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

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

How you know if you have the problem

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

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

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

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

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

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

How this belief is formed and why it is so common

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

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

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

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

The belief gets formed

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

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

Survival strategy beliefs

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

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

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

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

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

Get rid of the beliefs to get rid of the obsession

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let me explain.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

copyright ©2010 Morty Lefkoe

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Most of the behavioral or emotional problems we want to get rid of are relatively simple to deal with.  We procrastinate.  We worry all the time about what people think of us.  We lack confidence. Using The Lefkoe Method you can find and eliminate the beliefs and conditionings that cause these problems.  As a result, the problems will disappear.

Unfortunately overeating and weighing too much are not as simple.  This problem is much more difficult to get rid of than most because it consists of from six to eight (or even more) sub-problems, each of which has to be handled before the real problem is solved.

Let me explain.

Some people gain weight because they eat a lot of unhealthy fattening foods and do very little exercise.  That’s relatively simple to handle.  Eat more healthily and get more exercise.  If there are beliefs and conditionings that inhibit those two activities, get rid of them and you’ll start eating more healthy foods and exercising.

But for many people, the real problem is eating when they aren’t really hungry. If they would stop eating when they feel full and only eat when they are really hungry, the eating/weight problem would disappear.  This is my ultimate goal for my clients, not losing weight. Because if most people with a normal metabolism and with a healthy diet eat only when hungry, they will not gain weight.

So the question then becomes, why do people eat when they aren’t hungry?

There can be many reasons, including:

• It is a way to take a break from work; it’s a diversion.
• It is a way to reward yourself when you feel no one else or nothing else will.
• It is a way to experience love and acceptance.
• It is a way to keep unpleasant feelings down—such as anxiety, anger, upset, and sadness.
• It is a way to feel good, comforted, happy, secure, centered, at home.
• It is a way to feel comfortable in social situations where everyone else is eating.
• It is a way to remove yourself from the dating game and from sex.  In other words, if you feel uncomfortable in romantic relationships and/or in sexual relationships, one way to avoid them is to get very heavy to discourage the opposite sex. In fact, although being significantly overweight might discourage some people from a romantic or sexual relationship, it obviously does not discourage a great many.
• It is a response to childhood deprivation. If there wasn’t enough food to eat—if you didn’t eat the food right away it would be gone and you wouldn’t be able to eat at all—you can get conditioned to eat whenever you see food whether you are hungry or not.
• If I work hard and accomplish a lot I’m entitled to whatever I want, including anything I want to eat.
• You’re going to go on a diet and will be depriving yourself of food for a while.
• The food tastes really good, which makes you feel good.

If your eating/weight problem is the result of eating when you aren’t hungry, then you need to determine which “needs” your eating is fulfilling.  Then you can treat each of these needs as a separate undesirable behavior pattern. From there you can find and eliminate the beliefs that cause it.

In addition to having to get rid of a lot of beliefs, self-esteem and otherwise, eating/weight problems also involve a lot of conditioning.

Classical Conditioning

I discussed one type of conditioning and a process we have for de-conditioning in my blog post on May 5, 2009.  In this type of conditioning, which psychologists call “classical conditioning,” something that normally doesn’t cause an emotional response gets conditioned to do so.

Here’s an example I use with my clients that will make this type 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.  Why would you feel anxious?  Because the ice cream cone got conditioned to produce fear when it became associated with the fist. Something was scaring you (the fist) and ice cream just happened to be there every time the fist scared you.

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).  The Lefkoe Stimulus Process is a very effective method to use with classical conditioning.

Operant Conditioning

There is another type of conditioning that is especially relevant in eating/weight issues.  It results from continually rewarding or punishing specific behavior, thereby conditioning that behavior.  Psychologists call this “operant conditioning.”

For example, if every time you got upset as a child your mom gave you food to make you feel better, you could get conditioned to eat whenever you got upset.

Or, if your parents continually rewarded you for special things you did as a child by giving you a special meal with the food you really liked, you could get conditioned to eat whenever you wanted to feel acknowledged for something you did.

The Lefkoe De-conditioning Process is very effective with operant conditioning.

The Source Of One of the Sub-problems

Let’s examine one of the eating/weight sub-problems in a little more detail to see how it is the result of beliefs and operant conditioning.

Assume that whenever you feel alone, rejected, unloved, etc. you eat, whether you are hungry or not.  You might believe I’m unlovable, I don’t fit in, Food is love, I’m alone in the world, Eating is the way to be loved, and If someone gives you food it means he loves you.  There can be many others, but this gives you an idea of the type of beliefs that could cause a behavior pattern like this.

The operant conditioning involved here is eating in order to feel loved.  This could have occurred early in life if your parents fed you as an expression of their love.  This conditioning is more likely to be found in Jewish and Italian families.

Resolving eating/weight issues is especially tricky because you need to continue eating after the problem is gone.  You can’t stop it completely like you can stop alcohol and drugs.  Nevertheless, if you eliminate all the relevant beliefs and conditionings for all the sub-problems, an eating/weight problem can become nothing more than an unpleasant memory in your past.

To see a short video from someone who totally handled his emotional eating problems, click here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3tjZqDtBs8

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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Copyright © 2009 Morty Lefkoe

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.