Keith Storace, an Australian psychologist and consultant, shares his experience helping clients overcome limiting beliefs and focusing on the positive to create meaningful lives.

Keith highlights the power of the poetic principle in shaping our reality and emphasizes the importance of authentic relationships in our personal and professional lives. In therapy and leadership, Keith emphasizes the importance of understanding others, embracing their strengths, and fostering meaningful connections.

Keith maintains a Psychology and Consulting Practice at kikuIMAGINATION® working with individuals, couples, families, and groups; conducts seminars and workshops; and consults on mental health, professional development, and leadership.

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TRANSCRIPT

Stephen Matini: Keith. We met at this stage of our lives, right? But as you look back, have you always been this way, the way that I see you? Compassionate, warm.

Keith Storace: I'm reluctant to say yes because it might make me sound as though I am big, noting myself in some way, maybe not in childhood. I dunno if I was as compassionate as I'm now as I was in childhood. 'cause I was too busy being a child and all the great things that come with that.

But I've always wondered about things from a compassionate perspective, and not that that's easy because I think compassion is when you remove yourself from the middle of your life and put someone else there, as temporary as that might be.

My perspective has really been shaped and molded by many wonderful people in my life. I just paid enough attention at the time. I don't know why or how, but I was paying attention to the heart of what they wanted to get across.

Stephen Matini: When did you decide the focus of your career? Did it happen early on? Later on?

Keith Storace: There are a number of things that happened, a sequence of things. It wasn't until I was in my mid to late twenties that I connected the dots and thought I need to pursue psychology.

One of the earliest memories was when I was 14, I read the book by Kahlil Gibran called The Prophet,, and there's one line in it where someone asks the prophet what is work? And his response, or at least the shrunken version of his response that I remember in my head was work is love made visible.

And I remember thinking at 14 when I read that line, wow, that's what I want. That's the kind of job I want. I had no idea what that looked like, but I love the line work is love made visible. And I wondered, is that possible to have a job where you can do that? What does that look like?

As I grew up, I realized, well, you can enter the religious life, you can work as a counselor, psychologist, psychiatrist. You can even do it as a pastry cook. You know, it depends what you are passionate about. That was the beginning of me beginning to wonder about the kind of work I would do.

I wasn't aware of psychology at the time. I didn't know what psychology was. That didn't happen until a few years later when I was in high school. I have this wonderful teacher who asked us, or the assignment for class was we had to come up with a project that was about life. It could be anything. It could be trees, it could be whatever we wanted it to be, but it had to be about life.

And my usual approach to any project or homework was to leave till the last minute. I wasn't very good. I was too busy interested in what adolescents are interested in. So I left it and I realized on the Sunday the day before the project, the assignment was due that I hadn't done anything.

So it was close to midday on the Sunday and I rode my bicycle to the local library, which closed at midday, and I ran in, we didn't have computers back then. I went through the little index cards to try and find something.

And I remembered watching on television a few weeks earlier, a documentary by Jacques Cousteau on “pearls.” And I thought, pearls, that's life. That's about life. I'll write about Pearls. So I couldn't find what I was looking for. I went to the desk, the lady at the library desk announced that the library was closing. I was the only person left.

And I said, I need a book on pearls. And she said, oh, I think we've had one just returned. I got the book, she stamped the little card. I went to my bicycle, sat on retreat, started raining, the library closed, and I started to read this book on pearls. I thought, okay, I need to come up with something for handing in my assignment.

And the book wasn't about pearls as I thought it would be. It was about a man who was called Pearls, but he was the father of Gestalt therapy. So it wasn't a book about pearls, it was about Gestalt therapy. And I was so angry at myself. I had my own mini pity party in my head. I went home, I threw my bike against the garage wall and, and I forgot I had the book in my bag, which was just a very sort of a hessian kind of bag.

It was very soft material bag. And it started raining. And early evening I realized that I'd left the book in the bag and I ran out to get it. It was soaked. And I started crying and my mum overheard and she said, oh, you can use my hair dryer.

So I had this book opening up the book, drying every page. And as I'm drying it, I started reading it. I didn't understand most of what I read, but one thing that really came across the gestalt therapy was saying that we are parts of a whole, our behavior, how we feel isn't looked at in isolation.

So I ended up writing, I dunno how, but I ended up writing a project on people and Gestalt therapy for the assignment. I received an a triple plus, and I had the Gestalt prayer, what they call the Gestalt prayer on the front of the project.

And the teacher had written just underneath the A plus, she wrote a couple of words from the Gestalt prayer, which was, I am me and you are you. If we happen to meet and get along, that's great. If not, that's great as well. And she happened to be of the hippie era. So she really understood what I was trying to get across in my assignment.

But it did a lot for my confidence and the way that I understood community and people. And that was my first inkling that there was something that was called psychology that existed that was in the back of my head and it kept brewing.

You know, there were other incidents that brought me to that conclusion that I really needed to study psychology which I really feared because of the statistics. I was never good at math, but I quickly realized statistics is not mathematics. It's a language. Once you understand it, you can really bring some wonderful information together to make sense of the world.

Stephen Matini: And how did you get closer to positive psychology? Last time when we met, you talked about your reluctance for the word abnormal, which is something that in the industry, in the field is not longer used, you know, in many instances. Did it happen earlier on and later on af after a while that you worked?

Keith Storace: I'd heard about positive psychology, but it really came into being in my own understanding, I guess when I was studying psychology, that early stage of studying psychology where everything was labeled as abnormal, abnormal psychology.

There's a place for that in the scientific world, but we had humanistic psychology. And I didn't really come across positive psychology until I was introduced to appreciative inquiry, because that really focuses on the positive core, the difficulty I had with the term abnormal.

I remember speaking with my supervisor at the time, what happens if a client feels as though they're being labeled as abnormal? You know, they might come across the term. And she challenged me to come up with another term.

And I was sitting in the student cafeteria at university and I overheard one of the students talk about her appreciation for what she's learning. And it dawned on me at that point that appreciation psychology rather than abnormal psychology was a better fit for what i I was concerned about.

And that was way before I came across appreciative inquiry. But when I did come across appreciative inquiry, it was via the five core principles. And that's when I started to understand more about positive psychology. You know, because a lot of people ask me, well, I hear about positive psychology, but where's the therapy?

What's the therapy associated with positive psychology? And I struggled with that as well. You can look at what positive psychology offers, which is people often understand it as well. It's about feeling good and being grateful and looking at the good in things.

And a challenge isn't a problem, it's a challenge or a problem isn't a problem, it's a challenge, all of that. But how do you engage with that in therapy? And that's why the five core principles or the classic principles, that's why I think they're really powerful because that's when I started to, to use those principles in particular in leadership, I began to question whether I couldn't use those somehow in one-on-one therapy.

And that's how I, I started to develop the appreciative Dialogue therapy program with positive psychology. I came to know it because of my question around how do I use positive psychology in therapy? And the answer really came through appreciative inquiry.

Stephen Matini: So for those listeners who do not know, appreciative inquiry belongs to positive psychology. And it's a whole approach that focuses on strengths rather than weaknesses in rather than deficits. What you were mentioning, the five principles, and if I remember correctly, they are constructionist, anticipatory, poetic, simul, , and positive. Are you attached to all five of them? Or, or there's one of the five, the somehow speaks volumes to you.

Keith Storace: They're all fantastic, they're all brilliant and they're all powerful. When they're used together, they're amazing. But the one that stands out for me as a psychologist and as what I learned growing up is the poetic principle.

I often, in my early days of inquiry, I used to say to people, I even wrote this in one, in an article I wrote, what was David Cooperrider and Suresh Srivastva, who, who developed appreciative inquiry back in the eighties, what were they thinking? How did they come up with this? This is exceptionally wonderful. I didn't learn this in psychology.

The poetic principle in particular says that what we focus on becomes our reality. In simple terms, that's, I mean, you can really extrapolate it more than that as a psychologist. More importantly, as a human, I see that at work every day. If you are thinking of something that is on your mind the whole time, if you are working on a dream, that dream is working on you, even when you're asleep, when you move, move deliberately to bring that to life in the world, it's just brilliant.

And for me, the poetic principle stands out because it's really what the Appreciative Dialogue program is about. It's bringing to life in the world. What matters most to individuals. I mean, we've seen it big time post Covid, and we're still feeling the ripple effects of post covid and especially in Melbourne where we had such a long lockdown. In total it was nine months.

But I saw clients through that time, and I always came back to the poetic principle because during Covid and post Covid, what people are talking about is, I don't want to go back to my pre covid life. I, I need to do something different. We've heard about the great resignation globally. I don't think it's about the great resignation, it's about the great personal revolution or evolution. It's really wanting to move forward with who I truly am. Again, I probably sound really passionate about the poetic principle, but that's why, you know, what we focus on becomes our reality.

Listen to anyone who's achieved what they've really wanted to achieve in their lives, and they will tell you, I can't believe I get paid for doing what I love doing for doing what defines who I am. And they quickly say, that's my purpose in life. And I say, well, yes, at the moment it's your purpose in life, but I think that's your bliss. Our purpose over time changes, but that's your bliss.

That's where you are in the moment. I mean, there are 10 principles for people who are listening. There were the emergent principles, which are valuable as well. I certainly don't want to minimize those, but it's the classic ones, the five core ones that drew me to a appreciative inquiry that shaped my behavior as a leader and certainly crafted my approach to therapy, which is all about relationship as Irvin Yalom that wonderful American therapist says that the relationship is the therapy. And that's so true. You can't fake a genuine relationship. How do you ensure that that's going to happen? Not just as a psychologist in therapy, but as a leader in leadership?

Stephen Matini: It seems so complicated for a lot of people. Business is made of a lot, a lot of different things, it's a very complex type of thing, but really it boils down to relationship with a lot of different stakeholders. You know, one thing that you said when you're talking about poetic, you said that what you focus on, essentially you manifest. And yet a lot of people have such a difficulty understanding what is important to them to get the clarity.

Even myself, I would say I've always kind of known what I like or what I did not like, but for the longest time, it was so difficult either to have the courage, maybe greater clarity about what I want to pursue, which is something that I have right now, you know, in my fifties, and I never had it before this clear. And then last time, you and I talked about limiting beliefs. Are the limiting beliefs that do not allow us to see it or, or anything else.

Keith Storace: Limiting beliefs are a good way to start because limiting beliefs are the result of how we've somehow interpreted the world around us and believe the world sees us. It may not be true. The thing about limiting beliefs or negative core beliefs is that they're there for a reason. I really try and get the client to understand the importance of what they believe their core belief is.

So we do this exercise, I've developed a, a series of cards. I used to have it as a questionnaire, but it's much more fun having a series of cards and I have words on them. And, and the client will say, look at the card and say, I am. And if it says unworthy, it's a bit like a Likert scale in the either almost always or almost never. And there are a couple in between. So eventually we filter down to seven core beliefs and then eventually filter down to one.

And I make it my task. When we do that exercise, I make it my task to make sure that I don't end up taking the card with me. So I have to somehow convince through the narrative that emerges between us. I have to think of a way of a client agreeing that they are not a hundred percent unworthy once they agree to that, and they usually do, because, you know, I mean coming to therapy first and foremost, well, if you're a hundred percent unworthy, you wouldn't have believed that you had a right to come to counseling .

But once we establish their core belief, and look, I I have to say this point, I always say this in therapy, a belief by its very nature is something that is not true. If it was true, then it would be a fact. People don't say, I fact I am unworthy.

I get them to look at the importance of the power behind the belief. We often hear how powerful a thought is, and yes it is, but I say a belief is far more powerful because quite often we dunno what we believe it's there in the background, but we dunno what it is getting at least some sense of what a client's core belief is.

Then I ask 'em three questions and again, consider the five core principles of appreciative inquiry. But the three questions are, I look at a person's energy their relationships and their sense of future. I know it's not a feta complain, but I say to people, these are the three things that make us who we are. They're the three things that make us human and deal with experiences in the way that we do. So by energy, I asked the client, and you can ask this yourself about the life you are living.

And I did this through covid during the pandemic, but in terms of core beliefs and limiting beliefs, I asked the person, does your core belief energize you or does it exhaust you? He or she will think about that. And then I ask them, does your core belief build relationships or does it isolate you?

And the third one, does your core belief reveal a welcomed future or an unwanted one? Now, usually if the first two are negative or what I call negative, which is I'm exhausted and I'm isolated, they're not gonna have a good response to the future one. Now, it is frightening for some people when they do this exercise because when someone is deeply suffering from self-doubt, they don't see a way out in many ways, and this is why a lot of my work focuses on limiting beliefs and self-doubt.

So once a person has answered those three questions, I then get them to contemplate a time when they were doing something that was good for them. And I call this the create change exercise.

So I asked 'em to think about a time in their life where they created a change that in turn created them. At that point, they don't necessarily see a connection between what's going on on for them in terms of, of self-doubt. But they do come to understand that we get there eventually.

And sometimes there's hope happens over several sessions. So it's certainly not immediate, but I'll ask 'em to create a change. Think of a time where they created a change that in turn created them. And then I asked them three questions. Who or what inspired you to make that change? What did that change look like in your mind before you even began to move toward making that change? And who is involved in helping you bring that change to life?

Everyone has a story as little or as big as, as it is. Everyone has a story. What I'm really doing is looking at how they allow themselves, how they enable themselves to be inspired, how they enable themselves to imagine, and how they enable themselves to collaborate, especially with imagination. That goes a long way to build resilience. Once we have this story, I then go to talk about what I refer to as the seven positive stimulus statements. I call them stimulus statements, because for me, that's positive psychology.

Stephen Matini: Like a mantra.

Keith Storace: Yeah, each statement becomes a mantra. And, and usually as you asked me, and so rightly so, which of the five core principles stands out for me? And, and the poetic principle, again, it stands out for me because what we focus on becomes our reality. So the seven stimulus statements is to inspire that in the client. And then we've moved into the three questions, you know about inspiration, imagination, collaboration, and then the five, the, sorry, the seven stimulus statements.

They're about belief, imagination, perseverance, success, possibility, foresight, and action. And each one says, belief says belief influences choice. Three words, simple idea, but it's true. And we discuss that by unraveling a story that the client has. And we usually go back to the story, but the create change exercise, you know, okay, you told me that you decided you wanted to have a life change or see change.

You were working as an engineer, for example, you decided you wanted to do something completely different. We look at how belief influences choice in the light of whatever story they've, they've given me with imagination. We are who we imagine ourselves to be. That again, leans into limiting beliefs and core beliefs. So self-doubt is that preoccupation, you know, having that fear of failure and self-doubt on its own won't stop you.

Self-Denial, on the other hand, will, because self-denial is an action. And I don't mean self-denial in the way that psychologists talk about denial. You know, where someone who is grieving is denying what's happened or what life's gonna be like. Now it's self-denial where you stop yourself from moving toward how you want your life to be. And that's an action. So self-doubt is a belief, and self-denial is an action. So how we imagine ourselves to be the second positive stimulus statement and which is about imagination.

If we are steeped in self-doubt, if we are steeped in the limiting beliefs, then that's how we see ourselves and we won't progress. I often use the image of someone who has a basketball and there's a basketball hoop. If the person who doesn't believe in themselves thinks, well, there's no point in me trying to get this basketball in the hoop because I'm hopeless, I'm not worthy, it's not going to work, then they'll have a half-hearted approach to getting the ball in the hoop. And of course, because of that half-hearted approach, it won't go in.

And then they'll say, you see, I was right. Perseverance there is no failure, only frustration. Now, a lot of people disagree with me about that. Oh gosh, you know, you should embrace failure because you learn from it. And I'm saying, I'm not saying not not embrace failure, but someone who's suffering from the fear of failure, then they need to reframe what failure is.

And the way I help them reframe it is to say it's not a failure, it's a frustration. I do this a lot with university students. You failed an exam, okay, that's gonna frustrate you moving forward because you have to reset it or you may need to do redo the semester. It doesn't mean you failed your intention of eventually working in this field. It just means it's frustrated the process a little bit.

You know, we talk that through and they generally understand what I'm getting at when I talk about that. Success is not limited to natural ability. You don't have to be naturally gifted to do what you want to do. If you really want to do it, then it's going to take a lot of hard work and some people will have to work harder than others. But that's the, the notion of success possibility.

You know, with positive psychology and appreciative inquiry, the positive emerges through the possible. People often think it's the other way around. We begin to see possibilities when we are in a positive state. And that's true, but where does it begin if someone is not in a positive state? So let's look at what's possible.

And we've already started looking at what's possible because we've done the create change exercise, , and then foresight, which is a little arithmetic. I give them H plus I equals F. That's from my statistics days. And I made up that little formula. Basically it's asking, or it's saying that hindsight plus insight equals foresight and people do ooh, when they hear that, when I actually write what it means on the board.

But hindsight plus insight equals foresight. If you can get that right, then you're on the way. And I, and I highlight for the client how they've already told me that because in their story, the create change story, they've given me the positive call.

The client might not think they have a positive call, but there it is. And action. Our goals are only as achievable as the actions we take toward them. So those seven stimulus statements are to stimulate the kind of conversation that the client will believe. Again, going back to belief, the client will believe what those statements are really wanting the client to grasp because the client has told me their their create change story.

When I give talks about this people, their first question usually is, but what if a person doesn't have a create change story? What if a person truly can't think back to a time where they created a change that in turn created them? And my response is, well, firstly, I've never encountered that There have been clients who have struggled and they've struggled because they try to think big. You know, what's a big change that I created in my life?

And that's not about a big change. It's a tiny, it's a tiny change. It can be big if you've got one. Sure. The reason I call it appreciative dialogue, which is really an offshoot of of appreciative inquiry, is that it's an intentional conversation with a positive direction. And that in itself gives me my answer to how is positive psychology,

Stephen Matini: How long does it take to someone to change a limiting belief?

Keith Storace: Look, it really varies. The program that I use, depending on the nature of the client situation, it can take between six and 12 weeks to, I wouldn't say completely change their beliefs. Some people are really stuck with their beliefs. So I try and get them to understand, let's not focus too much on moving on from your belief. Let's focus on moving on with your belief, which really suggests managing it and controlling it. You know, you've heard that saying, we teach what we need to learn.

For me, that's my life lesson, how to really deal with my own self-doubt. So sometimes people can't move on, sort of leave it in the background. So it's about controlling it and understanding what it actually is. It's not hard, but it does take patience. As I started out saying, the relationship is the therapy. You have to really wanna be there with this client.

You really want to be able to walk in their shoes, you know, and understand what it is like for them. Because I haven't experienced everything a client has experienced. I've got my own experience of life. So I probably make it sound simpler than it is. I, I have to say too that I do use evidence-based, I call it my therapy triangle. There are three approaches to therapy that I use that underpins everything I've talked about.

And that is existential therapy, solution focused and cognitive behavioral. I now embed those three therapies because, and it's a really strong triangle because existential, the existential approach says individuals create their own meaning. Solution focus says elements of the desired solution are usually already present in the person's life, hence the create change story.

And cognitive behavioral therapy says behavior change is the result of a change in one's thoughts and beliefs. Again, we're looking at core beliefs now for the client. I don't talk about that with the client. I don't say I'm using this triangle of therapy, but I do say to them, there are three things that, that we're gonna look at that will eventually manifest in your life in a way that you'll be able to move forward and use this whole approach in all sorts of situations in life.

Stephen Matini: It's very subjective. Also, the, as you said, you know, how long it takes. Is it, it depends. It varies. You covered a lot of really important things and thank you so much, first of all, for being so generous with this conversation. If you had to highlight one main takeaway for a listener, something that, based on anything you said that you deemed to be really, really, really important as a starting point, what would you say that is?

Keith Storace: I would love for listeners to spend a good amount of time if they can, whenever they can immersed in the things that matter most to them. Because the gratitude that emerges from that kind of experience is an affirmation of who they are. When who you are is brought to life in the world.

In this way, the people around you will not only come to know you for who you truly are, they will also in one way or another be infected by you, in a beautiful way and benefit from the good in it all. So the more you become your true self, which is what we're all meant to be, the more others will benefit from that.

And if I had to talk in leadership speak, I would say that when people are encouraged and supported to engage in work or study that resonates with their strengths, values, and what they enjoy, they in turn feel strong, valued, and motivated to produce good work. You know? And this ultimately benefits who they are and their mental health and social relationships. What matters mostly is who you are. And that's what we all want to know.

Stephen Matini: Thank you, Keith. This has been wonderful.

Keith Storace: Good conversations. Appreciate with time and this has certainly been one of them. Thank you.