I was wrong about how beliefs are formed
It’s interesting how it’s possible to think you really understand something and then at some later point realize that your understanding was incomplete. It wasn’t wrong, but your new realization provides a much more accurate understanding. That’s what happened to me with the Lefkoe Belief Process (LBP). What I initially thought about how beliefs are formed When I first created the LBP 29 years ago, it seemed to me that our basic self-esteem-type beliefs were formed in childhood as a result of many interactions with parents. (For more details, please see two earlier posts: https://www.mortylefkoe.com/031610/ and https://www.mortylefkoe.com/wonderful-parents/#) In some cases [...]
Why some get angry and others fear it.
The first time I really allowed myself to experience my anger I fainted. I was about 36 and had successfully suppressed my anger since childhood. And there I was in a group therapy session, hitting a mat with a stick with foam wrapped around it, screaming: “Mom, I’m really angry at you.” When I started the exercise I was only mouthing empty words, but then at some point the words became real and the anger surfaced. It terrified me so much that I literally passed out on the mat. I fainted the next couple of times I tried that [...]
Beliefs determine behavior, right? Wrong.
For many years I thought that virtually all of our behavior and feelings were caused by beliefs. When thousands of clients found and eliminated the relevant beliefs, they saw spectacular behavioral and emotional changes. After about 12 years, however, I had a client who eliminated scores of beliefs and made many significant changes in his life, but who couldn’t get rid of the anger he felt toward his mother, who was a partner in his construction business, when she gave him advice on how to run his company. At that point I realized that beliefs weren’t the only cause [...]
How to build your self-confidence
NOTE: One of the most frequent questions I get is about what causes a low level of self-confidence and what can be done to improve it. To answer those questions I’ve posted an updated version of a post from early last year on this topic. Most of us would like to improve our level of confidence. But why? What is confidence anyway? Where does it come from? Why do some people have more of it than others? How can we improve our level of confidence? How does a low level of confidence affect us and what changes in our lives [...]
Did You Have Wonderful Parents?
Perhaps the single most common question I get from people who are using the Lefkoe Belief Process to eliminate beliefs is: “Why do you say that all of our self-esteem beliefs were formed in early interactions with our parents? I had great parents. My beliefs about myself weren’t formed until later in life.” I wrote a post last year explaining why parents are almost always the source of our self-esteem beliefs. https://www.mortylefkoe.com/031610/. But there are additional reasons why people might think their parents’ behavior has nothing to do with their beliefs that I didn’t cover in that post. To begin [...]
Stop Worrying About What Others Think
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 [...]
How You Can Eliminate Beliefs For Good
Most of the techniques that proclaim to permanently eliminate long-held beliefs don’t work. Why? And what do the successful techniques do that make them successful? In order to understand precisely what it takes to get rid of beliefs, you need to understand how we form beliefs. Because our survival as human beings is always at stake (even though our spiritual being is eternal), we have a built in survival mechanism that has us constantly asking about everything we encounter: Good for me or bad for me? Conducive to my survival or inimical to my survival? In other words, we are [...]
What could they possibly have been thinking?
There was a time in America when some people were treated as property, forced to do whatever other people wanted, abused without any ability to respond, and unable to obtain their freedom. Such behavior was legal and considered appropriate by the people practicing it. When we look at the people who exhibited that behavior we think with repulsion, “What could they possibly have been thinking?” I’m not referring to slavery 150 years ago. I’m referring to the abuse heaped upon millions of children daily by well-meaning parents who don’t realize the long-term damage being done by spanking and other forms [...]
How to control anger
The first time I really allowed myself to experience my anger I fainted. I was about 36 and had successfully suppressed my anger since childhood. And there I was in a group therapy session, hitting a mat with a stick with foam wrapped around it, screaming: “Mom, I’m really angry at you.” When I started the exercise I was only mouthing empty words, but then at some point the words became real and the anger surfaced. It terrified me so much that I literally passed out on the mat. I fainted the next couple of times I tried that exercise, [...]
