one-time thing but I know that he will do it again because once men cheat they always go back for more because they can’t help themselves. I’ll never be able to trust him again.”

This statement is all too familiar and dripping with meaning. What are the facts? The husband cheated, said it was a one-time thing and she had a child. Everything else is meaning.

This is not to say you cannot apply logic to a set of facts and forecast a future result. This is more an exercise in noticing “this means that” in your thinking.

The meaning we give something takes on a life of its own and eventually becomes a “fact” in our head. We think we are operating on the factual data but, in fact, the data has been so distorted by meaning that we can only come to a faulty conclusion.

Notice that meaning doesn’t exist in nature – only in our head – and different heads come up with different meanings. Imagine the daffodil saying to the crocus, “The only reason you bloom before me every year is so you can get the attention of the other flora and bees and show off.”

Want to add some meaning to your existence? Take meaning out of your life for just a day and truly find the value of 1 + 2 = 3.

All the best,

John

http://JohnMorganHypnosis.com

http://GrasshopperNotes.com

http://cdbaby.com/cd/johnmorgan

http://www.cafepress.com/grasshoppernote/3580301

I was having my bathroom tiled last year at this time. The man who did the job was truly a craftsman and truly miserable. I remembered his work from many years before but I had forgotten how steeped in misery he was on a personal level. After having him in my home for a couple of days, The Grasshopper had these two things to say:

“Your misery will continue if you would rather be right than get right.”

“Being right gets in the way of getting right.”

This man lives in the conceptual world of right and wrong. You may have already guessed that in this drama he plays the part of “Right.” As I listened to his stories, they were swollen with how this one was wrong and that person was wrong and, by and large, what idiots always showed up in his life. Reminds me of a story . . .

There is a man who is moving to a new area and decides to ask a local farmer what the people in the area are like. The farmer asks him a question before answering, “What are the people like in the area where you currently live?” The man said the people were honest, hard working, family folks and wonderful neighbors. The farmer said, “That’s exactly the kind of people you will find here.” Not but a few minutes later another man came by and asked the same question. The farmer again asked, “What are the people like in the area where you currently live?” This man said, “They are dishonest, back biting, people who are only out for themselves.” The farmer replied, “That’s exactly the kind of people you will find here.”

Getting right is recognizing that you are the cause of your wrong. When someone rights the ship, they are guiding it to an upright position and steering it out of harm’s way towards advantageous sailing conditions.

Making someone wrong is best left for court cases. When you make someone wrong, you always have the accent on the wrong syllable – “out there.” Something out there is wrong and causes me to be miserable. The longer you keep accentuating external conditions, the longer you will sail on the rails.

The quicker you take responsibility for your own state of mind, the sooner you will right the ship.

It’s amazing that we never notice that making someone wrong never brings us peace – just continued misery. People want to justify their rightness, and when it becomes a way of life, it seems everything always goes wrong.

You can spend your entire life trying to convince people that you are right but as The Grasshopper has said,

“Some people would rather be right than happy. And preferring to be right, they are left out.”

If you have truly been wronged, please address it. If you simply have to always be right, you are in for a lonely existence.

Getting right is noticing how invested you are in the concept of being “right,” and recognizing the misery that’s attached.

For many, always being right is a protection mechanism from the pain of being wrong. Someone who is always right has been conditioned to feel wrong somewhere along the way. The pain of being wrong is so severe that they cannot even entertain the idea, so they invest all their energy in being right.

Don’t give up your morals, just give up being right.

Being right is like being on drugs. It’s addictive. Begin to wean yourself away by recognizing your need to be right. Just by noticing this pattern of behavior, you begin to bring your boat to an even keel and set sail towards serenity.

All the best,

John

http://JohnMorganHypnosis.com

http://GrasshopperNotes.com

http://cdbaby.com/cd/johnmorgan

http://www.cafepress.com/grasshoppernote/3580301

Dr. Gregory House on the TV show, HOUSE says, “Everyone lies.” We all tell lies. It’s the work of the ego.

There are the white lies, the lies to escape blame, the ones to build ourselves up or tear someone else down, and an ongoing list of lies that have reasons too numerous to mention. Not lying to others – although a noble goal – is a pattern that is not going away anytime soon.

Did you notice that you can’t lie to the mirror? A mirror has no agenda other than to reflect back what shows up in its area.

Here is a very simple and profound exercise: Spend sometime today with a mirror. Have a conversation with the person in the mirror and admit, aloud, what lies you have been telling to yourself. Just stand before a mirror and allow the lies you have been telling yourself to come up one by one. Bring them out for inspection and vow to the person in the mirror that you will never tell this lie to yourself again.

This is not an exercise in recrimination or judgement. It’s an exercise in forgiveness.

Admit to yourself that you have been telling these lies to yourself for a long time and ask your mirrored self for forgiveness for not being forthright.

This is a very powerful exercise that you can do in private. This is no one’s business but yours. Once you look yourself in the eye and admit that you’ve lied, you open up a space for forgiveness to flow into.

When you feel the power of forgiveness flow through you, you will feel the burden of carrying this lie around drop like a ton of bricks, and the lightness you will feel is more than worth the effort.

It takes courage to tell the truth – even to yourself. Once you muster the courage to do this exercise, you will remove blocks to your growth that lying always produces.

Once you stop lying to yourself, then you can take on the challenge of being more truthful with others.

Every lie you live is a block to your freedom.

Talk to your mirror today and find the unvarnished truth. Unchain yourself from the pain of living a lie.

All the best,

John

http://JohnMorganHypnosis.com

http://GrasshopperNotes.com

http://cdbaby.com/cd/johnmorgan

http://www.cafepress.com/grasshoppernote/3580301

I was testing out my new video camera yesterday. I recorded my neighbor’s golf swing and then my own and we were reviewing the finer points of our mechanics on the viewfinder frame by frame. Amazingly, we were doing just what our instructors had said we were doing. After this, I just sat down on my front steps, looked into the camera and spontaneously started talking about abundance.

Maybe it was Spring that was coming up all around me that inspired my musings but the essence of it went something like this:

There is a difference between glitter and gold.

That which we reach out for is glitter; that which we mine for is gold.

When we reach out to grasp something, it’s very difficult to hold on to it for long. It becomes heavy and slips from our grasp. It’s temporary. We attempt to hoard it so we don’t have the burden of holding it. This practice sets up a mindset of lack and produces thoughts and actions that there will never be enough.

The reaching out process keeps us off balance – just like when you lean off your merry-go-round horse to reach for the brass ring. The risk/reward ratio is not in our favor. Reaching is a large wager with a puny payday.

Also, with reaching, many of us have been conditioned that we have to take what we want. We have to “go for the gusto.” And if your parents are like most, they taught you something else – not to take things that aren’t yours. When you reach out for something you don’t have, at another level, it is sensed that you are taking something that doesn’t belong to you. This out of awareness tug of war will keep you reaching and dropping.

We reach because we are conditioned to be mesmerized by the shiny exterior. This has us reach for all things that glitter. Reminds me of an old joke . . .

Why did the husband give his wife a cheap, shiny ring for Christmas? So it would turn green in time for St. Patrick’s Day.

The glitter is the bait to make us reach. And even though our instructor has told us that reaching won’t get us what we want, we continue to do it until we see our actions, frame by frame, are not getting us what we want.

That’s when we start mining for gold.

All abundance comes from within and spills outward. There is no reaching and no illusionary thoughts that you are taking it away from someone. In fact, there is so much of it; there is more than enough to go around. This is the lesson of the loaves and fishes that Jesus taught his disciples.

There is no need to hoard it because there is plenty more where that came from. It is a self replenishing supply because it is coming from infinity to which there is no end.

There is no end to true abundance. Once you know that you are the source of it, it’s no longer necessary to look for it in the Jones’ driveway.

Once you begin to realize that the same abundance you see outside is also in you, that’s when you stop reaching and begin mining.

If you don’t know there is a mother lode within, you’ll never carefully look at your reaching strategy to find out that it’s not working. You’ll just keep making the same mistake over and over again and over extending yourself.

The real you beneath your grasping ego has access to universal abundance. You just have to go there and mine for gold. Once you recognize the abundant state within, your reach will never exceed your grasp.

All the best,

John

http://JohnMorganHypnosis.com

http://GrasshopperNotes.com

http://cdbaby.com/cd/johnmorgan

http://www.cafepress.com/grasshoppernote/3580301

I had a dream last night that contained a message. I’ve had less than a handful of these types of dreams in my lifetime, so I pay attention when one of them comes along.

This dream, like most, lacked rhyme or reason and was a hodgepodge of loose ends but there was an unmistakable message included. The dream was related to my mother who died in 2001 but she wasn’t even in the dream. Perhaps a story would be helpful . . .

About 20 years ago, my mother said, “You know what they ought to have – a pocketbook with a light that goes on when you open it so you can find your keys and other things in the dark.” She thought it would be convenient and a safety feature for women entering their apartments or homes at nighttime. We all commented what a great idea that was and that was the end of it. I recently got an email from Amity, my business partner’s wife with an attachment picturing such a purse and she wrote, “I immediately thought of your mother when I saw this.”

This product didn’t exist 20 years ago but it did in my mother’s creative consciousness.

Back to the dream . . . In it, I was designing a purse and sewing pockets and compartments inside of it to make it more functional. It was definitely a prototype of some sort. I was having difficulty making the purse functional in the dream. There was a dual feeling of frustration and promise attached to this dreaming experience and then I woke up.

Mother’s Day is Sunday and I got a cryptic message from Mom that applies to all of us – follow your creative urges to fruition.

There are ideas and actions that want to flow through you. How you know this is because they keep showing up. You find excuses not to follow up on these actions and ideas and they keep getting put on the back burner or tucked away in a mental crawl space.

You are a conduit for creativity. This unmistakable urge is coming from your source and it wants to be born. All you have to do is let it happen.

Notice that your ego always stands in the way of creativity. The operative phrase of the ego is, “It can’t be done.” That’s because your ego only knows nuts and bolts. It missed the design class. There is a part of you that has a design for your life and it wants to show you the blueprint and the plan but the security guard (ego) won’t let them on the job site.

Step 1 – Issue your creative self an “on premises” badge and give them permission to visit you 24/7, even in your dreams.

Step 2 – Give your security guard more coffee breaks so you can put your creative stirrings into action without all that negative energy being present.

Step 3 – Always trust the creative sensation and it will keep delivering urges and action plans that keep you in the flow of life and not stuck in the guard shack.

Thanks, Mom.

Happy Mother’s Day!

John

I got a message from The Grasshopper this morning upon awakening – The 5 Boroughs.

I immediately thought of the 5 boroughs that comprise New York City – Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, The Bronx and Staten Island. There was no juice behind that thought but I knew this was something I was being encouraged to write about, so I just let “The 5 Boroughs” sit there and this is what popped:

The 5 boroughs are the 5 senses – sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell. That’s how we experience the world, at least the world we can sense.

These sense experiences burrow down into our consciousness and, after a few repetitions, they become patterns. We are unaware of many of these sense perceptions because they sneak past our conscious mind and become our make up over time. Reminds me of a story . . .

My ex brother-in-law has 4 brothers. We were all at a family gathering many years ago. The boys’ father was also at the event with his 5 sons. When the father got up from his chair, I noticed that he hooked his thumbs into his back waistband and adjusted his pants. It immediately dawned on me that all the brothers did the same thing when they got up. Do you think any of them were aware of this collective pattern? No, they were not, but they all did it in the same fashion.

They had seen it over the years and this visual piece of information burrowed down into their subconscious and became a pattern of behavior – one they were unaware of.

There are so many patterns of behavior that have come about due to burrowing sense perceptions. Patterns run our lives. We like to think we are in charge, but, truth be told, we are our patterns.

Side Note: Beliefs are patterns – many of which also got in there without our conscious knowledge or permission.

A pattern is comprised of one or any combination of the burrowed sense perceptions. After this burrowing takes place, we experience a visual, auditory, kinesthetic, olfactory, gustatory stimulus and we have a response. Reminds me of another story . . .

When I was 6 years old we moved into a new neighborhood. I made some new friends and we played in an alleyway behind a bakery. It had one of those big fans that sucked the hot air out of the building and also escorted some delightful scents into that alley for all of us to smell. I can’t speak for the others, but anytime I smell fresh baked aromas in the air, I am mentally transported back to that alley.

That’s one of the stimulus/response patterns I became aware of over time. There are many other ones that I have no knowledge of, yet they still run and I act in accordance with them. I don’t think that pants hiking and alleyway transportation interfere with the quality of our lives but other patterns do. The question we need to ask ourselves is, “What keeps showing up in my life?” The answer to that question will lead you to a pattern you have that is attracting those repetitive circumstances.

You don’t need to take the patterns apart piece by piece and discover all the burrowed sense perceptions to come to a resolution. There is a shortcut. If you read my blog, it’s one of the words that continually repeats itself in my writing – Recognition. Recognition is a pattern worth cultivating. When you recognize a counter-productive pattern of behavior that you have, especially when it is running, that is the beginning step in outgrowing or updating a pattern.

Recognition is the wedge that you slide between stimulus and response even though you may not even know what the stimulus is. All you need to do is notice the pattern while it’s running. This noticing is an interruption of the pattern. Recognition is enough of a wedge for you to choose another response – one that takes you off automatic pilot and delivers a new way of responding. Consistent application of pattern recognition will update the pattern into some more useful behavior.

There are many who say, “Change your thoughts and change your life.” A quicker way is to change your patterns and change your life. When the patterns change, the thoughts will automatically change.

This methodology works everywhere – even in the 5 boroughs of New York.

All the best,

John

http://JohnMorganHypnosis.com

http://GrasshopperNotes.com

http://cdbaby.com/cd/johnmorgan

http://www.cafepress.com/grasshoppernote/3580301

Yesterday I was in Border Books buying a book for my son. As I was standing in line there was a mother with 2 young daughters under the age of 5 in front of me. The younger of the two girls appeared to be around 3 years old. She was running and jumping while her mother was paying for her books. Then the little girl sat down on a pile of magazines that was sitting on the floor. She spotted this one magazine with a caricature of a woman with straw looking hair and an ashen, sunken in face that had cracks in the skull. It looked like a character from one of the many horror films available.

The little girl looked down at the picture and very matter of factly said, “She has cracks in her face.” There was no frightened response, just a recitation of what she was viewing. She repeated what she said. I was amused by her antics before she sat down on the magazines, and then I was grateful for the lesson I had just been taught by a 3 year old.

She didn’t add any meaning to what she was viewing. She just stated the reality of her moment. There were no computations of “this means that” and she didn’t have any reference material in her mental files to be taken aback by what she saw.

The picture garnered the attention of a 3 year old and her response reminded me how adding meaning to a situation roils the waters and makes everything cloudy. She was making what Jerry Stocking calls a “grounded assessment” – something that 12 jurors could agree on. She didn’t say, “Look at this weird, scary woman who is obviously on drugs and ready for the grim reaper.” She simply stated the reality – “She has cracks in her face.”

This is a very valuable thing to do with your thinking. It grounds you in reality and dispels illusions that adding meaning will always produce.

Take a peek or a listen to your own thinking and notice how full of ungrounded assessments it is. “Look at my disgusting fat body. It’s covered with unsightly globs of repulsive flab” is filled with “meaning” that keeps you focused on the illusion and separated from the solution. Let’s translate that sentence into one with grounded assessments and notice how different it feels. “I notice that my body contains fat and I have fat deposits in several places.”

That is something that is easier to go to work on because you are just stating reality, not adding to it. When you are working with a set of facts, a solution becomes more clear cut. When you add the emotional judgements to the mix, you now have another layer to cut through in order to get to a solution. That’s why a mediator is often helpful in getting to a solution. They plow through both sides of the dispute extracting all the emotional side roads so they can map out at a direct route to a solution.

Think of a dispute or grievance you are currently involved with. Write it out to the best of your ability. Now extract all the ungrounded assessments from the mix. My experience is that this practice turns down the thermostat on the red hot emotional factors and provides an air-conditioned environment more conducive to reaching a solution.

When I find myself caught up in ungrounded assessments, I now have a new phrase to bring me back to earth – “She has cracks in her face.”

All the best,

John

http://JohnMorganHypnosis.com

http://GrasshopperNotes.com

http://cdbaby.com/cd/johnmorgan

http://www.cafepress.com/grasshoppernote/3580301

Anyone who has ever played basketball or football or watched it being played is familiar with the time out signal – a horizontal palm of the hand on the fingertips of a vertical palm, forming a “T.” A time out is usually called to get the team time to regroup or to get a breather.

Children these days are give “timeouts” to interrupt a pattern of behavior that is not conducive to their surroundings or situation.

It occurred to me that we need to post the referee to have his whistle ready when we signal him to give our ego a time out. The ego will never request a timeout. The ego is like an exhausted child protesting that they are not tired. They will go kicking and screaming towards the thing they need the most. Reminds me of a story . . .

Yesterday, I was talking with a golf instructor about his internal dialogue beating him up. I told him that he displayed sufficient intelligence to grasp the unflattering message his ego was delivering on the first or second announcement inside his head. He agreed. Then I asked how many times the ego’s message repeated itself. He said too many to count. Note: Anytime you are entertaining unflattering or worrisome thoughts in your head, it’s the ego speaking. I told him since he was smart enough to comprehend the message on the first or second go round, then the constant repetition was unnecessary taking him into a downward spiral where he was about to lose the game. (Translation: He was about to lose the moment).

The ego always has you miss the moment. It’s busy chatting up the long gone past and the imagined future while you are losing the game. Your ego needs a time out.

When you are inside your head lamenting (past) or worrying (future), you are taking precious minutes off the clock and missing the action that is taking place right now. Right now is the only time that you can effectuate any change. If you are having counter-productive repetitive thoughts, they will always lead to less than desirable behavior. The quality of the thoughts dictates the quality of the behavior. If your repetitive thoughts are taking you away from life, your ego needs a time out.

When a team is coming unglued during a game, an aware coach will recognize they need a time out. This recognition is the necessary ingredient in order to give our relentless ego time to sit on the bench. Simply recognize that you are entertaining a repetitive message in your head. Don’t judge it or beat yourself up for having the thought, just observe it. Just this recognition is enough to give you a time out, making room for new thoughts and behaviors to move into your mind and body.

Recognition is your best friend who is always there for you. It will get you out of jam after jam. Spend as much time with recognition as you can and reap the rewards of the timeouts it calls.

All the best,

John

http://JohnMorganHypnosis.com

http://GrasshopperNotes.com

http://cdbaby.com/cd/johnmorgan

http://www.cafepress.com/grasshoppernote/3580301

I don’t know where the phrase originated but I like it a lot – “Celebrate success wherever you see it.”

It seems the essence of the phrase it to notice success and celebrate the concept, with the implied benefit being that success will find its way into your awareness. The more often it’s in your awareness, the more often it shows up in your life.

I think the notion can be limiting based on our cultural definition of success – bigger house, more expensive car, make more money, more prestige, more recognition, more, more, more.

I think the “celebrate success” concept is deeper than that and delivers more than the limited focus of our cultural desires.

This morning it came to me that every moment can be a success. “I am successfully walking the dog” is the phrase that popped into my mind. I was successfully walking Snuffy, the black nosed beagle. It wasn’t a visualization of something in the future. It was real and it was being done successfully right now. I celebrated that success.

You can celebrate success every moment because you are successfully doing something every moment. “I am successfully breathing” is reality based statement and it can be celebrated at any moment you choose. “I am successfully noticing the greenness of Spring, hearing the warble of the birds, feeling the light wind in my hair, smelling the aromas around me, tasting the hint of peach in my morning tea” can all be celebrations of success.

You can also celebrate things that on the surface don’t seem to match up with success. “I am successfully noticing the pain in my ankle, the worrisome thought about the project not being ready by the deadline, that I’m not as pretty as I used to be” are statements that have you successfully noticing reality. Reminds me of a quick story . . .

Hali Chambers who arranges all of our seminars has a phrase she uses when she is having difficulty reaching someone by telephone or email. She says or writes, “I have successfully failed to reach you.” That is the essence of noticing success everywhere.

Eckhart Tolle writes in his book A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose:

” . . . You cannot become successful. You can only be successful. Don’t let a mad world tell you that success is anything other than a successful present moment. And what is that? There is a sense of quality in what you do, even the most simple action.”

By celebrating the success of reality, you are imbuing your mind with the concept of success. You can see, hear, feel, touch and taste success everywhere. The more often you sense success, the more often it shows up in your life. You are conditioning your mind to be successful and attract success.

So if success has been eluding you, it’s time to get into the gym and do the “celebrating success” exercise. It’s easier than sit-ups and the results are immediate. Notice that you are successful at something right now. Then notice something else you are successfully doing. This daily workout will give you “dabs of real,” and when it becomes a routine, others will want to know your secret. Tell them the magic formula:

CELEBRATE SUCCESS!

All the best,

John

http://JohnMorganHypnosis.com

http://GrasshopperNotes.com

http://cdbaby.com/cd/johnmorgan

http://www.cafepress.com/grasshoppernote/3580301

My problem is with me; your problem is with you and when we meet, the blame shifts to the other. Isn’t this how it really works?

It is so common to blame another for our emotions. This is a very shortsighted practice that leaves the most important person out of the equation – Us. There are so many things or people we can blame. It’s a veritable smorgasbord – circumstances, the economy, my job, my boyfriend/girlfriend, spouse, doctor, boss, co-worker, friend, family member, Pilates instructor.

The thinking goes like this: If I’m upset, someone is responsible and that someone certainly couldn’t be me. Reminds me of a story . . .

I was invited to dinner last November. There were many people there I had never met before. One of the family members arrived late and everything was pleasant on the surface. Yet, within a matter of minutes, this person’s upsetness rose up for all to witness. To hear her tell it, it was the fault of some of the people who arrived before her. Little did she realize that she arrived upset. Over the years, I have become finely attuned to the built in radar that we all have for peoples’ states. It shows up in my body and I can feel it before it materializes. When I first saw this person, my spider sense started to tingle. I only wish I had the popcorn concession for the drama that we all were soon to witness.

We all own many experiences like this one. The key is not to get sucked into playing a role in this movie. If we respond in kind, that leads to escalation which never works on mitigating the feelings of being upset. When we begin to engage in the blame game, no real communication happens. My made up self (ego) engages with your made up self (ego) and we argue about illusionary causes.

We all get upset. It’s part of human conditioning. The secret to keep it from spreading is to notice the feeling within yourself and be with it. Don’t try and chase it away or assign its cause to someone else. Those strategies never work. What works is allowing yourself to feel the feeling without judgement, recrimination or blame. Just observe the upsetness residing in you. I’ll admit it feels temporarily wonderful to lash out at someone and make it their fault, but it’s a sugar high that retreats quickly and leaves you in the same place – upset.

One of my favorite expressions is, “You’re never upset for the reason you think.” The conscious mind is a perpetual, reasoning machine and it never runs out of reasons or people to assess blame to. When you observe and feel your upsetness, no reasons are necessary. Reasons continue to fuel the fire. Observing and being with the feeling allows the mind to quiet and the process of transmutation to happen. The quickest and most effective way to have upsetness dissipate is to be with the feeling.

This does not mean that you cannot have a discussion about issues that are bothering you with another and address them. This is very healthy and productive if you avoid the assigning of your feeling to another. They are your feelings and as G. Michael Durst asks in his wonderful book, Napkin Notes: On the Art of Living, “When did you make the decision that these would be your favorite emotions?”

Some people live their whole lives upset. When you talk with one of these folks, pay careful attention to where the finger points regarding them being upset. There is a cure but you have to give up your addiction to making others to blame for your feelings. It’s like my 4^th grade teacher, Miss Wagner said,

“You can have what you want or your reasons why not.”

If you continue to justify being upset, your life will be one, continual regret.

All the best,

John