The Direction of Intention

783. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

I’m reviewing some material for a project and pulled up a chapter from the rough draft of my unpublished ebook, The Open Story. I liked this section and although I know it was expanded from a past post, after 782 posts I’m pretending that you will read this with fresh eyes as I did today:

It is my habit to look beneath behavior to the underlying “structures of the land” (from Robert Fritz, behavior like water follows the path of least resistance – behavior will change when you change the structure of the land). I’ve coached hundreds of people: the process of fulfilling potential or expanding thinking almost always entails reaching beyond the realms of visible behavior into the underlying structures.

The other day Ana Noriega, coach extraordinaire, dropped a thought-bomb on me (she always does) that went something like this: if you want to change your belief, change your justification of the belief. It had never occurred to me to think of belief in the same way I’ve come to think of behavior.

I was about to say, “What!?” but she was already filling in the idea – Ana is usually 3 steps ahead of me and said, “Think about it. If you believe you are not worthy or something like that, there is always a justification beneath the belief. You justify the belief. I’m not worthy because….” Beneath every belief there is a justification: there is a reason you hold onto the belief.”

Justification is a form of story. Most of us are attached to our stories – why we can or cannot do something; why the world is this way or that way. Usually our justifications have to do with maintaining comfort – making sure we don’t stray into lands that challenge our beliefs – and that would require a peak into our justifications – it’s a loop.

Take a look at the things you want to change or manifest in your life. What are your beliefs about it? What are you justifying?

Filed under: Story, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: belief, justification, manifest, story, structure | Leave a comment »