Sleight of Mouth

Welcome to my Sleight of Mouth book summary!

“..limiting beliefs are frequently the result of unanswered ‘how’ questions.” (p. 155)

One-Sentence-Summary: An exploration of “how individual Sleight of Mouth [reframing] patterns may be applied in order to help people become more ‘open to doubt’ limiting beliefs and generalizations, and to become more ‘open to believe’ empowering beliefs and generalizations.” (p. 315)

I finished reading Sleight of Mouth by Robert Dilts. Total pages: 387

booboo real-time book rating: ★★★☆☆ (percentage of books with this rating: 34%)

This book was tough to finish. Great title, good start, drawn out with obtuse language towards the end.

“Negative responses often serve to maintain and even escalate problematic behaviors, rather than extinguish them. Blame frequently produces a type of ‘polarity response’ which actually serves to stimulate rather than inhibit the unwanted behavior.” (p. 56)

The other day I was at the gym and decided to talk to a very attractive girl who pretend not to understand me and was rude. At the time, my negative response was towards her and attractive females in general. How dare she. I am a good man, successful, smart, healthy, wealthy, and here she is pretending I’m a fly not worth a moment of her attention besides to swat me away. That negative response would have the effect of encouraging more of that problematic behavior in my future interactions becuase of me, not her. Today, I know that if she let herself get to know me, she would really like me. I know that she needs a slight warming up because maybe she’s chosen poorly in the past, maybe even dated a guy she met at the gym. I smile and maybe approach her at another moment.

Reframes as the Mind’s Immune System

The beginning of Chapter 9 offers a bunch of handy reframes to change how you look at deeply held limiting beliefs. Think of reframes like the mind’s immune system. Similar to how your body fights viruses (ie the immune system with a greater number of strategies to fight invaders will be more successful), reframes protect against thought viruses. The more you have, the more flexible you are in healing yourself.

“‘Anticipating that something will be difficult often makes it seem that much easier when you finally do it.” (p. 299)

For example, as a single man raised in Western society as an introvert, my frame for much of life is that I am probably bothering her. But that’s not true becuase if she allows herself to get to know me, historically speaking, the girl has liked me. In fact, what seems to me as if she’s busy, is actually her feeling intimitated and shy around me. She wants me to introduce myself. You see how many reframes I apply to that one whimpy limiting belief I held since I was an immature teenage in an all-male high school unfamiliar with how to interact with women?

“‘In unusual circumstances, unusual things can happen..” (p. 315)

Beliefs Connect Your Values

“..beliefs are fundamentally statements of relationships between various elements of our experience.” (p. 170) For example, the two beliefs:

• Success requires hard work
• Success is mainly a matter of luck

Connects the same value (success) to two very different causes.

Success requires hard work = links the value ‘success’ to the activity ‘hard work’ (compare to saying ‘success is mostly a matter of luck”)

having a lot of money means you’re successful is A= B equivalent

power corrupts, or early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise = cause/effect, link values caused to other aspects of our experience

This blog contains both my summary and review of the book Influencing.

What’s the Point of Reframes?

“..the most fundamental goal of applying the verbal patterns of Sleight of Mouth is to help people to shift their perspective 1) from a problem frame to an outcome frame, 2) from a failure frame to a feedback frame, and 3) from an impossibility frame to an ‘as if’ frame.” (p. 40)

You are reading my book review and summary by Robert Dilts. Be sure to check out my digital bookshelf for 100+ book summaries.

“The rain itself is neither ‘good’ nor ‘bad.’ The judgement related to it has to do with the consequence it produces within a particular context.” (p. 56) I just drove to a Spanish class at the shopping mall and upon leaving, it was raining. While I was in the shopping mall, the rain was a good thing becuase it made the mall busy, which I like (although I didn’t realize it was raining while I was in the mall). But as soon as I needed to drive home, the rain was a bad thing becuase it would now make me wet as I didn’t have a rain jacket.

Did you know I’m an author? I wrote four books on real estate investing, travel, and language learning.

“Rather than trying to attack and challenge the belief, it can be reframed from a problem to an advantage.” (p. 154) The fact that I turned into a shy man is my advnatage becuase someone who is social from a young age lacks this useful experience I have.

Thanks for visiting and thanks to Robert Dilts for writing Sleight of Mouth!

“..an individual’s internal state has important influences on his or her ability to perform in any situation.” (p. 222-3)

Date Started: Wednesday, May 21, 2025

Date Finished: Sunday, December 21, 2025 (214 days)