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You are not your feelings

Morty Lefkoe — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 00:22:53 +0000

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How many times have you heard yourself say: I’m upset, or I’m angry, or I’m happy? If you are typical, many times a day. But stop for a moment and consider what you are actually saying. You are saying “I am …. (some specific emotion).” Whether you mean to or not, you are defining yourself as being your emotions.

Actually, when you are in the grip of a strong emotion, it really feels all encompassing, as if there is no part of “you” that isn’t that emotion. In fact, sometimes a negative emotion so feels like who we are that we resist letting go of it even when we dislike having the feeling. In other words, often we seem to want to hold on to feelings because it seems as if giving up the feeling is like giving up part of ourselves.

Take a moment and remember a time when you felt angry at someone and you knew on some level that the person really hadn’t done anything so terrible and that you ought to let go of the anger. Take a moment and really make the incident real. … Do you remember that some part of you didn’t want to let go of the anger, as if you’d be losing some part of yourself if the emotion were to stop?

It also can be difficult to let go of an emotion when it feels as if the emotion is validating the meaning we’ve given an event. It can feel to us as if letting go of the emotion will invalidate that meaning and letting go of the meaning will invalidate the feeling (which is who we feel we are). An example of this would be someone who doesn’t do something for us that he promised to do. We might give that event the meaning that I can’t count on people and I have to do everything myself, which likely would lead us to feel angry. It feels to us as if it really is true that we can’t count on people. So the anger justifies the meaning we gave the event (which has no inherent meaning). At the same time the meaning justifies the feeling, so we might resist letting go of the meaning we made up.

But is that actually true? Are we our emotions?

If we really are our emotions, then when an emotion disappeared, we should disappear … but we don’t. Let me explain this outrageous statement: If we say we are anything specific, and that thing disappears, then logically we would have to disappear. But we don’t disappear when our emotions disappear.

Not only do emotions fade away automatically after a period of time, it also is possible to stop emotions on the spot by getting rid of the two things that cause them: stimuli that have been conditioned and our occurrings, in other words, the meaning we give events moment-to-moment.

As I’ve explained in several posts, we unconsciously and automatically give meaning to meaningless events all day long. Because events that have no inherent meaning can’t cause us to have feelings, the feelings we have must come from the meaning we give the events. And by dissolving the meaning—in other words, how events occur for us—we can dissolve all the negative feelings that arise from the meaning.

So if the emotions we have usually dissipate on their own after a while and if our emotions are primarily the result of meaning we give events and we can dissolve most emotions merely by dissolving the meaning that gave rise to them, can you get that it is more accurate to say we “have” emotions, but are not our emotions?

The two best ways to get rid of negative emotions are to dissolve the conditionings and the occurrings that cause the feelings. But if you don’t know how to do that, however, it still is possible to lessen the impact emotions have on you. How? By noticing when you feel swept up by a strong negative emotion that “you” are observing your feeling. And the “you” that is doing the observing is not the same “you” that is having the emotion. That realization will enable you to make a clear distinction between “being” your emotion and “having” an emotion. And that will enable you to get some perspective on the emotion and extricate yourself from it to a large extent.

Try my suggestion and let me know what happens in a comment.

Please leave your comments and questions here about today’s post. I read all posts and answer as many as I can.

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

Does “reality” really exist?

Morty Lefkoe — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 17:33:52 +0000

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If you asked someone, “Do things exist?” the response would probably be, “Of course things exist! The world is full of things. Everyone knows that there is physical stuff out there—that reality is tangible and real!”

But what allows any thing—a hand, a chair, or any other object—to exist? One way to discover the answer is to imagine a specific thing—say, your hand—expanding and expanding until there is nothing in the universe except the hand. What would happen to it? … Really, just take a moment and try this. You’ll be amazed at your experience … You wouldn’t see the hand anymore, would you? Why? … It would disappear because there would be nothing in the universe that was not the hand. This is a very basic concept about reality: In order for any thing to exist, there must also be not that thing.

Consider this for a moment. Can you see that any physical object is bounded by “not that object”? If an object did not have any borders—that is, if it wasn’t surrounded by “not that object”—it couldn’t be distinguished from everything else. In other words, it wouldn’t exist.

The same principle applies to nonmaterial concepts. Love and hate, peace and war, strong and weak, beautiful and ugly—these only exist and have unique attributes because they have been distinguished from each other. For example, the state of war is distinguished from peace by the presence of armed conflict. When there is no armed conflict there is peace. But if peace existed throughout the world all the time, and if the alternative (war) was unimaginable, you wouldn’t be able to distinguish peace. Peace, as a condition distinct from war, couldn’t exist.

A Universe Without Distinctions

Now imagine everything in the universe without any distinctions. It’s all just an undifferentiated whole. Can you see that there is nothing? That’s because in order for anything to exist, it must be distinguished from everything else. If no distinction is made between a specific thing and everything else, there is only an undifferentiated everything—which is another way of saying nothing.

Everything, without any distinctions, is the same as nothing. Take a moment and think about that. Until consciousness has made a distinction, nothing can possibly exist.

Therefore, the world really isn’t the way you perceive it. In fact, it isn’t any way until you perceive it that way—that is, until you distinguish it that way. You don’t even sense what’s “out there” because there’s nothing out there to be sensed. (Nothing, as we’ve seen, however, is the potential for everything before anyTHING is distinguished.) In making distinctions, we use our sensory apparatus (the five senses) as well as our perceptual framework (language, culture, and individual beliefs).

An excellent example of this point comes from a Time magazine cover story on human consciousness.

“A baby born with cataracts—an unusual but not unheard-of condition—and left untreated for as little as six months becomes permanently and irrevocably blind. If a sixty-year-old develops cataracts, an operation can restore full sight. The distinctions most of us make unconsciously and at a glance—foreground vs. background, moving vs. stationary, vertical vs. horizontal, and dozens more—are concepts that the brain has learned. It literally has to wire itself, with neurons growing out to touch and communicate with one another in an ever more sophisticated network of connections. And if those connections are not repeatedly stimulated in the first few months of life, when the brain is still in its formative period, they atrophy and die.” (Emphasis added.)

In other words, moving and stationary or vertical and horizontal are not things “out there.” Rather they are “concepts that the brain has learned” (or distinguished) as a result of having a specific sensory apparatus (and brain), without which they couldn’t be distinguished. That means they literally wouldn’t exist.

In other words, if everyone was born with cataracts (which would be normal if everyone had that condition), our reality would not possess moving and stationary, vertical and horizontal, etc.—despite the fact that we are convinced that these are inherent attributes of reality.

Is There AnyTHING Out There?

Here’s another thought exercise that will help make it clear that what we think is “out there” is largely a function of our perceptual apparatus. Imagine that beings from another galaxy arrived on earth. Imagine further that instead of human eyes they had a different “viewing sense, namely, the equivalent of an electron microscope.” When they viewed our world they might not see the solid objects we see; instead they might see atoms: electrons spinning around protons and neutrons. They might notice that almost all of what they were viewing (the atom) was empty space. So if these creatures were the inhabitants of earth, they might not even have a concept of solid matter.

Imagine further that instead of human ears, these visitors from space had a sense that picked up radio waves but did not hear “sounds” made in their presence.

And finally imagine that they had a sensory mechanism like dolphins, who “see” the echo of sound vibrations they send out.

These aliens would experience and describe a totally different universe than the physical universe we would swear exists all around us.

Our role in creating our reality can be seen in another area. Apart from our perceptual apparatus, our most important tool in making distinctions and creating our reality is language.
As Edward Sapir, a noted anthropologist, has said: “We see and hear and otherwise experience very largely as we do because the language habits of our community predispose certain choices of interpretation.

Language Determines How We Perceive Reality

Language is far more than a tool for communication. With language we categorize, distinguish, and create the universe. Ultimately, we perceive the world consistently with our language. For example, when we think in English, we perceive a world made up primarily of objects: people, trees, and houses. These objects do things or have things done to them using verbs. We literally see everything in the world in this fashion. We don’t perceive “things out there” because there really are things out there. That just happens to be our worldview, because in our language there is a subject, which acts upon an object, which exists independently of the subject. In the English language, independent entities (subjects and objects) are primary, rather than processes or relationships. That’s not true in every language.

As Ralph Strauch points out in his book The Reality Illusion: “Some languages are structured around quite different basic word- categories and relationships. They project very different pictures of the basic nature of reality as a result. The language of the Nootka Indians in the Pacific Northwest, for example, has only one principle word-category; it denotes happenings or events. A verbal form like ‘eventing’ might better describe this word-category, except that such a form doesn’t sound right in English, with its emphasis on noun forms. We might think of Nootka as composed entirely of verbs, except that they take no subjects or objects as English verbs do. The Nootka, then, perceive the world as a stream of transient events, rather than as the collection of more or less permanent objects which we see. Even something which we see clearly as a physical object, like a house, the Nootka perceive of as a long-lived temporal event. The literal English translation of the Nootka concept might be something like ‘housing occurs;’ or ‘it houses.’”

We swear things exist because we distinguish them though our particular perceptual apparatus and through our language. Change those and you dramatically change the world that you think is “out there.” There might not even be any more “things.”

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Why you should be concerned about your beliefs

Morty Lefkoe — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 00:21:41 +0000

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If you have read any of the writings of the top self-help experts during the past 10 years—such as Deepak Chopra, Jack Canfield, or Joe Vitale—you’ve learned that permanent change is impossible without eliminating the beliefs that are keeping you stuck.

I agree; beliefs do have that power. But why? What gives our beliefs the power they have to determine our behavior and feelings?

There are two reasons why beliefs have the power they have—one is obvious, the other more subtle.

Our beliefs about reality ARE our reality

First, a belief is a statement about people, reality, or ourselves that feels like the truth to us. Although you might think that you would consciously agree with what you believe, in fact, it is possible to consciously disagree with something you believe.

For example, you can know intellectually that mistakes are good learning experiences and still believe that mistakes are bad. If you have that belief, you would be afraid of trying new things or allowing others to know about your mistakes, even if you consciously think that mistakes are not bad at all.

Because most of us usually act consistently with reality, we act consistently with what we think reality is, not with what reality actually is. In other words, if we believe I’m not good enough, People can’t be trusted, or Life is difficult (none of which are true)—then we will deal with reality as if these statements are the truth. As a result, they will determine what we do and how we feel.

To use one simple example, if you believe I’m not loveable, Relationships don’t work, and Men/women can’t be trusted—if that is your reality—you have virtually no chance of having a nurturing, loving long-term relationship. Get rid of those and other related beliefs and you’ve changed your reality. At which point the possibility of a nurturing, loving long-term relationships becomes possible.

Because we view reality through the filter of our beliefs, which color our perceptions, long-term fundamental change requires eliminating the beliefs that limit us. Yes, it sometimes is possible to use will power to act against our beliefs in the short run, but ultimately we will act consistently with the way we view reality.

Beliefs are the primary source of our “occurrings”

There is a second way in which beliefs determine our lives: by influencing our moment-to-moment reactions.

For about 25 years I thought that beliefs affected our behavior and feelings directly, as explained above. To some extent I still think that is true. But a couple of years ago I realized that our moment-to-moment actions and feelings are determined primarily by the meaning we unconsciously and automatically give reality, in other words, how reality occurs to us—not by what actually happens in reality.

For example, imagine a friend of yours walks in a room that you are in, notices you, and doesn’t talk to you. Most people would think: My friend is angry with me. This would be so real that most people would say to someone with them: Don’t you see that my friend is angry with me?

But all that actually happened is the friend noticed you and didn’t talk to you. That event could occur to you as: He is angry with me. And because you deal with reality based on how it occurs to you—which you are convinced is what actually happened—you would respond to your friend as if he really is angry with you. Even though his anger exists only in your mind, not in reality.

We are constantly giving meaning to events. We do it 20-40 times a day. And we are hardly ever aware of it. So our “occurrings” run our lives. And what is the relationship between our occurrings and our beliefs? Our beliefs are the primary determinant of how reality occurs to us.

The meaning we give events, which have no inherent meaning, is determined largely by our beliefs, although our moods and physical condition also play a role.

Thus our beliefs determine our lives in two ways: directly, because they are what we think reality actually is and, indirectly, by significantly influencing our occurrings, which have the biggest impact on our moment-to-moment reactions.

The bad news and the good news

As a result, the bad news is: long-term fundamental behavioral and emotional change is virtually impossible without eliminating the limiting beliefs that are running your life. The good news is: You can make massive positive changes in your life—such as taking actions you were afraid to take and ridding yourself of such negative feelings as anxiety and anger—by eliminating your limiting beliefs.

It might well be that getting rid of a bunch of limiting beliefs is the best way to reduce the negative and increase the positive in your life in 2012.

Please leave your comments and questions here about today’s post. I read all posts and answer as many as I can.

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Stop being run by your feelings

Morty Lefkoe — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 00:36:34 +0000

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At one point or another, everyone has uttered the words: “I am happy.” And: “I am upset.”

Notice what happens when you say: “I am [something].” You are describing yourself. Any words that follow the statement “I am” is your description of yourself.

Moreover, when we say, “I am [something],” it feels as if we really are that “something.” It feels as if our entire being is happy, or upset, or anxious, or any other emotion we say we are.

But is that really who we are?

Most readers of my weekly blog have eliminated at least one belief using the Lefkoe Belief Process (see http://recreateyourlife.com) where they discovered that they are not merely a “creation,” who has beliefs and feelings and who takes action, they also are the creator of that creation.

Although the creation you think you are is comprised of your beliefs and feelings and what you do, the consciousness you really are is whole and complete, for whom anything is possible and nothing is missing.

Thus, it actually is more accurate to say: My creation has feelings, but I am not my feelings. My creation has beliefs, but I am not my beliefs. My creation takes action, but I am not what I do.

This is not merely semantics

When you experience that you are your feelings, you are totally at the effect of them. They seem to pervade your entire being and there seems to be no escape from them.

When you experience that you have feelings, but they are not who you are, you make a clear distinction between “you” and “your feelings.” That enables you to get some perspective on the feelings and to place your SELF outside the feelings, so that you are no longer at their effect.

How do you do that? There is a simple way to experience that you have feelings, but are not your feelings. I’m not talking about an affirmation, where you try to convince yourself of something you don’t really believe. I’m talking about experiencing the truth of the statement.

First, use the Who Am I Really? Process, which comes at the end of the LBP, several times. You can get a link to the WAIR? Process at http://d3n3f57qjh51zc.cloudfront.net/who-am-i-really-new.mp3.

Then, when you start having some negative feelings and you notice that you are at the effect of them, remind yourself what you experienced in the WAIR? Process: “I am the creator of my life, not merely a creation.” And then remind yourself of the experience you will already have had: “I have feelings; I am not my feelings.”

When you do that, notice how the intensity of the feeling diminishes and how the feeling starts to lose its grip on you.

Try it and let me know your experience. I promise it will transform the way you experience your feelings.

Please leave your comments and questions here about today’s post. I read all posts and answer as many as I can.

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How we intend to increase our impact in the world

Morty Lefkoe — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 00:47:54 +0000

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For almost 27 years we have been helping people eliminate the beliefs and conditionings that limit them and keep them from living the lives they desire. We are excited that we have facilitated over 13,000 in one-on-one sessions and almost 100,000 via our on-line programs. That’s a lot of people!

From time to time our clients turned out to be CEOs of business firms. When they discovered how effective The Lefkoe Method was in quickly and permanently eliminating problems, several of them asked if we could help their managers and executives become more productive and more effective. In every case where we worked with such people, we helped them to become more successful employees and happier in their personal lives.

Until today, however, we had never contacted organizations directly to tell them how we could help them have happier and more effective managers and executives (thereby becoming more profitable) by sending their managers and executives to work with us.

We know that when we help an individual, he or she benefits along with all the people that those individuals interact with. But when we help a manager or executive in an organization have better interpersonal skills, delegate more effectively, be more creative, communicate better, reduce stress, etc.—our work with such people is impacting hundreds or even tens of thousands of people.

Lefkoe Institute has created a new service

With this in mind we have created a service specifically designed to help managers and executives overcome both undesirable business behavior and personal issues that affect them at work. A detailed description of what we are offering can be found at http://lefkoe.com.

Why am I sending this information to you?

Because you—like the tens of thousands of others who receive this blog—probably have eliminated at least one belief and know how powerfully people are impacted when they eliminate beliefs. And if you know that, I want to ask a favor of you.

I have a favor to ask of you

I would appreciate it if you would share your personal experience (not necessarily specific details, but the general result) of using The Lefkoe Method with the appropriate people at your own organization, including your HR department. Then suggest that they visit our new site that describes exactly how we can help managers and executives become more effective. http://lefkoe.com.

If you know managers and executives or people in the HR department at other organizations, please send them the link also.

I promise to keep you informed about the impact the Lefkoe Institute is having on businesses, non-profit organizations, and government agencies. I expect that helping individuals from these places will enable them to make a profound difference with everyone they interact with, including co-workers and customers.

In any case, please take a look our new website that describes how we intend to increase our impact on the world, even if you have no one to send it to. I think you’ll find it interesting. http://lefkoe.com.

Please leave your comments and questions here about today’s post. We appreciate any suggestions on how we can make an even bigger difference in the world. I read all posts and answer as many as I can.

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 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.

How beliefs have caused a crisis in education

Morty Lefkoe — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 22:47:28 +0000

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Few institutions in our society are subject to as much passion, dissent, and, ultimately, paralysis as education. What is the source of the crisis in education and why does it seem to be so difficult to resolve?

As readers of this blog you won’t be surprised that my answer to both these questions is beliefs. Whenever you discover dysfunctional behavior—in individuals, organizations, or institutions—you will find beliefs at the source.

To understand the role of beliefs in creating the current crisis in education, let’s look at one widely accepted belief about what education should do: The primary purpose of education is to impart a prescribed amount of information about specific subjects.

As a result of that belief, we have federal, state and local programs designed to insure that students achieve a minimum level of proficiency (in other words, a minimum amount of information acquired) according to standardized tests. We rank our country compared to other countries based on scores on standardized tests that measure this.

What happened that initially led most people to accept the belief that a good education can be measured by the amount of information acquired? To answer, we must go back in time.

Compulsory education

When compulsory education was initiated in America over a century ago, its purpose was to prepare people to work in factories. Workers needed to read and write and be able to follow instructions. What a person knew about the world remained true during a lifetime of forty-some years. The amount of new knowledge produced during adult life was minimal. It wasn’t particularly important that one learn how to think independently or creatively.

Given such an environment, it made sense to conclude that there was a certain amount of information needed to succeed in life and that the function of school was to provide that information. The belief about the importance of learning a certain amount of information while in school was not wrong when it was formed. It made perfect sense and was totally appropriate, given the circumstances. It was the logical outcome of looking at the world as it existed when the belief was formed.

In today’s world, however, “facts” are in a constant state of change.

The amount of new knowledge produced every few years is greater than all the accumulated knowledge to date. The ability to succeed in the business world today (forget succeed—the ability even to get hired!) depends not so much on the quantity of information you know and how well you can follow orders but on your ability to think and act on your own. As Alvin Toffler put it, “The illiterate of the future are not those that cannot read or write, but those that cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.”

Today, people are not only changing jobs several times during their work lives; many of them are changing careers several times. Moreover, it has become increasingly clear that a satisfying life consists of more than business success. It requires a good sense of yourself, the ability to relate well to others, a positive sense of oneself, and lots more.

We need a new set of beliefs about education

The proposal for national standards to measure how much information has been learned in school is consistent with the existing beliefs about what education should be, but those beliefs are no longer appropriate. We need schools that operate consistently with a new sets of beliefs that are appropriate for today, one that opens the possibility for new educational strategies. There are some schools providing what is needed, but by definition they are “alternative” schools, operating outside the prevailing set of beliefs.

Let’s consider the difference between the “current” set of beliefs and a possible new one that is more appropriate for our time.

Compare the strategies resulting from different beliefs

Notice that the beliefs constituting the existing paradigm generate questions and strategies about how to achieve norms, obedience, and correct answers. The new beliefs lead to questions and strategies about how to motivate for lifelong learning, how to strengthen self-discipline, how to awaken curiosity, and how to encourage creative risk-taking in people of all ages.

Ron Miller, author of What Are Schools For?, describes the essence of this new paradigm:

Holistic educators recognize that all aspects of life are interconnected. They contend that education must be concerned with the physical, emotional, social, aesthetic/creative, and spiritual qualities of every person, as well as traditionally emphasized intellectual and vocational skills…. In our culture, education is implicitly equated with the transmission of information, particularly through written sources. But holistic educators have, for two centuries, asserted that education is an active engagement between a person and a vastly complex world. Holistic education emphasizes experience, not “Great Books” or a few “basic skills.” … Why limit students to a curriculum of academic subjects when the entire cosmos is at hand? Education, as John Dewey so eloquently argued, must not be seen as “preparation” for life—it is life! Education is growth, discovery, and a widening of horizons. This is just the opposite of traditional educational goals—discipline, order, high test scores—that aim to prepare children for the limited world which the adult generation has created.

If this description of an alternative model for education makes sense given today’s world, what educational strategies might we use to improve the educational system? We might focus on learning how to ask the right questions and how to think, rather than on dry facts that are not seen as relevant to one’s life. We might give students more responsibility for their own learning. We might use more learning experiences outside the classroom. We might relate the information that is taught to each student’s daily life. We might blend information from different areas together into core curricula so that students learn math when they study art and grammar when they study drama.

Strategies already exist that could solve most of today’s educational problems. What’s missing are the beliefs that would allow us to accept those strategies.

Please leave your comments and questions here about today’s post. I read them all and answer as many as I can.

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It Can’t Be Done

Morty Lefkoe — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 23:42:22 +0000

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“It can’t be done” is never the truth

What people really are saying when they utter these words is: “I don’t how how to do it.” Or, “it can’t be done the way we’ve always tried in the past.” Or, “it can’t be done according to the only way I can think of doing it.”

Here’s why “it can’t be done” is never an accurate statement, no matter what you are referring to

It is impossible to know anything, for certain, about the future. Given what we know we might be able to make reasonable predictions about the future, but we never know everything that might be relevant. Moreover, even if we did, things change all the time, making things that might have been very difficult yesterday relatively easy today

Many things that were considered impossible years ago have since happened. In fact, most “things” that exist today would have been considered impossible to someone living a couple of hundred years ago: airplanes, automobiles, television, space travel, heart transplants, and even indoor plumbing.

Actually we don’t have to go back that far. The personal computer, the Internet, video Skype calls to and from anyplace in the world (free), and cell phones would have been considered impossible even 50 years ago.

Any yet we are certain we are telling the truth when we say to others (and to ourselves): “It can’t be done.”

Steve Jobs Regularly Did The Impossible

Doing more of what we did yesterday isn’t very difficult. Even doing things a little differently or a little better isn’t very difficult. A lot of people do more, different or better every day. But doing something that has never been done before, that most people think is impossible isn’t that easy. It takes guts. It requires us to ignore the naysayers and not fear failure. Unfortunately most of us are all too willing to accept “it can’t be done” both from others and from ourselves.

Steve Jobs didn’t accept it. Ever. He transformed several industries (including mobile phones, the record business, and the personal computer) because he never accepted “It can’t be done” as an answer. And he heard that answer a lot because he was always asking people to do things that had never been done before. He insisted that it (whatever “it” was) could be done and, more often than not, the people who had told him that it couldn’t be done did it.

There are literally hundreds of examples of this from his career. One involves “gorilla glass,” the special glass used to manufacture the iPhone screen. As Walter Isaacson tells the story in his riveting biography of Steve Jobs: “Jobs decided it would feel much more elegant and substantive if the screens were glass. So he set about finding a glass that would be strong and resistant to scratches.”

Isaacson relates how a friend of Jobs told him about a glass that Corning had invented many years before that was exactly what he was looking for, but the company had never manufactured it. So Jobs went to visit the CEO of Corning, Wendell Weeks.

After Weeks told Jobs about the “gorilla glass” his firm had developed, Jobs said that he wanted as much as Corning could make within six months. Weeks responded: “We don’t have the capacity. None of our plants make the glass now.”

Issacson writes that Weeks “tried to explain that a false sense of confidence would not overcome engineering challenges, but that was a premise that Jobs had repeatedly shown he didn’t accept. He stared at Weeks unblinkingly.”

“Don’t be afraid,” Jobs replied. ”Get your mind around it. You can do it.”

“As Weeks retold this story, he shook his head in astonishment. ‘We did it in under six months,’ he said. ‘We produced a glass that had never been made.’”

The Lefkoe Belief Process—Possibilities

Some years ago after doing a lot of work in organizations I concluded that the most damaging belief in organizations was “I (or we) can’t ….” So I created a simple revision of the Lefkoe Belief Process that organizations could use to help employees quickly and easily eliminate “I can’t …” beliefs. Here is a link to a post I wrote that provides the actual steps of the LBP—Possibilities. http://www.mortylefkoe.com/get-rid-of-the-belief.

Creating Breakthroughs Can Be Fun

Many of us agree that we need breakthroughs in most of the important areas of life. In other words, what we are doing now doesn’t really work in government, in our educational system, in providing affordable health care for everyone, etc.

But breakthroughs, by definition, are something new, something that didn’t exist before. You won’t create a breakthrough if you only do things you know how to do. Unfortunately, for far too many people, anything that hasn’t existed before is considered impossible.

Breakthroughs always come for me when I try to do something I’ve never done before and that I don’t know how to do. I love to make promises that I don’t have any idea how I will keep, and then figure out how to keep them.

I did that with the first non-facilitated product we created. A friend of mine, Denis Hann, said to me that I would never really make a broad impact in the world if we only helped people eliminate beliefs in one-to-one sessions with people I had trained. No matter how many facilitators we trained, we’d never reach millions of people.

I agreed, but I had no idea how to create a product that would help people eliminate beliefs without a live facilitator. Denis said he would provide funds for a new company to create such a product if I could create it. It took over six months, but with the assistance of my wife Shelly and Denis’s friend and associate, Leszek Burzynski, I created a DVD product that helps people totally eliminates their fear of public speaking without a live facilitator

I also remember reading in a book about a fascinating distinction between reality and how reality occurs for us. I realized that most people never make that distinction between what actually happens in the world and the meaning we automatically and unconsciously give reality.

Shortly afterward I said to my staff: I’m going to create a course that will teach people how to make this distinction all the time and then easily and totally dissolve the “occurring” (the meaning we give reality). When they asked me if I knew how to do this, I replied, no, but I expected it would be a lot of fun figuring it out. (I did figure it out and the first course was a total success. We’re now in the middle of the seventh Lefkoe Occurring Course and the results improve every time we offer it.)

Good News and Bad News

I’ve got good news and bad news. The good news is that it is never true that “it can’t be done.” The only questions are how and when. The bad news also is that it is never true that “it can’t be done.” It’s bad news because people have just lost one of their best excuses for avoiding action.

If you really want to make a difference in the world and have fun doing it, commit to achieving some goals that seem impossible—that you don’t know how to accomplish—and then figure out how to achieve them. If you do that you’ll change the world and have a lot of fun doing i.

Please leave your comments and questions here about today’s post. I read them all and answer as many as I can.

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The Best of MortyLefkoe.com

Morty Lefkoe — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 00:01:45 +0000

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

Every month hundreds of new people sign up to receive this weekly blog. Most of them do not realize that there are now 132 posts describing the different processes that comprise The Lefkoe Method and explaining how to free yourself from your self-imposed limitations and create the life you want to live.

Even people who have been on this mailing list for over a year might not be aware of the useful material that was written before they found my blog.

So today I am going to provide you with a short description and a link to some of my favorite posts over the past few years. In addition to the ones listed below, please check out the Table of Contents on http://mortylefkoe.com for additional posts that you might find useful.

“Would You Like To Stop Worrying About What Others Think?” One of the most common problems people have is an almost-obsessive concern with the opinion of others, which often includes doing things you would not normally do just to get others to like or approve of you. In this post I explain what beliefs cause this problem. http://www.mortylefkoe.com/stop-worrying/#
“How Do Beliefs Produce ‘Driven,’ Compulsive Behavior?” Why are so many of us “driven” compulsively to do things that frequently aren’t in our own best self-interest? You probably aren’t surprised that my answer is: beliefs. But there is a specific type of belief that results in “driven” behavior. And it is formed in a very specific way. I explain in this post. http://www.mortylefkoe.com/how-do-beliefs-produce-driven-compulsive-behavior/#
“Can Beliefs Keep You From Becoming Wealthy?” Getting rid of beliefs will not guarantee that you become wealthy, but having certain beliefs about money can create a significant roadblock to financial abundance. Discover some of the most common limiting abundance beliefs. http://www.mortylefkoe.com/can-beliefs-keep-you-from-becoming-wealthy/#
“Get Into An Altered State Of Consciousness In Minutes” To experience a shift in one’s identity from “self” (one’s body, beliefs, thoughts, feelings, and behavior) to “SELF” (as consciousness, as a spiritual being) typically requires years of meditation. Some workshops claim to be able to provide that experience in several concentrated days. My “Who Am I Really?” Process assists people to make that shift in less than 30 minutes the first time and in less than 10 minutes thereafter. http://www.mortylefkoe.com/get-into-an-altered-state-of-consciousness-in-minutes/#
“Why Self-Help Often Doesn’t Work … And What Does” Knowing what to do, how to do it and why you should do it should be enough to change behavior. But it often isn’t. Why? See this post. http://www.mortylefkoe.com/111009/#
“How Relationships Are Affected By Beliefs” Because there are so many different types of relationship problems, there are many different beliefs that are the source of each of them. Here is a list. http://www.mortylefkoe.com/120109/#
“Getting Rid Of Beliefs Is Not Enough” Many problems—especially those involving emotions, such as anxiety and anger—are caused both by beliefs and conditioning. Here’s a description of how stimuli get conditioned to produce negative feelings. http://www.mortylefkoe.com/032310/#
“How To Build Confidence” What causes a lack of confidence and what can you do to increase your level of confidence? I answer these questions in detail in this post. http://www.mortylefkoe.com/040610/#
“What Do You Want A Lot Of That Will Hurt You When You Get It?” The answer might surprise you. Take a look. http://www.mortylefkoe.com/what-do-you-want-a-lot-of-that-will-hurt-you-when-you-get-it/#
“How To Control Anger” In this post I explain the source of both our anger and the fear of other’s anger. In most cases there are only a few beliefs and conditionings. http://www.mortylefkoe.com/041310/#
“Are You A Victim?” Most people have some attributes of a victim. What are they and where do they come from? Why is victimization so common? http://www.mortylefkoe.com/victim/#
“How To Create New Possibilities In Your Life” This is not about manifesting our thoughts and feelings with the Law of Attraction. This post describes how you always literally create possibilities for your life that didn’t exist before when you eliminate limiting beliefs. http://www.mortylefkoe.com/how-to-create-new-possibilities-in-your-life/#

Please leave your comments and questions here about any of my earlier posts. I read them all and answer as many as I can.

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How to build your self-confidence

Morty Lefkoe — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 22:51:28 +0000

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

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

But why?

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

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

What is confidence?

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

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

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

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

How to improve your level of confidence

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

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

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

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

Some of the consequences of low self-confidenc

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

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

How building confidence improves your life

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

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

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Do you know the difference in the many personal growth materials?

Morty Lefkoe — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 22:48:08 +0000

I’d like to slightly modify a story we’ve all heard before in order to enable you to get greater value from the many personal growth products and services.

If you give a man a fish, he will eat fish today but not have any fish for future meals. If you teach a man to fish, he will be able to eat fish forever as long as he is willing to catch the fish.

There is a third possibility that is not often talked about: If you transform the man’s diet (for instance, have him become a vegetarian) so that he doesn’t eat fish any more, his problem of not having fish to eat is solved forever.

Let’s apply the principle of this story to the rash of personal growth products and services we are offered daily.

Giving a man a fish is equivalent to doing something that will make people feel better. Workshops that result in participants leaving “on a high” are a good example of this. There is nothing wrong with seeking and enjoying products and services that merely provide a good experience at the moment, but it is important to realize that such “high” experiences usually have no lasting impact.

Teaching a man to fish is equivalent to giving people information, which if they used, would improve their lives. Workshops and books that provide people with useful information are a good example of this. There clearly is some “take-away” value, but the material must be used to be useful.

Transforming a man so he doesn’t need fish any more because he no longer eats fish is equivalent to eliminating the source of, or transcending, people’s behavioral or emotional problems. For example, when you eliminate the beliefs and conditionings that cause procrastinating, feeling anxious, or worrying about what others think of you, those problems disappear. No further action is required to achieve these benefits.

What’s been your experience with all three types?

Most people who are reading this probably have attended a workshop or read a book that promised a transformation, which gave you the feeling of being “transformed at the time,” but then resulted in you feeling disappointed when the “high” wore off a few days later and there were no permanent improvements in your life.

Most of you probably have attended some type of course or read some book that offered some really useful information. This material spelled out in detail how to improve your relationships (like my blog post last week) or become successful. The information truly is valuable because most people will achieve what the courses and written material promise if you implement what they teach.

Lasting change

Relatively rare are spiritual practices or belief-eliminating programs that actually transform you permanently, so that thereafter you deal with life differently and feel differently about specific situations.

The third category of personal growth material is not inherently better than the second. Both the second and third types of personal growth material can make a profound difference in your life, but there is still a significant difference between the two. And in order for you to get the most value from what you spend your time and money on, you should be clear about the difference.

Before you purchase material that teaches you how to do something, make sure you are committed to fully implementing the information. Not using it at all or stopping before the full benefit is achieved will result in a lot of frustration and wasting your money. If you are committed to using what you learn, then books like Jack Canfield’s The Success Principles, Marci Shimoff’s Happiness For No Reason, John Gray’s many Mars-Venus books on relationships, and any of Ivan Misner’s books on networking. are invaluable. My weekly blog posts are another example of the second type of personal growth material.

Certain meditation classes, workshops with people like Andrew Cohen (founder of Enlighten Next, and sessions where you use The Lefkoe Method to eliminate beliefs and conditionings (and create yourself as the creator of your life) are examples of the third type of personal growth material. You leave these experiences with a different experience of who you really are, there are permanent changes in what you do and how you feel, and your life is demonstrably improved from then on.

There is value in each of these three types of personal growth offerings, but the value is very different. Be clear what you are looking for and then make sure that what you purchase provides you what you want.

What do you think about the three different types of personal growth products and services? 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.

Eliminate The Fear That Stops You

Morty Lefkoe — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 00:58:12 +0000

Have you ever told yourself that you were going to do something—something you really wanted to do—and then just never get around to it? If you are, you are like millions of others and Seth Godin’s new book is about you.

I read his newest book, Poke the Box, a few months ago and it’s just the right book for our times. It probably will become his 13^th best-seller.

You need to take action

If you’ve read any of his earlier books or his daily blog (which I devour as soon as it arrives in my inbox), you know that Seth is passionate about innovation and change. And, he stresses repeatedly, if you want to produce something new and change anything, you have to start and you have to “ship,” in other words, create a product or service and then make it available.

In other words, get an idea for something new that people will find valuable and willing to pay for and then stay with it until it’s ready to ship. But everyone knows that. Do we need another book that repeats that obvious truth?

He is talking about business, but the point he is making applies to all of us, all the time, outside of business. Life is about making things happen, not just thinking about what we would like to make happen.

The reason we need Seth’s book is that, despite the fact that the need to start and ship (the need to move forward in life) is obvious, most people don’t do it.

Seth correctly says that the major reason is fear of failure. We are afraid to make mistakes and to fail. And anytime you are trying something new, something that hasn’t been proven to work before, there is always the possibility of a mistake or failure.

Why do we all fear failure?

Seth spends most of his latest book encouraging people to overcome this fear and giving them tips on how to do it.

I totally agree with Seth that what is needed most in this world is innovation that is turned into products and services and then shipped. I also agree that fear of mistakes and failure is the biggest barrier to people doing this.

But I have a slight disagreement about why so many people are afraid. Yes, we do have a reptilian brain where the only thing that counts is our survival. That’s why anything we perceive as threatening our survival will produce the emotion of fear.

But what determines what we perceive to be a threat to our survival? If you are a regularly reader of my posts, you won’t be surprised when I say the answer is beliefs. In this case, two specific beliefs.

What makes people fear mistakes and failure are two beliefs that most people seem to have: Mistakes and failure are bad and If I make a mistake or fail I’ll be rejected. If you think it is bad to make a mistake or fail and that you will be rejected if you do either of these two things, you will experience fear and, in far too many cases, the fear will inhibit action.

The source of the “fear of failure” beliefs

Why are these two beliefs so common? Well, let’s take a look at how they were formed. Most parents never take parenting classes on learning how to be an effective parent and most parents bring their own “baggage” with them to the job of parenting. Moreover, most parents have unreasonable expectations for their children. For example, most parents expect toddlers to come when called, sit still, not make too much noise, and do what they are told to do. All of these things are virtually impossible for a toddler.

How do parents respond when their expectations are not met? In the best of cases with mild annoyance and frustration—in the worst of cases with physical abuse. The reaction of most parents is in-between these two extremes. Most parents get angry and repeat the phrases that have become clichés in our society: “How many times do I have to tell you?” “Don’t you ever listen?” “Why can’t you do what I tell you?” “What’s wrong with you?” Many of our clients tell us about their parents’ “look.”

What meaning does a four-to-six-year-old give to his parents’ response? I’m not doing what my parents want. I don’t seem to be able to give them what they want. I’m making mistakes and failing. And because mom and dad are angry, that must be bad. And because it feels like my parents don’t love me when they are angry at me and it feels like they are withdrawing from me, it feels like I’m being rejected.

Yes, most schools also create an environment in which these two beliefs are likely to be formed. Unfortunately most kids have already created these beliefs at home before the age of six, before they ever got to school.

How do I know this? Because my associates and I have helped over 13,000 clients eliminate the beliefs that cause most of the problems in their lives and most of these clients have had these two beliefs about mistakes and failure. And the type of parenting behavior I described above is the source of the beliefs for almost all of them.

That’s the bad news. Here’s the good news.

Beliefs like these can be quickly and permanently eliminated. And what I’ve discovered from my work with clients is that as soon as these two beliefs are eliminated (sometimes a few other core beliefs are required), the fear of failure literally disappears. Forever.

So maybe the best way to create a world in which most people are willing to “poke the box”—to create a new idea, then start work on it and then ship it—is to help millions of people get rid of the beliefs that are preventing such behavior.

Steps of a process to eliminate the beliefs

Here are the steps of a modified version of the Lefkoe Belief Process^® that will enable most people to eliminate these two beliefs about mistakes and failure (and most other beliefs) permanently. (Literally tens of thousands of people have gotten rid of these beliefs using this process.) Just ask someone these questions and allow them to answer. I’ll provide the answers that most people with the belief, Mistakes and failure are bad, have given.

Step 1: What is the belief?

Mistakes and failure are bad.

Step 2: What is the source of the belief? What happened (usually before the age of six if it’s a self-esteem belief) that led to this belief being formed?

Mom and dad were critical of me when I didn’t do what they wanted, when they wanted, or the way they wanted. They said things like: “Can’t you do anything right?” “When are you going to learn?” Sometimes they’d just look and sound disappointed and sometimes they got angry and yelled.

Step 3: Can you see that, although the meaning you gave the events (your belief) is one logically valid interpretation, there are three of four others? Name a few other possible meanings for my behavior and mom and dad’s reaction to it.

Mom and dad’s annoyance at me when I didn’t live up to their expectations could have several meanings: Mom and dad thought mistakes and failure were bad, but they were wrong. Mistakes and failure were bad in my house; they might not have been bad in other households. Mom and dad didn’t understand that mistakes and failure can be great learning experiences and aren’t bad at all. Mom and dad got annoyed at me, not because mistakes and failure are bad, but because they had unreasonable expectations of me as a young child.

Step 4: After helping find several other interpretations, ask: Can you see that your interpretation (your belief) is not the truth, it is only a truth, one possible interpretation of several that explain the events? The answer usually will be, yes.

Yes. It is only a truth.

Step 5: Imagine being present during the earlier events where your belief was formed. Doesn’t it seem as if you can see [the words of the belief]? The answer usually will be, yes.

I did see it.

Step 6. Can you really “see” [the words of the belief]? If you can really “see” it, tell me what it looks like, the shape, color, and location?

I can’t see it. The belief was only in my mind, not in the world.

Step 7. Can you get that, although there certainly were consequences of mom and dad’s comments and behavior, it had no meaning? In other words, you don’t know anything for sure about mistakes and failure merely from how your parents responded to your behavior as a child, do you?

No, I don’t. The childhood events have no inherent meaning. Only the meaning I gave them.

Step 8. Say the words of the belief. … Does this statement still feel like the truth? The answer usually will be, no.

The belief is gone.

As always, don’t take my word for what I claim. I urge you to try the exercises I present in my posts so you can discover for yourself that they work and result in profound changes in people. To see the steps of this process in action and to eliminate the belief, Mistakes and failure are bad, yourself, please go to: http://recreateyourlife.com/free/mistakes.php.

Try this and then let me know what results you produced. Tell me if your fear of taking action disappears.

What do you think about how our fear of failure beliefs stops us from acting? 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.

(This post is an edited version of a post I wrote for Amex Open Forum on March 18, 2011.)

What Do YOU Want To Know About Occurring?

Morty Lefkoe — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 23:27:41 +0000

I have a question to ask you but before I ask, I’d like to give you some background.

First, you, along with tens of thousands of others who have used The Lefkoe Method, have sent me many hundreds of testimonials about the incredible results you’ve gotten from eliminating one of the common beliefs on the free program, from one of our DVD or streaming video programs, or from one-on-one sessions. Thanks for taking the time to do that. We at Lefkoe Institute are inspired each day by your messages.

But some of the most profound testimonials we’ve received have come from people who’ve taken one of the four courses we’ve offered on how to dissolve your occurrings. If you’ve been following my blog for a while, you’ve read one of my posts about how the single most powerful thing you can do to improve the quality of your life is to learn how to dissolve your occurrings. If you don’t know much about it, check out this short (12 minute) video that will explain it in detail. http://occurringcourse.com/occurring-works/

Essentially, you and I give meaning to events as they happen (which is how they “occur” for us) and don’t realize that there is a difference between the actual events and the occurring. For example, our spouse asks us: Did you do so-and-so for me? That is the actual event, in other words, what actually happened. For many of us, however, it would occur as either: He/she doesn’t trust me to do what he/she has asked. Or, why won’t he/she get off my back and leave me alone! Or, why should I do it; why doesn’t he/she do it him/herself? Etc.

And because we don’t distinguish between reality and our occurrings, we assume that our occurrings are reality and we respond as if they are.

I’ve learned so much during the past four courses about why we have occurrings, how to distinguish between them and reality, four different techniques to dissolve them quickly and easily, why it is more difficult to dissolve them when you have strong emotions, how to be able to do that when in the grip of strong emotions, why the testimonials from people in the occurring courses seem to be more profound than people who’ve only eliminated beliefs, etc.

Please tell me what you would like to know about occurring? I’ll either write a blog post or make a short video that answers the most commonly asked questions.

P.S. Thanks to the 80+ people who commented on my last blog post. Thanks for taking the time to provide a thoughtful response and for your suggestions. We are looking into how to implement some of the most popular recommendations. We will definitely offer a training in the next few months to teach you how to eliminate a belief once you’ve identified it.

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 checkout: 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 To Create A Better Relationship

Morty Lefkoe — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 20:34:52 +0000

Are you one of the millions of people who have been unable to find a loving, fulfilling, and exciting relationship?

I am convinced that everyone can have the relationship of his dreams if he got rid of the beliefs that get in the way. I speak from experience because I had two marriages that failed because of my limiting self-esteem and relationship beliefs. After eliminating them I found and married Shelly, to whom I will be married 30 years in just a few months. People who know us are inspired by the incredible relationship we have.

People can have several different types of relationship problems. Either they can’t find one (and they hate the dating game), or they had one and it failed (leading to a lot of emotional pain and upset), or they are still in one that just doesn’t work or isn’t nurturing (leading to constant unhappiness, frustration, and anger).

There is a fourth possibility that is even worse: being in a relationship that doesn’t really work and assuming that this is the best a relationship can possibly be. That leads to constant dissatisfaction, but no hope for improvement because people in this situation don’t think anything better is possible.

We’ve been asked many times to create a package of beliefs and conditionings that would help people in each one of these situations. Unfortunately, because each relationship is so different, the beliefs and conditionings involved also can be different, so a generic DVD program for the “average” person is impossible (at least at the moment, because nothing is ever really impossible in the long run).

I can, however, describe the type of beliefs and conditionings involved in different types of relationship problems. To begin with, negative self-esteem beliefs are usually involved in all of them, apart from the specific beliefs and conditionings related to specific problems. So beliefs like I’m not good enough, I’m not important, I’m powerless, I’m not deserving, etc. are a partial cause of almost any relationship problem.

Here are some of the beliefs that our clients, who have had a wide variety of relationship problems, have shared with us.

If you are having a hard time forming a relationship, you probably believe: Relationships are difficult. This can exist in various forms, such as Relationships don’t work, relationships require a lot of effort, etc. You probably believe men/women can’t be trusted. Other common beliefs are: There are no good men/women left out there. Marriage is suffocating. I’ll lose myself in a relationship. Men are jerks/selfish/dangerous/ have all the power/cheat. One self-esteem belief that is very applicable to relationship problems is I’m unlovable. All of the beliefs that cause a lack of confidence (see the list in the Natural Confidence program [http://recreateyourlife.com/naturalconfidence]) could be relevant in this situation. And there is at least one conditioning applicable to this situation: fear associated with rejection.

If you’re just left a failed relationship, you are likely to have concluded a bunch of negative beliefs about yourself and your former partner (which you probably hold as applicable to an entire gender) based on the specific problems you had in the relationship. You also ought to check out the beliefs involved in feeling like a victim, which include: Life is difficult, I’ll never get what I want, Things never work out for me, People can’t be trusted, and I can’t count on others.

If you are in a relationship that doesn’t work but you stay in it, you probably have many of the beliefs already mentioned, in addition to: This is all I deserve. I’ll never find anything better. I can’t make it on my own. I need a man/woman in order to survive. One very common problem in non-nurturing relationships is a fear of conflict and anger. This is usually caused by Anger is dangerous and Conflict is dangerous, along with two conditionings: Fear associated with anger and fear associated with conflict. The fear of anger and conflict keep people from standing up for themselves and saying what they want and need. And when their partner expresses anger it leads to withdrawal instead of a conversation to resolve the issue. (That was a major problem of mine for most of my life.)

In my recent post about not knowing what you don’t know (http://www.mortylefkoe.com/dont-dont/), I pointed out that often we don’t strive for something better in various areas of our life because we don’t think there is anything better. This is certainly true of relationships. Despite the fact that half of all marriages end in divorce, there are so many unhappy couples that stay together because the partners aren’t aware that something better is even possible. Such people can have any of the beliefs already mentioned, in addition to beliefs that blind them to the possibility that a better relationship is possible.

Please share your thoughts about what makes relationships work and not work with me and your fellow readers. And if you’ve identified any specific beliefs I didn’t mention that underlie any type of relationship problem, please share them also.

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Are you a victim?

Morty Lefkoe — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 19:12:54 +0000

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We all know people who are “victims”—people who view their lives through the filter: “It’s not my fault. They (or it) did it to me.” When you understand what the feeling of victimization really is, where it comes from, and how it affects people, you will discover it is even more widespread and debilitating than you might think.

The primary source of feeling like a victim is the feeling of powerlessness and, because we don’t like feeling that we are powerless, we tend to blame someone or something for causing that feeling. So we feel that we are a victim of circumstances or other people’s actions and we can’t do anything about it. Being a victim is experiencing yourself at the effect of something outside yourself.

Photo credit: jillallyn

Thus the single most important belief responsible for the feeling of victimization is I’m powerless. Other beliefs that could underlie this feeling include: I’ll never get what I want, People can’t be trusted, and Life is difficult.

Why feeling victimized is so debilitating

The reason feeling victimized is so debilitating is that it undermines your ability to do anything about your situation. If you are having difficulties in any area of your life, such as relationships or money, and you experience yourself as powerful and in control of your life, you can devise a strategy to improve your situation. And if one solution doesn’t work, you can learn from your experience and try again.

But if you have a victim mentality—in other words, if you feel powerless to affect your circumstances—you are likely to feel that the world is “doing it” to you and that there is nothing you can do about it.

That’s why this is one of the most devastating problems you can have: If you have any other problem, but see yourself as responsible for your situation, you have the ability to look for and implement a solution. If you have the problem of feeling victimized by life or other people, you are less likely to look for and implement a solution because you feel you can’t do anything about your situation.

Most victims can be identified by their conversation, which consists of a lot of “woe is me” and “it’s not my fault” language. However, there also is the “stoic” victim. Such people do not complain and keep a “stiff upper lip,” but underneath they experience a sense of victimization. Such people frequently don’t even let themselves know how they are feeling.

So victims are not just people who speak their victimization, but also those who have that experience underneath a veneer of confidence and “Everything’s okay; really it is.”

Typical characteristics of victims

Here are a few other important characteristics of victims:

People who are victims usually don’t see that the only thing in common between all the people and situations they think they have been victimized by is themselves.

Victims usually are people you can’t depend on, because they deny responsibility for their actions. They are quick to blame other people and situations for anything that doesn’t work in their lives.

Victims don’t have resilience, which is the ability to quickly bounce back after being knocked down.

Victims generally are passive.

Victims are usually angry at the people or events they think have “done them wrong,” and underneath the feeling of anger is almost always the feeling of powerlessness.

Successful people are rarely victims. One might be able to be a victim and still make money in rare cases, but usually it would be difficult for victims to be successful. To be successful you need to learn from your mistakes and try again. Victims are, by definition, people who do not acknowledge responsible for their actions and who blame outside forces.

So if you are a victim or know someone else who is, what can you do to help yourself or the other person? Fortunately, the source of this problem is similar to the source of almost every other problem: your beliefs. Reality and other people are not causing you to feel like a victim; your beliefs are. Get rid of the beliefs that cause the problem and the feeling of victimization will disappear for good.

Please share below any comments you have on my thoughts about victimization.

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.

To purchase a DVD program that I guarantee to help you significantly improve your confidence and also eliminate the major day-to-day problems that most people face, check out http://recreateyourlife.com/store/natural-confidence.php.

What’s the difference between change and transformation?

Morty Lefkoe — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 21:23:00 +0000

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If you’re reading this blog post you probably are interested in transformation. But I suspect that what you mean by transformation is very different from what others mean by the same word.

I’m a member of the Transformational Leadership Council, a group of “transformational” leaders, and I’ll bet if I asked each member what he/she meant by the term transformation we would get almost as many definitions as there are members.

So I would like to suggest a definition of transformation, not as the last word on the subject, but as a starting place for a discussion that I hope you will join after reading this post.

A butterfly emerging from its cocoon. (Photo by Randy Read)

Three types of change

I’d like to start by distinguishing between three very different types of change. Let’s call them first, second, and third order change. (I got my idea about three types of change from Gregory Bateson’s distinction between three types of learning in his book, Steps to an Ecology of Mind.)

First order change is a change in behavior that is consistent with your existing worldview, your existing beliefs, your existing “creation” (who you think you are). Let me give you an example. If you believe exercise is good and you like to exercise and you have beliefs that lead you to exercise regularly—and then you learn about a different exercise routine that would be better for your health—you probably would start using the new routine.

First order change is a change in behavior that does not require a change in one’s beliefs, in one’s view of oneself, in one’s “creation.” It only requires information you didn’t know before.

Second order change is a change in who we think we are in order to implement a change that is inconsistent with who we think we are.

In an earlier post I made the point that information and motivation usually do not result in change because often information is inconsistent with your belief system. And in the long run, it is difficult to act inconsistently with your beliefs.

So if we believe exercise is not necessary, that we don’t have time for it (because it is way down on our list of values), and that it is not fun, then learning about a new exercise or even learning that exercise is good for our health probably will not result in us using the new information we have gotten about exercising.

In order for that to happen, we need to change something about ourselves, probably our beliefs about exercise.

Second order change is a shift in your worldview, your beliefs, your “creation”—that opens up new possibilities for new actions that weren’t possible before.

If second order change is changing from one creation (our overall view of who we think we are) to a different creation, then third order change is being able to distinguish yourself as the creator of your creation. As such you have the ability to create a new creation at any time, which would create new possibilities and make any new information useable.

Categorizing offerings from the Lefkoe Institute

When I take a look at what we at the Lefkoe Institute offer people, I would say that my blog and most of my videos are representative of first order change. In other words, they provide information that will be useful and used by people who already have certain beliefs and will not be used (or even understood) by people with different beliefs.

If second order change consists of changing your beliefs and your “creation,” then the processes that eliminate beliefs and conditionings on all of our streaming video and DVD packages and in our one-on-one sessions provide second order change.

For example, in the Natural Confidence program you change from someone with a low level of self-confidence to someone with a high level of self-confidence. You also change from someone who is concerned about what others think of you to someone who is no longer concerned with what others think of you.

In fact, whenever you eliminate even one belief, you are changing your creation. You can see possibilities for your life that you couldn’t see before and you can do and feel things you couldn’t do and feel before.

To make this real, ask yourself what are the possibilities for a nurturing, long-term relationship for someone with the beliefs: I’m not lovable, relationships don’t work, men/women can’t be trusted. And what are the possibilities for someone with the opposite beliefs: I am lovable, relationships can work, and men/women can be trusted? Can you get how changing a few beliefs can drastically shift your sense of yourself and change the possibilities in your life?

Helping people stop their emotional eating using the Lefkoe De-conditioning Process is another example of a second order change program. Who you think you are changes from someone with an eating problem to someone who no longer has that eating problem. For someone who struggles daily with the problem of overeating, being able to totally eliminate that problem is not a negligible thing. This second order change program is life-changing. So I am not minimizing second order change programs.

So what is an example of a third order change program? The Who Am I Really? (WAIR?) Process, which is offered on all our streaming video and DVDs packages, and is a part of most of our one-on-one sessions, enables you to experience yourself as the creator of your creation. In that state you profoundly experience that you are not merely any given creation, you are the creator of all of them.

Our new Occurring Course is a good example of a third order change program because you learn how to change your experience of life at will by dissolving what you had thought was reality (in other words, how reality was occurring for you) and be left facing naked reality, without any meaning attached to it. Learning how to use the Lefkoe Occurring Process (LOP) in this course enables you to shift how you experience life, to eliminate negative feelings in moments, and to create a host of new possibilities for your life.

Interestingly enough, using the LOP to dissolve your “occurrings” usually puts you into the same “creator state” as the WAIR? Process, where you experience no limitations and unlimited possibilities. In this altered state of consciousness you experience yourself as the creator of your life, not as a specific creation.

All three types of change can be extremely valuable

Getting information you did not have before that you are able to use to improve your life can make a profound impact on your life (first order change).

Shifting your experience of yourself from one creation to another and creating new possibilities for your life that did not exist before can make a profound impact on your life (second order change).

And distinguishing yourself as the creator of your life—as opposed to a specific creation—and being able to change your experience of yourself and life at will can make a profound impact on your life (third order change).

So classifying change and programs that produce change into three categories is not at all meant to diminish one type or exalt another. All are different and each can be useful in different situations.

However, I suggest that the term “transformation” be reserved for the third type of change. This is change that results in you distinguishing yourself as the changer and not that which is being changed, that empowers you to initiate continued change on your own, and that enables you to create your experience of life moment by moment.

Please share below any comments you have on first, second, and third order change and my ideas on transformation.

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.

To purchase a DVD program that I guarantee to help you significantly improve your confidence and also eliminate the major day-to-day problems that most people face, please check out http://recreateyourlife.com/naturalconfidence.

Proof: Three Scientific Studies Prove The Lefkoe Method Works

Morty Lefkoe — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 21:35:28 +0000

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We are almost ready to submit an article to a major peer-reviewed journal based on a just-completed independent university study of The Lefkoe Method and it made me realize that I’ve never blogged about our two prior studies.

All three studies are exciting because very few people in the personal growth area have ever submitted their work to independent researchers at a major institution and encouraged them to study their products and services.

We have now done this three times and each time the results proved that The Lefkoe Method (TLM) does make significant changes in people’s lives.

The first study with incarcerated offenders

The first study was conducted in 1995 with incarcerated offenders, both adults and teens, just before they were released. The purpose of the study was: “We propose to examine the efficacy of the Decision Maker^® Process [since renamed the Lefkoe Belief Process] as an intervention to improve self-esteem, enhance an internal locus of control, and to reduce hostility, social alienation and anti-social behavior in eight incarcerated criminals.”

What were the results? Here is the conclusion drawn by Dr. Lee Sechrest, Professor Emeritus at the University of Arizona and the chief researcher:

“The simplest, and we think fairly compelling conclusion, is that the intervention resulted in generally favorable changes in self-concept in the Experimental group [the group that eliminated beliefs using the Lefkoe Belief process] and that without intervention, self-concepts would likely have deteriorated during confinement….

“All in all, this little experiment has to be regarded as a fairly remarkable success. Certainly it justifies efforts to carry out further testing to determine whether the changes observed can be dependably produced. If they can, the DM Process [the Lefkoe Belief Process] could have definite promise in helping young male offenders mend their ways.”

His comments, which were cloaked in academic jargon, don’t come close to revealing the effects of our first research attempt. Here are a few statements from subjects at the end of the study:

“Last weekend I went home and was with my buddies. They all carry guns and I felt like going home to get mine. Normally I would have gone and gotten it. Instead I just left. I had gone with them deliberately just to see what I would do. In the future I don’t plan to hang out with these guys anymore.”

“I no longer ‘rank’ on my little brother when I go home. Now I feel like I’m getting healthy. I’m going back to school and getting a high school diploma. I can get somewhere. You gave me a boost to get somewhere. I don’t even think about selling drugs anymore.”

“I’m not straining like I used to. I’m not self-destructive anymore. It doesn’t feel like I have to bite the bullet. My life used to be very strange, scary. I was afraid life would be a bore. I needed drugs to keep life from being boring. Always lived for the moment. None of this is true anymore.”

“I had thought about a career in drug and alcohol abuse counseling, but I liked easy money so I stayed selling drugs and never pursued it. I never thought about the possible consequences of selling drugs: getting killed, prison, etc. Before there was no worry, no fear. Now I am aware of what I have to lose if I go back to negative ways of thinking and acting. I used to solve all my problems with ‘F— it!’ Now money is not the greatest issue, happiness is.”

The second study with people who feared public speaking

Our first study was conducted with a few subjects and really was only a pilot. But the results were impressive enough to get Dr. Sechrest to agree to conduct another study in 2006. The purpose of this second study was to determine if The Lefkoe Method could totally eliminate the fear of public speaking.

The results of this study were published in a peer-reviewed journal, Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy and stated:

“The large, positive changes on all outcome measures subsequent to treatment give strong support to the claim of efficacy of the TLM for reducing fear associated with speaking in public. … The TLM resulted in substantial decreases or complete eliminations of fear, accompanied by positive changes in confidence and reduced negative sensations felt during speaking in public in the experimental group. Overall, the TLM appears to have potential as an effective, quick, and convenient procedure to eliminate the fear of speaking in public.” (Emphasis added.)

Specifically, the mean level of fear for subjects before they used TLM at the start of the study was 7, with 1 being no anxiety at all and 10 being extreme fear. After eliminating the relevant beliefs and conditionings, the mean level for fear was 1.5.

In a follow up six months later, the fear level was still only 1.9.

The third study is finally complete

The latest study, also conducted at the University of Arizona but by different researchers, is finally complete after over a year’s worth of testing.

We compared a group of people who purchased our Natural Confidence program (which eliminates 19 of the most common beliefs and 4 of the most common conditionings) with a group of students who used the same program, a group of people who used a Tony Robbins CD program, and with a control group. We then compared the effects we found with those found in several different studies that used the same measures we did to evaluate the impact of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.

The results, which I will not reveal until they have been peer-reviewed by experts in the field (this is standard practice in science), support most of the claims we have been making for TLM and Natural Confidence. We observed significant improvements in virtually everything we measured, including improvements of almost 50% in one area.

I look forward to sharing specific results as soon as our work has been peer-reviewed and the journal article is published.

We want to conduct more studies

At this point we would like to initiate a number of other studies.

I would like to validate our experience that emotional eating can be totally stopped in a matter of hours, despite the fact that nothing else has ever been able to do that.
I want to prove that TLM can totally “cure” a number of specific psychological problems, such as social anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and depression.
I want to investigate and learn more about the profound results that have been produced during the Occurring Courses.
And finally I would like independent evidence to prove that each of our programs does what we claim it to do, such as get rid of the fear of rejection, stop worrying about what people think of you, stop the little voice in your head that is often so critical of you, and end procrastination.

I have several reasons for wanting to get as many studies as we can get.

First, hardly anyone else in the personal growth field is willing to submit their work to independent researchers to see if their claims can be validated. (The Hoffman Process is a notable exception.) We not only welcome it, we are actively seeking researchers to work with TLM.

Second, the only way to get the licensed psychotherapists to take The Lefkoe Method seriously and start to use it with their clients is to prove its effectiveness in controlled research studies. We could help additional millions of people if TLM became an acceptable technique for psychotherapists.

And finally, the biggest problem the Lefkoe Institute has in getting people to try its products and services is skepticism: Many people have a hard time believing that beliefs can be permanently eliminated in a matter of minutes and problems that have existed for years can be permanently eliminated in a matter of a few hours. Studies from independent researchers that prove our claims to be true might help to overcome this skepticism.

Please share below any comments you have on our research studies.

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How to eliminate suffering and get enlightened

Morty Lefkoe — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 17:01:45 +0000

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There are two fundamentally different ways in which we can experience ourselves.

First, the way most of us usually experience ourselves: as a creation—a separate entity distinct from other entities, whose survival is always at stake. Some people call this the ego.

Second, as the creator of that creation—as consciousness, as Self, as non-dual awareness, as that which has always existed and always will exist.

The creation is experienced as an entity that is either “good enough” or “not good enough.” The creator, consciousness, Self is not experienced as someThing; rather it is a state of consciousness in which one experiences oneself as whole and complete, with nothing missing. On the other hand, because the creation is something specific, there is always something it is not, in other words, there is always something missing.

What is enlightenment?

Enlightenment consists of distinguishing yourself and then experiencing (as distinct from understanding) that you already are the creator, Self, consciousness—not merely the creation—it’s just that most people haven’t experienced it yet.

Therefore, transformation or enlightenment is not a place to get to; you are already there. And transformation or enlightenment is nothing more than (continually) creating that experience for yourself.

Why we need self-esteem

If we are going to experience ourselves as a creation, we need a high level of self-esteem. Why? Because when we experience ourselves as someThing whose survival is always at stake, we need to believe I’m able to survive (good enough, important, capable), and worthy of surviving. (Nathaniel Branden was the first person I know to point this out.) And a high level of self-esteem is more conducive to our survival than a low level of self-esteem.

But when you distinguish yourself as the creator of the creation (which you can easily experience with the “Who Am I Really?” Process), then a paradox occurs: you no longer need a high level of self-esteem (because your survival is no longer in question) and you experience yourself as whole and complete, as okay just the way you are, with nothing missing, anything is possible, and no limitations—which “feels like” a high level of self-esteem.

Although it is possible to change the creation (by eliminating our beliefs about ourselves, which changes how we act and feel)—the very fact of experiencing ourselves as a creation will necessarily result in experiencing something missing, some limitations, and, as the Buddha said: some degree of suffering.

Some suffering seems to be inherent in the experience of ourselves as a creation, an entity whose survival is always at stake. Let me explain why.

If some things are good for us (conducive to our survival), then other things are bad for us (a threat to our survival). And when we encounter anything that we consider to be a threat to our survival, we feel anxiety and suffer. Depending on our beliefs and who we think are, we can be threatened by people who are angry at us, not being liked by people, making mistakes, not reaching our goals—in other words, by anything that we consider “bad.”

In other words, when anything we consider ourselves to be (a good parent, a hard worker, a sexy person) is threatened, we feel anxiety because we think who we are is in danger of extinction.

When we experience ourselves as a creation with a low level of self-esteem, our lives become about acquiring self-esteem. We create survival strategies—which are substitutes for self-esteem—that run our lives, such as having people think well of us, taking care of others, or doing things perfectly. We think these survival strategies will make us good enough or important. Unfortunately, it’s an endless quest because they never really work, although they can ameliorate anxiety for the moment.

The Lefkoe Method has two purposes

This is why The Lefkoe Method has a two-fold purpose: to help you change your creation (for example, from not good enough to good enough) … and also to facilitate you to distinguish and then experience yourself as the creator of the creation.

As long as you have human form you probably will experience that that form’s survival is always at stake. But it is possible to transcend that experience and distinguish yourself as the creator at any time. In that transcendent state, you experience that you are the space in which reality and time show up, that you always were and always will be, and that survival is never an issue.

So although it is possible to minimize suffering by changing the creation (eliminating beliefs that lead to dysfunctional behavior and feelings), as long as you experience yourself as a creation, suffering is always lurking just around the corner. The best way to relieve suffering is to create yourself as the creator, as Self, as non-dual awareness.

An alternative method

There seems to be a second method that I’ve been exploring recently: to detach oneself from the dualistic world in which we live—to dissolve the meaning we impose on meaningless reality—and face reality stripped bare of all meaning. When the meaning is gone, anxiety and suffering will be gone too.

Suffering and any other unpleasant emotion are the result of adding the meaning: “bad for me” (as distinct from good for me)—to a meaningless event. That meaning causes the suffering. Human beings are always creating meaning because we need to know: good or bad for my survival.

So there appears to be two ways to relieve suffering: to experience yourself as the creator—as distinct from the creation, or to act very un-creation-like and dissolve all the meaning from events, to live totally in the moment. The Lefkoe Occurring Process was designed to do just that.

Please share any comments you have on these thoughts on enlightenment and how to relieve suffering.

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You Create Your Experience of Reality

Morty Lefkoe — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 23:28:19 +0000

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When you realize that you never saw your beliefs in the world, that you only saw events that had no inherent meaning, it becomes clear that you create your beliefs—and, ultimately, reality as you experience it. Thus, everything we say is “out there”—other than what we sense (in other words, what we touch, see, hear, smell, or taste)—is a distinction we create that exists only in our mind.

Creation is the act of making distinctions

For example, you walk down the street and think you actually see “men” and “women,” when you actually only perceive what we have defined as individual human beings. You describe these human beings as “men” or “women,” but you have never actually seen “men” or “women”; they are only abstractions you have distinguished and imposed on reality. If you were to arbitrarily distinguish people into those taller and those shorter than six feet, you would eventually walk down the street and think you are seeing “shorties” and “tallies” as clearly as you now see men and women.

In Alternate Realities, Lawrence LeShan gives a simple example:

Consider how we make classes of things. “Surely,” we say, “we do not create classes. We take them as we find them ‘out there,’ male and female, animal, vegetable, and mineral. . . . We are not creating anything. We are observing things and learning their relationships.” Why then, asked one philosopher, has no one made a class of red, juicy, edible things and included meat and cherries in it? Or a class of tall, dark-haired men and women with no earlobes?

It becomes clear, as we look at LeShan’s example, that we help create and maintain the reality we perceive and react to. So nothing is until you make it so. But once you do, it must be. You can no longer not see men and women. (I once had the following printed on a t-shirt: “It isn’t until it is, and then it must be.” Can you imagine me trying to explain what I meant by that phrase to everyone who read it and asked me?)

Here is a vivid example. In The Experts Speak by Christopher Cerf and Victor Navasky, hundreds of experts are cited who were limited in their ability to see anything outside their existing beliefs. The following is just one of the beliefs that was generally accepted as “the truth” and that determined the believer’s behavior at the time.

Cerf and Navasky tell of how

in the 1850s, a Hungarian doctor and professor of obstetrics, Ignaz Semmelweis, ordered his interns at the Viennese Lying-In Hospital to wash their hands after performing autopsies and before examining new mothers. The death rate plummeted from 22 out of 200 to two out of 200, prompting the following reaction from one of Europe’s most respected medical practitioners:

It may be that it [Semmelweis’s procedure] does contain a few good principles, but its scrupulous application has presented such difficulties that it would be necessary, in Paris for instance, to place in quarantine the personnel of a hospital the great part of a year, and that, moreover, to obtain results that remain entirely problematical.” (Dr. Charles Dubois, Parisian obstetrician, in a memo to the French Academy, on September 23, 1858.)

Semmeiweis’ superiors shared Dubois’ opinion; when the Hungarian physician insisted on defending his theories, they forced him to resign his post on the faculty.

Today this example seems ridiculous. Doesn’t everyone know that proper hygiene is a lifesaving factor in hospitals? We tend to view this as an objective reality—as a fact. But Dubois and his colleagues were operating out of a different worldview, from a different set of beliefs. Semmelweis’s theory did not fit with their beliefs about hospital care, and therefore it was not and could not be the truth for them.

The only thing that is “true” is that which you make true by definition. You create reality (truth) by making arbitrary distinctions out of nothing. Whatever you distinguish becomes real (true) by the very fact of your having made the distinction. The distinction brings something into existence. It also serves as the definition of what has been brought into existence. Our world is—but only because we said so. We are, by our very nature, conscious beings who distinguish, which means beings who create our perception of “reality.”

I want to emphasize that I am not saying we create our physical reality. Maybe we do and maybe we don’t; I’m not sure. I am saying we create our perception of physical reality, and most people don’t ever make that distinction. Getting fired or having a spouse leave us are facts in reality; the events actually do exist. That they are a disaster or an opportunity for something better is a function of our beliefs and our occurrings. So when I say we create our reality, I am saying we create our experience of reality and we can change it.

Once you have created a belief, you have created a reality (for you) in which your belief is “the truth.” (I am…. People are…. Life is….) And your life becomes consistent with that belief. You have constant evidence that the belief is true. You have a hard time even imagining possible behavior that is not consistent with your belief. It is difficult to eliminate or change the belief because you feel that you actually perceived it existing in the world. So your behavior continues to be consistent with your belief, even if it is dysfunctional and you try to change it.

When You Eliminate a Belief You Change Your Reality and Create New Possibilities

Because “things” only exist as a result of distinctions you make, when you dissolve or eliminate the distinction, that reality disappears. The following exercise demonstrates my point.

Let’s distinguish a two-dimensional figure with three straight sides from every other possible figure and call it a triangle. (A definition is nothing more than how you describe a specific distinction. It’s the “nature” of the distinction.) Now let’s change the figure by adding one more side and making it a four-sided figure with equal angles. Notice you no longer have a triangle. You now have a figure we have defined as a rectangle. The new figure no longer fits the definition of a triangle. You might say that the triangle has disappeared. It doesn’t exist.

From this illustration we learn that when the unique attributes of a “thing” are changed—when the distinction that makes it unique from other “things” is changed—that specific “thing” disappears.

This principle explains what makes a belief disappear during the Lefkoe Belief Process (LBP). In the LBP you identify a specific belief, which is a conviction you have that your way of viewing the world is “the truth,” as distinguished from all other views, which are not “the truth”—they’re false. You then transform a statement that you consider to be “the truth” into a statement that you consider to be “a truth?’ Once you do that, the statement is no longer a belief. It has become merely one possible interpretation—one of many possible ways of defining reality. Thus, the belief no longer exists. It has disappeared! And when the belief is gone, your reality has changed. New possibilities appear that weren’t there before.

Conventional Psychotherapy

Most therapies assume that there is an objective world “out there” that the client is having trouble dealing with. Therefore, the conventional role of therapy is to help people cope better with that objective world. The LBP, on the other hand, assumes that there is no “reality” (for you) independent from your beliefs. Thus, altering your beliefs not only changes your behavior, your feelings, and how you perceive the world, it literally changes the world in which you function.

Because we create the world as we experience it, we can change it at will.

Do you have any suggestions or comments on these thoughts on how your beliefs create your experience of reality?

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.

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How to get rid of your fears

Morty Lefkoe — Tue, 18 May 2010 17:48:26 +0000

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

I want to deeply thank the hundreds of you who shared intimate details about how your lives have been run by your fears and anger. Your stories were unbelievably honest and incredibly moving. They reminded me of how I described my own life in my journal years ago, just before I created the Lefkoe Belief Process (originally called the Decision Maker Process) and in the early months after I created it, before I had eliminated many beliefs.

Here are some excepts from my journal in the mid-1980s:

During the past few weeks I have been more and more upset, afraid, on edge. Nothing seems to be happening. I put articles, magazines, etc. out into the world, and nothing comes back. I am worried about money. I am troubled about the situation in which I have put my family.

It seems to be that there is something wrong with me, that no matter what I do, it will never be enough. I feel I am insufficient for the task I’ve set for myself.

Last night I was exhausted, crying when I got home, crying when I got up this morning.

I’m scared. And when I try to look and see what’s going on, my mind wanders and there’s a fog.

I just saw the thoughts: When all is said and done, I’m never going to make it. My life is not going to turn out.

If you didn’t know these comments were written by me many years ago, I’m sure you would assume they were among the many posts written last week describing the one area of your emotional life you would like to change.

Techniques That Didn’t Work For You

In your response to my question—What didn’t work to help you with your fear?—you said that most rational approaches, such as cognitive behavioral therapy, positive self-talk, and rational thinking, failed. ”Just don’t let the fear stop you” also didn’t work for most of you.

Your responses were mixed on EFT, hypnosis, and NLP. Some of you said these techniques were useful, others said they dealt only with the symptoms and never got rid of the underlying causes, which made the fear and other negative feelings come back.

Why Most Approaches To Eliminating Fear Don’t Work

I promised I would explain why the approaches that didn’t work for you couldn’t work. Here’s my answer.

Imagine a person with the beliefs: I’m not good enough, mistakes and failure are bad, I’m inadequate, I’ll never get what I want, nothing I do is good enough, life is difficult, people can’t be trusted, etc. If this is his reality, can you see that he would be afraid much of the time? …

Our beliefs have the power they do because, for us, they are our reality. And that’s why most change techniques that deal only with symptoms produce only temporary relief. If the source of your fear (and other negative emotions such as anger and general upset) is your beliefs, then the only thing that will permanently get rid of the fear is to eliminate those beliefs.

Let me give you a few more examples: Our behavior and feelings are responses to our reality. So if my reality is that relationships don’t work, that I’m not lovable, and that women can’t be trusted, then being in a relationship or even having the thought of a close romantic relationship probably would produce some level of anxiety. Why? Because in my reality relationships are unpleasant and unlikely to last.

If we perceive something as threatening us, we are hard-wired to feel some level of fear. If in our reality rejection is a threat to us, rejection will cause fear. If in our reality we will never get what we want and life is dangerous, then we are likely to live with some level of anxiety almost all the time.

In other words those things that we experience as threatening will necessarily result in fear. But what determines which events are perceived as threatening to us? Interestingly enough, it’s not what is actually out there in the world. Instead, it is our beliefs about ourselves, people and life.

Tera posted a comment on my blog that clearly explains why most approaches don’t work:

“I just wanted to point out that the Lefkoe Method is the only way I know that actually gets rid of the cause of the problems ONCE AND FOR ALL rather then all those techniques that only treat the symptoms. EFT, meditation, NLP, false forgiveness and letter writing, could drastically improve the quality of our lives, but they can’t fix the beliefs that cause the problems.”

A Modification Of This Theory

Based on what I learned in the Lefkoe Freedom Experiment earlier this year, I’d like to slightly modify what I’ve just written.

There seems to be an additional step between beliefs (and conditionings) and our behavior and feelings. Let me explain. Remember I said that beliefs get their power because they are our reality and our behavior and feelings are determined by our reality.

In essence, our beliefs and conditionings are the primary determinant for how reality “occurs” for us, or “shows up” for us. And because we usually don’t distinguish between reality and the way reality occurs for us, the “occurring” is our reality and directly determines our behavior and feelings.

Here’s how it works. Say you believe I’m not good enough, I’ll never get what I want, life will never turn out for me, and other similar beliefs. Then you lose your job or your investments severely decline in value. Given those beliefs, the events probably would occur for you as a disaster, as a hole you will never get out of, as another in the many set-backs life keeps throwing at you. (I know because this is a description of my beliefs and the way life occurred for me before I used the Lefkoe Belief Process on myself.)

But can you see that all that happened in the world is that you lost your job or your investments declined in value? With different beliefs the same events would occur for you differently, such as, here is an opportunity to get an even better job, one that will be more fulfilling, or what can this experience teach me about investing that will make me a more successful investor in the future. (How do you think “set-backs” occur for Warren Buffet, Steve Jobs, or Bill Gates?)

The problem for most of us is that we rarely, if ever, distinguish between actual events in the world and how those events occur for us. For us, the way things occur for us is our reality. And even if we did notice the difference, most of us don’t know how to realize that the occurring is only in own minds and not in the world, which would make it disappear.

To Sum Up

Ultimately, getting rid of fear and other negative emotions (and undesirable behavior such as procrastination) requires eliminating the beliefs that cause the problem. Remember, however, because events as such have no meaning, they are unable to make you feel anything. So in the short-term you can get rid of negative feelings in moments by dissolving how the world is occurring for you. When you use the Lefkoe Occurring Process to dissolve the meaning you have given events (which determines how they occur for you), all your negative feelings disappear and you are left with nothing but the meaningless events.

If you eliminate the beliefs that are the source of your fear and other negative emotions and if you learn how to dissolve your “occurring world,” I promise you will be able to create your experience of life regardless of the circumstances. An experience that is free of anxiety and anger, that is instead filled with excitement, joy, and unlimited possibilities.

Now I Have Another Question For You

It’s become clear from your posts during the past week or so that a lot of you are dissatisfied with some aspect of your life and yet you have a sense that something better is possible.

So in order to serve you best, please take a minute to post a comment below telling me how my team and I can best help you increase your love, happiness, success, and fulfillment in your life.

What could they possibly have been thinking?

Morty Lefkoe — Tue, 04 May 2010 22:54:58 +0000

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

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

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

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

Corporal Punishment Doesn’t Work

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yelling Also Can Be Abusive

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Do We Really “Own” Our Children?

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

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

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

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

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

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How can I help you?

Morty Lefkoe — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 17:04:09 +0000

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

People like you and I can make profound and lasting changes in our lives, if we have the right knowledge and support. To insure that you have ready access to that knowledge and support I’ve created a Facebook Page that is dedicated to providing them. It has been created for people committed to improving the quality of their lives …

who know that the “good life” requires constant growth …

who aren’t satisfied with a life of “here’s how it happened to turn out”…

who are always asking “what if …?” and “why not …?”…

who want to free themselves from their self-imposed limitations …

who believe that true satisfaction ultimately comes from contributing to others …

who are committed to, as one person said on my blog, “living the best life possible.”

Do you see yourself here?

If your answer is “yes,” if this message resonates inside you, I’m here to tell you that this site was created just for you. You can make lasting and dramatic changes in your life even if the methods you’ve tried before didn’t work for you. Together we can make it happen.

To join myself and hundreds of others on this journey “become a fan.”

Many of us know intellectually that we are spiritual beings living day to day as human beings. But most of us don’t experience and act on that knowledge a lot of the time. We forget who we really are. We act as if we are only a “creation,” when really we are the “creator” of that creation. It is possible to fully experience who we really are when we do the “Who Am I Really?” Process. In that state we experience anything is possible and that we have no limitations.

Use the WAIR? Process and have this experience for yourself if you haven’t already. You can find it at the end of the free belief-elimination process at http://recreateyourlife.com/free or as a separate downloadable program in any of our packages of beliefs and conditionings.

At our Facebook site (“become a fan”) we will remind you who you really are and give you the tools to be able to easily experience who you really are.

All of us need two things:

1. the ability to free ourselves from our self-imposed limitations so we can live a more stress-free and satisfying life and

2. the ability to regularly get in touch with the energy/consciousness/creator we really are.

We will provide you with tools to do both.

Use this site to ask your own questions and answer the questions of others. What has helped you and what has disappointed you? Books, workshops, CDs, DVDs, personal growth gurus. Let’s create a site that will support all of us who really want to improve the quality of our lives.

How can we collaborate, cooperate, create what we want and need, explore and even enjoy ourselves?

The Internet now makes conversations possible that weren’t possible before. Let’s learn from each other. We no longer have to associate primarily with people in our neighborhoods, schools, or place of business. Now we can find people with similar interests all over the world. We’ve had customers in over 45 countries, all with a similar goal: to eliminate the barriers that keep them from being able to do what they’ve always wanted to do and live the live they’ve always wanted to live.

We at Lefkoe Institute see our job as supporting such people. We’ve developed The Lefkoe Method that has proven itself repeatedly to make profound improvements in people’s lives. Our mission is sharing it with the world, in order to help people free themselves from their internal limitations, so they can recreate their lives.

Moreover, the principles underlying the The Lefkoe Method explain many things about human behavior that weren’t clearly understood before. That knowledge, which we are committed to sharing with you, enables you to better understand yourself and others.

Tell me what you want and need and we’ll do our best to provide it. Share about your own journey. Tell me what general topics you want covered and I’ll write about them in my weekly blog posts (which you can listen to as a podcast). I’ll answer your specific personal questions on the Facebook/Recreate Your Life fan page.

Click here to “become a fan.”

If you find this post useful, please click on the Digg button below, which will make tens of thousands of people aware of it. Thanks for helping us to help others.

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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.

If you find this post useful, please click on the Digg button below, which will make tens of thousands of people aware of it. Thanks for helping us to help others.

We are now turning these weekly blog posts into podcasts. Sign up for the RSS feed to get the podcasts sent to you weekly.

Please share my blog posts by providing a link from your own website or blog to http://mortylefkoe.com.

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

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How to build confidence

Morty Lefkoe — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 17:05:49 +0000

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

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

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

What is confidence?

Confidence actually exists on a continuum, ranging from a very low to a very high belief in our own abilities, a sense we can handle whatever life throws at us. Very few people are totally lacking in confidence and very few feel confident that they can handle almost anything. So the issue for most people is where they currently are on the continuum and how they can improve their confidence.

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

How to improve your level of confidence

The way to gain confidence about specific abilities is to learn those skills and practice a lot. The way to improve our internal level of confidence that we apply to life in general is to eliminate our limiting beliefs. Every negative belief we have lowers our internal level of self-confidence, beliefs such as I’m not good enough, I’m inadequate, I’m powerless, I’m not capable, Nothing I do is good enough, and I’m not worthy.

Once you understand that a lot of negative self-esteem beliefs lowers your level of self-confidence and getting rid of them raises it, you will understand the myth that self-confidence comes from succeeding or failing at specific projects in life.

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

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

Some of the consequences of low self-confidence

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

How building confidence improves your life

Nothing I can say will provide as good a sense of what happens when you eliminate the beliefs that thwart a high level of self-confidence than a note someone posted on my blog.

First and foremost THANK YOU!

I thought I was confident before so I grab the [Natural Confidence] course just to see how it worked. I starting doing them, I did the first one and when I said the belief, I could feel the charge inherent in it. I thought wow really. At the finish of the first belief, when we repeat the belief it was dead, no charge whatsoever. It was more observing the belief as if someone else said it not me believing it. That moment I was hooked.

I could not stop. I did the first 5 beliefs in a day. Each day I did 4-5 beliefs.

I love it. I don’t really know what I had before the course, it was not the confidence I thought. But now I feel deep inside a calm assurance, a swagger if you will. I am walking taller, chin up giving eye contact without instructing myself to. Before I would say to myself “you gotta make eye contact,” etc. There is no little voice telling me to act confident; it is just what I do now. I just am Now.

They say when the student is ready the teacher will appear, I guess I was ready!

Thank you once again,

Giorgio

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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.

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

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Make Your Arguments a Thing of the Past

Morty Lefkoe — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 20:20:15 +0000

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Did I ever tell you about the time I gave myself an award for “‘Getting Off It’ the Fastest”?

Well, I’m going to tell you right now because I think it will make a profound difference in your relationships with people, especially your loved ones.

When I married Shelly almost 29 years ago I was a mess. I had just been divorced for a second time and was getting depressed frequently. When we argued, which happened frequently, my way of coping with upset was to withdraw … for a couple of days! Shelly, on the other hand, would “get off it” (let go of the upset) in an hour or so and then wonder why I was reacting to something that had ended hours or even days before.

As I used The Lefkoe Method (TLM) to eliminate beliefs and conditionings, the time it took me to let go of my upset decreased until, like Shelly, I could get off it in an hour or so after the argument was over.

At some point we created a friendly competition to see who could get off it first, in other words, who could let go of the upset totally and be back in relationship with the other person first. I ultimately acquired the ability to do that during an argument (as opposed to after it was over) and being able to stop right in the middle of it and just smile and say: “I’m sorry that whatever I am doing is upsetting you. Is there anything I can do to resolve this? I love you.”

Here’s what’s important about what I was doing. I didn’t say these words to placate Shelly or use extreme will power while still being upset. I actually was able to stop the upset and then say words that were true for me.

How did I learn to do that? I started asking myself what meaning I was giving Shelly’s behavior and comments. And then I used two steps of the Lefkoe Belief Process to get rid of that meaning.

First I figured out two or three other meanings for whatever Shelly had done or said, other than the one I have given it. If it had other valid meanings, the one I had couldn’t be “the truth.” Then I asked myself if I could literally “see” the meaning I had given her actions and statements. Obviously I never could “see” the meaning I had given.

So I realized the meaning existed only in my mind. What she was doing and saying had no inherent meaning. The only meaning was the one I had given it.

As you know if you’ve eliminated at least one belief using the Lefkoe Belief Process, events that have no meaning can’t make us feel anything. So the upset that I thought Shelly had “caused” was, in fact, caused by the meaning I had given what Shelly did and said. When that become real, the upset literally disappeared.

So how did I get the award? I created the reward myself and printed it out after a very special day. She had gotten angry at something I had said and done, and before I ever reacted to her, I asked myself: What does Shelly’s reaction to me really mean? When I answered, nothing, I had no reaction to her anger at all. None. And then I said what I had been saying when I had gotten off it during an argument (but his time it was before the argument ever started), “I can see how you could get upset by what I did and said. And if you are angry, that’s okay. And I love you.” And I said it with a smile.

It’s very hard to argue with someone who is not arguing back. She calmed down in a matter of minutes. Later that day I asked Shelly to give me the award I had created for getting off it the fastest ever … a time that could never be beaten … because I never got on it to begin with.

Remember, events have no inherent meaning, so nothing your loved one (or anyone else) does can upset you or make you angry. (If this isn’t real for you, eliminate a couple of limiting beliefs without charge at http://recreateyourlife.com and it will become real). What produces the upset or anger is the meaning you make up to explain why the other person did what they did.

For example, if your partner doesn’t do something you asked her to do and then you give the event the meaning that you can’t get what you want, you will get angry. If you give the event the meaning that your partner doesn’t care about what you want, you will be hurt or upset. If you say that your partner’s behavior could have many different meanings and, in fact, has no inherent meaning, you will feel nothing. You probably will just calmly do it yourself or ask your partner again if she will do it.

And that is something you can learn to do with practice (and, obviously, the more beliefs and conditionings you eliminate, the easier it is to do).

I haven’t always been able to do that since that day, but I do most of the time with Shelly and I even learned how to do it with my daughter Brittany when she was 14 (she’s now 21 and in college).

I had always had a very close relationship with Brittany. She would tell me what she was thinking and feeling quite often. I usually visited Brittany after she came home from school and asked her how her day went and we had a nice chat. When she reached 13-14 years old, she changed. I joke that she was captured by aliens who left one of their own in her place, because my daughter couldn’t not possibly have acted the way my daughter acted between the ages of 13 and 18-19. (In fact this is a natural part of a child’s development.)

At any rate, by the time she was a freshman in high school she had started getting angry at me frequently, telling me I was annoying (and worse), saying she didn’t feel like talking, and asking me to leave her room.

Although I would comply, I would leave upset. Why upset? Because the meaning I was giving her behavior was she was ruining our relationship (which was very important to me), that she was angry with me, that I couldn’t talk to her any more, etc. If that’s what her behavior meant, that was upsetting to me.

I asked myself, what else could it mean? She was individuating, as she should be doing. She had a problem with one of her teachers. Her hormones were raging. She had some difficulties with friends during the day. Etc. Did I ever “see” that something fundamental had happened to “ruin” our relationship? That I wouldn’t ever be able to talk to her the way we had in the past? No, I didn’t see that. I only saw her behavior, which could have many different meanings other than the one I had given it.

So one day, as a result of doing the type of thinking I just described, I didn’t get upset. I merely got up and left the room without saying a word. And after I left the room and closed her door, I said: “Honey, I hear a daughter who loves her dad very much and who’s probably having a hard day. Sorry about that. I love you too sweetheart.”

As I walked away I heard a shoe bounce off the door. Ten minutes later she came out of her room, threw her arms around me, kissed me, and apologized for being shitty.

She acted that badly and worse hundreds of times over the next 4-5 years but for the most part I was able to react without reacting. And it led to an incredibly close bond being formed between us. She knew I loved her unconditionally and would always be there for her because I didn’t withdraw my love when she treated me badly.

It probably will take practice to give a different meaning to someone else’s behavior, but when you do, arguments will become a thing of the past. Relationships will improve dramatically. And the quality of your life will skyrocket. And you’ll be able to create your own “Get off it the fastest” award.

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. http://mortylefkoe.com

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What is My Job As A Parent?

Morty Lefkoe — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 18:59:09 +0000

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

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

“What’s wrong with you?”

“Don’t you ever listen?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Eliminating Beliefs in Organizations

Morty Lefkoe — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 19:21:50 +0000

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You probably already know that The Lefkoe Method can improve your personal life. Did you also know that it can be used to improve your work environment?

Although the Lefkoe Institute is not doing much corporate work right now, we have helped over 10,000 employees from over 50 companies—ranging from Fortune 500 to small family owned businesses—to change their organizational beliefs and their individual beliefs about their jobs. As a result, those organizations were able to produce significant change and improved results. Here is a fascinating case history of how the Lefkoe Belief Process (LBP) was used effectively in one of those companies.

One small manufacturing company we helped a few years ago had a typical top-down managerial hierarchy, with the bosses making all the decisions and the workers doing little more than following orders. Morale was low. Results were only fair.

Our goal was to totally transform the way the company operated, with a focus on giving the workers a tremendous amount of authority to make day-to-day decisions, with the managers acting as support instead of as “bosses.”

We conducted workshops with all of the company’s employees during which each eliminated one personal belief and all eliminated a bunch of limiting beliefs about their company. We taught them how to use a simplified version of the LBP.

Within days many of the employees started making suggestions for improvements in the company. (Change beliefs and behavior changes effortlessly.) Supervisors were allowing workers to make more and more decisions on their own. A lot of excitement was generated; many of the changes workers suggested were instituted.

At this point Bob, the manager of a department of about thirty-five workers, went on vacation for a week. Two days after he left, Jean, one of the supervisors who reported to him, handled something in her own that everyone had agreed would be done by the workers. When Rick, one of the workers, complained to her, Jean said, in effect, “So what? I’m still the supervisor.” When Rick continued to protest, Jean took him to the Operations Manager’s office.

The other workers observed the heated argument and most of them concluded, “We’re back where we started. Nothing has really changed. If you speak up you get into trouble.”

The next week Bob returned from vacation to discover that morale and productivity had sunk to a new low, with virtually no suggestions or worker participation. What would most managers do in a situation like this? Talk to the supervisor involved in the altercation? Yes, but that in itself would have little effect on the other thirty-some workers. Talk to the workers individually and as a group, telling them that one incident isn’t really important and that the new era of openness and involvement will continue? Yes, but through what filter will anything the manager says be heard by the workers? “I hear what you’re saying, but you weren’t here last week, and you didn’t see with your own eyes as I did that ‘We’re back where we started. Nothing has really changed. If you speak up you get into trouble.’”

Here’s what Bob actually did. He called a meeting of the department’s entire workforce and asked that someone explain exactly what happened while he was away. One of the workers described the incident between Jean and Rick. Bob thanked him and replied, “So most of you concluded, ‘We’re back where we started. Nothing has really changed. If you speak up you get into trouble.’ Right?”

A scattering of “Yeah” could be heard.

Bob continued, “That’s a reasonable conclusion, based on what happened between Jean and Rick. Right now, however, I’d like you to play a little game with me. It’s called Possibilities. I’d like you to tell me at least four or five other things that last week’s incident could possibly mean. I’m not trying to invalidate your conclusion, which is as good as any other we’ll find. I’d just like you to tell me what other interpretations might be possible?”

After a few minutes the answers started coming from the floor.
* It could mean that Jean hasn’t bought into our empowerment program, but all the other supervisors have.
* It could mean that Jean has it in for Rick, but she wouldn’t be a problem for any other worker.
* It could mean that Jean was having a bad day and she is as committed to the new empowerment program as anyone.
* It could mean that Jean is willing to delegate most of her work except for the job involved in last week’s problem.

After several more responses, Bob said, “Can you see that what most of you concluded—‘We’re back where we started. Nothing has really changed. If you speak up you get into trouble’—is only one valid interpretation of what happened, but that a number of other explanations are just as valid?”

Heads started nodding up and down.

He continued, “Didn’t it seem last week when Jean and Larry were arguing that you could see right here on the factory floor, ‘We’re back where we started. Nothing has really changed. If you speak up you get into trouble?’”

One worker yelled out, “If you had been here, Bob, you’d have seen it too!”

Bob smiled. “Did you really see that? If you did, I’d like to know, was it on the wall or the floor? Was it red or green, striped or polka-dotted? Big or small?” Bob waited a few seconds … “Or did you just see Rick and Jean arguing, and the only place—‘We’re back where we started. Nothing has really changed. If you speak up you get into trouble’—has ever been is in your mind, as an interpretation of what you really did see?” They got the point.

Bob turned to Rick. “By the way, what happened when you went to the Operations Manager’s office with Jean?”

“He told us to work it out ourselves,” Rick answered.

Bob turned back to the group. “Anything else?” He saw a lot of sheepish grins. “Let’s go to work.”

In most companies, hardly a day goes by that some employees don’t observe something and then reach a conclusion that negatively affects their behavior from then on. Usually their manager will try to change their behavior using Information + Motivation. (See my blog post, http://mortylefkoe.com/111009, on why that doesn’t work.) Sometimes if the belief surfaces—“So-and-so can’t be trusted” or “That new plan will never work”—the Lefkoe Belief Process (or a variation) can be used easily, with one employee at a time or with a large group, just as Bob did.

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 to this blog: http://mortylefkoe.com.

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

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

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Are Your Beliefs Permanently Gone? Four Tests To Know For Sure

Morty Lefkoe — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 19:24:21 +0000

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The Lefkoe Institute has had a big marketing problem since its inception 24 years ago. People don’t believe we can do what we promise to do.

Our unique distinction is that we can help people quickly and permanently eliminate all the relevant beliefs that cause virtually any behavioral or emotional problem in their lives. But most people have the belief: Change is difficult, takes a long time, and requires a lot of reinforcement. So telling people what we offer usually results in people expressing skepticism about our claim.

Interestingly enough, when we started helping people eliminate beliefs 24 years ago, most people didn’t see a connection between beliefs and behavior. “What do my beliefs have to do with what I do and feel?” most people would ask.

But as a result of many best-selling books by such popular authors as Deepak Chopra, Wayne Dyer, and Joe Vitale now almost everyone in the personal growth field acknowledges that in order to make fundamental permanent change, you have to remove limiting beliefs first.

As a result, almost all the major teachers in this field claim to be able to eliminate beliefs, because it’s what most of their customers are asking for. In some cases they deliver on their promise. Unfortunately, although many of the popular belief-elimination techniques result in feeling as if the belief is gone at the moment, in many cases the beliefs are not eliminated permanently.

Consequently, many people have become skeptical when someone claims they can help them quickly, easily, and permanently eliminate long-held beliefs. (As one well-known psychologist told me many years ago when I made that claim: “Anyone who says he can permanently eliminate beliefs is a fraud.”)

This is not to say that programs that don’t eliminate beliefs aren’t valuable. Many of them make a profound difference in people’s lives without eliminating beliefs.

I’d like to suggest four questions you can ask to assure yourself that the belief-elimination process you are using really works.

1. Does the belief you want to get rid of go away and stay away? You can know a belief is eliminated right after an exercise because the words of the belief no longer feel true; the words feel as if they have no meaning. That’s not the same as having an insight that has you conclude the belief must be gone because it no longer makes sense to hold the belief or because the belief doesn’t feel as true as it did before. In this type of situation it can seem as if the belief is really gone, but it really isn’t. One way to check is to say the words of the belief several days later. Do they feel true, uncomfortable? Do they resonate with you? Or do the words still feel meaningless? With no energy or discomfort? If you still feel as if the belief is gone several days later, it probably is.

2. Did you get rid of some undesirable behavior or feeling after eliminating all the relevant beliefs? Ultimately you don’t care about eliminating beliefs. Eliminating beliefs is a means to an end. The true test to know that beliefs are gone is if the problem that the beliefs caused is gone. Because most problems usually are caused by a number of beliefs, you have to eliminate at least 8-10 beliefs to know that any given problem is gone, which then is proof that the beliefs must also be gone. For example, procrastination is caused by 16 beliefs. A good test that the 16 beliefs have been eliminated is to see if your procrastination disappears and doesn’t come back. (Actually it is caused by 13 beliefs and three conditionings, but conditioning is not really relevant in this discussion.)

3. Did you get a guarantee that the beliefs will not come back AND the problem that the beliefs cause will not come back either.

We have helped over 13,000 clients in private sessions and well over 30,000 in on-line and DVD programs eliminate beliefs and problems. We offer a lifetime guarantee that the problem will not return and have a refund rate of about 10%. To see just a few of the reviews of our on-line products, go to http://blog.recreateyourlife.com. To see some video reviews, go to http://bit.ly/3Z10LN.

4. Is there independent research that proves that the beliefs and the problems are truly eliminated and don’t return?

The most objective way to prove that beliefs and the problems they cause are really gone is an independent study with a control group. This is the “gold standard” for proof of the effectiveness of a belief-elimination process.

The University of Arizona conducted a study that was published in a peer-reviewed journal, Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy.

Preliminary Report on Results from”Speaking Without Fear” Study

Prepared by Victoria Cunningham, Ph.D. & Lee Sechrest, Ph.D.
Department of Psychology, University of Arizona

May 20, 2004

“A recent study was conducted to examine the ability of Morty Lefkoe’s ‘The Lefkoe Method’ to reduce or even eliminate fear of speaking in public in a group of forty volunteers recruited from Toastmasters Clubs and other random sources and who reported fairly severe symptoms related to public speaking. Subjects were randomly assigned to an experimental or a control group… All treatment sessions were conducted by telephone, and, on average, only three one-hour sessions were required to achieve treatment goals.

“The results support our hypothesis that self-reported fear of speaking in public would be virtually eliminated. Before the experiment, both groups rated their last public speaking experience as an average of about 7 on a 10-point scale on which 1 meant ‘not at all fearful,’ and 10 indicated ‘extremely fearful’. Subjects in the experimental group experienced a reduction of about 5 points to an average score of 1.5, whereas the control group remained unchanged. In addition, after receiving the same treatment, scores for the control group were also reduced by about 5 points to yield an average of 1.5. It is important to note that all subjects rated their post-treatment scores in relation to an actual public speaking experience.

“We also asked subjects about other common physical sensations and cognitive difficulties often associated with speaking in public, e.g., increased heart rate, sweating, dry mouth, quivering voice, stuttering and difficulty staying focused. The results were quite consistent with those from the rating scale: prominent symptoms were reduced for everyone who received the treatment, and the difference between the experimental and control groups was large and statistically significant. Responses to additional questions to gauge individuals’ self-confidence as a speaker also provide evidence that ‘The Lefkoe Method’ was effective in virtually eliminating the fear of public speaking.” (Emphasis added.)

For a copy of the entire study from Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, go to http://www.undoityourself.com/research.html.

A follow up was conducted with the subjects six months later. The average level of fear was still below 2.

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