Changing Beliefs.

by David Barron. dr.barron@changework.com

Copyright 1999 by David Barron.

"Changing a belief is easy." - Richard Bandler

Many people have made a simple decision that has made a profound change in they life. More than likely this is because the decision was to change a belief. By simply realizing that an old belief no longer applies new decisions can be made that lead to new outcomes.

For the purpose of this article I am going to focus on changing beliefs
in yourself. Perhaps a future article will deal with changing beliefs in others.

Okay if changing a belief is easy how do you do it?
The first part is to recognize a belief when you hear it. All beliefs are phrased in one of two way
· Cause and Effect: "Salesmen make me so angry." Or "Tests cause me to be nervous."
· Complex Equivalence: Simple A=B. "John is a nice guy." "Salesmen are crooks."
Much of what we know is without even questioning it as a belief. Our belief can be so much a part of us that, like a fish that is so a part of the water it has no knowledge of it. Thus many beliefs we hold on to no longer serve us any benefit. Some examples of these beliefs are "Authority figures scare me." Or "I can only succeed when I'm under pressure.", "The Church is ALWAYS right." These beliefs may have at one time helped us, but no longer.

Once you recognize a useless belief it's time to get rid of it.

One of the simple ways to get rid of a belief is done in a simple step by step process.
1) Find something, we'll call it A, you know is false (like the sun is easy to lick) or something that is no longer true in your life (like you used to sleep in a smaller bed).
2) Take the old belief and move it to A.

Yeah, it's that simple. From an NLP standpoint you can gather all the sub-modalities but it's not always necessary. Simply, saying "Put that belief where you put things that you know are false and MAKE IT STICK!"

Go back and check it to make sure the changed belief is still where you put things that are false.

This technique can be done with a simple conversational approach. Done in a self-talk format.
" Is this belief of any help to me?"
" No."
"Okay, find something that I know is no longer true for me."
"I no longer ride a red bicycle."
"Now, I'll move that belief to exactly where I keep the "no longer true" belief and I will MAKE IT STICK."

In order to "MAKE IT STICK" I personally like to metaphorically apply epoxy or super-glue to the belief before sticking it into the new area.

You might also note that this technique could be done conversationally to change another person's belief but I will leave that to another article.

Copyright David Barron-1999

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