CORRECTING/CHANGING BELIEFS/PROGRAMS!!!
VERY DOABLE AND VERY, VERY, VERY WORTHWHILE!
This is the most impactful thing you can do to uplevel your life! It is the keystone to creating a great life! (See the side panel for the implementation pieces.)
CONTENTS
All beliefs are changed through these paths
The required process
What you should end up with
Worksheets that are helpful - And which to use for what
Learning and completion programs
Appendix: Are beliefs changeable?
Take: Checklist for what I believe about changeability of beliefs
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ALL BELIEFS ARE CHANGED THROUGH THESE PATHS
These are nothing new that you haven't heard before. However, maybe this time, you'll choose to follow the process and complete that process to come out the other end with what is a new life.
One question that comes up is "are beliefs changeable?" The answer is "yes!" The rationale and discussion of this is in the appendix (at the bottom of the page).
THE REQUIRED PROCESS (See The Complete Step By Step Belief Reconstruction Procedure for the full-press reworking of one's belief system.)
These are the pieces of the process:
1. Identify what the erroneous beliefs are. (Thoughts preceding "bad results.")
2. Test for truth and then understand them.
3. Make a choice - Keep or not?
4. Create a believable, functional, and workable belief
5. Learn, internalize the belief
This is the process piece by piece:
1. IDENTIFY WHAT THE NEGATIVE-EFFECT BELIEFS ARE. (Any negative emotion is an absolute indicator of having a negative-effect and necessarily erroneous belief.) Write those thoughts down during the day, for at least two weeks: Write down: Thought, how I felt and/or bad result, what occurred.
Also identify your Core Beliefs, record them, and deal with at least the
top 5.
Record as you wish, in a journal or whatever. Keep the work you do on
the beliefs in a loose leaf notebook (see possible format: The Beliefs
2. TEST FOR TRUTH AND THEN UNDERSTAND THEM. Do the following
processes on selected ones.
Understanding process - Learn to understand why they are not true, about
that type of belief, until you're rationally convinced. Go to the
Contents Links Beliefs And Thoughts Section.)
Use the forms provided below, printing them all out and choosing which to
use and when.
3. MAKE A CHOICE - Is the old belief worth keeping?
3A. Optional: Weigh the payoffs versus the costs of the negative belief.
4. CREATE A BELIEVABLE, FUNCTIONAL, AND WORKABLE BELIEF
Usually it is the opposite of the negative beliefs. It can be derived from "wise
advice" by your higher thinking brain (and you can check it out with another
higher thinking brain outside you.
5. LEARN, INTERNALIZE THIS BELIEF. (Without this step you have some
benefit, but not the full benefit that comes from practicing completion.) Create
and use the following:
5A. Empowering statements (often called 'affirmations') that are deeper than
"rote" (you can't "affirm" to overpower a false belief).
5B. Practice until learned and "feels right"
1. At least 4 times a day, practice
a. The empowering statements
b. A situation where you see yourself using these thoughts
Actual
Mental - Imagery, visualizing what it would be like to live that way [a reinforcing mode, incredibly underused]; this is recommended
as a tool that is extremely useful but
Read the supporting materials
For a complete checklist and to do list, go to The Complete Step By Step Belief Reconstruction Procedure. I recommend using that as your master list and using the
Thought Change Long Form for all major beliefs and/or as a reminder of what to look at when restructuring beliefs even in the shorter forms.
WHEN DO I STOP?
When you have the desired result - a fully installed habit and it "feels right", where there is no "cognitive dissonance."
We become accustomed to what we believe and we will often hold it to be true (factual). We think this belief or way of operating is "part of me", part of my personality, so anything that is not consistent with that may feel phony (i.e. not really me). That new belief or behavior will just "not feel right". This is cognitive dissonance, when what you are doing is dissonant with what you feel is you or believe is right. Although the belief that a belief is part of your personality is a thought and an erroneous one at that, there is an included emotion bundled with the thought (as with most mental patterns) - and it is a real emotion. For now we can call it "not feeling right" about something.
(It is actually a fear of letting go of it, of losing 'self', in an irrational bit of thinking where 'losing self' means you are lessened, less powerful, less able - which is nonsense, since a belief can be discarded with no difference in 'self'. One should learn, understand, believe, and know that one is not that which is attached or taken into oneself. To eliminate all confusion, you must know who you actually are. Read Who I Am and complete an installation of it, as it'll considerably free you up in life.)
If you fail to "complete" on a belief changing process, you'll still keep on having problems, that you'll have to deal with over and over and over. If that is the case with you, it indicates that you have stopped before completion.
Basically, "what you do not complete, you're doomed to repeat".
Some people confuse dealing with a "symptom" (or resultant consequence) with solving a problem. But you can only keep a problem from reocurring when you have solved the actual cause. This is a "duh!" since it is obvious that if the cause is still around it will keep giving you the undesired result! See Cause and Effect - note that everything happens in a 'causal chain', that no effect can appear without a cause.
WHAT YOU SHOULD END UP WITH
If you're doing this to change your life overall, instead of just applying it to one situation or belief, the suggested ending results, minimum, would be these. Note that these must be repeated until memorized and easily accessible:
5+ New empowering core statements (about self, life)
10 Powerful affirmations (to be memorized, but with another 20 that can be read)
10 Powerful coping statements
A collection of old beliefs and new beliefs that you can review as needed to
make sure they are installed.
A written solid life philosophy, read and approved of by a knowledgeable
person. A philosophy is essentially a grouping of beliefs that are a way of
viewing the world and oneself in it.
These would be kept in your Reminders Notebook for easy reference.
WORKSHEETS THAT ARE HELPFUL
You'll find of interest the following worksheets to help you in the process. You can use these forms yourself or with a straight-thinking, progressive partner to guide you through it, using the forms. The Option Institute teaches what they call The Power Dialogue Process (see the book Power Dialogues), which each course member learns (they also train "Mentors" to assist individuals in the dialogue process).
The "Schema of The Experience of Life" is a diagram of the process for working with thoughts and perceptions.
It will be helpful to read, if you're really serious, How To Use The Longer, More Detailed Forms For Greater Ease And Effectiveness in general.
The belief worksheets - overall summary listing: To view a concise list go to "Forms To Use" in the Detailed Contents Belief Section.
How to reference, file, and use the worksheets
It is best to print these all out and to keep them in a useful place, and to save a blank form in your computer in a designated super-file "Beliefs Forms" for typing into for keeping in your "My Beliefs" super-file in your computer (or, of course, you could just flip into the master listing of forms to use in the Detailed Contents Belief Section. and then save them in your Word files on your computer and complete them. (For how to organize your computer, see Computer Organization Outline.) When a need comes up, look for the form that will work best for you. (It is best to use organized forms, as they are more effective than trying to keep it into your head. And the new truths can then be made into affirmations for your use.)
CONTENTS OF TYPES OF WORKSHEETS, BELOW
Master lists of beliefs
For a sequence of sentences
For core beliefs re-work
For a triggering incident (or random thought) - Normally used most often
For a childhood event or earlier similar event
Great for all types of beliefs
MASTER LISTS OF BELIEFS
Beliefs List Prioritized - Central master list or just a quiklist
Sentence Completion Exercise - Beliefs - Uses "prompter" beginnings to a statement and then you complete the rest of the sentence. Helps elicit more beliefs.
FOR A SEQUENCE OF SENTENCES
This is an "instant" re-wording exercise to create more power. Significant sentences can be extracted and put through a more in-depth form.
Re-Forming The Thought Sentences - Ask if it is the truth and apply the process and put it either in the columnar form, where a new "truth" is created, or the new statements after the question, with more back up and recommendations and plans.
FOR CORE BELIEFS RE-WORK:
The Belief Transformation Process - The Core Statement Rework Process - It is most helpful to start from your "core" statement about you and/or your life, usually such things as "I'm not good enough" or "I'm powerless". You'll find other beliefs stem from the core statement about yourself, which implies that many of the corollary beliefs can all be blown out at once when the core statement is no longer believed. Use the simple checklist to identify some without much
effort. Best for: Core beliefs, eliciting other statements around or from core statements. It is similar in process to the Thought/Belief Change Record, above.
Further comments: There are certain beliefs about yourself, at the core, that you carry around with you that also do not serve you well. You can, without a great deal of difficulty, re-form (re-think) those to ones that will serve you well in life. Re-forming and replacing core beliefs allows one to easily release those numerous supporting, disempowering beliefs that have been derived from each core belief - it is a lot like blowing up a large building, where the charges only have to be placed at the strategic supporting columns to have the whole building fall in on itself! Save yourself lots of time that could be wasted on dealing with each disempowering belief randomly and/or one at a time - which is one of the inefficiencies of most therapeutic approaches.
FOR A TRIGGERING INCIDENT OR THOUGHT
Best for an incident that triggers a reaction, rather than a sequence of a number of sentences. It can also be used for a past incident, even a childhood one, especially to gain deeper insight into how you created that belief. This format is likely to be the one used the most often, especially in relationship situations.
Rational Self-Analysis - What Happened, What Beliefs Occurred And Altering Them - This process, if you have any ability to be rational (which you do!), can have you seeing much more clearly what is actually occurring and what was "made up" and what beliefs might not be true - and then you can come to closure, with new beliefs and a clearer view.
Similar idea, different format, with a one page version and a longer more complete version:
Thought/Belief Change Record - The process used by cognitive behaviorists, where you identify the beliefs/thoughts that generated your emotions and behaviors (often from an event occurring, or it could be just a random thought) and then alter them to create more useful, more realistic beliefs and ways of thinking. There is a one page form, below, that can be used. However, the thorough process will involve the long form, which I recommend, though it does take more time, effort and thought. This, too, starts with the event, recording and analyzing the "automatic thoughts" (beliefs) and the emotions and then replacing them, and then rating the change in emotion. It includes the types of thinking distortions, so that you can alter those. This is possibly the best process to use for processing a number of automatic thoughts - see which of the two on this site that you like the most.
One page: Thought/Belief Change Record
Complete, long form: Thought Change Long Form
Read Using The Thought Change Long Form to get additional perspective
and guidance.
Psychological Perspective Problem Re-work - This goes all the way through
from the 'what happened' and 'what you said to yourself' all the way to
formulating a new perspective statement, which can be used as part of your belief system.
FOR A CHILDHOOD EVENT OR AN EARLIER SIMILAR EVENT, BELIEF, OR EMOTION
An Earlier Similar Event - Interaction With The Child, Loving Allies - Take an earlier similar event looking at it with the help of fictional wise allies talking to the child, leading one to mantras and/or what they can learn from this. What is learned can be the basis for a whole new belief. Plus the "emotional charge" on the old event and/or belief can be lessened or eliminated.
GREAT FOR ALL TYPES OF BELIEFS
The Option Method - Use this highly successful method to "de-belief" the limiting beliefs.
Questions - Provided through Lenora Boyle, , a practitioner. This is a "prompter" for the questions. (www.changinglimitingbeliefs.com)
Best for: Asking questions to elicit your beliefs and to elicit your own replacements using your own innate abilities. Try it, as it has proven to be
very effective. You could simply write your answers down in the form, though what is typically done is to have another person ask the questions, but one who is trained to do the process (called a "Mentor"). To learn more click through to the website above.
To receive additional examples of this try the CD "The Power Dialogues" from The Option Institute. They have training programs in this particular method.
Great for eliciting fear-child beliefs
What My "Child" Is Saying - Talking to your inner child and then reinterpreting the conversation. This is a metaphorical use of your "inner child" to elicit what the conversation is that the child (your primitive brain) is having. It also elicits what the sentence is that is under the sentence that is being said, as a belief statement is often just the surface of a whole sequence of belief statements - when you get to the bottom statements and replace those, often the whole unthoughtout sequence unravels and disappears. This also includes adding a comforting or supporting statement that could be useful.
Best for: Alternative way of eliciting thoughts, giving oneself more permission to say "stupid" things, plus it adds a "comforting"
approach to it.
Additional worksheets that could be of interest and good use in this process
A LEARNING AND COMPLETION PROGRAMS
The Quik Program For ReForming Of One's Belief - This will be devised, but you can just abbreviate the steps in the complete procedure below.
The Complete Step By Step Belief Reconstruction Procedure - Includes all the steps to completely reconstruct one's belief system, where one is serious about creating an excellent, excellent belief system that will dramatically improve the quality of one's life and one's experience of life.
Self-Judging And Re-Forming The Conversation - A learning plan to eliminate/reduce self judging and the great damage it can cause. It is time to remove your self-limitations.
Best for: Attacking those beliefs that seem to be prevalent for most people: those around self-judgments.
tba
APPENDIX: ARE BELIEFS CHANGEABLE?
Somehow people see beliefs as unchangeable, often coming from a viewpoint of "that's just who I am" or "that's just the way I am".
Poppycock!
If we believe that rational, factual thinking is the only way to make good decisions (considering any intuitive input), then we must address this question from that viewpoint and not from some vague conclusion, assumption or belief. In our non-thinking primitive mode of thinking we might use a sequence like this: I haven't been able to change my beliefs so far, so therefore they're not changeable or at least I can't change them. That's full of reasoning holes. For instance, one can't make a scientific conclusion through a small sampling of all possibilities nor if one hasn't tried all the methods.
Let's use logic for a moment.
If our brains came into life without anything other than some instinctual wiring, then what was added into the recordings in our brain was inputted by our environment, our culture, our closest caregivers and friends, and our own conclusions. If we took in the information and recorded it on a disk is the information unchangeable?
Science has proven that we can take our memory disks (neuronal pathways) and alter them physically by inputting and repeating new information - and that the old neuronal pathways have been proven to fall away over time, with the brain taking the pieces and using them elsewhere where they'll be more useful.
Most people are aware of the idea that if we repeat something alot of times it gets "grooved" into our brain (the myelin shield gets built up to protect the pathway and to speed up its use). But many of those same people give up when they can't seem to reprogram a belief with a few tries.
They then begin to make the mistake in reasoning that Buddha considered part of the fallacy that perpetuated suffering in mankind. People fail to see that all things are impermanent, and they tend to believe some things are permanent that are totally just electrostatic and chemical combinations on a memory disk in the brain.
Can you put new electrostatic and chemicals onto a memory disk? Is that doable in the mechanical world on rewritable CD's and DVD's? Most people would say "yes" to the latter. And, since science has proven the plasticity of the brain and that electrostatic and chemical combinations and neuron connections are absolutely changeable, then our beliefs are changeable - if we realize that the brain is just a bunch of recordings plus a super-computer reasoning power. See mini-booklet How You And Your Brain/Body Operate and understand that it is all mechanical.
There is no permanence in our neuronal wiring in those recordings. And a belief is merely a wiring together of a number of neurons in such a way that we match up to something similar to the recording and then bring in our prediction from the past of what might occur along with our emotions related to that, so that we can "survive".
Do you buy, yet, that beliefs are not permanent? If not, shoot me an email, so I can address any missings in the reasoning.
CHECKLIST FOR WHAT I BELIEVE ABOUT CHANGEABILITY
Choose one of these below so that you can have a definite view, with the power of clarity, on the changeability of beliefs: (check off what you agree with)
___ Beliefs are somewhat changeable and some may not be changeable.
___ Many beliefs are changeable but some big ones are permanent.
___ All beliefs were created by me from various sources and my thinking,
therefore they are my creation and not something permanent.
___ If I created them, I can create different ones.
___ I need only do that which is sufficient to change the beliefs that are
important to my life.
___ There is sufficient science that has worked to change beliefs for other
people.
___ Therefore, I can change my life with sufficient re-programming.
___ I commit to putting the necessary effort into changing the key limiting or
negative beliefs that affect my life.
___ Doing that will considerably increase the quality of my life.
___ Doing that is well worth the effort, as the payoff is enormous.
Affirmed this ____ day of _______________, ______
Signed ______________________________
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