You wrote: “Yes now I notice it, there is indeed first an “IF … THEN …” link, and then the second link is a Complexe Equivalence.”

Pay close attention here. There was an “IF … THEN … ” link, but it didn’t exist in your nervous system as language. It was a straight sensory connection. This plays a big part in what kind of question will unlock new choices.

You wrote: “Well I must say Martin, I feel great at the moment, there was this realisation of independence in disagreeing with someone or someone disagreeing with me, this gave me a powerful feeling. Like it’s ok to disagree now. I’m kind of wondering how I’m going to act and feel different next time someone disagrees with me!

These were 2 fantastic questions I didn’t think of before! As I was searching for answers I felt good, and I also got what you were doing with these questions: reframing. But obviously I don’t just want to get this belief of mine changed but mainly I want to know more ways of changing beliefs. So this one was a reframing. What are some more ways to do this thing? Any models you could name? That would be a great help to me.”

I’m glad that worked out for you.

So you ask if there are ways other than reframing to change beliefs.

None that I’d find useful.

The model you’re looking for is Sleight of Mouth.

For some reason, WordPress didn’t tell me about your comment. So I just saw your question now.

Here’s what I’d simply ask you: “What else could happen when you return something to a store?”

Stop for a second and have fun with that question. Come up with 5 possibilities, one of which has to make you laugh until you have tears flowing.

1. Somebody disagrees with me on something.
2. They must know it better than me.
3. I’m wrong about what I know.

The first link is pre-linguistic. When somebody disagrees, you FEEL they must know it better than you. It’s a direct sensory connection.

The second link is linguistic. They must know it better than you, so you’re wrong about what I know.

There are many paths you can take in experimenting with this and gaining new choices. Here are two just to get started:

1. When someone knows something better than you, what else could it mean?

Stop for a second and consider the question above. Identify several possibilities.

2. Wonder: What’s great about someone disagreeing with me?

Then, go back to a time when someone disagreed with you and live through it feeling great about it. After, imagine a possible future disagreement and live through it feeling great about it. Then, come back to the present with what you learned.

Share with us what happened.

Let’s say that I start to feel angry because some of my employees are acting in a totally selfish way, disregarding their co-workers’ and the company’s needs.

What’s really happening here is that one of my values, win-win solutions, is getting violated repeatedly. At this point, if I choose to take action, I might:

1. Call for a meeting with my staff
2. Fire employees with a destructive attitude
3. Request that the manager align everyone
4. So forth and so on

By taking action, I mean that I can try to bring the world into alignment with my values.

I used “change my values” as a sweeping generalization. It can mean one of three things:

1. Re-ordering my values hierarchy
2. Adding new values or removing values from my top ten values
3. Changing the criteria associated to my values to meet/avoid them differently

There’s actually not just one way to actually do this. There are several different strategies to get this done.

Submodality shifts usually won’t work effectively to change beliefs (except for intonation submodalities) for the simple reason that beliefs are linguistic constructs. Submodality work is EXTREMELY effective in working with pre-linguistic patterns, such as nail biting, emotional outbursts, nervous ticks, etc.

Beliefs, however, aren’t simple sensory constructs. They involve language and, as such, can be changed simply using language.

Would you have specific examples of beliefs you’d like to change/install? It will be a lot easier to explain/demonstrate with some concrete cases.

And by the way, thanks for the props!

Actually, to me all emotions are appropriate in any context, as they are just markers. If you’re feeling pleasure, it means the situation aligns with your values. In the case of a painful emotion, the situation probably doesn’t align with your values (even if it might feel appopriate to feel sad and angry in the circumstances of the death of your dog).

In NLP, there are many tiny distinctions that can make a huge difference in our understanding of how our psychic-emotional system works. For instance:

1. pleasurable vs. painful emotion
2. appopriate vs. inappropriate emotion
3. empowering vs. disempowering emotion

I’ve found many fascinating nuances as well in values hierarchies that most practitioners don’t usually pick up on.

Keep rocking!

It’s very important that you believe you can deal with this emotion right now. The simplest, most powerful and quickest way to handle an emotion is to recall an instance in the past when you felt a similar emotion and recognize that you had successfully handled it before. If you dealt with it in the past then it is possible that you can deal with it again right now. Think about how you dealt with your emotions in the past and use this as your guide for what you can do right now to change how you feel.

The best time to deal with an emotion is when you first start feeling it. So don’t delay in applying the six steps and save yourself the distress.

You know I noticed with myself that there are 2 kinds of beliefs that I have, some of them are things I believe in my head, and some of them are kinesthetic, which is really weird to me, it’s like my brain says “Hey believing this is just plain dumb” but my body feels that it is true. Say for instance in a shop, when I would want to go there and return something I recently bought, I immediately feel “they’re going to yell at me, get really mad, their face is going to turn red, veins popping up in their face, and then they will probably beat me up.” My brain says this is most likely not to happen, but still my feeling is that it just might and probably will, so I get scared like crazy. Is this the same like the one before, sensory connection? What questions would help here to change this one?

By the way, good news, I’m completely different now about when people disagree. It actually worked. I’m still amazed of how quick this was (after 14 hours of useless coaching from others).