The Three Principles related to addictions and habits

Hey, it's Mary Shiller, and I am happy to be with you today. I had a little bit of a technical glitch, and I figured out what I needed to do, so here I am. So if you happen to be joining me live here in the Mind Yoga Spa group on Facebook, just give me a little shout out, um, by liking this video or posting a comment. Or, uh, just saying hi. And if you're joining me via recording, that's fantastic too. Please feel free to comment. So again, my name is Mary Shiller. I am the author of two books, The Joy Formula and Mind Yoga. I'm also a transformative coach, and I base everything that I write and coach people in on something called the three principles, as originally expressed by Sydney Banks. And in this particular conversation that we're having today, I'd like to chat for a few minutes about the Three Principles related to addiction. Hi, Lori, good to see you here. Um, so this comes up a lot, actually, this question about how the Three Principles can help people with addiction and also with habits that they don't particularly want to have anymore. Oh, I'm turned sideways? Uh-oh. Thanks, Laurie. Let's see, how's this? Is that better? This has been really funny today. This technology is lovely, but when it goes wrong, it can be pretty hilarious. So let me start by saying that I am not a specialist in addiction. I am a coach, but since the 3 principles that we talk about are universal, it's very easy to see how they relate to things like addictive behavior and habits that we would prefer to not have anymore. You know, there's a quote that's attributed to Sydney Banks I didn't hear him say it personally since I was not able to hear him speak personally, but it says something like, if the only thing people learned was not to be afraid of their experience, that alone would change the world. And I personally find that phrase, that sentence, to be incredibly powerful, especially as it relates to things like addictive behavior and habitual behavior. Because really, if you stop to think about what those behaviors are trying to do, they are trying to change our experience in some way. They're trying to alleviate some pain that we have. They're trying to— a behavior like, I mean, it could be anything from drinking too much alcohol to overeating to smoking to shopping, all kinds of things. People have all kinds of ways of trying to escape their experience, and that's one reason why that sentence by Sydney Banks resonates so much with me. I'll say it again: if the only thing that people learned was not to be afraid of their experience, that alone would change the world. And the reason why I find that so helpful to remember is because as human beings, we seem to have this idea that that our experience is supposed to be something other than what it already is. So we experience some kind of feeling, we decide that we don't like that feeling, and we decide that we need to get rid of that feeling or change it somehow. And that in and of itself itself is an innocent mistake that we're making. And the principles are very helpful in showing us that because they reveal to us that any experience we're having is simply coming from any thought that is going through our mind at any given time. It's not coming from something on the outside. So there is nothing on the outside that we're ever having to cope with. It's always coming from momentary— keyword, momentary— thought. And I think when people are addicted to something or have some habitual behavior that's trying to take them out of their experience, they are confused about where that experience is coming from. First of all, they think it's something on the outside of them that they can't control, and so they try to escape that in some way. Or if they do have the sense that it's coming from their own thoughts, they try to do something to alter that thinking, to change it quickly. And all of that, unfortunately, has the opposite effect of what people desire because they're missing a very key piece, which is that thought is designed to change on its own if we do nothing to try to change it. And also, of course, our natural state, as the principles point to, is one of well-being. So if we understand that, if we understand that if I can do nothing to— if I not can do nothing, but if I understand that I need do nothing to alter my state, my state will change on its own and it will naturally go back to that set point of well-being. I often make the analogy of people who have an addictive behavior or a habitual behavior, that it's like going to the dentist if you have a broken leg. So, for example, if you are trying to feel better by smoking, that is not going to help you feel better because your feelings are coming from momentary thought. So I'm not really sure how smoking a cigarette is going to affect momentary thought. It isn't. It's the same with any behavior that we're doing as in an attempt to change whatever we're feeling. There is no connection between the two things. There's— hi, Patricia, thank you. There's no connection between an outer behavior and our feelings. It just doesn't work that way. So it's really a result of people being confused about what is influencing what here. So let me just do a brief recap of what I've said so far. Hi, Laurie. Laurie says, my state takes a really long time to change sometimes, and that gets frustrating, which I know is another layer of thought. Oh, that's a great point. So why do you think that is? Why do you think your state of mind takes a really long time to change sometimes? Well, partly it refers back to what I said at the beginning, which is that statement that Sydney Banks made about not being afraid of our experience. So if we find ourselves in a state of mind that we don't like, most of us go into some form of panic mode. It can be a lot of panic, or it can be a little bit of panic. So we then, like you said, Laurie, we add another layer of thought on top of that, which is now we're worried about this state of mind that we're in, and we're worried about how long it's going to last. And then oftentimes when we get in that state, we reach for something on the outside to try to fix it. We reach for food. We reach for a cigarette. We reach for alcohol. Patty says, and the panic escalates. So, right. So we're essentially creating these layers upon layers upon layers of thought, and we're only creating more turmoil for ourselves when in fact If we can see at the very beginning that there is nothing to be fearful of, whatever we are experiencing, and that in fact, not even being fearful of, but actually appreciating the fact that we have this human being experience and all these amazing emotions I mean, I used to be very afraid of my post-traumatic stress disorder types of thoughts and feelings. It used to terrify me, literally terrify me. I would go into major panic mode. I would try to do anything to try to escape that feeling, and I couldn't seem to do it. It just made it worse. What changed everything for me was realizing that there wasn't anything for me to be afraid of at all. That I could sit with whatever feeling I had. I could appreciate the fact that I was having a feeling at all. I could recognize that it was coming from momentary thought and nothing more, that I didn't have to worry about because it would change on its own. And before I knew what was going on, the feeling would pass. So I really want to emphasize that piece of this equation. That idea that we don't have to be afraid of our experience because it's coming from momentary thought. And in fact, we can appreciate that experience because it lets us know we're alive. It lets us know that we are human beings here having this amazing life experience. Why would we ever want to stifle that? And the other thing is, and I kind of alluded to this earlier, that we make this assumption that we're supposed to be having a different kind of experience. We make this assumption that it is somehow bad to have a panicky feeling inside. We make this assumption that it's bad to feel sad, and we put all of this judgment on these thoughts/feelings that we have, and if instead we could just see that they are part of a huge continuum that human beings have been gifted with, and that really when we allow ourselves to feel those fully is when we're truly free. I often liken feelings to waves. You know, I see something like addictive or habitual behavior as an attempt to hold back a wave with your arms. And instead, if you would allow the wave of whatever the feeling is to wash over you, it would then, you know, crash into the shore and peter out. And then you know, go back out into the ocean and leave you be for a while. And for me, it's been incredibly powerful and freeing to understand that that is simply how human beings operate. There is nothing wrong with feeling any way at all, and also understanding that nothing I reach for on the outside has any connection whatsoever to the way that I feel. I know that it can really look that way, and some people might say, well, you know, if I have a cigarette or if I eat something, you know, it has a physiological effect, and that may be true. However, I think some of you might agree with me that The mind has a lot more power over our physiology than we might realize. And I personally believe that the effect of all of those things is more psychological than physiological. And it just so happens, perhaps, that a change of thought comes in at the same time. It's also interesting to realize, in thinking about food for example, I spoke with a woman about a year or so ago who had problems with eating too much. She said, "You know, I like eating certain foods because they remind me of when I was a kid and I feel happy when I eat them." I said to her, "You realize that those feelings you have are not coming from the food, right? Like, food cannot transmit a feeling to you. That the memories you're having are coming from within yourself, not from the food that you're eating. And she had never really seen it that way before. So if you find yourself, you know, struggling in that way, you might stop to consider the fact that you can have all the feelings like that that you want, and simply by being who you are. That it's not a function of a device or a substance. It's simply a function of being a human being. So I really love this discussion because it really points out the fact that these three principles are showing us how this human being system of ours works. And if we can simply allow it to work the way that it's designed to work, we will always, always, always 100% of the time come back to that set point of well-being. It's when we assume that we need to do something to intervene and make it happen faster, when we assume that there's something wrong with the way that we're feeling, and so we need to reach for something out here to fix it, that's when we start to get ourselves into trouble. There is so much freedom and so much power in this understanding, and it has been shown over and over again to be incredibly effective with people who have addictive behavior. As a final point here, there are several movies on the website called 3principlesmovies.com related to addiction, and there's one of a young gentleman who was addicted to heroin, and he goes into a Three Principles-based treatment program, and he says it became so obvious to him that he didn't have a heroin problem He had a thinking problem. And what I interpreted that to mean was he didn't understand the relationship between his thoughts and his experience. He didn't understand that nothing outside of him was going to change his experience, that that was only going to happen via a change in thought. And really, like I said earlier, it was like going to the dentist with a broken leg. The two things just are not correlated at all. There, I think Michael Neal says something like, there aren't enough cookies in the world to make you feel better. And that's absolutely true because feeling better comes from within. And luckily for us, feeling good is our natural state. So if we just wait out the feeling that we're not particularly comfortable with, not worry about it, not be concerned, just know that it's part of this continuum that human beings are on, these waves of thoughts and feelings, that's just what human beings do, then we will return to that feeling of well-being much, much faster. So I hope this short talk has been helpful to you. I apologize for the delay in getting started. I appreciate you as well as if you've joined on the replay. So please feel free to post any questions and comments, and I'm happy to talk about this subject again, as I know that it's very important for a lot of people who have people in their lives who have addiction problems, or if you yourself have a problem with addiction, or even just a habitual behavior that you'd like to be rid of. Thank you, Patty. I appreciate that. And I know, you know, it sounds really easy maybe when I say all of this, and it may not look so easy in practice. But what I would encourage you to do, no matter what you yourself are dealing with, the next time you have a feeling that you don't particularly like, just see what happens if you don't worry about it. If you can see, kind of zoom the camera back. Here, I'll zoom back. Zoom the camera back and see yourself simply as a human being who's having this human being experience, the ups and downs that are normal in that. And let me know what happens. Okay, take good care, and I will talk to you again very, very soon. Thank you so very much for watching. Bye-bye now.