How do you know what you don’t know?
How did you get your beliefs? Did you sit down and decide what beliefs and values you will have and why? Chances are you haven’t. Chances are they just turned up due to life experiences, circumstances and surroundings. I wonder if you would choose some of the same beliefs if you did sit down to establish them today. I wonder how it would change your life moving forward if all of your beliefs actually served you.
So how do you go about discovering what it is you don’t know in relation to your beliefs? Well the first step I use when working with clients, which you can also use, is to assist them in taking a close look at something in their lives that is not the way they would like it to be. It could be a relationship, wanting more friends, problems at work, or health concerns. Basically anything that is not the way you want it to be. I do this by asking them what would happen if the situation was the way they wanted it to be. For example, what would happen if they did had more friends? And then I ask, what else would happen? I keep asking them ‘and what else would happen?’ until they no longer come up with an answer and then I ask it again. Whatever answers pop into their mind is treated as being true, as the answers are coming from their unconscious, after all where else would they come from? They come up with not only pleasurable but also painful scenarios. It’s the painful scenarios I get them to focus on. The reason for this is that, we as humans do more to avoid pain that we do to feel pleasure (read more on pain and pleasure in the March 2011 edition of the Empower Newsletter). Some underlying painful beliefs in the example of having more friends could be that having friends is hard work, they can’t be trusted, they let you down or that they even end up hurting you.
So although we consciously know we will gain certain pleasures from getting what we want, our unconscious also associates pain from past experiences. The painful ones win out. Our unconscious remembers when we were hurt in the past and associates that certain event as the cause. So when we encounter that same experience again, because our unconscious wants to protect us it instinctively associates it as painful. And because we do more to avoid pain than we do to feel pleasure, we avoid the pain. Hence, we unconsciously sabotage our friendships or potential friendships.
So how can we change our beliefs? I start by getting my client to focus on the pleasurable outcomes they have had in the past. Take the example of wanting more friends. I ask them if all of their experiences have been painful. I think not, surely there have been some good times, support and/or laughter. I then get them to start focusing on the pleasurable outcome they want and all the times in the past it has been pleasurable. From these pleasures a new belief is adopted. Secondly I assist them in using their unconscious mind to their advantage by associating pain to not having more friends. By asking questions like, what is not having more friends costing you and what are you missing out on by not having more friends? These questions are asked until they have created enough pain for their unconscious mind to want to avoid.
I strongly urge you to try this technique. What do you have to loose besides a disempowering belief that no longer serves, supports, nurtures or challenges you. I would love to hear about ‘what you now know that you didn’t previously know’.
August 26, 2012 4:01 pm 
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