Chapter 5: Pushing the Communication Buttons 85
- For each value, can you identify how you may be making a deletion,
a distortion, or a generalisation that’s stopping you from fulfilling a
desire?
This question’s the crucial one!
- Also note whether any limiting decisions are lurking, which may be
impacting on your values.
We describe limiting decisions in the later section ‘Decisions’.
During a deep relaxation, James remembered, when he was about six, his
parents having a discussion about their landlord increasing the rent on their
house. He recalled how worried his parents sounded. He realised that he’d
formed a belief then that rich people were greedy and bad.Beliefs
Beliefs are really powerful; they can propel you to the heights of success
or drag you to the depths of failure because, to paraphrase Henry Ford,
‘whether you believe you can or whether you believe you can’t... you’re
right’.Your beliefs are formed in all kinds of unconscious ways. You learn that
you’re gifted from your parents, that you can’t draw from your teacher, that
you must support your friends from your peers, and so on. In some cases, as
with the teacher, when you’re told that you can’t draw, you delete any oppor-
tunities you may have to find out how to draw. After all, one teacher told you
that you can’t draw.Beliefs can start off like a ‘splinter in your mind’ (remember Morpheus talk-
ing to Neo in the film The Matrix?) and, as it irritates and niggles, you begin
to find instances that validate the splinter and over a period of time you
develop a concrete belief.Choose your beliefs very carefully because they have a tendency to become
self-fulfilling prophecies!Attitudes
Your attitude is your way of thinking about a topic or perhaps a group of
people: it tells others how you’re feeling or your state of mind about some-
one or something. Your attitude is a filter of which you’re very conscious and
is formed by a collection of values, beliefs, and opinions around a particular
subject. Changing an attitude is challenging because your conscious mind is
actively involved in building and holding on to attitudes.You can get some awareness of other people’s attitudes from what they say
and how they behave. At work, someone who goes the extra mile and has a
positive frame of mind is considered to have a good attitude to their work,
whereas a dodger or malingerer may be seen as having a bad attitude to work.