Frequently
Asked Questions about the
Decision Maker®
Belief Process
1. Why is change usually so difficult?
2. What is the Decision Maker® Belief Process?
3. How does the Decision Maker® Belief Process make change easy?
4. What type of personal problems can the Decision Maker® Belief Process be used with?
7. How can the Decision Maker® Belief Process be used to improve athletic performance?
10. What did you discover in your prison research about the causes of criminal and violent behavior?
11. How can the DMB Process be used to help prevent and cure physical illness?
15. Is the Decision Maker® Belief Process a self-help approach? Can people use it on themselves?
16. Can the Decision Maker® Belief Process be used with anyone?
1.
Why is change usually so difficult?
A belief is something we think is the truth, a fact that we observed in
the world. We think we sensed (saw or heard) out in the world what we
believe, which is why beliefs usually are not eliminated even when we
are aware that a belief is illogical or self-defeating. When the belief
was formed we didn't distinguish between reality (what we observed) and
the meaning (that is, the beliefs) we ascribed to reality. In fact, there
is no meaning in the world ; all meaning exists only in our minds. But
we usually live as if the meaning we have ascribed to events is inherent
in the events. It seems to us as if we saw earlier in life that I'm
not good enough, I don't matter, I'll never get what I want, People can't
be trusted, Life is difficult, and I'm not safe in the world.
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2.
What is the Decision Maker® Belief Process?
The Decision Maker® Belief Process is based on the notion that
all of our behavior and much of what we feel is the result of our beliefs.
It is an explicit, reproducible technique that allows people to identify
the beliefs responsible for dysfunctional behavioral or emotional patterns,
and then eliminate those beliefs. When all the beliefs responsible for
any given pattern have been eliminated, the pattern disappears.
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3.
How does the Decision Maker® Belief Process make change
easy?
By returning to the experiences that led to a given belief (what we observed
or heard) and realizing that the belief is only one possible interpretation
of the experiences, in other words, "a truth" rather
than "the truth", the belief will disappear. It will
disappear when we recognize there is no meaning in the world, that any
given belief is only one possible meaning for what we saw that exists
only in our mind.
The elimination of the belief creates new possibilities for action that
literally didn't exist before. The new possibilities that are created
by disappearing a belief are not merely different or better ways of doing
what was possible before; they literally are possibilities for entirely
different behavior that is not possible until the old belief is eliminated.
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4.
What type of personal problems can the Decision Maker® Belief
Process be used with?
The Decision Maker® Belief Process has been used with over
1,000 people to eliminate such dysfunctional patterns as eating disorders,
chronic depression, phobias, obsessive-compulsive disorders, the inability
to express feelings, obsessing about what others think of you, defensiveness,
workaholism, controlling behavior, never being satisfied, entering and
staying in abusive relationships, the inability to make romantic relationships
work, procrastination, and negative feelings of fear, anxiety, guilt and
hostility.
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5.
How can the Decision Maker® Belief Process be used to improve
an organization's culture and profitability?
An organizations behavior, just like that of individuals, is consistent
with its beliefs. In organizations the beliefs are known collectively
as the culture, which can be defined as the beliefs about what is required
for the organization to survive and succeed. The culture gets institutionalized
in an organization's policies, practices, procedures, systems, and structure.
It is difficult, if not impossible, for an organization to implement any
strategy inconsistent with its culture.
DMI has used a variation of the Decision Maker® Belief Process
in over 40 companies, from Fortune 500-size to companies with less than
100 employees, to assist over 10,000 employees to make radical changes
in the culture. When an organization gets unstuck from its old beliefs,
new, more appropriate behavior becomes possible.
Ultimately when a company realizes that there are no universal truths
about business, that there is nothing an organization should always do
under all circumstances, then it operates in a meta-culture. This meta-culture
holds that people should operate out of "a truths," i.e.,
what makes sense at any given moment. In such a culture, change becomes
effortless because employees are not wedded to "the truth"
about their job functions and their organization's policies, practices,
procedures, etc.
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6.
If our behavior and emotions are the result of our beliefs, usually
formed in childhood, what are the implications for parenting?
In session after session, hour after hour, Certified Decison Maker®
Facilitators have heard a thousand clients describe the experiences they
had with their parents, most of whom were very loving and well–meaning,
that led them to the beliefs they were trying to eliminate: "My mom
and dad always did ..., they neverdid ..., they always said ..., they
never said ...." What parents do and don't do, say and don't say,
provide their children with the experiences that the children interpret
into beliefs. Those beliefs, in turn, then determine their behavior and
emotions and, ultimately, their lives for better or for worse.
Given the critical importance of beliefs, what should be the major role
of parents? Influencing behavior? Teaching information? Making their children
happy?–or assisting their children to form positive beliefs about themselves
and life? Clearly the latter. And the best way we know to insure that
you are getting your job as a parent done is constantly to ask yourself
the question: What are my children likely to conclude about themselves
and life as a result of this interaction we just had?
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7.
How can the Decision Maker® Belief Process be used to improve
athletic performance?
Ask yourself the question: Whatever sport you play, how often do you play
up to your potential? If you rank your best performance a 10, how often
do you play at a 10?
Most people answer 5 to 20 percent of the time. Many people reply, "Only
once, and I've never done that well since."
The next question to answer is: If you can play at a 10 sometimes, why
can't you do it more frequently? You obviously have the physical skills
and ability or you wouldn't have been able to do it that one time.
The reason your game isn't consistent and you don't play up to your potential
most of the time is strictly mental–specifically, your beliefs, attitudes,
and feelings–all of which the Decision Maker® Belief Process
can assist you to change.
As Andre Agassi, one of the world's best tennis players, put it: "People
always say that winning makes you believe in yourself, but with me, it's
a little different. It's believing in myself that makes me win."
The Decision Maker® Belief Process can help you believe in
yourself.
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8.
I understand you think that low self-esteem is only a partial source
of most personal problems? What other types of beliefs are involved?
Let's say you are a child of seven or eight who has created a host of
negative beliefs about yourself or life. You are beginning to realize
that you are going to grow up and will have to make your own way in life.
You are confronted with a real dilemma–albeit an unconscious one: "How
will I make it in life if there's something fundamentally wrong with me
or the world?"
Imagine the fear and anxiety you must feel when you experience these two
conflicting "facts." On one hand, you experience that you must
make it on your own in life. On the other hand, you have concluded that
there's something fundamentally wrong with you or life that will make
it difficult, if not impossible, to make it. Fear and anxiety are unpleasant
and painful feelings, so children who have them try to find ways to get
rid of them.
In Decision Maker® sessions, We discovered that people have
two basic ways of dealing with the unpleasant feelings that are caused
by negative self-esteem beliefs: First, they use alcohol, drugs, food,
or other substances to try to cover up the feelings and numb themselves,
or to make themselves feel good. Second, they develop survival strategies
that help them deal with the anxiety that stems from their negative beliefs.
As a survival strategy is formed, the child also forms a belief about
that strategy. For example: I'm good enough because... What makes
me worthwhile is... The way to deal with a dangerous world is... The way
to survive is ...
Survival strategy beliefs are based on a child's observation of what it
takes to feel good about himself, to be important, to be worthwhile, or
to be able to deal with life. For example: Susan's parents placed a heavy
emphasis on friendships, on what others thought of them, and on impressing
people. Susan concluded that the way to survive was to get everyone to
like and approve of her. Art lived in a community where the people who
were considered important and given respect were in gangs and carried
guns, so he chose that as his survival strategy.
One consequence of being run by survival strategy beliefs is that instead
of living out of choices and pleasure–doing things because you want to
do them–you do them primarily to survive. You experience your survival
as dependent on the success of your survival strategy. The need to fulfill
the terms of your survival strategy dominates your life.
People who have beliefs that are indicative of low self-esteem are not
just criminals, drug addicts, unsuccessful people, or those who suffer
from deep depression. Many people with low self-esteem are visibly successful,
living in nice homes, with stable families. What distinguishes people
is not their self-esteem beliefs, but their survival strategies–the ways
they cope with a negative sense of themselves.
Although the dysfunctional behavior people exhibit is usually a direct
result of their survival strategy beliefs, the "energy" that
drives the survival strategies is the underlying negative self-esteem.
Thus, both the underlying self-esteem beliefs and the survival strategy
beliefs have to be eliminated. The role of survival strategy beliefs explains
why therapies designed only to improve self-esteem rarely produce fundamental
and lasting changes in people's lives.
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9.
How is the Decision Maker® Belief Process different from
psychotherapy? Isn't it like cognitive-behavioral therapy?
Cognitive therapies have two major elements: (1) changing beliefs by challenging
the validity of the evidence that the client gives to support them and
(2) getting the client to agree to act consistently with an alternative
belief to test its possible validity.
Regarding point one, in the Decision Maker® Belief Process
the current belief is not given up because one comes to see that
it's wrong, because it's not true, because it's illogical, because it
doesn't make sense, and/or because it's self defeating. In other words,
one does not get "talked out" of the existing belief. The Decision
Maker® Belief Process actually validates people for
forming the belief earlier in life by assisting them to realize that most
people probably would have made a similar decision under similar circumstances.
It insures that people realize that their belief actually is one valid
interpretation of their earlier circumstances.
Moreover, the "evidence" that you offer for a belief usually
is not the real reason you believe it. The evidence offered usually consists
of recent observations that appear to substantiate the belief.
The real source of your beliefs, however, is interpretations of circumstances
earlier in life. Fundamental beliefs about yourself and life usually are
formed before the age of six. After a belief has been formed, however,
you act consistently with it–thereby producing "current evidence"
for the already existing belief. In other words, life becomes a self-fulfilling
prophecy. Because the evidence you present to validate your beliefs usually
is a consequence of the beliefs, not their source, challenging
the validity of that evidence is not the most effective way to eliminate
it.
Regarding the second element of cognitive-behavioral therapy, because
the current belief is totally eliminated when you do the Decision Maker®
Belief Process, you have no need to try to act differently when you go
back "into life." Your behavior changes naturally and effortlessly
once the belief is gone.
Another distinction between the Decision Maker® Belief Process
and many cognitive approaches is that the latter frequently are a tool
for the subject, whereas the former is a tool for the facilitator. In
other words, the cognitive approaches assist clients to think more rationally,
in order to act more rationally, in the face of such strong emotions as
anger, depression, and hostility, etc. The Decision Maker®
Belief Process, on the other hand, is used by the facilitator to assist
clients to eliminate the beliefs that produce such emotions. When these
emotions stop after the beliefs that give rise to them are eliminated,
there no longer is a need for a tool to deal with them more effectively.
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10.
What did you discover in your prison research about the causes of criminal
and violent behavior?
The research study was designed by Dr. Lee Sechrest, Professor of Psychology
at the University of Arizona. We used the Decision Maker® Belief
Process in working with the experimental subjects in one–and–one half
hour, one-on-one sessions each week for thirteen weeks. The subjects were
teenagers from the Long Lane School for Adjudicated Delinquents in Middletown,
CT, and adults from the Maple Street House, a half-way house in Bridgeport,
CT.
The study concluded that eliminating such common beliefs among criminals
as I'm bad, There's something wrong with me, People can't be trusted,
and Carrying a gun is what makes me important, dramatically improved
their self-esteem and drastically changed their attitudes about violence,
the need for peer approval, and hostility. We discovered that both the
negative self-esteem beliefs and the survival strategy beliefs had to
be eliminated before criminal and violent behavior can be stopped completely.
Dr. Lee Sechrest concluded after an analysis of the data: "The results
strongly support the claim that persons in the experimental condition
did develop more favorable self-concepts over the weeks of the experiment,
while those in the control condition showed no systematic change. For
the overall self-concept measure [the Tennessee Self-concept Scale] and
for all the subscales except Moral-ethnic Self and Self-criticism, the
results were statistically significant and indicated more improvement
in the experimental group.... Similarly, by self-reports, the persons
in the experimental group also improved more in several behavioral dispositions
likely to be related to risk of further legal violations....
"The simplest, and we think fairly compelling conclusion, is that
the intervention resulted in generally favorable changes in self-concept
in the Experimental group and that without intervention, self-concepts
would likely have deteriorated during confinement....
"All in all, this little experiment has to be regarded as a fairly
remarkable success. Certainly it justifies efforts to carry out further
testing to determine whether the changes observed can be dependably produced.
If they can, the Decision Maker® Belief Process could have
definite promise in helping young male offenders mend their ways."
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11.
How can the DM Process be used to help prevent and cure physical illness?
Norman Cousins has pointed out: "If you can reduce the depression
that almost invariably affects cancer patients, you can increase the body's
own capacity for combating malignancies." In his book, Head First,
Cousins summarized research which showed that "depression is a demonstrated
cause of physical ill health, including deleterious effects on the immune
system. Equally striking is the fact that liberation from depression produces
an almost automatic boost in the number of disease-fighting immune cells."
Depression is experienced as an overwhelming sense of hopelessness and
helplessness. Those attitudes, in turn, are the result of such beliefs
as I'm not good enough, I don't matter, I'll never get what I want,
People can't be trusted, Life is difficult, and I'm not safe in the world.
By eliminating beliefs such as these, depression itself also can be eliminated.
Dr. Lynda H. Powell, an assistant professor at the Department of Epidemiology
and Public Health at the Yale University School of Medicine, has done
extensive research into the relationship between mental states and heart
attacks. She points out that "Hostility and cynical mistrust are
consistently associated with coronary artery disease."
The Decision Maker® Belief Process has been used repeatedly
to quickly and permanently eliminate emotions such as hostility and cynical
mistrust.
The evidence is overwhelming that our physical well-being is largely a
function of our mental well-being. As Dr. Leonard Sagan concludes in his
book, The Health of Nations: "The data reviewed [throughout
the book] demonstrate that those who are competent and have confidence
in themselves and in their ability to control their own lives will experience
better health outcomes than those who do not.
" ... Our current biomedical paradigm focuses narrowly on adult behavior,
on diet and particularly on physical fitness as the primary determinant
of health, and largely ignores the fundamental role of our self-esteem,
and our ability to form affectionate relationships with others, and finally,
to feel ourselves to be in charge our of own lives. It is in these qualities
that true health lies."
The Decision Maker® Belief Process has been proved effective
in eliminating the beliefs that cause depression and anxiety, low self-esteem,
lack of confidence, hostility, stress, the inability to relate well to
others, victimization, and other emotions and attitudes that have been
associated with physical illnesses.
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12.
You say that the Decision Maker® Belief Process has an important
spiritual element. What do you mean by that?
When the belief disappears, there is usually an observable change in clients'
bodies and demeanor. They look (and usually report that they feel) lighter
and relieved of a heavy burden.
At this point clients discover that they are not the sum total of their
beliefs, such as, I am someone who isn't good enough or I am someone
who doesn't trust people–they are the creator of those beliefs.
We assist them to discover that there had to be an "interpreter"
of the events before there could be an "interpretation," a belief
creator before there could be a belief. In other words, who you really
are is not your beliefs; you are that which generated the beliefs. You
are not your decisions; you are the "decision maker"–which is
why we have named the Process the Decision Maker®.
The final part of the Decision Maker® Belief Process is asking
the client if he usually experiences that there has been "something
missing" in his experience of life, even on those occasions in life
that he would have considered to be successes. The answer is usually,
yes. We then ask if he experiences anything missing "right now, as
the decision maker." The answer is almost always, no. When we ask
what the experience is, right now, the answer virtually every client gives
is: calm, serene, peaceful, infinite possibilities, no limitations, whole,
complete, alive, powerful, and nothing missing.
Although this clear experience of infinite possibilities and nothing missing
that clients report during Decision Maker® Belief Process sessions
goes away following the session, clients report it becomes increasingly
real and becomes experienced as a part of one's life following several
Decision Maker® sessions. They start to view their life as,
what the Buddhists call, a "silent witness." They "have"
upsets; they are not upset. They "have" pain; they are not in
pain. They observe barriers in their lives; they are not stopped. In other
words, they do not experience themselves as the story of their lives;
they experience themselves as the creator of their lives.
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13.
Do the beliefs come back after they have been eliminated? Do you need
to reinforce the work done in sessions?
In a word, no. Once beliefs have been eliminated using the Decision Maker®
Belief Process, they stay gone. We've noticed that in clients we saw eight
to ten years ago that the beliefs do not return. And because our behavior
is the result of beliefs, once the beliefs are gone the behavior changes
naturally, effortless, permanently. There is no need to reinforce the
work done in Decision Maker® sessions.
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14.
How can the principles of the Decision Maker® Belief Process
be used to make fundamental changes in societal institutions, such as
education and the health care system?
Growing up, I saw the failure of repeated attempts to solve problems in
every area of life, such as welfare, crime, the environment, foreign policy,
child abuse, prejudice against women, racism, and health care. Several
years after I developed the Decision Maker® Belief Process
in early 1985, I finally understood why most of the attempts failed: The
existing paradigms (collections of beliefs related to a specific aspect
of life) in virtually every area were no longer appropriate to today's
circumstances. As a result, one of two things happened. Either the attempted
solutions were not effective in dealing with the problems, because they
were consistent with the existing inappropriate paradigm. Or, the strategies
were potentially useful, but widespread implementation was impossible
because the strategies were inconsistent with the institution's existing
paradigm.
The Decision Maker® Belief Process explains why there are no
workable solutions in the existing boxes–the current paradigms. It enables
us to realize that the problems we face today in virtually every area
of life cannot be solved with the options that exist in the current boxes.
Ultimately, what we need is a society that practices "Decision Maker®
thinking." The result would be a profound realization that there
is no "the truth" about education, health care, or any
other institution. What is needed is a new "a truth"
that is more appropriate for the moment–which should be replaced with
a new "a truth" when future conditions require it.
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15.
Is the Decision Maker® Belief Process a self-help approach?
Can people use it on themselves?
Although a few people have told me they have used the Decision Maker®
Belief
Process on themselves successfully, most people will
not be able to. For most people their beliefs are so "the truth"
that it is difficult to get outside them sufficiently to follow all the
steps of the Decision Maker® Belief
Process, especially the one that requires you to
find other possible interpretations for the events that led to the belief.
It is easier for someone to facilitate someone else in the DMBP. If someone
already knows the belief she wants to eliminate and knows when it was
formed, it isn't very difficult for most people to run through the steps
of the DMBP and assist that person to eliminate the belief.
The problem arises when someone knows a dysfunctional pattern she wants
to eliminate and doesn't know all the beliefs that are causing it. Finding
all the beliefs, sometimes as many as fifty or more for such problems
as eating disorders, requires training and skill that the average person
doesn't possess. It also can be difficult to find the source of a belief
without assistance.
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16.
Can the Decision Maker® Belief Process be used with anyone?
Almost anyone can use the Decision Maker® Belief Process. Using
it to eliminate beliefs does not require a high level of intelligence
or psychological awareness. We have facilitated people of all ages, from
children as young as six, to adults in their seventies. We have worked
with people at all levels of psychological awareness, from psychoanalysts
who had undergone considerable therapy, to people who rarely were introspective
and never had thought about why they did what they did. We have assisted
people possessing Ph.D.'s, who could grasp the implications of what we
were doing very quickly, and with people who never finished high school,
who didn't comprehend the implications at all and who didn't even know
what the words "possibilities" and "worthy" meant.
This is not to claim that the Decision Maker® Belief Process
would be effective with everyone or that it would be the best intervention
to use under all conditions. To begin with, a subject obviously would
require sufficient intelligence and concentration to follow the steps
of the Decision Maker® Belief Process for an hour or two. People
under the influence of drugs or alcohol would not be good candidates,
although the Decision Maker® Belief Process might be very effective
during periods when they were sober or not under the influence of drugs.
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