One of the things I’m finding fascinating in my study of The 3 Principles .. as related to my personal food and weight struggles .. is the overall opposition to the use of “Techniques”.

The philosophy appears to include the way that people personally practice the 3 Principles, as well as the way that speakers present information about the 3 Principles.

Garret Kramer (see his bio below) gives some reasons for this position in the following articles.

Self-help?

Self-help. A term completely misunderstood. How can entire industry call itself one thing and deliver the exact opposite? Have you ever read a self-help book in which the author didn’t offer his or her ideas, strategies, or techniques for feeling or performing better? Me neither. And there you have it: Someone else’s ideas, strategies, or techniques might be interesting, even logical, but they come from the outside—they’re not self-help. That can only come from the inside.

Now, if you’re wondering if I’m overthinking it or you feel that my perspective is based on a mere technicality, consider this: What self-help truly is has become obscured by misinterpretation. In other words, self-help—or the innate ability for human beings to self-correct when troubled—is an unknown principle to the vast majority of people. So, regrettably, we apply the “external-help” methods of others. This requires thought, which clutters our minds and makes us feel worse.

So what about my work, or the work of my colleagues and a handful of others? What’s different about that? I’ll speak for myself. I devote my professional life to pointing people away from today’s surplus of external coping strategies and toward the power of their own psychological immune (self-help) systems. In fact, to me, it’s a coincidence when someone employs an external-help strategy and then feels better (that’s why it doesn’t happen every time). But when someone gets on with life and then self-corrects—now that’s truth.

Sure, I know that self-help is just a word used to describe a certain group of experts or a section in the bookstore. The connotation of the word, however, needs a major adjustment. Look inside for answers, people; self-help can only start there.

Six Reasons Why It’s Not a Good Idea to Use Mental Techniques

As most of you know, my work is all about teaching others the importance of allowing one’s inner wisdom and instincts to do as nature intended: clear out the mind’s clutter. The first step in making this happen is to stop using prescribed mental techniques or strategies. The six reasons why:

1. Mental techniques never lead to excellence.
The human mind is an amazing self-corrective mechanism. While an uptick in one’s performance level or happiness may appear to come from the use of a mental technique (positive thinking, analyzing one’s past, sticking to a routine, visualizing an affirmative outcome, etc.), it is actually derived from the mind’s natural ability to regulate to clarity. That’s why the use of mental techniques appears to only work sometimes.

2. Mental techniques imply that a person’s feelings come from the outside.
The only reason that a person would employ a mental technique or coping strategy is because he or she is attributing a bad feeling to a life circumstance, when, in truth, feelings can only come from inside the person. Knowing that feelings are formed from the inside-out is what activates a person’s natural resilience.

3. Mental techniques come from someone else.
The use of suggested mental strategies thwarts a person’s free will and instincts. Why? These strategies come from another person. One’s inner wisdom is the only true source of consistent peace of mind and excellence.

4. Mental techniques require thinking.
As mentioned, feelings can only come from within a person. But from where? The answer is from one’s thinking—more thinking leads to a worse feeling, less thinking leads to a better feeling. So, because the application of mental strategies requires thought, implementing these strategies eventually makes a person feel worse.

5. Mental techniques obstruct a person’s psychological immune system.
Once again, the human mind is designed to self-correct. Just like our physical immune systems keep our bodies in check; our psychological immune systems protect our minds. When we use outside fixes to remedy our feelings, however, we get in the way of this automatic process. When a person continually applies mental techniques, his or her psychological immune system becomes obstructed to the point of malfunction.

6. Mental techniques are not truth.
A mental technique is no more than someone’s idea, theory, or concept. And ideas, concepts, and theories are not truth. Here, on the other hand, is truth: Wayward feelings come from normal fluctuations of thought. Feelings are not permanent; they don’t need to be fixed. The path to long-term fulfillment is not found by applying how-to techniques. It’s found by understanding how the mind works.

About Garret Kramer:
Garret Kramer is the founder of Inner Sports. He has provided mental conditioning, consulting, and crisis management services to hundreds of athletes, coaches, and business leaders; from well-known professionals, Olympians, and teams, to collegiate players across a multitude of sports. Credited with bringing the principles of Mind, Consciousness, and Thought to the athletic community at large, Garret has been featured on or in: WFAN, ESPN, FOX, NPR. The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Sports Illustrated, and Forbes. He is the author of Stillpower: Excellence with Ease in Sports and Life, (2012) and The Path of No Resistance: Why Overcoming is Simpler than You Think. (July 2015)

A Craving is a feeling that we’ve attached an action to.  The video at the bottom of this article is of former addict, Lucy Bainbridge, and therapist, Elaine Hilides, sharing a 3 Principles perspective on Addiction and Cravings.

For those people who are interested in learning more about Elaine Hilides, … as part of my Diet Hobby, I purchased and read Elaine Hilides book, Mindfullness The No-Diet Diet Book (2013), quite some time ago, before becoming interested in the 3 Principles concept. At the time of my first reading, I judged the book to be okay, but rather ordinary and unimpressive.

Because I was impressed by the video interview below - which I discovered during my current study of the 3 Principles as related to my struggle with dieting and weight control. Because the interview impressed me, I re-read Elaine Hilides book to see if had overlooked something that might be personally helpful.

Upon my second reading, I found that the book starts with an interesting 3 Principles approach to weight-control before it jumps into a presentation of the author’s own dietary personal beliefs - which are presented as factual truths. The author’s beliefs include specific techniques and guidelines involving intuitive eating, behavior modification, and eating primarily “real” non-processed food.

A common 3 Principles saying is that “we feel our thinking”, and of course, my own thinking is often about weight issues. Therefore, I was interested in the following ideas.

You have a story, and idea, about yourself, your weight and your eating and you believe that your story is real, although this is an illusion because YOU created the story.

We all fall into the illusion that the feelings we experience about our weight and food problems are real. But we all experience reality through our own filters and perceptions, and we create our reality moment by moment by whatever we are thinking at that moment.

Yes, the chair you’re sitting in is real, but your experience of the chair might be different to someone else’s experience of that chair. You might think the chair is comfortable but another person might disagree. The chair exists, but it is your thoughts about the chair that creates your experience of it your reality, your story.

Each of us is living in our own version of reality. Think back to your Christmas Day celebration. Each person who was present will have a different story about that event. Once you recognize that you are telling yourself a story, you can see that thought is a vehicle you use to create your story and your reality.

Repeating your old, tired story of why you do what you do, limits you and keeps you stuck in the same place.

There is nothing to re-learn. You just have to remember what you already know. It’s a simple approach. There are no complicated techniques to remember or affirmations to repeat. There is nothing to do or apply, it is “is” in the same way that you walk and breathe.

This new and simple paradigm is not about changing your thoughts with positive thinking and positive affirmations.

It points you to an understanding of what thought is and how you can use the power of thought to free yourself from making unhelpful food choices and then beating yourself up over that choice.

Many have lost their way by thinking that they can’t change and so “why try?”

You have the magic in you. You have free will. Life isn’t happening to you. The more you remember that external situations, food or circumstances have no power over you, the more freedom you have.

You can have the freedom to have a wonderful relationship with food by rediscovering your own innate health, and letting go of the thoughts that are causing the bad feeling you have about your weight.

When you get into a thought storm about your weight, your mind is full and noisy, and clinging to a diet sheet ... as if that is the answer ... only adds to your thinking and muddles your mind even more. You already have the answer. When you allow your thoughts to quiet down, your mood shifts which gives you space to allow new thoughts in.

Unfortunately, the remainder of the book is similar to most diet or "non-diet" books, in that it consists of the author sharing her specific personal dietary beliefs as if they were an Ultimate Truth.

Ms. Hilides’ message is that one can regain health by choosing the “right” foods in order to keep the body running optimally while paying close attention to one’s thoughts, which are the driving force behind every decision made about what one allows oneself to eat.

While the author indicates that people should follow their body's own personal wisdom in order to be guided toward energy and health, that message is contradicted by the prevalence of specific recommendations to embrace and follow the author’s own personal dietary beliefs.

  Despite the fact that I do not personally embrace the author's dietary preferences nor her dietary recommendations, I found the 3 Principle perspectives on Addiction and Cravings, as shown in the video below, to be valuable enough to be included here in my digital scrapbook, DietHobby.