Perspective Patterns
by Steve Andreas
©2001
(This Appendix to the book "Transforming
Your Self: becoming who you want to be,"
was originally published as an article in *Anchor Point, Vol. 15, No.
4 May, pp. 5-18)
Introduction
One way to describe most unhappiness is that we develop "tunnel
vision," narrowly focusing in on a problem while ignoring everything
else that surrounds it. We also tend to take problem experiences out
of the flow of time, isolating them from what preceded and followed
them. While this concentration can be useful in order to study a situation
to see what can be done, a narrow view often leaves out the very information
that we need in order to start moving toward a solution. To see a problem
"in perspective" means to see it in relation to something
else, and the same thing is true of our thinking about ourselves.
There are many, many ways to gain perspective. Simply expanding your
field of vision to include much more of what is happening simultaneously
in the moment gives a perspective that is literally wider and
broader in scope, the "big picture" that includes much
more information. Typically when a problem is seen within a larger context,
it appears smaller and easier to solve, and the additional information
included may provide a basis for a solution. Expanding the frame
in this way is the most common pattern in most cartoons. Usually a series
of small frames sets up a puzzling or confusing situation, and then
a larger frame at the end includes something new that resolves the puzzle
and makes sense out of it, changing the meaning. Sometimes the last
frame simply draws attention to something that was already in the earlier
frames, but was easy to overlook and ignore.
Since the frames in a cartoon typically indicate a time sequence, this
example introduces the other way that we can increase scope, by turning
a still picture into a sequential movie that shows a situation changing
over a period of time. Expanding scope in either space, time, or both,
is a simple, yet very powerful intervention that is an important part
of many effective change patterns.
Simple dissociation, stepping out of a problem context, allows you to
see yourself in relation
to your surroundings. This gives you a different outside
perspective, the perceptual position of a curious, and perhaps compassionate,
but otherwise emotionally uninvolved observer. Taking on the perceptual
position of another person in the same context provides yet another
perspective, with different information.
Seeing two events that are separated in time in relation to each other
creates another kind of perspective. Whenever we endure something unresourceful
in order to move toward a desirable future, we are seeing how the present
activity relates to our future outcome, providing a sequential perspective.
This kind of perspective utilizes two representations that are connected
simultaneously in our experience, yet which remain separate from each
other in different time frames. People who overuse food, drugs
and other forms of instant pleasure typically do not view their present
behavior in relation to its long-term consequences. They can be taught
to take a "longer view" to help them avoid experiences that
may be pleasant, but which have later unpleasant consequences. The same
kind of perspective can help them stick with tasks that are not inherently
pleasant, but are useful in reaching pleasant goals.
Of course, in many contexts it can be very useful to have a narrow perspective,
concentrating your attention and deliberately deleting other concerns,
events, and information. Whenever you want to focus attention
on a single task, or the simple enjoyment of life's pleasures, a broader
perspective would only detract from your experience. All skills
are useful in certain times and places, and every skill becomes
a limitation if we lose the choice to use it or not in a particular
situation.
John McWhirter has characterized the general form of a simultaneous
perspective that is the basis for a healthy self-concept, a pattern
that has many other useful applications.
Visual Perspective Pattern
I would like to demonstrate this pattern in the visual system with someone
who has an image that still troubles you in some way. I don't
need to know anything about the content; you can keep that to yourself.
(Mike comes up.) So, Mike, you have an image that when you think about
it, it still bothers you, right? Try it right now, just to check
to be sure it still bothers you. . . . (Mike's breathing becomes shallower,
and his body becomes still.)
Mike: Yeah. Not a lot, but it still does.
OK, take that picture and just set it aside somewhere. Now I want
you to think of four resource experiences, one at a time, perhaps ones
that you think might be particularly useful in relation to that image
that still bothers you. And I'd like your unconscious mind to
participate fully in this selection process. I want you to develop
an image for each of these four resources, one that fully represents
each of them. Let me know when you have those four images. . .
. (Mike nods.)
Now I want you to take these four images, and make each of them about
18" high, and 18" wide, and then place them together so that
you can see all four pictures at once in a large collage about three
feet in front of you. Some people like to imagine that they put
Velcro on the back of the images so when they place them they can hear
that little sound that Velcro makes when it sticks, and know that they
will stay put. When you have all four up there together, it will
be a little harder to see the details of what's in each one, but you'll
still know what's there. Take whatever time you need to set that
up, and let me know when it's ready. . . . (Mike nods.)
Great. Now keeping this collage intact, I want you to take that image
that we started with that still bothered you, and place it right in
the middle of that collage, so that it covers up just the inner corners
of those four resource pictures where they meet in the center of the
collage. You may want to adjust the size of that troubling image
a bit so that it lies flat and becomes part of the collage, leaving
most of those four resource pictures visible. Then notice how
you respond to that troublesome image in the context of those four resources.
. .
Mike: It takes the "juice" out of it.
So there's less feeling response to it, is that right? (Yes.) So that
is a decrease in the intensity, the amount of the feeling.
Does it also change the quality, the kind of response
you have, in any way?
Mike: Well, I guess the quality of my response is more one of
understanding, rather than reaction.
When you have understanding, that often leads to some kind of potential
solution, so that you can see a path out of it.
Mike: Oh yeah. I was already working on solutions.
What was bothering me was the strength of my reaction to it.
So now you feel a more comfortable response to it. Is that going
to make finding a solution easier? (Yeah.)
Do you have any questions you'd like to ask Mike? And Mike, of
course you have the choice to not answer any questions that you'd prefer
not to.
Ann: You said you were already working on a solution to this situation?
Mike: Yes, I was working on a solution; I knew there was a solution
to the problem. What I was uncomfortable about was that my reaction
to the situation kind of set off a bell. "Why am I having
such a strong reaction to this? Clearly I can work out a solution, but
what else is going on?"
Fred: Did you access four different experiences, or four different
states of mind?
Mike: I had images of four different experiences that I'd had
before.
Fred, I think your question is really for me, and it's an opportunity
to make a point that I think is very important in all our work.
The way I think of it, the images result in what you might call
a state of mind. If I ask you to access a state of mind, for instance
"excitement," how do you go about doing that? Most people
will spontaneously think of a specific experience that they respond
to with a specific kind of excitement. The word "excitement"
is a fairly general term that could apply to a wide variety of different
feelings in different situations. A lot of therapies and other
personal change methods stay in the realm of these more general terms,
and that makes it very hard to elicit the specific responses that will
actually result in behavioral change. When you talk in general
terms, the result is general understandings that usually don't result
in an actual change in response. So-called "intellectual
understanding" is one example of this.
Let's take a very simple example. I want you all to salivate now,
just by focusing your attention on your mouth. . . . That's pretty
hard for most people, because "salivation" is just a word,
so you don't get a very strong response. Salivating becomes much
easier if you vividly imagine cutting open a bright yellow lemon with
a sharp knife, seeing the glistening surface of the cut lemon with some
drops of lemon juice dripping, and then imagine bringing one half of
the lemon up to your mouth and squeezing some of the juice into your
mouth and tasting it. That's using very concrete imagery to elicit what
is usually a very unconscious response, which you don't get just by
saying "salivate." Likewise, the process of setting up the
visual perspective pattern is a mostly conscious process, but the response
you get is unconscious and spontaneous.
Sally: Mike, did the submodalities of the problem image change?
Mike: Yes. It got dimmer, and less colorful--overall less
intense.
Good question. What we have done here is one very simple way to
teach the use of simultaneous perspective in the visual system, by assembling
different experiences and putting them together in a particular way.
Thanks, Mike. Here's an outline of this very simple process.
Visual Perspective Exercise
Outline (pairs, 15 minutes total)
1. Remember a troubling image, test to be sure it is still troublesome,
and notice your response to it.
2. Identify four specific relevant positive resource experiences and
get an image for each.
3. Create a large collage out of these four images, about 3' high, 3'
wide, and 3' away from you.
4. Place the troubling image in the center of this, so that it overlaps
just the inner corners of the four resource images and lies flat, becoming
part of the collage.
5. Notice how your response changes in both quantity and quality.
If your response doesn't change, back up in the process and get different
resources, or make other adjustments. Switch roles and then share and
discuss your experiences.
The most common problem that some people encounter in doing this is
that the troublesome picture becomes so large that it covers up the
resources. The easiest way to avoid this is to gesture with both
hands as you give instructions to your partner, first larger to indicate
the size of the collage, and then much smaller to indicate the size
of the problem image. Even then, sometimes the problem image becomes
too large, and in that case you just stop them, back up the process
and explain that the problem image needs to be smaller.
Another problem can arise if the problem image does not lie flat against
the collage and become part of it. If the problem image remains
separate from the resource images, it is likely to be seen in contrast
to them, rather than together with them and as a part of them.
This contrast usually emphasizes the problem even more, and increases
the "tunnel vision" experience rather than decreasing it.
Finally, it's possible that the resources that you chose are inappropriate,
so you can try choosing different resources.
Al: I was wondering about having more than four pictures.
Four is just a convenient number that usually works well. One
woman who did this spontaneously had about eight pictures, like the
petals of a large flower. The troublesome image then became the
center of the flower. Most people think of pictures being rectangular,
but there's nothing sacred about the shape, either. You could
have circles or ovals, or round-cornered rectangles. You could
also have them spread out top-to-bottom, or sideways in a long row.
I once saw a TV program in which Brian Weiss worked with a woman
who had a phobia, using a process called "past-lives regression."
After she was done, you could tell from her nonverbal response that
she still had her phobia, but it didn't matter as much to her,
because now she saw her present life as one small part of a long string
of lives--many lives before, and many others to come. She gestured
with her hands and arms to show this long string of lives. In
the perspective of that long string of lives, her present life seemed
very small, and the problems that she had in this life were even smaller.
Personally, I have great doubts about the reality of past lives, and
I'd rather just cure the phobia. However, it's an interesting
example of using this kind of perspective pattern to change someone's
response in a useful way. There are many ways to create this kind
of perspective, but they all use the same principles. The key
thing is to connect all the images together in the same location and
plane.
Ben: You asked Mike to pick images, but you weren't specific about
whether they were to be still images or movies.
It doesn't really matter, unless it matters to the person--and then
they are likely to just go ahead and use whatever they prefer.
The word "image" or "picture" allows them to get
a visual representation in whatever way is easiest for them. If
you ask for details, you often find that people have what first appears
to be a still image, but it is one that can easily be expanded into
a filmstrip or a movie. The still picture is a sort of summary or icon
for all the information that is in the full movie.
Fred: You asked Mike to choose resources that were related to
the problem image. Is that always a good idea?
I think it's usually a good idea, because the word "resource"
is a very general term that can refer to a very wide range of experiences.
We all have a great many resource experiences, and some are wonderful
resources for one kind of problem and no use at all for another. A great
resource for doing mathematics is not likely to be much use for skiing,
and vice versa, so it's helpful to have a way to be selective.
On the other hand, someone may be thinking of a problem in such a narrow
way that they will consciously discard resources that could be very
useful. When you're inside a box, it can be very hard to think
outside the box. Sometimes a far-out, totally "unlikely"
resource is exactly what is needed to counteract the tunnel vision that
automatically excludes it. One reason for asking his unconscious mind
to participate fully in the selection process is so that his conscious
mind can be prepared for the possibility that his unconscious will think
of resources that his conscious mind might otherwise reject as inappropriate.
Sometimes it can even be useful to ask the person to think of resources
that are very unrelated to the problem image. With someone
with a very contrary and overactive conscious mind, you could even ask
them to select resources that they think couldn't possibly be
useful.
Now I want you to pair up and assist each other in doing this.
Take about five minutes each way, and another five to discuss what you
experienced--fifteen or twenty minutes total.
* * *
* *
Auditory Perspective Pattern
Next I'd like to demonstrate this perspective pattern in the auditory
system, using a troubling voice instead of an image. Again, I
don't need to know any content. It can be your own voice, or someone
else's voice, or it could even be a sound that has no words with
it. (Tim comes up.) Tim, I want you to listen to that voice,
and verify that it still makes you uncomfortable. . . .
Tim: (looking up and then down left and frowning) Yes, it
sure does.
It looks like you get a picture first before you get the voice.
Is that right?
(Yes.) That's fine, we can still use the voice. Is this your voice
or someone else's? (It's my voice.) OK, so you're talking to yourself.
Where do you hear the voice?
Tim: Behind my head, to the right a little.
OK. Now just let that voice go to wherever voices go when you're
not listening to them, and think of four times in your life when your
own voice served as a strong resource to you. (If Tim had someone
else's voice troubling him, rather than his own, I would ask for four
resource voices that belong to someone else.) Think of them one
by one and listen to what each one has to say, and the tonality, until
you have four of them. . . . (Tim nods.) Now position
those four voices around your head, more or less evenly spaced, wherever
seems appropriate to you--perhaps one in front, one in back, and one
on either side. Just as with the visual pattern, when you have
those four voices talking all at once, it will be harder to hear the
details of what they are saying, but you can still hear the tonalities,
and know the general nature of what they are saying. Let me know
when that is set up, with all four voices talking at once. . . .
(Tim nods.) OK. Now bring that troubling voice back in to
join the other four, and listen to all five at once. . . . Does
that change your response to that voice?
Tim: It's farther away now, and not as loud. I feel better;
it's easier to listen to it. I can hear some of what it's saying
as useful information, while before I was just noticing my bad feelings.
OK. Great. Does anyone have any questions for Tim?
Tess:
Were you able to understand what the five voices were saying when they
were all talking at once?
Tim: No. I knew they were there, and I could pick out bits
and pieces, and the meaning was there, but I couldn't really hear all
five voices at once.
That's typical, and it's important to warn people about this, or they
may worry that they are doing the process wrong. A woman who was
born blind and only got her sight when she was about 30 could keep track
of eight different conversations at once, as if she had an eight-track
tape recorder. But very few people can do that, and it's not necessary
for this pattern to work.
Tim: When I had the four resource voices talking at once, I felt
like I was sitting in a big, comfortable overstuffed easy chair, as
if the voices were literally supporting me.
That's a nice spontaneous synesthesia. Here's an outline of this
process.
Auditory Perspective Pattern
Exercise Outline (pairs, 15 minutes total)
1. Think of a troubling voice, and notice your response. Notice the
location of the voice, and whether it's your own voice or someone else's.
Then set that voice aside.
2. Find four resource voices, one by one, and listen to each one, both
the tonality and the words. (If the problem voice is another person's
the resource voices should also be someone else's, and if the problem
voice is your voice, the resource voices should also be yours.)
3. Arrange these voices around your head so that you can hear all four
talking at once. It will be harder to hear the details when they
are all talking.
4. Bring the troubling voice in, and listen to all five talking at once.
Notice how your response changes in both intensity and quality.
Sue: Why do you have the voices around the head?
Nearly everyone experiences a troublesome voice somewhere around
their head, or inside it. If they have a voice somewhere else,
it probably doesn't bother them very much, and you can all try a little
experiment to demonstrate this. Think of a troublesome or
critical voice, either your own, or someone else's. . . . Is there
anyone who has a voice that isn't inside, or near your head? No.
Now try listening to that same voice, but coming from your left elbow.
. . . Now listen to it coming from your right heel. . .
. Location is very important for all our experiences, and particularly
so for voices.
Doing this kind of location shift alone can be very useful as a quick
demonstration of the importance of location, or as a temporary intervention
in a crisis, but usually it won't last unless it is combined with some
other process that fully respects the positive function or outcome of
the troublesome voice. When Tim heard his troubling voice in combination
with the resource voices, it spontaneously moved farther away and became
softer. That made it easier for Tim to listen to it and appreciate what
it had to tell him. That kind of shift in response to another
change is much more likely to last.
Now I want you all to pair up and assist each other in doing this.
It will only take you about five minutes to do it each way, and then
you can take another five minutes to share what you experienced with
your partner.
* * *
* *
Kinesthetic Perspective
Pattern
Doing McWhirter's perspective pattern in the kinesthetic system is a
little trickier, for two quite different reasons. The first reason
is that most of us are much more familiar with working in the visual
and auditory systems, making changes in our images, voices and sounds.
The second reason is that when we speak of kinesthetic feelings, usually
we mean feelings of pleasantness or unpleasantness, liking or disliking
something, etc. These are the evaluative feelings that
are about some other experience. While these feelings are
extremely important in deciding what kinds of experiences we want to
have more of or less of, they are not appropriate for the perspective
pattern.
The feelings that are appropriate for the perspective pattern
are the feelings of the experience of doing something.
When you are doing any activity
you have a great many tactile feelings from the sensory nerves in your
skin, which give you a wealth of information about your immediate environment
as you contact it. If you are swimming, for instance, you can
feel the temperature and movement of the air and water in relation to
your body, as well as any objects you may be contacting.
You can also feel many other "proprioceptive" sensations from
the nerves in your muscles and joints that tell you how your body is
positioned and moving, including muscular tension or relaxation, etc.
All these feelings give you specific sensory information about the position
and movements of your own body and about the world immediately around
you.
You may also have evaluative feelings about your sensory
feelings, just as you can have evaluative feelings about something that
you see, or hear, or taste, or smell. You may like the temperature
of the water, or not like the way your body moves as you swim, etc.
These are evaluative feelings about the data feelings.
These two different kinds of feelings are easily confused, because they
are both felt in our bodies. The evaluative feelings are usually
felt mostly along the midline of the front of the chest and abdomen,
although very strong evaluative feelings may be felt throughout the
body.
When I demonstrated this perspective pattern in the visual and auditory
systems, I asked for an image or voice that the person was troubled
by. The troubled feelings are always evaluative feelings of not
liking the image or voice. Similarly, when we use the perspective
pattern in the kinesthetic system, what we want is a set of kinesthetic
tactile and proprioceptive feelings that the person also has a troubling
evaluative feeling about. So for instance perhaps someone isn't
satisfied with how they feel as they swim, or play golf, or
play a piano, or any other physical activity. The perspective
pattern in the kinesthetic system is particularly useful in improving
any sport, motor skill, or other kinesthetic performance. Is there someone
who would like to experience this?
Bill: I'm not satisfied with the way I play basketball.
Great. First I want you to reexperience what it's like to play
basketball, and it can be very useful to chunk it down to one specific
element of the game, such as free throws, or dribbling. After
you have done the pattern with one element it will be easy to go on
to do the same with other elements of the game. You don't have to actually
dribble or shoot baskets, but I suggest that you stand up, so that your
whole body is free to move slightly as you review what you feel as you
play basketball. I also want you to check to be sure that you still
feel some dissatisfaction with it. . . .
Bill: Overall I enjoy playing basketball, or I wouldn't do it.
But there are also a lot of little places where it's not smooth, where
I feel kind of kinked up and everything momentarily slows down.
I don't like those, and I usually mess up right then, or soon afterward.
OK. Now set aside that experience of playing basketball for a
moment, and think of four physical activities that could serve as resources,
one at a time. Since you described the problem as a kinkiness or lack
of smoothness, I suggest that you pick four activities that you can
do particularly smoothly. And since basketball is a whole-body
activity, be sure that each resource is also something that your whole
body is involved in. As you select each resource activity, take
a little time to reexperience how it feels to do it. Let me know
when you have four. . . . (Bill nods.)
OK, now I want you to do something that will probably feel a bit strange.
Imagine that you divide your body into four quadrants with a horizontal
line at about your waist and another vertical line down your middle.
Then access the four resources one by one, and feel each resource in
one of those four quadrants of your body. Just as with the visual
and auditory patterns, it will be a little difficult to feel the details
of each when you are feeling all four at once. Let me know when
you have all four. . . . (Bill nods.)
Now, keeping the feelings of those four different resources, imagine
that you are playing basketball, using your whole body. After
a little while, allow those resources to move into other parts of your
body and blend together. Take a little time to experience what
that is like. . . .
Bill: That's really interesting, and very nice, but I think it's
going to be a little hard to describe. When you first told me
to have all four resources in different parts of my body, I felt really
strange and disjointed. But when I imagined playing basketball,
the different resource feelings sort of flowed into each other, and
into playing basketball. It gave me a real muscle sense of playing
much more fluidly, and smoothing out those kinky places.
Sue: I was wondering if you'd be willing to tell us what the four
resource activities were?
Bill: Sure. Skiing, giving a massage, driving a car on a
winding road, and swimming in the ocean.
Ann: Steve, in the visual pattern you had the problem experience
overlap only part of the resources. In this kinesthetic one, all
the resources were in different parts of the body, while the problem
activity was whole-body, which means that the resources were completely
overlapped by the problem activity.
That's a great question,
and the simplest answer is that I can't think of a better way to do
it when the problem activity is a whole-body one. If it were part-body,
you could do it in a way that is more similar to how we did it in the
visual system. It's particularly important to have only a partial
overlap in the visual system, because if it overlaps completely, you
can't see the resources at all, so it's impossible to integrate them
with the problem. In the auditory system, when you have all the
voices going at once, they actually overlap completely, but you can
still hear them all; the overlapping doesn't make the resource voices
disappear, unless the problem voice were so loud that it drowned out
the resources.
It's very useful to take some time to practice taking an event or pattern
in one modality and then transform it into an analogous experience in
another modality. How could we do a visual perspective pattern
that was analogous to the situation in the auditory or kinesthetic system?
. . .
Bill: Well, I'm thinking about my experience with the kinesthetic
pattern. It was sort of as if I could feel one set of feelings
through the other. If I take that into the visual system,
it would be like seeing one picture through another, as if they were
both partly transparent.
Exactly. If we did the visual pattern with transparent pictures
we could cover the resources with the problem image completely, and
they would still show through. However, many people associate
transparency with unreality, and if so, that would weaken the resources.
Partial overlapping works fine in the visual system, so I suggest that
you simply do it that way.
Transparency is a very useful submodality that most people don't use.
It's particularly useful for imagining the insides of things in three
dimensions, like a CAT Scan. A geologist can use transparency
to look at a hillside, and imagine how all the rock and soil layers
probably look, and a good surgeon can visualize the organs inside someone's
body.
Transparency can also be used to integrate visual images by superimposing
them and then allowing them to gradually blend into one image.
For instance, you can make a transparent image of a problem, and then
set it aside temporarily while you make a much larger transparency that
represents your entire life. Then superimpose the smaller problem
transparency over the transparency that represents your whole life and
allow them to blend together into a single image. That uses transparency,
together with a much larger scope of your whole life to give a different
kind of new perspective. It can be very useful to take a single
submodality shift like this--opaque to transparent--and play with it
to find out how you could use it with patterns that you already
know.
I have presented this pattern in each of the three major modalities.
Do you think that you could do the same pattern while mixing modalities?
For instance could you use visual resources for a problem voice?
Or kinesthetic resources for a problem image? . . .
Tom: When
I'm balancing my checkbook, I hear the sounds of the wind in the pines,
or the sound of a stream to motivate me to do it, because it reminds
me of how I eventually get to enjoy some of the money.
That's a great
way to motivate you, and it does utilize perspective, in one of the
ways that I mentioned earlier. But if those sounds are motivating,
I predict that they are in a different location, and don't actually
integrate into the task of doing your checkbook. For motivation, you
want the two experiences to be related, yet separated in space
and time, as if saying, "Do this, and you get to do that."
For the integration that occurs with McWhirter's pattern, both representations
need to be in the same modality. If you want to add or subtract
decimals and fractions, you have to change one of them into the other
in order to do it. Sometimes the person will spontaneously be able to
make the necessary adjustments, but it's not wise to count on it, and
more often you will get something other than what you intend. However,
you can integrate one image with sound with another image with sound,
because then the two images can integrate and the two sounds can also
integrate.
McWhirter's perspective pattern joins a group of different events together
into a collection of experience that results in a broader understanding
or generalization. When I asked for four resource experiences,
the word "resource" is already a generalization about a group
of specific events that are similar in some way. When they are
combined with the problem experience they both enrich each other to
form a new generalization.
Beliefs
One particularly interesting place to use the understandings provided
by this perspective pattern is with the generalizations that are usually
called "limiting beliefs," particularly when these beliefs
are about yourself. When you have a limiting belief, there are several
possibilities:
1. The belief may be based on only one unresourceful experience,
with no positive experiences joined with it to provide a useful perspective.
This is what many people assume when they do "Reimprinting"
or "Change Personal History," or some other remedial change
work on a single traumatic past experience.
2. There is a group of unresourceful experiences. While it is
possible to have a single difficult experience, most difficulties repeat,
and usually the most intense one becomes a sort of "magnet"
that gathers other similar experiences to form a group that is the basis
for a very unuseful perspective, and this is what is often called
a "negative" or limiting belief. Doing change work on a single
experience will work well only if it is done on the most intense
example of a group of experiences, because then the change will usually
generalize to the rest of the group automatically.
3. The belief may be based on a group of unresourceful experiences,
combined with only one or a few resourceful ones. The positive ones
are just not powerful enough or numerous enough to provide a balanced
perspective. In this case it can be useful to transform unresourceful
ones, and also to remember, elicit, or create additional positive examples,
so that the overall meaning of the generalization becomes more positive
and useful.
4. The belief may have a mix of unresourceful and resourceful experiences
that provide an ambiguous perspective. This is very similar to the previous situation, so again it is useful
to transform unresourceful examples and generate additional positive
ones so that the generalization becomes unambiguously positive.
For simplicity, I have presented McWhirter's perspective pattern in
the context of a single problem experience, accessing a number of resources
that provide a wider scope, and more information. This establishes
a new context for the problem experience, creating a useful new perspective
that provides a new meaning. However, usually a problem experience
is part of a group of experiences that is the basis for a limiting
belief, and then you need to work with the whole group in order to change
it.
This kind of perspective pattern underlies all the generalizations
you make, both about the world and about yourself, so this pattern presents
some of the fundamental properties of how we form all beliefs.
Now that you have been sensitized to this process, you will probably
find it (or the need for it) almost everywhere you look.
This is an excerpt from Real People
Press' new title "Transforming
Your Self: becoming who you want to be." |
