Following on from my introductory article on the Three Principles of Optimal Performance. This excerpt is part two from my upcoming ebook on Optimal Performance.
Our brains are always thinking, its what they to do, but we don’t have to participate in thinking that is not healthy or helpful, we can see it for what it is, let it go, not taking it seriously. Previously habituated patterns of thinking, of the stories we tell ourselves, with ego and personality, become just that, creations of ego … we see that they are not us, they are fictions of thinking and imagination.
Psychologist Dr. Keith Blevens put the Three Principles into an historic perspective when he wrote:
“William James, widely regarded as the father of psychology and its greatest writer and thinker, published his seminal work, The Principles of Psychology, in 1890. He compared the state of psychology as a science to that of physics before Galileo. James regarded his own brilliant work as exploratory but provisional. His expressed hope was that the field would eventually discover causal laws that would make possible the prediction and control of mental life.
He asserted that “such knowledge, realized on a large scale, would be an achievement compared with which the control of the rest of physical nature would be relatively insignificant” (Morris, 1950). These causal laws, these principles, are precisely what Syd Banks has somehow come to know.
Mr. Banks not only discovered these principles, he has also effectively shared this understanding with people in many walks of life, some of whom, like myself, were psychologists. But something else has happened that even William James could not have foreseen. This more-than-intellectual-understanding, as it started to come alive in others, awakened in them new and evolving levels of simple but pure presence of mind, of mental health. And for that we all will be forever grateful.”
Sydney Banks enlightenment experience came to his conscious mind from the universal mind, as he describes it, the energy and intelligence of all life.
In his personal mind, he had unconsciously and innocently lived in a reality of limitation and mental suffering, ruminating over his life experiences. Banks was an orphan who had to leave school at 14, as he described it, the story he told himself and lived in was ‘poor Syd, poor Syd’. He had been trapped in and believed his own story of limitation. His subconscious mind, full of memories of hardship, anxiety and self doubt was his space of daily living. His insight showed the illogic of this, he was walking backwards through life looking and living in the past as if it was real. Because of this he was never present with the immediate joy and freedom of the moment.
Sydney Banks’ insight and the understanding embodied in the Three Principles has opened up a new psychological paradigm to guide mental health and human performance into the future.
Implications of the Three Principles for Optimal Health and Performance
Thought Factory – we live in a thought generated reality, our brains are thought generating machines, literally a ‘thought factory’ that generates thousands of thoughts a day. Understanding the three principles allows us to see how we create our reality via thought and project that out into the world.
One Thought – We are one thought away from mental health, from peace of mind and optimal performance. One thought, one insight will change your thinking that changes your reality. That insight is not dependent on prior learning, knowledge or intellect, it is dependent on an openness, receptivity and intention to better mental health and performance. Mental health & optimal performance are about finding healthy thoughts from moment to moment.
Operating System – the Three Principles are the fundamental operating system for mental and physical life, they are not an application, they are the operating system that the software of our learnt knowledge and skills runs on. This operating system comes from universal mind and runs on wisdom and insight, a far deeper and more powerful intelligence than our personal mind of knowledge, experience and skills. Wisdom comes to us via insight and intuition.
Innate Health – the Three Principles allows us to see that mental health is our innate state. In the same way that our intelligence will automatically and innately go about the process of healing a cut, we don’t need to consciously do anything other than clean and dress the wound. When we have a mental experience that we perceive to be negative, we don’t need to dig around in the past to keep on reliving it, we take the learning from the experience and focus on healthy thoughts in the present moment.
Learning – the operating system is not a skill set. It’s important to not confuse the 3P’s with learning, the 3P’s are not a magic wand, it facilitates accelerated learning but it is not THE learning of a specific skill. It is the intelligence that our learnt intelligence and experience resides in. Understanding the 3P’s does not teach you french or spanish, to ride a bike or drive a car, it won’t remember the maths you need to pass your exam next Friday. It will help you to have a clear mind, to focus with clarity, to attend to what is happening around you rather than be distracted by ‘what if’ thinking.
Focus – ‘Distraction is the enemy of performance’, is an old coaching saying of mine. When we are present in the moment we intend, attend, act and respond to what is, rather than imaginary ‘what ifs’. We spend more time living in and performing in the present moment, when our mind is not distracted by ‘what ifs’ we see, think and act with clarity. This has incredible power as the information we receive via our senses is clearer and thus more accurate. The clarity of thinking in the moment leads to clarity of focus and decision making. What takes us out of the present moment, out of the ‘Zone of Optimal Performance’ is the distraction of anxious, erroneous or outdated thinking that creates confusing ‘what if’ thinking.
Constant Truth – The psycho-logic of the principles allows us to see how thinking works and by extension how we create our reality via ‘thought in the moment’. Thought creates our reality moment by moment, our experience of our feelings is always our experience of our ‘thought in the moment’.
Out Dated Thinking: When old, outdated thinking is seen for what it is, it falls away and then you have less on your mind, when you have less on your mind, your innate joy and sense of harmony returns to its default status.
‘What If’ Thinking – When you have less ‘past – future’ thinking going on, then you are not being distracted by anxious thinking about what may or may not happen, you experience more of the present in the moment. You act and respond in and to the moment.
Separate Realities – Life is experienced individually and uniquely, no one person can think and experience life as another. It allows for respectful communication and understanding of another persons thinking and reality. It helps us to insightfully and compassionately relate to other people, becoming less judgementmental and egotistical.
Synchronicity – Synchronising our personal mind with universal mind allows us to experience and bring harmony to our lives. Personal mind is ever changing, as our thinking changes; universal mind is constant and unchangeable. When personal mind synchronizes with universal mind, we are present in the moment, attending to what is, not what isn’t.
Clarity – when we are not distracted by imaginary thinking we experience clarity of mind, this leads to clear and precise thought and action. It allows for accelerated learning as the filters of outdated thoughts and beliefs become redundant. What you see and experience is much closer to an accurate representation of reality undiluted or distracted by past – future ‘what if’ thinking.
Demystify the Illusion – The principles clarify the misunderstanding of the first story we are typically educated into, the ‘outside – in’ myth of finding happiness through accumulating belongings, people and experiences and see that this is not possible, when the logic of the principles is applied to this myth it is seen for what it is, an illusion.
Decompress Stress – It helps us to see how the silent killer of the last and current century works, how it is a self created illness and the 3P’s offers us understanding to alleviate this. We see how stress and the perception of ‘pressure’, ‘expectation’,’worry’ and ‘self consciousness’ are created and how we can transcend this to perform with a clear mind, focused, ready and relaxed.
Free Wont – French scientist Benjamin Libet discovered that there is a window of time between when a thought is generated by the brain and when it reaches consciousness. This means the concept of free will is actually more a case of ‘free wont’, specifically when it is habituated thinking that doesn’t serve health or wellness. The principles allow that thinking to be seen for what it is, outdated or illusory thinking that no longer needs to be acted on, the choice is then to not act, or not respond to erroneous or out dated thinking.
A Sense of Humour – when thinking is seen for what it is, just thinking, an impersonal tool to steer us through life, the thinking that doesn’t serve us then falls away as it is no longer relevant. Much of it is old thinking that is outdated, seen in this light, much of it is humorous. You see outdated thinking and wonder how could I seriously have thought that! It leaves more space for joy, humour and light heartedness.
Resilience – when we move from misunderstanding to understanding how we create our reality, the illusion is seen for what it is, a shadow of our thinking. Its power falls away and is replaced by what was there all the time but unrealized, the resilience of the human spirit. Not a well that has to be drunk at for its knowledge or its power, the realization that you are the well, you are the power and that everything you thought you ever needed is actually who and what you are.
The principles allow us to see the impersonal nature of thought for what it is, allowing us to get beyond the limitation of our own personal history and experiences, values and beliefs. It is literally like being able to reset our own personal operating system back to the default factory settings. To start again with all the potentiality of a new born child with a blank canvas, yet to now be able to impersonally utilise our accumulated learning and its wisdom.
