How to Change Your Belief - Belief Swish Pattern

Written by Ivan Staroversky | 07 July 2010

Belief is an acceptance of a fact, opinion, or assertion as real or true, without positive knowledge or absolute certainty. Basically, belief is something that you take for granted without further proof. Beliefs can be positive and negative, useful and useless, strong and weak, constructive and destructive. Sometimes people form negative beliefs about themselves, others or the world in general. These negative believes follow people for years and usually do more harm than usefulness. Some of the common negative beliefs include:

"I am not successful."
"I am never going to be rich." or "Money is evil."
"I am a looser and other people are successful."
"I won't be able to achieve my goals."
"This is simply not possible."
"I am not smart"
"I am shy."

Would you agree that it would be useful to be able to change these beliefs at will? Psychology has many techniques and methods which can help you to change your beliefs. In this post I would like to share with you an NLP technique called Belief Swish Pattern. First lets practice and examine how your beliefs are structured.

1. Think of something simple that you believe strongly. For example, that The Sun will come up tomorrow or that you will drive to work tomorrow.

2. Notice what images, sounds, and feelings arise when you think about this belief. Are you really certain about it?

3. Examine the structure of your belief. In Neuro Linguistic Programming, the structure of your belief is determined by submodalities. Submodalities are characteristics of something that you are thinking about.

Go down through the list of submodalities and note as many qualities of your belief as you can.

4. Think of something that you doubt or are not sure of. Something that you think that maybe is true or maybe is not.

5. Notice what images, sounds, and feelings arise when you think about this uncertain thought.

6. Go down through the list of submodalities and note as many qualities of your belief as you can.

7. Think of the strong belief for a moment. Now think of the doubtful belief for a moment. Note the differences in submodalities between the strong belief and the doubtful belief.

1. Think of a limiting or a negative belief you no longer want to have. For example, that you will not be healthy or that you will not be able to lose weight.

2. Think of a positive resourceful belief you do want to have. For example, that you will become healthy soon or that you will able to lose a number of pounds within a number of weeks.

3. Examine the submodalities of certainty and uncertainty that you have already elicited.

4. Imagine the limiting belief you want to get rid of. Now quickly move it off into the distance and snap it back into the submodalities of the uncertainty.

5. Right after you finish step 4, imagine the positive resourceful belief and fire it off into the distance and snap it back into the submodalities of the strong belief.

6. Repeat this a number of times. Remember to do this quickly each time.

Reference:

Bandler, R. (2008). Get the Life You Want: The Secrets to Quick and Lasting Life Change with Neuro-Linguistic Programming. Deerfield Beach, FL: HCI.