9. Beliefs, Values, and Core Questions

Related Reading
Activities are based on Chapter 9, “Beliefs, Values, and Core Questions,” in Healing with Language.

Beliefs
A belief is a sense of certainty about something. It can be positive (something is) or negative (something is not). Beliefs serve as filters for perception. We “see it when we believe it.”

Values
Values are beliefs that express the worth of something. Which do you value more, money or free time, and how do you know? Values are typically expressed through behavior.

Core Questions
Core questions are a type of perceptual frame that operates below the level of conscious awareness.

Discussion Questions

1. Complete the exercise on p. 126 in Healing with Language and report the results.
2. Using the exercises on pp. 127 – 130 in Healing with Language, identify two or three of your own limiting beliefs, and change them. Futurepace your outcome, and describe the results.
3. Complete the exercises on pp. 132 – 134 in Healing with Language and report on what you learned about your most important values.
4. Describe the major categories of beliefs (global, closely held, presupposition, metaphor, hierarchical, contradictory, interdependent, etc.) and provide relevant examples from your own experience. How many of those beliefs come from what Don Miguel Ruiz would call “domestication”?
5. How can you identify someone’s core questions?
6. What do core questions say about a person?

7. How can questions be used to influence an individual’s perceptual frame?