How can you end negative feelings without the danger of suppressing them?
Some time ago, I said to an acquaintance "It's possible to give up having negative emotions" and he said, "But if you suppress your feelings they'll just come back when you least expect them. They'll mess with your mind and make you sick." This wasn't the first time someone has responded that way to my message. Many people assume that "not having a feeling" means really having it but suppressing it. They think you can only push a feeling out of awareness not change it. Because a few of you might share this idea (or at least know people that [...]
What makes you good enough?
Sometimes when a client has a difficult time acknowledging that she has a negative self-esteem belief that I am certain she has, such as I’m not good enough, I ask them a question: “What makes you good enough?” Before continuing, ask and then answer this question for yourself. You’ll see the value of doing so in just a moment … This is actually a trick question, because if they say anything other than “nothing,” they are acknowledging that they need something to be good enough, which logically means they think they aren’t good enough to begin with. Once they have [...]
How to improve the quality of your life
I’ve said on many occasions that all of us at the Lefkoe Institute are committed to helping you improve the quality of your life. But I don’t think I’ve ever defined what I mean by “improving the quality of your life.” It is possible to have a life where you are surviving very well, in other words, you have plenty of money to meet your needs and plenty of friends. In such a situation I would say you are surviving very well, but that doesn’t mean you are necessarily thriving. You might not be depressed or be run by anxiety, [...]
How to create the space for others to grow around you
A guest post by Shelly Lefkoe As most of you know my beloved husband Morty has been through quite a journey. He was diagnosed with lymphoma some time ago and a few months ago became very, very ill. At that time our daughter Blake flew in from Hawaii for an indefinite stay to help care for him (she stayed three weeks); my other daughter Brittany came in from San Francisco where she now lives to spend a few days with us; my best friend of 50 years came from Nashville to stay with us for a week. During the week [...]
Does it really make a difference what we choose?
During a session last week, a client was trying to decide between two alternative paths for her career. She listed the pros and cons of each and tried to decide which one would be the best choice. I recognized that the principles I wrote about in last week’s post about our obsession with results was relevant to her thinking. I realized something else: There was no way to know for sure which choice would turn out to be the best and there was a very good chance that her second choice, if that’s the one that she ended up being [...]
More is possible than we realize
When people know they don’t know something and they want to know about that something, they learn about it. So if you know that your relationships could be better, that it is possible stop worrying about the opinions of others, and that it is possible to eliminate the beliefs that keep you from being more successful in life—and you want to make improvements in these areas—you have several choices. You can search on Google to find out where to get help. You can ask friends what they did. You can read books and take courses. Etc. But what if you [...]
Is your happiness really dependent on results?
For most people, happiness and success are a function of the results they achieve. Their lives are dedicated to achieving results. The source of that almost obsessive focus on results is not hard to find. Virtually from the moment we are born, our parents stress the importance of results. When we do what they want us to do, we hear: “Good boy!” or “Good girl!” When we finish all our food, we hear: “Good for you; you ate all your food!” As we get older we hear: “Good job!” when we do our errands or clean our room. (Obviously there [...]
Aphorisms are fun to read but are they useful?
The aphorisms that cover the screens on Facebook and Google+ are what the people posting them consider to be important “information” they want to remind you of. Essentially they are saying, “Live this way and improve the quality of your life.” But if you take a look at the aphorisms you like and respond to, the ones that you nod to and say: “Yeah, that makes perfect sense”—notice that the ones you like are the ones you either already agree with or that made immediate sense to you. So the aphorism is not necessarily telling you something new, something that [...]
Of course I worry about what others think. Doesn’t everyone?
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 this ever-present problem because they assume it’s part of the “human condition.” What is this ubiquitous problem? Constantly worrying about what others think and frequently 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?” [...]
