Although most therapists would agree that behavior change usually is difficult and does not happen overnight, I disagree with that assessment. 

About sixteen years ago I developed the first in a series of interventions that literally do produce rapid and permanent change. 

The primary one, the Decision Maker® Belief Process (DMBP), eliminates the beliefs that cause our behavioral and emotional patterns.         

The DMBP and other interventions are based on a single axiom that is grounded in everyday experience:  Events have no inherent meaning. There are three corollary distinctions that arise from that axiom: There is no meaning in the world.  All meaning is in our minds.  All beliefs are merely the meaning we assign to what we observe.

Before I explain how this axiom and its corollaries can be the basis for a process that quickly and permanently eliminates beliefs, let me explain what I mean by “Events have no inherent meaning.” 

Please try the following mental exercise:

Assume your parents were very critical of you most of the time and rarely acknowledged you for your achievements. 

No matter what you did, they focused on what you didn’t do and how you should have done better. 

If this was the pattern of their interactions with you, there literally would be thousands of them by the time you were six or seven years old. 

What would you have concluded about yourself by this time? 

If you are typical of most children, you would concluded that There's something wrong with me or I'm not good enough.

You would have experienced these beliefs as “the truth” about you as a child. 

Today, as an adult, even though you might consciously realize the beliefs were silly and illogical, on some deep level you still would experience them as the truth about you.

If you were to recall your childhood, it would seem to you that you could “see” that I'm not good enough.

In other words, when you visualized your parents being critical, it would seem as if you also were visualizing I'm not good enough. It’s as if your parent’s behavior inherently meant I'm not good enough.

It would be so real to you that you could see your belief in the world that it seems you could say to someone: “If you were there watching my interactions with my parents, you also would see I'm not good enough.”   

But if you really looked at the events that led to the belief, namely, your parents’ behavior, you would realize that their behavior could have a number of different meanings, each one as valid as the one you chose.

For example: 

· My parents thought that being critical would motivate me to excel. 

· My parents had lousy parenting skills. 

· My parents may have thought I wasn’t good enough, but they were wrong. 

· Maybe I wasn’t good enough when I was a kid, but that doesn't mean I always wouldn’t be good enough. 

· Maybe my parents were dissatisfied with my behavior, but they didn't think I wasn’t good enough.

If you now tried to visualize I'm not good enough “out there in the world,” you would realize you couldn't, because you really never did see it. All you actually saw was your parents' behavior.

And if that behavior could have a number of valid meanings, it has no single inherent meaning.

At which point you would be forced to conclude that the only place that meaning has ever existed has been as a belief in your mind.   

When you reach this point, the belief has been transformed from “the truth” to “a truth” and is no longer a belief. If you were to state the words of the belief, they would sound silly and meaningless. 

This axiom and its corollaries explain why it usually is difficult to get rid of beliefs: We think we “saw” the belief inherent in our observations.  It is difficult to talk someone out of something they think they “saw.” 

As soon, however, as we realize that we never saw the belief (i.e., the meaning) in the events, that the meaning existed only in our mind, the belief disappears. 

The first intervention I developed based on the axiom and corollaries was the Decision Maker® Belief Process, which is designed to quickly and permanently eliminate long-held beliefs (e.g., I’m not good enough). 

Obviously I can’t provide a detailed explanation of each intervention here, but I can give you a sense of how the DMDP works to eliminate beliefs.


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Photo: Emily Browning, Jim Carrey, Liam Aiken in Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004)

positive psychology, recognizing self-limiting beliefs, anxiety relief programs, anxiety relief products, personal growth development, The Lefkoe Method