Let’s talk about something a bit less delicate and a lot more honest:
You don’t need to polish the sh*t.
Most of us have spent years – sometimes decades – trying to “fix” ourselves.
We go to therapy, read every book, dissect our past, analyse our trauma, repeat affirmations… all with the underlying belief:
“If I can just sort out all this mess, I’ll finally be okay.”
But what if the mess was never the problem?
What if you were never the problem?
You Are the Diamond, Not the Dirt
One of my favourite metaphors (borrowed originally from Michael Neill) is this:
At your core, you are a diamond.
Pure, whole, unbreakable, perfectly formed.
Over time, life happens:
- You’re told you’re too much or not enough.
- You develop coping mechanisms and habits.
- You have painful experiences and draw conclusions from them.
- You build stories about who you are and how life works.
Each one of those adds a little layer of dirt over the diamond.
After a while, you look down and all you can see is… sh*t.
Anxious sh*t.
Overthinking sh*t.
Low self-esteem sh*t.
Burnout sh*t.
It genuinely looks like you are the problem.
But here’s the truth the Principles are always pointing back to:
The diamond has never stopped being a diamond.
It’s only ever been covered.
Never damaged. Never removed. Never broken.
Traditional Psychology: Polishing the Dirt
Traditional psychology often invites us to look closely at the layers:
- Where did this come from?
- How does this relate to your childhood?
- What beliefs are you carrying?
- How can we reframe or replace this?
Again, there’s nothing “wrong” with any of that. But it often becomes a lifelong project of… polishing the dirt.
We shine a little light on it. We understand it in more detail. We might feel a little bit better for a while.
But at the end of the day, we’re still relating to ourselves as:
“I am the mess that needs work.”
What the Three Principles by Sydney Banks point to is something very different:
You don’t need to polish the sh*t.
You need to remember there’s a diamond underneath.
The Principles: Letting the Layers Fall Away
When you begin to see that your experience is created moment-to-moment through Thought and experienced via Consciousness, something subtle but huge starts to happen:
- You stop treating every thought as a fact.
- You stop believing every feeling is a verdict on who you are.
- You see that moods and emotions are weather, not identity.
And the more you see that, the less you grip onto the stories that keep the dirt in place.
You don’t have to rip the layers off. You don’t have to go hunting for each one. They simply become less convincing, less interesting, less worth polishing.
And gradually, almost without you noticing, more of the diamond shines through.
You Don’t Have to Become “Better”
One of the biggest misunderstandings I see with the Principles is this idea that:
“If I understand this properly, I’ll finally become a better human being.”
No.
The Principles aren’t a self-improvement strategy.
They’re a description of who you already are:
You are already the diamond, even when you feel completely lost.
You are already whole, even when your mind is screaming that you’re broken.
You are already connected to Mind (the intelligence behind life), even when you can’t feel it at all.
Seeing that – even a tiny bit – is what begins to loosen the grip of self-judgement.
You don’t need to become better. You need to see more clearly what’s already true.
“But My History is So Messy…”
You might be thinking:
“You don’t know what I’ve been through.”
“My trauma is different.”
“My brain just doesn’t work like other people’s.”
I hear versions of this all the time. And my honest answer is:
No matter what your story is, your essence is untouched.
That doesn’t dismiss the pain you’ve experienced. It doesn’t bypass grief, loss, abuse, or hardship.
What it does say is:
Nothing that has happened to you has the power to change what you are at your core.
It can add a lot of layers, yes. It can make it very hard to feel your diamond. But it cannot destroy it.
And that matters, because it means you are never too far gone for insight, peace, or hope.
A New Way to Relate to Yourself
So instead of waking up each day thinking:
“How do I fix myself today?”
“What part of the mess do I need to work on next?”
You might start to ask:
“What if I’m already okay underneath this?”
“What if this thought/feeling is just more dirt, not the truth about me?”
“What if I don’t need to polish this, just let it pass?”
From there, life softens.
You don’t stop being human. You’ll still have wobbles, bad days, reactions, moods. But you’ll know, deep down, that none of that touches the diamond.
Want Support Seeing Your Own Diamond?
If this metaphor resonates with you, that’s your wisdom giving you a nudge.
Inside my Signature Eight Week Course, we spend time really exploring this – not as a nice idea, but as something you can feel for yourself. We look at anxiety, overthinking, low mood, health fears… all through the lens of who you already are underneath.
And if you’d love an ongoing space where we keep pointing back to your true nature (with guest speakers, live calls, and voice-note support), you can join the waitlist for my membership. You’ll receive my free guide, “Press Pause: Four Insights for a Calmer Mind,” as a starting point while you wait. Take a look here.
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