Some Native kids began to hang out in a mostly White residential area in Bemidji, Minnesota. They began throwing their garbage on the ground and causing enough of a ruckus that the residents became concerned. More than concerned, they wanted them out of there! Some residents harassed these Native kids, They called the police. Nothing worked.
Julie Flathers, who had been trained in Health Realization, lived in the neighborhood. As I remember the story, she and her neighbor puzzled over what to do. She knew these kids had health within them, only no one was seeing it. She and her neighbor then had the idea “Let’s bring them lemonade and cookies!” The Native kids were shocked and suspicious – at first. But when they saw the sincerity and friendliness of Julie and her neighbor, they became most appreciative. They all began to talk and make friends. Without even being asked, the Native kids started to pick up their garbage.
This is what can happen when people see health and innocence instead of the presenting behavior. People rise to the occasion through that sight. It is another example of “what we see is what we get.”
Center for Sustainable Change wishes to introduce our new CEO, Terri Alamo, who begins her position effective November 1. Terri replaces our retiring CEO, Dave Nichols, who has served as CSC’s CEO with passion, warmth, and devotion for the past 5½ years.
CSC’s Board awarded Dave and his wife and Administrative Assistant, Chini, the Roger Clark Mills Award for their exceptional efforts in bringing the Principles to community settings and continuing the legacy of CSC co-founder, Dr. Roger Mills.
Terri Alamo is deeply rooted in the Principles and brings business, organizational, and technical experience, energy, and a passion for CSC’s work. Terri and her husband Joe own TLC for Coaches, and their firm has worked with many people in the Three Principles community including Michael Neill, 3PGC, Divine Play, Linda Pritcher, Cathy Fandrich, and Annika Hurwitt.
We welcome Terri with excitement and open arms, and we wish the best for Dave, who will continue serving as a Goodwill Ambassador for CSC.
Dave and Chini Nichols received the Roger Clark Mills Award from CSC co-founder Ami Chen Mills-Naim and CSC Board Chair Sandy Johnson at The Awesome Event in Charlottesville, VA. We wish Dave & Chini well in their “refirement.”
In 1987 Janet Reno approached Dr. Roger Mills, inquiring whether he thought he could help solve some of the systemic problems at the Modello Federal Housing Project that had for years plagued her at her Florida State Attorney office.
Roger Mills accepted the challenge. Ms. Reno’s willingness to “think outside of the typical bureaucratic box,” her trust to authorize a radically new and “unproven” intervention, and her commitment of the financial resources necessary proved to be the elements necessary to make this experiment possible.
In one case, “a crack-addicted mother was prostituting her two teenage daughters to bring money in to the house to buy crack. She’d already sold all her furniture. Virtually nothing remained in the house. Her kids’ behavior had become erratic – missing school a lot.” Her nine kids were placed in foster homes. One year later, the mother was clean. She got her kids back, her kids returned to school and were doing well, she got married and began work as a hospital nurses’ aid.
One week ago today, Janet Reno, former Attorney General of the United States, died. She is remembered as being the first woman to hold that position. She is remembered for her bluntness and independence. She is remembered with criticism for her handling of some high-profile controversies, including the deadly raid on a cult compound in Waco, TX, and the custody issues surrounding Elián González, a 6-year-old Cuban refugee.
What has been little noted as the nation mourns Reno’s passing is her pivotal role in initiating the very first community-based Three Principles program in Homestead, FL. This intervention model recognized core truths about humanity – each person is innately healthy and is to be respected, each person can access their innate wisdom at any moment, each person’s innate wisdom offers choices that when chosen will benefit their life and the lives of their family and the broader community.
Center for Sustainable Change (CSC) is the international nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization incorporated by Dr. Roger Mills in 2004. CSC directly resulted from Roger’s tireless work replicating the successes experienced in Homestead, FL, in many similar communities across the U.S. as well as sharing the Principles of Mind, Consciousness, and Thought with “people on the street” in communities around the world.
We, everyone engaged with CSC and its mission, remain grateful for Janet Reno’s support of Dr. Mills in Florida so many years ago. We are proud of the world-wide reach achieved from that initial project.
We express our sorrow at the passing of Janet Reno. She had a sense of trust in her innate wisdom, recognizing that traditional and researched responses had not worked, she was willing to trust a different approach, a new idea. It is our hope that administrators world-wide who are charged with improving the quality of life for their constituents will become willing to trust their own innate wisdom, to try something that might work over what has not worked. That would be a lasting legacy indeed.
I had a client last year, a woman in her 50’s who lived in the rough inner city. She was the “salt of the earth” kind of person, who lived with a lot of anger in her life. Her 16 yr old daughter was wild, and the two of them would have countless arguments between them. She also had Crohn’s disease which was flaring up quite a lot as well.
The meeting with me was probably the first time she was able to sit down and have any kind of a peaceful conversation with anyone. Now this lady is smart, street smart, she needed to be to get by from day to day.
Within about 30 minutes of talking together I had the opportunity of teaching her in very simple terms how thought works, that every feeling of anger that she was experiencing was simply created by her own thoughts, that she was in fact making these thoughts up, just like a Hollywood producer makes up a movie from the vivid imagination of their own mind.
And she saw it, very quickly. The affect was instantaneous, it’s as if all of a sudden the weight of the world had been lifted off her shoulders, and she knew that she was going to be ok from that moment on.
When she came back to see me a week later, she told me that her relationship with her daughter had improved dramatically, because she herself, had been a lot calmer during the week. Her neighbour commented that she heard her singing in the morning, and wondered what was up.
She only needed to see me one more session, as so much had changed in her life for the better. On top of that she said that the wrinkles on her forehead had disappeared, as well as the swelling in her ankles. Her Crohn’s disease also did not flare up anything like before.
The effect of a calm mind has huge implications for the health of the body. Our bodies are made up of about 50 trillion cells, and each cell is being turned on and off by the chemistry in the blood. Since the chemistry of the blood is changed moment to moment by our thinking, so our thinking is directly causing cells to turn on and off. Stressful thinking is turning good cells off and bad cells on.
And after a matter of only about one half hour of negative thinking this has changed the physical body itself. The word “disease” is lack of “ease”.
The trick is to marinate in the sweet spot of calmness, as much as possible, as that’s where all the goodies are, and that’s it in a nutshell.
Center for Sustainable Change wishes to introduce our new CEO, 
