I’m guessing you’re familiar with the old time, pejorative phrase “You’ve been sold a bill of goods.”

Let me state the obvious: You can’t be sold a bill of goods if you’re not buying.

This is not a warning to stay home and “sew up your pockets” as much as it is an invitation to notice what you’ve been sold that’s proving to be worthless.

We’ve been sold on too many third-rate things to count through our conditioning. The key is to find one of them and start pulling on its string. This realization and action begins a domino effect on our other bills that aren’t that good.

What have you been sold, without your permission, that’s holding you back from viewing reality?

Is it a way of life? Attitudes? Prejudices? Zero in on what you’ve been sold that can’t be resold. Come around to the idea that it’s a worthless commodity that has strung you along and has led you deeper in debt.

Animal lovers beware: You may have to slay a few, sacred cows to get to the point where you are debt free from these bills.

It’s a process – one that begins with reflection on the hole you’re in. As the Grasshopper warned years ago: “Change your behavior or stay in your hole.”

What are you passionately defending that doesn’t hold water? By mindlessly defending, you are using a sieve for a bucket.

Take a moment to focus on the results you consistently get. If they are unfulfilling, become willing to inspect your behavior. What you’re likely to find is an old bill not worth paying.

All the best,

John

Here’s an old Grasshopper Note that has real potential.

“Potential Is An Empty Promise.”

The seed needs the soil otherwise you only possess the downside of potential.

Are you as smart as someone who’s way more successful than you? The answer to that question is almost always “Yes.” Are you as resourceful as them is a much better question to ask yourself. The answer to that question is almost always “No.”

What resources are they using that you’re ignoring?

Internal resources immediately come to mind. We block most of our internal resources by our incessant thinking. When you are thinking, your chances of reaching the rich soil of your creative resources are thwarted.

The key to getting your seeds into this soil is to get out of the barren fields of your mind and into the fertile environment where your potential can grow, not just be lamented about.

How much of your thinking is about how successful you should be vs. the reality of how successful you are? I’m defining “Successful” as measurably accomplished.

Measuring your thinking is just comparing IQs, which are accidents of birth. Measuring your accomplishments is a more useful barometer of how often you get your ideas and hands in the dirt – the key to success.

If you want your potential to grow, you have to get past knowing what you know.

That means to get out of your head and into the infinite field of resources where the act of planting is measurably ahead of anything that’s said.

All the best,

John

Using baseball as an analogy, a spectator is a fan watching or listening to the action on the field. A participant is the player on the field.

In your field of dreams are you a spectator or participant?

My experience is most of us fall into the spectator catagory.

That means we watch life go by and rarely jump in to participate.

For example, we live vicariously through others watching something like the Kardashians on TV. We may dream of another lifestyle or another direction to head in but never take the first participating step.

You can learn how to do something from a book or a YouTube video but if you don’t execute the steps, you remain a spectator.

It’s nice to be a compendium of information on a topic but it’s beyond words when you actually participate.

Quoting the Grasshopper from many moons ago, “Plans without follow-through are dreams that die.”

Want to start living the dream? Participate!

All the best,

John

Lots of people are preparing to die. They make sure their insurance and will are in order, burial plot or cremation secured, organ donation detailed, and list the type of funeral gathering they desire. That is quite prudent and my guess is these folks make up a small percentage of the population.

Even less people are preparing to live.

If you don’t feel alive everyday, you are at death’s doorstep.

Feeling alive is recognizing the moment you are in and making the most of it. It won’t be coming around again, so take advantage of it while its here.

Seems we often withdraw from the moment we’re in to be somewhere else. That somewhere else is being in our head – a giant moment killer.

Participating in moments makes us feel alive and well. All else disappears when we engage in the moment. If you are having a conversation with someone and you go inside your head to rehearse what you are going to say, you’ve come out of that moment and, more importantly, lose the aliveness of connection with the other person.

I have no idea how long I’ll live. That decision is out of my hands. Deciding to live everyday of your life is a choice you can make. It starts with participating in life’s moments.

Big and small moments are labels that indicate a head trip. All moments, no matter how they are judged afterward, deliver equal amounts of life.

Prove it to yourself. Participate in more moments and measure you aliveness. What you’ll discover is that staying in your head keeps you in the dead zone. Coming out to play will make you feel alive everyday.

All the best,

John

Is it “Wayback Wednesday” already? Must be because below is a Grasshopper note from long ago:

“A More Active Life Leads To More Happy Accidents.”

I’ve always liked the word “serendipity” but never knew its origin. It comes from the fairy tale The Three Princes of Serendip where the three princes were making accidental discoveries while they were in search of something else.

Seems that we all have made accidental discoveries when in search of something unrelated. Serendipity is alive and well in our lives and we would do well to set the stage for it to appear more often.

The trick is not to go looking for serendipity but to commit to doing something vs. thinking about something. Doing gets you out and about; thinking keeps you shuttered and stout. Taking action gives serendipity the opportunity to find you.

The arithmetic works like this: The more you get out and do, the more often you have a chance of serendipity visiting you. It’s most often the byproduct of activity and interaction. Action will lead you to people and places that thinking can never take you.

Have you ever had a chance meeting that turned into something larger than you could have ever imagined? It happens to someone every day when they get their isolationist thinking out of the way.

Here’s the big secret: Serendipity will not come knocking on your door. You’re more likely to bump into it if you put yourself where it lives – outside of your head.

Serendipity is in direct proportion to you putting yourself out there. And when you do, please don’t act too surprised when it taps you on the shoulder and asks you to dance.

All the best,

John

Came across an old Grasshopper Note that is as close as I can get to defining “True.”

“True: What You Do.”

I’ve had a hard time with the word “truth” for a long time. Based on my experience, “truth” had too many interpretations, like “my truth,” “your truth” and that old standby “it’s the truth.”

I am now comfortable with a definition of what is true: It’s what you do.

How often have you said something as stupid as this: “I know what I’d do in that situation.” No you don’t. You know what you think you would do and you label that as true. Too often we don’t do what we think we would do, so our pronouncement often isn’t true.

True is only what you do do, and I don’t mean that in a smelly sense.

Your words are sometimes true; your actions are always true, because true is what you do.

“I went to the store” is true. “You went to the store with the intention of robbing it,” says the prosecutor. That may or may not be true.

True can be verified by cataloging your actions, not by interpreting them.

I’ve grown weary of the word “true” as it’s commonly tossed about. There are too many false premises in most peoples’ use of the word.

“True” doesn’t have modifiers. “It’s a.m. here on the east coast.” That’s true if it’s after midnight and before Noon. “It’s a lovely morning here on the east coast” is debatable.

Leave the modifiers out of your actions and you’ll be telling the truth.

My main purpose in writing this is to call attention to our often, lame attempts to justify our actions. It’s really this simple: You did what you did and that’s the truth.

All the best,

John