Profit From Belief Shattering

What I took from NLP, applied to marketing and made millions from

If you want to be successful at a certain business but view yourself as a failure (belief: “I’m a failure”) then you will act in a way to satisfy that belief… meaning even if you stumble upon success you will find a way to sabotage it.

Beliefs influence our behavior way more than information. If we know what to do and we have the best information to do it, but we believe we can get hurt if we were to do it… then we don’t act.

If you have incomplete and inaccurate information but believe you’ll “find a way or make one” then you act with confidence and likely self-fulfill your own success.

Almost anything that stops you from getting what you want can be tied to some sort of false, limiting belief.

The Problem with Beliefs

They are largely followed unconsciously.

It’s similar to how your eyes blink. You don’t think about - it just happens. Once (often when you were young) someone said something ONE time in just the right way and you accepted it, never examined it again, and now decades later still follow that belief.

Countless clients have come to me sharing a story about some crusty old teacher who said to them “you will never learn” and now they’ve formed the belief “It’s difficult to learn new things”.

Some of the smartest, most capable people I know who are absolute learning machines still believe they have trouble learning because of an offhand remark from some miserable teacher who doesn’t even remember the person they gave this shitty belief to.

If you can help someone bring consciousness to a limiting belief, it offers the chance for the person to consider a different belief - a more up to date and empowering belief. Your old beliefs had a purpose and served you at the time but many of them need examined to see if they are still relevant to who you are now and what your goals are.

Beliefs & Frames

To understand how to break limiting beliefs you have to realize all beliefs are held in frames. A frame is the boundary and constraints around the belief.

One thing I learned early on studying NLP that helped me so much in marketing is the difference between a “problem frame” and a “solution frame”.

A problem frame is where the belief is presented as a disadvantage - “It’s too expensive”. The focus here is on the cost. A solution frame is “how could I afford it?”. The focus here is on the outcome.

The easiest way to break a limiting belief is to change the focus. If you do nothing else but get good at hearing problem frames and shifting them to solution frames you’ll make a lot more money.

I have a ton of techniques I’ll share shortly which takes this even further.

My 2 Favorite Beliefs About Beliefs

In NLP I learned the concept of utility - that beliefs are neither good or bad. They are either useful or not.

Procrastination is not a deficiency - it’s just useful in some circumstances but not others.

Failure is not bad in itself - I want you to fail at all the ways of making yourself feel useless.

Every belief has utility. You hold the beliefs you hold because it’s the best you know to do the best you can. When I deal with a client or prospect, I assume positive intent on every behavior.

“I can’t afford it” means to me you’re looking to get the most for your money.

“I don’t have the time” means to me you place such value on your time - good for you!

“I’m afraid I’ll fail” means you have a value you place on success and you want to operate in a way which is safe for you to get that success.

Adopt these two beliefs and you’ll make a ton more money:

1. All behavior is useful in the right circumstance.

2. Prospects have a positive intent with their belief, regardless of how limiting it may be.

Techniques to Break Limiting Beliefs

I got a bunch.

A quick note before we dive in - the assumption here is you’re talking with prospects who want, need and are absolutely the best qualified to buy what you sell.

Many people who should buy don’t because in the short term buying anything is risky and the easiest thing (in the short term) is to do nothing. If you don’t put the effort in to overcome this, they don’t get the help and you don’t get the money.

CARING is at the heart of it - if you genuinely care about the market you serve, and you see your audience behaving in a way that doesn’t serve them, make it your mission to empower them to empower themselves.

Cool?

Let’s run technique.

Behavior → State→Meaning

I tried this and it didn’t go my way. It make me feel bad. Therefore I’m a failure.

Ever take on that belief? Most of us have.

The behavior is “I tried this” the internal state is “I feel bad” and the meaning is “I’m a failure”.

How about this one…

Someone said I sucked. I’m sad now and afraid to try it again. I guess I’m not good enough.

Behavior: third party criticism State: sad and afraid. Meaning: not good enough.

To break this belief we can change the frame around the behavior, state or meaning.

“Someone said I sucked”. Oh, are they the end all be all authority one suckyness. Did they win a gold medal in the state of Utah for their immaculate ability to spot objective suckyness in the wild?

This is but one way I can reframe the behavior from something bad (Criticism) to something else (in this case, absurdity).

If you change the frame you view the behavior in, it will automatically change the internal state. What was once fear and sadness can now be humor. And by changing the state, you change its meaning (my sense of self worth doesn’t have to be dependent on what strangers from the internet say about me).

I could’ve as easily said “I find the people who matter don’t have time to tell other people they suck. Only the biggest losers can sit around all day making it their life’s worth to try to drag others down instead trying to bring themselves up…”

And that may change the the internal state from sad and afraid to apathy - you now don’t care enough for it to effect you so therefore you don’t even derive a meaning from it.

Note: not every technique works with every person all the time. Treat these like tools in a tool box. You try one. If it works, great. If it doesn’t, grab the next tool. My attitude on this is if I have enough tools and use them, I can help anyone who wants help. (Not the belief that “I tried it and it didn’t work immediately the first time so therefore none of this works!”).

With practice you can get good at parsing out the parts that form a belief. You’ll start to notice the behaviors, and then you can play with them (shift the focus to a different behavior for example). You’ll see the internal states they create and you can adjust them (offer alternative states to consider for example) and you’ll pick up on the meanings (and then have them see if those meanings even make sense or if there are more useful meanings).

Now notice the patterns as I give the tactics on breaking limiting beliefs.

As if Frame

Here is where you reframe an “I can’t” into a “what if you could?”.

Prospect says “I can’t afford it.” You say “Assume you can afford it. Would you buy it then?”

Prospect says “I don’t have the time.” You say “If you had the time, what is the first thing you would do after you buy?”

Prospect says “I can’t do this.” You say “Imagine you already did this - how would your life be better off?”

The shift from the problem frame to the solution frame is to assume that what can’t be done is already done. This gets the lead to consider a new perspective - one that’s more empowering.

The truth is most people can do most things if they want to bad enough - we’re just figuring out how much of a priority it is for the prospect to want the solution.

Second Position Frame

Client tells me one day they are terribly unproductive. I say to them: “Okay, I’m filling in for you tomorrow so you can take a day off. I want to be exactly as unproductive as you are because I take my job seriously. How do I know when to start slacking off?”

Notice the shift from problem to a solution frame? I’m framing his lack of productivity as a skill! I’m also helping him bring awareness to the belief, so he can examine it from a new perspective.

New perspectives = new insights.

________ or something else? Frame

Prospect says: “I don’t have the budget.” You say: “is the budget your most important concern or is there an even greater concern?”

If the budget is the main concern then you can follow up on that (e.g. “budgets are great to have because they help us get the most out of our money. How do you know what to budget for…?”).

If budget isn’t the main concern (and it usually isn’t) then that’s great! You can get an even more important limiting belief, the one most likely to influence the sell.

Prospect says: “I need to think it over”. You say: “do you need to think it over or do you need to feel it over?” And now you give some wiggle to the fixed belief and you give new consideration. New considerations can lead to a new belief.

Prospect says: “I’m afraid of failure.” You say: “is it failure you’re afraid of or is it success? Failure you know well but success is foreign to you and that can be scary. What if this works even better than you could ever believe - what problems would you face then?”

I have used that last one to close thousands and thousands of dollars in sales.

Redefinition Frame

Prospect says “It costs too much.” You say: “Yes it does… to the wrong person. Are you the wrong person or not though?” You have agreed to their statement but also changed the meaning of the statement.

I often tell clients that there is no such thing as costs - there are only investments. Some are good and some are bad.

By redefining the language, we shift cost (problem) to investment (solution) and it helps prospects better see value.

Chunk Down Frame

Beliefs are often vast generalizations and if you can zoom in on something specific, you can break the limiting belief.

I had a client once who had sold over billions of dollars of their products but he hated marketing and was against to the type of marketing I knew that could grow his business.

What I said to him: “Your products tell stories don’t they? And what happens to clients when they hear those stories? You’re a great story teller and it shows in your products. What kind of story could we tell in this media…”.

By focusing on one specific type of marketing that he could easily accept I was able to help him move forward with doing “marketing” even though he wanted nothing to do with “marketing”.

Counter Example

A prospect says to me: “I ran a few facebook ads and it didn’t work so facebook ads just don’t work”.

My response: “well let’s call Zuckerberg and tell him to shut the whole thing down and let’s let all these businesses that are spending millions of dollars a year know they’re stupid and that even though a bunch of them are making money from ads that somehow those ads don’t work!”

Note: rapport is important for some of these techniques. If you tease someone who doesn’t like you, they think you cruel. If you tease a friend, it’s endearing. So use these different techniques as they make sense related to the state of rapport you’re in.

I have now given doubt to this once rock solid belief the client had. He changes tact: “well they work for others, not for me…”

Great - now shift it again with the as-if frame: “if you knew for certain they would work and you just had to build the campaign out, what would you do different than you’re doing now knowing that you would 100% succeed if you did it right?”.

Chaining these techniques is powerful!

Another example - Prospect says: “I never finish anything.” My response: “so who takes you to school in the morning then, mom or dad? I assume you haven’t graduated kindergarten yet since you don’t finish anything.”

Prospect says: “I lack confidence.” Me: “How confident are you about that statement?”

Analogy Frame

A theme you may notice so far is we often don’t directly argue with the belief. If a client says “I’m scared” and you say “no you’re not” that works about 0.1% of the time. We shift beliefs like magicians do magic - through distraction or indirectly.

The analogy is one of the safest and most indirect ways. If it doesn’t work, it’s still fun. And it often does work.

Client says: “I’m afraid I’ll fail”. You say: “ever learn to ride a bike? I bet at first it was scraped knees and bruised elbows. But I bet you didn’t care all too much because the idea of riding the bike was greater than the fear of a few missteps and mistakes.”

I have a program I sell where people have to cold contact brands to become resellers of their products. I know audiences are afraid of cold outreach (I could be rejected, I would feel terrible if rejected, and I must be worthless as a person if others reject me.)

I use the analogy: “When we were little our parents told us not to talk to strangers and it served us well but here we are full grown adults still afraid to talk to strangers when it’s hard to make friends and fall in love if we don’t at least talk to some strangers some of the time…”

Another Outcome Frame

Prospect says: “How fast will I achieve results if I do this” and I say: “I don’t know how fast results will come in… days, weeks, months perhaps… I do know though that you’ll have a new sense of purpose and excitement about life as you work through this and I can’t imagine what else and in what wonderful ways it will show up in your business…”

The point is the speed of outcome probably isn’t as important as something else is, and so I help the prospect be aware of the bigger picture by giving them other outcomes to consider that are as beneficial if not more than the one they are currently fixated on.

Apply to Self Frame

Prospect says: “I have trouble seeing myself using this because it might come across as pushy.” Me: “do you see me as pushy?”

If client says “No” then you can help them see that it’s possible to use the techniques without being pushy. If client says “Yes” I can say: “yet still here you are. Why do you think I can be pushy sometimes?” Client says: “because you really care about my results.” I say: “And do you not care about your clients results…”

And then they buy.