Changing Them...and Their Beliefs...Forever
Kevin Hogan, Psy.D.
There are brand new insights (Aug 2004) into the greatest challenge the Master Persuader faces. How do you effectively and permanently change beliefs... in someone else?
The step-by-step process is here. This has never been written about or revealed before. It is lengthy, profound, powerful, and at times uncomfortable. But...if you put this article into practice, it will easily make you wealthier, happier and healthier.
At the end of this article, I'm going to give you the absolute most important technique for making beliefs stick within you...or someone else...that you have ever experienced. If you skip any part of the article, the strategies will make absolutely no sense.
In order to permanently change a belief in someone else, you must successfully change several beliefs in your own mind. Here are some things you might believe (or have believed in the past).
- They leave the financial planner's office. They are on the road to financial freedom.
- They leave the hypnotist's office. They are nonsmokers.
- They leave the weight loss class. They are on their diet.
- The speaker finishes his motivational speech. They are motivated.
- The coupon promotion appears in the paper. They move on to the next marketing plan.
- They walk out of the therapists office feeling better. Resolution and change have occurred.
- They hired the right guy for the job. They are ready to move on to other challenges.
Nonsense.
None of the above are real.
No one leaves the office a "non smoker."
No one has even begun their diet in the class. They haven't even backed out of the driveway onto the road to financial freedom.
Beliefs like those mentioned above are one of the destructive causes of failure in the very people you and I help every day.
Beliefs are what you strive to change other people to believe. Unfortunately that is a problem.
When someone tells the person, "you are now a nonsmoker, on the road to financial freedom, motivated, experiencing change from therapy," they are wrong.
All we have done is temporarily stop the person or company from further self destruction.
That night, the person looking to lose 40 pounds goes home from class and is filled with lots of motivation. They stare down the cookie jar. They win. They go to bed. Tomorrow life happens. The kids get into a fight, the school calls about a problem, the IRS sends you a letter, the hotel loses your reservation...stress happens. As the day goes on life beats you up and down and nothing seems to go right.
They get home. They eat lightly at dinner remembering that they only have 6 months to go to lose their 40 pounds. But the stress levels have caused the body to pump stress hormones into the body and brain. The brain's serotonin levels reduce rapidly and the cravings begin about 10 PM. An hour later. The fingers are in the cookie jar. 27 hours after the class begun they have broken their diet.
You can switch this story for all the other above scenarios, as they are all the same. I'll do one more for you. You do the rest.
Leaving the financial planner's office, you are convinced that you must save $300 per month to have a good chance at a "secure future," "becoming a millionaire," or maybe even "financial freedom." You go to bed excited. You have begun...or so you think.
The next day life happens. Kids fight. School calls. IRS letter arrives. Hotel loses reservation. Nothing is going your way. You and the other person in your life start talking about vacation/car/diversion X. You salivate with thoughts of relaxation, beaches, palm trees and ocean waves. You've had it. You get on line and book the vacation. You haven't taken one in months. Or perhaps you buy that car. Yours is getting old. It's a '98 for heaven's sake. Or...perhaps you do both. After all, you can always stash that $300 next month. It's not THAT big of a deal.
And so it goes.
The short-term stress responses to life easily overtake the long-term needs and wants for the future. It's why the homeless women are typically grossly obese. It's why the guy who is living paycheck to paycheck drives a 2004 model and the 55 year old woman who has $20,000 in retirement is off at Macy's rewarding herself for an exhausting week.
The short-term hit of a cigarette fills the pleasure centers of the brain in a way that is far greater than what the entire REST of the brain can fight with any arguments of health or long-term hopes.
The person believes that they will get the end result anyway or immediately determine...in the moment that the long-term result isn't as important, and that they DESERVE the short term hit. (The cookies, the car, the diversion, the whatever.)
Believe.
That is the beginning and ending of the person's problem. They left the office THINKING they changed. The company THOUGHT they were motivated.
Who were they all kidding?
BELIEFS had not been changed. The madness had only stopped for the moment. Usually it lasts 24-48 hours, then the person returns to their old behavioral patterns. What else COULD they do? Nothing different.
BELIEFS had NOT been changed.
"So Kevin.... just WHAT does change beliefs?"
What Builds Belief?
A belief is based and built upon habits, actions and experienced evidence. Imagine: Someone goes to Synagogue every Sabbath. They turn the lights off at sundown Friday. They rest and pray on Sabbath. They have dietary habits and rituals that are unique to their "belief structure." The rituals and lifestyle are unwavering.
Before we go on....Note: Some beliefs are good. Some are bad. Some are deadly.
Beliefs rarely change. It is very difficult to change when someone has experienced, taken actions and formed habits. The person going to Synagogue is happy. It gives them peace. They are fulfilled. They are happy. They would resist change and with rare exception...will not. I would argue this is a good set of beliefs to continue this lifestyle. Many would argue otherwise, which is just fine.
Let's look at a deadly belief.
The girl is 31 years old. She weighs 450 pounds. She is transitional homeless. (Moves from place to place collecting the dollars and entitlements due such a person.) Her only positive feeling in life is the trip to the fast food restaurant (not an evil place, by the way) which costs less than $7 for her and her son. They do this 5 or 6 days each week. For the hour after eating, she gets her only moments of "feeling good." Those moments are very real and she does deserve to be happy.
But she will die soon and her six year old son will be permanently homeless and foster care becomes grossly difficult at this age.
The short-term "feeling" causes beliefs to be reinforced everyday that cause her to overlook the long-term value of her life to herself, her family and her son.
She's not a bad person. In fact, the opposite is true. She's an earnest Christian. Everyone loves her and wonders how it could all be the way it is for her. Tragic, yet very real. In a free society it should never happen. But beliefs are reinforced daily one way or the other and they are very, very difficult to change.
Those who tell you differently are dead wrong and need to visit reality soon.
Is there any hope of changing their beliefs? Not just the 31 year old woman or the smoker but all of the people we talked about.
Yes. But it doesn't happen like any of the would-be gurus or "experts" tell you it does. They are dead wrong and don't want to know differently because they "believe" they are right...but because of this destructive belief, many go broke, suffer or die. Here's how you will be different.
The guru tells you that to create a belief, you affirm something to be true. Repeat the affirmation over and over. (After all, repetition is the mother of learning.)
I am a millionaire.
I am a millionaire.
I am a millionaire.
I am a millionaire.
Your unconscious mind says,
"You are a liar."
And the unconscious mind will punish you precisely how your parents did for lying. It will not be good.
The unconscious has learned that you are a liar and because you lied, you will not get what you asked for. And should you try, you will now be self-sabotaged.
Fortunately, the unconscious mind was given lots of second chances. Stop the mindless affirming lies and the unconscious mind MIGHT give you what you want. But don't push it.
Beliefs rarely, if ever, come from repeating a sentence over and over. Beliefs can come from SOMEONE ELSE painting verbal pictures of affirmation for you. The weight of others has always had far more impact on who you have become than anything you ever said or say.
The First Step
The first step in changing a belief is to establish precisely what you WANT to believe.
For example: I want to weigh 40 pounds less.
That's fine. It's do-able. You can make a picture. But you did that in the weight loss class. Big deal. It failed on day two. And so will the process of true belief change, if you stop at step one.
Step two. Each day you perform behaviors, rituals and actions that will allow you to get instant feedback about your work.
In real life, for the person who wants to lose weight, it means the following.
- Write down how many calories you want to consume BEFORE you consume them or you don't eat.
- Write down the total calories consumed by the end of the day and circle that number if you succeed in meeting your intake goal for the day.
- If you miss by more than 100 calories you must circle the number.
- Round all calorie consumption estimates up to the next 50 calories.
- Do not starve yourself.
- Do not try and lose 40 pounds or ANY AMOUNT of weight from this moment forward.
- Simply track your calories before you eat and keep the paper you track them on for one year.
- At the end of each week write down the average per day calories. ex. 2500 @ 7. That means you averaged 2500 calories per day that week. you are NO LONGER measuring pounds as your measurement tool but calories. Pounds are notoriously tricky in their variability from time of day to time of month. So are scales. They vary as much as 4 pounds each time you step on one. track the calories. The pounds will come off in due time.
There is more, but this is not an article about weight loss. It's an article about changing beliefs.
Control a Cause
Now, when you track these calories (dollars saved, days without a cigarette or reduced number of cigarettes, or sales in the company) you are tracking one of the two basic causes of weight loss or gain. You are CONTROLLING a CAUSE.
When you control a cause, and see that you have done so for MONTHS, you start to BELIEVE that you can CONTROL your eating AND your weight AND the tracking becomes as ritualistic as showering and combing your hair.
This is how you teach yourself habit, action taking and evidence for new beliefs. The belief is, "I can determine how many calories I eat."
The evidence is the daily proof that YOU decide how many calories you will intake every time you open the refrigerator and that YOU decide how many calories you will consume that day.
What if you go above the number you choose? What if you don't make as many calls as your goal? What if you smoke a cigarette? What if you fall back into the habit of procrastination for one day?
That's life. We ASSUME that will happen when we begin our LONG-TERM plan. There will be 5 or 10 days in the course of the year where you don't achieve the daily desired outcome. That is just fine. It's part of the plan. Failing on any given day means you are living. It means you are PAYING ATTENTION. People who don't pay attention can't succeed. Ever.
You are building evidence to support your very young belief that YOU are in CONTROL. As time goes by the evidence mounts and soon you can show anyone with absolute certainty that you are succeeding and that you can replicate this in any area of life.
Someone gains weight for the same reason they don't make sales calls, for the same reason they put the manuscript on the shelf and don't send it to the publisher, for the same reason they smoke. It's ALL the same. The person does NOT BELIEVE THAT THEY ARE CONTROL and they PROVE IT ALL DAY LONG. An endless loop that leads to the bottom of the Canyon, never to return....
Creating Images
Next, you must create images of the person themself and have that image perform daily activities that would occur in the life they desire to live.
So, if someone wanted to be motivated to make sales calls, there are several sets of images that you need to plug in (probably using covert hypnosis or covert conditioning). I'll use the selling example specifically.
- The person getting up out of bed thinking about their long-term goals.
- Going into the shower thinking about their daily outcomes.
- Coming out of the shower thinking about the first person who turns them down or treats them with disrespect and HOW THEY (the person you are working with) RESPOND to the turn down.
- Going to the office thinking about more outcomes both positive and negative, with the negative outcomes ALWAYS having specific responses that are realistic and achievable to be programmed in. (He hung up on me, I felt bad for a minute, shrugged my shoulders, dialed the next number.)
- You need DOZENS of possible outcomes to each phone call, sales call. You need to know specifically what the person wants plugged into their brain realizing that negative emotions of rejection and failure are common and SHOULD be anticipated. That's fine. It's how the individual RESPONDS to those FEELINGS that matters. What does the RESPONSE cause them to do next? THAT IS THE BEGINNING OF BELIEF CHANGE because two hours later when they are in the office and they experience those negative moments they will have prepared feelings and responses for the situation that they will NATURALLY go to because they haven't imaged them so many times they could go nowhere else. You can't change the feeling of rejection. It is a biological reaction. YOU CAN CHANGE THE RESPONSE as to what happens NEXT and THAT is what must be plotted out.
You can look to other people, like role models, for examples of what to do next or how to respond, but each reaction and response MUST be of the person themselves doing the behavior.
How a Belief Forms
Now that the person has dozens of possible responses to a dozen or so likely reactions on the part of prospects or customers, beliefs BEGIN to form. Like a baby forming in the Mother's womb, cells divide, then SLOWLY take shape of life. That's EXACTLY how it is with almost ALL beliefs.
NOW, the person can say, with congruency and INTEGRITY, "When X happens, I feel Y then I immediately do Z." That is a belief. It is based upon evidence both internal and external. It IS THEIR EXPERIENCE. It is THEIR HABIT and THEIR NORMAL BEHAVIOR. It's that way because they have created dozens of experiences in reality and in their mind, to create ONE BELIEF.
Let me give you a couple of examples of beliefs that you have that are validated every single day.
x) I go to the office 5 days per week. This belief is validated both internally and externally. They see it and they do it. It is validated over and over. It is now a belief. There is no ambiguity or loss of integrity. You believe what you imagine and what you do in reality. That is a belief that is going to stick.
y) I believe I own a car. This belief is validated both internally and externally. Every time the person sees the car, they recognize it as theirs. If their are no more payments on the car, it is validated in reality as THEIR CAR.