How To Help Impossible Clients Without Going Insane

In the early 1900s the race was on. Who would be the first to make a machine that could fly without balloons holding it up.

Millionaires, people the equivalent of Warren Buffett or Bill Gates today, had tried and failed time and time again to make such a machine work.

Along with all this competition were the Wright Brothers.

Two bicycle mechanics from North Carolina, who were also trying to build the first airplane.

What chance did two bicycle mechanics have?

But of course, we all know they succeeded.

They had little money.
They were not scientists.
They were not engineers.

How could they solve the problem when everyone else had failed?

The key was to conduct cheap tests with gliders instead of making big, fancy machines that others were building.

This allowed them to try many experiments and, most importantly, come up with theories to explain why every glider crashed. This way, they could learn from failures and come up with solutions.

So, how does this help us with our “impossible” clients?

First, I’d like to explain what an “impossible” client really is.

It is simply a client who doesn’t change even when you use everything you know.

Why are they impossible?

They aren’t really. The mind naturally assumes, “If all I know can’t help, then they can’t be helped.”

And this leads to a pretty obvious solution.

We must learn something new to make the impossible possible, just as the Wright Brothers did.

How Morty used this learning principle to help an “impossible” client

In his last session with Morty, Jason, who ran a construction company, had eliminated belief 101.

As you would expect, Jason had experienced many changes in his life. He was happier. He was more successful. But he was experiencing something that neither Morty nor Shelly expected. And he, too, was surprised by it.

What was it?

He still had emotional-flare ups of anger, particularly when he was told what to do by anyone, especially his mother.

Eliminating belief after belief had no effect on these emotions. They were as strong as ever.

Would Morty ever find the final beliefs causing his anger?

He thought he would, and that’s why he kept trying.

Belief after belief.
Session after session.
And still no change in these emotions.

Eventually, Morty had to give up.

Eliminating more beliefs was unlikely to help. If you try something over 100 times and see no change, then will more of the same really make a difference?

Probably not.

But he didn’t give up on the client. He only gave up on the idea that eliminating beliefs alone would help this man.

Like the Wright Brothers, he had to come up with some new ideas.

So what did he do?

A lot of thinking, writing, and discussing with others.

He reviewed the literature in psychology and hit upon the idea of stimulus conditioning.

Experiencing a stimulus followed by an emotion over and over causes the two to be linked together in the mind.

Later, I’ll give you a link that explains how this process of conditioning works as well as what it takes to free ourselves from conditioning.

But for now I want to focus on one point.

Morty used this new learning to create a solution to his client’s problem.

He didn’t assume the client could not be helped.

He didn’t assume he knew all there was to know.

For Morty, the fact that the client didn’t improve meant that Morty did not know something.

He seemed to operate on the principle that you could solve any problem if you developed an understanding of that problem and worked to produce a process.

Here’s what we’ve discussed so far

• When we struggle with a challenging client, we need to learn something new to help them.
• Our mind only says they are “impossible” because it doesn’t yet see a solution.
• To find a solution, we need to learn something new.

The Wright Brothers kept crashing gliders and learning new things until finally they were able to control the glider.

Then they put an engine on it and made it fly farther.

The Wright Brothers learned by choosing to solve just one problem first — that of learning how to build a glider that could be navigated successfully.

Then they focused on building an engine.

Then they focused on the next problem and the next.

To help our clients go further, we have to learn more than we already do.

That’s why in each of our training programs at The Lefkoe Institute, we teach you just one objective at a time.

In LMT1 you learn how to eliminate beliefs.
In LMT2 you learn how to find every belief causing a problem.
In LMT3 you learn how to eliminate emotions not caused by beliefs.

This increases the chance that you learn effectively as you’ll just be making one category of mistakes at each stage … then correct them before moving onto the next category.

Right now, you may be having clients like Jason who still have negative emotions despite eliminating many beliefs. You’ll learn how to solve that problem in LMT3.

After, that you’ll experience more successes, but you’ll also find new challenges as well.

So take each “impossible” client as a sign that there is more to learn. And keep in mind that those of us who are certified facilitators also get clients we haven’t yet figured out how to help, too. They number fewer and fewer as we continue to learn, but it still happens. Maybe there is no end to growth and learning.

Oh, and as promised, here’s a link to an explanation of the Lefkoe Stimulus Process.