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The NLP Belief Creator

Chris Harrison - February 2005
©2007 PlanetNLP Ltd

The purpose of this NLP exercise is to enable you to create a belief to give you more options in your life.

For instance, believing that you can learn new skills easily and effortlessly, is a useful belief to create.

Even if it's untrue, holding the belief will still make it easier to learn than having the opposite belief.

This is the kind of belief to create with this exercise.

It is important to understand the steps so that you can perform this exercise without any doubt as to what you are doing and why.

A new belief doesn't need any doubt associated with it, so as well as reading the exercise several times, it is a good idea to try the exercise out a few times with a minor belief before attempting with anything life changing.

It is also a good idea to read the Content and Submodality Primers before attempting this exercise.

Step 1:

Think of something that you sincerely believe. This does not need to be something important, in fact something trivial such as the belief that you can breathe, or some other trivial but undeniable belief is best.

Now think of that belief and notice that when you think of the belief you visualize something related to that belief.

Notice where in space that image is positioned.

Is it to the right? to the left? And how far away?

Do you say anything in your head, or hear any sounds that tell you that this is a belief.

If so make a note of them.

Now think about something completely different for a moment, maybe the weather, your last bank statement.

Anything really.

Perhaps you could just let your mind go blank.

Step 2:

Now think of something that you are unsure as to whether it's true or not.

In fact pick something that you don't really care about either way about.

For instance, I don't know if gold is denser than silver, and it certainly doesn't have a particularly major effect on my life either way.

Now think of this idea and as before notice that when you think of it you visualize something related to that idea.

Notice where in space that image is positioned.

Is it to the right? to the left? And how far away?

Step 3:

So now that you have two positions, think of the belief you wish to create, and notice where that image is.

Now you need to move the image firstly into the same position as the 'don't care' belief, and then into the 'belief' position.

If there were any internal sounds connected to the belief, repeat them in your head when you position the image into the 'belief' position.

There are a couple of things that may make this difficult and these are as follows:

1) The image will not move from the left to the right or visa versa.

This seems to be a general problem.

The way around this is to move the image into the center, way off in the distance and then pull it towards you and into the second position.

2) The image moves back to it's original position.

There are a number of ways to solve this.

When you move the image make a sound in your head to swish the image into the new position.
Imagine a sucker on the back of the image and stick it in place
Nail it in place.
Imagine a series of locks to hold it in place.
Think of any way you could hold the image in place in the real world and imagine it.

Once you have the image in the correct place, make sure that it is the same size as the original.

Test it:

Think of something completely different.

Let your mind go blank again, and then think of the new belief.

How do you feel about it now?

Does it have the correct position and size?

Did you hear the internal dialogue that tells you that it's true?

If not, go back and run through the steps again.