How to avoid working on the wrong beliefs

Author: Rodney Daut

In your quest to make changes in your life and in the lives of others, you’ve discovered that beliefs are what hold us back … and eliminating them can quite literally, set us free.

But it’s possible to eliminate belief after belief and see very little change.

Why does that happen?

It’s because many of the “beliefs” people work on are not the true causes of their problem.

If you eliminate a belief that doesn’t cause the problem, the problem won’t go away.

This common problem causes needless frustration and can even lower your confidence.

“Does this stuff really work?” you might wonder.

“Why do I get amazing results sometimes and at other times, nothing seems to happen?”

Before I give you the solution, I want you to know a few things.

One, finding beliefs that cause a client’s problem is a complex skill.

It took Morty and Shelly many years to figure it all out.

And it took so long because they were having to learn everything at once.

First, they were figuring out how to get rid of beliefs.

Sessions used to last 2 hours because that’s how long it used to take to get rid of a single belief.

Eventually, as they got faster, they reduced session time to 90 minutes … then 75 …

And eventually 60 minutes.

Now we regularly help clients get rid of multiple beliefs in a session.

Second, they were also trying to figure out how beliefs connected to the problems people faced.

And like you, many times they were eliminating beliefs that didn’t make any difference to the client.

After many years, they figured out what to do and the principles that explain it.

Then they started teaching others.

So if you’ve struggled at all, just know that your learning curve will not be nearly as long as theirs. (Morty created the Lefkoe belief Process in 1986. That’s over 30 years ago.)

In fact, you probably don’t take 2 hours to eliminate a belief. If so, you’re probably better at the process than they were by 1987.

One thing that helped them improve their results dramatically was when they stopped eliminating beliefs that didn’t make a difference.

They did this by discovering a subtle and easy-to-miss problem that occurs in sessions.

The problem is …

Working on a belief that describes an issue instead of eliminating a belief that causes it.

When this happens, you keep finding beliefs that seem to logically connect to an issue but in fact really don’t.

Here’s an example:

Joey used to procrastinate a lot. When he has something to do, often he puts it off as long as he can.

Because Joey wants to stop this destructive behavior, he tries seminars, books, DVDs, therapy, etc.

None of them really help.

He keeps procrastinating.

At some point he realizes that his behavior and feelings come mainly from his beliefs, so he starts looking for the beliefs that would cause this persistent problem.

The first belief that occurs to him is, I’m a procrastinator.

I mean after all, we’ve all heard of the self-fulfilling prophecy.

If you believe you’ll fail, you will.
If you think you can’t, you won’t.
If you think I’m a procrastinator, then you will put things off.

Makes sense, right?

But it’s plain wrong.

You see, you had to already have the habit of putting things off before you could observe your behavior and then form the belief, I’m a procrastinator.

And if that’s the case, this can’t be one of the beliefs that caused the problem of procrastination.

In order to find the beliefs that cause you to procrastinate, you would first have to examine the feelings and thoughts you have just before you have something to do that you avoid doing.

This would give you clues as to the beliefs involved.

In the case of procrastination, if you’ve got a project to work on and you’re putting it off, you might feel anxiety and think …

I might screw up
I don’t think I can do it
I wonder what people will think of what I do

Some of the beliefs that might cause such thoughts and feelings include:

Mistakes and failure are bad
I’m not capable or competent,
I’m not good enough,
What makes me good enough is having people think well of me.

So when you want to change, don’t look for a belief that describes your behavior or your situation.

If you procrastinate, don’t try to get rid of “I am a procrastinator.”

Instead, identify the thoughts and feelings that come before the behavior you are trying to change, and then look for the beliefs that cause them.

So now that you’ve learned not to work on beliefs that merely describe, but don’t cause your problem, you can avoid wasting time working on beliefs that won’t change anything.

And you’ll increase the chances that you eliminate beliefs that do make a difference.

You will be more satisfied with your work on yourself and your clients …

Because you’ll see more progress.

Still, a client can give you a ton of information that can be quite overwhelming.

The client might tell you about everything wrong in his life.

His family.
Her finances.
His career.
Her love life.

How do you sift through it all to find a pattern that you can help the client change?

That is the subject of the next lesson which will be available in a few days.