A little bit about Joe Bailey
Joe Bailey’s life purpose is to help people find true happiness and peace of mind.
Towards this end, he studied psychology at the undergraduate and graduate levels, eventually becoming a licensed psychologist. For the past forty-six years, Joe’s desire to understand the connection between–
- Psychological
- Physical
- Spiritual
facets of human beings has pulled him into a deeper understanding of the whole person and away from the current fragmented view. His search led to a health-based approach to counseling, prevention programs, workplace wellness and the attainment of a personal life of peace, joy and fulfillment for all people called Three Principles Psychology, when he met his mentor Sydney Banks in 1980. Sydney continued to mentor and inspire Joe for the next 29 years on a paradigm shift for the field of psychology.
In his career, Joe has worked–
- Marriage and family counselor
- University teacher
- Trainer of therapists
- Author
- Consultant to organizations
He has been a pioneer in his profession, weaving together ideas and insights on psychology and spirituality. In his twenties, he became a trainer of counselors in family therapy and addictions and introduced ideas of primary prevention of addictions to the treatment profession. Over the next thirty-five years, Joe helped pioneer a revolutionary new psychology, Three Principles Psychology, which focused on seeing and actualizing health rather than the current disease model. These principles form the basis for psychology as a principle-based paradigm rather than our current fragmented view.M
Bringing a new psychological paradigm into the healthcare work place
Joe brought this psychological paradigm into the work place, especially healthcare. He helps organizations appreciate the importance of the mental well-being of their employees and managers in order to create healthy and productive organizations. This approach was used as a model, by Joe and other faculty members, to create “The Inner Life of Healers” program at the University of Minnesota Medical School, where Joe was an adjunct faculty member. Joe also developed a pilot program at the Mayo Clinic Arizona called the Arizona Resiliency Program, to develop a burnout prevention program based on the principles and resiliency called The Arizona Resiliency Program. He has also worked with hospital systems to affect culture change in East Lansing Michigan and North Memorial Hospital in Minneapolis.
Joe’s first book, The Serenity Principle (Harper Collins, 1990) has had a significant impact on the treatment of thousands of clients and addiction professionals throughout the world. His best selling book, Slowing Down to the Speed of Life (co-authored with Richard Carlson, Harper San Francisco, 1997) and later The Speed Trap (Harper San Francisco, 1999) were other expressions of his approach in and out of the work place. In these books he communicates the principles of living and realizing inner peace and health and how to transcend a major problem facing our society—the frenetic pace of life and stress. Joe’s fourth book, Slowing Down to the Speed of Love, was an accumulation of his life’s realizations that take the reader to practically live their life from their true self and shows them how this awareness impacts all of their relationships. Joe’s fifth book, Fearproof Your Life, was released in 2007 (Conari Press), and was written in response to the wave of fear that has swept our culture in this new century. Joe is currently working on a book exploring the common thread of the three principles in transformational experiences people have had through understanding the 3 Principles and also spontaneously throughout history called The Transformation Principle.
Joe spreads his message of hope and understanding through–
- coaching
- public speaking
- seminars and retreats
- consultation to organizations
- writing
- and online
Joe lives and works with his wife, Michael, in St. Paul, Minnesota and is a father and grandfather.
I'm passionate about being in nature whether gardening, fly fishing, kayaking or skiing in the mountains.
A Little of my history and what lead me to Health Realization, and Three Principles Psychology
Let me introduce myself and a say a little about who I am and a little of my life’s journey that has led me to my purpose in life and to the purpose of this website. I was trained as a clinical psychologist to help people with mental health and addictions issues. Although I have spent much of my career doing counseling and training others in it, I have always felt a stronger calling to be an educator about mental health to a broader spectrum of humanity. I still work with many individual counseling and coaching clients, but my focus has sharpened to speak, write and teach to the general audience of humanity and place my energy into organizational and systemic change.
Through teaching, consulting and writing books I feel dedicated to raising the awareness of others by helping them gain a deeper insight into the very nature of how we “tick” psychologically by revealing the underlying constant principles of human psychological functioning. My work takes others to the very heart of how we function psychologically so that stress, emotional suffering, and other impediments to living our lives fully, can be removed and prevented, not merely coped with through techniques and time consuming methods.
Before I understood the principles behind my psychological functioning I was sentenced to a life of stress and coping with it. As a traditionally trained Western psychologist, unlike other principle based sciences, I was taught a pre-principle paradigm of psychology. When we don’t understand the principles behind how anything works, like the solar system and gravity, or the principles of how an engine works before you try to fix it, it is a guessing game about how to really affect positive change.
In my graduate program and post graduate studies the existing paradigm was concerned with diagnosing problems and illnesses and creating techniques and interventions to alleviate people’s suffering. Without a deeper understanding of the fundamental principles of human experience, psychologists innocently created hundreds of conflicting theories and therapies with limited long term success. Therapies were expensive, took a long time, and were met with resistance from the clients and stress and burnout for the therapists.
Professional Turning Point
In 1980 I was fortunate to learn of a paradigm shift happening in psychology, as discovered by Sydney Banks. It was in its infancy but showed promise in illuminating the constant principles behind all human experience–whether in people with mental dysfunction or very successful people who were functioning at levels of creativity, resilience, performance, and success.
–Joe Bailey
Joe Bailey is featured on the GOLDEN MOMENTS podcast about Sydney Banks.
In this 1st episode, Keith Blevens, Ph.D. and Joe Bailey, M.A., L.P. share insights about Sydney Banks and the Three Principles; and how these principles have advanced the fields of Psychology, and the personal impact of learning the three principles of psychology from Sydney Banks directly.
Since that initial introduction to the new paradigm and realizing the principles personally in my own life, my whole approach to counseling and educating others began a dramatic shift towards helping to bring out the natural resilience in my clients and students vs. treating their symptoms and illnesses. My therapy began to focus on educating my clients on how their mind works to create their personal psychological reality from the inside out, rather than rummaging through their past history for “why” they were unhappy, depressed, addicted, anxious, and so on. My clients were relieved and grateful that I was finally teaching them “to fish”, rather than making them dependent on years of counseling to keep them in supply of fresh fish. It was empowering to them and to me as their guide. I taught them something that gave them the understanding to continue to heal themselves and have insights about how to live their lives more effectively and successfully. As this paradigm of the Three Principles has evolved, it became more scientific, concise and clarified through the work of Dr. Keith Blevens and Valda Monroe who teach this as a single paradigm. For the past ten years their work greatly enhanced my effectiveness in bringing this understanding to others.
I soon began to experience greater demand for this counseling than I could provide and started to train others in this new paradigm called by numerous names throughout the years (Neo-Cognitive Psychology, Psychology of Mind, Health Realization, Three Principles Psychology). With other mental health professionals I opened a mental health institute to treat clients, train other professionals and do research on this model’s effectiveness.
I have written five books on this new paradigm that are in 65 countries and 26 languages. I have spoken to organizations, universities, and the media throughout the world over the past 33 years. I have taught at several universities and consulted with many professional organizations to bring these principles to their employees and the clients they serve, including mental health agencies, addiction treatment centers, hospitals, businesses, government agencies, and schools.
Why I Am Here
Understanding of the inside-out nature of experience takes us back to what we have always known in our hearts but have forgotten. Through podcasts on a variety of subjects, articles, and excerpts from my books, I will help guide you back to your inner wisdom, to what you have always had hidden from awareness within you. This is the secret to freedom from fear controlling your life, new thinking no matter what challenges you face in life, and the hope to continue deepening the discovery of the fundamental principles of living.
The purpose of this website is to help you grow in your practical understanding of this insight into the principles. All of us has the natural capacity for mental well-being, resilience, and personal happiness. When we see that this is possible and we understand how to re-awaken that natural ability to live more from that state of mind, we are more present, we think more clearly and insightfully, and we feel calmer, inspired, connected, and confident in our own wisdom.
Good luck on realizing your resilience,
Joe Bailey