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.

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

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

copyright © 2011 Morty Lefkoe

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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.

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.

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

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.

copyright ©2010 Morty Lefkoe

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let me explain.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

copyright ©2010 Morty Lefkoe

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Copyright © 2009 Morty Lefkoe

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

Last fall I conducted a one-hour tele-seminar in which I answered questions I had been sent about beliefs.  I thought I would devote this week’s blog post to answering a few of the most common questions I received.

Question: Once you have eliminated a belief, what does one need to do to move forward and leave their dysfunctional behavior patterns behind?

Answer: In a word, nothing.  Once you have eliminated all the beliefs (there is rarely only one) that cause any given behavioral or emotional problem, the problem just dissolves and there is nothing more you have to do.

Question: How critical is it to identify the origin of a belief correctly, and how accurately does one need to identify it?

Answer: Our experience is that you do need to find the real source of a belief in order for the Lefkoe Belief Process (LBP) to be effective in eliminating the belief.  For example, if you think the source of a belief is experiences you had in school, when the real source is interactions with your parents, the belief might not be eliminated.  Why?

Remember that in the process you are asked: Imagine being a child and observing the events that led to the belief.  Doesn’t it seem as if you can see (the belief)?

For the belief to go away for visual people, you need to get that what you’ve spent a lifetime thinking you saw in those events, you never really did see. If you truly can see something, then it really is there.  The trick is to realize that you didn’t see what you thought you saw.  The belief (in other words, the meaning you gave the events) exists only in your mind, not out there in the world to be seen.

If you mistakenly choose other events that aren’t really the source, you still will think you saw (the belief) in interactions with your parents and the belief will still be there.

For people who are predominantly emotionally kinesthetic and “felt” the belief instead of seeing it, they need to get that the events didn’t make them feel (the belief); it was the meaning they gave those events. Again, if you have the wrong source, this part of the LBP might not work.

More often than not, a belief is formed from the meaning we give to a pattern of events, such as the way mom and dad reacted when you didn’t live up to their expectations or the fact that mom and dad weren’t around very much.  Not the one time you remember dad yelling or mom not being home one afternoon.

There is no way to know for sure if you have found the “real” source of a belief.  One test is whether or not it feels true for you that a repeated pattern of events led you to form the belief. Another is that you need to be able to answer yes to the question: Wouldn’t most people have formed the belief you did in those same circumstances?

In other words, the events must be a logical source for a given belief.

Question: When going through the process of eliminating beliefs, I have a hard time with the concept of ‘seeing’ the belief.  I usually don’t think I saw it; it’s more like I felt it.  So sometimes beliefs don’t go away because I don’t get it.  Is there a way around this?

Answer: I provided part of the answer to this question in my answer to the prior question.

Emotionally kinesthetic people generally do not “see” the belief in the situations that led to the belief being formed, they “felt” it.

The end of the Lefkoe Belief Process has a section specifically for people who are kinesthetic, so if you don’t think you saw the belief, just skip that question and go to the next step of the Process (the events that led you to form the belief have no meaning) and then finish the Process.  If you complete the LBP, the belief will be eliminated.

Question: How do you apply the technique [Lefkoe Belief Process] on your own?

Answer: Most people cannot do it by themselves; a few can. Try it; it might work for you.

There are at least three reasons most people can’t do it.

First, without a lot of training it is hard for most people to identify all the beliefs and conditionings that cause any given problem.  And if you don’t find and eliminate all of them, the problem might lessen, but not be eliminated totally.

Second, even when you know the belief you want to eliminate, it can be tricky to find alternate interpretations for certain beliefs and sources.

Third, most problems can be eliminated by eliminating the beliefs and conditionings that cause it.  From time to time it is necessary to use additional processes that eliminate negative “senses” (of oneself, life, etc.) that were conditioned early in life or negative expectations, where one is conditioned to expect negative things to occur.  You need to be trained to use those processes.

After helping thousands of people eliminate tens of thousands of beliefs, I find that I am able to walk myself through the LBP or the Lefkoe Stimulus Process (to eliminate conditionings) some of the time, but when I discover a new problem and I’m not sure what beliefs or conditionings cause it, I still need a trained Lefkoe Method facilitator to help me.

Question: Is it possible for limiting beliefs to have not originated with your parents?  Is it possible for limiting beliefs to have formed in adulthood, say after romantic disappointment?  If so, how does one locate the source of the limiting belief?

Answer: Almost all negative self-esteem beliefs are formed through interactions with parents during the first five or six years of life.  We form many other beliefs later in life when we encounter new situations.

We form beliefs about school in school, politics as we start reading and hearing about it, and romantic relationships as we start having them.

How do you find the source of beliefs formed later in life?  Training and a lot of experience.

Question: I think the biggest belief I have that keeps me from transformation is that I can’t do it – I don’t have what it takes to follow though.

Answer: That’s possible, but this is an example of how it can be tricky to identify all the relevant beliefs that cause a problem.

You might believe I don’t have what it takes to follow through, but what beliefs would you have to have to have formed that one?  Probably many, including I’m not good enough, Nothing I do is good enough, I’m inadequate, I’m powerless, and I’m not capable.

In other words, there are probably a bunch of beliefs that led you to not follow through, and now you believe you can’t follow through.  You have to find and get rid of all those earlier beliefs too.

Question: One of the biggest roadblocks is identifying the core belief that is holding me back.  I come up with a lot of peripheral beliefs.  What is the best way to determine what is the core belief that needs to be changed?

Answer: As far as we are concerned, there is no “the core belief.”  There are almost always many core (self-esteem) beliefs and many other beliefs causing the problem you want to get rid of.

NOTE: We’re offering another tele-seminar answering your questions about beliefs on August 13, from 6:00-7:00 Pacific Time.  For information and to submit a question, please click on https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/357775698
Thanks for reading my blog. I really would appreciate your comments and questions. Please feel free to share my blog posts with anyone you think might be interested as long as you tell people where it came from.

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

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

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

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

Copyright © 2009 Morty Lefkoe

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

Remember the last time you heard a parent say: “My kids are wonderful. They always obey me.” Or, “They never talk back.” Or, “They are never a problem.” Did you sigh with envy and say, “Oh, I wish my kids were like that”? Think again. What would children have to believe about themselves to always obey, never talk back, or never be a problem?

I started out as a typical parent who sometimes envied those parents with “perfect” children.  Then when my first daughter was about three, I developed the Lefkoe Belief Process (LBP), a technique that assists people to identify the specific beliefs that are responsible for any dysfunctional behavioral or emotional problem.

Examples of such problems include anxiety, concern with what others think of us, procrastination, lack of confidence, stress, self-criticism, and relationships that don’t work.  After the beliefs are identified, the LBP enables people to quickly and permanently eliminate them.  When the beliefs disappear, the problems do also.

What We’ve Learned From Our Clients

In working directly with over 13,000 clients we have seen how the beliefs we form in childhood determine how our lives turn out in almost every respect.  And, most importantly, how the beliefs that lead to “good behavior” as a child are not necessarily the best beliefs to have later in life.

Most of us would be thrilled if we called our child and told her dinner was ready and we found her sitting at the table seconds later.  But what would she have to believe if she was totally immersed in playing when we called and she immediately dropped what she was doing to come to dinner?  She would have to consider what we want to be more important than what she wants, which might result from such beliefs as What I want doesn’t matter and I’m not important.

The biggest problem many of us have with our younger children is getting them into the car when we have to leave the house.  A child who was always ready to leave would bring joy to any parent’s heart.  But, again, what beliefs would a child have to have to always act that way?  In addition to the two just named, another belief might be The way to be accepted is to make people happy, to never upset them.

Some Specific Consequences As an Adult

What are the long-term consequences of such beliefs?  One of our clients, Joan, always did what her parents wanted when she was a kid. Her parents described her as “the perfect child.” Two of the beliefs that made her compliant as a child were What I want doesn’t matter and I’m not important. As an adult these same beliefs led to passive behavior and a sense of victimization. Larry, another client, had concluded early in life: The way to be accepted is to make people happy, to never upset them. His problem as an adult was an obsession with what others thought of him and a fear of expressing his own opinions.

In session after session we have heard thousands of clients describe the experiences they had with their parents that resulted in the beliefs they were trying to eliminate as an adult: “My mom and dad always did …, they never did …, they always said …, they never said ….”

In my book, Re-create Your Life: Transforming Yourself and Your World, I 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.  As I began to see how our behavior as parents led to our children forming beliefs that then determined the rest of their lives, I began to question the long-range implications of having children “obey.”

Short Term Benefits versus Long Term Costs

Maybe getting children to behave is good for us as parents, but not necessarily good for our children.  It might make our lives easier but what does it do to them?  My wife Shelly and I asked ourselves the question:  If we succeed in getting our children to do what we want, and, as a result of our interactions with our children, they form negative self-esteem beliefs, such as, I’m not good enough or I’m not worthwhile, or other negative beliefs, such as, What I want doesn’t matter or I’ll never get what I want, is what we achieved short term with our children worth the long-term cost?

I’m not saying that our children’s behavior on a daily basis is not important.  Of course it is. There are some things that children need to do for their health and well-being and there are some things children need to do for our well-being.  We clearly would be remiss as parents if we took a totally hands-off attitude and allowed our children to do whatever they wanted.  So we need to learn parenting skills that enable us to influence our children’s behavior when necessary, without leading to negative conclusions.

A Parenting Tip

For example, instead of calling our children just when we are about to sit down to dinner or two minutes before we are about to leave the house, expecting them to drop whatever they are doing because our schedule requires their presence, we can give our children ample warning.  Fifteen minutes before we will need them we can ask them what they are doing, acknowledge that it probably is very important to them, and then ask them if they can complete whatever they’re doing in fifteen minutes because dinner will be ready, we will be leaving the house, etc.  If we treat them with dignity and respect what is important to them, the odds are good they will respect our needs, without forming any negative beliefs about themselves.

And that is the crucial point.  The single factor that has the greatest impact on whether or not our children achieve happiness and true satisfaction in life is a healthy self-esteem, a positive sense of life, and other positive beliefs.

To make this real, let’s assume that your child has one of the two following sets of beliefs: I’m not good enough; There’s something wrong with me; I’m not deserving; I don’t matter; I’m powerless—or : I am good enough; I’m worthwhile just because I am, not for any reason; I am worthy and deserving; I matter; Life is whatever I make it.

Which Set of Beliefs Would Lead to a Good Life?

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

Given that fact, what do you think that the major role of parents should be? Getting children to behave, or assisting them to create positive decisions about themselves and life?

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

After we’ve changed our focus as parents, from getting our children to obey, to assisting them to create a positive attitude about themselves and life, we may no longer consider the ultimate parenting accolade to be: “Your child is so well-behaved.” We may come to prefer: “Your child has such a positive attitude about herself and life.”

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

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

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

Follow me on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/mortylefkoe and join our fan page on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/pages/The-Lefkoe-Institute/54781675766?ref=ts) to get my latest insights on the role of beliefs in our lives.

Why are so many of us “driven” compulsively to seek or 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.  Let me explain.

Imagine you are a young child who has created a host of negative beliefs about yourself or about life. (Very few of us escape childhood without forming a bunch of negative self-esteem beliefs.  I’ll explain why in a future blog.) At this point you are in school, interacting with lots of other kids and adults. It dawns on you that you are going to grow up and will have to make your own way in life. You are confronted with a real dilemma, albeit an unconscious one: “How will I make it in life if there’s something fundamentally wrong with me or the world?”

Imagine the fear and anxiety you must feel when you experience these two conflicting “facts”: On one hand, you sense that you must make it on your own in life. On the other hand, you have concluded that “There’s something fundamentally wrong with me or life that will make it difficult, if not impossible, to make it on my own.”

Fear and anxiety are unpleasant and painful feelings, so children who have them try to find ways of not feeling them. In tens of thousands of sessions with clients, I’ve discovered that people have two basic ways of dealing with the unpleasant feelings that are caused by negative self-esteem beliefs:

First, they use alcohol, drugs, sex, food, or other substances to cover up the feelings and numb themselves or to make themselves feel good.

Second, they develop strategies that help them deal with the anxiety that stems from their negative beliefs. I call them “survival strategies” because the fear one experiences when one has negative self-esteem beliefs often makes one feel as if his survival is being threatened.

When a survival strategy is formed, the child also forms a belief about that strategy:
“What makes me good enough (or important, or worthwhile, etc.) is ….”  A variation of that is: “The way to survive is ….”

Survival strategies are based on a child’s observation of what it takes to feel good about herself, to be important, to be worthwhile, or to be able to deal with life in spite of negative self-esteem beliefs.

For example:

Susan’s parents placed a heavy emphasis on friendships, on what others thought of them, and on impressing people, so Susan concluded that the way to survive was to get everyone to like and approve of her.

Fred formed a similar belief in a different way:  When he got praise and acknowledgement from his parents he really felt good about himself, in a way he normally didn’t.  So he concluded what made him good enough and important was having people think well of him.

Here’s Lauren’s story: She noticed that people treated her dad with respect and admiration because he had been so successful in business and had so much money, so Lauren concluded that what made her important and good enough was being financially successful.

Art lived in a community where the people who were considered important and given respect were in gangs and carried guns, so he chose that as his survival strategy.

(By the way, one way to know if you have negative self-esteem beliefs is to ask yourself: What makes you good enough [or important, or worthwhile, etc.]?  When you answer anything other than: “Nothing,” it becomes clear that you need whatever you answered in order to be okay.)

Once you decide that a positive sense of yourself is “because of” anything, you’ve created a lifelong problem.  For example, if you believe the only way to be good enough is to be wealthy and have a big house, your sense of worth is linked to those conditions. If you aren’t wealthy and don’t have a big house, you are forced to face your belief that you’re not good enough, which produces anxiety. Moreover, even if your survival strategy is achieved, there’s the danger of losing it. Total disaster is always just around the corner for you. Life becomes a sea of anxiety, in which you are constantly struggling to meet the conditions you have made for being good enough. Your self-esteem is always in question.

Tom, an executive in a Wall Street firm, earns over $200,000 a year. His core belief is I don’t matter, and his survival strategy belief is: “What makes me worthwhile is being seen as important by others.” As a result, Tom becomes anxious whenever a new person gets hired, or a colleague wins praise, or he isn’t included in a meeting, or his boss doesn’t acknowledge him after he’s completed a project.

Miriam has the survival strategy belief: “What makes me acceptable is being beautiful.” For most of her life, she has lived comfortably with that belief. Her beauty earned her quite a bit of attention, admiration, and even love. But now Miriam is approaching fifty, and she’s frightened. The march of time is threatening to rob her of the one thing that she believes makes her acceptable. She has become increasingly depressed; every time a man fails to look at her admiringly, she has a deep feeling of not being okay.

One consequence of being run by survival strategy beliefs is that instead of living out of choices and pleasure—doing things because you want to do them—you do them primarily to survive (to feel okay about yourself). You experience your survival as dependent on the success of your survival strategy. The need to fulfill the terms of your survival strategy dominates your life.

Someone once said, “You can never get enough of what you never really wanted in the first place.” That’s an excellent description of trying to live using survival strategies to compensate for negative self-esteem beliefs. Once you say you’re not worthwhile just the way you are, no amount of accomplishment or praise will provide the unconditional sense of self-esteem you want and need.

People who have beliefs that are indicative of low self-esteem are not just criminals or drug addicts or unsuccessful people or those who suffer from deep depression. Many people with low self-esteem are visibly successful, living in nice homes with stable families. What distinguishes people is not their self-esteem beliefs, but their survival strategies—the ways they cope with a negative sense of themselves.

Although the dysfunctional behavior that people exhibit is usually a direct result of their survival strategy beliefs, the energy that drives the survival strategies is the underlying negative self-esteem. We don’t want to have to acknowledge the negative self-esteem belief (it’s too scary), so we do whatever it takes to manifest the survival strategy belief.  That’s why the underlying self-esteem should be eliminated before the survival strategy belief.

The role of survival strategy beliefs explains why therapies designed only to improve self-esteem rarely produce fundamental and lasting changes in people’s behavior and feelings.

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

To purchase an on-line interactive program where you can eliminate 19 beliefs, including two of the most common survival strategy beliefs (“What makes me good enough or important is having people think well of me” and “What makes me good enough or important is doing things perfectly”) go to http://www.recreateyourlife.com/sales.html.

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

Follow me on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/mortylefkoe and join our fan page on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/pages/The-Lefkoe-Institute/54781675766?ref=ts) to get our latest insights on the role of beliefs in our lives.