Enabling Beliefs

2 min read

We all have beliefs that we have formed from our experiences over time. Some beliefs are enabling and help us achieve our outcomes and others are limiting and hold us back.

You would be amazed how some beliefs that some people have held for ages continue to act powerfully and unhelpfully for them simply because they have remained unchallenged.
‘ You can’t teach an old dog new tricks ’ and ‘ Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t ’ can be extremely limiting beliefs to hold in some situations where a more constructive or positive outcome is desired.

Once you become aware of a belief it is helpful to ask yourself :

  • Is this always true? What are the consequences if it is always true?
  • What else has to be true to support this belief?
  • What would be a more enabling belief in this context ? What has to happen for that enabling belief to be true in this case?

Presuppositions

Enabling beliefs (or called presuppositions) can be helpful and useful in supporting you to achieve your outcomes.

You can generally find a presupposition to help shift you’re thinking when feeling stuck or you want to try a different approach.
Note: It is not necessary to believe that the presupposition is true in all situations or contexts but it is necessary to act as if it was true.

  1. The map is not the territory.
  2. The meaning of communication is the response you get.
  3. There is no failure, only feedback.
  4. Present behavior represents the very best choice available to that person at that precise time.
  5. Every behavior has a positive intention.
  6. Mind and body are part of the same system, and anything that occurs in one part of the system will affect the other part.
  7. The person with the most flexibility in thinking and behavior has the most influence in any interaction.
  8. Choice is better than no choice.
  9. If one person can do something, then anyone can learn how to do it.
  10. Everyone already has everything that they need to achieve what they want.
  11. A person’s behavior is not who they are.
  12. Language represents internal experience.
  13. It is not possible to not communicate.
  14. There is a solution to every problem.
  15. Resistance in another person is a sign of lack of rapport.

These enabling beliefs (presuppositions) are from the study of successful communicators by Bandler and Grinder when they first developed NLP.