Do you offer advice or do you offer input? It depends.

If you expect the sage wisdom you are offering to be followed, you are offering advice.

If you are offering what you consider the most productive course of action without any expectation, you are offering input.

Advice seems to flow downhill at you like an avalanche; input is just there for the choosing.

If you are a parent, chances are, you are offering advice, no matter how you disguise it. Advice is rarely accepted.

Most often, when you receive input, you are paying for it. Input is high priced advice without expectation.

It’s easier to offer advice than it is input. Just decide what you think someone else should do based on what you think you would do in that situation. There’s the rub. Advice is more about you than it is about them.

Reminds me of a story . . .

My father was always on me about my hair when I was a teenager. Longer hair was the fashion then but it was never in fashion with my father. It was a constant source of contention. Then one day we were traveling together in the car and the topic came up again. After my father had his say, I asked him why he couldn’t let it alone. I said, “I’m doing OK in school, I don’t get into any trouble, I don’t do drugs, and I always came home on time. What’s the big deal about my hair?” His answer: “I’m embarrassed about it with my friends.”

When his dictate (advice) was ignored, it seemed to suggest to him that he didn’t have proper control over me and that would reflect badly on him with his friends. It was more about him than it was about me.

Advice is controlling. If you have a dog in the fight, you’ll bite to be right.

Input lacks the emotional charge that often gets in the way of advice being taken.

The telltale sign of advice is that it’s jam packed with these three words: “Should,” “Must,” and “Ought.”

Input often contains more questions. “Have you ever considered . . .?” “What do you think is the natural course of events if you continue that action?”

None of us are likely to stop parceling out advice anytime soon. The question worth consideration is: “How likely is it to be followed?”

The answer to that question will get us more curious about how to offer more input and less advice.

All the best,

John

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You will experience a discrepancy gap between you and another until you can come up with a workable fit between what you want to give them and what they want, and vice-versa.

It’s more than about compromise. Compromise is generally temporary and usually leaves both sides longing for what they originally wanted.

Knowing what others want and being able to fill that desire is the Holy Grail, especially when it matches up with what you want to give them.

Too often we think for others, even though our own thinking is a full time job for us. We frequently hallucinate what another wants, and when we provide it and it’s met with disappointment, we fume, stew or say “Forget You.”

We rarely take the time to find out what another wants before deciding whether we can provide it or not. We attempt to sell them on what we think they want or what we want them to buy.

The way to have an opportunity to close the discrepancy gap is to become more aware of what others want. That means you have to ask, not mind read.

There is a great book I may have mentioned before called “Acres of Diamonds” by Russell Conwell. It was written before we were all born and the premise is this: If you surveyed your neighbors within a 5 mile radius of your home and asked them what product or service they wanted or needed that they didn’t currently have, you could graph that data and come up with a product or service that people would buy. Conwell’s notion was that you had an acre of diamonds in your back yard.

You have an acre of diamonds in your back pocket; you just have to ask.

Asking people what they want or need will give you a better idea as to whether you can deliver it or not. Once you know with more precision what they require, you can decide if you are willing and able to provide it.

If you are willing and able, you will close the discrepancy gap.

If you’re willing but unable, you may attempt to BS them and sell them something you know they don’t want. That eventually falls apart even if you’re a great convincer.

If you are able but unwilling, you are at the point where you can compromise, walk away or lie.

Again, compromise is temporary. You will be dealing with this issue again. Walking away is the option that allows you to live with yourself. Unfortunately, lying is the route most often taken. We tell them we are willing, but we’re really not. This will cause us to eventually renege on our promise.

If you are having trouble selling your ideas to another, you probably aren’t asking enough questions and/or you aren’t listening to their answers. More importantly, you are BS-ing yourself if you attempt to sell them on what they don’t want, or temporarily provide them with what they want knowing you won’t be able to sustain it.

The discrepancy gap is closed by honesty.

If you’re unable to provide what they want, say so.

If you are unwilling to provide it, say so.

If you have to compromise for the greater good, know that it is temporary.

If you truly want to close the discrepancy gap, find out what people want and then determine if you are willing and able to deliver.

I can’t tell you if the following statement is true but it sure feels that way to me: Some of the best deals you will ever make in life are those that you are willing to walk away from.

All the best,

John

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It’s really easy to measure the rut you’re in. All you have to do is measure your comfort level there.

How do you measure your comfort level?

It’s easy! Just determine if you were complaining about the same problem, last week, last month, last year or last century.

Your comfort level has increased over the years and is taking you deeper into your rut if you’re still complaining about the same unsolved difficulties that you were in the past.

You’re stuck!

Note: Your comfort level and recognizing your comfort level are two separate things.

Your comfort level is what prevents you from taking steps to free yourself from the thing you’ve been battling for years. We like the comfort of our rut. It’s the only explanation that works for why we don’t extricate ourselves.

Recognizing your comfort level is sensing the uncomfortable feeling of being stuck.

Sensing discomfort is therapeutic; it’s like the old axiom that some people will never start back up until they feel the pain of hitting bottom.

You may recognize the fact of being stuck but that’s not enough because it’s countered by the comfort level you feel while being there.

For example, let’s pretend you know someone who is suffering the pain of drug or alcohol abuse. They may be in public denial about their problem, but in private they know they’re in a deep dark hole. Yet the comfort level they feel with their drug of choice outweighs any search for living comfortably without it. They’re stuck in their comfort zone.

It seems counter-intuitive but you have to get uncomfortable to get to the genuine, soothing comfort of being unstuck.

As noted, you discover the depth of your rut by measuring the duration of your complaints. The longer you’ve been complaining about the same thing, the deeper your rut.

If you want to solve your problem, you have to get uncomfortable.

You have to get out to the edge to learn something new. You don’t have to live there, just visit. Being on the edge is certainly past our comfort zone and it’s necessary to explore that area to have any chance of seeing and experiencing the comfort of being an unstuck you.

We don’t recognize that we’ve been complaining about the same thing for years. We don’t recognize that we’ve decorated our rut with our complaints and made it more homey. We don’t recognize that if we stop complaining and get uncomfortable, it is our ticket out.

Complaining about your problem doesn’t work. If it did, you would have solved your problem years ago. All those chats with your bartender, your well meaning friends or your therapist would have fixed it.

The first step in getting out of a rut is to stop complaining. That alone will get you uncomfortable because complaining has become so comfortable over the years.

Once you stop complaining, you free up some real estate in your mind for some new direction to pop in. It’s at this choice point that we determine how serious we are about solving our problem. Do we have the courage to get more uncomfortable and walk to the edge and see our new horizon, or do we pass on the opportunity and creep back to our comfort zone and choke on our own regurgitation?

There is power in ceasing our complaints. It gets us to focus on solutions rather than problems, and the result is a lighted pathway to the edge.

Your best chance for getting to the edge of discovery is to ask yourself this question: Do I have the courage to stop complaining about the rut I’m in?

All the best,

John

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What may be a problem for you may not be to someone else. Problems are relative.

“Relative to what?” you ask. They are relative to your perceived position.

Our viewing angle is 360 degrees. We tend to view our problems from the same angle, give or take a few degrees each time.

Rarely do we take an opposite or different angle of approach.

Our problems stay right side up if we refuse to turn them upside down.

We are conditioned to look at the same situations the same way each time.

We have the same conversations in our head as we did the last time and we come up with the same solutions that didn’t work before.

What’s not working in your life is a problem. The main reason you aren’t getting solutions is because you are stuck on the same angle of approach.

Dieting is my favorite example simply because so many people can relate to it. When you go on a diet, you have the same conversation in your head you had the last time – the same solution. For example, you may decide that you’re not going to eat sweets anymore. After all, you lost weight the last time you employed that strategy. You seem to forget that you like sweets and eventually will go back to them.

Sweets aren’t the problem; your weight is the problem. Your solution is to look at that problem from the same angle of view. We have 360 angles to approach from, but we default to the same angle we used the last time.

I don’t know the specific answer to your problem, but I do know this: You do.

You just haven’t taken the time to move around the circle and take a look from a different angle.

If you just notice that you’re approaching something you’ve failed at before from the same angle again, you are at the doorstep of real change. It’s this noticing that will prompt you to move your position and look at your problem from a different angle.

If we want to stop going around in circles, it’s helpful to adopt a different angle of view.

All the best,

John

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I glommed onto the obvious yesterday. If you want better answers, ask better questions.

It seems the quality of the question has a bearing on the quality of the answer. If you ask a superficial question, there’s a good chance you’ll get a shallow answer. The converse is accurate as well: If you ask a deeper question, you’ll receive a deeper response.

The burden of quality is on the questioner. That’s because the answer will rarely go deeper than the question.

“Hinters” ask lousy questions. If you want to witness people who rarely get what they want, hang around with people who hint a lot.

Hinting is a poor, and often cowardly, practice.

The junior high dance is the best example of not getting what you want because you don’t ask. If you hint, you get to watch the person you want to dance with waltz across the floor with someone who asked.

The salesman who asks, eats; and the better their questions, the more money they make.

One of the things I learned from Jerry Stocking is: You can ask anything of anyone, if you’re not invested in what their answer has to be.

Once you get over the fear of asking, then it’s time to work on the quality of your questions.

A quality question doesn’t have a hint of hedging in it. Ask for what you want. Yes, there is a sense of timing involved. For example, if you decide you’ve met the person of your dreams after the first date, you don’t ask their mother when you first meet her if you can call her “Mom.”

A quality question is not a BS question. That means don’t ask a question you already know the answer to (unless you’re a trial attorney). That will only deliver something you already know and does nothing in getting you better answers. Even kids can sense when there is a BS question.

A quality question is most often one that’s not rehearsed. That means that once you get out of your head and into the communication process with another, you ask questions from a deeper place. The back and forth becomes an intimate, fluid dance rather than a stilted, step-by-step toe stomper, and trusted answers are the result.

A quality question is a specific request for action or information.

This is by no means an all inclusive list; there are many more ways of asking better questions. This is more of a reminder to ask and ask often, and to become more aware of your asking style.

I wonder how soon you’ll ask for better answers.

All the best,

John

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How much do you embrace the unexpected?

I’m willing to wager that the percentage is rather small. That’s because we have a larger love affair with the expected.

If you graph it, you’ll see that you give more of your attention to the expected.

My guess is that our filter of expectation is a powerful, shaping force in how we view life. The often quoted Abraham Lincoln line comes to mind: “Most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.”

That’s another way of saying they are nurturing and fulfilling their expectations, positive or negative.

What you expect to happen usually happens. It’s only when it doesn’t go according to expectation that we come to a choice point.

it’s truly in our best interest to pay extra attention when our expectations don’t happen, and take steps to wrap our arms around the unexpected.

When the unexpected grabs more of your attention, that’s when you begin to move off a predictable course.

The unexpected is an agent of change.

How many things have you accomplished in life that would never have happened, if you didn’t accept the unexpected?

We all have turning points we can look back on that were catalysts to move us in a new direction. If you take a more careful look, that curve in the road was unexpected.

It’s what we do with the unexpected that will shape our future, not lamenting that we didn’t get what we expected.

We all get daily doses of the unexpected. I just don’t think we yet recognize how valuable these experiences are.

You really can’t expect the unexpected, but you can pay more attention to it when it does show up. It’s what you do next that will determine your future. That bold step is to embrace the unexpected.

All the best,

John

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In the past, one of life’s biggest challenges for me has been getting past the past. I don’t think I’m alone.

The past takes on a life of its own, especially when we keep it on life support.

We are attempting to keep alive that which is dead.

Memory is the main force that helps keep the illusion of the past alive.

The faulty thinking goes like this: if I can remember it, it still exists.

The truth is, if you can remember it, your memory of it still exists – nothing else.

The practical advice that is presented to star-crossed lovers – you can’t live on love – applies doubly when you substitute the word “Memories” for “Love.”

The reasons diets don’t work is because people cannot go the rest of their lives eating less food than their body needs. Similarly, when you dine from a menu of memories, you are always starving.

You starve by refusing to eat what the present moment presents. You opt for the illusional calories of the past which cannot sustain life, and cause a slow, painful death.

Your current state of affairs is your life – not what happened 20 minutes or 20 years ago. When you lose sight of that fact, you’ll have trouble getting past the past.

Getting past the past requires that you notice the present. Sometimes it takes a logical kick in the pants to get you focused where your life really is. Reminds me of a story I’ve told before . . .

Year ago, I was telling my friend, Paul about a job offer I had received. I was unemployed at the time. After telling him all about the job, I lamented that it didn’t pay the amount of money that I was making before. He surgically struck with the following comment: “It’s more than you’re making now.”

The reality of the present has a way of dissolving the past; we just have to focus on it to get that result.

Remember this: Memories of the past can be delicious; attempting to live on them will cause decay, because you can’t sustain life by attempting to live off the empty calories of yesterday.

All the best,

John

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The Grasshopper delivered an old message from another angle the other day when he said, “Don’t let what you know get in the way of what you can learn.”

How often do we say “No” to new learning by being in the know?

It’s often what we know that keeps us in the dark; not what’s available to learn.

Too frequently, we attempt to make a new concept fit in with something we already know. If we can’t make it fit into our current mold, we judge it as unworkable and dismiss it out of hand.

There often isn’t anything unworkable about the notion, other than it can’t fit into our space.

This isn’t like attempting to fit a size 9 foot into a size 5 shoe; that’s physics.

This is more about making the space you have for new ideas become more elastic.

When we refuse to stretch, we become even more rigid. It’s a basic fact of life.

How do you find out your level of rigidity? Begin to notice what you say “No” to. The longer your list, the stiffer you are.

New concepts require a “Yes.” If “No” is your default answer, you’re either a parent of a rebelling teenager or you are stiffer than a corpse.

I’ve been both and can attest that both can be outgrown.

There aren’t 12 steps – just 2.

1. Notice how often you say “No.”
2. Begin to say “Yes” more often.

“Yes” is the land of opportunity; “No” is a one horse town.

If you want to grow, you have to stop saying “No.”

All the best,

John

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No matter how unique we consider ourselves to be, we are dyed-in-the-wool copy cats. We can’t help it.

Unconscious emulation is popularly known as early learning. It’s “monkey see, monkey do” or “monkey hear, monkey do.”

There is nothing original about that.

The Christian theology of “Original Sin” suggests that we are born into a condition of imperfection. The idea is that we’re perfectly born into an imperfect world. It’s from that imperfect world that we learn our patterns and beliefs.

You have to listen no further than your pattern of speech to validate your unconscious unoriginality. My guess is that if you grew up in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, you have a different accent that the people who grew up in Brooklyn, New York. Your accent got in there by accident without your permission. So did lots of other unoriginal stuff.

Do you exhibit things that your parents did that you consciously swore you would never do? Figures of speech? Mannerisms? Beliefs? This realization usually happens when we become parents. Some unoriginal bon mot leaves our lips and we astonish ourselves when we recognize that, “I said that just like my mother/father/early caregiver.”

That’s when you know that you’re not an original.

So the question becomes: How do we become more original? We have to stop copying, as the nuns used to say to us, “from your neighbor’s paper.”

To change an unoriginal pattern of thought or behavior, you first have to recognize it as a copy. You also have to stop and realize that you got most of your unoriginality through osmosis. It just seeped in insidiously without your knowledge or consent.

Once you have the realization that you are presenting unoriginal ideas and behaviors, you arrive at the threshold of originality.

Each time we recognize our unoriginality, while it’s happening, we cross the threshold and get a little deeper into originality.

Originality doesn’t come from parrots or trained seals.

Originality and creativity are the same concept with different letters. They both come from a place where there are no stored ideas – a void that spawns originality.

The more often you enter that void, the more original you become.

We move from Planet of the Apes to Curious George when we begin to recognize how unoriginal we truly are.

All the best,

John

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It seems kind of silly to say that we wear goggles every day, but we do. They are our windows to the world.

The problem is we don’t know we perceive our world through the prism of goggles because we can’t see them.

Our goggles are our patterns.

You’ve heard the expression “Rose colored glasses”? That’s just assigning a color to someone’s patterns.

We view our world once removed. That means there is reality, and then our perception of it through our goggles.

Patterns are very useful. They help us automate so many behaviors that would be tedious to relearn every time we use them. They are also our biggest stumbling block.

Many patterns keep us from seeing clearly. Think of them as fogged up goggles.

How many times have you had the thought, “I should have seen that coming”? You couldn’t have possibly seen it wearing gunked up goggles.

The way to see more clearly is to inspect your goggles and clean them up from time to time.

Have you ever taken off a pair of sunglasses and noticed how dirty the lenses have gotten without you recognizing it? You may laugh and wonder how you could have possibly seen anything through those things, and then you take the time to clean them. Your world is much clearer after that happens.

What are you not seeing? It may be an opportunity or it may be a pitfall. You won’t see either with bird shit on your goggles.

So the two steps to seeing more clearly are:

1. Recognize you are wearing goggles.
2. Clean them up from time to time.

Recognition is the key to transformation; cleaning the lenses is your guarantee of a brighter future.

Pass the Windex, please.

All the best,

John

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