Author, therapist and coach Lori Carpenos has seen that what affects our relationships the most is our state of mind. When the couples she works with see that ‘working on’ their relationship is not the answer to a loving relationship, that’s when everything changes. Lori Carpenos opened a private individual, couples and family counseling practice, in 1994, to pass along something she had stumbled upon in 1985, when she was privileged to meet the late Sydney Banks. As a result, her life changed in ways she could never have imagined at that time. She maintains a private practice in West Hartford, CT as a therapist, life coach, business consultant, facilitator, and writer. You can find Lori Carpenos at 3PrinciplesTherapy.com. You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below. Show Notes * Starting out as an art teacher * Resonating with Sydney Banks’ exploration of innate mental health * On recognizing that ‘working’ on a relationship only makes things harder * How we all fall back into love when our minds are quiet * Getting on the wrong bus with our thinking but knowing we can choose a different ride * How we all always have all the love we need within us * How arguments originate from our state of mind * On being single and our relationship to thought about that * How we are all in relationship with our thinking Transcript of Interview with Lori Carpenos Alexandra: Lori Carpenos, welcome to Unbroken. Lori: Oh, thank you, Alexandra. It’s nice to be with you. Alexandra: It’s great to have you here. I’m so happy to meet you. Tell us a bit about your background and how you came to find the Three Principles. Lori: Well, they actually found me. It was quite by happenstance. I’d never heard of Sydney Banks, never heard of the three principles. I was an art teacher in Massachusetts, and I got a master’s in expressive arts therapy. I had this idea I wanted to do art therapy. And the place for that was California. So I was 25 years old, and I decided to quit my tenured art teacher job. Much to the dismay of my parents. They tried to stop me. But I felt called in retrospect, when I realized it was not to be an art therapist, because I’m driving across the country. Because California was known as the land of New Thought and new things. And art therapy was supposedly really big. I get halfway across. And I’m listening to a program, NPR, where they’re talking about a bill that had just passed in California, eliminating art, music, all the extra curricular activities in hospitals, schools, and I couldn’t believe it. It was like I was hearing something that was not true. And I’m thinking well, I’m halfway there. I already quit my job. I don’t have a job back on the east coast. So what do I do? I decided to keep going. I didn’t have a job. I knew one person in Northern California where I was headed to. No job, a cocktail waitress with my master’s degree my pocket...

In instances where our bodies and our innate wisdom are speaking to us, it can be tempting to see those messages as problems. But when we see them for the wisdom they carry and stay open to the messages these ‘problems’ have for us, we begin to see that they are always trying to help us on our paths as human beings. You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below. Show Notes * When a good sleeper encounters a bout of insomnia * Discovering insightfully that is people pleasing tendencies keeping me awake * How insomnia does not mean that I’m broken or that my ability to sleep is broken * How insomnia, like overeating, is feedback about our mental state * What is insight and how does it arrive? * On the universal intelligence that is always flowing through all of us Transcript of episode Hello explorers and welcome to Q&A episode 50 of Unbroken. I’m Alexandra Amor. Before we get started today, I want to have a little mini celebration with you. Because this is q&a Episode 50. That means there are 100 episodes have Unbroken now. 50 episodes like this q&a one and 50 interview episodes. I’m pretty happy and proud of that milestone and I thank you for being with me here along for the ride, however long you’ve been joining me. It’s a real pleasure for me to be here to do this every week, and to share what I see with the aim of helping others, of supporting and uplifting and sharing what has made such a big huge difference in my life. So here’s to another 100 episodes. I aim to be around for the next year as well. February 14, 2024 will be the one year anniversary of the current website and the Freedom From Overeating course and Unbroken podcast. So we’ll celebrate that as well. Today’s q&a episode is going to involve a bit of a story. I’m also going to give you some background to give some context for what I’m about to share. And this story today has to do with insight, it has to do with our unbrokenness, which is really nice given that this is the 100th episode. So let’s get started. I’ll begin by telling you that about towards the end of 2023, October or November, there came a situation. I should back up a little further. I’m on the board or I was on the board of a little nonprofit that exists here in the town where I live. It’s a nonprofit housing society, independent living for seniors in the Ucluelet area. I’ve been on the board for a couple of years. And there’s one paid position in this organization. And the building is just a small, like, it looks like an apartment building. It has 10 apartments, all for seniors. And it’s independent living, like I said, so everybody is independent. They really don’t need any kind of assistance with mental health or physical chores or that kind of thing. Some of them can get care workers to come in, but 80% 90% of them don’t. It’s like an apartment building. And there’s one paid position. And it’s an administrative position that is 15 hours a week in the building. The woman who had been doing it was of retirement age. And also, she had been with the organization for five years and had brought the people,

Nikon Gormley had achieved success as a top-level athlete, but he was still searching for answers. He wanted to feel calm during his taekwondo matches so he began looking in all the usual places. It wasn’t until he discovered the Three Principles that things began to click into place for him. Now he coaches others about the innate resilience and well-being that we all possess. Nikon Gormley is passionate about guiding people to unleash their true, full potential so that they can experience greater levels of success, purpose, and well-being in their lives. He helps people understand and experience the beauty of how their minds work, harness the power of insight to navigate life with more clarity and ease and achieve more with less struggle, less anxiety, and less pressure. Nikon is also passionate about Taekwondo. He have been practising Taekwondo for 25+ years and has a 5th Dan Black Belt. He has trained and competed around the world as an elite athlete. You can find Nikon Gormley at NikonGormley.com and on YouTube @nikongormley. You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below. Show Notes * Training as an Olympic taekwondo athlete * Searching for ways to be a better athlete * Growing a business at its own pace, rather than out of insecurity * When the habit of being discontented stops being interesting * How our feelings are always guiding us home * How ‘nobody gets stupid when they’re peaceful’ * On the nature of worry and its origin in thought * Choosing what we pay attention to * How ambition can be insecurity in disguise Resources Mentioned in this Episode * Michael Neill’s book The Inside Out Revolution * Mavis Karn’s book It’s That Simple * Listen to my interview with Mavis Transcript of Interview with Nikon Gormley Alexandra: Nikon Gormley, welcome to Unbroken. Nikon: Thank you for having me, Alexandra. It’s pleasure to be here. Alexandra: It’s so nice to have you here. Tell us a little bit about your background and how you discovered the Three Principles. Nikon: My background started as a taekwondo athlete, as a young boy, as a martial art taken as a Korean martial art. And being called the athlete side of it, right, there’s a martial art side of it. And there’s an athlete side of it, because it was the Olympic sport in Thailand, it’s just very popular, we have it in our national Olympics, or we can get University scholarship scholarships for it. I started when I was 12. And I played for about 20 years. And being in a sport, you develop this thing where you just want to be better, you get obsessed with yourself not being good enough, and you get obsessed with wanting to be better. And apart from doing everything I physically could to be better and training, I knew I had to work on my mind.

When we’re looking to change an overeating habit we can innocently get caught up in the noise in our heads that talks about diet plans and strategies for mastering new habits and willpower. Alternatively, what creates real change – including dropping an unwanted habit – is learning to pay attention to the ‘signal’ that is available to all of us. That signal is universal intelligence and it’s built into us and it’s also built into our unwanted habits themselves. You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below. Show Notes * Looking in a different place for answers to things like an unwanted habit * Paying less attention to the noise of our personal thinking * Relying on universal intelligence, wisdom and insight to help us change * Practising learning to listen to signal rather than noise * How our unwanted habits are feedback about the noise we’re listening to Resources Mentioned in this Episode * Michael Neil * Book: It’s Not About The Food * Q&A Episode 44 Transcript of Episode Hello explorers, and welcome to Q&A Episode 49 of Unbroken. I’m Alexandra Amor. I’m here today with some comments, a discussion, an exploration about the signals that we receive versus the noise that’s going on within us, and how that this can affect an overeating habit and resolving that habit and weight loss and all those yummy things. I’ve been thinking about change a lot lately in my personal life, and I do, of course, all the time. Specifically, I’ve been thinking about change, because I’ve been feeling a little bit stuck. I think I might talk about that in more detail on a future Q&A episode. But it’s just this feeling of having resolved sort of 98% of my overeating habit. And the residue that’s left the sticky stuff at the bottom of a cup when you’re having – I don’t drink coffee, but I think sometimes if you’re drinking coffee, the sort of the sludge at the bottom is thicker than what you’ve been drinking. That happens for me when I drink hot chocolate. So the chocolate at the bottom of the cup is always a little thicker than everything else. I’ve been contemplating that. And because of that, I’ve been thinking a lot about what I’m going to share on today’s episode. This came up during a conversation with Nikon Gormley, and he’s going to be on the show next week, February 7, I think, or 8th or whatever the Thursday is. And he brought up this metaphor that Michael Neill talks about, which is a metaphor for change. It’s a metaphor for what’s happening within us. It’s a metaphor for paying attention to the spiritual nature of ourselves, rather than just paying attention to our personal thinking, all that kind of thing. I wanted to talk about this because I think it’s really important to see the differentiat...

Psychologist and author, Dr. Gail Brenner, shares about the healing power of being present and compassionate with whatever is going on within us. And how when we begin to recognize that there is no ‘out there’ in our lives – there is only our perception – that we begin to suffer less. Gail Brenner’s interest in suffering and the end of suffering is long standing. Like you, she just wanted to be happy. She put together a functional life of work and friends, but was continually plagued by anxiety, confusion, and relationship troubles. In her search for peace, she came across spiritual teachings about the nature of happiness. And she made some life-changing discoveries including that the more she became disinterested in thoughts—any thoughts—the happier she was. You can find Dr. Gail Brenner at GailBrenner.com. You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.  Show Notes * How meditation can teach us to be with our experience * Having compassion for everything that arises within us * How believing what the mind tells us can be a source of suffering * Welcoming and relating to all the different parts of ourselves with out judging them * How we can get stuck on the path of healing * How happiness is our natural state * How peace never leaves us, we simply place our attention on other things that we believe cause us suffering * The feeling of separation that is at the root of trauma * How there is no life ‘out there’; there is only what we perceive Resources Mentioned in this Episode * Rumi poem: The Guest House Transcript of Interview with Dr. Gail Brenner Alexandra: Dr. Gail Brenner, welcome to Unbroken. Gail: Thank you. Very happy to be here. Alexandra: I’m happy to have you here. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about your background and how you came to realize you didn’t need self-help? Gail: My background, how far back should I go? I’ll just start professionally. I’m a psychologist, and I’ve been a psychologist for a long time. It’s a profession that drew me many years ago. We heal ourselves as therapists or practitioners, and as much as we help other people. So I think that was part of my motivation early on. My training was pretty conventional. And then things started really moving and shifting and changing for me, when I started meditating. This was about a little over 20 years ago at this point. I had been in therapy myself for a very long time, and didn’t at this point, I can say, I didn’t get a lot of change from that, that I was looking for. So I kept looking. I had this spirit in me of like, well, there’s got to be something else out there to help with the way that I my version of suffering. I started meditating. And that really started changing everything, because of the way meditation teaches us to be with our experience. So to be aware of what’s arising in us; sensations, emotions, whatever it is. And when I first started meditating,

In this excerpt from It’s Not About the Food I share a story about the surprising thing I learned at an Equus training and how it impacts the drive to overeat. Learn more about the book here. You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.  Transcript of this episode It is early autumn 2014 and I’m standing in a covered outdoor riding arena. Beyond the open walls I can see the California sunshine warming the desert landscape. Here inside, it’s a bit chilly in the early morning, and I’m wishing I’d worn a light jacket.
 The arena is huge, probably nearly the length of a football field and almost as wide. The ground is covered in brown dirt, and where the sun comes past the walls into the building, I can see dust motes floating in the beams. Within the larger arena, there’s a temporary round pen that’s about 40 feet in diameter. I’m inside that pen and I’m not alone. With me is a brown and white horse, whose name I didn’t catch, and we’re going to spend the next few minutes bonding. 
I’m here at ‘horsey camp,’ as I call it, in my latest attempt to try to heal the drive to overeat. I’ve flown from Vancouver, British Columbia, to very Southern California and spent money I don’t have in order to spend two days doing what’s called Equus training.
 I love horses and grew up around them. My dad started me taking riding lessons when I was about four years old. So this is a comfortable and happy place for me. However, we’re not doing any riding this weekend. I and the other ten or so women in the class will all be doing our work from the ground. Which is why I’m standing in the round pen with a paint horse.
 Over the next two days, we all take turns in the round pen with a variety of horses. The premise of the training is that we’re going to learn about ourselves by being in the pen with a horse, both by seeing how we react to different situations and also by seeing how the horses react to us. Horses are highly intuitive and sensitive creatures. Though they are large, they are prey animals, not predators, so they’ve evolved to be keenly sensitive to their environments and to changes in the energy around them. As such, they give immediate feedback about a person’s state of being, often pointing out patterns of behavior that we aren’t aware of.
 The objective of the first exercise we do is to get the horse to trot, or canter, around the outside edge of the round pen. Individual trainees like me stand in the very center of the pen and encourage the horse to move without shouting or running at it. You might have a coiled lead rope in one hand that you can gently slap against your leg, but that’s all the guidance you can give to the large animal looking at you with wary eyes. You’re essentially moving the horse with your energy. Letting it know what you want it to do by holding the intention in your mind and being clear and calm. (We’ll get to why calmness matters in a minute.) 
I’ve traveled to this foreign land, crossed an international boundary, rented a car, and booked a hotel with the hope that this silent, brown and white animal with pointy ears and a soft muzzle will show me what’s wrong with me. I want to know why I feel so broken inside and why, no matter what I do,

When coach, speaker and author Jack Pransky first heard about the changes happening in the community of Modello, Florida, he knew he had to find out more. Pretty quickly he ended up writing a book about Roger Mills’ work using the Three Principles in that community, which was radically changing lives. Since then he’s written several books about the understanding, including its history, and he continues to be passionate about sharing its simplicity and impact. Dr. Jack Pransky is a Three Principles Author, Trainer and Practitioner: a Coach of Coaches and a Counselor of Counselors. Jack is a national and international consultant, speaker, and author who has worked in the field of prevention and community organizing since 1968. You can find Jack Pransky at InsideOutUnderstanding.com and on Facebook at Jack Pransky. You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.  Show Notes * Jack’s book Modello about a housing project near Miami and its turnaround via the Three Principles * The challenge of changing minds in the world of prevention and traditional outside-in psychology * How using our intellect to get through life isn’t as easy as relying on our innate wisdom * How we can only think ourselves away from wisdom * On consciousness as its role in making our thinking look vividly real Transcript of Interview with Jack Pransky Alexandra: Jack Pransky, welcome to Unbroken. Jack: I’m very happy to be here. Alexandra: So nice to meet you. Jack: Nice to meet you too. It’s a pleasure. Alexandra: Thank you. Tell us a little bit about your background and how you became interested in the Three Principles. Jack: So many people have heard this story that I have a hard time recreating. I was involved in the field of prevention for many, many years; prevention of problem behaviors, alcohol and drug abuse, child abuse, domestic violence, delinquency, or things like that. I got to the point where I sort of knew what I was doing. And, decided to write a book about it, called Prevention, The Critical Need. Just before that book was about to go to press, I was invited to a Prevention Conference. Roger Mills was speaking. And I was suspicious, because I just spent three years of my life trying to find out what worked, and I’d never heard of this guy. But when he brought a couple of people with him from the housing project that he worked in, he was talking about how the housing projects, which is a horrible place, had gotten completely turned around. I could tell from listening to these people that their lives would never be the same, like something deeply had happened with them that we were not used to seeing and prevention. So that’s what got me hooked. I ended up asking Roger Mills if I could write a book about happened in Modello. And so I did that. And then I had to find the source. And the source was Syd Banks. And the rest is history. Alexandra: As they say. Well, that was one of my questions. Tell us a bit more about that book and about the community of...

It can be so easy to get caught up in the drama of life and experience suffering because of this. But when we begin to explore the nature of our thinking and see that it is a spiritual energy coming to life within us, our suffering eases. You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.  Show Notes * New schedule for Unbroken podcast – Thursday’s only for the next while * Coming up in a Thursday episode I’ll talk about coming out of the back of the spiral * How thinking works like a television * What we experience is only every going on inside us * When we see this it makes resolving an overeating habit so much easier Resources Mentioned in this Episode * Dr. Bruce Greyson * Waking the Wild podcast Transcript of this episode Hello explorers and welcome to Q&A Episode 47 of Unbroken. I’m Alexandra Amor. Thank you for being here with me today. I appreciate it. Before we kick off today’s subject, which is how is our thinking like television, I wanted to do a couple of quick housekeeping items. The first one is that we’re coming up to a year of Unbroken podcast, which is very exciting. I started on February 14 to 2023. And this episode that I’m recording now will go out on January 8 2024. So almost a year of episodes. 47 Q&A episodes and 47 interview episodes. I’m really proud of everything that I accomplished in this past almost year. And as we do, I’ve been contemplating things over the holiday time when I had to had a few days off. What I realized is that I have some projects that I’d really like to work on in this coming year. And that releasing two podcast episodes a week is a bit of an impediment to that. It’s a lot of work, recording two episodes per week. So what I’m going to do is change the schedule up a little bit, and switch to one episode per week. Starting the week of January 15 there will just be one episode of Unbroken each week on Thursday. And I’m going to alternate between interview episodes and these this type of solo shows that I do, where I talk about what I’m seeing, and what the insights that I’ve had and what I’m observing, and that kind of thing. So yeah, like I say, that’ll start the week of January 15. January 18 will be the first of that kind of episodes. And it’ll actually be an interview with I think it will be with Gail, Dr. Gail Brenner. So you can keep your eyes and ears open for that. And then what else? What other housekeeping did I have? Oh, yes. I’ve talked a little bit lately about being in the back of the spiral. If you’ve listened to previous episodes, I’ve mentioned that a couple of times. I’ve come out of the back of the spiral. So that’s exciting news. And I’m really thrilled about it. So I think what I’ll do is I’ll talk about that on the first solo episode after I make this schedule change. So that’ll be later in January, maybe the 18th or something like that, I think. I’m not quite sure.

Coach and author Dicken Bettinger has spent most of his adult life sharing the simple, yet not generally understood, simplicity of human psychology that he first learned from Sydney Banks. Dicken’s message is simple: at any given moment, we are all either caught up in our thinking, or we are connected to the well-being and peace that is within every one of us. Dicken Bettinger, Ed.D., received his undergraduate degree from St. Lawrence University and began his career teaching high school students. He received his Master’s degree from Pennsylvania State University and his Doctoral degree in counseling psychology from Boston University. Thirty-three years ago he met Sydney Banks who had an enlightenment experience where he realized the Three Principles that underlie all human experience. Dicken had finally found universal principles that he could teach anyone.  You can find Dicken Bettinger at 3PriniciplesMentoring.com and on YouTube @dickenbettinger. You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.  Show Notes * On the early quest to help people ease their suffering * How when our thoughts clear we experience the well-being that we are made of * How we feel what we think * How our state of mind affects things like productivity and success * On the quiet that is always available when you’re not listening to the noise * How parenting is positively affected when we see our thinking for what it is * What meaning do our dreams have? * How we all have access to universal wisdom Resources Mentioned in this Episode * Dicken’s book with Natasha Swerdloff is Coming Home: Uncovering the Foundations of Psychological Well-being * Sydney Banks * Dr. Roger Mills Transcript of Interview with Dicken Bettinger Alexandra: Dicken Bettinger, welcome to Unbroken. Dicken: It’s great to be here with you, Alexandra. Thanks for inviting me. Alexandra: My pleasure. So why don’t you give us a little bit of your background and tell us how you came to discover the three principles? Dicken: I’d be glad to. I started my career as a high school English teacher. And I was very young and I looked younger than the high school students I was teaching. Pretty soon I had more kids coming to me to talk about their problems than the guidance counselor’s. The guidance counselors came and talked to me. What are you doing? And so it started my passion and curiosity about what can I learn that I can share with people that would help them have an easier time in life and began many, many year long year quest to explore what people are teaching about well-being. I taught for six years, and then I left to get my doctorate in counseling psychology and I became a licensed psychologist. And I had been working for 10 years, focusing my whole career on well-being,

When we expect change to happen as a result of will-power naturally it looks like a good idea to choose a day on the calendar to begin making that change. But, really, change happens via insight, and that can happen any day of the year. You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.  Show Notes * Welcome to 2024 * The admirable motivation behind New Year’s Resolutions * The two things we can do instead of setting New Year’s Resolutions * What actually creates lasting change Transcript of this episode Hello explorers, and welcome to episode 46 of Unbroken. I’m Alexandra Amor. If you’re listening to this on the day it goes out, it’s going out on New Year’s Day 2024. So welcome to a new year. I don’t know about you, but at this point, I’m usually ready for the holidays to be over, I have to say. I just really like getting back to some sort of semblance of normalcy. I do kind of enjoy the holidays. There’s a bit of baggage there that I won’t talk about now. But you know, it’s different. I travel a little bit and I go and see friends. And it’s nice to be doing some different things and going out for meals and doing whatever it is we do. For some of you that will be getting together with family and that kind of thing. And then I’m kind of glad when the chaos is over. Today, it’ll be New Year’s Day as you’re listening to this, and I’m probably going to have a pretty quiet day, I like to have a quiet New Year’s Day. So I hope you’re doing whatever makes you happy as well. Let’s talk about why New Year’s resolutions are BS. Before I jump into that, I just want to give a quick caveat. And say that there’s nothing wrong with goal setting. There’s nothing wrong with dreams and goals and all that kind of stuff. I personally am someone who loves lists. I always have lists on my desk of things I like to accomplish. And I feel really good when I’m able to highlight them that they’re done. That’s my method of dealing with lists of to dos. And it’s good to have goals and didn’t have things that we want to accomplish in life. So everything I’m about to say is not to disparage that kind of dreaming and goal setting and all that kind of stuff. There’s a reason that New Year’s resolutions are BS, according to me. And it’s because of the way that we go about them. When we make a New Year’s resolution, and let’s be honest, they’re so often around weight loss and exercise, aren’t they? Those are the articles that we see in the media that we see on the television, morning programs and all that kind of thing. It’s about making a newer, better you and that you can start that on New Year’s Day. I’m going to go back to the iceberg metaphor in order to illustrate this. I shared that metaphor in Episode 44, which was a couple of weeks ago. New Year’s resolutions are like the ice pick on that iceberg. The way that we go about making new year’s resolutions and trying to change has that real ice pick kind of approach. And it’s that that we’re mistaken about.