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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Beliefs are as important as biochemistry in addictions
For 30 years I have been contending that unlearning beliefs will change behavior, including addictive behavior. Despite the fact that many thousands of people have made radical behavioral changes as a result of eliminating beliefs, I continue to get emails from people who state: “There is clear scientific evidence that addictions are biophysical. They are the result of chemical responses and conditionings. Getting rid of a few beliefs can’t possibly cure addictions.” Well, a recent scientific study concluded, "… cognitive beliefs could be as potent as pharmacological interventions in terms of modifying biophysical processes in the brain and changing behavior [...]
You can’t deal effectively with reality if you don’t know what it is
If you’ve been reading my recent blogs you learned that one benefit of dissolving your occurrings (the meanings you assign to the countless events that you encounter daily) is getting rid of virtually all your negative feelings and emotional stress. I then wrote about another benefit: creating possibilities that didn’t exist for you before. Today I want to explain a third benefit of dissolving occurrings, one that is at least as important as the first two: Dissolving your occurrings enables you to deal with “what is,” instead of an imagined “what is” that has meaning (usually negative) attached. That enables [...]
Would you like to live longer?
On several occasions I’ve explained that when we stop giving meaning to the moment-to-moment events in our lives, we can virtually stop having the negative feelings that cause our stress and emotional suffering. I’ve also discussed the fact that minimizing your stress can literally improve your physical health. In this post I’ll go one step further: I will show you how reducing your stress can actually have you live years longer. An article in Time explains how stress decreases life span A recent issue of Time (February 23-March 2, 2015) has several articles on aging and longevity. One of the [...]
What can YOU learn from my condition?
By the time you read this I either will be in surgery or have completed it. This week’s post will bring you up to date. I am not telling you about how I am dealing with the cancer diagnosis because I think it is particularly interesting. I am telling you because I think that the way I am dealing with it might provide some useful lessons for you. It is possible for YOU to stop giving events meaning. It is possible for YOU to create a positive context for your life. It is possible for YOU to pretty much eliminate [...]
A new cancer diagnosis
Less than 48 hours ago I received a call from Jennifer Lucus, my oncologist. She had just received the results of a PET and CT scan that I had done Monday morning. I was convinced that she would tell me that I was fine, that there was no recurrence of the fourth stage metastatic colon cancer I had been diagnosed with in April of last year. I “knew” that I had been healed because colon cancer produces CEA antigens that can be measured in the blood, and my CEA level had been in the normal range for over seven months. [...]
The relationship between beliefs and occurring
Creating a new theory or change technique is an interesting process for me. I usually first get only a very vague sense of an entire idea. I can barely grasp it; I just have a sense of it, like an object in the fog where I sense “something out there,” but the outlines and details of that “something” are very vague. I have an intuitive sense that there’s something useful there, but I’m not sure precisely what it is. Then, over time, little by little the fog starts to clear away until I am able to distinguish aspects of the [...]
