you will never achieve any significant level of intellectual independence. In the face of ountervailing opinion, you will always fear that someone more intelligent knows more than you-you will feel unsuited to make independent choices.

If you believe that life is a fools tale meaning nothing, then, like Macbeth, you will drive yourself toward your own destruction.

Your beliefs are the ultimate self-fulfilling prophecy. Remember that your subconscious is gullible-it believes what you tell it to believe. If you believe you dont deserve to be rich, your mind wont let you be rich. If you believe you dont deserve love, it wont let you achieve love. If you believe that you arent intelligent, it will make you stupid.

So you have to get rid of limiting beliefs in order to succeed in life. The first step toward changing limiting beliefs is gaining an awareness of what they are, and awareness comes first from recognizing their symptoms as manifested in your actions. The symptoms are very similar to the ones I discussed regarding values, namely the recurrent inability to follow through on the achievem ent of your goals and the negative nature of the questions and statements you make to yourself. This isnt surprising since values and beliefs are so intimately connected.

The statements we make to ourselves and the questions we ask of ourselves are both a cause and a consequence of our beliefs. When you say something to yourself like "I am so stupid!" you are both stating and reinforcing a belief, however briefly ,you may think it is true. You may not mean this self-reproach in a fundamental sense, but if you say it often enough, especially in a highly emotional state, then your mind is very likely to start believing it.

An excellent way to help gain awareness of both your limiting global beliefs and your limiting rules is once again to put pen to pap er and ask yourself some questions:

What are the limiting global beliefs that are stopping me from achieving what 1 want in my ?

Use the same procedure that was described for listing your values. First, fill in the blank with "life," and write as many answers as you can as fast as you can. Then get more particular by answering the question for whatever area of your life you want to consider, such as career and relationships.

The second step of this process is to access the rules that you live by. If you cannot immediately identify the major global beliefs that are limiting you. this second step may lead you toward answers. Start with the values you listed in the hierarchical order you gave them. For each value, ask yourself what has to happen in order for you to achieve it. Your answers will probably take either the "if. then" form or the form, "To be, I must ." For example, if success is

at the top of your list, you might come up with something like this:

What must happen in order for me to feel succes sful? To be a success, I must

make one million dollars a year.

have an attractive spouse and two children, have a body like Arnold Schwarzenegger (or Kim Basinger) and have at most 13% body fat. feel totally happy 100% of the time, never have a conflict with anyone, never feel angry or frustrated, be the best at everything 1 do.

Depending on your unique circumstances, some of these rules may be quite reasonable, but most of them are totally unrealistic. What if instead you believed that to feel successful, all you had to do is wake up and do your best every day? No one can feel totally happy all the time. Everyone is going to feel angry and frustrated. Not everyone can look like Arnold Schwarzenegger or Kim Basinger.

My point, once again, is that we often sabotage any chance of gaining the states we seek in life because we make the rules impossible to win by.

In doing these exercises, you will often find yourself listing attainments expressed in terms of

means values such as quantities of money and so forth. It is possible that your values, your core beliefs, and even your rules may all be consistent and positive, but that you hold negative or conflicting beliefs about the means values that make the ends values you seek possible. To get to these negative beliefs, it is helpful to use the following sentence completion technique:

Having (means value) means

When you answer this question, first list all the benefits you see yourself deriving from attaining whatever value you are seeking. For example:

Having a lot of money means I would be completely free. I would have more time to spend with my loved ones. I wouldnt have to worry about my bills. I could pay off all my bills. I could get the clothes, house, and car that Ive always wanted.

I could help out the people in need that I care about.

I wouldnt be dependent on the welfare of my company for my livelihood.

Next, list all of the things that you were taught or believe that might limit the attainment of the means value. For example:

Money is the root of all evil. Money cant buy happiness. To be rich you have to exploit the poor. Rich people are snobs.

It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.

Making money means I would lose my spirituality.

Making money means I would have to take on too much responsibility.

If you dig into your mind, you will be amazed at all the knowledge you have in your head that can stop you from feeling how you want to feel and being what and where you want to be in life. You can look at these limiting "truisms" in your mind and say, "That really doesnt make sense to me." You can remind yourself that all rich people arent snobs, and there is no compulsion for you to be one if you become wealthy. In short, you can mentally cancel out the validity of these beliefs.

Im telling you, right now, you have the intelligence and the ability to succeed; you just have to get rid of the limits you place on yourself. So examine your beliefs and rules and identify the ones that are limiting and impossible.

Thus far, my main focus has been on identifying limiting beliefs, but in or der to change, you have to get rid of those beliefs and replace them with positive, empowering beliefs. Let me just list a few positive global beliefs to set the tone for the beliefs and rules you might adopt in your own way and your own phrasing:

Positive Global Beliefs: Life is full of unlimited possibility. Every problem is a new challenge and an opportunity to grow. I am fortunate to be healthy and alive. I am capable of controlling my own destiny.

People are a source of knowledge, inspiration, and joy. There is always a way to achieve what Im committed to.

When it comes to defining new rules that you want to adopt, remember to rig the game of life so its easy to win. The rules that allow you to feel passion, love, happiness, success, and so forth dont have to be difficult or impossible.

We all need challenge in life, yes, but there is more than enough challenge in striving for a constant

progression of goal achievement without setting ourselves up to "dream the impossible dream," and "fight the unbeatable foe." Life is too short, too precious, and too full of potential to waste time by setting ourselves up to experience life as futile.

Once you have spent some significant time doing these exercises, you will have a grasp on the values and beliefs that limit you, and you should have a pretty well-defined idea of the positive values and beliefs that you would like to replace them with. The problem now is how to go about making the replacement. Once again we are faced with the problem that knowledge alone is not enough; we need a method of execution. This is where the importance of projection comes into play.

HARNESSING THE POWER OF THE SUBCONSCIOUS

There are significant events in all of our lives that, when recalled, recreate pleasure or pain that feels nearly as vital as when the event actually occurred. For example, perhaps you had a major triumph in your career, and when you recall it, you find yourself smiling and feeling proud. Or perhaps you had a failed relationship, and when you recall the conflicts that you went through, your stomach tightens, your muscles tense, and you relive the pain and loss that you felt.

We have also all experienced the pleasure or pain of projecting some event into the future. You may picture yourself basking in the Bahamian sun, pifia colada in hand, feeling the gentle breeze as the waves softly swoosh against the shore. On thinking abo ut this, you may actually feel the sense of total relaxation that you would experience, and smile at the prospect. Or you may be driving along and imagine someone running out in front of you and feel the total dread and horror of accidentally killing someone with your car.

Feelings of pleasure and pain are not limited to the present; we have the ability to recall them from the past, and project them into the future.

Since the subconscious provides motivation according to two primary emotional forces-the need to avoid pain and the desire to attain pleasure-it makes sense that to eliminate a limiting association, we need to convince the subconscious that it will cause pain, lots of pain.

Conversely, to install a new, positive value or belief, you have to conv ince the subconscious that it will lead to enormous amounts of pleasure.

The way to do this on the conscious level is to link up the negative and limiting values and beliefs with pain in the past, present, and future; and to link the positive, life -serving values and beliefs with lots of pleasure in the present and the future.

Anthony Robbins has devised a method he calls the "Dickens Pattem," named after the method of change used on Scrooge by the ghostly visitors in Charles Dickens story, A Christmas Carol. If you will recall, what the ghosts did was to take Scrooge on a joumey through past, present, and future, demonstrating along the way the sources of pleasure and pain in Scrooges life. It is noteworthy that the most effective impetus to change for Scrooge was the pain that his present course would cause in the future.

Basically, the Dickens Pattem is as follows:

1. Pick two limiting beliefs that you want to change. Close your eyes and think back in time about all the pain that this belief has caused you. Feel the weight, the burden that you feel as a result of holding the belief. Think about all the consequences of having this belief. Think of all the things you have missed out on, the love, the material things, the fun. What have these belie fs cost you financially, in your career, in your relationships with people? Really focus on the pain and loss you have experienced just as if it was happening to you all over again. Go back as far as you can remember and relive all the painful experiences you can that were caused by the limiting belief.

2. With your eyes still closed, think about the pain that these limiting beliefs are causing you in the present, including all the pain that is in your mind because of the past. How do you feel about yourself right now? Do the beliefs enervate you or drain you? Do they make you feel in control of your life, or helpless? How do they affect you socially? What opportunities have you missed to enjoy other people? How do they affect you physically, emotionally, sp iritually? Feel the pain.

3. Move ahead into the future, projecting the pain that the belief will cause in your life in one year.