Interview with Ray Dodd

In 1996, after a chance meeting at the pyramid ruins in Teotihuacan, Mexico, Ray Dodd embarked on a 6-year apprenticeship with don Miguel Ruiz M.D. (author of the best-selling book, The Four Agreements). Now author of BeliefWorks and The Power of Belief, he helps both individuals and businesses forge new beliefs to affect lasting and positive change. A former professional musician and engineer with many years in corporate management, he is a master coach, teaching seminars about BeliefWorks™, and applying the age-less wisdom of the Toltec to life and business.

SCM: Your book is called BeliefWorks. What is a BeliefWorks?

RD: We each house a human Belief factory that creates a one-of-a-kind worldview driving everything we do. Our BeliefWorks manufactures the lens we see life through turning what is into what we believe it is.

SCM: Okay, why is that significant?

RD: Belief affects everything! What we believe affects our relationships, how well we communicate, what we buy, how we raise our children, the state of our health and wealth - as well as the work we do. And, when we have beliefs anchored in fear they can severely impact how we feel and the way we act.

SCM: Can you give an example of how your beliefs might affect your happiness?

RD: One man told me that when he was a child, his mother and father argued constantly. His mother told him over and over, “Don’t be like your father!” He heard this a 1000 times growing up. Now as a man he believes he has to prove he’s not a bad person when he’s in relationship with a woman. In some ways he learned to be a man, not from his father, but from his mother. He’s afraid he will do the wrong thing or say the wrong thing and is responsible for her emotions. These deep beliefs are crippling his love life.

SCM: Aren’t your beliefs just what you think is true?

RD: Not really. If that were true you could just decide to believe something and like magic you'd always follow through on what you say you believe. But it's not that easy. For example, my mentor don Miguel wrote the book, The Four Agreements. Many people have trouble following them even though they want to adopt them. Agreeing with the idea “don’t take things personally” is one thing, doing it is another. Our underlying beliefs are what actually affect our behavior.

SCM: There’s a lot of criticism of the religious community, of politicians, as well as corporate executives that people are hypocritical in their beliefs. They profess one thing but the way they behave is far different than what they say they believe. Why is that?

RD: Because their professed beliefs are often no more than opinions.

SCM: What do you mean?

RD: How often do you tell everyone what you believe, but when you come face-to-face with the thorny realties of everyday life your behavior doesn’t line up? An opinion is what you think is true. But beliefs are not just in the mind. They inhabit the mind, body and spirit.

SCM: If a belief is not what we think is true, what is it?

RD: Belief is an outlook, like a dream, with an emotional perspective filled with words that define and defend it’s point of view. What we believe is a filter that modifies everything we experience, and it often lies hidden, beneath what we are conscious of.

SCM: Okay, how do I phrase this……If what you think you believe is not always what you actually believe, then how do you find out what you really believe?

RD: Good question! If you want to know what you believe just look around you. Your life is a masterpiece of art. Your art. What you have created is a perfect reflection of what you believe. When you begin to notice that it opens a world of enormous possibility.

SCM: What about the belief that you can’t change your beliefs? Is that valid?

RD: Sure, you’re the master of your own virtual reality. I think Henry Ford said, ”Whether you believe you can, or you can’t, you're right.”

SCM: People have told me that their beliefs help them explain what goes on in the world. It makes them feel safe. So, for those people, why should they change any of these beliefs?

RD: I think most of us fabricate a comfort zone - what I call "The Island the Known." On the surface it seems to work, but it creates a very narrow view of a marvelous and expansive universe.

SCM: You say that not one thing that happened to us affects our belief system, unless we agree. Little kids don’t choose their situation, it just happens. Are you saying they are responsible for what they have no control over?

RD: Little children are innocent and often helpless, and they most certainly experience significant events they have no control over. But how they decide to define these events has a powerful influence over how they interpret the world. It becomes the filter that supports their point of view about who they are or how the world is.

A client of mine had a dream of becoming a nurse. Instead she chose to clean other peoples houses. She told me she couldn’t pursue nursing because she just wasn’t smart enough. After exploring this further, she discovered that when she was a child her father and brother told her over and over how stupid she was. It was just their opinion but she agreed to it and allowed it to shape her world.

Realizing that all your beliefs were formed because you agreed to them is empowering. We have always had the power. The power to choose a point of view.

SCM: In your Bio, you said that you spent 6 and a-half years working directly with don Miguel Ruiz M.D., author of the best-selling book, The Four Agreements. How did your time with don Miguel Ruiz impact BeliefWorks?

RD: Don Miguel’s philosophy originates from Toltec wisdom - an oral tradition that has been his family for hundreds of years. I like their outlook because it reflects all bonafide wisdom traditions, plus it’s simple and pragmatic. One of their main ideas is that the mind is always dreaming, perceiving through a filter of all our experiences, beliefs and agreements. Now, with modern brain imaging techniques, cutting edge science and new-biology, these ideas are well supported. Our beliefs create a unique virtual reality that deeply impacts everything we do. Noticing this is key if you want to explore ways to harness the amazing power of belief and take control of your BeliefWorks.

SCM: You talk about dealing with difficult people. How can we effectively deal with them?

RD: Most problems are problems of interpretation. A person who appears difficult to you may be viewed by someone else as intriguing. A lot of our struggles with others come from our expectations, assumptions, and filters. Adopting a control strategy to manage others is a fear tactic. To communicate effectively takes noticing our part in the whole struggle. Very often our real issue with a difficult person is reaction - the pain of not being recognized, accepted, and loved - not their “bad” behavior.

SCM: You say that one of way to stop conflict is to “give up the need to be right.” That’s a tall order. Why would we want to do that? Is there any way we can give up the need to be right without loosing a certain amount of self-esteem; without becoming a push-over?

RD: Let me illustrate with this example. I man I know ended up in a messy divorce. He and his wife had agreed to split everything equally, but she was very angry and broke all of her earlier promises. He was hurt and argued with her using as evidence the things that he thought she should have done but did not do. This created a lot of drama. Perhaps he was accurate about what she did, but his interpretation and his arguments about what she should do were about his addiction to being right. Being right frequently creates a story that makes you suffer. Giving up being right doesn’t mean that you don’t take appropriate action. It just means you let go of what is causing so much inner turmoil.

SCM: Do you find that when people come from different regions or foreign countries, that there is automatically going to be some conflicts because their beliefs are so different?

RD: Those sorts of conflicts are all about judgements. What’s really interesting is what lies beneath the surface. I’m more fascinated by: Why are people afraid? Why do they feel threatened? What are they really defending? Those things have nothing to do with opinions masquerading as cultural beliefs. They are the emotional perspectives of a fear-based belief system.

SCM: Do we believe what we think, or do we think what we believe? Is there a difference?

RD: We think what we believe. Belief expresses itself in a holistic way. Remember that belief is a living dream with an emotional perspective populated with agreements that define and defend its point of view. The words that dominate our attention, our internal dialog is a voice of knowledge telling us about everything we believe.

SCM: You talk a lot about this inner dialog. Everybody has chatter in their heads, is it a problem?

RD: I guess to decide whether it’s a problem, listen to it and notice how much it controls your attention. When our attention is captured by the chatter, our mind interprets what is happening through our filter of belief and we may miss what is actually happening.

SCM: What if we say we believe we can do something, try to practice positive thinking, but it doesn’t happen. What then?

RD: Having the right attitude, perseverance, and taking consistent action is powerful stuff. But, where you have complete authority is what you decide about what happens to you and around you. The power and promise of belief is that we create the virtual reality that affects every moment of our lives. Living the life of your dreams isn’t always about getting what you want. It’s about creating happiness and well-being. You can’t always control others or reality.

SCM: A friend of mine seems really strong, has confidence in her ability to handle whatever comes up, but seems to get very irritated when things go wrong. She has these unconscious automatic reactions. Is that because of her beliefs?

RD: Sure. We say one thing, but when we get stressed our fear-based beliefs start running the show. What is immediately apparent is the emotion. That’s because your beliefs have an emotional point of view.

SCM: In BeliefWorks you talk a lot about how powerful belief is and learning to put that power to work. I guess the best place to start is changing a belief that holds you back. How do you do that?

RD: First you have to have an awareness of what belief is, how it works and what you actually believe. That’s 90 percent of the process. Then to change your belief you need to take the steps to release it and practice re-crafting a new belief.

SCM: How effective is the process you outline in BeliefWorks, and your first book, The Power of Belief? Can it work for everyone?

RD: We have had extraordinary results working with people who desire real change – whether it’s a better relationship with their kids, making more money, fixing problems in an organization or just feeling better about themselves. BeliefWorks is being used by therapists, coaches, teachers, managers, mediators, and is even being applied with people in drug and alcohol recovery. It is truly an amazing process!

This Interview may be reprinted in whole or in part at no charge to publication. If you have any questions, please contact Sarah Sgarlat at Hampton Roads Publishing , 1.434.296.2772 , ssgarlat@hrpub.com, or email the author at: ray@everydaywisdom.us. A text version is available by request at: info@everydaywisdom.us.