31. THE RELEASE OF LIMITING
BELIEF SYSTEMS

BY DELIBERATELY CHANGING THE INTERNAL IMAGE OF REALITY, PEOPLE CAN CHANGE THE WORLD. INDEED, THE REAL FUNDAMENTAL CHANGES IN SOCIETIES HAVE COME ABOUT NOT FROM DICTATES OF GOVERNMENTS AND THE RESULTS OF BATTLES, BUT THROUGH VAST NUMBERS OF PEOPLE CHANGING THEIR MINDS.
– Willis Harman

The drive to learn and know our fundamental nature is a basic human need. I now realize that this need kept drawing me to understand the fundamental aspects of my direct experiences of primary knowing. There were missing pieces to the “whole” I just couldn’t articulate. Sometimes I felt I was coming close to knowing – I was gaining tacit knowledge, but I couldn’t give voice to it. But when I met with the scientists at Pari and Princeton and later read Polanyi’s precise description of the way radically new knowledge is discovered, everything suddenly came together for me.

Over the years, my worldview had shifted. I had released my limiting belief systems, which had been inculcated in me over a lifetime, and discovered that a profound shift had occurred in my metaphysics – my philosophy of being and knowing.

Metaphysics formats and enables experience and, in turn, molds scientific, social, and individual reality. It provides a description of human experience that satisfies a deep longing within us. Dean Brown, in answer to the question, “What is the use of metaphysics?” replied, “We become what we behold.”

Willis Harman once said to me, “By deliberately changing the internal image of reality, people can change the world. Indeed, the real fundamental changes in societies have come about not from dictates of governments and the results of battles, but through vast numbers of people changing their minds.”

I have learned over the years that Stage II leaders and even many Stage III leaders operate under obsolete assumptions and inner mental models of which they may no longer even be aware. These limiting belief systems inhibit leaders at all levels from pursuing and discovering novel opportunities. The result is repeated strategic failure even in enterprises that are exceedingly well run.