Jack Pransky - Paradigm Shift: A History of The Three Principles

Foreword

I was honored but surprised when Jack asked me to pen this Foreword. I couldnt help but think I was an unlikely choice. After all, I am not a psychologist, psychiatrist, social worker, teacher or practitioner of any kind. I am just a businessman. And, though I have been on the periphery of The Three Principles community for a while, I amas my Dad used to saya piker compared to the people you are about to meet in this book. Then, after reading the book and learning more about the incredible things all of the wonderful people in this community have done over the last forty-plus years, I went from feeling unlikely to feeling unfit. But I trust Jack implicitly and I feel passionately about The Three Principles that Sydney Banks discovered and shared with the world and the community that has embraced his vision, so here I am.

Like I said, Im a business guy who has worked in and run high-tech businesses for nearly thirty years. In the mid-1990s during a particularly challenging time, I was fortunate to meet Dr. George Pransky and, at the recommendation of my friend and colleague, Dick Bozoian, hired George to work with my leadership team, my employees and me. George brought with him an amazing cadre of Principles-based practitioners (all of whom are featured in this book) and, ultimately, Syd Banks himselfto help us at a time when we were struggling and feeling we were out of ideas about how to turn our business around.

It is impossible to convey in a few paragraphs what transpired over more than a decade of sharing The Principles with thousands of people in our company. In short, our performance improved dramatically as we exceeded our commitments and objectives year after year. The more deeply and broadly our workforce understood The Principles, the more successful we became. We would often say that through our understanding of The Principles, our workforce became incredibly resilientnearly discouragement-proofand I believe that our Principles program (that we called State of Mind and Business Success) was the single most important competitive advantage we had in the marketplace and a primary factor in our success. And we had a blast.

While our customers and shareholders loved the terrific performanceas did Iit paled in comparison to the profound impact that learning The Principles had on the personal lives of our employees. People frequently talked of how their understanding helped them to be better spouses, parents, friends, siblings, sons & daughters and members of the community. Some spoke about how it helped them deal with long-standing problems of depression, addiction, PTSD, guilt, habitual negative thinking, anxiety, OCD, ADHD or just plain-old insecurity and chronic unhappiness. Others, who felt that they were healthy and happy, were amazed at how their new understanding helped unleash their potential and took the quality of their lives to levels they had never imagined.

It was an amazing ride.

Having seen how understanding The Three Principles helped me, my business, my family, friends and colleagues, when I was asked to help create what is now The Three Principles Global Community (3PGC) after Syd passed away in 2009, I was happy to sign on. Since then, I have had the honor of meeting and becoming friends with so many of the incredible people in this fascinating community. They are some of the most impressive and caring people Ive ever met. The book you hold in your hand tells their storythe story of how they have shared a profound truth with hundreds of thousands if not millions of people throughout the world for more than forty years. From Syd Banks experience in 1973 through to today, the story of The Three Principles and its community is a compelling one. I am forever grateful to Syd Banks and George Pransky for their friendship and for all they have done to share The Principles with the world. I miss Syd and know he would be proud of all of the great Principles-based work that is going on all over the world. I am also grateful to Jack Pransky and the other contributors to this book for putting the time and energy into capturing all of the elements of that story and, more importantly, for creating the story in the first place.

It normally takes dozens, if not hundreds of years for a new paradigm to take hold in the world and to become a fundamental element of mainstream culture. Ive read that the idea of sanitizing the medical equipmentand the handsof surgeons took nearly 50 years to become doctrine and required practice after germ theory had been validated. It was even longer until it was seen as common sense in the mainstream. The Three Principles is a radical new paradigm that is diametrically opposed to how most of the human race has viewed life since time began. Gaining widespread acceptance is an uphill battle to be sure. In the face of such a headwind, I am humbled and amazed by the impact Syd and the people in this book have had in the last 40-plus years. And as I watch that impact grow through technology and the passion and energy of an ever-increasing number of bright, enterprising teachers, I know this is just the beginning. I feel an evolutionary inflection point coming. It may take a while, but I believe there will be a time where most of mankind will live their lives with a solid understanding of these Principles