Sydney Banks always told people, "Just be you. Just be ordinary."  Many people thought he was advising mediocrity.  But he was not.  He was advising understanding that each one of us is born with the power to think our way through the life we can imagine; no two people are alike.  It doesn't help us to compare ourselves to others or to aspire to be more like x-person we admire.  Just relaxing into our own being and understanding that what we all have in common as human beings is that we are each creating our own separate realities.  No one is special; everyone has the same beauty, resiliency, and power to change from within, and infinite potential.  Being the ordinary human being we each are is extraordinary.

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Understanding the Three Principles leads to mental well-being and allows for it to be sustained and strengthened throughout our lifetime.  The Principles explain a universal fact: we all use the power of Mind to create our own Thought, and Consciousness enables us to experience our perception of our life as real.  Once we recognize that we are the creators of our individual realities, we can navigate life's ups and downs.  Knowing that our feelings are the barometers of the quality of our thinking allows us to turn away from figuring out or fighting our thoughts.  Instead we use our feeling states as a guide to whether to take our thinking seriously, or allow it to pass.  The Principles explain that the power to think is the power to live the life we want.  We know to quiet our minds and look towards positive feelings.

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Much is written about personality disorders.  With an understanding of the Principles, we can see that what we call personality disorders are the best efforts of extremely insecure people to define and control themselves.  They either create a fantastic idea of themselves and present to the world as perfect, always right, and better/smarter than everyone else or they create a victim story in which their life is far worse than anyone else's.  They think they are always mistreated, misunderstood and taken advantage of by others.  Those are the two sides of profound insecurity: thinking about oneself constantly and hiding fear behind braggadocio -- positive or negative.  If people calm down enough to just be in life and not worry about themselves and their image, the "disorders" fade. 

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Some people get upset with life or disappointed in themselves if relationships don't turn out the way they hoped or planned. People get locked into bad feelings and find they have trouble "getting over" the relationship. In fact, as soon as a relationship ends, "it" is over. From then on, we are locked in a relationship with our own memories. It helps to see how easily we can be tricked by our own thinking. If we dwell on what we've lost, or what went wrong, or why our plan went awry, we are innocently wallowing in the muck of old thoughts and losing touch with life as it is now and a fresh start. A deeper understanding of our power as the thinker to quiet our thinking and listen for new insights is the answer.

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Planning and goal-setting are highly recommended techniques for life success. We offer a different view. The ability to have a successful experience of life is intrinsic to all human beings; it is recognizing and following our wisdom instead of getting locked into our personal thinking about what should happen and then struggling to make it work out. It makes sense to have a direction, an intention, for life -- the work or activities or people that attract you. The intention opens you to recognizing opportunities or listening to your own creative thinking as you make decisions and move through life. Wisdom is like our internal Sherpa, leading us through the unknown to as yet unseen beauty and happiness.

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We started "Psychology Has It Backwards: The Program" to give people who follow our podcasts an opportunity to meet with us and explore their questions and ideas more deeply. We wanted to help therapists understand our work; help people who are trying to find ease in life get experience with the ideas and interact with others who are finding more peace; and show people learning to work with the Principles how it looks to interact with clients/learners from this perspective. It has turned out to be a really nice experience, so we're hoping more people will join us. We have kept the price very low and there are no requirements; we just want to share contentment and happiness and the promise of the Three Principles.

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Disagreements are a head-on collision of thoughts. When two people (or groups, organizations, nations) who see the world differently confront each other's ideas, the result is often misunderstanding (or anger, alienation, war). Without understanding, thoughts look not only real, but clearly right, to us. The Principles bring us back to our common humanity with the understanding that thinking is a spiritual gift that all people share; we experience our reality as we think and become aware of our thoughts. But everyone creates a different, ever-changing reality. Knowing how the gifts of thought and consciousness work, we can appreciate differences. Knowing that the quality of our thinking changes with our state of mind allows us to understand ups and downs. That gives us ease with differences and grace with each other.

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Think of the intellect, our personal mind, as our individual library, collections of everything we've learned or thought about, representing all we know so far. It is what allows us to study and learn, to do our work, to remember how to get around places, to recall people we know, to enjoy reminiscing, and also to scare ourselves with recollections of our difficulties or bad experiences. We depend on our intellect, and we can become so attached to it and enamored of what we know that we lose sight of the greatest resource we have, access to the unknown and to wisdom beyond the intellect from which, in a quiet mind, we gain insights and new answers and fresh ideas to guide us.

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We talk about Innate Health as fundamental to the effect of the Principles. It's good to stop to appreciate what a gift it is to mankind. Innate Health is the spiritual core of well-being that cannot be touched by the circumstances of our life. It is our intuitive knowing that we're OK, deep-down, and we can rise above our problems. It's the resource that allows us to survive and thrive. It is our default setting that renews our resilience once we quiet down in the midst of turmoil; we naturally return to balance and wisdom as we understand the nature of thought and allow dysfunctional thinking to pass. People resonate with the very mention of Innate Health because it is a profound universal truth about humanity.

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Many people think it is important to love yourself to understand love. We would say trying to love yourself involves a lot of thinking about yourself, and dealing with judgments. When we connect with the spiritual nature of Mind, Consciousness and Thought, the life power before the formation of ideas and judgments, the FEELING of love, a universal, non-contingent contentment and appreciation for life itself -- pure love -- fills us up and we feel a connection deeper than personal love. In that deep feeling, we forget about ourselves and just immerse ourselves in the moment. Love and understanding for all of life emerges from that feeling.

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