Sometimes
I have to go for a limiting belief change before anything
else will work. An example of this happened just recently.
This young man, Jason, was brought to me from out of state
by his family. The family had scheduled several days in Oklahoma
City and I had cleared my calendar for them. The young man
was 12 years old. According to his mother "He was hyperactive
and impulsive as a child. At age 6, we had him tested at Children's
Hospital for 3 days. They found him to be ADHD with all the
symptoms. They medicated him with Ritalin and a wide range
of other drugs through age 12. All were unsuccessful or caused
severe side effects such as insomnia, anxiety, emotional problems,
confusion, tics, etc.
In the sixth grade he fell apart. He began showing signs of
depression. He talked of death, was angry, frustrated, confused,
and had low self-esteem. I had talked to the mother
before we started about the possibility of working on Jason's
limiting beliefs. This was primarily because of the shortness
of time of their visit and the fact that I would not be available
for follow-up. She had agreed upon this approach.
I started by asking Jason some questions about school and
how he did in school just to build some rapport and to get
to know how his mind worked. Shortly thereafter I had him
spell several easy words which he already knew how to spell.
After he could do that successfully, I had him attempt to
spell a couple of them backwards to see if he could do it.
The results were inconsistent and slow. Sometimes he could
slowly spell them backwards and other times he could not.
When I asked him to explain what happened to his pictures
when he had trouble he said they disappeared -- just vanished.
I would get him to try different sub-modalities such as size,
distance, and brightness and the changes seemed to help him
stabilize the pictures.
I switched to having him visualize an apple and to learn
to move it around in his mind. He was more successful with
the apple even when I started trying to get him to picture
the word "apple" on the face of the apple. He could
do this quite easily. When I started having him print longer
words on the apple, he started getting frustrated. He started
tearfully saying things, with frustration in his voice, like
"I can't do this!" "This is not working."
"Why do I have to do this?" and "I want to
leave." We took a break. The statement "I can’t
do this!" is a limiting belief about his capability.
When we came back from the break, he was really into frustration
and anger and he was tired. He wanted to quit. I decided immediately
to shift to work on changing his belief. I asked him if he
ever believed in the Easter Bunny or Santa Claus. He had.
I then asked him if he still believed in them. He did not.
I asked him to describe what had happened and asked him to
consider how it was possible that he once believed in something
and now did not. He described how some friends had made some
comments that made him wonder about Santa Claus, then he had
thought about how impossible it was for Santa Claus to travel
that far that fast, and then he had caught his parents putting
presents under the tree.
I told him that those were the natural steps to changing
a belief: first, you would start to doubt it because you would
experience some counter examples; second, the evidence would
build up in support of the disbelief; and then, third, it
would become an old belief that you no longer believed. Then
you are open to replace it with a new belief which serves
you better. I gave him several other examples of times in
which he had believed something and had gone through the same
process (e.g., Easter Bunny, tooth fairy, couldn't walk or
ride bike but then he learned how, etc).
We are constantly adopting new beliefs about ourselves and
life and using them until they no longer serve us and then
discarding them and adopting newer beliefs which are more
relevant," I said. "It is a natural process of growing.
One of your limiting beliefs right now is that your brain
controls you instead of you controlling your brain. Therefore,
when you get bored or frustrated, you act out inappropriately
-- and you believe you don't have any choices." "Do
you know the major difference between yourself and me?"
I asked. "You believe that your mind controls you and
I believe that I can use my mind to accomplish anything I
want in the world."
Jason went into several extreme counter examples like throwing
a football to the moon, staying alive if somebody shot me
in the head, and so on... I agreed with him that I probably
couldn't do those things but that there were some more simple
things where his mind was getting him in trouble and that
my mind did not get me into trouble.
"For example," I said "when you get bored
in school, you disrupt the class by making noise, moving about,
or by leaving the classroom. When I am bored, I figure out
a way to entertain myself with my mind. I remember when I
first learned to do that," I continued. "I was in
the 5th grade and I was having to sit through long and boring
church services and not get in trouble. I remembered figuring
out that I could sit still while looking at the preacher and
daydream in my mind of something I had rather be doing or
make up a movie of something interesting. My mother and her
friends thought I was very attentive to the sermon. I stayed
out of trouble and didn't get bored." "Do you know
that I still use that strategy to this day if I have to do
something boring -- like work out at the spa or mow the lawn?"
I added.
Jason then came up with some more counter examples like "You
can't make a million dollars suddenly appear" or "You
can't heal yourself if you are sick." I then proceeded
to share stories with him of how I had changed a limiting
belief about money being evil to a more useful belief which
would support my career in helping others. The new belief
had dramatically affected my income. Also, I related some
stories about how we were able to assist people with allergies,
asthma, cancer, etc. by eliciting their limiting beliefs about
their health and assisting them in changing the limiting beliefs
to beliefs which would empower their own natural healing.
I then showed Jason a picture on my wall of myself walking
on fire. I told him that walking on fire was an example of
how the mind was so powerful in controlling the body. He was
surprised and tried to deny it -- but the photo clearly shows
flames in the coals.
Jason started thinking about some possibilities and I started
clearing some space so I could physically walk him through
a belief change process. As Jason went through the process,
you could see a physical change in him. His eyes and focus
become clearer and more steady. He became totally attentive
to what I was doing and the possibilities. He had changed
his old belief of "My mind controls me!" to "I
can use my mind to accomplish anything I want!"
After we finished, I future paced the new belief into several
times in his life where I knew he had previously had trouble,
such as when he became bored or angry in school. "Awesome!"
was his response. "I can do this!" was another.
He said, "This is just like running a movie in my mind
and I'm the director."
We then went back to doing some of the spelling words in
his mind where he previously could not spell them backwards.
He could now spell them backwards easily. We expanded the
length of the words. He could still do it. He asked me, "what
is the longest word you have ever spelled backwards?"
I replied, "Super-cala-fraga-listic-expy-ala-doshas."
Luckily he didn't have me prove it since it had been a long
time since I had done it.
We broke for lunch and I instructed him and his mother to
play the game of noticing billboards and street signs and
spelling them backwards to each other. When they came back
from lunch they were happily and easily spelling all sorts
of words and numbers backwards. We continued to work on other
learning strategies as examples that he could learn how to
use his mind to be successful in whatever he wanted.
I also pointed out to him that when he tried to learn something
and it was hard that it just meant that he needed to learn
another way or that he needed to break it down into smaller
tasks. I told him that in those instances all he had to do
was "back off for a moment and remember that he could
use his mind to accomplish anything." I also reminded
him about the time when he was very young and learning to
walk and that "that little Jason didn't get frustrated
and quit when he fell down then -- and aren't you glad now
that little Jason didn't give up back then and that he persisted
and kept trying?"
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