In short, 3P is the description of how we all - from moment to moment - create our own personal reality through our thinking. In other words, we create all our experiences within ourselves, even if it feels like they are created and imposed on us by things outside of ourselves.
It's also the theory of how we are all completely healthy and equipped with an inner compass to guide us. And how all our experiences, including our emotions, are innocently created by our own creative thoughts. And how those thoughts can sometimes get in the way of us listening to our inner compass.
If you need 'a few' more words, it can be explained like this:
3P is a psychological paradigm. A way of understanding our psychological structure (our design).
Over the years I have worked with different frameworks, but never before have I come across one that made so much sense and was so effective in helping people feel better. One that really helps people to (re)find their peace, joy and inner health.
So it was only natural for me to join the Danish frontrunners who are introducing the three principles in Denmark. It would actually be impossible for me not to, because after understanding how our design works, I can't un-understand it. It's a bit like once you've discovered that something crazy and incomprehensible was just a magic trick, you can't experience it again like you did before you knew it was a trick. No matter how hard you try.
3P is based on three fundamental assumptions:
1) Life is experienced from the inside-out.
In other words, we each create our own perceived reality based on the thoughts our brain is producing at that moment.
In fact, we can only experience life through a filter of our own thoughts - like looking at landscapes with a pair of colored sunglasses on, or through binoculars that distort the image.
And our emotions are a reaction to the distorted image. A reaction to our thoughts.
But (and this is the biggest trick of life that we constantly fall for) it FEELS like that distorted image is reality. Like it's my neighbor being stupid and making me angry, or my boyfriend making me sad when he forgets our anniversary.
It FEELS as if the different things in reality create all these thoughts and feelings inside me, i.e. that life is experienced from the outside-in - but in reality it's the other way around, life is experienced from the inside-out: All the thoughts and feelings inside me create my perceived reality.
My experienced reality that is registered, or observed if you will, by my consciousness.
Reality is neutral, it just IS. Life happens (period) It is our thoughts that value-load and create meaning, and in this way we create our own reality - which is experienced as anything but neutral. But which at the same time is only our own private reality - at the exact moment we experience it. Other people and other moments have other realities.
Luckily, our thoughts are ever-changing. If we don't put energy into holding on to them, they change automatically. Our state of mind and mood changes and suddenly the world looks completely different.
I can look at my teenage son one moment and wonder how I could have such a self-absorbed, lazy and rude child, and the next moment I can look at him and wonder how I could have such a loving, caring, fun and determined child.
And he's exactly the same - it's just my thoughts about him that have changed.
Or I can look in the mirror one morning and see an old, flabby, boring wife with cellulite and 15 kilos too much on her side, and the next day I can look in the same mirror and see a fucking hot sexy ass with feminine curves and radiance. And I KNOW that my physique doesn't change that much from day to day - but my thoughts do, and thus my perceived reality, my 'truth'
The great thing is that when we know this is how our system works, we don't have to take it so seriously. When I experience my son as annoying, I know that it's just my experience right there, and the same when I experience myself as fat and hopeless. It's just a snapshot. I don't have to hold on to it or do anything about it - I don't have to panic or turn into Ms. Fix-it
That doesn't mean we should just sit back and do nothing. That we should sit back and say everything is fine. It just means we shouldn't let our thoughts throw us around in the merry-go-round.
because luckily, we all have an innate inner compass to guide us in life. And that's the second fundamental assumption of 3P:
2) We all have innate mental health
It can also be called an inner compass that is always there, always trying to guide us, even in those moments when our thoughts are so loud that we don't think we can hear anything but them. Peace and happiness reside within us, it's our natural state, and when we don't move away from it, it's there.
When I stop brooding over an unfairness, I feel better. When I let go of all the worried thoughts, I feel better. When I stop trying to anticipate every upcoming challenge, I feel better. When I stop analyzing what went wrong last summer, I feel better. When I stop thinking about how much I need to be satisfied, I will be satisfied.
Our system doesn't really want to spend energy on being restless, so it's always looking for our inner peace and happiness, but our thoughts can lead us astray. You could say that we should look for peace and happiness in all sorts of places other than where the peace actually is - which is inside ourselves, behind our thoughts. And the more we struggle around trying to find peace, the further away we get from it.
Only when we stop the struggle, let go of the thoughts and trust that it's there, can we feel it.
We don't have a word for this inner health in the Danish language, which is why we hear it referred to in many different ways: life force, soul, wisdom, your nature, heart, inner compass, gut feeling, common sense, inner core, my true self, inner voice and many, many more terms. But no matter which term is used, it all points to the same thing: The part of you that is always trying to guide you towards a better life. A life at peace.
In the same way that trees seek the light (even if it requires them to grow in all sorts of crooked ways) and birds migrate south - not because they have sat down and reflected on whether it might be a good idea, but simply because their life force guides them, in the same way we have an inner compass that guides us. But unlike birds and trees, we also have an intellect that can get in our way.
And make no mistake, our intellect is a gift that makes us capable of many great things. It's just not the right tool to use as a guide in life.
A bit like how a hedge trimmer is a great tool for trimming a hedge, but not so useful for mixing dough for a cake. Sure, it can be used - the result just isn't as good and there's a hell of a lot of cleaning afterwards.
When we start listening to our wisdom, our inner compass, instead of our intellect, we will find that everything becomes simpler, that life seems to flow more easily. We start working WITH life, instead of AGAINST it. We can see that there is nothing at stake. Everything that our intellect, our ego made a fuss about, wasn't that dangerous or that big.
And the things that are actually important are now in a clearer light, we can see them better because our thoughts aren't so noisy and distracting. Because our drama brain isn't allowed to pull all sorts of unimportant details into our field of vision and make us believe that they are important. And therefore, because we're calm, we're also much better able to see what we need to do. We're no longer fumbling around in a fog of thought, trying to find our way. We see the path. Loud and clear.
And it was always there, we just had to dare to let go of our thoughts, let go of the anxious need to control in order to see it.
Sometimes we get so overwhelmed by negative thoughts and emotions that we feel like we're going to die. And when we feel this way, it can feel like we've lost our inner health. That we're broken, that we're no longer ourselves. That we've lost our compass and can no longer find our way. Our state of mind is at rock bottom and it feels like we can never get back up.
But, just as the sun and blue skies aren't broken or lost forever just because it's cloudy, in the same way our health and compass aren't lost just because we can't feel it.
And when we find ourselves in these situations (because sometimes we do, no matter how much we understand our design), it's about stopping and acting from where we are.
If it's cloudy, it doesn't make sense to go to the beach to sunbathe, or to go around like crazy and try to wave the clouds away, or to be angry and complain that the clouds are there because they shouldn't be. No, what makes sense is to accept that this is the way it is right now, then we can light candles and sit down with a movie and a cup of coffee. And then it doesn't matter that it's cloudy. We know it will pass again.
And it's the same with our mental state, but unlike the physical weather, the clouds of our mind (thoughts) are actually impressionable. The more we just let them be, the faster they disappear, and the more we fight against them and refuse to accept them, the more they multiply.
It's a paradox.
I once had a cat that was always jumping up and trying to get attention from people who didn't like cats, and completely ignored those who wanted to talk to it. I think the clouds of our minds are a bit like that cat.
3) What we are is constant.
The last assumption is the assumption of who we are:
Because we are not what we say, what we do or what we think.
We are not what we look like or what others think of us.
We are not our attitudes, our traits or our temperament.
We're not even what we think we are.
What we are is different from anything that can be changed. What we are is constant.
What we are is what registers that we are thinking and feeling. We are not the one who looks, we are the one who sees.
In 3P we call it consciousness, but we could also call it observing self, soul or anything else.
And it's that awareness, that understanding of what we are, that I'm referring to when I say I can't break.
My thoughts can become very inappropriate at times and make me feel like everything is shit. And I might feel like I've gone completely off the rails and fear that I'm completely broken. But, it's just an experience my consciousness is having right at that moment, based on the thoughts I'm about to take seriously, thoughts that fortunately will change when I no longer hold on to them.
And no matter what experiences my thoughts subject my consciousness to - no matter how miserable I feel - my consciousness is always the same and completely undamaged.
When working from this understanding, it becomes pointless to 'process' the past, or to think that I as a therapist should fix my clients. I can't fix anyone, how could I - they're not even broken. What I can do is point to people's own inner health, help shift attention away from the tyranny of thoughts and towards a greater understanding of our design. Helping to create the calmness needed to better hear our own wisdom. Once that's in place, the system will take care of the rest.
Want to learn more about how you can use 3P to make your life easier? Then buy my book: A New Way of Life - From Overthinking to Wisdom