French-Burgess Six Step Belief Change System

You are probably already well aware of the power of goal setting.
Setting goals, having a clear outcome, knowing what you want these are always
emphasised in personal and professional development approaches as crucial
activities if you really want to go places and move forwards in life and in business.
So how is it that, even after we have set the clear goal, made the new year
resolution, found out what we need to do and how to do it, in certain areas at certain
times, we can still find ourselves making little progress or moving forwards very
slowly. How is it that sometimes, when we set that New Year resolution, we have a
definite feeling of deja vue? Our goals might seem a little familiar or even very
familiar because we realise that we set the same goals last year and the year before
and that progress has been non-existent or minimal.
If any of the above is resonating with you personally or if you know people who have
had these kinds of experiences and you want to help them to move forwards, this
article is perfect for you because we are going to share with you some very simple,
effective steps that you can apply immediately in any situation to help you (or to help
you to help others) to achieve goals and resolutions much more quickly, consistently
and effectively.
Years ago, when we first started to get into personal development, over and over
again we would come across the message that a crucial ingredient in making
something happen is to believe it! You may have come across car manufacturer
Henry Fords famous quote if you believe you can or you believe you cant, you are
right!. What that means is that if you believe you can do something, that positive
belief will open the gates on your resources giving you the best possible chance of
success. If you dont belief that you can do something, no matter how resourceful you
are, the gates will be shut and that is going to make it much more difficult for you to
achieve your goal.
So we really got the message that believing is important, and of course it is!
The trouble was, we had an unanswered question back then that went something like
this. What if I want something very much and I dont happen to believe it very
strongly or I have all kinds of doubts instead? The how to was not offered we were
only told that believing it was a very important thing to have in place.
So over the years we have made it our mission to discover and to develop some
really practical, easy-to-apply steps to help you to actually make the transition from
doubts to more helpful achievement-focused beliefs. What follows in this article is
one of our tried and tested routes to making the internal changes required for you to
really believe in what you want to achieve. It is a six-step How to guide for actually
adding in one of those all-important success ingredients, namely Believe it!

Academy of High Achievers Ltd 2008

Web: www.aha-success.com

Tel: 0845 373 4028

Email: [email protected]

Step 1 Decide what you DO want

Sometimes a positive change starts by noticing and attending to what is not wanted
and some people can get the high motivation they need to move them away from the
thing or state they dont want so this can often be useful as a starting point. Dwelling
on this can also tend to trigger less resourceful states such as anxiety or overwhelm
and sometimes this gets people feeling stuck.
So to move forward successfully it is also very important to get facing the right
direction by proactively answering the question so what do I want?
Motorcycling and skiing provide great examples of how we will tend to get more of
what we are focusing on. If a person fills their mind with where they do not want their
motorcycle or skis to take them (in the case of a motorcyclist, focusing on the kerb or
the parked car, or the lamp post, or in the case of a skier, focusing on the tree, the
precipice or the queue of people at the bottom of the slope!) then it is like every cell
of their body is instructing their motorcycle or skis to take them to that very place! It is
like the equipment knows! And of course in a way it does because your mind controls
your body which controls the equipment! So focusing on what you do want will begin
to send more helpful instructions to every cell of your body as to where to steer you
next.
Exercise:
Decide on something that you do want right now and write it down. It could be
one of those recurring resolutions or a goal where you may have been feeling
stuck. We are going to use this goal as the basis for applying all of the
forthcoming steps.

Step 2 The Beliefs Audit

The beliefs and assumptions that we hold are just generalisations or structures in
thinking. They are just representations of what is out there and these
representations may be serving us or keeping us stuck. Of course our own beliefs
seem very real to us (we believe in them!) and we treat them as if they are actually
true. Thats because we are focusing our attention on just some (only a small
amount) of the vast amount of information that is available and deleting/overlooking
all kinds of other information. The good news is that we know that beliefs can and do
change, particularly when we start to give ourselves full permission to notice new
information.
Step 2 in this process offers you the opportunity to do the most valuable audit of your
life! An audit of the inner stuff that we call beliefs.
In this audit, rather than evaluating your beliefs as true or false or right or wrong,
we suggest that you evaluate your beliefs as either helpful beliefs (because they are
smoothing the way to you achieving your goal) or unhelpful beliefs (because they
are getting in the way of you achieving your goal)

Academy of High Achievers Ltd 2008

Web: www.aha-success.com

Tel: 0845 373 4028

Email: [email protected]

Exercise:
Its time to start to get curious about whats going on in there! On a blank sheet
of paper draw a line down the middle so that you have two columns. At the top
of one column write unhelpful beliefs and at the top of the other column write
helpful beliefs. Now, thinking of your goal, allow your beliefs and
assumptions (those things that you think you know) to bubble up to the
surface. They may be beliefs about how possible your goal is to achieve, how
easy or difficult it is, how capable you believe you are, They may be beliefs
about other people, beliefs about the timescale required to achieve, or beliefs
about what things mean. Write as many as you can in each column and then
looking at the unhelpful column, circle the belief that you feel is the most
significantly unhelpful or in the way.
.

Step 3 - The skill of what iffing

Human beings have very many skills and one of them is the skill that we call what
iffing (or asking what if questions.) The only problem is that many of the what if
questions that we tend to ask are unhelpful. For example we tend to ask questions
like what if it doesnt work?, what if they dont like me?, what if I fall flat on my
face?
These kinds of questions are very often unhelpful (unless of course they are
purposefully asked as part of a project management process in order to reach great
solutions). If, when you have asked these kinds of what if questions, it invoked selfdoubt or anxiety, it is likely that it closed the gates on your resources and may made
you feel stuck.
Of course the power of what iffing that can keep a person stuck can also be
channelled in a positive direction to open up the persons resource gates and free
them to move forward excitedly.
In this step, the intention is to come up with a list of positive alternative what if
questions that will begin to open the gates on your resources. When the questions
are deliberately asked with the right tonality on the inside (eg excited curiosity), you
will notice your beliefs starting to shift as your thinking begins to steer in a more
helpful direction. The questions help you to begin to uncover alternative possibilities
and as you ask them to yourself, you may notice a part of you beginning to recognise
elements that could be true.
Exercise:
Working with the one significant unhelpful belief that you have circled (in the
audit), now come up with as many positive alternative questions as you can.
For example, if your unhelpful belief was this is going to be difficult you might
start to come up with positive alternative questions such as what if its easier
than I think? What if its just the first step that seems difficult, and the next
steps get easier and easier? What if Ive got all the resources to make it easy?
What if it is just like another time when something seemed difficult and turned
out to be easier than I had expected?
Academy of High Achievers Ltd 2008
Web: www.aha-success.com

Tel: 0845 373 4028

Email: [email protected]

Step 4 The Debate

Although, having applied the first three steps of the process, you will probably
already begin to notice your beliefs shifting positively, you may still need to build up
some evidence to support the new potential beliefs contained in your helpful what if
questions.
The debate provides opportunities for you to solidify your new thinking so that you
can add supporting legs to your new beliefs.
As a participant in a debate (the kind of debate that you would find in a debating
society) you would very likely be given a random subject to argue and even though
you may not believe in the subject, it would be your job to come up with as many
arguments as you could to convince the judges that your position was the most
believable. Solid evidence and convincing argument can be found in the most
outlandish of positions (after all, when you think about it, people have often formed
the most ridiculous and unhelpful beliefs in the first place and successfully defended
them for years).
Exercise:
Take one of your favourite positive what if questions and cross out the words
what if at the beginning and add the word because. at the end. For
example, the question what if its easier than I think? would become Its
easier than I think because.
Now complete the statement with as much supporting evidence as you can
think of.
Allow yourself to say the arguments out loud whilst deliberately using the
tonality of conviction and certainty as though your life depended on
convincing people that the position is true. The more you engage in full-on
selling of the position, the more your physiology and your mind will be
accepting the possibility as a feasible one. Repetition and speaking out loud
will make the case for the new position, with increasing conviction in the
tonality and with full permission to add in extra evidence as it begins to occur
to you.
Step 5 Mental Rehearsal
Now that your new perceptions are beginning to become more believable, we need
to start to literally programme them in by turning the evidence into an experience.
Many top sports people disclose that they frequently (and sometimes continuously)
use mental rehearsal/visualisation of them winning as a key psychological process
in preparation for top level achievement. A few years ago we interviewed Olympic
gold medallist, Sally Gunnel, to discover what mental preparation she had done
before the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. She told us that, after she had not achieved
what she knew she was capable of in the previous Olympics, she knew she had to do
something different. She decided to include much more mental preparation in her
training schedule and for over twelve months before the Olympic Games, each and
every day, several times a day she visualised herself winning the race. That kind of
preparation takes real commitment and of course gets results because you are filling
your mind, over and over again, with the experiences that you intend to create for
Academy of High Achievers Ltd 2008
Web: www.aha-success.com

Tel: 0845 373 4028

Email: [email protected]

yourself. This intense programming activity adds more supporting legs to the
enticing possibilities and turns them into solid beliefs!
Exercise:
Now take the time to schedule into your diary time for mental
rehearsal/visualisation. Experiment with what works best for you and allow
yourself to imagine the scenario/s that you decided upon in step 1. You can do
this by filling your mind with internal movies of the whole experience you want
to have. Give yourself a remote control changing the finer details of the
pictures, the sounds, the feelings, and any other information that is useful to
notice. Play the movies that give you the best feelings over and over again and
enjoy! Also weave into the experiences that you are rehearsing all of the
evidence that you have captured in step 4 that support the possibilities you
raised in step 3. Be playful with this process enjoy rehearsing your success!

Step 6 Empowering Roles for Action

This final step in the process is about getting out there armed with new perspectives
and taking the actions that will allow you to attract the real evidence that these new
beliefs are true.
So often people will raise the bar on their performance when they step into particular
roles. We have all heard of those extraordinary stories when an old granny has found
themselves in the position of playing the role of life saver and has ended up
performing an outstanding feat like ripping a car door open to get to and rescue their
grand children!
The role we assign ourselves consciously or unconsciously in any moment has a
massive effect on the resources we access and what we ultimately achieve. Often
when we are being a role model to someone (for example as a parent, boss, trainer
or demonstrator of excellent practice) it brings out the absolute best in us. The great
news is that we can step into an empowering role by imagining having the right
people with us so we can go about being an example of excellence for them. We
have tested this in lots of different contexts and it works an absolute treat!
On a personal note, we regularly take imaginary friends out with us when we are
coaching, training or delivering keynote speeches. Imagining having trainee coaches,
or less experienced trainers and speakers with us, people who are learning from and
modelling our every word and action will inevitably raise our bar and enables us to
open the gates on our resources, helping us to really shine!
Exercise:
Now take the time to consider this question: who would you be being a role
model to in order to raise the bar on your performance and open the gates on
your resources? We encourage you to experiment with this in your imagination
and do whatever works to become really practiced at being the best role model
that you can be!

Academy of High Achievers Ltd 2008

Web: www.aha-success.com

Tel: 0845 373 4028

Email: [email protected]

Sometimes people like to go back and repeat steps as they work through the
process. Each of the steps is powerful in itself and so please do experiment with
dipping in to any of the steps in isolation, as sometimes just doing one of these
activities is enough to create a major shift in perception and belief and then
performance.
We encourage you to have fun with the process and play!
We love to hear about the successes that people have with the process so please do
drop us an email as you notice beliefs changing in positive and permanent ways!
And of course, if you have any questions, we are here to help - so get in touch!
With our warmest intentions for you
Tony and Julie

Tony Burgess and Julie French

Directors of Academy of High Achievers Ltd (Aha!)
www.aha-success.com
[email protected]

Tel: 0845 373 4028

Tonys mobile: +44(0)7989 469 570

Julies mobile: +44(0)7989 991 056

Academy of High Achievers Ltd 2008

Web: www.aha-success.com

Tel: 0845 373 4028

Email: [email protected]

Tony Burgess
Tony Burgess is a Founding Director of the Academy of High Achievers.
As an experienced trainer, facilitator, speaker, firewalk instructor and coach, most of
Tony's time is now spent designing, co-ordinating and delivering performanceenhancing and life-enriching programmes for people who are hungry for more
success and fulfilment in their lives.
Tony has worked with business leaders, teams within organisations, entrepreneurs,
educators, students, sports people and members of the public to help them to tap
into and release the full potential of their personal resources, preparing them to attain
whatever outcomes they set out to achieve and much more besides.
Tony has a degree in psychology, and for the last fourteen years he has specialised
in helping people to thrive in their endeavours by teaching them powerful 'mental
fitness' techniques and offering them super-effective connection and communication
tools.
Tony's core philosophy is based on 'living his truth' and by congruent example he
constantly strives to inspire others to 'shine' brighter.

Academy of High Achievers Ltd 2008

Web: www.aha-success.com

Tel: 0845 373 4028

Email: [email protected]

Julie French
Julie French is a Founding Director of the Academy of High Achievers.
Building on a successful career as a senior manager leading large teams, managing
multi million pound budgets and operating at board level, Julie now works with
companies and organisations that are going through change and need to improve
their internal relationships. Her specific expertise is in people management and
communication.
Julie is an outstanding Executive Coach, Master Practitioner and Certified Trainer in
Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) and is also a Certified Professional Speaker
and Firewalk instructor. Combining exceptional listening skills with a creative and
empowering approach, Julie assists organisations and individuals to realise their
vision.
Julie loves life and one of her great characteristics is in 'exploding warmth' wherever
she goes!

Academy of High Achievers Ltd 2008

Web: www.aha-success.com

Tel: 0845 373 4028

Email: [email protected]