Last night I attended an amazing Ecademy meeting in London. The meeting had over 200 attendees each one as fascinating as the last. I wanted to share the information we received from the guest speakers that night as already it has proven to be a valuable tool. I will continue using it in my every day life.

French-Burgess Six Step Belief Change System is designed to help you get out of your own way. It is needed by people who want to improve or completely re-invent themselves. It’s a system which helps with motivation, getting things done, and getting things done better than before.

Step 1 – Choose what it is you want.

In my business, I want to become a better networker, I want to be able to approach strangers more easily and talk to them as I do my own friends.

Focus on what it is you want, not what you don’t want. When you focus on what you don’t want, you tend to get it. I don’t want to run out of money and have to ration food, but for this example, I will rephrase it as: I want to keep making money and clear £xxxx per month to ensure I can buy what I want, when I want.

Step 2 – Audit your thoughts.

Take a piece of paper, head it with the choice above and draw two columns below. Head each column: ‘Helpful Thoughts’ and ‘Unhelpful Thoughts’

Now write down all the thoughts you have about the above goal and put them into one of the columns. Helpful comments are positive comments: ‘I need take on new clients’, ‘I could speak to x about distributing’. Unhelpful comments are negative comments: ‘I haven’t got the money to pay for ….’, ‘I’m no good at talking to strangers’, ‘what if it doesn’t work?’

Step 3 – What iffing.

Look through your helpful and unhelpful thoughts and get to know them and understand where they’re coming from. Now take each unhelpful comment in turn, and convert it into a positive ‘What if’ and write these in the helpful comments box.

i.e.
I am no good at talking to strangers.
becomes:-
I do have a skill for talking to strangers.

What if it doesn’t work
becomes:-
What if it does work?
What if it works very well?

Step 4 – Provide Evidence.

When you use ‘What if ….’ negatively, you provide evidence reinforcing the many reasons why you shouldn’t do something. ‘I always mess up conversations with people’, ‘I always end up being stuck talking to the one person no-one else wants to talk to.’

So do the same with the positive ‘what ifs’ you wrote above. Continue each ‘What if…’ with ‘…because…’

i.e.
I do have a skill for talking to strangers because I do sometimes meet some very interesting and powerful people, I have developed contacts that I know I can rely on and talk to whenever I need help. I have received business from some of these contacts, and have made new contacts because of it.

What if it does work? Because I have worked on projects more complicated than this before, and they worked beautifully. I have helped others with similar projects, and they worked fine. I have had a few people literally throwing money at me for other projects they are interested in.

Step 5 – Experience the new situation.

When you think about negative outcomes, do you envisage them? do you imagine being there, imagine the complaining phone calls, imagine the shame, and imagine people saying negative things about you?

Does that really happen? You’ve seen it so many times, you believe it will actually happen, you almost implant a false memory and provide more reasons not to do something.

Again, in reverse, imagine this ‘what if…’ imagine what would happen if it did work, imagine the congratulations and smiles you get from important people. Imagine those phone calls out of the blue ‘Hi, I’ve been speaking to a client of mine and he said that you are fantastic at …. can we arrange a meeting, I have a job for you.’

Mentally rehearse this scenario, what you see, feel, how you walk, how you stand, how you speak to people. Keep rehearsing this in your head over and over.

You now have a goal, you have an emotional connection with the outcome, one which will help drive you to perform better and achieve more.

Step 6 – Imaginary friends.

Would you normally be more relaxed talking to a one-man-band company face to face or the CEO of a multi-national company?

Which scenario would you perform better in? Which would you present to more effectively? Which would you spend more time preparing for?

Would you perform better if your spouse was there? When your business partner or member of staff is present, would you feel more comfortable or confident?

Would you feel more confident talking to high powered business executives if you were one yourself?

If you’re not something you need to be, imagine you are. Don’t say it, else you’ll be lying and could be locked up. Just imagine it. I feel absolutely comfortable talking to this woman because my business has been around for as long as hers and is doing as well as hers. (Don’t use this one if you are offering you’re about to defend them in a criminal case, or specialise in business rescue loans!)

With these pointers in mind, change your mindset, decide that you can do it and provide evidence for this. Visualise the outcome and keep the feeling in memory. Be who you want to be in any situation and achieve all those things you put off until tomorrow.

6 Step Belief Change Official Document from French and Burgess