Beliefs And How To Change Them:
A Manual Of Methods For
Changing Beliefs In
Ourselves And Others
by Mr. Larry Westenberg LCSW (Author)
By learning and practicing the concepts and skills in this book, you can begin to master how to shift and strategically change beliefs during a normal conversation. Written by a therapist with over 40 years of experience, he developed these methods while working in forensic mental health treatment to shift the beliefs of people who thought it was “cool” to kill people.
The book begins by teaching techniques for shifting and controlling your own feelings. This is important because beliefs usually rely on a “feeling that something is true.” You learn to shift feelings in yourself, and then shift feelings in others. You learn several different “feeling sequences” that can be very useful in a number of different situations.
You will then learn why people form beliefs. People form beliefs so that the world becomes more predictable. Since beliefs make the world more predictable, people randomly apply beliefs to all different areas of their lives. In fact, people decide what categories they will divide their life into by deciding on values. Values are just beliefs, ranked in importance.
The book then teaches about the structure of beliefs, so you can detect the belief structures a person uses whenever they talk. This allows you to understand them more easily, and shows you how to shift their beliefs. You will learn about shifting beliefs, truths, evidence, values and more by exploring language patterns that are part of the conversational hypnosis techniques utilized by the late Dr. Milton Erickson.
You will also learn conditions for forming new beliefs, and the ideals to keep in mind when changing beliefs in yourself and others so that the impact on the larger world is positive. Lastly, you will explore three beliefs that could destroy the world, and three beliefs that could save the world, as well as a very simple value filter for evaluating what is a good belief.
Learn to detect how television and media is constantly utilizing conversational hypnosis, and how to make your own communication more likely to be heard, understood and accepted by a listener. Learn a set of patterns for weakening beliefs, and another set for strengthening beliefs – all in this one book!
“I believe in making small, simple changes that ripple into waves of change, helping each individual move forward in their life.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Larry Westenberg
MSEd., MSW, LCSW
Larry is a trainer and Instructional Designer with a MSEd. specializing in Training Design. He has been designing training programs for Fortune 50 companies since 2005, including AT&T, IBM, Abbott Labs, Blue Cross and Blue Shield, Accenture and several banks. Larry’s thesis for his MSEd. proposed that highly structured information layouts in manuals and materials could improve learning and retention of information. He developed corporate training materials that followed his multi-level information methods he proposed in his thesis. Three classes he developed were purchased by MIT for use in their graduate school. You can experience these hyper-structured layouts in his book, in his practice cards and with his training methods.
Additionally, Larry has a MSW, and is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) who has helped thousands of individuals in crisis, inpatient and outpatient treatment settings, as well as private practice. He has worked as a therapist for over 40 years, including six years assessing and treating the criminally insane during his 15 years of working at a large state psychiatric hospital. He has served as an expert witness regarding psychiatric and emergency room assessment procedures, as he did ER psychiatric assessments working in numerous ERs in the Chicago area. Mr. Westenberg maintains a private counseling practice utilizing his self-help and self-coaching system called, “Human Animal Behavior Training(sm) or HABT(sm).