Changing Beliefs

One of my most influential personal teachers is a guy called Jeff Moran, he taught me how to work with and teach kids and had a big impact on my more spiritual beliefs. He once told me that "belief change" was the absloute fundamental key to everything... therapy, spiritual pursuit, teaching... anything...

SO

I would like some ideas for how to change beliefs from you. Just a couple of sentences of advice.

Here is a really simple one to get the ball rolling:

1.write down the belief on a piece of paper
2.come up with 5 reasons or situations in which that belief does not hold water
3.consider just what you lose by choosing to beleive that this is true


there is more but I will leave it at that for now

you have a go

I'll second that methodology. Esther and Jerry Hicks, the Law of Attraction....very similar, I read/studied that well before starting "Self Protection/Martial Arts".

"Seek things that feel good to you when you focus upon them"
"What will come next? Whatever it is you choose"

"Whether you believe you can or you can't, you're right." Henry Ford...
But I liked it better from Stewey on the Family Guy

Same concept as you suggested; but imagine your future and the impact and grim result if you don't change the negative belief (assuming you aren't trying to change an empowering belief ), how badly you'll feel.

Then look into the future without that limiting belief, how much better your life would be, all the benefits that would result, not just for you, for everyone around you.

Imagine how you'd act in the future without that negative belief, how you'd great you'd feel, how you'd move,
how you'd see things differently in a better light.
Act in that manner now

"There's no difference between being brave and acting brave" dunno who said that one...
prolly another cartoon character from TV... I have GOT to get out more.

There's no difference between being brave and acting brave

all nice theory, but i now there is a difference in acting brave or beeing brave!
im also reading a book now its called... reality is an illusion...

from a well known nlp practitioner and entertrainer from holland..

what he say is clear.. its not the experience.. only your interpretation of that experience.

So if you like to change your beliefs, you only have to change the way you think about a situation, futere, past...

Chulodogo, I agree with you but still stand by what I had said about bravery.

When you're born you have no beliefs. Like you say, I think your beliefs are formed by
your experiences, or more like how you interpret your experiences.
What you believe is a major influence on how you get on, going through life.
Creating doubt, questioning limiting beliefs, challenging them is the first step in changing them,
in turn changing how you behave.
To generate more positive, empowering beliefs, your behaviour and your interpretation of your
experiences resulting from your behaviour are what go into the mix to support that new empowering belief. I think of it as a two way street, your actions support your beliefs and your beliefs influence your actions.
...but I've been wrong before

Let me know what you think of the book when you're done it, will add it to my reading list
if it's worthwhile, thanks.

"Belief creates the actual fact."
William James

"You'll see it when you believe it."
Wayne Dyer

Quote :

(b-lf)
n.
1. The mental act, condition, or habit of placing trust or confidence in another: My belief in you is as strong as ever.
2. Mental acceptance of and conviction in the truth, actuality, or validity of something: His explanation of what happened defies belief.
3. Something believed or accepted as true, especially a particular tenet or a body of tenets accepted by a group of persons.

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/belief

Try new things where the experience will challenge the belief.
Might want to have some safeguards in effect when you try the new experience
eg. Challenging the belief you can't fly... probably best to try your takeoff from a chair
rather than a rooftop.

Well as for me I actually can fly. It's just that I can't stay in the air for very long.

RichardB wrote:

Well as for me I actually can fly. It's just that I can't stay in the air for very long.

... and you only get one go... which sucks...





Bringing it back to sharing ideas on changing beliefs (and reinjecting a self protection type flavour):

you have a student who has this old negative belief
"I just cant protect myself, if someone starts on me I get so scared I want to curl up into a ball"

you want to change that, where do you go? How do you do it?


ps Regarding the "If you believe you can, then you can" philosophy- Ive watched X Factor last night and its clear the people subscribing to this view have missed out the "if I work at it really really hard for years and years" bit that USED to be implicit in Henry Ford's philosophy- you notice the most famous quotes abuout beliefs come from enterprising Americans in a young country around the time of the industrial revolution?

Well I think we are about due another quantum leap revolution and it will start with a shift in belief about how the world works, what is true and what is not and which parts of what we do and how we live are out of date.

But of course nowadays, nobody wants to put the work in, because everyone lives in an "immediate gratification" pod of pink goo just like in the Matrix.... with a big machine feeding off our working life's energy... slurp, slurp!

Red or Blue pill?

Whilst believing you can fly is a dangerous for a numpty jumping off a building, its ok for someone who chooses to go out and work towards their pilots license.

I dont think we can do "anything at all"... but we can do a lot, lot more.

"you have a student who has this old negative belief
"I just cant protect myself, if someone starts on me I get so scared I want to curl up into a ball"

you want to change that, where do you go? How do you do it?"

Don't be judgmental. You have to respect and acknowledge their current belief that right now in the present, they can't protect themselves.
Usually to determine why and how they came to this conclusion is as simple as asking. (their current belief is based on their perception of past experiences). BIG FAT REMINDER Your goal is to help the student to be better able to protect
themselves. Unless you're a therapist... be aware there may be bigger issues that you aren't trained to help with.

Help the student to understand the end goal of your instruction (setting high but achievable expectations for the student), explain how they're going to get there. Ensure the alignment of their goals with the goal of your instruction.

Set tasks in "iterations" (timelines with short term goals) within the term of your instruction (where the student's success with each of the tasks create new experiences building new beliefs) building further skills and more challenges with each iteration.
Proper technique training, coaching and recognition of successive short term goals (achievements) all provide the resources to support the new beliefs
Bite size successes along the way to achieve longer term goal.

On the more technical side, if you introduce scenario training ensure that this is very step by step with progressive
intensity. Introduced to early in training or with too much aplitude can induce the more physiological and emotional
aspects of fear/stress managment than what you're actually trying to train to deal with (think take baby steps)

...would be what I would suggest

and one of the things that you did in there is state excplicitly what the objective is in positive terms

negative belief: "I cant protect myself"

what do you want, stated as a positive? "I want to be able to protect myself" (not as a negative which would be "I dont want to feel afraid")

Step 1 : well defined clearly represented positive defintion of desired outcome

budding NLPérs should google "nlp structural well formedness"

Just adding this simple step can dramatically change the frame of the training (or therapy if thats your thing)


explicitly stated specific outcomes

focus on what you want not on what you dont want... whatever you focus on grows stronger.

One of the interesting things about RBSD is that you can always play the 'what if' game - and as soon as someone feels reasonably confident in defeating an unarmed assailant they're wondering about multiple or armed attackers. That makes achieving the goal of 'being able to protect myself' even more nebulous.

Like Nix wrote, you can break down the main goal into manageable chunks and perhaps give your student the ability to say 'I can reliably produce a knock-out pre-emptive strike under stress'.