Harbors make inviting scenes. Photographers of all stripes and talent levels have photographed them since the inception of cameras.

Attached is a picture my son took on a recent trip to Block Island. I was looking at it last night and began to think about the word “Harbor.”

I initially thought of seascapes and then I remembered a line from numerous TV shows – “Harboring criminals.” Like many words, “Harbor” has multiple meanings.

In the case of boats or as a refuge for criminals, it’s suggests a collection area – a collection area that defines the harborer.

The natural question to ask then is: “What are you harboring?”

For many, the answer will be resentment.

You can collect anything you want in this area, but you’ve chosen resentment. You’ve defined an area within you where resentment can drop anchor and have a safe port of call and stay as long as it wants.

Resentment is not a good harbor mate. It leaks oil, never washes itself, spreads its garbage everywhere and pollutes the environment. Yet, we allow it to stay at no charge and at a tremendous cost.

If you harbor resentment, it will consume you.

What I’ve come to discover about resentment is that people who harbor it, justify and defend it. They become like the mother of a sociopath. “My child is a caring, loving person.” Never mind that they just found 21 victims buried under his front porch.

When you justify your resentment, you give it new life. It continues to grow until, one day, it totally poisons you. I’m sure resentment has never shown up on a death certificate but I’m just as certain that people die as a result of resentment every day. It’s an insidious disease.

When you look up resentment in the dictionary you read, “Aggrieved feelings caused by a sense of having been badly treated.”

Here’s what the definition leaves out: The bad treatment you received will pale in comparison to the damage you do to yourself by harboring resentment.

What you need to hear LOUD and CLEAR is that which you resent will kill you no matter how justified you are.

Sad to say but I’ve seen too many cases of people who died extremely painful deaths due to the justification of a smoking habit. Justification of resentment is just as deadly.

I’m reminded of what The Buddha said about anger which could just as easily apply to resentment. He said, “Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.”

People who harbor resentment believe their justification is their reward. As long as they can tell their story, they feel as though they are getting vindication.

What they fail to see is what others see – them dying a slow, painful death.

It’s a choice; you can harbor anything you want. I wonder how soon you’ll ban resentment from your harbor.

All the best,

John

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I went to the beach yesterday with my son and granddaughter and treated myself to one of my favorite things – a beach nap.

When I awakened, The Grasshopper hopped onto my blanket and uttered these words: “To be offended, you must give your consent.”

I began to muse on that phrase as we swam and caught some waves.

It occurred to me that each time we are offended, it’s by choice. There is a choice point and we choose to be offended.

It’s so easy to start a war with the “offending” party when we pretend that we had nothing to do with being offended. “It’s their fault!”

No, it’s our choice that completes the circuit and turns on our conditioned reaction.

It takes a stimulus and a reaction to tango.

If you’re tired of doing the same old dance, it’s time to choose a new partner.

Some of the best sales people I know choose something other than being offended. They found that the old dance steps got in the way of them making sales. Sales can be brutal depending on your reaction to the vitriol that comes from some prospects. If you complete the circuit, you won’t complete the sale.

The question really is, “Who’s offended?”

It’s the conditioned us that takes offense. We let our conditioning kick in, unchecked, and we find ourselves offended.

We find ourselves offended by the words and deeds of others without offering ourselves a choice.

Imagine your kitchen cabinet for a moment and envision your stack of dinner plates. If the top plate represents your conditioned reaction and you take it every time, you have an idea of how many other choices you ignored.

When you feel your conditioned reaction coming to the top of the stack time after time, it’s time to offer yourself a deeper choice.

Being offended is the same as being wounded. The question you may want to consider is: “How many more bullets do I want to take?”

I hope I’ve been able to convince you that you play a major role in being offended, and if you don’t agree with me, no offense taken.

All the best,

John

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I’ve never attended the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island but I would wager that one of the lessons taught there contains the essence of these words: “Retreat doesn’t mean defeat.”

Sometimes it feels like we are at war in life. We gear up for battle and we give it everything we have, only to lose.

What if somewhere during the battle we got the gift of awareness that we were fighting with an enemy too powerful to defeat?

That’s the gift you get when you realize you are fighting with reality. It’s a no win situation, yet, too often, we continue the battle.

The Grasshopper had me jot down two words on a sticky note last night – “Resign & Realign.”

I had no idea what they meant at the time but this morning the words became clear.

1. Resign yourself to the fact that you cannot beat reality, and cease your efforts.
2. Realign your saved resources and approach your dilemma a different way.

One of the most valuable gifts you will get in life is the realization that what you are doing is not working. It’s a gift to be treasured. It’s the difference between banging your head against the wall once or twice or doing it every day of your life.

When you go to war with reality, life is a constant battle. It never dawns on us that reality doesn’t conform to our rules. We fight on for our principles and we dress our wounds daily.

Resigning is not giving up; it’s a strategy to help you win. When you enter this calming retreat, you can better marshal your resources to approach reality in another way. Reminds me of a story . . .

Back in my Navy days, I was assigned to the radio and TV studio aboard an aircraft carrier. We had a great group of guys in our department that got along famously and we had a fun time doing our jobs. Then one day we got a new member of our group who slightly outranked all of our staff. He came from a military family and he was well healed in discipline and the chain of command. What he lacked was common sense.

He didn’t recognize what a well oiled machine we had put together. He had difficulty with a lower ranked member of our staff telling a higher ranked member what to do in our operation. He totally missed that we were using our collective skills to benefit the product we were producing, rather than relying on rank to give out instructions. Let’s just say he had a lot of rules.

This led to a lot of head butting until one day he got it. His “Ah-Ha” moment came the day he found out that one of our lowest ranking members had worked in a TV studio when he was a civilian and had more experience than the rest of us put together. It finally dawned on him why we let this guy call the shots. He resigned himself to the fact that rank may have its privileges but it can gum up the production of a TV newscast.

He realigned his thinking that day and found out that his never retreat way would never get the mission accomplished. He instantly became a member of the team that day and was truly a joy to work with.

Resign & Realign: It’s a reality based strategy that will help you win more often.

All the best,

John

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I have a confession to make. I hate planning. Planning is an essential tool for getting things done, but it’s rarely in my toolbox.

I have loads of justifications for shunning planning. For example, take a look at the standard 5 year business plan. They rarely come to fruition. That’s because they often change it a year and a half into it and start another 5 year plan. It’s like a treadmill to nowhere.

The people that make these plans love planning, but it’s not serving them.

The tedium of planning is my nemesis. Tedium is the ally of the planner.

Action is the ingredient that makes a plan work.

Too often all the action is either put into planning or into activities to avoid planning, but rarely into the execution of the plan.

I do get lots done but I make it hard on myself by having loosely basted plans. It comes down to a lot of last minute activity that gets the job done, but it always leaves a scar.

On the other hand, the perpetual planner is always left behind.

What’s the answer?

There are actually two.

1. Hire a planner.
2. Hire a doer.

They are the perfect solutions because a planner doesn’t want to do the work and a non planner doesn’t want to plan.

A third solution, which is rarely looked into, is to recognize the way you do things.

Many people are unaware that they would benefit by learning to plan, and others are unaware that they are held back by their penchant for planning.

You may be the rare bird that both plans and executes, so you can go read something else now while the rest of us discover which camp we fall into.

It’s often the simple recognition of your style that can spur you to take a different course of action.

Are you the planner without action or the action without a plan? It’s helpful to notice.

If you can’t afford a planner or a doer, it may be time to recognize your weak link and make a plan of action to remedy it.

We’re all familiar with the axiom, “if you fail to plan, you plan to fail.” A more complete axiom that won’t fit as neatly on a poster would be, “If you fail to take appropriate action, it doesn’t matter if you have a plan or not.”

Will you take action when you recognize your style?

Sound like a plan?

All the best,

John

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I cannot begin to remember how many radio commercials I have voiced over the years that contained the words, “Everything must go!”

These type of commercials are as alive and well today as they were then, and will be here tomorrow and beyond.

The gist of the ad is to let you know that the retailer is expecting a new shipment and they have to make room for it by having some sort of liquidation sale that will save you $$$$$.

Truth be told, most of those ads are hype. It’s just a gimmick to have lackluster sales pick up.

But the words have power – past getting you to reach in your pocket and pony up money for something someone wants to get rid of.

“Everything Must Go” can serve as a mantra for the inventory of overstocked thoughts we carry around in our head.

What is a clear head other than the successful result of an “Everything Must Go” sale?

A clear head is one devoid of thoughts – a rare moment for just about all of us.

It’s from this clear position that we are afforded the opportunity to be creative and have new thoughts and ideas fill the void.

So how do you have an “Everything Must Go” sale?

First, recognize that you have lots of inventory. Reminds me of a recent conversation I had with a friend . . .

She was asking me the difference between me now, and me a number of years ago. I reflected on the question for a moment and said, “My head was a lot noisier then, but I didn’t know it.” If you don’t recognize a pattern that you automatically run, your chances of changing it are south of skinny.

So the first step is to notice that you have wall-to-wall inventory in your head. Many people never get that gift of insight. They just think it’s normal to have thoughts run around in their head with reckless abandon because they have nothing to contrast it to.

Have you ever seen or heard something that made time stand still for a moment? It literally took your thoughts away and maybe your breath as well. That’s a clear head. You are experiencing something without the aid of thought – just like you did as an infant before your intellect formed.

There are no thoughts getting in the way of the experience. Remember: Thoughts are always afterthoughts. The experience is always first, and usually ignored because of the onslaught of thought.

The second step is to get in the habit of interrupting your thoughts. Reminds me of a talk show technique . . .

When you want to get a guest off their “talking points,” interrupt them often in mid sentence and ask them another question. If you want to see someone who’s a master at this, watch Chris Matthews on “Hardball” on MSNBC-TV. The interruption gets them off balance and their prepared remarks fall away and they often reveal something new.

When you take the time to interrupt your own thoughts, you begin to clear your head of predictable tripe and you make room for new inventory.

Make it your practice to recognize that your head is on automatic pilot and interrupt your thoughts in midstream. The result is a clear head with ample room for new inventory.

Every time you see an “Everything Must Go” ad on TV, in a magazine, newspaper, online or hear it on the radio, it will remind you it’s time to interrupt your thoughts and clear your head.

“EVERYTHING MUST GO!”

All the best,

John

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It seems, at some level, we are all collectors. We have our stuff.

Reminds me of a story . . .

Back in my radio days, all the managers of our company were at a meeting in Las Vegas. The program directors had all once been on-air broadcasters and a bunch of us were sitting around discussing our careers and how we got started in radio. One of the youngest guys told us that when he was 10 years old he did a critique of the radio station he listened to in Seattle. He put it in a notebook and the notebook found its way into a box that he forgot about. He found it about 15 years later and read over his assessment with professional eyes and found that he was darn close to the mark when he was 10.

That got everyone to talking about their stuff. Finally, the young man asked, “Does everybody have a box of stuff?” and we all nodded “Yes.”

That reminds me of another story . . .

My business partner, another former radio broadcaster, was moving from upstate New York to Florida and had a dilemma. What was he going to do with all his stuff?

He had compiled quite a bit over the years from an international beer can collection to golf balls from around the globe that he collected during his many travels. He had all sorts of stuff. Then, all of a sudden, he had an epiphany. He remembers saying to himself, “If I died today, who would want this stuff?” The things he thought people would want, he gave to them. The things he deemed that those close to him had no interest in, he auctioned off. He hired a professional auctioneer and anything he didn’t sell at auction was put out on trash day.

What have you been collecting that no longer has meaning for you?

The answer may not be any list of tangible goods but a collection of things that no longer serve you. How about a long standing grudge, a prejudice that serves no one, or a position on something that just won’t stand up to the facts?

We all have our stuff and it may be time for an assessment.

Holding on to that which burdens us keeps us from traveling light. Moving your old stuff from one day to the next can turn into a lifetime of being a pack mule for pain.

Today’s thought: It may be time to unstuff your stuff.

All the best,

John

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I find that I operate best when stuff mentally flows through me rather than having it get stuck in place.

Everyone gets irregular from time to time so let me introduce you to “Mental Ex-Lax.”

Getting stuck on a thought is literally having it loop around in circles giving you the same thought and the same attendant feelings over and over again. It’s like a “Twilight Zone” adventure where you are on a beltway with no exit ramps.

The laxative that gets you moving again is recognition. Reminds me of a story . . .

I have an old business acquaintance whom I run into every once in a blue moon. The conversation is friendly enough but has always led to one upmanship until . . . I recognized it.

Up until that point, it was what he knew and what I knew and nothing new came out of it. We were competing for who had the better point with the bigger impact. For lack of a better description, we were talking past each other. Then one day I saw him at a local driving range and the old familiar pattern came out to play and then I recognized myself as stuck in this going nowhere exchange.

My remedy? Mental Ex-Lax! That simply means to stop competing and listen.

When I wait for my opening to get my stellar point across, I’m focused on when someone is going to take a break rather than on what they are saying. I miss a lot. When I listen, ideas begin to flow through me.

Reminds me of another story . . . I have a friend who is very funny and one who is not. When they get together, the one without the funny skills goes into competition with the one who is hilarious. I should just hand everyone who is in attendance a wet blanket because “Unfunny” has no sensory acuity as to what’s going on around them and jams the flow.

It takes a little practice but if you stop competing and start to listen, you’ll notice how things begin to flow through you. What you’ll find is that when it is your turn to contribute, you’ll have something more of substance to say.

To sum things up: Go with the flow!

All the best,

John

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The sad truth is that you can’t hold happiness hostage.

Happiness is a free spirit that comes and goes with the whim of the wind. No jail can hold it.

Just like you can enjoy a warm or cool breeze while it’s blowing, happiness is meant to be enjoyed while it is here. It can’t be manufactured.

We do, however, manufacture unhappiness by the truckload and it can be contained.

Take a moment and look at the backwards logic we employ about happiness. We attempt to contain that which can’t be held and we create and hold on to that which cannot be enjoyed.

Unhappiness is not the lack of happiness. It is a separate entity with its own DNA.

Unhappiness is created when we give substance to our thoughts. Happiness is not a thought; it’s a sensation that we feel.

When we spend so much time in our head and too little time in our body, we find out why happiness is such an infrequent visitor.

It’s your head that tells you that you’re unhappy. It’s your body that senses that you are happy.

Unhappiness is self contained because it’s a looped thought pattern that crowds your head and won’t let anything else in. Your body can feel happiness independent from your head.

The way to enjoy happiness, while it’s here, is to feel it, not think about containing it. You will be happier for longer periods of time using this strategy.

It’s easy to maintain unhappiness. Just keep thinking about all the things that make you unhappy. When you spend all your time in your head, you’ll miss most of the visits that happiness makes to your body.

The way to find more happiness is to visit with your body more often. That means to get out of your head and sense what’s going on in your body. It’s easy enough to do, just focus on a body part and notice the sensations going on there. Then shift your attention to another part of your body and sense what’s going on there. Move your attention through your entire body and notice what you feel.

Not only is this a great way to relax, you just may stumble upon a happy feeling or two.

You’ll have to excuse me; I feel a breeze coming on.

All the best,

John

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It’s so amazing to me how we make uninformed decisions every day.

Politics would be the easiest example to cite because the electorate rarely, if ever, votes on the facts at hand but on the emotion they are feeling at the time.

Uninformed voting is the only thing that seems bipartisan these days.

But “fact-less” decisions go on in every area of our life – the least of which is politics.

Take peoples’ rules for example. I’ve mentioned it before, but our rules are usually inherited before we know what inherited means. That means our rules are somebody else’s rules that we got conditioned to.

You can easily observe an uninformed tenet when someone states a personal rule and indicates it should apply to everyone. Two things are in play here that these folks are unaware of.

1. They don’t know they didn’t independently arrive at that rule.
2. It doesn’t apply to everyone just because it’s bible for them.

Yet, they will continue to make their uninformed case as though it is fact instead of opinion.

Exchanging opinions is the grist of conversation. Some can converse for hours without a fact entering the discussion. Listen to just about any caller to a talk show if you need examples.

The mark of us becoming informed is to have the presence of mind to fact check our opinions. That doesn’t mean to go looking for people who agree with you. That’s just putting gasoline on an out of control fire.

The first step in this procedure is to examine your beliefs and determine how factual they are. It’s an eye opening experience to find out how much of what we believe is devoid of evidence. Step two is to take that belief and put it in the opinion file. I don’t know who first said it but it bears repeating here, “We are entitled to our own opinions, but not our own set of facts.”

You become more informed and more believable when you label your position as opinion. When something is an opinion, it doesn’t need the “fight to the death” mentality that many employ when they believe they are arguing for their “facts.”

Socrates said, “An unexamined life is not worth living.” He could have easily substituted the word “Uniformed” for unexamined and the statement would have been just as relevant.

The examination’s purpose is to find out how much of you is not you. When you begin to strip away all that has been added, you become informed.

I would never want to have my opinions taken away from me because they are so much fun to have. I just want to be able to put them in the pile that works best when push comes to shove – the uninformed pile.

All the best,

John

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It may come as a shock to you that we have many beliefs we don’t believe in.

Beliefs are patterned routines that we run inside of our mind that create visible behavior. A belief (pattern) we don’t believe in is most notable when we make a claim that we aren’t a certain way that nobody else believes.

They see the evidence; we are inured to it. The same evidence makes them believe and us nonbelievers.

Your belief that you can’t possibly be that way stands in the way of you believing.

Some of us can go a lifetime ignoring the evidence that’s readily available due a belief we own that we have no evidence for. That won’t keep us from arguing for our limiting belief.

What have people, who have no connection to each other, told you time and again, over the years, about you that you continue not to believe?

They could all be wrong. If you didn’t laugh at that line, you can stop reading now because no amount of evidence will convince you. You are a “True believer.”

If you got a little smirk, there may be some hope left for you yet.

The problem isn’t looking for the evidence. It’s in abundant supply. The problem is the instant reaction we have to it. That reaction is one of opposition and denial.

If you can recognize your instant reaction and set it aside for just a moment, you will set in motion the strategy to update your belief. New information comes through when we set aside our initial reaction. It’s this new information that helps us restructure our reaction and choose a new way to respond. It’s then, and only then, that we get to see what others see and it becomes easier to believe.

You won’t get any actionable information by opposing and denying. That just gets you to believe what no one else believes. One question you can ask yourself is: Are my beliefs working for me?

If your answer is “No,” you now have the wedge you need to find the humbleness necessary to change a long standing, limiting belief.

Wouldn’t it be nice to have beliefs you can believe in? Start interrupting your denial and opposition and you’ll find a way.

Don’t believe me; I could have made this all up.

All the best,

John

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