A deeply personal note from me to you... because you're incredible...

A lot of people had gotten to me yesterday about how much they could relate with what I was talking about. I had known that what I said was good and right because it came from that place where I was being as honest as a person can possibly be.

For a long time I had worried about what others thought about my work and what I was doing in pretty much all of my work and all of what I was doing. The end result became a sort of half truth that only proved to suppress me in the same way that all of my dead end jobs I never wanted to be at in the first place did. It was evident in my writing; even when it was good something was missing, and it failed to make that same sort of connection as yesterday's piece.

I have spent a long time now studying people, and there are two truths that have been since the first human breath was taken, and will always be true until the very last. Both involve our longing. The first is our longing to freely express our soul, as we do as children, to pour all of the joys of our heart into the world around us through our work, our play.

You show me a person who's forced to do things that they don't want to do too often and I'll show you a miserable bastard. Show me a person that doesn't have opportunities, for whatever the reasons, fear, oppression, to show off who it is that they really are through the things that they do and I'll show you desperation.

The other thing that we all long for is that sense of connection with our fellow man. We need to know that people get us, understand how we feel; we need to understand them. We need to know that we matter. We all, every one of us, need to feel loved, that we're not alone in the world, that we make a difference in people's lives, that we make those lives better.

You show me someone who feels alone in the world and I'll show you a person on the edge. You show me a person who feels like they don't matter and I'll show you a person who's lost everything, who's lost hope.

I've been driven to do most of everything that I've done so far in life by all of the worst in people. I was ruthlessly abused by my peers for all of the things that I didn't have, growing up as poor as can be. In many ways that still happens every day. No matter what I've ever done, it was never good enough for any of the people I surrounded myself with, I was never good enough, and that tainted the lens through which I see the world and left me jaded. In many ways I'm still not good enough. I became terrified to express who I am; I developed major depressive disorder, which I still deal with daily.

Many people have told me, and will tell me, that if I want to make a career of being a Life Coach then I can't show that side of myself. I can't be weak. I always have to put my best foot forward. I think that's a total crock of shit.

If you read my blog daily I take you along with me on my ups and downs. Some days I'm happy; some days I'm sad. Some days I'm strong, full of fire, and some I'm crushed by the days events. That's because I'm human, a man, real. It's precisely because of my pain that I can empathize with others' pain. It's because I've felt what they feel that I can see hurt in their eyes and my soul cries out to help them never to feel that again. It's because I don't want to hurt that I don't want you to hurt. It's because I, for so long, have been unable to express myself that I want you to be able to do so, to pour everything into realizing your dreams.

And that's precisely why I know how good I can be at this.

We all see the world in a certain way based on where we've been, what we've seen, who we're with and what has happened to us from our first thought to this moment right now. It's something I bring up often, and for good reason. Who we are and what we do rolls right off of that, is a direct result of it.

Our only real success in life comes from how well and how often we're able to fulfill those two longings, to find that self expression, in making that real human connection. That's where true happiness lies. And you can never find happiness without it. I've never been very good at either, and it's impossible not to see the marked difference in me when I am able to pull it off. But in my struggle to do so I've come to a great understanding of myself. 

I've never been the guy people seek out for a good time, never the one they think about when things are good. But, like a priest, they come to me when in need and disappear once fulfilled. The things that I do for that great release, writing, my pictures, Personal Performance Consulting (I like that one), are not and can not be the sort of thing I throw out in your face and convince you to want, or need, or get into. As such, I can not myself be something that I can convince people to want, or need, or be into. Rather, they have to be there when you need them, to connect, to see beauty, to make you feel better about who you are. I have to be there for you when you need.

This blog started as one thing, and became something very different. It's become my way of showing you all how I see the world. It's become my way of showing you who I am. And when you enjoy it, when you can relate, when you agree with or know what it is that I'm saying, when you feel the same, then in those brief moments you are connecting with my heart; you're one with my soul. In those moments you are me, and I am you. In those moments... I'm not alone. In those moments I'm free, and I matter.

For all of those reasons I thank you with every fiber of my being.
And I love you.

Sincerely,
John LaSota

It's all in how you carry yourself

An usual night of dreams that felt like reality and reality that felt like a dream led to waking to what so far has appeared to be a perfect morning, the sort that fills you with a calm, peaceful feeling, which is exactly what I needed to start me off the right way and get into what I wanted to talk about today.

One of the things that has always calmed me down, and if you know me well then you know how very important that is, is taking pictures. Normally I stay away from taking pictures of people and stick to shots of sunsets and nature, shots like this one here that I took with my point and shoot

But the shots that I always wanted to get kept eluding me because I just wasn't equipped with the proper tools, which meant that I was going to have to actually get a professional grade camera to shoot things like this

I took this shot this past Saturday while wondering around testing the new camera, and MAN did I need to do so with the way things were going. I needed to be calmed more than ever. But in my travels the random events of life seemed to open up to show me some things that maybe I needed to see.

I have no idea who these people are, but he had just proposed to her as I happened to walk by, and they asked me to take a picture for them so that they could remember it. It was nice to be a part of their special moment, even in a very small way, so I took one of my own.

For whatever reason, I've always been a guy that people have done that with. I get asked to take pictures for people all the time. There constantly seems to be someone coming to me for directions, even when I'm in a city that I've never been to before. We don't approach just anyone for this sort of thing, you know that as well as I do. Every one of us has been in a similar situation before, and you have to have a certain comfort level with the stranger you're asking just from how they appear to be.

Well, 93% of all communication is in our body language. We literally say way more to the people surrounding us by the way we're standing around and the look on our faces than with any of the garbage that flies from our mouths. That aura, that energy that emanates, speaks to everyone in proximity.

When I saw this woman in the picture above me she was working with small children, helping to make their day at the park a fun and memorable one. I happened to pass three times while snapping my photos, and with each pass I couldn't help but notice the calm and easy demeanor she displayed and the softness about her. This picture does nothing to do her justice, but even here you can see that in her face. There was a grace, an elegance about her that just melted my heart, and though I doubt very much I'll ever see her again, instantly I thought I saw someone special and it stirred a change in me.

Our chance encounters with the people that walk in and out of our lives are often not a thing to latch on to and hold, but an opportunity to change the way we look at things, what Marianne Williamson calls miracles in her great book A Return to Love.

I'm always talking about the lack of a certain something in our starlets these days, which of course filters down to all the women in our society, that ladies like Olivia De Havilland (up top) had so much of that it poured from them on the screen and moved you.

Where are the Princess Grace Kelly's of the world, the kind of woman that even 30 years after her death the very mention of her name still echoes the embodiment of the word her parents chose to call her by.... Grace.

Or Ingrid Bergman, who you really could believe great men, the Victor Lazlo's of our lifetime, would endure almost anything to get back to, to live for, to inspire them to fight for a better world, or give it all up for.

And of course my all time favorite, Audrey Hepburn. They just don't make women like this anymore.....

Except they do. A chance encounter with a random girl just being herself opened my eyes to something that I either didn't believe that could ever exist again, or perhaps that I had been looking in the wrong places, at the wrong people, for all along. And I began to think about myself, casting the same light on who I am and the way that I act that I had been burning the ladies of the world with.

I've stated in the past how John Wayne was once the embodiment of what is was to be the American man and how as a kid growing up this is what I too was supposed to be, why I often act the way that I do, rough and tumble, out there for everyone to see, A MAN BABY, YEAH! But the truth of the matter is that I'm really probably more like Ash from Army of Darkness in all the wrong ways

"Are all men from the future loud mouth braggards like yourself?"
"No, just me baby.... just me"

Dr. Wayne Dyer always says that you do not attract what you want into your life, you attract what you are, something I firmly believe. When you carry that into the people in your life, if you act like an animal, you'll attract other animals. Act like ghetto trash, you'll attract ghetto trash. Act like Ash... you get deadites

So it's really no wonder that this is the type of woman that I've been finding when I look.

But the woman at the park had me inspired to be more than what I've become, to find all the best parts of myself and have that be the face that I show to the world. In NLP we have a technique that we call modeling, and by that we mean to find someone that displays the characteristics that you want to have yourself and model the way that you behave after the way that they do it. And if you want classy, elegant women in your life, then you have to be more like a man that would be in the same circles of that sort of person. You have to be Cary Grant.

Well, I'm not nearly that good looking, nor am I suave or sophisticated. I may be too much of a Shanty Queens slob sitting on the curb, rough around the edges to hope to pull that off naturally without coming off as try hard. But that doesn't mean I have to be loud and obnoxious either, and I find that when I'm at my best, it's when I'm being the strong, quiet type that takes care of his responsibilities and doesn't worry about the rest. So I may be better off as the Ed Burns type

Well... maybe I don't have his looks either, but if you want to attract a better quality of person in your life, then you have to be a better person. And it's all in the way that you carry yourself. So rather than worrying about who's out there and how good they are, instead concentrate on who you are and how good you can be.

Then the truly beautiful ones will find you.
So who do you want to be?

Later people