Modifying Core Beliefs to Boost your

Changing Core Beliefs “following a Genuine NLP Coaching client. Done with authorization from the client, whose name has been modified. The Life Coach is Nancy Slocum.

I don’t care.

I mean truly don't give a rats ass. I do not. And I could not get myself to care even if I wished to. But I do not even need to and that's how much I don't care about anything. Caring about anything just does not make any sense to me. It's a core belief I guess and changing core beliefs looks difficult.

If I cared, I wouldn't smoke. I wouldn't drink so much and I wouldn't even pig out. I’d treat my spouse better and take more responsibility round the house. There is so much I would do if I cared, but I don't! I know how tough this must sound because there is a part of me that does care, but that part is pretty damn feeble. I am able to see how my life would seriously improve if I cared about it more. I know what to do, but in the instant, this part of me that doesn't care about anything just takes over and nothing truly matters after that. Not caring, I even enjoy myself in a nonsensical way. It is a kind of momentary liberty.

Rod grimaced as he thought about everything he’d just claimed. It’s hard, real troublesome.

And he's right. Changing core beliefs that nothing is worth caring for isn't particularly easy. For Rod, it's been a lifelong pursuit. Naturally, he compensates for not caring by forcing himself to work at it when he needs to. When his wife has had enough, he gets busy doing the things he has to do around the house. When his weight reaches 250 pounds, he diets down to 220. He compensates for not caring by scrambling to piece things together when they fall to bits due to neglect.

This is rather a way to go thru life, stubbornly refusing to worry, then hustling to pick up the pieces left in the trail of neglect. Life, for example it is, demands that we care about our health, family, work and the basics of getting along in a whole world of folk. When we refuse to worry, the effects start to mount. Of course, not caring in the extraordinary is suicide.

How did Rod come to such a quandary, caught between his beyond control disregard for the demands of life and the ever-pressing fact that life calls to be well attended?

I suspect it started when ma and pa divorced. Mom was always a little distant, but when she took us kids and left my father, she retreated farther into a depression. She left home early and when she returned from work, spent the evening in her bedroom. Fundamentally, I was left alone to raise myself. I got myself up for school, made my lunch, ate breakfast, bathed and walked to college. After college, I came home, did my homework and hid from my bigger brother. Evenings were spent in front of the TV alone.

When kids are neglected, they tend to believe their desires are insignificant. In fact , if they were vital, adults would attend to them, right? They can't fathom, until the teen years, that adults could be simply inadequate or wrong. Children simply abandon their needs in the same fashion as their would-be caregivers and remain irredeemably unconscious of the method. For Rod, not caring about his desires was simply the air he lived in and breathed.

As a grown up, his need to take care of himself, his family and his various responsibilities naturally took a backseat to his core belief that his desires did not merit such close attention. This, of course, is an invitation to live behind the 8-ball.

I care most when my lack of caring has caught up with me. I believe caring is just not my default setting. How would I love to be? I don’t know. Of course I could say “I would like to care more” but that'd be announced without much feeling behind it.

I don't truly believe I'm afraid to care, even though it is smart from a logical point of view. Caringinvestment..could lead directly to refusal, failure, pain. But my life now doesn't support that. I only get positive returns on caring these days, in my wedding and business and health, etcIt is the absence of caring that leads to negative effects.

I just think uncaring is my natural tendency from way, way back. I'm hard put to get under the emotional armoring of having learned so well that not too much is worth actually caring for. It is like a stone sitting on my heart “every day of my life.

Changing core beliefs. Where is the hope for Rod? It lies in the realm of training around changing core beliefs. When Rod begins to get under the stone that sits on his heart with the help of his coach, a new world will burst open before his eyes. For the moment, Rod will just observe his pattern without making an attempt to change it. “Just. Notice when you lack caring. See it. Don’t try to change it. Just identify it and observe without judgment,” was Nancy’s information for this week.

This is a real unfinished work, reported with authorization. Rod, whose name has been changed, will provide updates to his process as they develop. Stay tuned for more on Rod’s changing core beliefs process.

Mark Matts is an NLP Certification consultant and general lover of NLP.