"Real?  What is Real? How Do You Define 'Real?'"  - Morpheus in The Matrix

Life never lets up does it? 
No matter how much you learn, progress, relax or move forward, something or someone can erupt and present you with a challenge to the quiet moment you are having, the focus you are concentrated in, or the peace of mind you're enjoying. 

Life is in your face and you can't ignore it or meditate it away.  Though, believe me, I have tried.  You too?  Didn't work did it?  So what about that? 

If I were working with you as a coach, the very next thing you might say to me is "Well then, what should I do?"  

Now, that would really seem like the right question, wouldn't it?  But let's look before that.  The question is not what to do so much as "Where will you look for the answer?"

I've talked about this in my book, but let's explore this more. 

The answer to the challenge of other people and circumstances is not in finding the right response to is happening in front of us; it's in reading ourselves. 

What you and I have both been trained to do is exactly the opposite.  We've been trained to try to correctly interpret a situation and then process a lightening-rapid search in the data base of our previous experiences, our opinions and beliefs, and information gleaned from others in order to locate the appropriate words or actions to rise to the occasion.    

Now, what you and I both know from experience is that not only do we rarely come up with the correct answer, but much of the time all logic, reason and temperance are completely aborted and we simply react.  I bet you've tried a million gazillion times NOT to do precisely that. Right? We all have. We try not to react, we promise ourselves we won't say this or that but (as is the case with all "trying") we fail. Suddenly we find ourselves embroiled, annoyed, and saying things we later regret.

How many times have you sworn to yourself you would get off this particular merry-go-round?  Hm?  I have.  For heaven's sake, I've been just recently swearing to myself that I won't get angry and then I find myself shouting at someone on the street.   

Want to know what I've done to fix that?  

Nothing.

I DO nothing.  Because all my doing and my trying not to do is part of my issue.

I dont' want to do anything because I can't.

First, that would be trying to go against a law of life, a principle which says that I feel everything that I think.

Second, instead of seeing that is what is happening is going on inside me, I interpret my own bad feelings as a call to action.   

The compulsion to act is not a signal to act!  Check out that feeling of a compulsion to do something; is there urgency in it?  Are your own feelings stirred up?  If they are,  that is telling you quite the opposite.  It is probably NOT the time to press SEND on that text message... 

But who can notice this when we are convinced our problem is outside of us and not inside of us?  Who can see that in the moment, when all any of us want to do is to try to resolve the bad feeling through action. And don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that the feeling itself is a problem -- it is not. No feeling is ever a problem. The fact that you feel what is happening in you is not a problem at all.  What I'm saying is we constantly misread the signals of our feelings as calls to action. Instead of seeing them as the sign that we are off kilter inside of us. 

Common misinterpretations of our internal signals will have us leaving phone messages we regret, making angry hand gestures, using our cars as weapons, drinking too much, overeating -- a litany of reactive, even obsessive behaviors arise from not understanding the true source of our own feelings.   

Of course, this is not always self-evident.  For a very long time we've been taught to ascribe our feelings to the outside world.  "You make me so angry!" we'll say.  "His cheating made her start drinking heavily," we'll say.  

These are not words we just say. These are reflections of how we believe we are constructed.  I am not talking about a theory here. This is not a concept. This is the reality of how you and I and every human being on this planet is built to work. You feel whatever you think. I feel whatever I think.  That is a part of the definition of how a human system works.

We think we are responding to a world that bumps, blows and buffets us all over the place.  But we never are.  That world we each see and each person we see is truly a function of what is IN us at the time we are looking.  This is why you can go to a very beautiful place on vacation, and take all your worry with you and have an awful time.  The beauty will not affect you. You will affect you. This is why you can be in a terrible traffic jam and being having a perfectly good time. If traffic has causal power, why is it not affecting you today?  This is not a concept, it is a capacity we all have to experience the outside world as a function or literally, a result of the inside of us. 

Ultimately this may well mean that there really is no reality. But that is far beyond what I understand for now. All I know is that if I can appreciate knowing how it really works, 

• I can read the signs more accurately and not be confused about the source of my feelings
• I can use my feelings as a guide to know when I'm off center 
• I can stop trying to control my feelings - including needing to "quiet my mind" 
• I can go right ahead and live my life WITH all my feelings happening, because I know they are just signals 
• I can allow my internal world to right itself; as it inevitably does

Now, I want to apologize that I did trick you with the title. This is not the cure for any of us to never, ever be reactive again, but does it help to know that when you are reacting, that it's coming from you and that's just the way the system works?

It has helped me a great deal.

I said to the almond tree, Friend, speak to me of God,
 and the almond tree blossomed. - Nikos Kazantzakis 

How like trees we are. Except for one thing... they are not upset.

But let me backup for a moment. 

One morning I was watching a palm tree. 

This one, actually.

It's rather beautiful how they sway with abandon (I swear they are going to snap in half!) and how tall some grow on huge spindly legs -- some three times higher than the homes below them.   

I was watching a palm standing perfectly silently. Everything was still in the air. So I thought.  Then a few of the feathered fronds began twitching wildly. There must have been one small stream of air gusting through that part of the branch. 

The palms are so high that they catch all kinds of air currents that I never feel or see.  These invisible winds can strip the palms of all their fronds and send them hurling to the ground, crashing through the windshields of the cars below.  Or just tickle them gently. Palms are truly at the mercy of the shifting winds.  Nothing can change the effect the wind on them: they sway and flutter all day and all night.  It is easy to see that this whole picture works very harmoniously, even on the stormiest of days. In fact, it seems built to work this way.  

Tossed by the Wind

As I watched the palm fronds doing their accordion dance, it occurred to me this is the way human thinking works too.  We experience our thoughts much the same way the palms experience the winds.   Thoughts move through us long before we detect they are there and we too, sway and flutter.  (In terms of our feelings that is).   

One thing I know to be true about humans is that thoughts are the source of our feelings.  Stormy thoughts stir up inevitably dark and tempestuous feelings and activate our senses. We can't stop that process any more than the palm can not sway in the wind.  

When the human has passing thoughts moving through they ondulate in harmony with that thinking, just like the tree bends with the passing wind; the difference is the tree is not upset about the fact that this is happening.  

The Tree is Neutral
When our thoughts are blowing around and our feelings are getting tossed up and down, however, we get anxious and afraid.  We don't feel neutral about this. We get concerned about our own movement.  I work with many people who are concerned about the way they are feeling.  They ask me, "Why do I feel so bad?"  Consider the possibility for a moment that there are not infinite answers to this question. There is, as far as I know, only one answer to this question: thought is blowing through.   

Sydney Banks who first described the 3 Principles wrote in The Missing Link, "Thought on it's own is a completely neutral gift."  

The simple explanation for all of it is, you are experiencing what you think.   

If only, like the tree, we could be neutral about this process!  After all, it's just the way we are made. Trees don't prefer calm days to windy days.  Trees are not concerned about storms. 

People are not like this are they?  We humans would like it all to stop moving. We want it smoothed out.  We don't want to sway in the wind. We don't like it.  All these troublesome feelings getting stirred around ... we want to control the wind. We want to locate the person who sent the wind and make them stop. We hire people hoping they will tell us how to stop the wind.   

We are not always happy when we realize we can't stop the wind blowing.   

It's No Big Deal
One of the laws of life is that, as humans, we think.  Another is that we feel what we think.   What if we could really see that this is just no big deal? 

It is so very important to know that the human is not defective as he/she experiences the ups and downs of emotional life. 

I was telling a friend that the great benefit of learning the Three Principles is not that my life has smoothed out to a lovely even hum, but that I've stopped worrying about tracking where I am in every moment and trying to control what I think. I accept that I am in movement.  

I used to be incredibly concerned about my moods.  I thought they meant something about me.   Now I see how they come and go and I am much less attentive to them. I'm not trying to create a prevalent "good mood" I am simply getting clearer about how the process works. And that clarity has left me much kinder and more understanding towards myself.  Being less concerned about shifting feelings also tends to leave me in a clearer state of mind generally, so I notice I occasionally have made better decisions about what truly needs to be said out loud, or whether I should be driving.   

When I am not trying to change my own mood or judging it, I get more open to seeing it for what it is. 

We are actually as perfectly built as the tree.  You already are the tree that bends.  If you were not unhappy about that, you'd be as contented as the palm tree, or let's say -- you'd be as "non-concerned" as a palm tree -- and you'd stop trying so hard to control the content and flow of your thinking. 

In that moment you'd find your complete freedom, because you would literally no longer be like Don Quixote "tilting at windmills."

_Understanding is so misunderstood!

When I first decided to write on the importance of "understanding" I wondered if you'd would think I was talking about some kind of passive attitude toward life, or advocating some form of forgiveness called "understanding how it wasn't their fault."  But I'm talking about neither.  

I'm reaching as deep as I can into the meaning of what it is to understand. Because actually, if your life is chaotic, understanding how that happens truly helps. 

_The Myths of Understanding 

We think understanding means analyzing. What do when you try to understand your partner, for example?  You dissect. You pick apart. You scrutinize. You observe with the intent of figuring out why it is they are so messed up.

We also confuse understanding with ruminating and obsessing. When we try to understand ourselves, we start to dig up the past in order to find the root of our behaviors. We replay what's happened to us, how people have wronged us. Have you noticed these activities do not lead to the kind of understanding that fosters lasting change or loving connection?

Humanity has lots of history. We've had lots of past and lost of time to look back on the past and we still have very little understanding. We've also been using our logic for a while now, but haven't got much better at locating the sources of our internal human misery. We have only to look around to see that is true. 

_The United Nations officially came into existence on 24 October 1945 and we still don't really understand how to create peace amongst nations. We just don't. We have some theories. We have some notions.  But we have yet to truly understand why charters, structures, treaties and organizations are so ineffective. If we had this understanding within each person, we'd have world peace by now.   

It is not so surprising there's no peace amongst nations, when you realize that we barely understand how to love people in our own households. Relationships are minefields of unsigned bargains, silent expectations and keenly tuned transgression antennae.  I know. That's been me.  

Our outer world mirrors our deep misunderstanding of ourselves as human beings.  How could that happen? 

I remember being very shocked the day my life completely broke down and realized I actually knew nothing, I had no clue whatsoever, how to create a truly loving relationship. The facts where obvious to me: I had a string of broken relationships behind me.  Clearly I did not understand.

Then I asked myself, having spent time in therapy, and lots of time analyzing myself and others, what exactly was I failing to understand? Was I failing to understand others, or was I failing to understand myself?

_Add Understanding and Let Rise

If I could write the recipe for a happier life, I'd put in a big dose of the one most important ingredient there is; the one thing that is actually the most helpful thing you can ever have: understanding the human.

I want to suggest that if, in your life you are not operating to your fullest capacities, it can be very helpful to know where good ideas live.  

• If your career, relationships, or projects tend to get derailed easily, it's helpful to understand where human resiliency is found. 
• If the misbehavior of those around you gets under your skin and disturbs your peace of mind don't you agree it would be helpful to understand why it is you come unglued?

This is the kind of understanding I'm talking about: understanding the inside mechanisms and what they have to do with how you feel in your life. 

_The Case For Misunderstanding Is Everywhere

The other day I was reading an article that was making the strong argument that workplaces ARE, by nature, inherently stressful. The article was saying that offices have challenging things happening and stressed people in them (which is true) but then it asserted that although people have some internal control over stress, "the workplace itself is at the root of most employee stress."

Your own common sense will show you, if you seek to understand the roots of stress, that there is no stress living in "offices." There are chairs and desks and people.  Other people exhibit stress, for sure, but it's not a virus. You can't catch it when they stress-sneeze on you.  

In fact, you've had plenty of days when despite a hornet's nest of worried co-workers buzzing all around you, you maintained your equilibrium and were fine.  

If you are going to deal with stress, tension and the often disturbed behaviors of others on a permanent basis aren't you curious to understand how you managed  that day of resiliency -- when what we read indicates you shouldn't be able to? If outside things are causing inside reactions why are there exceptions? Understanding that seems to me like the answer to everything. The universal panacea. 
 
Or would you rather keep trying to take the stress out of the office ...? Because, like world peace, we haven't really got a handle on that one yet either!

_I sometimes wonder how many team meetings, improved processes, morale building, stress-reducing initiatives have taken place over the course of the years in just the companies I worked in. Over the life of those companies alone I reckon probably thousands! Now what about around the world?   Oh my goodness. That's lots of training for very little understanding.

I only know of a handful of initiatives that have had true and lasting impact. And they all had one thing in common: They offered a greater understanding of how our own internal human systems work. 

The Proof In The Pudding

This week I had the good fortune of spending some time with Don Donovan, one of the people working in the Three Principles Global Community and a former executive at a large military systems manufacturing corporation.  Don brought Pransky and Associates into his division of the company to offer exactly this understanding to the people who worked there -- with tremendous results.  In fact, every critical success factor the company measured to track the health of the business, elevated in direct correlation with the dissemination of this understanding. 

As the understanding of the how human beings actually function became more common, not only did it change the workplace and business results, it also changed the families and communities in which employees lived. 

As we were talking he said, "You know, George Pransky and I used to sometimes say that it's as if human potential were freeze-dried and this understanding works like pouring water onto it."

What do you say to that kind of understanding?

I talked about this in the radio show on January 27th, to listen, click here

_ The more time I spend alive, the less inclination I have to waste my time.

Some suggest that being mindful of the fact that death is just an inch away at any moment, motivates us to live more fully and squeeze all the juice out of life that we can. If this were true we'd have the single most powerful self-help tool ever discovered.  Everyone would instantly get how precious and important their life is and the world would be bursting with happy, loving people. 

Actually, I think most of us are blissfully unmotivated by our finiteness. We love to live in the illusion of never-land, which is, it-will-never-happen-to-me-land. We like to ignore the uncomfortable things, putting off the inevitable until it's nipping at our heels. 

We ignore the projects that are dearest to our hearts. We keep feeding the flames of our grudges and resentments. We let pettiness interfere with telling people how much we love them and how much they mean to us. In short, we willingly waste our present moment either mulling over the past or worrying about the future. Or both. Regrets are daily companions and the only time we aren't concerned about tomorrow is when we reach for the credit card.  

But time, if you think about it, is a funny old thing. 

• We can have a moment of beauty in which we lose all sense of time.   
• We can look back on last year and think it went fast.
• We can look at the clock waiting for lunch and believe time has slowed to a standstill.   
• Five minutes awake in the middle of the night can feel like a lifetime. 

Where does the sensation of time passing come from?  That is, where is your experience of time taking place?  

Like most of life, it is all pretty much made up, isn't it?

But if that's true, that is rather good news.  It means there is very little that is solid. And much of what we think is "true" turns out not to be.

For example, when I'm dreading the final editing of my book, I look at the manuscript and think I have 239 pages to go through one by one. Yet again.  Just thinking about it slows me down!  I'm now influencing my own experience of time.

Yet there have been plenty of days when I worked 12 hours almost straight through and felt refreshed and happy. Suddenly it is midnight, or 1 am and I think, "Wow, it's amazing how time flies!"  Time is doing nothing of the sort. It is neither flying nor passing nor stopping.  

If time is based on your attitude and personal filters, then surely many more things are too: your impressions of people, your decisions about what's possible, your worries of the future, and so on. 

___Everything is in flux in all moments.  We really only know two things. The past is done. The future is not here yet.  In fact it never will be. It will only always ever be this minute.

With a real sense of that, I enjoy my time quite a bit.  I also get quite a lot done, not because I'm afraid I might die at any moment, but because this moment is so very full, fresh and interesting.



I don't want to get too esoteric about time being just a made-up thing, so for those interested, you might want to pick up Steve Chandler's book "Time Warrior" which contains more practical wisdom on the the bend-ability of time. 

Ami Chen Mills-Naim and I also talked about releasing the old on the last show of 2011. That was a great show if you missed it. (click here to listen) 

One of the good things about the passing of time is the possibility of seeing our past differently and of finding new grace to move on from regrets and hurt. 

The past always teaches us the same lesson: "It's over." (Peruse the chapter on Forgiveness from my book for more ... )

Here comes the New Year.  Ready to clear out?

Think of your internal clear-out as if you had been holding something in your hand all year long.  Open your hand and let it drop.

All that stuff that you've accomplished or failed to is really no more than ideas about you should be, and notions about what would make you happy.

You may notice that you are actually changing and dropping these ideas all the time.  Throughout the year you may have picked up a few items you no longer need ...

_As anyone knows who has moved house, it's truly amazing how quickly we fill the space around us!  Isn't it incredible how, after a major clear-out, within a few years we seem to have filled the bucket back up to the brim?  Isn't it mind-boggling how much you discover you own when you start getting rid of stuff?    

It's almost as if we are not quite fully aware of what we are doing.   

I'm not saying you don't need every single item that you have.  But I do remember what Jacob Glass used to say -- there's no vortex quite like an empty apartment!

Our internal world is a bit like this too, isn't it?  We go along picking up all kinds of ideas from the world around us, like lint. Then suddenly we find we are saying things we don't even believe or mean to say!   

The we sit up in surprise and think, "That's not me!  I'm not like that." And it's a bit of a shock, really.   

Many of the things we pick up are painful to us -- fears about what other people might do to us, harsh judgements, tendencies to worry about the state of the world.   Even the temptation to gossip or bland conversations about the weather; these are just habits we all share as accepted ways of relating to one another.  They are not the real you.

Of course, not all these ideas we pick up are harmful or burdensome.  Only the unquestioned ones!

How about our ideas of what success looks like for an example?  Many children are being pushed into performance testing and evaluation as early as 4 and 5, in order to be accepted into kindergarten. Kindergarten! This is a notion of success that we could do without. It is full of fear about the future, and it's already beginning to velcro itself to tiny minds -- leaving them little room to stretch and grow naturally.  What chance will kids have to be their creative selves if the playing field is already shrinking around them?  

Who have we all become as a result of carrying around some of these burdensome ideas?  Who do we long to be?  Can you feel that longing?

We have added some junk to our beautiful selves that doesn't need to be there: self-condemnation, self-harm, self-chastisement, you name it.  You know what it is. You should hear the things people say to themselves. Tuned in lately? What if you knew that all your internal thoughts were being broadcast on a loudspeaker for everyone to hear? 

These accepted concepts about how we should look, how much we should weigh, whether we make enough money, whether we are on a path to success, are weighing us down. 

Is it really any wonder that we find it hard to connect with others, to love fully and to feel free?

Will we get to the point where we no longer recognize ourselves?  

And if we recognize ourselves, what are we identifying with anyway -- it's all just a bunch of notions about how things should be.

How about, let's not. 

It's almost the end of the year, let's leave them behind in 2011.    

Here' to YOU.

_What have hummingbirds got to do with your life?  Lots, as it turns out!

I don't know how much you know about hummingbirds, but I was very ignorant about these beautiful creatures.  So feel free to laugh at me, but ...

For one, I thought hummingbirds were in constant motion.  They are not. They dip from flower to flower, and as I learned one day, they will actually perch on a branch, rest, and then while still sitting with their tails opening and closing like wee luminescent fans, they'll casually poke the nearest flower.

I also thought they were silent.  They are not. As they whirr and whizz around at  speed they chirp, trill, cry, call and sing in delighted tones.  They have different whistles and clucks and I've come to recognize them by their unique sounds as well as their colorings.  And they have other surprising behaviors, like rising up ten stories, hovering and then diving straight down at screaming velocity!

Two reasons why I'm on the hummingbird theme.

One is that in life, I'm often so ignorant of the tiny marvels all around. It's funny how easily we can be lulled into thinking that we know what life is all about.  Perhaps if you'd asked me about hummingbirds, I might have been fairly confident in my thinking that they are in constant motion.  Even though I really did not know that.

I come up against my own ignorance when I'm closely observing life around me.  If I am open to what is there, suddenly life seems to open to me.  It begins teaching me how things really are.  And then I have the opportunity to laugh and drop my illusions.

Often when we find ourselves at the crossroads of what we think we know and some brand new information, it can be tempting to stick with the road we know. Even if it really is not good for us and not leading us where we think.

I do believe it can be strange to us, and even difficult, to remain open to life. Although it is natural for all human beings, it isn't normal practice to let life reveal its secrets to us. We are rather more used to reaching first for what we think we know.  We seem to become more open to learning only after we've come to the edge, exhausted, of what we know.

And this brings me to my second point about hummingbirds and life.  Just like the hummingbird is quiet sometimes, so we need to be.

Everything we need to know about how to live life is available to us. One of the reasons we get lost and take the wrong fork in the road repeatedly is because we have not stopped long enough to listen.  We are too rarely informed from the inside.  We haven't listened to ourselves. I'm not talking about following every emotional upheaval wherever it takes you, I'm talking about honoring our inner guidance.

Many times you've made a mistake and later known that something inside was telling you to do differently.  You probably swapped that inner information for logical reasoning.  Your logical mind didn't have the right answer.  But you knew that afterwards.

This happens -- not because the logical mind is always wrong; it is just more interested in keeping you glued together than anything else.  It wants the version of you that you have now to be preserved; this above all other things.  Your logical thinking is at its' most dangerous not when it doesn't know, but when it thinks it knows. 

As a result, we can easily become great big rigid intolerable know-it-alls.

To have a porous attitude to life is to know one thing: that you don't know everything.  At least not as far as the facts go. And most certainly not as far as concerns the inner lives of other people.  But you can know yourself.

To do that, you need the delightful attitudes of listening, quietness and openness.

The one thing that we all know is exactly what it feels like when we are living as our true selves, living and being who we are. 

I'd suggest that when we are quiet enough to hear our own direction in life and we follow it, we automatically feel open to learning, to understanding others, to loving others. 

To listen closely to your inner world is to hear Life speaking to you.

We are all connected to this same Life, this Spirit or Formless Intelligence, so the result of tuning in is always to feel closer to our real self and to feel closer to others.

_There are some basic dynamics about how the human mind works that create the true basis for change. 

I like to share those dynamics with people when coaching individuals or consulting in business, (and I'll share them with you below) because  active principles help anyone continue to grow, long after a coaching relationship is concluded.

Without this basis for working, the nature of personal change remains a mystery. And I don't want my client to remain a mystery to themselves. I want to work on solid ground, so we are not guessing and fumbling and wishing and hoping.

As my clients come to understand these fundamentals about the workings of their own internal mechanics, they began to see for themselves why they are stuck and consequently, exactly what is required -- for them.  Together we establish a self-sustaining, and self-generated basis for positive change, new ideas and insights.

This is such a practical base-camp to start from that transformational shifts occur in my clients that are irreversible and arise in areas where people had no expectation that change was even possible.

This has also been 100% true in my own life.

_Why Inside / Out Helps
Here's why getting a good grasp of your inner workings is so helpful. 

When you understand, you relax.  You get it. Things makes sense and you know why they are happening. You understand your experiences and as a result your life. You don't get worried that you will forget that, because you see the root of all problems and you know how "the system" works. You begin correcting at the source, instead of at the after-spill.  As your mind relaxes and clears, the more ideas come, the less reactive you are, the less conflicts flare unexpectedly, and the more you feel alive. Clients tell me they feel more "themselves."

It really is astounding how much it helps us to understand that the human mind has some simple functioning rules.  And to know what they are and how they work in simple terms.

Not knowing how your mind works is akin to getting behind the wheel of a car having no idea what happens when you press the accelerator.   If you don't know, you press the pedal, the car speeds forward and there you are behind the wheel, feeling completely helpless to stop it. Even though you have the power to.

Like understanding what happens with car floor pedals, Principles-based work gives you a greater understanding of what happens when you get behind the wheel of life.  

Yet it may not be obvious what this means. I know I didn't see it. I thought I knew a great deal about humans and their motives and behavior.  It turns out I had only scratched the surface. The root of all behavior and all that we feel lies in our thinking -- in the domain of the mind.  We  think we understand our human minds.  We don't. If we truly understood the nature of the mind, we would have many, many more happy humans.

Simple Principles For A Change
It turns out that there are very simple working principles that explain how our own mind-states fluctuate, accelerate and slow down.  Just like for our clueless driver, the functions to learn are not complex, but the information is precious. 

_Misunderstanding our internal signals leads to every problem we have in life.

It has us frantically over-steering, reacting in the wrong ways and then trying to fix the problems we ourselves created by trying to control everything around us. This is very much like going to the doctor for a treatment and walking out of the office with a prescription for your neighbor. 

_Of course, our human machine looks more complex than car pedals, but how we function internally has working rules that actually are very easy to get. To learn them is to grasp THE single greatest determining factor in your quality of life.

For companies looking to increase employee performance, resiliency and wellness, this understanding constitutes the ultimate competitive advantage.  It is easy to see that employees with clear thinking processes, less emotional clutter and stress would be the definitive asset.

The work I do is often referred to as Principles-based, an "inside/out approach," "transformational coaching" or "The Three Principles work,"  Whatever the term used, the key distinction lies in that a Principles-based view always consists of looking at the inner functioning of human beings as thinking and feeling entities, for whom the overriding explanation for all our ups and downs in performance, contentment, and well-being -- lies on the inside of each of us and never in the circumstances outside of us.

The idea of looking within to understand human life is nothing new, of course.

What IS Inside /Out Work?
As a Principles-based coach, I will talk with a person about their inner world, the nature of thought and other aspects of mind and thinking functions so that we can lay a common ground about how the pedals work. We want to start off here.  Yet Principles work is not positive thinking, behavioral psychology or positive psychology.  It's also not about any kind of new brain science.  It focuses on humans as thinking/feeling beings as a whole; and the implications of that knowledge in very practical terms. I'm interested in what's practical.  And I've never found anything more practical that the rules that govern how things work.

I would describe this inside/out approach as having a basis in the following simple truths about all humans:

• we all think
• we feel whatever we think
• there's no "off switch" - we are alive and part of Life as a whole
  

This turns out to be the most practical thing you can ever learn if you are willing to examine more closely how these work in you and your life.

In fact, I'd say that anyone who's not yet completely content and peaceful about life, would benefit from spending time understanding how exactly these play out for them, very specifically, day to day. I don't want you to think of them theoretically or conceptually. Concepts are are very little use for real change. If I say to you "I saw a dog today," I'm giving you no more than a conceptual category, but you have no idea what I really saw, do you?  There's not much you can do with that.  Except know I didn't see a tree or a boat.

Principles are not theories or concepts.  Principles are of immense use. Their relevance is immediate.  I've seen people grasp these simple truths and have their stress and anxiety dissolve on the spot. 

Have You Read the Manual?
Without a good understanding of our own inner driving mechanisms, we all tend to:

•  misunderstand our feelings
•  attribute our feelings to all kinds of things outside ourselves
•  run around trying to change the way we feel in all kinds of ways that actually don't change how we feel
• forget that a new idea could arrive at any time
  

This is what I mean by using the pedals without understanding what they do. I see people everyday who are metaphorically speaking, driving with the gas and brakes on at the same time. Someone who blames a long line at Starbucks for their bad mood is showing me they do not understand that it is actually their own thoughts are coming alive in them through their own five senses.

I see people who are depressed, they are worried and can't sleep, they are eating their way through life -- they are waiting on the bank balance to go up, the child to come home or the scales to change in order to feel better. Maybe they want a coach to help.  The best thing a coach could ever do is to show them how in every human, thoughts and feelings change independently of circumstances.

It sets them free.

Truly, we do not understand how the human mechanism works. Rising divorce levels are a testament to it. Persistent stress levels are a testament to it. Continued war is a testament to it.

These things would change and will change when we begin to grasp the operating principles of the human mind. 

To work on a Principles-basis is to finally be given the manual to the human operating system that is you.

_What Changes? Only Everything.
There is compelling and well-documented evidence of just how successful a Principles-based approach is in working with others.

Research being published is demonstrating how self-perpetuating change and ripples out from a single individual to all those around them.

Books are being written about the effects of trainings on human performance -- in sports and in the boardroom. Video documentation is available on work with young offenders and there are two videos on my home page about "no hope" diagnosis for addiction, mental illness and persistent or traumatic stress and how they were overturned.

In our own CSC work in organizations we see teams cooperate more fully and work environments become more harmonious and creative after Principles-based trainings.

There isn't an athlete on the planet who doesn't know the important role that the mind plays in performance levels.

In every field of endeavor, a greater understanding of how you operate internally will help you. Tremendously.

Everyone automatically becomes a better driver when they understand the pedals.

**
To learn more about Organizational State of Mind Trainings or personal coaching using the Principles-based approach, contact me.

Please view the CSC media site or on Three Principles Movies for even more case studies, research and training links.

Whether we know it or not, we all are making our way through life with a defective operating manual for how human life works.  And as you know, the problem with an outdated instruction book, is that is doesn't match your device, so it doesn't work!

I've been having a look at what's in the manual lately. I think you may also conclude that it's about as accurate as we now consider a 100-year old medical textbook to be or a 15th Century map of the earth.

In short, you wouldn't use an old DOS manual to learn today's computers.

Of course, the operating manual for human being-ness is not something I keep in a drawer next to my bed. I don't even remember being given it, so it's a bit shocking to discover the out-dated principles it contains are playing out in my life today. 

It's too bad we don't get a new version delivered to our doors each year like phone books, because then we might see just how out of sync they are. We've really gone way too long without the necessary new edition!  

What we are trying to do is to run our brilliant and beautiful lives (our modern software) on some very old mainframes.  Breakdown seems pretty inevitable, don't you think? And you can reboot all you like, but eventually it's just going to hang there or power down.

Familiar?

We have much more information now on how humans really function, yet we've been slow to update our understanding of "How Life Works."  Have you been reading the manual lately?  Personally I'm well known for ignoring instruction manuals (and ending up in a technical twist!) 

To spare you this fate, I thought I'd lay out some of the outdated assumptions and unexamined "rules" that many of us share about what is true about the world, about people, and about life.  You may disagree with these or you may see more than these, but just to get us started here are ... 

Eight Persistent Un-Truths About How Life Works 

1. All least part of our happiness is outside of our control  

I read an article just this week on HuffingPost by a psychologist who quoted apparently well-known scientific evidence that we control only 50% of our happiness levels - the rest is controlled by the environment and our genes.

Grain of truth: We do experience ups and downs in our happiness levels which we do not fully understand.    

2. We are incomplete in some way

So, when was the last time you declared you were enough as you are?  The game of life seems to be set up as a search to find our missing pieces. Do you think it's really possible for us to lose or be missing essential parts of ourselves?  

Grain of truth: If you keep telling yourself you are inadequate you will feel that way. 

3. We are damaged by what happens to us  

We undergo physical harm and mental torture, but there are many exceptions to the rule that says we must always emerged damaged and ruined by what happens to us. This is a rule that was broken by Viktor Frankl, to name just one person

Grain of truth: Bad things do happen.  Psychological damage is not inevitable or there would be no exceptions like Frankl -- and there are many more.

4.  Some people are permanently damaged 

You might be amazed to know that you would not have to look very far to find someone who had genuinely and inexplicably recovered from the "incurable."  Here's a great place to start, listen to Bill Pettit on this video. 

Grain of truth: The body can be damaged. It will die.  Is there anything more to you than just your body?

5.  Events are the cause of what we feel inside  

If they are, how do they get in there?  If they are, why doesn't everyone feel the same way about the same event?

Grain of truth: Lots of events are totally outside our control.  Feelings are not in events, they are in humans.

6.  People can and do make us feel things we don't want to feel

Ever stopped to think if someone can really, truly, "get into your head?"    

Grain of truth: Humans do react to what others say and do.   

We may not be aware of all of the thoughts that are passing through, but what happens in our heads is always entirely our own process. 

7.  Love can be taken from us or lost  

This can only true if love is limited to a physical body. Do you think it is?

Grain of truth: A loving feeling does disappear when loving thoughts are absent.

8.  If a particular thing happens, a certain response must inevitably follow

Ever wondered if it was OK to feel happy after someone dies? Does it seem wrong to be happy when lots of people are unemployed?  These are social ideas, they are not psychological truths. "Automatic reactions" take place in a backdrop of thinking about how things are and should be.  

Grain of truth: We do have thoughts about what it is OK and not OK to feel.   

We simply have feelings that are in line with what we think.  

There are many other assumptions about how we work that we could look at one by one, but it's nice to boil them down to as simply as possible.

Let's lay out the truths so far:

• Events, people, and things cannot get inside us.
• We only experience our thoughts about events, people and things.
• Whatever thoughts are we will feel them.
• We are free to think.
• We are not free to: not experience whatever we think.
• We are not aware of every single thought that comes by 

You are not your thoughts. If you are aware of the content of your thoughts, you cannot BE the content of your thoughts.  

Shall we make it even simpler?

You think

You feel what you think

You can't NOT think  

Isn't it nice to now how the system works?  

Every morning when we wake up and look out from our two eyes into the world something happens.  We become aware that we have a body, we seem to step into that body like the crab scrambling for a shell, and then out of that body we gaze, blink, step forward, and spend our day.

We don't give this routine much consideration, so it is very easy to just assume that we are limited, confined, fragile and our sphere of influence is reduced to those we meet or talk with in any given moment.   

I think we often start our day inside a feeling of smallness. We forget that our influence is not limited to our task list, our meeting calendar or today's projects.  In truth, we are not aware of how wide we reach, how many people we touch, and most importantly, how we are transmitting beyond our shells.

In part I'm simply talking about just lifting our eyes for a moment to take in a wider view of life.  A greater awareness of the largeness of ourselves. When you do that, just briefly, right now, do you really think that you are this dinky body and nothing more?  How can you be certain that people don't remember you, think of you, care for you and are impacted by you -- in ways that you have no idea of.  In fact people right now who have never met you may have some kind of opinion of you.

Each of us has a reach that is far greater than it might seem.   

Even people, like myself, who have decided that to reach out deliberately to touch others and to be a part of moving this world forward in a loving direction, may or may not be fully aware of this all the time.

But everyone makes a difference to someone.

Everyone matters.

Everyone.

You don't have to decide to change the world and help thousands of people to be making a difference in your world right now. In fact, you couldn't NOT make a difference if you tried.

The question is, what difference are you making?  You don't have to sign up for any cause if you don't want to. But would you like that to be conscious of how impact works?

Anyone who is working for change certainly needs to. Without that awareness people try to influence in all the wrong ways, through bullying, guilt-making, pushing, forcing, and many other angry forms of activism.  Every time you've been repulsed by someone's approach to donate to their cause, you were reacting to their impact on you.  You were not reacting to the cause itself.

So, difference-makers (in other words, all of us), who are you?

Are you acting from the discomfort of your own badly-fitting shell?  Your limited perspective?  Your anger?  Your frustration?  Your blaming others for the state of the world?

I don't think any of us humans will ever be perfect, so forget being squeaky clean.  But do pay attention to who are you being.  Who you are being is not an action, it is an attitude.  Here are some ways we can see you as you transmit who you are:

-  are you opinionated or open?
-  are you a listener or are you only interested in confirming what you think?
-  are you hard with yourself, so you cannot allow yourself to forgive others?
-  are you rushing so much that you find it tough to give someone your full attention? 
-  are you reflective in a conversation, or reactive?
-  are you often thinking how other people need to change their ways and habits?
-  are you blaming the person you love for not giving you what you need?

Of course we all show up all these way sometimes.  No one is immune from being human.

Gage your true impact on others, not from your actions, but from the deeper ways in which you hold fixed opinions and views of other people.  Notice the feeling in you when you talk to someone.  What's your internal opinion?  What do you think you are really transmitting to them?  We are never transmitting words, we are transmitting US.

The smaller and more limited you feel inside you, the greater your negative impact on others -- no matter how noble your cause may be. 

You cannot replace inner shrinkage with outer expansion.  You must expand inwardly first before you can do anything effectively in the world, with your partner, children or your colleagues at work.

May you see something bigger about yourself today.   In other words, may you see something true.  Because the truth is that your shell is nothing more than the collection of all the smallest ideas you have about yourself.  Who you are could never fit into any shell. 

And knowing that makes a difference.