If you’re planning to take the Lightning Process seminar then this chapter is a checklist to prepare you to be as ready as you can be to get full value out of the next steps of the Process. Throughout the book you will have recognized how influential beliefs are in everything that we do; this will, of course, include your health and the Lightning Process training. It’s important, therefore, to consider your beliefs in more detail, particularly how they were formed, what they are currently, and how we can begin to change the ones that aren’t very useful to you anymore.
Wherever something is described as taken as read, assumed to be true, common knowledge or generalized (these are those ‘all’ kinds of statements: ‘all women are bad drivers’, ‘all men can’t shop’, etc.’), then we have a belief in operation. Beliefs are both valuable and problematic. Let’s look at their value first.
They serve a very useful purpose in that they are formed when we discover a gap in our understanding. The process of their creation goes something like this:
A simple example is learning how to open doors. Doors are a mystery to children at first. They seem to be walls sometimes and openings at other times. They don’t understand them. Then, one wonderful day, usually at about 14 months old, they work out that adults get through walls by pushing or pulling the ‘door’ to open it. Armed with this knowledge, they now understand the magic of doors and can apply it in every room in their house and in all other buildings, too. It serves them very well.
Until they meet that strangest of things – the sliding door. Have you ever noticed what happens when an adult is faced, unknowingly, by a sliding door?
First they push it. Then pull it. Then they do the same again but harder. Then they kick it. They think it’s locked or stuck. And then, finally, by chance they might notice it doesn’t have hinges, or feel the sideways motion of it. Only then do they realize that the old technology based on their well-established belief about opening doors is inappropriate here.
And that is the problem with beliefs. They are an especially powerful type of generalization (in this case ‘all doors open with a push or pull’) in that they are often so fundamentally believed and unquestioned that we forget they are there, even though they affect our thinking in all situations. The problem with beliefs is we completely mistake them for truths.
And because we spent a long time collecting the evidence to support our belief, it gains an ingrained dependability. It’s something we measure the world by. So anything that doesn’t quite fit with our beliefs is assumed to be untrue. This, as we mentioned right at the beginning of the book, makes it difficult to look at anything new with an open mind.
Spotting and working with limiting beliefs is tricky on your own because they don’t show up very clearly as beliefs, as they seem true to us. The next section explores some of the ways you could begin to notice them for what they really are.
Almost always, you’ll be able to spot beliefs by the fact that they are expressed as statements of fact yet often include the following:
For example:
Beliefs don’t respond to logical intervention. For example, it is very difficult to argue or reason someone out of ‘hating him or herself’ into ‘liking themselves’. Most racists know someone who belongs to the racial group they despise, and yet they think that individual is ‘quite nice’. For example, an Anglophobe hates English people, but may consider Isaac Newton to be ‘not a bad man’. However, this doesn’t stop them knowing that ‘the English are all useless’.
It is completely possible to hold two or more conflicting beliefs at the same time. In soccer, one team’s fans may hate another team’s fans and yet, during the World Cup, when England’s national team play Germany’s, some of the fans will join together in hating Germany’s fans. Or they may support Germany if they are playing Argentina (for those too young to remember, or who don’t know, there is still some animosity in certain sections of English society towards both the Germans and the Argentineans, since fighting them some considerable time ago in the world wars and the Falklands War).
The Sixth Commandment, ‘Thou shalt not kill’, is still held by the chaplains who bless the troops before they go into battle. It isn’t unusual to have a mixture of opposing beliefs, but it does tend to make things more complicated for us. Success is most easily achieved in any field of endeavour when our beliefs are aligned.
Robert Dilts, one of the foremost NLP authors and researchers, spent some time looking at the power and influence that beliefs have on all aspects of human endeavour, and especially the influence that they have on our health. The following exercise is my development of his original important work in this field.
Use this exercise to help you identify what your beliefs are about ‘resolving your issues’.
Score yourself on a scale of one to five, where one means you disagree strongly with the statement and five means you completely agree with the statement. The answers to these questions may initially seem so obvious that quite often people are surprised to notice their actual beliefs don’t quite match what they thought they would or should.
Statement 1: I want to resolve all of my issues.
If your score is less than five then you need to get more clarity about whether you want this change. Don’t worry if it’s not a five. It’s not that uncommon to find you don’t want it as much as you should, and the other questions will also help you identify why your score is less than five.
Statement 2: It is possible for me to resolve all of my issues.
It’s important to distinguish this question from the next one. This question is really about whether it is possible or impossible to resolve the issues. To some extent this question should use the options of only yes or no, as it’s a bit like being alive or dead or being pregnant or not pregnant, in that you can’t really be halfway between. Similarly, if something isn’t impossible, then, by definition, it must be possible. So let’s redraw it:
Totally impossible | YES/NO |
Possible | YES/NO |
Statement 3: I am capable of resolving all of my issues.
This question is considering whether or not you have the capabilities to make the changes you wish for. It is a bit like assembling a piece of flat-packed furniture or making a jigsaw puzzle. If, when you take it out of the box, you find there are pieces missing, then you don’t currently have the capability to assemble the furniture or complete the jigsaw. Without the correct components it is just simply beyond your capabilities.
If your issues are about health, for example, do you have the correct components for healing? They would include your immune system, blood, oxygen, etc. For the moment, let’s ignore the fact that you will also need some knowledge of how to get these systems working properly, as this is something that is covered in the Lightning Process seminars.
Statement 4: It is appropriate and good for me and my life to resolve all of my issues, and I am prepared to do what it takes to make the changes.
This is asking if there would there be any negative consequences to making these changes. Occasionally, by asking this question, we can discover if there are any small or significant reasons why we haven’t made the changes we so clearly desire. Once you have identified any reasons for not being comfortable with the changes you desire, then you can begin to address them.
Statement 5: I have the power to influence and change these issues.
If you don’t feel that you have the power to change these issues then, as it highlights, you expect someone else to sort out your issues for you. Therefore, the Lightning Process isn’t really going to be that useful for you at this point. This is because, as you have probably noticed throughout the book, influence is such a core element of the philosophy behind the success of the Lightning Process. This is a sign that you haven’t quite found your way through the first steps of the Lightning Process contained in this book. The solution is to go through the book, running the exercises again, or to speak to a practitioner to discover how you can start to trust that you have the power to make these changes.
Statement 6: I deserve to and am valuable enough to resolve my issues.
For those who don’t have an issue with deserving and feeling valuable enough, this probably seems like a ridiculous question to answer. However, a large proportion of people do have a serious lack of self-belief, especially in terms of how valuable they feel or how deserving they think they are of experiencing good things. Fortunately, the Lightning Process seminars are very useful in helping people to resolve these key stumbling blocks.
Statement 7: In terms of my issues and my ability to follow instructions, I am similar enough to all the others who have used the Lightning Process to get the results they wanted, and I am bound to make the same kind of changes as them.
If you don’t feel that you can achieve the sort of results that so many other people using the Lightning Process have, then, unfortunately, you probably won’t until you resolve this part of your belief. This is covered extensively in the sections on placebo and expectations of success (chapter 3). If you scored low on this belief, please re-read that section.
I would recommend that you now go through the same seven statements, but this time using the belief, ‘Resolving my issues will be easy, rapid and permanent’.
Before taking the Lightning Process seminar, spend some time considering these seven key questions and your answers. If you get low scores, ask yourself, ‘What can I do to change this?’ Both this book and the Lightning Process website are designed to help you start to shift some of these unhelpful beliefs. If this applies to you, then I would suggest you see this as a good thing. It means you are being honest with yourself; wanting to ensure that you only take the seminar when you feel you have an excellent chance of getting the results you want. The seminar itself will also contain similar elements of homework to this, so it also gives you a taste of what taking the course will be like and will help you to decide if this is the kind of journey you would want to take.
The next chapter presents a practical exercise, loosely based on some of the exercises in the seminar, to help prepare you further.