NOTE: One of the most frequent questions I get is about what causes a low level of self-confidence and what can be done to improve it.  To answer those questions I’ve posted an updated version of a post from early last year on this topic.

Most of us would like to improve our level of confidence.

But why?

• What is confidence anyway?
• Where does it come from?  Why do some people have more of it than others?
• How can we improve our level of confidence?
• How does a low level of confidence affect us and what changes in our lives when we gain confidence?

As someone who has helped literally thousands of people build more confidence, I think I am qualified to answer these questions.  (By the way, I had very little self-confidence for most of my life but now I consistently experience a high level of confidence.)

What is confidence?

Confidence actually exists on a continuum, ranging from a sense of victimization to a sense that we can handle whatever life throws at us.  Some people are almost totally lacking in confidence and some feel confident that they can handle almost anything; most people are in-between.  So the issue for most people is where they currently are on the continuum and how they can raise their level of confidence.

It is important to distinguish between confidence about being able to perform a specific task (such as fly a plane or speak a foreign language) and confidence in yourself. One might not be confident about being able to perform a specific task even though one has high level of self-confidence.  Such a person knows that her inability to perform a specific task means nothing about her as a person.

Confidence is ultimately a function of the self-esteem beliefs we hold.  For example, someone who believes I’m not good enough, I’m not capable, I’m powerless, I’m not worthy or deserving, etc. will likely have a low level of self-confidence.  On the other hand, someone with the beliefs I am good enough, I am capable, I impact my reality, I’m worthy and deserving, etc. will likely have a high level of self-confidence.

In other words, your confidence in yourself as a person is the result of having positive beliefs about yourself.

How to improve your level of confidence

The way to gain confidence about specific abilities is to learn those skills and practice a lot.  The way to improve our internal level of confidence that we apply to life in general is to eliminate our limiting beliefs.  Every negative self-esteem-type belief we have lowers our internal level of self-confidence; every one we eliminate raises our internal level of self-confidence.

Once you understand that negative self-esteem beliefs lower your level of self-confidence and getting rid of them raises it, you will realize that the commonly-held notion that self-confidence comes from succeeding or failing at specific projects in life is a serious misunderstanding.

Even if you usually succeed at tasks as a kid, but your parents constantly tell you that you should have done better, you are likely to conclude, Nothing I do is good enough and other similar beliefs, which will lower your self-confidence.  On the other hand, if you don’t succeed at tasks a lot of the time as a kid and your parents say things like: “That’s okay, no one gets it right the first time.  If you keep practicing you will get better and better”—you are likely to conclude: If I keep trying I can do anything. That belief would raise your level of self-confidence.  In other words, your level of self-confidence is a function of your beliefs—the meaning you give your results—not your actual results.

And if you create a bunch of positive self-esteem beliefs early in life, failures later on probably will be experienced as learning experiences or temporary set backs that have nothing to do with who you are as a person.

Some of the consequences of low self-confidenc

A low level of self-confidence can result in a host of other emotional problems, such as worrying about the opinions of others (we don’t have confidence in our own opinion), a critical “little voice” in our head that constantly criticizes almost anything we do (because nothing we do is really good enough), and stress (because we are constantly worried that what we are doing is just not good enough and we will fail.)

Low self-confidence also can result in self-defeating behavior.  It can keep you from ever getting started.  Or it can have you quit at the first sign of a problem.  Or it can lead you to sabotage yourself when you get close to success because you feel you don’t really deserve to get what you want.  Or if somehow you manage to get some of what you want, a low level of self-confidence will keep you from truly enjoying your success.  The best illustration of this latter point is a study of large company CEOs done many years ago in which most of them admitted they were terrified that they would be “found out” and that everything they had achieved would be taken away from them.  This fear is so common that it has been given a name: “The Imposter Syndrome.

How building confidence improves your life

Some of the benefits of increased self-confidence include: You’ll take more chances. You’ll stop procrastinating.  You’ll do whatever you need to do to move your vision forward.  You’ll finally start things you’ve always wanted to do and never got around to doing. It will make social activity easier.  Talking to people and meeting new people will become easier and effortless.   Failure and mistakes will no longer be dreaded. And you’ll do what you want without worrying about what others will think

Do you still have any questions about confidence?  Is the difference clear between a lack of self-confidence and the inability to perform a specific task?  Please leave your comments and questions below

If you found this post useful, please tell your friends and followers by using the buttons at the top of this post.

If you haven’t yet eliminated at least one of your limiting self-esteem beliefs using the Lefkoe Belief Process, go to http://www.recreateyourlife.com/free where you can eliminate one negative belief free.

For information about eliminating 23 of the most common limiting beliefs and conditionings, which cause eight of the most common problems in our lives including a lack of confidence, and get a separate video of the WAIR? Process, please check out: http://recreateyourlife.com/naturalconfidence.

These weekly blog posts also exist as podcasts.  Sign up for the RSS feed or at iTunes to get the podcasts sent to you weekly.

copyright ©2010-11 Morty Lefkoe

Perhaps the single most common question I get from people who are using the Lefkoe Belief Process to eliminate beliefs is: “Why do you say that all of our self-esteem beliefs were formed in early interactions with our parents?  I had great parents.  My beliefs about myself weren’t formed until later in life.”

I wrote a post last year explaining why parents are almost always the source of our self-esteem beliefs. http://www.mortylefkoe.com/031610/.  But there are additional reasons why people might think their parents’ behavior has nothing to do with their beliefs that I didn’t cover in that post.

To begin with, the beliefs you form in childhood as a result of interactions with your parents are not always the result of “bad” or abusive behavior.  Negative self-esteem beliefs can be formed just as easily when parents withdraw from their children as when they yell at or punish their children.  And withdrawing is not as obviously “bad” as punishment.

Other parental behavior that causes negative self-esteem beliefs is anything that results in you feeling guilty—because you think you’ve treated your parents badly.  What type of person must you be to treat your parents badly? …  I’m not good enough. I’m bad.  I’m not deserving.

Imagine that you don’t do what your parents want you to do and their response makes you feel guilty, because they do so many wonderful things for you and you won’t do what they want you to do for them.  If you then get yelled at, spanked, or punished, you might well experience your parents’ behavior as appropriate—not as “negative behavior.”

I remember one client who told me early on that his parents were wonderful people who never did anything that could have led to negative beliefs.  Shortly afterwards he mentioned that he was spanked on a regular basis.  When I said that the spanking might well have been the source of several of his beliefs, he protested and replied: “But I was bad.  I deserved to be spanked. My parents didn’t do anything wrong.”

In cultures where parents aren’t around a lot, where fathers have little to do with child rearing, where physical punishment is common, and where comparisons with others and negative criticism are the norm, you might well think that your childhood was “normal,” and could not possibly be the source of negative beliefs.

Although your childhood might have been “typical,” it certainly was not “normal.”

To learn several other reasons why 99% of our self-esteem beliefs are formed in childhood as a result of interactions with our parents, see my earlier blog post if you haven’t already read it.  And if you are a parent, read it again to learn what not to do to keep your children from forming the negative beliefs you probably formed in your childhood.  http://www.mortylefkoe.com/031610/.

I’d love to hear from you with your thoughts about the source of your beliefs. Please write your comments below.

For information about Shelly Lefkoe’s excellent course on parenting, which is based upon her 20 years of experience as a Certified Lefkoe Method Facilitator, and that helps parents raise children with a minimum of negative limiting beliefs, please go to: http://parentingthelefkoeway.com.

If you haven’t yet eliminated at least one of your limiting self-esteem beliefs using the Lefkoe Belief Process, go to http://www.recreateyourlife.com/free where you can eliminate one negative belief free.

For information about eliminating 23 of the most common limiting beliefs and conditionings, which cause eight of the most common problems in our lives, please check out: http://recreateyourlife.com/naturalconfidence.

These weekly blog posts also exist as podcasts.  Sign up for the RSS feed or at iTunes to get the podcasts sent to you weekly.

Copyright © 2011 Morty Lefkoe

One of the most devastating problems people have is so common that nearly everybody views it as “human nature.”  Few people even try to get rid of the problem because they assume everyone has it; it’s part of the “human condition.”

What is this problem?  Worrying about what others think and doing things just to get people’s approval.

How you know if you have the problem

How do you know if you are one of the tens of millions of people who have this problem?

Do you often walk away from people thinking, “Did I say the right thing”; did I offend someone”; “should I have said or asked …”?

Do you frequently hear that “little voice” in your head saying: “What will they think?”?

Do you often feel you need to be a certain way and you can’t just be yourself?

Although these thoughts and behaviors seem to be a much a part of who we are, in fact, however, you can eradicate these thoughts and behaviors forever.

How?  By eliminating the beliefs that cause them.  Although this problem can be caused by different beliefs in different people, there is one specific belief that anyone with this problem almost certainly has: “What makes me good enough is having people think well of me.”

How this belief is formed and why it is so common

Today, I’m going to tell you how this belief is formed, why so many people have it (maybe even you) and how getting rid of this belief will transform your life.

Early in life many of us form negative beliefs about ourselves like “I’m not good enough.”  (Almost every one of the 14,000 clients we’ve had from almost 60 countries around the world has had this belief.) Because most parents expect children to do things that are unrealistic for their age (such as be neat and quiet and come when called at the age of three or four), and because most parents get frustrated, annoyed or angry when their children don’t do what they’re told, most children conclude “there must be something wrong with me” when mom and dad are upset with me so often, or I’m not good enough.

Because our beliefs about ourselves are usually formed during the first six years of life, most of us already have this belief when we leave our homes and go out into the world of teachers, other kids, school, etc.  Obviously a belief like this would make us think as we start school: “How will I get people to like me and how will I make it in the world if I’m not good enough?”

And those thoughts, in turn, would lead to us feeling “not okay” about ourselves and anxious to some extent.

The belief gets formed

And then one day a solution appears.  We do something that our parents (or perhaps a teacher or coach) like and they give us a very positive response.  How does that make us feel?  Happy and very good about ourselves.

The first few times that happens we feel good but don’t make anything of it.  And then after this progression of events occurs a few times we conclude: If I didn’t feel good about myself, and then after getting praise and/or positive attention I do feel good about myself, what that means is: “What makes me good enough or important is having people think well of me.”

Survival strategy beliefs

This is a very special type of belief.  It is a belief that tells us what needs to happen in order to experience being okay. And when it doesn’t happen we don’t feel very good about ourselves.

Well, if we don’t experience being good enough the way we are and we need something outside ourselves to become good enough, how often would we want that outside something to occur?  All the time! Anytime anyone doesn’t like us, rejects us, or thinks poorly of us, we have lost our “survival strategy,” our method for making us feel good about ourselves.  At that point the underlying belief: “I’m not good enough,” is uncovered and stares us in the face, leaving us feeling not good enough and producing some level of anxiety.

As a result, the need to have others think well of us is experienced like a drug addiction by many people.  When they achieve it they feel good for the moment, but it’s only a matter of time before they need another “fix.” At that point they become obsessed about getting it.

There are other “survival strategy” beliefs, such as What makes me good enough is doing things perfectly; what makes me good enough is being successful/wealthy (can you see now see why some people are obsessed with this?); and what makes me good enough is taking care of others.  And it’s possible to have more than one.  But based on our experience in our private practice, “having people think well of me” is the most common.

It now should be clear why so many people are obsessed about what others think about them: Most people have the belief I’m not good enough (or some variation of it) and “having people think well of me” is the remedy most of us have found to cover up the anxiety that stems from having that belief.

Get rid of the beliefs to get rid of the obsession

If the obsession about having people think well of us is a direct result of having several beliefs, the way to get rid of the obsession is to get rid of these beliefs. You can eliminate “I’m not good enough” using our free interactive web program at http://www.recreateyourlife.com.  You also can buy a program that will enable you to eliminate “What makes me good enough is having people think well of me,” as well as a number of other crippling beliefs.  See our Natural Confidence program at http://recreateyourlife.com/naturalconfidence.

Thanks for reading my blog. Are you worried about what others think?  Do you now understand why?  Can you now understand why this is such a common phenomenon? Please share your experience.

Most of the techniques that proclaim to permanently eliminate long-held beliefs don’t work.  Why?  And what do the successful techniques do that make them successful?

In order to understand precisely what it takes to get rid of beliefs, you need to understand how we form beliefs.

Because our survival as human beings is always at stake (even though our spiritual being is eternal), we have a built in survival mechanism that has us constantly asking about everything we encounter: Good for me or bad for me?  Conducive to my survival or inimical to my survival?  In other words, we are constantly appraising everything we come in contact with and asking (unconsciously): What does this mean?

As children we want to know why mom and dad (on whom our lives depend) are angry with us, or why they aren’t around when we want them, or why we can never seem to please them.  For most kids between the ages of two and six, the answers to these three questions usually are: Mistakes and failure are bad.  I’m not important.  I’m not good enough.

Here’s how the beliefs are formed

After asking ourselves: What do these events mean?—we then “make up” one possible meaning.  And then we “attribute” that meaning to the events, after which it seems as if the meaning is inherent in the events.  In other words, it then seems to us as if we discovered the meaning in the events.

Because the overwhelming majority of people are “visual”—in other words, they know reality based on what they can “see”—they know their beliefs are true because they think they can see them in the world.  Once you think you can see something, logic will never talk you out of what you think you have seen “out there.”

Let’s apply what I’ve just explained about how beliefs are formed to the most common belief people have, I’m not good enough.  Mom and dad want quiet.  Young kids are rarely quiet.  Mom and dad want the house to be neat.  Kids are rarely neat.  Mom and dad want to serve dinner when it’s ready and leave the house when they are ready to leave the house.  Kids are busy playing and doing what they want to do; mealtime and leaving the house are not always a priority for them.  As a result, many times each day children do not live up to their parents’ expectations.

At best parents respond with annoyance and frustration, expressed in facial expressions, a tone of voice, and comments like: “What’s wrong with you?”  “How many times do I have to tell you?”  “Don’t you ever listen?”  (At worst, parents use physical abuse and other punishments.)

When a child asks herself, what does it mean that she is not doing what her parents want repeatedly and what do her parents’ responses mean, the answer 99% of all children give is: I’m not good enough. (My associates and I have talked to well over 13,000 clients who have told us this.)

If she actually were not good enough, her parents’ responses to her behavior would make sense.  In other words, this belief is a reasonable interpretation of mom and dad’s response to her when she is a very young child.

Here is the important part: Once she gives this meaning to the events, it seems to her as if her meaning (her belief) is inherent in the events—as if when she looks at the events she is discovering the meaning “out there” in the world.  Once that happens, her belief about the way the world is becomes an entrenched “fact.”

Most of the techniques designed to get rid of beliefs never deal with how the belief got formed and what a belief actually is:  A statement about reality that it seems you saw in reality.  And because you think you saw your beliefs, you will hold on to them—despite understanding logically that the belief isn’t true and despite understanding that it is self-defeating to continue to hold on to the belief.  It is virtually impossible to not believe something you think you “saw.”

How to get rid of the belief

So how can you eliminate the belief quickly, easily, and permanently?  Here are the simple steps.

Take a look at a given belief and realize it is one “valid” interpretation of your experiences.  And then realize that there are other possible interpretations that hadn’t occurred to you at the time you formed the belief, but, nevertheless, could just as easily account for the events.  At which point you realize your belief is “a truth” and not “the truth.”

Then the crucial part comes: Put yourself back into the events that led to the belief and, as you look at them, ask yourself: Doesn’t it seem as if I can “see” [the belief]?  The answer for visual people will always be: “Yes.  And you would have seen it too if you had been there.”

Then ask yourself: Did I really “see” it?  Because if you really saw it, you would be able to describe it: color, shape, location, etc.  When you realize that you can’t describe it, you immediately realize that, in fact, you never really “saw” the belief.  You only saw events, but the meaning of the events—in other works, the beliefs you formed about the events—existed only in your mind.

At this point, for most visual people, the belief is gone.  It existed and resisted being extinguished because you thought you had seen it.  As soon as you realize you never saw it, that it existed only in your mind, it is no longer something you thought you discovered and saw in the world; it is only one interpretation of many possible interpretations that has existed only in your mind.

As the final clincher, ask yourself if the events that led to the formation of the belief have any inherent meaning.  Did they have any meaning before you give them a meaning?  By that I mean, can you draw any conclusion for sure from these events?  You will quickly realize that the events that led to your belief have many different possible meanings; there is no one meaning that is inherently true.  So, while the events might have had consequences at the time they happened, they have no inherent meaning.  Any meaning exists only in your mind, not in the world.

At that point, for predominantly visual people, the belief is permanently gone.

Emotionally kinesthetic people are slightly different

The scenario is slightly different for those people who are not visual, who are primarily emotionally kinesthetic.  If you are one of these people, you don’t know reality primarily based on what you see, but based on what you feel. If you feel something a lot, it must be true.  Why would you be having a feeling over and over if there weren’t something in the world causing it?

These people—when asked: Didn’t it seem as if you saw [your belief]?—answer: “I don’t know what you mean by seeing it; I felt it.”

Here’s how to get rid of a belief if this describes how you function.  Ask yourself if the events that caused the belief made you feel [the words of the belief].  The answer will be, yes

Then remind yourself that you had said earlier that the events had no inherent meaning and ask yourself: Is it possible for events that have no inherent meaning to make you feel anything?  The answer, of course, is no.  So if the events that seemed to have caused the feeling didn’t cause the feeling, what did?

The answer is simple: the meaning you had previously given the events.  In other words, the feeling is the result of the belief you had formed.  If you had given the events a different meaning, that different meaning would have produced a different feeling. The way to prove this is to imagine the earlier events, observing them as a participant, and then giving the events one of the alternative interpretations you had given the events earlier in the process.

When you do that the “feeling of the belief” is gone.

It becomes clear that having the feeling of the belief repeatedly tells you nothing about the validity of the feeling, because the feeling was not caused by events in the world.  It was caused totally by you, by the meaning you already had given the events.

When you say the words of the belief at that point, they will sound meaningless and silly.  The belief will be gone.

To summarize: Beliefs are statements about reality that we feel are the truth, that are facts about the world.  We are convinced our beliefs are true because we think we saw them in the world and because we felt them so often that they must be true (or else why would we have felt them so often?).  Once we realize we never saw the beliefs in the world, that they were only in our mind, and that the feelings we had repeatedly were only because of meanings we gave meaningless events—the beliefs will be gone forever.

Getting rid of beliefs quickly, easily, and permanently is actually very easy when you understand how beliefs are formed and what it takes to eliminate a belief.  And now you understand that.

We are in the process of creating an on-line training where you can become proficient in each of the steps of the Lefkoe Belief Process for eliminating beliefs.  If you are interested in receiving advance notification, please let me know.

If you haven’t yet eliminated at least one of your limiting self-esteem beliefs using the Lefkoe Belief Process, go to http://www.recreateyourlife.com/free where you can eliminate one negative belief free.

For information about eliminating 23 of the most common limiting beliefs and conditionings, which cause eight of the most common problems in our lives, please check out: http://recreateyourlife.com/naturalconfidence.

These weekly blog posts also exist as podcasts.  Sign up for the RSS feed or at iTunes to get the podcasts sent to you weekly.

Copyright © 2011 Morty Lefkoe

Note: There is an email link embedded within this post, please visit this post to email it.

There was a time in America when some people were treated as property, forced to do whatever other people wanted, abused without any ability to respond, and unable to obtain their freedom. Such behavior was legal and considered appropriate by the people practicing it.

When we look at the people who exhibited that behavior we think with repulsion, “What could they possibly have been thinking?”

I’m not referring to slavery 150 years ago. I’m referring to the abuse heaped upon millions of children daily by well-meaning parents who don’t realize the long-term damage being done by spanking and other forms of punishment.

Corporal Punishment Doesn’t Work

Research has shown that corporal (physical) punishment not only doesn’t stop the behavior it was intended to stop, it produces a host of negative consequences. These studies have linked corporal punishment to adverse physical, psychological and educational outcomes.

Researcher Elizabeth Gershoff, Ph.D., in a 2002 meta-analytic study that combined 60 years of research on corporal punishment, found that the only positive outcome of corporal punishment was immediate compliance; however, corporal punishment was associated with less long-term compliance. Corporal punishment was linked with nine other negative outcomes, including increased rates of aggression, delinquency, mental health problems, problems in relationships with their parents, and likelihood of being physically abused.

Time recently described a new study published in Pediatrics that confirms the results of many earlier studies, “As five-year-olds, the children who had been spanked were more likely than the non-spanked to be defiant, demand immediate satisfaction of their wants and needs, become frustrated easily, have temper tantrums and lash out physically against other people or animals.” (Emphasis added.)

We’ve discovered from our work with over 13,000 clients that most self-esteem beliefs are formed from interactions with parents during the first six years of life. Spanking produces the dysfunctional behavior described in the studies quoted above because it leads to such beliefs as: I’m powerless. I’m bad. I deserve to be punished. There’s something wrong with me. The way to be safe is to have power over others. Violence is an acceptable way to handle disagreements. The way to keep from being punished is to not get caught. I’m not good enough.

Despite all the evidence showing the negative consequences of spanking, many people still argue that it is a useful and appropriate tool for parents. One such person is Dr. James Dobson, a psychologist who Time called “the nation’s most influential evangelical leader.” He argues "[P]ain is a marvelous purifier. . . It is not necessary to beat the child into submission; a little bit of pain goes a long way for a young child. However, the spanking should be of sufficient magnitude to cause the child to cry genuinely." (Emphasis added.) (From his book, Dare to Discipline, pages 6 and 7.)

Answering the question: “I have spanked my children for their disobedience, and it didn’t seem to help. Does this approach fail with some children?”, Dobson replied:

“The spanking may be too gentle. If it doesn’t hurt, it doesn’t motivate a child to avoid the consequence next time. A slap with the hand on the bottom of a multi-diapered thirty-month-old is not a deterrent to anything. Be sure the child gets the message — while being careful not to go too far.” (Emphasis added.) (Complete Marriage and Family Home Reference Guide)

Now you may be thinking, I don’t spank my child and I don’t know any parents who do; it isn’t really that common anymore. In fact, it is a lot more common than you might imagine. According to the Center for Effective Discipline, in the 2006-2007 school year, 223,190 school children in the U.S. were subjected to physical punishment. A recent survey in the UK showed that seven out of 10 parents used corporal punishment on their children.

Yelling Also Can Be Abusive

But that’s only half the story. A lot of people who would never physically abuse their children abuse them emotionally on a regular basis. Such people can grasp the brutality of hitting a defenseless child, but think nothing of screaming at their child, uttering such common phrases as: “What’s wrong with you?” “Are you stupid?” “How many times do I have to tell you? Don’t you understand English?” “If you were a good child you’d obey me.”

Our work with clients also has showed us that such emotional abuse often leads to as many negative beliefs about ourselves as physical abuse, including many of the same beliefs that spanking produces, plus I’m not capable, I’m not competent. Mistakes are bad. I’m not loveable. I’m not worthy. I’m inadequate.

There’s an important distinction to be made here: Physical and emotional abuse, as painful as it might be in the moment, has no long-term consequences. But the abuse inevitably leads children to form negative beliefs about themselves and life, that in turn lead to a wide variety of behavioral and emotional problems for the rest of their lives. (Thousands of clients have stopped their chronic anxiety, eating disorders, needing the approval of others, lack of confidence, etc. by eliminating the childhood beliefs that cause such debilitating problems.)

Why do we hit or yell at our children? The answer most parents probably would give is “Nothing else seems to get my children to listen.” Would you hit or yell at your friends who frustrated you because they wouldn’t listen to your advice? And if that’s not appropriate, what makes it okay to do it to defenseless children?

Shouldn’t Children Be Disciplined If They Don’t Obey?

Think of a time when you were disciplined by your parents. … Did you think: I’ll never do that again, or did you think: I’ll make sure I never get caught doing that again. … Did you learn anything from the punishment other than to make sure you don’t get caught? … Did it instill a moral sense of right and wrong and the desire to do what’s right, or were you just angry with your parents? …

Research has shown that spanking and browbeating sometimes can work to produce immediately compliance, but there is no learning involved. If they really worked to permanently change behavior you’d only have to use them once or perhaps a few times. It’s weird to me that parents justify hitting and yelling as a way to get their children to listen, and then keep doing it over and over because their children don’t listen! That reminds me of the old saying: Insanity consists of doing the same thing over and over expecting to get a different result.

Do We Really “Own” Our Children?

Many parents feel they are legally and morally justified in forcing their children to do whatever they arbitrarily decide they want their children to do, just because they are the parents. They hate the question “why?” because they usually don’t have an answer. If their children disobey, it’s okay for them to punish their children until they “cry.” Their justification: “How can we possibly get our kids to do what we want if we can’t spank them or yell at them?”

If a master’s absolute dominion over his slaves was justified by the argument that the slaves were “owned” by their masters, isn’t that the implicit argument that justifies punishing children? (Obviously, parents don’t consciously think that about their children, but think about it for a moment, isn’t that the implicit assumption out of which most parents operate? Don’t they think: “Who are you to tell me how to parent? They are ‘my’ children.”)

If we ever are going to raise a generation of children who don’t have the negative beliefs and day-to-day problems so many of us have today, the first thing we are going to have to do is realize that physical and even emotional abuse results in lasting damage. Not the actual abuse itself, which is over in a few minutes. But the meaning children give that abuse results in crippling beliefs that stay with them and cause them suffering for the rest of their lives.

This post is not meant to make parents feel guilty who didn’t realize the consequences of their behavior or who just don’t have any effective parenting skills. It is meant to destroy, once and for all, the idea that parents “own” their children and have the right to spank or scream at them for disobeying.

Please help get this post into the hands of as many parents as possible. Let’s do whatever we can to hasten the day when everyone looks back at these early 21^st century parenting practices in America and says: “What could they possibly have been thinking?”

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The first time I really allowed myself to experience my anger I fainted.

I was about 36 and had successfully suppressed my anger since childhood. And there I was in a group therapy session, hitting a mat with a stick with foam wrapped around it, screaming: “Mom, I’m really angry at you.” When I started the exercise I was only mouthing empty words, but then at some point the words became real and the anger surfaced. It terrified me so much that I literally passed out on the mat.

I fainted the next couple of times I tried that exercise, but eventually I was able to experience anger toward my mother that I had never allowed myself to experience. And I was able to remain in an upright position.

Although there probably aren’t many people who first experienced their anger in exactly the same way I did, there are millions who are terrified of experiencing their own anger or being in the presence of the anger of others. Many people get in touch with that anger in therapy or some personal growth course, and millions never do.

In addition to the fact that suppressing your anger is suppressing a part of yourself—in other words, having a part of you be unknown to you—suppressed anger has been implicated in serious illnesses, especially heart diseases.

So if you want to discover why our anger is so scary that we need to hide it, even from ourselves, and if we want to be able to experience anger without fear, read on and let me explain how we can do that.

The Primary Source of Our Fear

The primary source of our fear of anger is three specific beliefs and two conditionings. The beliefs are: Confrontation is dangerous, If I’m angry I’ll lose control, and Anger is dangerous. And the conditionings are: fear associated with anger and fear associated with confrontation. There can be a several others relevant beliefs and conditionings, but it is my experience that when these five have been eliminated, most of the fear we have of our own anger and the anger of others will be gone.

The source of these five beliefs and conditionings is almost always a childhood where one or both parents frequently displayed extreme anger. (I’ll explain why some people frequently express anger in a minute.) If we are terrified by the anger of our parents as a child, the typical reaction is the five beliefs and conditionings I listed.

The group therapy I described above helped me get in touch with my anger and allowed me to experience it instead of suppress it so totally that I didn’t even know I was feeling it. But my fear of anger did not disappear totally until I eliminated the five beliefs and conditionings several years later.

Now what about people who aren’t afraid of anger, but who themselves are angry a lot and express that anger as verbal or physical abuse? What is the source of that?

People Who Get Angry Easily

Kids want affection, attention, and acknowledgment. When they repeatedly can’t get what they want, they are likely to feel powerless. Also, frequently being told: “Just do it because I said so” can produce the same feeling. This leads to the belief I’m powerless.

This is a basic self-esteem belief that makes us feel out of control and insecure, because if we are powerless then we don’t have the ability to do what we think needs to be done. In other words, on a subconscious level we know our survival is always at stake.

When we form such a belief as a child we need to find some way to deal with the ever-present anxiety it produces. As I explained in a blog post last year (http://www.mortylefkoe.com/how-do-beliefs-produce-%E2%80%9Cdriven%E2%80%9D-compulsive-behavior/), when we form a negative self-esteem belief as a child we need to develop some strategy to deal with it. For example, if we conclude I’m not good enough or important, the most common survival strategy is the belief: What makes me good enough and important is having people think well of me.

And the most frequently-formed survival strategy when one concludes I’m powerless is, The way to be in control is to have everything be exactly the way I want it to be.

Think about this for a moment. Imagine you needed to have everything be exactly the way you wanted in order to feel in control. And if things weren’t exactly the way you wanted them to be—or if someone didn’t listen to you—you would feel powerless, which would lead to a profound anxiety. What would happen when someone or something kept you from having things the way you wanted them to be?

You’d feel lots of anger, probably rage. You would be angry at whomever or whatever you feel is making you feel powerless. And if it’s a child or spouse, the rage can easily turn into verbal and/or physical abuse. (This explains people like O.J. Simpson.)

(If you form the belief I’m powerless and don’t ever form the survival strategy belief, instead of exploding in anger you are likely to be a typical “victim.” You will always be talking about how people and events are “doing it to me” and you will allow people to take advantage of you.)

Based on over 25 years of experience I am now fairly certain that underneath all anger is a sense of powerlessness, because if you could do something about the situation you wouldn’t feel angry. And if the two beliefs I mentioned above were eliminated, a large part of one’s anger would be dissipated.

It’s amazing to think that merely getting rid of a few beliefs and conditionings could minimize one of the major sources of heart disease and getting rid of a few more could halt the epidemic of child and spouse abuse. Just one more example of the power of beliefs in our lives.

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If you haven’t yet eliminated at least one of your limiting self-esteem beliefs using the Lefkoe Belief Process, go to http://www.recreateyourlife.com/free where you can eliminate one limiting belief free.

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It took me a long time to stop bragging.  About 50 years in fact.

As a child I always bragged about things that I thought would impress others.  How good my grades were.  Things I had done.  Popular kids I hung out with.  Having people think well of me was so important that I even lied just to impress others.

When I was 17 I was living in Miami Beach in an apartment with my mom.  From time to time I dated girls who visited Miami Beach on vacation.  One time I remember driving past my aunt’s beautiful house and saying to the girl: “That’s where I live.”  I would have been embarrassed to show her an apartment building and say I lived in there.  Living in the luxurious water-front house meant I was “someone special” and that’s how I wanted others to view me.

For most of my life I didn’t see my bragging as a problem.  I did it and most of the people I knew did it also.  It was just something that people did.

It wasn’t until I developed The Lefkoe Method about 25 years ago and started to figure out what beliefs caused which problems that I realized that bragging is actually a way to compensate for a low level of self-esteem.

Let me explain.

As I’ve written in the past, very few people escape childhood without forming a bunch of negative self-esteem beliefs.  With few exceptions, parents aren’t aware how their behavior is instrumental in the beliefs their children are forming.  And as I said a few weeks ago in a post about parenting, parents, being adults, generally like quiet; children are not quiet and cannot even understand why anyone would value quiet.  Parents for the most part want their house to be neat; young children don’t even understand the concept of “neat.” Parents want to sit down for dinner when it is ready and before it gets cold; children are almost always doing something that is far more important to them and don’t want to stop doing it when their parents call them.

In other words, parents usually want their children to do things that they are developmentally incapable of doing.  They want their young children to act like little adults, which they cannot possibly do.

The question is not, Do children frequently “disobey” their parents?  Children are developmentally incapable to living up to most parents’ expectations. The only question is how parents react when their children are not doing what the parents want them to do.

And because few parents go to parenting school and most bring their own beliefs from their childhoods with them, their reactions range from annoyance and frustration to anger and abuse, with every possibility in between.  So we form negative beliefs about ourselves. (See http://mortylefkoe.com/031610)

Once we have a negative sense of ourselves, we need to find something that makes us feel good about ourselves, something that makes us feel able to survive and worthy of surviving.  I call these survival strategy behaviors, because they feel to us as if we need them to survive. They are formed early in life when we accidently do something and get a positive response from parents or some other person who is important to us.  That positive response makes us feel good about ourselves.  After a few repetitions, we conclude: What makes me good enough and important is … being successful, or doing things for people, or my accomplishments, or having people think well of me. (See my post on survival strategies, http://www.mortylefkoe.com/how-do-beliefs-produce-%E2%80%9Cdriven%E2%80%9D-compulsive-behavior/)

What makes me good enough and important is having people think well of me is the most common survival strategy belief we’ve seen after working with over 13,000 clients in the past 25 years. And that’s why bragging is so common.

As I started to help clients eliminate this belief I discovered that I held it also.  Eventually I eliminated a lot of negative self-esteem beliefs and several survival strategy beliefs, including What makes me good enough and important is having people think well of me.

After these beliefs were finally gone, I noticed one day that my bragging had stopped.  I knew I was okay the way I was and I no longer need the approval of others to make me feel okay.  I preferred that you like me, but your not liking me no longer meant anything about me.  So I didn’t have to do or say things to get your approval anymore.  A lifetime of bragging had stopped without me even noticing at first.

You might want to ask: Is every comment about one’s accomplishments “bragging”? Not necessarily.  Here’s how to tell the difference between someone bragging and merely stating facts: Are the “facts” repeated frequently; does there seem to be a need on the person’s part that you really get the importance of what they are telling you; does the speaker have a lot of energy on “the facts”? If so, you probably are hearing bragging coming from people who need you to think well of them to feel good about themselves.

If the accomplishments are presented as information, something the speaker is proud of but not “invested in,” without looking for or needing a positive reaction from you, it probably isn’t bragging.

Bragging isn’t bad and it isn’t wrong.  It’s merely the inevitable result of certain beliefs.  It’s not the bragging you want to get rid of, it’s the beliefs that have you brag to get the approval of others to feel okay about yourself.  And you can stop the bragging anytime you want by eliminating the negative self-esteem beliefs and the survival strategy beliefs that cause it.

If you haven’t yet eliminated at least one of your limiting self-esteem beliefs using the LBP, go to http://www.recreateyourlife.com/free where you can eliminate one limiting belief free.

Please share my blog posts with anyone you think might be interested (as long as you tell people where they came from) and provide a link from your own website or blog.   http://mortylefkoe.com

To purchase DVD programs that we guarantee to eliminate eight of the most common daily problems people face, go to http://www.recreateyourlife.com/store.

Follow me on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/mortylefkoe and join our fan page on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/recreateyourlife) where I answer your questions about the role of beliefs in our lives.

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Because many emotions are caused by beliefs, getting rid of the relevant beliefs can frequently eradicate negative emotions. For example, the belief that “Dogs are dangerous” will result in an emotion of fear when confronting a dog. The belief “People can’t be trusted” will result in a feeling of suspicion around people. When the beliefs are eliminated, the emotions usually will be also. There are, however, emotions in adults that appear to be caused by something in addition to beliefs.  Getting rid of beliefs is not enough.

Let me explain the source of these negative emotions, such as fear and anger, and what you need to do to stop them from occurring.

During the first few years after I developed the Lefkoe Belief Process (LBP) to eliminate limiting beliefs, clients were able to make radical changes in their behavior by eliminating the beliefs that caused the behavior. Frequently, there also were meaningful emotional changes. We started noticing, however, that sometimes a client would continue to have a trace of a specific emotion such as anger or fear, even after eliminating all the beliefs we could find that seemed to be relevant. We usually assumed that there was another belief we hadn’t yet discovered, but eventually would.

Eventually we realized that, although some emotions are the direct result of beliefs, many are the result of conditioning in addition to beliefs. When that is the case, the LBP will not eliminate the conditioning. (You do, however, have to use the LBP to eliminate any relevant beliefs before de-conditioning can be effective in stopping the negative emotion. If you haven’t yet experienced eliminating a belief with the LBP, go to http://www.recreateyourlife.com to try it free.)

A few years ago I developed a process I call the Lefkoe Stimulus Process (LStP). It is specifically designed to eliminate the emotions that are caused by conditioned stimuli. It is simpler to use than the basic LBP and usually takes only five minutes to completely eliminate the stimuli for such emotions as fear, anxiety, anger and guilt.

How Associations Early In Life Cause Negative Emotions Later In Life

Very often we are plagued by repeated negative feelings in our life, such as fear, anger, guilt, anxiety, and sadness. We experience these feelings every time specific events or circumstances occur, such as anxiety whenever we make a mistake or someone gets angry at us, or anger whenever we are asked to do something. In many cases the events that stimulate the feeling in us do not produce the same feeling in others, and vice versa. Why does an event that is not inherently fearful produce fear (or some other emotion) in some people and not in others?

Let me explain: The classic example of this situation was an experiment a physiologist named Pavlov conducted with dogs. When presented with food, the dogs salivated. Then a bell was rung just prior to presenting the dogs with food. After numerous presentations of the food with the bell, the bell was rung and no food was delivered. The dogs salivated anyway, because they had associated the bell with the food. In other words, a neutral stimulus that normally would not produce a response does so because it gets associated with a stimulus that does produce a response. In other words, the neutral stimulus gets conditioned.

Here’s an example I use with my clients that will make the process of conditioning very clear.  Imagine that I handed you an ice cream cone with one hand and made a fist with my other hand and drew it back as if to hit you.  What would you probably feel? … Some level of anxiety if you thought you might get hit.  Now imagine that the next few times someone handed you an ice cream cone, the same thing happened and you felt anxious each time.

What do you think you would feel the next time you were handed an ice cream cone, even if there was no menacing fist? … Probably anxious.  And yet it’s clear that ice cream cones are not inherently scary.  If this next time there was no fist, only ice cream, why would you feel anxious?  Because the ice cream cone got conditioned to produce fear.  The ice cream just happened to be there every time you got scared by the fist.

The principle is that anything that occurs repeatedly (or even once if the incident is traumatic enough) at the same time that something else is causing an emotion will itself get conditioned to produce the same emotion.

That’s how making mistakes, being criticized, not meeting expectations, being rejected, and a host of other situations that are not inherently scary get conditioned to produce anxiety (or some other emotion, such as anger).  This process is also the primary cause of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Here is a real life example: Consider one of my clients who experienced fear whenever he was asked to do something.  I asked him when did he first experience fear associated with being asked to do something? He told me that when he was a child his father frequently got angry and yelled at him whenever he didn’t do what his father demanded of him. When my client reviewed the original cause of his feeling of fear, he discovered that the fear was not inherent in being asked to do something.

What caused the fear was the meaning he unconsciously attributed to his father’s threatening behavior that usually occurred when he was asked to do something: The person he depended on for his very survival seemed to be withdrawing his love. No love, no care; no care, no survival. That perception—that his survival was at stake—is what caused the fear. Being told to do things just happened to occur at the same time as something else that constantly caused fear.

Whatever is going on when you experience fear due to your parents’ anger (because their anger is an implied threat to your survival) gets conditioned to produce the same fear. The stimulus today—making mistakes, being criticized, not living up to expectations, etc.—is not, itself, scary.

How The Lefkoe Stimulus Process Works

The Lefkoe Stimulus Process works by assisting you to make a distinction between the original real cause of the emotion and the events that just happened to be occurring at the time.  Once that distinction is made, the conditioning is extinguished.  It’s as if you could say to Pavlov’s dogs: “Hey dogs, you can’t eat the bell.  It just happened to be ringing whenever you got food.”  If the dogs could understand that distinction they would no longer salivate at the sound of the bell.  But while dogs can’t make that distinction, humans can. And when they do, de-conditioning occurs.  Using the Lefkoe Stimulus Process and the LBP you can easily get rid of the anxiety, anger, and other negative emotions that plague you.

If you haven’t yet eliminated at least one of your limiting self-esteem beliefs using the LBP, go to http://www.recreateyourlife.com/free where you can eliminate one limiting belief free.

Please share my blog posts with anyone you think might be interested (as long as you tell people where they came from) and provide a link from your own website or blog.   http://mortylefkoe.com.

To purchase DVD programs that we guarantee to eliminate eight of the most common daily problems people face, go to http://www.recreateyourlife.com/store.

Follow me on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/mortylefkoe and join our fan page on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/recreateyourlife) where I answer your questions about the role of beliefs in our lives.

Finally, to receive notice of new blog posts, please fill out the following form.

copyright ©2010 Morty Lefkoe

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“How many times do I have to tell you?”

“What am I ever going to do with you?”

“What’s wrong with you?”

“Don’t you ever listen?”

Imagine yourself to be a young child listening to your parents repeatedly ask you questions like these.  … If you stop for a few moments, listen to these words inside your head, and experience what it feels like, you will have a clear picture of what far too many children feel every day.

But what’s even worse than the momentary hurt you probably felt as a child are the beliefs that you probably formed if your parents used words like this day after day, year after year. You’d probably conclude: There’s something wrong with me.  I’m not good enough.  I’m not capable. Mistakes and failure are bad.

As parents we would be horrified to discover that many of our conversations with our children result in these beliefs.  Nonetheless, speaking to them this way has a significant negative impact on them, not the least of which is a negative sense of themselves due to low self-esteem.

For over 25 years we have been working with people who’ve had a wide variety of dysfunctional behavioral or emotional patterns.  Some were relatively minor, such as the inability to express feelings, procrastination, and obsessing about what others thought about them. Some were serious, such as eating disorders, chronic depression or anxiety, and phobias.  We’ve helped these people with the Lefkoe Belief Process^® (LBP), a technique I developed that allows people to quickly and permanently eliminate the specific beliefs that are responsible for any undesirable behavior or feeling.  When the beliefs disappear, the patterns do also.  (To use the LBP to eliminate one negative self-esteem belief without charge, go to: http://www.recreateyourlife.com.)

In session after session, hour after hour, we have heard thousands of clients describe the experiences they had with their parents, most of whom loved their children and meant well, that led the clients to form the beliefs they were trying to eliminate: “My mom and dad always did …, they never did …, they always said …, they never said ….”

In the parenting e-Book my wife Shelly and I co-wrote, Guide to Effective Parenting, we explain in detail how what parents do and don’t do, say and don’t say, provide their children with the experiences that the children interpret into beliefs.  Those beliefs, in turn, then determine their behavior and emotions and, ultimately, their lives—for better or for worse.  (For information about this e-Book, go to http://www.lefkoeinstitute.com/parenting-ebook.html.)

Shelly and I have read numerous books on parenting and have taught countless parenting workshops.  Nonetheless, we still found ourselves doing some things that were interpreted negatively by our two girls when they were younger.  But we finally got in the habit of asking ourselves the question after we interacted with our children: What has my child just concluded?  When we think the answer is “probably something negative,” we go back to our children to apologize and reopen the discussion.

As an example, one day when our daughter Brittany was about five years old (she’s now 21!) Shelly went into the bathroom before bedtime to brush Brittany’s teeth.  Our daughter flatly refused, being the independent young lady that she is.  After all of Shelly’s parenting skills and tools failed, she found herself physically overpowering our daughter with one arm around her neck and one hand with the toothbrush in her mouth.  After a few moments she regained her sanity and realized what she was doing.  She stopped immediately and apologized to Brittany.

Shelly realized that, as important as brushing Brittany’s teeth was, far more important was what our daughter would conclude about herself and life out of that interaction if repeated consistently.  A couple of possibilities include: I’m powerless or What I want doesn’t matter. (Rarely do just a few experiences lead to negative beliefs.  A number of experiences usually are required before we reach specific negative conclusions about ourselves and life.)

How can we get our children to do what needs to be done (teeth that don’t get brushed do get cavities) without them forming negative beliefs about themselves?  Knowing how to interact with our children in a way that facilitates a healthy self-esteem and a positive sense of life is not self-evident. There are many books and courses that provide excellent skills and tools.  One of the best techniques is to ask your children what to do and give them a choice. When Brittany didn’t want to go to the bathroom to brush her teeth, we learned to ask her how she’d like to go—with Shelly leading a parade and her following (you should have seen Shelly as a drum major!), with her in my arms or on my back, or did she want to meet me there in five minutes?

Most of us think we are successful parents if we get our children to behave properly, to learn what we think they need to learn, and to be happy. The question we suggest you ask yourself is: At what cost? If you succeed in achieving what you want for your children, but they form negative self-esteem beliefs, such as, I’m not good enough or I’m not worthwhile, or negative beliefs about life, such as, Life’s difficult or I’ll never get what I want, was your behavior really “successful”?  In other words, are the benefits you achieved short term with your children worth the long-term cost?

I am not saying that our children’s behavior on a daily basis, the information they acquire from us, and their happiness are not important.  Of course they are.  What I’m saying is that the single factor that has the greatest impact on whether or not your children achieve true happiness and satisfaction in life is a healthy self-esteem and a positive sense of life.  Nothing we do, learn or feel when we’re young will have as much influence on our adult life as the fundamental beliefs we form and take into adulthood.

To make this real, let’s assume that your children have one of the two following sets of beliefs: I’m not good enough; There’s something wrong with me; I’m not deserving; I’m not loveable; I don’t matter—or: I am good enough; I’m worthwhile just because I am, not for any reason; I’m loveable; I matter.

Which set of beliefs would most likely lead to anxiety and depression? To substance abuse? To teenage pregnancy? To eating disorders? To satisfying relationships? To a productive career?  To a truly satisfying life?

Given the critical importance of beliefs, what should be the primary role of parents?  Influencing behavior?  Teaching information?  Making their children happy?—or assisting their children to form positive beliefs about themselves and life?

If you chose the latter, the best way I know of to insure that you are getting your job as a parent done is constantly to ask yourself the question: What are my children likely to conclude about themselves and life as a result of this interaction we just had?  If it is a negative decision, go back, apologize and clean it up.  If it is a positive decision, congratulations!  You got your job done.

P.S.  Several of you wrote and said I never finished the story about my argument with Shelly in my post last week.  So here the end of the story: As soon as I realized that my upset really had nothing to do with her, and was the result of conditioning, I told her that, apologized for getting upset at her and withdrawing, and that was the end of it. We actually have a game when we have an argument: Who can “get off it” the fastest.  More and more often I don’t get hooked at all so I don’t even have to get off it, because I never get on it.

If you haven’t yet eliminated at least one of your limiting self-esteem beliefs using the Lefkoe Belief Process, go to http://www.recreateyourlife.com/free where you can eliminate one limiting belief free.

Please share my blog posts with anyone you think might be interested (as long as you tell people where they came from) and provide a link from your own website or blog.   http://mortylefkoe.com

To purchase DVD programs that we guarantee to eliminate eight of the most common daily problems people face, go to http://www.recreateyourlife.com/store.

Follow me on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/mortylefkoe and join our fan page on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/LefkoeInstitute) to get my latest insights on the role of beliefs in our lives.

Finally, to receive notice of new blog posts, please fill out the following form.

copyright ©2010 Morty Lefkoe

Note: There is an email link embedded within this post, please visit this post to email it.

Since we first offered belief-elimination programs on the Internet last November many people have said to me: The source of the beliefs you give in the belief-elimination videos might be the source for most people, but not all are true for me. Please help me find the source of my beliefs.

So I decided to devote this week’s blog post to providing you with the principles we teach Certified Lefkoe Method facilitators, so that you will be more effective in finding the source of your beliefs when the sources we suggest on the videos aren’t true for you.

1. Beliefs are almost always a logical interpretation you make of earlier events.  A belief is the meaning you give to events that have no inherent meaning. So the most obvious way to find the beliefs of the earlier events is to ask yourself: What possibly could have happened that would have led to this belief being formed?  What might mom and dad have done or said repeatedly that would have had me conclude (the words of the belief)?

2.  If the belief is a self-esteem belief—in other words, a belief about oneself such as I’m not important, I’m not good enough, or I’m powerless—then the source of the belief is almost always in interactions with parents (or very rarely other full time caretakers), before age six.

3.  The source of a belief is rarely one or two incidents; it is usually a pattern of events, for example, the way you are treated by your parents daily, not the couple of times something “big” happened.  Look for the nature of your relationship with your parents, rather than for specific incidents, although the incidents might be most real to you and can be used to eventually get to the pattern of behavior and the on-going relationship.   Obviously, traumatic events like rape or seeing someone killed can, in themselves, lead to a belief.

4.  For most people, the source of I’m not good enough, I’m inadequate, I’m not capable, I’m not competent, Nothing I do is good enough, Mistakes and failure are bad, and several other similar beliefs was your parents’ frequent dissatisfaction or anger when you weren’t doing what they wanted, when they wanted, or the way they wanted.  You heard things like: Don’t you ever learn? How many times do I have to tell you?  What’s wrong with you?

5.  The question to ask is: What are the earliest events that could be the source of the belief?  Self‑esteem beliefs almost always can be traced to the first six years of life with your primary caretakers.  On the other hand, other types of beliefs are frequently formed later in life (for example, when you get your first job you form beliefs about work and when you get involved in your first relationships you form beliefs about relationships).  So don’t assume that all beliefs can be traced to early childhood.

6.  Try to get concrete events as the source of a belief, rather than interpretations, for example, my parents yelled at me and hit me, rather than my parents were upset with me or didn’t like me.  If you can’t remember any concrete events after looking, but you do have a clear sense of the source of a belief, such as, my parents didn’t care about me, come up with specific behaviors your parents exhibited that meant to you that they didn’t care.  This way you will have something to work with in the “seeing” and “kinesthetic” steps of the Lefkoe Belief Process.

7. Sometimes people will have no memory whatsoever of their childhood before the age of six or seven.  Because most self‑esteem, sense of self, and sense of life beliefs seem to have been formed before that age, this situation can present a potential difficulty.  In such a case it frequently is possible to get a good sense of what must have happened in your childhood by using the following technique:

Recall whatever you can of your relationship with your parents.  What were the personality and behavior patterns of your parents at whatever age you can remember?  If there were any later siblings, how did your parents deal with the younger brother or sister?  When you have a good sense of your parents, ask: How would they have acted with you when you were two?—and then describe the behavior typical to a two-year-old.  What about when you were three?  Etc.

Typical childhood situations include: not putting things away; making noise; not doing what parents wanted, when parents wanted, the way parents wanted; not doing chores; parents not being around at all or being around physically but not emotionally; not having any say about what you did; not being held and kissed; not being acknowledged for what you did; being compared unfavorable with siblings or others.

Almost every client with whom I’ve tried this has been able to make real how her parents treated her before the age of six by imagining how her parents must have acted in specific typical childhood situations, based on a knowledge of her parents at a later age that is real for her.

Because I remember virtually nothing before the age of six, this is the technique I‘ve used to eliminate all my beliefs that were formed in childhood.

8.  You might have a hard time finding the source of a belief because you are uncomfortable about criticizing your parents.  Some of my clients constantly talk about how wonderful their parents were and say they can’t imagine anything their parents did or said that could have led them to conclude anything negative about themselves or life.

In such cases I emphasize that their parents did the best they could, that the point of the Lefkoe Belief Process is not to make their parents wrong, that something in their life must have happened that led to the belief in question, and that the dysfunctional pattern they now have is not the result of anything their parents did, but, instead, is the result of their interpretation of what their parents did.  To avoid this problem I usually explain this before asking the clients about the events that lead to the belief.

9.  It also is important to realize that even if 90% of a child’s interactions with his parents were “positive,” and only 10% “negative,” the child will still try to make sense out of the 10% and can reach negative conclusions about himself.

10.  It is important to understand that the belief made sense at the time it was formed. It was a logical interpretation, one that most people (most children, in the case of beliefs formed in childhood) who had the same experiences would have made.  You didn’t make a mistake in forming the belief.  It was actually a brilliant abstraction that integrated a great many disparate events that hadn’t made sense before.

11. Sometimes you might feel strongly that there are two different sources of a belief, one from parents at home and one from early school.  You are not sure if you had formed the belief before starting school.  In such a case, use the earlier source.  If the belief is not eliminated, then go through the program again using the later events as the source.

12.  Although survival strategy beliefs are interpretations of events, like any other beliefs, there is something unique about the way they are formed. See my blog post on May 26, 2009 that describes survival strategy beliefs in detail.

Thanks for reading my blog. Do you agree or disagree with the points I made in this post?  Why?  Do you have something to add?  Your comments will add value for thousands of readers.

Please feel free to share my blog posts with anyone you think might be interested (as long as you tell people where they came from) and to provide a link from your own website or blog.

If you haven’t yet eliminated at least one of your limiting self-esteem beliefs using the Lefkoe Belief Process, go to http://www.recreateyourlife.com/free where you can eliminate one limiting belief free.

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Mike had become a wealthy entrepreneur, but he had a hard time enjoying his business success because it seemed that every minute he wasn’t solving a business problem he was worried about what others thought of him and what he could do to get their approval.

Janet probably had as many good ideas as Mike, but because she was plagued with procrastination, she was nowhere near as successful.

Roger always talked about his dream of doing something on his own, but he just didn’t have the confidence to leave his safe (and boring) job.

And finally there was Marlene, who complained of bouts of anxiety that seemed to come over her without warning and paralyze her.

Stories like these from our clients go on forever.  We’ve heard tens of thousands of them. It seems as if no one really escapes.

Escapes what?  … Having a low sense of self-esteem, a negative sense of oneself, a little voice in one’s head that is constantly critical of oneself.

Common Myths About Self-esteem

Before I explain why so many people have low self-esteem, let me first dispel a few common myths about self-esteem.

First, people who are described as “full of themselves,” or who have “too much self-esteem,” are people with low self-esteem who are trying to convince themselves and others of a worth they don’t experience. Low self-esteem is the result of negative self-esteem beliefs, such as I’m not good enough, I’m not important, I’m not worthy or deserving, and I’m not capable. People with high self-esteem don’t need to convince anyone of their worth; they know they are good enough and important and don’t need anyone’s approval to experience being okay.

Second, low self-esteem is not limited to the “losers” in life. A survey that makes this point crystal clear reported than many CEOs of billion dollar companies had the fear that “someday I’ll be found out and they’ll take it all away from me.”  It is possible to be successful by conventional standards (plenty of money, a good job or your own company, selling your artistic endeavors, achieving whatever you set out to achieve) and still have low self-esteem. In such cases the low self-esteem shows up as a critical “little voice” in your head that criticizes much of what you achieve, as a feeling that you don’t deserve your success, or as a fear of rejection, or a need to get others’ approval. All of these things that undercut the enjoyment you get from your success are the result of low self-esteem.

Third, not all people with low self-esteem are unable to function well.  How well you are able to function depends not only on self-esteem beliefs, but also on what other beliefs you hold.  In a study the Lefkoe Institute did with incarcerated teens and adults a few years ago, we discovered that those subjects had the same negative self-esteem beliefs as the CEOs we saw in our private practice.  The difference was that the CEOs believed that what made them good enough or important is being successful (by society’s standards), while the people in jail believed that what made them good enough or important was getting away with things others couldn’t do, or being part of a gang, or not accepting anyone else’s rules.

Why Is Low Self-Esteem So Common?

The question that is probably occurring to most of you right now is: Why do so many people have negative self-esteem beliefs?  Why has almost every one of the 13,000 clients we’ve talked to had the belief, I’m not good enough?

As I’ve described in previous blog posts, almost all of our self-esteem beliefs, positive or negative, are formed in the first six years of life as the result of interactions we have with our primary caretakers, almost always our parents.

Any yet most parents love their children and want the best for their children.  So what goes wrong?

To begin with, most parents are not aware that children are forming beliefs about themselves based on their interactions with their parents, which usually doesn’t appear to be at all harmful.

But even when parents are aware of this, they can have a hard time stopping their inappropriate behavior because they are rarely aware of the conflict between what they as parents want and what children are able to understand and do at various ages.

Parents, being adults, generally like quiet; children are not quiet and cannot even understand why anyone would value quiet.

Parents for the most part want their house to be neat; young children don’t even understand the concept of “neat.”

Parents want to sit down for dinner when it is ready and before it gets cold; children are almost always doing something that is far more important to them and don’t want to stop doing it when their parents call them.

In other words, parents usually want their children to do things that they are developmentally incapable of doing.  They want their young children to act like little adults, which they cannot possibly do.

If we expect children to “do things right,” we have to explain what “right” is.  And we may need to explain something many times to a child under the age of six or seven before they really get it.  And, finally, there are some concepts that young children are just incapable of grasping.

The question is not, Do children frequently “disobey” their parents?  Children are developmentally incapable to living up to most parents’ expectations. The only question is how parents react when their children are not doing what the parents want them to do.
And because few parents go to parenting school and most bring their own beliefs from their childhoods with them, their reactions range from annoyance and frustration to anger and abuse, with every possibility in between.

What Is The Question Young Children Ask All Day Long?

Hint.  It’s only one word.

Yes, it’s “Why?”.

Children know that they don’t have the answers (kids are always saying, “When I grow up, then I’ll be able to….). Children think their parents (because they are adults) know everything and have all the answers.

It’s as if the child thinks to herself, “If my parents don’t like what I do a lot of the time and are unhappy with me, they must have a good reason.  I guess I’m not good enough to have their approval.”  Or, “If I can’t get their attention, I guess I’m not important.” Or, “If I always have to do what they want me to do and rarely get to do what I want, I guess I’m powerless.”

In other words, children form their beliefs about themselves trying to make sense of their parents’ behavior, statements, tone of voice, and facial expressions … every waking minute.

It is important to emphasize here that rarely will just a few parental actions or statements lead children to form beliefs, positive or negative.  It is only when something is done or said many times that a child forms a belief.  It’s as if children say to themselves, “Why does this keep happening?  Oh, now I know what it means.”

Parental Clichés Lead To Low Self-Esteem

Some of the phrases parents commonly use have become clichés in our society:

• “How many times do I have to tell you?”
• “Don’t you ever listen?”
• “What’s wrong with you?”
• “Are you just clumsy/stupid?”

What would it mean to a child aged two to six or seven to hear those phrases uttered repeatedly in anger or frustration?

Thirteen thousand clients have told us:

I’m not good enough. Mistakes are bad.  I’m not capable or competent.  I’m inadequate.

Do you understand now why so many of us have low self-esteem, which shows up in so many obvious and subtle ways, including worrying about what people think of us, being afraid to take risks, having a little voice in our head that keeps telling us that what we do isn’t good enough, etc.?

Thanks for reading my blog. I really would appreciate your comments and questions. Please feel free to share my blog posts with anyone you think might be interested as long as you tell people where it came from.

If you haven’t yet eliminated at least one of your limiting self-esteem beliefs using The Lefkoe Method, go to http://www.recreateyourlife.com/free where you can eliminate one such belief free.

To purchase an on-line interactive program where you can eliminate 19 beliefs, go to http://www.recreateyourlife.com/sales.html.

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Copyright © 2009 Morty Lefkoe

Many psychotherapists tell us that our current difficulties are a direct result of our childhoods.  As a result many people “blame” their parents for any upsets or suffering they experience as adults.

When you eliminate a belief using the Lefkoe Belief Process it becomes quite clear that what happened to you as a child has no impact at all on you as an adult.  What runs your life today is the meaning you are giving those childhood events.

This is not merely a semantic difference.  If your life were controlled by childhood events, you would never be able to get free of those events because the events did occur and there’s nothing you can do to have them not have occurred.

Moreover, if your upsets and suffering today really were a function of what mom and dad did and said to you as a child, then in a very real sense your problems today would be their “fault.”  And if that were the case, it would make sense to “blame” them for your difficulties today.

On the other hand, if your life today is a function of the meaning you gave those events, meaning you now hold as beliefs, then you can change that meaning at any time and become totally free of your childhood.

Take a moment and reread the last paragraph.  When you really get it, your life will transform.

And if your feelings and behavior are the result of beliefs (and conditionings) you formed in childhood, beliefs and conditionings that easily can be eliminated as an adult, then fault and blame become irrelevant.

Your parents acted the way they did because of their beliefs, just as you act the way you do because of your beliefs.   Sure, it would have been nice if they had had some parenting training and had eliminated a bunch of beliefs that would have enabled them to be better parents. But—no matter what happened during your childhood interactions with your parents—you can have your life today be whatever you want it to be.

So we need to stop blaming our parents for what doesn’t work in our lives, eliminate the beliefs that are causing our upsets and suffering today, and then go out and create the lives we want.

If you haven’t yet eliminated at least one of your limiting self-esteem beliefs using The Lefkoe Method, go to http://www.recreateyourlife.com/free where you can eliminate one limiting belief free.

Thanks for reading my blog. Comments and questions are welcomed.

Follow me on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/mortylefkoe and join our fan page on Facebook (The Lefkoe Institute) to get our latest insights on the role of beliefs in our lives.