Morty Lefkoe » conditionings

Is it “real” or only our meaning?

Morty Lefkoe — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 22:47:51 +0000

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We are in the process of creating a new online program specifically for people who experience a lot of stress. As part of my research I attended a lecture on stress in San Francisco last week delivered by Dr. Sian Bieland, a University of Chicago professor.

Dr. Bieland explained to the U of C alumni audience how “stressful situations” make us “choke.” She described how stress affects us and then offered us a few tips on how to alleviate or overcome stress when we experience it in business or in sports.

As I listened I had the thought: Most psychologists and personal growth gurus assume that problems (such as stressful situations) really exist “out there,” “in the world,” and then offer solutions to deal with them. I have a real problem with that approach because I don’t think that many of the so-called problems exist independent of us. (See my post, “How To Change ‘Human Nature’,” which deals with a similar topic, http://www.mortylefkoe.com/change-human-nature/#)

In other words, if there were such a thing as a stressful situation, then it would be very useful to learn how to deal with it effectively. But I contend there is no such thing as a stressful situation. Situations, as such, have no inherent meaning. And meaningless events can’t make us feel stress or anything else.

The stress we experience is the result of the meaning we give to events, not the events themselves. Change the meaning and the stress disappears.

Here are a few examples of how we attribute meaning

Assume your business fails and you have to declare bankruptcy. Most people would agree that that is a stressful situation. If you give the bankruptcy the meaning that you failed, that it means something bad about you, that you will never be able to earn enough money to support yourself and your family, etc.—then that meaning will cause considerable stress. On the other hand, if you have read the life stories of successful people (in business and other fields of endeavor) and know that most of them attribute their success today to the lessons they learned through “failure” earlier in life, your bankruptcy would occur to you as a valuable learning lesson. And if you assigned the event this meaning, you would not experience stress. Many years ago my wife Shelly and I experienced bankruptcy and foreclosure on our home. Shelly experienced tremendous fear and stress, because she gave the events the meaning I described above. I experienced no stress whatsoever, because the events occurred to me as learning opportunities.

Here’s another example: In a recent Lefkoe Occurring Course one of the participants told us how he had helped some friends whose house had burned down, destroying virtually all their possessions. The friends were devastated. But after the people whose house burned down talked for a while to their friend (who was learning how to stop giving meaning to events in our course) they realized that they had always wanted to live out of the United States, they had an idea for a new business they had always wanted to start, etc. By the time the conversation was over the couple was excited about all the possibilities they had identified and were no longer upset about the destruction of their home.

One more story: Another student in an Occurring Course wrote about how she dealt with her daughter being taken to the hospital in a lot of pain. The doctors initially had no idea what was wrong with her, so they had to give her a lot of tests. The mother kept thinking to herself, “My daughter’s pain doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t mean she is going to die, or even that she is very sick.” When the doctors came in after many hours to tell her that her daughter would be fine, she realized that not giving her daughter’s condition any meaning enabled her to stay present with her daughter and help calm her down, rather than be hysterical as she would have been had she given negative meaning as she would have in the past.

For people who have never experienced that events have no inherent meaning, stories like these can be difficult to believe, and yet that is how life occurs to me every day and to many others who have learned how to stop giving meaning to events.

Back to my original point: Wouldn’t it be better to learn how to dissolve (or not even experience) stress than to learn how to cope with it while being overwhelmed by it?

Meaning we make up is the source of most relationship difficulties

Stress is not the only type of emotion that is the result of meaning. Almost all upsets and arguments are the result of the meaning we give the other person’s behavior.

There are many psychotherapists and relationship experts who offer excellent advice on how to minimize arguments and deal more effectively with them when they occur. But if upsets and arguments are the result of the meaning you give the behavior of others, and you can dissolve that meaning, then upsets and arguments are no longer inevitable. I’ve eliminated about 95% of them from my life since I learned to stop giving meaning to what my wife Shelly and my two daughters do and say.

Here’s a description of how someone in my last Occurring Course changed the meaning he gave some events and totally shifted his reaction to loved ones.

“On Sunday evening, I tried to call my daughter, but I got her voice mail. I tried to call my girlfriend, and I got her voice mail. I tried to call my son and I got his voice mail. It occurred to me that everyone else was somewhere having fun and I was not and that they were so busy having a good time that they didn’t have time to talk to me. I quickly noticed that it was not the truth, just my interpretation. It caused me to smile to myself as I noticed how I had made it mean that they didn’t want to talk to me. [As soon as I made that distinction] the bad feeling was gone. “

What a difference a little bit of meaning makes!

My tip of the week

Before you look for a solution to a problem that seems to exist “out there,” check and see if it really exists independently of you or whether the meaning you have given events in the world created the problem to begin with. If so, then dissolve the meaning that is causing the problem by realizing that there is a crucial difference between what actually happens in reality and the meaning you give those events that exists only in your mind. When you’ve done that, the meaning will dissolve along with the problem that the meaning had caused.

Please leave your comments and questions about dissolving problems we created to begin with, instead of coping with or handling problems that appear to be in the world.

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.

To get my blog posts as podcasts, sign up for the RSS feed above or look up “Morty Lefkoe” at iTunes to get the podcasts sent to you weekly.

You are weird

Morty Lefkoe — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 22:43:24 +0000

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All of you who read my blog posts and who signed up on my website to eliminate a limiting belief are “weird,” according to best-selling author and popular blogger Seth Godin.

Why would he apply that term to you? Seth uses the term “weird” to describe anyone who is not “normal,” in other words, people who express their uniqueness and who don’t try to fit in with what “most people” are doing.

What makes YOU weird? Most “normal” people are not interested in personal growth. You—who are on my mailing list and reading this blog post—are a distinct minority. Because you want more out of life … because you are willing to spend your time, energy, and money to create a better life for yourself. Most “normal” people do not have this awareness and commitment.

Interestingly enough, many of the people who come to us to help them eliminate beliefs are normal. Thousands of clients who come to us to get rid of their fear of public speaking only want to get rid of that specific practical problem. Most of them deny they have any problems at all in their lives other than their public speaking fear. They have no interest in personal growth. They are normal.

Seth’s newest book, We Are All Weird, makes the point that there are getting to be fewer and fewer “normal” people in the world, in other words, people who aspire to be just like everyone else. More and more people are beginning to express their unique selves, which are weird to the normal people.

We want to hang out in “tribes”

And as people get interested in being their authentic selves, they also want to hang out with others who are weird in the same way they are weird, in “tribes” as Seth puts it.

So if you are weird because you are interested in living the best life you can possible live, because you are willing to put in the effort to overcome the barriers to having a life that truly works, and because you are unwilling to put up with merely getting by—then, first, I want to acknowledge you for that weirdness. You are part of a relatively small group of people on this planet.

And, second, I would like to support you. I have created a page on Facebook that over 1,400 of you weirdoes who are devoted to personal transformation already have joined. I put a link there to my blog posts each week as well as other information that I think would be valuable. I intend to make even more useful material available in the future. You can post comments and questions there and have other members of your tribe respond.

In addition, I have offered to answer any question posted on that site pertaining to personal growth.

If you would like to converse with people who have a similar commitment to personal growth, be given information that will contribute to that growth, and have a chance to get your questions answered, please join your fellow tribe members at http://facebook.com/recreateyourlife.

As one of the weirdoes who has committed his life to helping others get rid of the barriers in their lives that keep them from the lives they want to live, I look forward to interacting with you there

Please leave your comments and questions about how I can support your personal journey to a life free from unnecessary limitations.

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

To get my blog posts as podcasts, sign up for the RSS feed above or look up “Morty Lefkoe” at iTunes to get the podcasts sent to you weekly.

How can we serve you?

Morty Lefkoe — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 23:08:00 +0000

I am committed to making the Lefkoe Institute as helpful to you as possible. To that end I’ve created a number of products and services designed to help you make lasting changes in your life. In addition, I’ve created this blog to provide you with useful information.

In order to continue to provide you with what you want and need, I would like to know exactly what you would find useful. So I have two questions:

1. What courses or solutions would you like us to offer that would help you permanently eliminate the barriers in your life and live the life you want to live?

So that you don’t suggest a product or service that I’ve already created, here’s a run-down of everything we currently offer.

PRODUCTS

Free Belief Elimination Program

We’ve made available three videos that help you eliminate three of the most common beliefs that keep people from having what they want. They are only available in streaming video. http://recreateyourlife.com/free

Natural Confidence Program

This program helps you attain the natural state of confidence you had before you formed any limiting beliefs. Once you complete the program, you’ll take action to achieve your goals, do what you believe is right even if others disagree, and feel calm and relaxed during what used to be experienced as troubling times.

Eliminating the 23 beliefs and conditionings on this program will also help you get rid of seven other common problems, including a lack of confidence, procrastination, worrying about what others think of you, and stress. This program is available as a DVD and in streaming video formats.

The Abundance Program

This series of five videos, available only in streaming video, helps you eliminate five beliefs that can block you from having a sense of financial abundance. http://recreateyourlife.com/moneybeliefs.

The Secret For Ending Overeating for Good (free eBook)

This eBook describes the causes of and a revolutionary cure for emotional eating. Get the free book at: http://www.emotionaleatingreport.com/. You also can sign up there to get regular blog posts specifically on emotional eating.

SERVICES

One-on-one Phone Sessions

We offer private phone and Skype sessions that help you discover the beliefs and conditionings that cause any behavioral or emotional problem, and then eliminate them. To find out how we can help you, please call us at 415-884-0552.

Courses

The Lefkoe Occurring Course

This powerful course, which is only offered three or four times a year, teaches you how to dissipate the fear that keeps you from taking action and dissolve the anger that harms relationships. You achieve this by dissolving your “occurrings,” which arise from the meanings you give to events moment-by-moment. These automatic, unconsciously created occurrings determine how you experience your life. When you complete this course, you will have made the Lefkoe Occurring Process—the Process that enables you to dissolve your “occurrings” in moments—so automatic that you’ll rarely have to use it consciously any more. The course results in you experiencing a peace of mind that is possible only when your mind stops creating negative meanings for events. As Krishnamurti once said, "The highest stage of human intelligence is to observe without evaluating."

Lefkoe Belief Process Training Course

This nearly completed tele-course will teach you how to help yourself and others eliminate beliefs using the Lefkoe Belief Process.

2. What topics would you like more information about?

During the past few years I’ve written 124 posts on this blog, the equivalent of over two full-length books, which have led to 3, 138 comments and questions from readers and my responses.

Because you—my readers—read these posts because you are interested in improving something in your life, I’ve mainly written about how you can make fundamental changes in your behavior and emotions. I intend this blog to be the “go to” site for people wanting to discover the real underlying source of their problems and learn about the best solutions.

Here’s a link to a list of topics I’ve already written about

http://www.mortylefkoe.com/table-of-contents/#

How can we serve you?

Please answer my two questions, which I’ve copied below, so we can continue to give you what you want and need.

1. What courses or problems would you like us to offer that would help you make the changes you want to make and live the life you want to live?

2. What topics would you like more information about?

We are committed to being the best place to get information on how to improve your life and to being the best company to obtain effective and permanent solutions to the problems in your life.

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.

To get my blog posts as podcasts, sign up for the RSS feed at mortylefkoe.com above or look up “Morty Lefkoe” at iTunes to get the podcasts sent to you weekly.

What is the relationship between financial success and personal growth?

Morty Lefkoe — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 22:58:02 +0000

The tens of millions of people who are interested in self-improvement have two different but related focuses: financial success and personal growth.

People who primarily are interested in financial success seek out products that promise to help them make more money and end up with more wealth. Such people are usually willing to pay more for their courses and webinars than for courses that only improve their emotional well-being.

People who primarily are interested in personal growth usually want to change their behavior, such as stop procrastinating, and their emotions, such as stop their anxiety and anger. People for whom this is the goal usually are willing to pay far less for such products. Some of these people, especially those who have a strong spiritual bent, even think that being spiritual precludes them from pursuing money.

So although sometimes there is an overlap between these two groups, people tend to have one focus or the other.

There is an inextricable connection

But even for the people who do pursue both goals, I’m not sure that many people interested in self-improvement are aware that there is an inextricable connection between the two areas of life.

Although financial success can be affected by many different factors—including what product or service you are offering, the quality of the offering, to what market, competition, at what price, etc.—one of the most critical factors that is often ignored but that significantly affects your financial success is your mental/emotional state.

Because my expertise is on how beliefs affect our lives, I’ll focus on the impact of beliefs, but whether the source of dysfunctional behavior and emotions are beliefs or anything else, the chance of achieving and enjoying financial success in today’s world is slim unless you are able to get rid of your dysfunctional behavior and emotions.

Let me explain why.

For many years, success in business depended on showing up every day and doing what you were told. If you did it well enough for long enough, you’d usually move up through the organization you worked for and end up with a nice pension.

Financial success requires personal growth

Today showing up and doing the “right” thing is no longer enough, whether you work for yourself or for others. More and more organizations are looking for creative, innovative, imaginative people who will figure out for themselves what needs to be done instead of waiting to be told. And if you work for yourself, then merely doing what others do, the way others do it, is unlikely to provide significant financial success.

Today the world is looking for the intellectually curious, the people who are willing to take risks, who, as Seth Godin puts it, are willing to “poke the box.”

If that is what financial success requires in today’s fast-changing world—where what worked yesterday is probably not what is going to work today and certainly won’t be what works tomorrow—than your behavior and emotional state are crucial.

Beliefs that hinder financial success

What is the chance of you being innovative, taking chances, doing what makes sense to you whether others approve or not, etc. if you have even just a few of the following beliefs?

I’m not good enough.
Mistakes and failure are bad.
If I make a mistake or fail I’ll be rejected.
I’m inadequate.
I’m not important.
What makes me good enough and important is having others think well of me.
I’m not capable.
I’m not competent.
I’m powerless.

And that list of self-esteem beliefs doesn’t even include specific beliefs about money, such as:

Money is hard to get.
Money is a struggle.
There’s never enough money.

In addition to the beliefs, what if also you have been conditioned to feel fear if you are rejected, if you are criticized or judged, or if you don’t live up to the expectations of others?

People with beliefs and conditionings like these will have a hard time doing what they need to do to achieve financial success. Yes, they can learn what to do from a lot of great books and courses, but it will still be difficult to implement that really useful advice.

A client buys the house of her dreams

My wife Shelly—who is a Certified Lefkoe Method Facilitator who helps over 25 clients a week get rid of limiting beliefs—told me the following story that illustrates this point. She had a client who eliminated a few negative self-esteem beliefs and other negative beliefs about achieving financial abundance. One day she got a call from this client who wanted to share some exciting news with her. The client and three of her friends had attended a T. Harv Eker workshop, after which she had bought the summer house of her dreams.

The client attributed her new possession to what she learned in the workshop. Shelly listened and then asked the client what her friends had purchased. The client responded that they hadn’t bought anything or done anything to improve their financial condition after the workshop.

At that point Shelly pulled out the client’s file and read her some of the beliefs she had eliminated before she attended the workshop: I’m not deserving, Money is scarce and hard to get, You should always save for a rainy day, I’ll never get what I want, and I’m not important.

Shelly then asked her, “Do you think you would have spent the money and bought the summer house of your dreams if you still had the beliefs you eliminated?” The stunned silence at the other end of the phone line was the answer.

Obviously merely getting rid of limiting beliefs and conditionings is not sufficient to insure financial abundance. You have to take action. But the ability to take the type of actions required for financial success in today’s world require the ability to not be stopped by your fear of making mistakes, by what you think others may think of your behavior, or by a lack of confidence.

So if financial success is your focus—and there is nothing wrong with that focus—make sure you handle your personal growth first. It probably will give you a better chance to achieve financial success and it certainly will enable you to enjoy it more.

What do you think about the relationship between personal growth and financial success? Please write your comments below.

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

For information about eliminating 23 of the most common limiting beliefs and conditionings, which cause eight of the most common problems in our lives, 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.

How Making Distinctions Can Change Your Life

Morty Lefkoe — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 23:37:35 +0000

My post today is about “distinctions.” And why should you care about distinctions? Because most of the problems in your life today exist because of distinctions you failed to make earlier in your life. Moreover, the way to permanently eliminate those problems from your life is to make those distinctions now.

I’ve known for a long time that the act of creating something is dependent on making distinctions. But I now also see in a way that I never did before that the effectiveness of The Lefkoe Method results from its ability to help you make distinctions you haven’t made.

Creation is an act of distinction

First let me explain what I mean by creation results from an act of distinction. I first realized this when I heard a presentation by Werner Erhard over 30 years ago. Let’s do a little thought experiment he used to make real that making a distinction is an act of creation. Really do the exercise.

Imagine your hand expanding and expanding until it fills the universe, so that there is nothing in the universe but your hand. What happens to your hand? … If you actually do this exercise you will experience your hand disappearing. Why? … Because any “thing,” in order to exist, must have a not “it.

A hand is a palm and fingers with space around it. If there were nothing but hand, it would crease to exist because it couldn’t be distinguished from everything else. In other words, any “thing” (or everything), without any distinctions, is nothing.

This is not only true for physical objects, it also is true for abstractions. In order for “up” to exist, there has to be a “down.” “Peace” requires “war.” If there were only peace all the time, the idea of peace, as distinct from war, could not exist.

So the existence of any specific thing requires the non-existence of that thing. This is what is meant by a “dualistic universe.”

Is it now clear that we create by distinguishing some “thing” from everything else?

Beliefs are caused by a failure to distinguish

Now let me explain my insight the other day when I realized that all the processes of The Lefkoe Method are based on making distinctions that had not been made earlier and most of our behavioral and emotional problems (which are caused primarily by negative beliefs and destructive conditioning) ultimately are the result of not making crucial distinctions earlier in life. Let me explain

Let’s start with the Lefkoe Belief Process. To begin with, most people have never distinguished their beliefs as the primary cause of their behavior and feelings. Moreover, when you form a belief you are not distinguishing between the events and the meaning you are giving the events; it seems to you as if you have discovered the meaning (the belief) in the world, which leads you to think the meaning is inherent in the events, which leads you to think you can “see” the meaning in the world.

A belief is eliminated for most people when they distinguish between the event and the meaning, which leads them to realize they cannot “see” the belief in the world, at which point they get that the meaning exists only in their mind and not in the world. Emotionally kinesthetic people eliminate the belief when they make a distinction between reality as the source of their feeling/belief and the meaning they gave reality as the source of their feeling/belief.

In other words, the belief got formed because we failed to make a distinction earlier in life and is eliminated today when we make that distinction. If we had made the appropriate distinction earlier between the event and the meaning we attributed to it, the belief never would have been formed.

Conditionings also are caused by a failure to distinguish

What is the role of distinctions in the Lefkoe Stimulus Process (LStimP)? Let’s use my ice cream story to explain how stimuli are conditioned to produce emotions and how the LStimP de-conditions those stimuli so that they no longer trigger those emotions.

Imagine you were being handed an ice cream cone with one hand while the other hand made a fist that looked as if it was going to hit you. What would you probably feel as you observed both the ice cream and the fist? … Probably some degree of anxiety. If this happened repeatedly, at some point the ice cream would get conditioned to produce anxiety even when there was no fist accompanying it.

A common example of this in real life is being criticized as a child by your parents, who usually got angry and yelled at you when they criticized you. The criticism as such did not produce anxiety; the meaning a child gives the yelling produced anxiety because, for children, yelling means parents are angry, which means they don’t love me any more, which means I could be abandoned, which means I could die. That is what causes the anxiety.

The principle is: anything that repeatedly accompanies something else that produces anxiety can itself easily get conditioned to produce anxiety … when we don’t distinguish between the stimulus actually causing the anxiety and the other stimulus that itself does not produce anxiety but that repeatedly accompanies something that does.

The LStimP works by making a distinction that you didn’t make earlier in life when the conditioning took place. You realize that the ice cream was never scary; the fear was caused by the fist and you now make a distinction between the two. Being criticized was never scary; the fear was caused by the meaning you gave your yelling parents and you now make a distinction between the two.

Other Lefkoe Method processes help you made distinctions

There are other Lefkoe Method processes, such as the Lefkoe Occurring Process, which dissolves the meaning we give current events, the Lefkoe De-conditioning Process, which de-conditions emotional eating, the Lefkoe Sense Process, which de-conditions a negative sense of life or sense of self, and the Lefkoe Expectation Process, which de-conditions negative expectations.

These processes work in much the same way as the Lefkoe Belief Process: they enable you to make distinctions today that hadn’t been made earlier in life. When the distinction is made, the belief, the sense, the occurring, the expectation, or the conditioning is eliminated, as are the problems they cause.

Yet more to come

A lot of research has been done in recent years that proves conclusively that the brain is plastic, meaning it can change up until death. And making new distinctions is what enables the brain to create new pathways and learn. I have a strong sense that a better understanding of “distinctions” will enable me to create additional processes to facilitate easy and permanent change.

What do you think about distinctions? Do you have any questions about why they are so important in understanding both why people get stuck and how to get them unstuck? I’d love to read your comments and questions.

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.

Did You Have Wonderful Parents?

Morty Lefkoe — Tue, 24 May 2011 19:49:36 +0000

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.

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.

Are You Happy With Who You Turned Out To Be?

Morty Lefkoe — Tue, 17 May 2011 19:36:38 +0000

For most of my life I didn’t want to be me. I was so unhappy with my life that being almost anyone else would have been preferable to being me. For many years I wanted to be Fred Astaire, because I loved the joyful, bright sense of life he projected, an experience that I rarely felt.

Today is my birthday and I am 74 years young. I feel and look at least a decade younger than my chronological age. And today I am happy to be me and wouldn’t consider being anyone else.

What is the source of this dramatic shift?

Getting rid of all the beliefs and conditionings that led me to be depressed and unhappy most of the time. And then learning how to stop giving meaning to the daily events in my life. Today I experience myself as the creator of my life almost all the time and I’ve stopped giving meaning to events most of the time, which has almost totally eliminated stress from my life. I’ve stopped seeking; I know I’m already there. I feel anything is possible and that I have no limitations. I experience virtually all my circumstances as okay just the way they are.

Why am sharing this with you?

Because what I did to reach this state is available to you too. Anyone (including you, yes, even you!) can experience a sense of wholeness, feeling totally okay with the way you are, and that you are the creator of your life. It doesn’t have to take a lot of time and it isn’t very expensive.

Please don’t give up your dream of a life of joy and success. I was about as low as you can get and I’ve now reached a state of total satisfaction with my life. You can too. Don’t wait until your 74^th birthday to be truly happy with your life.

I’d love to hear from you with your thoughts about overcoming all your barriers and living a life of true bliss. Please write your comments below.

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.

How To Change “Human Nature”

Morty Lefkoe — Tue, 10 May 2011 22:57:00 +0000

Are you bothered by a psychological problem that you aren’t even trying to get rid of because you think it’s “human nature” and can’t be eliminated? If so, you aren’t alone.

For example, Seth Godin recently published his 13^th book, Poke the Box, that explains most people’s failure to take action by claiming that people have to overcome their natural resistance in order to take action. His Domino Project also published a book by Steve Pressfield, Do the Work, that also emphasized how resistance is the single biggest barrier to creativity and innovation, and it includes tips on how to fight this demon that lurks within each of us.

There are a number of psychological traits that are so common that most people consider them to be inherent in human beings. Don’t all people experience:

resistance to change?
fear of making a mistake or failing?
fear of rejection?
a concern with the opinion of others?
anger if you don’t get your way?

It is understandable that few people seek help to deal with these feelings. So many people have them that they are considered to be part of being human. In fact, however, they are not inherent in human nature at all. All these psychological responses are the result of beliefs and conditioning formed early in our lives. Thus, all can be totally eliminated when the relevant beliefs and conditionings are eliminated.

The beliefs and conditionings that cause these psychological responses

First let me list some of the beliefs and conditionings that cause the psychological responses listed above; then I’ll explain why they are so common as to be considered “human nature.”

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.
If I make a mistake I’ll be rejected.
What makes me good enough and important is having others think well of me.
What makes me good enough and important is doing things perfectly.
I’m powerless.
I can’t make it on my own.
The way to be in control is to have things be exactly the way I want them to be.

In addition to these beliefs, many people have been conditioned to feel some level of fear

whenever they are rejected,
when they don’t live up to the expectations of others, or
when they are criticized or judged.

These conditionings also contribute to the common psychological responses listed above.

Imagine someone to have these beliefs and to experience fear whenever these three situations occur. Doesn’t it seem obvious that they probably would have some if not all of the psychological traits listed above? Now imagine that tens of millions of people had these beliefs and conditionings. Wouldn’t it seem reasonable to assume that everyone was just born with them?

The source of these beliefs and conditionings

Now let’s take a look at why these psychological responses (and the beliefs and conditionings that cause them) are so common.

The basic beliefs that underlie these common psychological traits were almost always formed in childhood, in our interactions with our parents. Here’s how it happens.

As little kids we are always asking “why?”. Sometimes we ask our parents to explain things to us, and sometimes we ask ourselves, “Why am I being treated like this? Why is my life like this?” We answer these questions for ourselves (unconsciously) during the first few years of life. Because our parents are the people who we spend most of our waking hours with, they are involved in most of the experiences that lead to our fundamental beliefs.

And what are those experiences in most households? 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. Etc.

In other words, most 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 physical abuse, with every possibility in between.

Virtually all of us have lots of negative self beliefs

Parenthetically, it is important to recognize that our behavioral and emotional problems later in life are not our parents’ fault. By that I mean we are not affected by our parents’ behavior after we grow up and leave the house. They are no longer in our lives in the same way. What does cause resistance to taking action, fear of rejection, etc.? The meaning we gave our parents’ behavior, which became our beliefs.

I think there are two primary reasons why the source of self beliefs is always interactions with parents as a young child and not people or events later in life. First, as children we depend on them for our very survival; on some level we feel that we have to be able to trust them to survive. Second, as adults, they seem to know how to navigate reality and we know we can’t. (What do all kids say? “When I grow up, then I’ll be able to ….”) So they must know what they are doing and their behavior must be “correct.” If I don’t like how I’m treated, it must be my fault.

The source of specific self beliefs

Here is the common source of a few negative self-esteem beliefs.

If I trust my parents and they must know what they are doing, and if they are angry with me, it must be my fault. I’m not good enough.
If I can’t get them to spend the time with me that I want or if they are physically around but not paying attention to me, it must be my fault. I’m not important.
If I can’t get them to give me what I want most of the time, it must be my fault. I’m not worthy or deserving.
If my parents make all the decisions that affect my life and I have little say, I feel powerless. I’m powerless.

Is it clear now that the devastating psychological traits that are considered to be human nature are, in fact, the result of beliefs and conditionings caused by a typical childhood?

I’d love to hear from you with your thoughts about what is human nature and what can be changed. Please write your comments below.

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You Can Get Rid Of Your Depression

Morty Lefkoe — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 23:12:29 +0000

It is possible to permanently eliminate your depression.

The purpose of this post is to assure those of you who are feeling depressed (or who know anyone who is depressed) that it is possible to get rid of it totally. I was depressed for about 30 years, so much so that I thought of suicide frequently. I haven’t felt anywhere near depressed for over 15 years. If I can do it, you can too.

Depression is ultimately the result of feeling hopeless and helpless. It is experienced as an overwhelming sense of despair. Unfortunately, this mental disorder is very prevalent, with estimates that almost one in six Americans will experience depression in their lifetime. Moreover, many people whose symptoms are not serious enough to be classified as chronically depressed still experience bouts of despair that they are unable to shake for days on end.

There are some people who claim that depression is chemical and that the brain of depressed people is actually different than the brain of normal people. A study conducted a few years ago did show that MRIs of depressed people were different from the MRIs of “normal” people. The study went on to describe, however, how after a few months of cognitive behavioral therapy the brains looked the same. In other words, it is more likely that the mental state caused the changed brain state than an abnormal brain state produced depression.

Luckily, depression, like most mental problems, is the result of beliefs and conditionings, all of which can be eliminated by the Lefkoe Belief Process (LBP) and the Lefkoe Stimulus Process (LStimP).

The following is a list of some beliefs that clients with depression have identified and eliminated. Can you see that almost anyone with most of these beliefs would have to feel depressed, at least to some extent?

If someone didn’t have any of these beliefs and, instead, held their opposite—such as “I control my life, not other people or circumstances” “My life is whatever I make it,” “I am good enough, important, and deserving”—could they possibly feel depressed?

Say each of the following beliefs out loud. If any of them resonate with you, it’s a belief you hold. Even though you may have held it since you were a child, and even if you’ve tried a number of ways to get rid of it, LBP can assist you to eliminate it.

Typical beliefs that underlie depression

I’m powerless.
I’m not good enough.
I’m not deserving.
I’m inadequate.
I’m not important.
I’m worthless.
I’m not lovable.
Who I am is not okay.
I have no value.
There’s something wrong with me.
Happiness doesn’t last.
It’s not safe to be myself.
Life is hard, painful, a struggle, and stressful.
Being responsible is a burden.
I have to be perfect or people won’t accept me.
I can’t have what I want.
I don’t matter.

Ruth eliminated her life-long depression

Ruth Bonomo of Westport, CT, who used the LBP to eliminate many beliefs like these, described how she totally ended her life-long depression:

“I used to walk around enclosed in a veil of depression, fear, and self-loathing. I was always at the edge of the pit, ready to jump in and relinquish responsibility for my life and how it was turning out. I was on the verge of abandoning my family when my son became ill. After he spent several days in the hospital I realized I better get myself together; this kid needed and deserved me and I needed to be a responsible parent.

“I found Shelly Lefkoe and the Lefkoe Belief Process. Immediately I began to shed emotional pounds. It was as if I had been running around on an exercise wheel in a hamster cage my whole life, and now I was free.

“Now I experience my emotions very differently. I’m not at the effect of them; I just have them. I get to feel all my emotions without having to worry about the pit. The most remarkable thing I’ve gained from eliminating beliefs with the Lefkoe Belief Process is self-love and acceptance. Now that I love myself, I am much less judgmental of others. I no longer worry about who I am and what people think of me. Everything is easier to deal with. The problems of life are still there, but I experience them without the drama and feeling that the world is coming to an end.”

When people are feeling depressed it feels like there is no way out and never will be. It feels like there is not much point in doing anything because nothing will make any difference. There isn’t even motivation to try to get better because it feels like nothing will help, like you will be stuck like this forever.

Psychotherapists have used The Lefkoe Method successfully

Margaret Carter, M.A., Family Therapist, said the following about using The Lefkoe Method to treat depression:

“I have used The Lefkoe Method numerous times in my practice for depression. In one such case the client had life-long depression and had made several prior attempts at counseling, to no avail.

“The client’s behaviors were self-destructive and self-limiting, and self-esteem was very low.

“After using The Lefkoe Method the client reported increased self-esteem, peace of mind, relief—for the first time in life—from depression, and expanded maturation and hope.

“The Lefkoe Method can be life transforming. It also meets our great need for an effective, brief therapy.”

Please forward this post to anyone you know who suffers from depression. Let them know that they don’t need to suffer any longer.

I’d love to hear from you with your thoughts about having and getting rid of depression. Please write your comments below.

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How To Keep Your New Year’s Resolutions. Guaranteed!

Morty Lefkoe — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 21:39:14 +0000

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Did you keep your New Year’s resolutions last year? … What about the year before? …

If you are like most people, you worked on them through the middle of January and by early February you had forgotten you ever made them. Or, perhaps after several years of failure, you stopped making New Year’s resolutions at all.

Why don’t we do the things that we say we are going to do? Things we really want to do? Things that truly would benefit our lives?

The answer is simple. Our behavior is not the result of our desires or even our commitments. It is the result of our beliefs and conditioning. And if there is a conflict between our beliefs/conditioning and our commitments/desires, the beliefs/conditioning usually will win.

Let me give you a few examples.

I’m going to stop procrastinating

A few years ago I had a friend named Johnny whose problem was that he procrastinated a lot of the time. He almost always left work projects go until the last minute. As a result, he was anxious much of the time and sometimes he would turn projects in late, which resulted in an upset boss.

At some point he decided he must change, so he made a New Year’s resolution to stop procrastinating the next year. Because he was really committed, he did everything he could to insure his success.

He prioritized his activities, assuming that it would help him focus on the most important projects.
He made a schedule that helped him allot time during the month for work on the projects.
He put up reminders in prominent places.
He created rewards to give himself when he finished a project—a special dinner or a new item of clothing.
He asked his friends to support him.

And yet—despite this detailed strategy for keeping his resolution—by early February he called to tell me the problem was as bad as ever.

I put on my “Lefkoe Method Facilitator” hat and asked Johnny what thoughts he had when he was about to do what he knew he should do at work, just before he put it off and did something else instead. He gave me the following list.

What I do might not be good enough.
People might judge my work badly.
I feel uncomfortable when I think about doing the project.

Can you see that these thoughts and feelings were keeping him from acting? That most people with those thoughts and feelings probably would procrastinate, especially with important projects?

After a short discussion we found a number of beliefs that were causing the thoughts and feelings, including these three:

I’m not good enough.
What makes me good enough is having others think well of me.
Mistakes and failure are bad.

These beliefs (and several others) led to the thoughts and feelings that caused Johnny’s procrastination. After I helped him get rid of the beliefs, the procrastination stopped … totally.

If you resolve to stop procrastination, eliminate all of the relevant beliefs and your New Year’s resolution will finally manifest.

I’m going to find a great relationship this year

Here’s another story that will explain why it can be so difficult to stick with our New Year’s resolutions.

Years ago I had a friend, Jennifer, who really wanted a great romantic relationship. In fact, it was all she could talk about. But she either went months at a time without any relationship at all, or she would get into disastrous relationships that didn’t last more than a couple of months and then ended with a lot of upset.

One year she made a New Year’s resolution to create a great guy in the coming year. She made a list of all the qualities she wanted, visualized what he looked like, and imagined spending time with him as he did all the things she imagined this great guy would do.

But after February came and went, she, too, asked if I would put on my professional hat and help her. We quickly identified the following beliefs, among others: I’m not good enough. I’m not loveable. I’m not deserving. Men can’t be trusted. Men are jerks. Relationships don’t work. I’ll never get what I want.

What were the chances of a nurturing long-term romantic relationship with beliefs like these? … Slim to nil. So I helped her eliminate these and a few other beliefs and conditionings.

By June she was in the relationship of her dreams and by the end of the year she was married.

I’m going to lose weight

With about 70% of American adults obese or overweight, the resolution to lose weight is probably a common one.

Unfortunately, the reason people have a difficult time losing weight is the same reason they overeat and gained the weight in the first place.

As I explain in detail in my eBook, The Secret to Ending Overeating For Good, (http://emotionaleatingreport.com) overeating—in other words, eating when you aren’t hungry—is caused both by conditioning and beliefs. And most people’s weight problem is the result of overeating. In other words, if you only ate when you were truly hungry—and not for emotional reasons—and you ate healthy food with a modicum of exercise, you would not gain weight.

Overeaters have conditioned eating as the “drug of choice” whenever certain “triggers” occur, such as being lonely, bored, anxious, feeling unlovable, depressed, stressed, or rejected.

Many also have beliefs like: If I don’t eat the food in front of me now, there won’t be any later. If I can’t eat “bad” foods, I’m missing out. The way to keep food from running my life (like it did my mom’s) is to eat whatever I want to eat.

What are the possibilities of keeping your resolution to lose weight if you have conditionings and beliefs like these? Again, not too good. On the other hand, if you get rid of all the relevant beliefs and conditionings, your overeating will stop naturally and automatically, and losing weight will be relatively easy.

2011 is the year you can achieve all your resolutions

As you make your list of what you resolve to do in 2011, take a look and see if you have any beliefs or conditionings that might be barriers to achieving any of your goals. If so, get rid of them and then notice that, perhaps for the first time, you keep your New Year’s resolutions and you achieve all that you want.

Happy Holidays! May you continue to dissolve the barriers to your “creation’s” happiness and well-being and may you continue to experience yourself as the “creator” you actually are—with nothing missing and anything possible.

Let’s have 2011 the year you make all your dreams come true.

Please share below your thoughts and questions on keeping your New Year‘s resolutions.

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How to control anger

Morty Lefkoe — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 20:21:35 +0000

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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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Getting Rid of Beliefs is Not Enough

Morty Lefkoe — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 17:53:17 +0000

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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.

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Answers to questions about beliefs, Part 2

Morty Lefkoe — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 17:40:47 +0000

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Here are my answers to a bunch of new questions I’ve been asked repeatedly about beliefs.

1. Once you understand that you can’t see beliefs in the world and that events have no inherent meaning, why do you have to go though the process time after time to eliminate additional beliefs?

Remember, a belief is a statement about reality you think is true. And most people, because they are visual, think it is true because they think they saw it in the world. Even though you know in principle that all meaning is in your mind and you can’t really see any of your beliefs in the world, all your reminding beliefs still exist because you still think you saw them earlier in life.

For example, even though it might now be real that you never saw I’m not good enough in the world, that all you saw were parents who were angry when you didn’t met their expectations, you can still think you saw I’m not important when your parents weren’t around.

Each belief exists independently for you as something you think you saw in the world (or, if you are emotionally kinesthetic, you think something in the world caused you to feel the belief). You have to eliminate each belief separately.

2. Why do you hold the belief that beliefs are difficult for a person to find?

They aren’t necessarily hard to find. And for someone who has had a lot of training and experience looking for the beliefs that cause any given problem, they can be relatively easy to find. It’s just that most people are not used to looking for the relevant beliefs for different problems, so most people do not know how to do it.

3. Why do I have a difficult time eliminating beliefs even after I’ve identified them?

Eliminating beliefs is not difficult when you are trained in a process that is effective at eliminating beliefs. Many of the techniques that claim to eliminate beliefs don’t really get rid of them, so the beliefs show up again later. Although it isn’t difficult to use the Lefkoe Belief Process to eliminate beliefs, you do have to learn how to use it. And if you don’t go through each step properly, the belief won’t go away.

4. Why do we seem to have more negative beliefs about ourselves than positive ones?

I’m not sure that we do. We generally are only aware of the negative ones that produce problems in our lives. But we have thousands of others that are either neutral or that lead to positive results.

5. How do you know the difference between a “belief” versus your intuition telling you something?

It can be difficult to know the difference. Here’s one tip that might be useful: If the feeling (of danger or whatever) occurs continuously, then it is probably the result of a belief or conditioning. Beliefs and conditionings affect us all the time and we would probably have the same reaction in similar situations.

If the feeling rarely occurs in similar situations, then it likely is intuition. Just remember, however, intuition isn’t accurate all the time.

6. Even when there is physical evidence that a belief you picked up as an adult is valid, how can you let go of the powerful emotion?

The emotion probably is the result of the belief, so when the belief has been eliminated, the feeling will be gone. Moreover, there is never physical evidence that a belief is true. There are events and then there is the meaning we give the events. The events are “valid”—in other words, they are out there in the world; the meaning (the belief) is always in our mind.

7. I’ve done your program (the beliefs seem to be gone), but the beliefs come back and are still there. How can I get rid of them?

For visual people, who know reality because they see it, beliefs rarely if ever come back. For emotionally kinesthetic people, who operate more out of feelings, beliefs do come back from time to time, but with much less intensity. Just use the Lefkoe Belief Process again and, for most people, that should be enough to get rid of them forever. For some people some beliefs might some back again, but the third time is usually sufficient to eliminate them permanently.

I’m working on developing a new process that will be more effective with emotionally kinesthetic people so the beliefs will stay gone the first time.

8. How do you identify the belief that is running our lives? Are certain survival strategies generated by certain beliefs?

First, there is no single “the belief” that is running our life. There are many. So we don’t look for the beliefs that “run our lives”; we look for the beliefs that cause specific problems in our lives, such as procrastination, anxiety, relationship difficulties, and worrying about what others think of us.

See my earlier blog post (August 8, 2009) that offers a few tips on how to find the beliefs that cause specific problems.

See my earlier blog post (May 26, 2009) that deals with survival strategy beliefs.

9. How do you know if you have a belief that may be holding you back from something that you want?

If you are unable to change your behavior or your feelings despite repeated attempts, the odds are what you want to change is being caused by beliefs and conditionings. If you are able to do what you want and change when you want to, you are unlikely to have limiting beliefs in that area of your life keeping you stuck.

10. Can you change your existing beliefs by reading articles about beliefs?

I’d hesitate to say that anything is impossible, but it is highly unlikely that reading articles about beliefs will eliminate them. In fact, it is highly unlikely that thinking about the steps of the Lefkoe Belief Process will eliminate a belief. You need to do the Process and make each step real for yourself. You need to get you never saw a specific belief in the world and that the events you did see have no inherent meaning.

As I said in answer to an earlier question, merely understanding that all meaning is in our minds will not make all beliefs go away. Understanding is nice, but it won’t eliminate beliefs.

11. Why do feelings of self-loathing reappear after I feel like I’ve dealt with and made peace with myself when I’m overwhelmed and frustrated?

Because “dealing with” and “making peace with myself” does not make beliefs go away. So whenever you get in a stressful situation, the beliefs that are still there get reactivated and you feel self-loathing. If you get rid of the beliefs that cause the self-loathing, the feeling will not come back again.

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.

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What Happens When a Belief is Eliminated?

Morty Lefkoe — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 17:49:19 +0000

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Because people are not used to permanently eliminating beliefs (processes that are guaranteed to totally and permanently eliminate long-standing beliefs are rare), people aren’t sure what to expect when a belief really is eradicated.

Actually, there can be a wide variety of responses. We have had people tell us that they felt their life was transformed, like an oppressive weight had been lifted from their shoulders. They were clear their life would never be the same.

Other people aren’t even sure the belief is gone. “I’m not sure” is their reaction. This reaction is usually the result of holding the belief: Change is difficult and takes a lot of time. Such people usually have eliminated the belief and have a hard time accepting that they can get rid of a belief in just a few minutes. They believe that what they just did is impossible!

Others experience that the belief is gone at the moment, but fear that it will return at some point in the future. Such people have done processes that purported to permanently eliminate beliefs in the past but the belief always “came back.”

Still other people realize the belief really is gone; it no longer resonates, the words sound meaningless, it is easier to say the belief. But the overall feeling is sort of: “So what? It’s gone. Now what?”

That’s a reasonable response, because most people don’t care about getting rid of beliefs; they want to get rid of the everyday problems that affect them daily. Some of the most common (and the approximate number of beliefs and conditionings that cause each) are:

Procrastination (16), need for the approval of others (10), fear of rejection (9), social anxiety (16), high levels of stress (23), a critical “little voice” in your head (18), perfectionism (14), a lack of confidence (23), and relationship difficulties (10-20).

Each of these everyday problems has a different number of beliefs (and conditionings) and the problem won’t be totally gone until all of the beliefs have been eliminated.

For example, here is a list of the beliefs and conditionings that cause procrastination:

Beliefs

Mistakes and failure are bad.
I’m not good enough.
Change is difficult.

What makes me good enough or important is having people think well of me.
Nothing I do is good enough.
I’m not capable.
I’m not competent.
If I make a mistake I’ll be rejected.
I’m a failure.
I’m stupid.
I’m not worthy.
I’m powerless.
What makes me good enough or important is doing things perfectly.

Conditionings

Fear associated with criticism and judgment.
Fear associated with not meeting expectations.
Fear associated with rejection

Thus, the ultimate test of whether or not a belief has been eradicated is when the problem disappears after you eliminate a bunch of beliefs and conditionings.

One of easiest problems to eliminate (if you know the source) is a phobia, which is caused only one or two beliefs and one or two conditionings. The most complicated problems to eliminate are chronic depression and eating disorders, which can have over 30 beliefs and conditionings, many of which are unique to each person.

By the way, if you discovered this blog recently, please take a look at earlier posts below. You might find a few that you are really interested in. Some recent titles include:

• Get Rid Of Negative “Senses” And “Expectations”
• Get Rid Of The Belief “I Can’t ….”
• Our Perceptions Shape Our Reality
• How To Find The Beliefs That Cause Specific Problems
• Why Does The World Suffer From An Epidemic Of Low Self-Esteem?
• How To Create New Possibilities In Your Life
• Get Into An Altered State Of Consciousness In Minutes
• Can Beliefs Keep You From Becoming Wealthy?
• How Do Beliefs Produce “Driven,” Compulsive Behavior?
• Leave The Past In The Past
• Would You Like To Stop Worrying About What Others Think?
• How To Eliminate Some Of Your Negative Emotions … For Good
• How To Eliminate Upsets And Suffering From Your Life, Parts 1 And 2

Thanks for reading my blog. I really 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 they came from.

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.

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How To Find The Beliefs That Cause Various Problems

Morty Lefkoe — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 17:08:54 +0000

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Getting rid of a limiting belief with the Lefkoe Belief Process (LBP) is not particularly difficult. We can train people to do that in a weekend. And we can create an on-line process or a DVD that will eliminate a specific belief.

The trickiest aspect of the LBP is identifying all the relevant beliefs that cause a given problem. Getting rid of the beliefs is actually easier than finding them.

That’s why we can put together programs that eliminate specific problems when we already know what beliefs (and conditionings) cause those problems for most people. So far we have created packages that get rid of such issues as procrastination, lack of confidence, social anxiety, fear of rejection, the need for approval, perfectionism, high levels of stress, and the critical “little voice” in our heads.

Some patterns like phobias can be eliminated by getting rid of one belief and one conditioning. One client had a fear of small bugs, insects, or rats. It was totally caused by one conditioning: Fear associated with being touched by small insects or animals. When that was de-conditioned, the fear was gone. Another client had a fear of dogs. She had the belief: Dogs are dangerous and the conditioning: fear associated with dogs. When they were gone, the client said she felt comfortable with dogs, unless they were barking. We then discovered and eliminated the belief: barking dogs are dangerous. Then her fear of dogs was totally gone.

Other patterns like depression and eating disorders can have upwards of 30-40 beliefs (in addition to conditionings, senses, and expectations). These patterns can have as many as 15 negative self-esteem-type beliefs, along with negative beliefs about life, such as life is difficult. It is easier to get rid of bulimia than overeating, because you can stop bingeing and purging, but you can’t stop eating. And overeating is really a combination of several different issues, for example, people can eat to keep feelings down, to reward themselves, to take care of themselves when they think others won’t, to keep from thinking about unpleasant things, and woman sometimes gain weight to remove themselves from the dating game.

Many patterns share a lot of the same beliefs. So, for example, if you eliminate all the beliefs for a lack of confidence (19 beliefs and 4 conditionings), you also will be eliminating all the beliefs that cause several other problems, such as procrastination, lack of confidence, social anxiety, fear of rejection, seeking approval, perfectionism, high levels of stress, and the critical “little voice” in our heads. These other problems have fewer beliefs and conditionings (as few as 6 beliefs and 3 conditionings for fear of rejection) and different combinations of them.

I am frequently asked how one can figure out what beliefs and conditionings cause specific problems. We spend an entire three-day weekend teaching people how to do this, so I can’t teach you in a short blog post. But the first step is just to figure out logically what beliefs could cause the problem.

For example, if you aren’t able to create a lasting, nurturing romantic relationship, you probably have beliefs about yourself, the opposite sex, and relationships. What do you think they are? … Logical possibilities include: I’m not loveable, women/men can’t be trusted, and relationships don’t work.

If you are afraid to take chances, what are some of the beliefs you might have? … Mistakes and failure are bad. I’m not good enough. Nothing I do is good enough.

And if you’re an approval junkie, what are some of the beliefs you might have? … I’m not good enough. I’m not important. What makes me good enough or important is having people think well of me.

The Best Technique For Finding Beliefs

The best single technique for finding the relevant beliefs is to notice what you are thinking and feeling as the problem occurs. They will be a clue to the underlying beliefs. For example, if the overall problem is social anxiety—not feeling comfortable with people in social situations—then when meeting someone at a party you might notice yourself thinking: I don’t feel comfortable when people are putting their attention on me. And you might be aware of an anxious feeling as if something bad is going to happen. Two beliefs that “go with” those thoughts are: Something bad will happen if people put their attention on me and I’m not good enough. A conditioning that could account for the feeling is: fear associated with people focusing on me.

Ultimately, experience is the best way to find all the beliefs and conditionings that cause any given problem. (As I mentioned in a recent post, a negative sense of self and life, along with negative expectations, sometimes have to be eliminated before an undesirable behavior or feeling is totally gone.)

Luckily, not knowing what beliefs cause which problems is not really a problem because we at the Lefkoe Institute already know what beliefs (and conditionings) cause common problems. In other words, probably 90% of people will be able to get rid of a given problem if they eliminate the beliefs and conditionings we’ve already identified for those problems. And we offer packages that eliminate the beliefs and conditionings for those problems.

And if you have a problem for which we don’t yet have a package, Certified Lefkoe Method Facilitators are able to help you find the beliefs and conditionings that cause any problem you want to get rid of, and then help you eliminate them.

My Vision

My vision is to have The Lefkoe Method so thoroughly incorporated into the culture that everyone learns the relationship between beliefs and behavior at an early age and also learns how to help others eliminate beliefs and change behavior. And to have parents know the child-rearing techniques that minimize the number of crippling beliefs their children form.

An experience my wife Shelly had a few years ago symbolizes the way I envision how the world will utilize TLM in the future. She went to the gym and got on the Stairmaster. A couple of minutes later a friend of hers who she hadn’t seen for a few months got on the machine next to her. Shelly asked her friend how she was doing. The friend told Shelly about some relationship difficulties she was having.

What would most women do in a situation like this? … Empathize with their friend’s predicament and give some advice. Shelly empathized but didn’t give any advice. Instead she helped her friend identify three of the most relevant beliefs that were responsible for the relationship difficulty and then helped her friend eliminate them all … in 45 minutes. As a result, the friend had the possibility for a good long-term, nurturing relationship that she didn’t have before talking to Shelly.

Let’s Create This World

Can you imagine a world in which it was commonplace for everyone to be able to do that for everyone else? That’s my vision and what my life is dedicated to creating.

NOTE: We’re offering another tele-seminar answering your questions about beliefs on August 13, from 6:00-7:00 Pacific Time. For information and to submit a question, please click on https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/357775698

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 they 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 limiting belief free.

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

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.

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Leave the past in the past

Morty Lefkoe — Tue, 19 May 2009 18:29:13 +0000

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.

How to eliminate upsets and suffering from your life. Part 1

Morty Lefkoe — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 16:55:38 +0000

This post assumes you already have eliminated at least one belief using the Lefkoe Belief Process and used the “Who am I Really?” Process to experience yourself as the creator of your life. If you haven’t please visit http://www.recreateyourlife.com/free first so you can eliminate a belief and have that experience.

Most people think upsets and suffering are inevitable. They aren’t.

In fact, there are two different techniques that will dissolve your upsets and suffering. I’ll describe one of them in today’s post and tell you about the other one in my next post.

Let me start with an assertion that I will explain: All upsets result from experiencing yourself as a victim.

Do you get upset about your difficult circumstances when you know you can fix or handle them? … Take a moment and really think about this. … No, you don’t.

You get upset or suffer when you think you can’t do anything about what is happening. If you feel you can’t do anything about a situation, you are experiencing it as outside your control. You experience the problem as “out there.” Someone or something is doing it to you. That’s the experience of being a victim.

What happens in the world might be outside your control, e.g., floods, the death of a loved one, and losing a job. But if you really look carefully, you will realize that events, as such, as not upsetting. What upsets you or causes you suffering is the meaning you are giving to events that have no inherent meaning. And in most cases one of the meanings you are giving is that you can’t deal with the events

Another interpretation is you don’t know how to deal with them right now, but you could learn how in the future. Can you really “see” that anything is outside your control? … What color and shape is it? …

So change the meaning you give your circumstances—from There’s nothing I can do about it, to I don’t know what to do about it now but I can figure out how to make things even better than before—and your experience of upset and victimization will disappear like ice on a hot summer day. At that point you can start focusing on how to deal with the undesired circumstances.

For example, imagine you are fired from your job. That is a real situation; it really does exist in the world. You might then conclude: There’s nothing I can do about it, I’ll never get another job, I won’t have money for food and to take care of my family, etc. These are all meanings you are giving to the event.

You can “see” that you are no longer working at the job. You cannot “see” the meanings you are giving the event. They exist only in your mind.

You might not be able to change the event; it actually happened. But there might be a lot you can do to get a new job, create your own business, get money for food and to take care of your family, etc. If you focus on finding a solution to the difficult circumstances instead of on the meanings you are giving the circumstances, you will feel empowered, not victimized.

In my life a lot of “bad” things have happened, such as two divorces, going bankrupt, and losing a job I really wanted. But when I look back on those events today I can see how each of them ultimately made a positive contribution to the happiness and success I have today. At the time I gave them a “negative” meaning: This is a disaster, why did this happen to me, I’ll never recover from this, etc.

There is another meaning to the same events that I didn’t see at the time and that is very clear today: This is preparing me for something even better in the future. In every case the “disaster” led to something wonderful that would have been impossible without the “disaster.” If I had been able to see that meaning at the time, my upset and suffering would have disappeared. And I contend it is possible to see that meaning even before the wonderful things happen in the future.

I don’t think it is possible to permanently change specific behavior patterns and emotions without eliminating the beliefs and conditionings that cause them. But it is possible to change your emotional state at any time regardless of the circumstances.

Circumstances can’t cause upsets and suffering; only you can. When you change the meaning you are giving your circumstances and become responsible for your experience of the circumstances, your sense of victimization will disappear and so will your upset and suffering.

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

To eliminate a limiting core belief free, please visit http://recreateyourlife.com/free.

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

How to live a life without stress

Morty Lefkoe — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 01:42:11 +0000

It is possible to get rid of your stress.

“Yeah, sure,” you might say. “And how exactly am I supposed to get rid of all the stressful things in my life?”

Here’s how I answered that question for myself.

I was filled with anxiety for most of my life. I worried about what people thought of me, I was worried about not having enough money, and I worried about my mother who was having a difficult time after divorcing my father when I was three. If worry causes stress, I was overwhelmed with stress from the time I was a child.

My way of dealing with the “things that were causing stress in my life” could be summed up in the phrase I uttered at least several times a day for the first 20 years of my life: “I can’t wait until I grow up and then I’ll be able to ….” My life was always focused on changing my circumstances some day so that the anxiety would go away and I would be happy.

After many years of therapy, workshops, and self-help books the stress had lessened somewhat, and I was coping with my difficult circumstances better, but I was still trying to change what was happening in my life to gain happiness. I noticed that I was now in my 40s and I still hadn’t managed to change things enough to make me happy and relieve my constant stress.

It was only after I started using a belief-eliminating process I had created that I realized that the stress was not coming from what was happening, but from the meaning I was placing on what was happening. Once I was able to change the meaning, the stress literally disappeared.

For example, before I married my current wife Shelly (to whom I have now been married for 26 glorious years), I had been married twice before. Neither relationship worked very well or lasted very long. Most of my married life with these two women was very stressful. At the time, I blamed my wives and said all I needed to do was to find the right woman, in other words, change my circumstances.

So I tried it for the third time, hopefully with the “right” woman. Unfortunately, right after we got married I noticed the stress was still there.

About that time I started looking for and eliminating the beliefs that were causing the problems in my life. One problem was that I was incredibly needy. I actually believed that I couldn’t survive without a woman in my life who loved me. That belief led me to place so much pressure on my wives that our relationships were constantly stressful. Once I eliminated that belief and a bunch of others (most importantly, what makes me good enough and important is having people like me and think well of me), the neediness stopped. And when the neediness stopped, and when a bunch of negative beliefs about myself were gone and I realized I was loveable and worthy of being loved, my relationship with my current wife transformed.

The same person and the same circumstances, but instead of trying to get my sense of okeyness from my marriage, I brought my sense of okeyness to my marriage. It made all the difference in the world. And the stress was gone.

I’m reminded of a news story I read in the mid-1990s when a lot of middle-level managers were losing their jobs. The article interviewed a number of these out-of-work people. Some of them were very stressed, worrying about making ends meet. Some of them, however, were very happy and seemed to exhibit no stress at all.

People in this latter group experienced being fired as an opportunity to do something they had always wanted to do and had never done because they were “stuck” in their jobs. They either created one-person consulting firms, opened some type of retail store, or went back to school and changed professions entirely.

If losing your job means you will never find another way to make money, you will be stressed. If losing your job means you can now do something even more nurturing and satisfying, you will be excited about the same event.

You see, events don’t have any inherent meaning. Circumstances don’t mean anything until you give them a meaning … and one meaning can be stressful while another might be enlivening. Stress is caused by the meaning we give to events-which in turn is caused by our negative beliefs and feelings about ourselves, people, and the world we live in. The beliefs can easily be eliminated with the Lefkoe Belief Process (LBP) and the feelings with the Lefkoe Stimulus Process (LStimP).

Imagine that you are about to undertake an important project and have the beliefs: “I don’t think I can do it. I think I will fail and failure is bad” How do you feel? … You’d feel stress-and would blame the project for causing the stress. Now imagine the same project, but this time you have the beliefs: “I’m competent. I know I’ll do a great job. And if I don’t my results don’t mean anything about who I am.” How do you feel now? … Notice that the project is no longer causing stress.

The following is a list of some beliefs that clients complaining of stress have identified and eliminated. Can you see that anyone with beliefs such as these probably would experience stress?

Say each of the following beliefs out loud. If any of them resonate with you, it’s probably a belief you hold. Even though you may have held it since you were a child, and even if you’ve tried a number of ways to get rid of it, you can get rid of it using the right approach. I had many of these myself and eradicated them all.

“If I fail it means I’m stupid.”
“I’m not competent.”
“I’m not good enough.”
“Nothing I do is good enough.”
“I’ll never get what I want.”
“Mistakes are bad.”
“If I make a mistake it means I’m bad and stupid.”
“Life is difficult.”
“People can’t be trusted.”
“I’m powerless.”
“I have no control over my life.”
“I don’t measure up.”
“The unknown is scary.”
“If I do something wrong, something terrible will happen.”

Assume that you didn’t have these or any other related beliefs. Imagine, instead, that you believed, “There is no such thing as failure; everything is merely a learning experience.” And, “I’m fine just the way I am; I don’t have to do anything to be okay and accepted by others.” Would you still be likely to experience as much stress as you do now?

Most of the techniques commonly used to deal with stress focus on how to better cope with stress after we experience it. For example, meditation, deep breathing, and visualizations can sometimes alleviate it for the moment. Our work, on the other hand, assists people to totally eliminate their stress (or not even get it in the first place) by getting rid of the beliefs that cause it.

One client, a psychotherapist who lived with constant stress, described how the Lefkoe Belief Process helped her overcome it.

“At my first session with Shelly Lefkoe I told her: ‘I’m overwhelmed. I’m confused. Scattered. I’m not focused. All over the place. I can’t organize. Frightened by competition. It keeps me from being successful. There is an emptiness I have to fill. I feel anxious and stressed all the time.’

“Shelly helped me eliminate a number of beliefs, after which my life changed dramatically. Today I have a grounded sense of confidence. I enjoy life more. I feel better about who I am. I now believe I am worthy of being taken seriously. Unlike what my mother used to say, ‘No one could take you seriously,’ I know I have much to offer people.

“The emptiness is gone. I have an inner joy. I accept what I can do and have confidence that I can do it. It doesn’t matter what others are doing. The other guy is not such a threat anymore. Finally, I have a sense of poise in the world that I lacked before. I used to be seen as this naive, wimpy type. I don’t think that’s what I project any more. I project a stronger image. I’m someone I’m happy to be. The anxiety and stress are gone.”

As I said when I started this post, it is possible to get rid of your stress. I’ve done it and I know a lot of others who have too. Change the meaning you are giving to the events in your life by changing your beliefs, and you, too, will see your stress melt away like ice cream on a hot summer day.

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 belief free.

Tags: beliefs, BlogDesk, changing beliefs, eliminate beliefs, eliminating beliefs, fear of public speaking, motivation, personal change, personal growth, power of beliefs, produce change, psychotherapy, solving problems

Tags: stress, worry, worrying