Afterthoughts on changing beliefs
Just in case you missed any of my afterthoughts on the post about changing our beliefs...
Beliefs are like the cells in a honeycomb
Beliefs don’t exist in isolation.
If you decide to take one down, you have to deal with its neighbours as well.
Those closest probably provide the greatest support and will require more effort. Those further away still have some influence and might require later attention.
To hijack neurobiologist Carla Shatz’s observation (and mix the metaphor - sorry), beliefs that wire together fire together.
Unthink twisted thinking
Holding the belief, “I’m not creative,” is what David Burns calls twisted thinking.
It could be ‘all-or-nothing thinking,’ where one small problem turns an endeavour into a TOTAL failure.
Or it could be ‘overgeneralisation’ where we do an intergalactic extrapolation from a single challenging event (one of my gifts, unfortunately).
Either way, it’s (just) a thought. Unthink it, rethink it, feel good about the change, and then set about delivering evidence to reinforce the new thought. And remember to feel good about the new thought as well.
I know it’s not always that straightforward, but persevere, and remember the evidence bit.
The Feeling Good Handbook, by David D Burns, ISBN 9780452281325.
Reinterpret the past
We often fool ourselves into thinking that our beliefs are based on experience and evidence.
They’re not! They’re based on our interpretation of that experience and evidence.
Change the interpretation, feel good about the change => change the belief!
Undermine your castle’s battlements
I love metaphors. I’m not very good at them, but I still love them.
When Europeans began building stone castles in the 12th and 13th centuries, attacking forces turned to miners as their weapon of choice. They literally mined beneath the battlements until they collapsed. Hence the term, undermine. It required effort, patience, and a knack for knowing when to get out of the tunnel.
That feels like a pretty good metaphor for changing beliefs! Pick away at their foundations, with contradictory evidence, for example, until they have no alternative but to crumble.
Banishing self-limiting beliefs
Self-limiting beliefs tend to start with I can’t or I’m not. For example, “I’m not creative.”
In the first instance, changing a belief is as simple as changing the words: “I am creative.”
Then we can locate evidence in our past experience that corroborates the changed words.
Then we can add some tone and some energy, the shoutier the better: “I AM CREATIVE!”
Then we can reinforce the new belief by actually doing something about it. Start saying, “I can...” or “I am...” and then look for corroboration.
Develop a yet-mentality
Les (my lovely wife of nearly 50 years) was helping out at a summer camp for mid-teenagers.
She was working alongside a softly spoken teacher from California called Sam, when one of the kids said, “But I can’t play the piano.”
Sam paused with exaggerated deliberation, then said, “...yet.”