Are you opened or closed? I guess for most of us, it really depends on what’s being considered.

In the past, my personal conditioning had me automatically close to just about anything that didn’t match up with what I already knew. That was a limitation to learning something new.

I now say “Yes” to a lot more things that I said “No” to in the past. I guess you could say that I’ve opened.

Having experienced both opened and closed, I can tell you that open works much better. Open creates more possibilities; closed continually shuts the door.

I recently thought of a story from my teenage years where my father was attempting to teach me the value of opened vs. closed.

My dad and my uncle bought a Tastee Freeze franchise as an investment in the 60s. All of us who were old enough worked at the store from April through October. I vividly remember one dreary Sunday night in mid October. It was just me and my father working on this cold and rainy night before Columbus Day. Our advertised closing time was 11 p,m. It was about 10 p.m. and we hadn’t had a customer for over an hour, and the prospect of anyone coming out for ice cream was slim and his second cousin, slimmer.

I said to my father, “Why don’t we close up and go home? Looks like nobody is coming out in this weather for ice cream.” He said, “What about the guy who may come out to bring ice cream home for his children. Where will he go the next time he wants ice cream late at night and remembers that we were weren’t open like we said we would be?” I silently grumbled because I knew we were staying ’til 11.

Not but 10 minutes later, a guy drove up with a car full of kids and got them all ice cream. I’m sure the kids didn’t care that it was wet, cold and rainy. They were getting ice cream.

The moral of the story is you get more when you stay open.

How does one become more open? Begin to notice your automatic reactions – the ones you always have. Once observed, you may want to question whether they’re working for you or not. That’s the beginning to the opening process – the process that leads to more open doors.

Are you opened or closed? It’s really not a condition, but rather a choice – one you get to make every day. I hope you make a yummy choice.

All the best,

John

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Back in my broadcasting days, I had occasion to meet many of the great performers of the time because I had access to a back stage pass. Many people never get the opportunity to interact with these folks, up close and personal. They only get to glimpse their gifts from afar. I gained admission with a coveted, special pass.

Here’s the good news. We all have admission to the backstage part of us bearing gifts, we just rarely use it.

One way to gain admission is through the “Power of Admission.”

We have built up an immunity to admitting things. We just can’t seem to own the idea of owning up. This is a game we play with ourselves and others that keeps the huge, imposing bouncer at the back stage door, barring our admittance to greater gifts.

The magic pass that gets you in is “Admission.”

The reasons people give for not making a clean breast of things is that it makes them feel wrong. No one likes the feeling of being wrong. We substitute another feeling to take its place – Guilt. Many would rather feel the shame of guilt rather than the pain of wrong, so they never admit anything.

Trouble is both guilt and wrong keep you from gaining admission backstage, keeping you separated from your gifts.

Here is a formula that works. Begin to admit things without adding “right” or “wrong” to your admission.

Start with yourself. It’s true that people even have a hard time admitting things to themselves, but it’s the best, low risk place to begin this practice.

Admit what you did in factual terms. Leave the judgement and recrimination out of it. An effective admission needs to have the word “I” up front. I did (fill in the blank).

Life, like real courtrooms, doesn’t contain many spontaneous admissions, no matter how many of them you see in TV courtroom dramas. We are hesitant to admit anything we’ve done because of the fear of banishment. What we fear is what we already have in place – banishment from our back stage place of love and acceptance.

When you admit without adding right or wrong it does two immediate things:

1. Eases your guilt.
2. Gets you through the back stage door.

Once you practice with yourself, you can branch out with minor admissions to others until you can work your way up to the full blown freedom of major admissions. The trick to opening the door is to leave right and wrong behind, on the floor.

Right and wrong prevent you from admitting. Once you remove them from the requirements and just admit the facts, you have tapped into the new found freedom that goes along with “The Power of Admission.”

This doesn’t mean that you can’t ever admit that you were way off base with your actions. It just means that it’s highly unlikely you’ll take the first step towards admission if right and wrong remain in place.

Start the process of admitting today and you’ll begin to feel the special perks of having a back stage pass.

All the best,

John

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The Grasshopper came up with a new term – Moo – Do. (Moo minus Do) If you think the results are anything like cow shit, you’re not far off.

Moo – Do is the voodoo logic we use when we equate thought and talk with movement.

Keeping with the theme, thinking and doing are as separate as milking and mooing.

It’s udderly ridiculous to think if we think and talk about something long enough, it will happen. That practice has the effect of addressing a 4-H meeting claiming that brown cows give chocolate milk. In today’s vernacular they would say, “When it’s only in your head, you get no cred.”

Here’s something to put in our cud to chew: The more we talk, the less we do.

How often do we believe that because we thought about something, we did something? “Oh, I thought about that all weekend.” So what?

What physical steps did you take?

In school, our thinking is given venerated status and is continually measured by classroom tests. In life, the results of our actions are the only measurements we are graded on.

In most cases, thoughts precede action, that is, unless they get caught in traffic. Perhaps a large Guernsey is blocking the roadway. It would be quite cow-ardly to not make any effort to move her and get on our way. We’d rather talk to ourselves and have our say. And if you rent the mindset of piss and moan, you’ll “buy the farm” before you own.

Moo without Do is stagnation. When we add them together, it’s cause for celebration.

I hope this inspires you to get your cow in gear. (Sorry, there were no donkeys here).

All the best,

John

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Negativity is simply this – Hanging on to a negative thought. That thought is reflected in your body as an uneasy feeling that your mind describes as an emotion.

The answer to this dilemma is not thinking positively. That just sets up a push-pull argument that goes back and forth inside our mind.

The solution is to notice you are having the negative thought and to feel the associated sensation in your body. When you give full attention to the sensation that goes along with the thought, you begin a process of transformation that has the feeling ease, and the thought subside.

I could write about this all day long, but the proof is in the doing.

The next time you notice negativity within you, give your full attention to the feeling that goes along with the thought. That doesn’t mean to discuss it; it means to feel it in your body. You are acknowledging the reality of the feeling and not pretending that it isn’t there by thinking positively. The result is more peaceful feelings with much better thoughts.

“Think Positive” is an incomplete piece of advice. There is no strategy offered to genuinely get you there other than the willpower of thinking, which has a miserable rate of failure.

On the surface, “Feel Negative To Be Positive” doesn’t sound like a workable strategy until you put it to the test.

Take the personal exam right now. Fully explore the sensations associated with a negative thought and witness your weekend brighten.

All the best,

John

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This is the story of “The Butterfly & The Hermit.”

• The Butterfly goes everywhere except one place. The Hermit goes to one place, but is everywhere.
• The Butterfly’s attention is captured by things that dazzle. The Hermit is always at the center of attention.
• The Butterfly evolved to its position. The Hermit never changes.

It’s as though they are as different as night and light, one on the move, the other out of sight.

Can these two ever find common ground or will they remain as separated as “Lost” & “Found”?

The story’s ending depends on you. Can you find a way to unite these two?

If the Butterfly finds the Hermit’s hut, it can drink nectar it’s never tasted – one that leaves it satiated.

Now its flights will be ones of its picking, rather than filled with wounds that need licking.

You see, The Butterfly & The Hermit are the same – one part preferring solace, the other part fame.

Once you see these two as one, you discover all the secrets under the sun.

When you marry these parts of you, you fly into the air and out of the stew.

The story of “The Butterfly & The Hermit” is really the story of you. It takes a wonderful turn of events when you allow your spirit to imbue.

All the best,

John

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“Unripened” is defined as not fully developed or mature as in unripened fruit. We all get that it needs more time to come to fruition.

Humans need more than time to fully mature. We need recognition – recognition of what I define as the 4 Signs of Immaturity.

How many of these warning signs do you have?

It occurred to me that 4 things stunt our growth on the trail to maturity and here they are:

1. A Polarity Response.
2. Failure to take responsibility for your actions.
3. Failure to apologize.
4. When you’re upset, you’re upset with everyone.

Anyone who has raised children recognizes these signs as teenage behavior but we don’t normally recognize the behavior in ourselves. Most of us outgrow teenage behaviors; some of us never fully mature. Let’s look more closely at the 4 Signs of Immaturity.

POLARITY RESPONSE The easiest way to define it is, “I say white and you say black.” The word “oppositional” comes to mind. This person is quick to disagree. We all have polarity to something; these folks have it to almost everything. Their first inkling is to go the other way or to make you wrong. My experience is that someone in their formative years made them wrong.

FAILURE TO TAKE RESPONSIBILITY Nothing is ever their fault. Even if they believe it’s their fault, they can’t admit it because in doing so it would crack the image that they want the world to see. For them, that’s a fate worse than death.

FAILURE TO APOLOGIZE The words “I’m sorry” may leave their lips but it’s immediately followed by a justification. The justification often takes the form of “You made me do that.” Another justification is a mindset they own that says “I do so much good that you ought to overlook this transgression.” That would be like a philanthropist who donates millions of dollars to the hospital but exposes himself one time in the nurse’s lounge. He thinks no apology is necessary. A true apology would mean they were wrong, and wrong is not a feeling they can tolerate.

UPSET WITH EVERYONE These folks cannot compartmentalize upset. That means that you’ll get the same snarly behavior from them that the offending party receives. They don’t recognize that you had nothing to do with their upset but they want you to also pay the price. That’s called “selfish.”

How mature are you?

If you have one of these signs, you can easily label yourself as 75% mature, two of them 50%, three of them 25%, and if you have all four, you definitely don’t play well with others.

Recognition is the key to fruition. Notice and act on these warning signs and you’ll age to perfection.

All the best,

John

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Here’s a new concept on enemies – You’ll always have them.

One thing we learned from the three movies that made up THE GODFATHER Trilogy is this: After you wipe out all of your enemies, there will be new ones waiting on the horizon.

An old remedy works in this situation – If you can’t beat them, join them.

Many people treat their patterns of behavior as enemies. For example, people who can’t lose weight, treat their body as an enemy. It’s a “me against them” strategy that rarely works, and when it does, it’s short-lived, like the results of a new diet.

Your patterns of behavior are not enemies – just parts of you that aren’t working anymore. If you ever examined one of these patterned behaviors more closely, you would recognize that it was formed for a purpose – a purpose that was in your best interest at the time.

Reminds me of a story I tell at my seminars . . .

I had a client years ago who was afraid of the water. Her husband was doing well and wanted to buy a summer home on the beach for the family to enjoy. She objected due to her deathly fear of water. It seems that when she was a few years old, her brother pushed her into a wave and she went under, swallowed a mouthful of water, and from that point forward she was visibly shaken at the mere thought of the ocean.

She had sought out several forms of counseling to help her over this hump but was unsuccessful in diluting this fear. When we met, I listened to her story which was well documented and then pointed out what a wonderful thing her mind did for her. It protected her from further harm by exhibiting fear and keeping her away from the ocean.

I commiserated about how fearful it must have been for a little girl to experience such an event. I also pointed out that she had grown since then into an older, wiser person. The difficulty is her pattern hadn’t grown up. It was still responding as though she was a little girl. It was still protecting her from the big, bad ocean.

The pattern was perceived as an enemy and we turned it into a friend by letting her know it was acting in her best interest at the time. Now our job was to update the pattern so that it served her best interests, today. This reframing of events was the jump off point for our session which was very productive.

She consented to buying the beach house and reported enjoying her new found freedom in and around the water.

She could have kept this pattern as an enemy her whole life and would have paid a price for doing so. We all pay a price by treating our behaviors as enemies. They were formed for a purpose, a purpose we may not be able to figure out, but nevertheless our patterns are purposeful.

If you use “once purposeful” as a jump off point, it’s much easier to let go of the resistance we have towards our behaviors. This approach frees up the energy we used to use fighting our behaviors so it can be used as a catalyst for updating them.

It’s a tiny little shift in focus that turns enemies into friends. I wonder how soon you can make a new friend.

All the best,

John

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Is your basket empty or full?

I guess it depends on which basket you’re referring to.

We have a basket on the front porch and we have one that sits inside. If our only attempt is to keep the one on the porch full, the one on the inside remains empty.

It’s sort of like the teenage girl who’s covered in mounds of make-up attempting to cover up the empty self-esteem she has on the inside.

It’s the basket on the inside that nourishes you. The one we display on the porch is most often waxed fruit.

How do we get our priorities in balance so we have a better working relationship between what’s on the inside and outside and deliver more fruitful results?

The answer is to look to nature. Nature never demands a flower without first planting a seed. We’re looking to fill up only our outer basket with things that have no roots. It always leads to imbalance – mental and otherwise.

Our inner basket contains nutrient rich soil at the bottom and is self replenishing. The basket on the porch takes so much effort to keep filled from outside sources. It would be much simpler if we had our inner and outer baskets form a partnership and replenish what we have on the outside from our inexhaustible source on the inside.

That takes recognition. We must first recognize that we have a nutrient rich inner source ready for our seed in order to fully activate it. Once we recognize that we have an inner source that keeps the outer full, then we have the ease and confidence to pursue our dreams without spending time hoarding or conniving.

When we pay too much attention to outer appearances, it leads us to believe that a book is only its cover and the cover is the only thing worth pursuing. This behavior results in a superficial life that never fills up the hunger we feel for inner sustenance.

Practice calming your mind and take a look inside. I promise you you’ll find something no longer worth ignoring – your basket of bounty.

All the best,

John

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