A favorite teacher of mine used to say: “Petit, the most important thing for anyone to learn is how to wash out their brains. From the moment we’re born, we’re brainwashed. We’re told ‘Don’t do that! Do this! Don’t think that – think this! Don’t feel that way! This is how you should feel!’ We’re told this by everyone around us – our parents, teachers, ministers, and politicians. So by the time we’re eighteen, we’re so loaded up, we don’t know who we are – we’re brainwashed. And that OK – that’s how things work. But after eighteen, we need to start washing out our brains – keeping what works, getting rid of what doesn’t. You take a shower everyday, you need to wash out your brain everyday!”

It’s easy to understand this brainwashing if you think of yourself in terms of a computer. As we grow up, we’re constantly being programmed. Many of these programs become so essential to who we are, they basically become our “operating system,” and our default settings. We end up thinking that we don’t have any other choice – this is just who we are. The programs we picked up in childhood were all necessary for some reason; however, as adults they can get in the way. It would be nice if we could go through our programs and delete the ones we don’t like; but unfortunately it’s not so easy. It’s as if these programs are password protected, and the only way to change them is by knowing the password. And so, for the last fifteen years I’ve been helping people discover these passwords, tucked away in the unconscious, in whatever way works for them. For some, it’s using therapies such as Voice Dialogue, Jungian Therapy, Rational Emotive Therapy, and others. For others, it’s group therapy; or my program for couples, “The Art of Peace.” But for everybody the goal is the same – to help them learn how to wash out their brains, so that they can have choice about how to live their lives in the present moment.