What do you know that others think is untrue?
A few days ago I read a fascinating cover story in Fast Company magazine on Peter Thiel. Peter is a billionaire investor who co-founded PayPal, which was sold to eBay in 2002 for $1.5 billion. Since then he was one of the early investors in Facebook; he later invested in LinkedIn, Spotify, SpaceX and Airbnb. He obviously has a knack for determining what makes a successful company. So when I found out he had written a book, Zero to One, I ordered it immediately and read it in one day. I learned a lot about what it takes to grow [...]
Are You Too Self-focused?
Many books in recent years have stated that “trust” is the new key to success in business. Customers are looking for companies they can trust and companies that can’t be trusted are rapidly losing market share. And obviously it would be hard to get a job if the person interviewing you didn’t trust you. But trust is a key factor in personal relationships also. It would be difficult for someone to form a really close relationship with you if they didn’t trust you. And most people would probably agree that one of the most important characteristics of their best friends [...]
You can have much more happiness than you realize
Most people are more interested in avoiding or relieving pain than in achieving and experiencing happiness. Thus most people go into psychotherapy or pursue “self-help” programs to overcome "problems"—such as changing some negative, undesirable behavior (e.g., procrastination or not taking action to further one's goals) or stopping some negative undesirable emotions (e.g., fear or depression). Far fewer people ask for help when they aren’t experiencing some obvious problem. In other words, relatively few people strive to improve their lives when it already seems to be “working.” Much more is possible There’s nothing wrong with that approach. I'd like to suggest, [...]
How To Keep Your New Year’s Resolutions
Did you keep your New Year’s resolutions last year? … What about the year before? … If you are like most people, you worked on them through the middle of January and by early February you had forgotten you ever made them. Or, perhaps after several years of failure, you stopped making New Year’s resolutions at all. Why don’t we do the things that we say we are going to do? Things we really want to do? Things that truly would benefit our lives? The answer is simple. Our behavior is not the result of our desires or even our [...]
Most people agree … and they are all wrong
Because I’m in the change business I am frequently telling people that change is really easy if you know how to do it. Almost without exception, however, their response is: “What do you mean change is easy? Everyone knows that people resist change!” Don’t you think that people resist change? Don’t you notice that your friends, family and co-workers frequently know what to do and just don’t do it. Of course people resist change. It’s obviously human nature. Despite the conventional wisdom, people don’t resist change. People do resist something, but it’s not change. Let’s take a look and see [...]
Why what people do and say sometimes seems insane
Have you ever listened to something a friend or loved one said to you and thought: “They have to be insane! That makes no sense at all!” And what about things they do? Aren’t you flabbergasted when a friend or loved one doesn’t do something they promised to do or not returned a call for days? So much of what people do and say make little or no sense to us. Why? Things people say and do don’t make sense to us because we assume that they are giving events the same meaning we do. If we realized that [...]
Do You Want To Create New Possibilities In Your Life?
Recently I wrote about how our beliefs become reality for us, determining our behavior and feelings. Because how we view reality determines the possibilities for action that are open for us, by eliminating limiting beliefs you are able to literally create new possibilities in your life. Let me give you an example. Assume you had the beliefs: I’m not loveable. Relationships don’t work. Men/women can’t be trusted. With these beliefs, what are the possibilities that you could have a really good, nurturing, long-term romantic relationship? … Slim to nil, right? Now let’s assume you completely eliminate those beliefs. Can you [...]
It took me 26 years
Today (Monday) is a holiday and I’m sitting in my office writing this on my MAC. No one else is around and the phones are pretty quiet. I came in on what should have been a day off because this week we are going to make available our new Lefkoe Belief Process Training and I have to work with Rodney (who works virtually from Southern California) to make sure the web site and all the emails get completed today. This week my dream of 26 years will finally come true. Ever since I figured out how to help people get [...]
Why do you have relationship problems?
Thanks so much for the many thoughtful responses to my post last week asking you how we can contribute to improving your life. The single most common response had to do with relationships. Unfortunately, there is no simple advice I can offer in this area for several reasons. Different types of relationship problems To begin with, many of the beliefs men have that serve as barriers to having a great relationship are different from the beliefs women have. Moreover, relationships have a lot of different aspects, such as: • men can have a hard time approaching women, • both men [...]
