Using Your Brain —for a CHANGE

Man: I started with the belief that it was dangerous for me to drive at night without my glasses. I wanted to change it to the belief that I could safely drive without my glasses at night. Then my partner pointed out that my desired belief was a goal, and that it might be dangerous to change to that belief, I might go driving at night thinking I was safe when I wasn't. So we changed to the belief that I can learn to drive safely at night without glasses. I think I was really working on a much more general belief that I couldn't learn, period. I have a sense that this will affect much more than just driving at night; it seems much broader than that.

Great. Changing the belief that you can't learn something is useful for a lot of people. Many people try something once, don't succeed at it, and conclude they can't do it and they can't learn to do it. I know a man who "knew" he couldn't play the piano: "I sat down at the piano and tried it once, but nothing came of it." I start off with the belief that as long as you have most of your brain cells intact, anyone can do anything. You may need to chunk down the task, or learn to do it differently, and it may take you a while to get good at it, but starting with the belief that you can learn will take you a long way. My belief may even be wrong sometimes, but it makes it possible for me to do things and get results that I would never even consider if I assumed people were genetically incapable.

Man: Several people are using firewalking as a way to change people's limiting beliefs. Can you comment on that?

If someone believes they can't do something like firewalking and you get them to discover that it's possible, that can certainly shatter an old belief, particularly if they're told, "If you can walk on fire, you can do anything!" However, there's no way to carefully specify the new belief that gets put in its place. I read about one person who went through a firewalk and said, "Now I believe that I could be standing right at the explosion of a nuclear warhead, and it wouldn't affect me." If he's lucky, he won't ever get to test that belief, but it's an example of the kind of junky beliefs that can get installed that way. If you install beliefs that way, people often put in beliefs that don't relate to evidence or feedback. One firewalk teacher is calling himself "the foremost NLP trainer," when he hasn't even been certified as a master practitioner, much less a trainer! Some of his other beliefs have even less evidence for them.

I know that some people have gotten some very useful belief changes from doing the firewalk. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. The problem with firewalking is that you have little control over the new belief that takes the place of the old one. There are enough bizarre and dangerous beliefs in the world without adding to them with a random process.

Another problem with something like firewalking is that it tends to install the belief that it takes a really dramatic external event to get you to change. I'd rather install the belief that change happens constantly, and easily, and making it work for you is a matter of understanding how to run your own brain. It doesn't take walking on hot coals to do that.

There is a completely separate issue of whether firewalking is actually something that's difficult to do or not, and whether the six hours of evangelistic preparation makes any difference in being able to walk on the coals. A reporter from the Rolling Stone timed people as they walked across and found a range of 1.5 seconds to 1.9 seconds, with an average of about 1.7 seconds. The length of the walk was about 10 feet, so if you have a 30" stride you can easily make it across in 4 steps — two on each foot. That gives a maximum of less than half a second of actual contact per footstep. Firewalkers make a big deal about the temperature of the coals—1,400 to 2,000 degrees — but they don't mention that each foot has only two contacts with the coals lasting less than half a second each. When you pick up a hot coal that's landed on your carpet to throw it back into the fireplace, your fingers probably contact the coal for about that long— and your fingertips are much more sensitive than your feet.