Beliefs
One particularly interesting place to use the understandings provided by this perspective pattern is with the generalizations that are usually called "limiting beliefs," particularly when these beliefs are about yourself. When you have a limiting belief, there are several possibilities:
- The belief may be based on only one unresourceful experience, with no positive experiences joined with it to provide a useful perspective. This is what many people assume when they do "Reimprinting" or "Change Personal History," or some other remedial change work on a single traumatic past experience.
- There is a group of unresourceful experiences. While it is possible to have a single difficult experience, most difficulties repeat, and usually the most intense one becomes a sort of "magnet" that gathers other similar experiences to form a group that is the basis for a very unuseful perspective, and this is what is often called a "negative" or limiting belief. Doing change work on a single experience will work well only if it is done on the most intense example of a group of experiences, because then the change will usually generalize to the rest of the group automatically.
- The belief may be based on a group of unresourceful experiences, combined with only one or a few resourceful ones. The positive ones are just not powerful enough or numerous enough to provide a balanced perspective. In this case it can be useful to transform unresourceful ones, and also to remember, elicit, or create additional positive examples, so that the overall meaning of the generalization becomes more positive and useful.
- The belief may have a mix of unresourceful and resourceful experiences that provide an ambiguous perspective. This is very similar to the previous situation, so again it is useful to transform unresourceful examples and generate additional positive ones so that the generalization becomes unambiguously positive.
For simplicity, I have presented McWhirter's perspective pattern in the context of a single problem experience, accessing a number of resources that provide a wider scope, and more information. This establishes a new context for the problem experience, creating a useful new perspective that provides a new meaning. However, usually a problem experience is part of a group of experiences that is the basis for a limiting belief, and then you need to work with the whole group in order to change it.
This kind of perspective pattern underlies all the generalizations you make, both about the world and about yourself, so this pattern presents some of the fundamental properties of how we form all beliefs. Now that you have been sensitized to this process, you will probably find it (or the need for it) almost everywhere you look.
