Neuro-Linguistic Programming

Core beliefs and values, those which we hold most dear, and which permeate across many areas of our lives, form the basis of our identity and the backbone of our personality.

Beliefs and values are considered important in NLP for a number of reasons:

They're perceptual filters. Like Meta Programs, they determine to a large degree the way we experience the external world. In fact, our beliefs and values act both to create our internal representation of reality and to confirm it.

They're distortions. Every belief and value is essentially a generalization we've made about the world, and every generalization is essentially a distortion. When someone has a problem there's often a distorted belief or value at the root of it. Becoming consciously aware of what's being assumed or presupposed opens the door to their accuracy and usefulness being challenged.

They have motivational importance. Beliefs in general, and values in particular, are motivational. They're not just static maps; we use them to choose routes and plan journeys. Because we tend to move towards what we value and away from what we don't value, we put energy behind what's important to us. If we value the family, we'll prioritize it, and schedule time and activities. If we value success or money, we might be prepared to work long hours at the office.

They provide maximum leverage for change. Working on the higher levels automatically impacts on the lower levels, and from a practical perspective you can leverage change more powerfully by working with high levels such as values and beliefs. If you only change the environment, behavior or capabilities, the transformation may be short lived.

The power of beliefs

There's considerable evidence for the power of beliefs across a range of fields, but the Placebo Effect is probably the most compelling. Placebos are pills containing sugar or starch, or liquids containing no active agents. Yet research has shown time and again that a significant proportion of patients who are given placebos believe them to be therapeutic and actually get well. The success rate varies according to the situation, but placebos are typically as effective as real drugs in over one-third of cases.

The placebo effect even extends as far as conditions that require surgery. Patients requiring a procedure for angina were separated into two groups. All were anaesthetized in the normal way, but just one of the groups actually underwent the operation. The members of the other group only had their skin cut, to make them believe the procedure had taken place.

Those operated on showed a useful 40 per cent improvement, while those who had the placebo surgery had an astonishing 80 per cent recovery rate.

Another example of the power of beliefs can be found in the story from Abraham Maslow. A patient wouldn't eat because he believed he was a corpse. After spending much time and energy trying to convince his patient he wasn't really a corpse, the psychiatrist finally asked him if corpses bled. The patient said he didn't believe they did, so the psychiatrist asked him to participate in an experiment that involved pricking the patient with a pin. The patient started to bleed, and in astonishment said, 'Wow - corpses do bleed after all!'