John's Blog

Looking around, you will witness a lot of polarity in this world.  Polarity means: for every up there is a down, For every inside there is an outside, For every high there is a low.  Sometimes, these opposite are obvious, but sometimes, these opposites are harder to spot.  Many a therapy session I conduct is with people battling deep lows, unaware that these troubles are not demons, but rather self inflicted balance to their pursuit of frequent highs.  The most common polarity I witness, invisible to most, results in people easily embracing mediocrity, and missing success. This seeming oxymoron is fuelled, I'm told by the average, by the paralysing fear of failure.  Oh sausage! Failure isn't the polarity of success. Failure is an inherent part of the process to success. One simply must fail in order to learn, grow, and win.  What is keeping you from the success you so desire is fear itself. The fear has got you labelling failure negatively,...

Don't busy yourself with the "how" of your success, rather invest in the details of "what". And before you tell me you need the "how" to get results, do something for me... make your left hand into a duck-face, and let it quack 3 or 4 times. Now, how did you do that?  Yes yes, you can tell me about nerves and messages, and muscle control. .. but, howwwwww? You don't know, do you?  You just swallowed ... how? Blinked, breathed, and farted... how? How did you do these things? You maybe know the biology of the mechanism, but how? Ninety percent of what we do daily is handled by our subconscious mind. We merely think about the "outcome" or result, and our unconscious mind sets about implementing systems to achieve that result.  Why can't we use this efficient system to achieve our life goals? 🤷‍♂️ Well, that's the point! You can and should allow this mechanism to help achieve all that you want in life.  How?  Use ...

Let's just be clear on this once and for all: Hard work alone will help you pay bills, but won't fulfil your dreams.  I know of and deeply respect hard working individuals that are slogging it out to provi4de the necessities for their families. But hardwork alone will not make you rise above your circumstances. Look around you: how many hard working people do you know are struggling?  Faith on the other hand stirs the dream, instills hope, fans the flames - but faith alone makes you nothing more than a daydreamer.  Those rare individuals that soar with eaglesare the ones that have figured the unique balance between hard work and the power of faith.  Effort alone makes you a slave.  Faith alone makes you a dreamer.  Faith and Effort fulfil all your ambitions!

A musician sits at a piano, carefully selecting specific keys from the 88 that are available, to create a song that will touch hearts. The keys not played seem invisible, ignored and unimportant, but are just as involved in the performances as the played keys. The untouched notes lend scale and harmony to the heard song, in the same way night-fall dances with day-break, in the same way the mountain gives grace to the valley, in the same way back supports front. Looking in the mirror is like sitting down at the piano knowing all 88 keys are available. You are full, complete, and endowed with all things needed for life and godliness. When you play the melody of your life, the roles, characteristics, and expressions you choose to ignore, are as much part of you as the ones that touch the heart of others.

Wait now, Sausage. Let's just unravel this quickly. When peering into the mirror,  we were taught to look beyond the reflection, to deep, deep within the soul of the face staring back. We were taught to search in ourselves what we could become. This lesson then forged a path of constant change for us. We nip, tuck, chisel and chop our way through life to reveal the gem we once saw, hidden in the depths of our reflection. In the process, we sacrifice our true identity and align with "Human Becomings". We ought to look in the mirror and see who we really are, walk away and live up to that image - a Human Being - a true expression of a perfect creation, called you.

Regain a sense of wonder: Surrendering to a concept of an "automatic" life between cradle and crematorium makes people take their existence for granted. The "normal" people shun the curious souls that gawk at mans place in the universe, and at the existence of God. The "normal" man doesn't want to think about these things, because when he speaks of them, his words are confusing, even to him, because he simply doesn't understand. The curious souls dont waste energy constructing words to explain the universe, because their understanding of such isnt found in language, but in feelings. When you consider your existence on this rock, flying around a spherical fire, out in a lonely corner of the universe - as an odd occurrence,  you start to feel a sense of respect.  What a strange situation life is, don't you agree? Once you respect your existemce (even though you are unable to explain it) and this unusual occurrence called life, you st...

"Pieces are missing!" I mumbled as I sifted through the pile of heart and mind bits on the floor. "Maybe, or you never had those pieces before," the spirit of wisdom chuckled to himself. My heart had exploded into fragments when i first met her. Then, when she smiled, my mind crumbled in awe of her grace,  eloquence, and beauty. In the aftermath of our meeting, I scrambled to reassemble a functioning existence. Unsure of which pieces went where, I had a feeling bits of me were missing. "Maybe," the jesting spirit continued, "maybe she has the bits you need?" I shot a look in the spirit's direction, hoping for  a  clue, but got none. "Pffft!" I dismissed his comment as a ruse, but secretly, internally, I flung myself to the feet of hope. Im not able to share how she feels, but I can tell you this: the sound of her voice yanks my world from blood into grey, and a glimpse of her smile wrings the grey into daybreak.

In this world of exaggerated ambition, what is the true opposite of success? Failure? At first, it would seem so, but take a momemt to consider the common light bulb. Legend has it that Thomas Edison, the light bulb patent owner, had ten thousand failed attempts at the now-common-household necessity,  before making a working prototype. In an interview in 1936, a reporter asked Mr Edison about the ten thousand attempts, wondering if such numbers was a sign to quit.  Mr Edison replied with: "Either I win or I learn. I learned ten thousand ways on how not to do it." These words reveal Mr Edison's feelings that failure is not the opposite of  success, but an inherent part of the success process. The fact is, You WILL fail a few times at the start of a new adventure, but will you win and will you learn? Sportsmen and women call these failed attemots and learning curves -  "practice." So, back to the original question: what is the true opposite of success...

The fears we nurture become self fulfilling prophecies. Isn't it true that when standing on the verge of a new journey, and you imagine potential perils preventing your happy arrival, that you never successfully complete that journey? Have you noticed how the fears of getting hurt that surface at the start of a new romance turn into the very storm that sinks the relation ship? It seems to me that in life we get not that which we hope or pray for, but rather, we manifest that for which we prepare. Maybe life isn't a journey with a fixed destination, nor about a relationship with a definitive purpose. Maybe life is meant to be more of a dance. When two dancers get onto the floor, they don't pick a specific spot on which to end the dance. They go with the music, allowing the magic of the flow to carry them, stopping when the time is right. Maybe Life offers you music with no specific destination in mind, free of all contrived fears, and calls on you to merely danc...