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I’ve met the enemy and he/she’s living in my shorts

Study after study has proven that "What you believe is what you get."

This is why it is so important to know what you believe. It is important because everything you do is a by-product of what you believe. Multiple studies confirm the fact that our beliefs create our experience... they can even affect our physical being.

In the book, Changing Belief Systems with NLP, Dr. Robert Dilts talks about the role of beliefs and the processes that influence them. He gives examples of three studies demonstrating how beliefs function. These examples include weight loss, recovery from terminal cancer and a study on placebos. All are documented cases of how an individual's underlying belief translates to the "physical" world through healing, physical changes and the process of living.

The key question is, "What is keeping you from doing this, or getting that?" Most people don’t even realize what is going on. It is your own conflicting beliefs at the unconscious level that keep you from becoming your dreams.

I want to share with you information from the study on placebos. The placebo effect is where someone who believes he/she is receiving medication is actually given a "fake" drug and gets well anyway. They only take a sugar pill, yet they heal. Dilts mentions many different studies that prove the point. On average a placebo will work as well as a real drug more than 33% of the time. Remember that is on "average." Some studies demonstrated placebos working as well as morphine in 54% of cases.

Why is this important?

What you believe has a lot to do with what is going on in your life. And the bigger problem is most people don’t know what they believe. When I make a new friend, one of the things I want to know is what do they believe. And it is interesting to hear people stumbling around, working to explain to someone, what they believe.

Because beliefs are so powerful, if you are not getting the results you want in your life you might want to take a look at the underlying belief systems that guide you. What is holding you back from accomplishing your dreams? The answer is probably some belief system, deep down, that might be in conflict with some of your "known" beliefs.

By B.S. I don’t mean the stuff littering the Texas prairies… I mean Belief Systems.

So ask yourself, "What is stopping me from achieving this goal?"

Did you miss the importance of this question? It is the secret question that will get you to what blocks your success. It will get you to identify the B.S. that is holding you back or keeping your from accomplishing what you say you want to accomplish. By B.S. I don’t mean the stuff littering the Texas prairies… I mean Belief Systems.

How did we get to this point? We have gotten to this point because we are…

Meaning Making Machines…

The creature that we call human has this need to make sense of everything. People ask themselves, "Why was I abused?" or, "Why was I abandoned?" or, "What did I do to cause my parents to get divorced?" As a result, they sometimes come to conclusions like, "I must not be lovable." We make meaning out of everything and that "meaning" we create, literally becomes our reality.

In daily life, nobody responds to objective reality. Instead, we respond to our perception of reality, filtered through what we believe to be true.

In daily life, nobody responds to objective reality. Instead, we respond to our perception of reality, filtered through what we believe to be true. So we need to understand what we believe. And as we identify what we believe we will realize that we have conflicting belief systems. We can believe two different things about the same activity causing confusion, weird feelings and many times self-sabotage.

Sometimes the limitation or the "blockage," comes from a system of beliefs, not a single belief. In other words, there are multiple beliefs feeding off of each other. And sadly, some of these beliefs seem opposite of other beliefs. So what do you do when you have conflicting beliefs?

We wont have enough time in this article to address that, however we will do that in the next newsletter. I would like to leave you with some "homework" to do over the next couple of weeks. This homework will help you uncover your beliefs. In his book, Robert Dilts says that the hardest part of identifying a belief is that the ones that affect you most are typically the ones you are least conscious of.

So the first thing we have to address when we are working with beliefs is that we are going into the "hidden" areas of our mind. There are four common problems that Dilts identifies that can prevent us from figuring out what our deep beliefs are:

The Smoke Screen

This is just like James Bond, or the Ninjas that we see on the small screen. You drop a smoke bomb to allow for your escape. If you can’t see "it" or identify "it", then you don’t have to deal with "it." This pattern of evasion shows up a lot in our Leadership Awakening class. We are getting right down close to a certain belief and that protective wall pushes the button. All of the sudden certain students find themselves lost and confused… smoke has filled the chasm of the minds eye. It can show up in many different ways:

It might be a feeling: Something like "I can’t go any further, I can’t push myself anymore." They are so close to succeeding and yet want to quit.

Sometimes it becomes a tangent. Getting too close and all of the sudden… somebody starts changing the subject and saying irrelevant things, or changing the focus of the conversation.

In addition, sometimes a person will just shut down completely.

Red Herring

A "red Herring" is a false clue. In English murder mysteries, a red herring comes when the fugitive leaves a clue to purposefully lead detectives in a wrong direction. This shows up because people start feeling uncomfortable, or feel "screwed up", or they say it’s not that big of a deal… so we downplay the importance, and thus the need to dig deeper. The red herring often comes from incongruity, meaning that what we say and do don't match.

Fishing in the Dreams

On page 74-75 of his book, Dilts explains this in detail. Let me explain it this way: We want some help so we seek counseling from others. Some of those "others" are friends, co-workers and others who we allow to play junior psychologist. We allow other people to put meaning into our events and feelings. Sometimes that could be a therapist, or a counselor, and they probably have pure intent, and want to help us heal. The problem happens because they are seeing our situation through their own filters, through their own dreams.

It is very important to not let others tell us what we are thinking and feeling, unless they are skilled and licensed in that field. So others take a situation that is going on in your life and make meaning out of it based on their map of reality…not necessarily your reality and what is going on in "your" experience.

Critical Mass

The final way we "hide" our beliefs is critical mass. This is a term used in physics. In order to create a chain reaction in electrons and atoms, you have to reach a certain threshold of energy. When you reach that level of energy it starts the process, "critical mass" kicks in. There is a great book that talks about this called the "100th Monkey." It is the proverbial "Straw that broke the camels back." Wow what a powerful piece of straw, it broke the camels back. Of course, of all the other straws hadn’t been piled on first, it wouldn’t have made any difference. This means that people don’t necessarily get limited by a single belief, we could be working with a system of beliefs.

That if the opposite of insanity. Some of you feel crazy at times, once you take a look at your underlying beliefs that are holding you back…then you can change the approach and thus change the results.

The bottom line is that we are all working perfectly. That doesn't mean we are perfect, but rather that we are working perfectly based on our programming. You have your "critical mass" going… you are getting the results you have programmed yourself to get. So if you don’t like the results, change the approach. As you change the approach you change the results. That if the opposite of insanity. Some of you feel crazy at times, once you take a look at your underlying beliefs that are holding you back…then you can change the approach and thus change the results.

Here is some 'homework' for you to do over the next two weeks: Get a pad of paper and on the top of it write, "I believe…." You will add beliefs to that list whenever you can. List out as many of your beliefs as possible. I would say you should come up with a minimum of 50. You can do this. Take the time and build you list of beliefs. We will then do something with that information. Have a great couple of weeks and remember…

When you live your life like it matters…It does.

With Passion-Under Construction
Mr. Black

Scott V. Black
The Empower U Leadership Team
Septermber 18, 2006