What is a Good Life? #65
How People Actually Change with George & Linda Pranksy
On the 65th episode of the What is a Good Life? podcast, I am delighted to introduce our guests, George and Linda Pransky. In 1976, George and Linda stumbled upon a new way of helping people that was radically different from the traditional counselling methods they had been using in their work. The new principles they were learning had a huge impact on their personal lives, their relationship, and the way they worked with their clients.
Through teaching these principles to their clients, they became pioneers in a new field of psychology, both serving as Partners of Pransky & Associates and on the executive committee of the Three Principles Global Community. Dr. George Pransky is also the author of The Relationship Handbook, Life is a Metaphor, and The Secret to Mental Health, as well as over fifty audio recordings.
In this episode, George and Linda share their understandings around how people really change, through realisations rather than intellect and willpower. We discuss the importance of gratitude, patience, quiet, accountability, and faith in further realisations occurring. While we also explore how our thinking is often broken and how they both have moved from reacting to life to living life.
This whole conversation is incredibly enlightening. George and Linda have so much wisdom to share, and in highlighting where our problems reside and sharing several anecdotes and insights, the whole conversation serves as an invitation to be drawn into your life rather than simply reacting to it.
The weekly clip from the podcast (6 mins), my weekly reflection (3 mins), the full podcast (55 mins), and the weekly questions all follow below.
1. Weekly Clip from the Podcast
2. My weekly reflection
This whole conversation had multiple moments, insights, or anecdotes that pointed to a deeper wisdom of being that is almost at odds with how much of our culture works or how we think we change.
The sense of deep realisations causing us to change rings a lot more true to my experience of life rather than a persistent stream of life-hacks, willing, productivity, and the intellect working harder to clear up the intellect’s thinking.
From talking with George and Linda Pransky last week, it further affirmed for me the need for us to slow down. If realisations are a part of how we truly change, where is the time and space for us to even notice such realisations are available to us and naturally occurring, when we are running from one thing to the next until we go to bed?
Running from one thing to the next need not be a physical activity either. It may also be the experience of clicking on one video almost as soon as the last one is about to end, bouncing from one tab to the next, or scrolling to another image before you have even taken in or appreciated the last thing you have glanced at.
In a recent newsletter, I mentioned my guest, Duncan Moss's observation between the connection of time and compassion. While in this discussion, there is a clear connection between time, patience, even quiet, and realisations.
For me personally, I see a clear correlation between the sense of wisdom I can feel and experience in my life and the speed at which my life is running. It simply makes sense that the less I have on my plate, the more I can observe what is actually occurring in my life.
Last week, I had two experiences of feeding my baby lunch. The first time, I had just come home from the office across the road, I had another meeting planned, and I had a window in which to feed my daughter. I had my watch on my wrist, and I was trying to feed her in the time that I had.
Anything that got in the way of that goal was seen as a disturbance rather than something to observe and play with. My overriding image or memory was me glancing at my wristwatch.
Informed by this experience, the next day I fed her, I had no watch or phone within reach or eyesight, there was no tight window within which to feed her, and the whole experience became far more than feeding her. I could observe, connect, pay attention, I can still see a drop of water run down her rubber bib, or see how bright her blue eyes looked as she glanced out the window.
When she blew out a messy exhale that spat food over my jeans, it drew huge laughter rather than any sense of disturbance. All the things I was able to observe simply when I removed the pressure of time from one experience to the next.
Now I know people have busy lives, and I know I have moments in my life when things are busier than normal. But for me, I have noticed in the last few years that the things I was making my life busier with weren’t worth what the busyness was causing me to miss.
Like is the dinner or concert really worth it if it squeezes everything else before it? Is it worth it to make several appointments on a Saturday if there isn’t a moment to breathe in between or rest? Is it really that important to make every engagement your friends invite you to if you have no time for reflection or pause in your week?
Regardless of whether your busy schedule incorporates meditation or some mindful process each day, if the rest of our days are simply stress and perpetual motion that is crammed to the brim, the type of realisations that George and Linda are pointing to in this discussion may continue to elude us.
While all it may require is a little more time to appreciate what is in your life as opposed to what you are assuming is missing, a little more time to appreciate how wonderful you are as opposed to frantically trying to improve your “weaknesses”, and a little more space for your natural being and intelligence to cultivate realisations that bring you closer to what you really need and want in your life.
3. Full Episode - How People Actually Change with George & Linda Pransky - What is a Good Life? #65
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4. This week’s Questions
Can you recall an important realisation you made in your life that led to a significant change in behaviour?
If time was limitless was is the first thing you would do differently in your life?
About Me
I am a Coach based in Berlin, via Dublin, Ireland. I left behind a 15-year career in Capital Markets after I became extremely curious around answering some of the bigger questions in life. I started this project in 2021, for which I’ve now interviewed around 200 people, to provide people with the space to reflect on their own lives and to create content that would spark people’s own inquiry into this question. I am also trying to share more genuine expressions of the human experience, beyond the facades we typically project.
If you would like to work with me, or you simply want to get in touch, here’s my email and LinkedIn.