Denise was one of the most impressive people I’d ever worked with.
She was a director at her company, moving up fast, and well-respected by everyone around her. At work, she had no problem advocating for her team, pushing for resources, making the case for initiatives she believed in. She’d learned to do all of that. She was good at it.
But when we got on the phone for the first time, she said something I’ll never forget.
“Shelly, I don’t know why I can’t just ask for what I want.”
She wasn’t talking about work.
What she wanted was simple. More alone time with her husband. Real connection. Date nights. Conversations that weren’t about the kids or the calendar. With two children and two demanding careers, she and her husband had slowly drifted into a life that was full — but not really together.
She hadn’t asked for any of it. She’d just waited. Hoped he would initiate. Told herself she didn’t really need it.
“It’s not that I’m afraid he’ll say no,” she told me. “It’s more like… asking just feels wrong. Like it would make me a bad person.”
I knew exactly what was happening.
Denise had plenty of evidence she could ask for things when it mattered. She’d advocated for her team, pushed for resources, made the case for initiatives she believed in.
But she was living inside a box.
And the box had a name: If I ask for what I want, that means I’m selfish.
The box nobody told you about
My late husband Morty had a way of describing limiting beliefs that I’ve never heard anyone say better.
He used to say: if you’re inside a box called I’m not good enough or I’m not important, there are still plenty of possibilities available to you inside that box. You can work hard. Build things. Achieve things. Be kind and generous and successful.
But speaking up and asking for what you want? Having real confidence in who you are? Letting yourself be fully seen?
Those aren’t inside the box.
The same is true for Denise’s box. And here’s what made it so sneaky: the box didn’t show up everywhere. Inside if I ask for what I want, that means I’m selfish, asking for things on behalf of others — her team, her organization, her kids — felt completely fine. Even noble.
But asking for something just for herself? In her marriage, her closest relationship?
Not in the box.
And the cruelest part? Most people don’t know they’re in one.
They just think that’s how they are. “I’m just not someone who asks for things.” “I’ve always been more of a giver.” “I don’t really need much anyway.”
They’re not wired that way. They built a box. And then forgot they built it.
How the box gets built
Here’s what I know after working with thousands of people over the past three decades.
We come into this world knowing nothing about ourselves. Nothing about life. We’re just little balls of consciousness, trying to figure it all out.
And the main way we figure it out is by watching the people around us — and asking why.
When Denise was young, her mother was a devoted, self-sacrificing woman who prided herself on never needing anything. Whenever Denise expressed a want — something she needed, something she wished for — her mother’s response was some version of: you should be grateful for what you have. Don’t be so selfish. Think about others.
Denise didn’t think: my mother was taught that her own needs didn’t matter. She didn’t think: my mother is passing on a belief she learned from her own mother.
She was a child. She thought: wanting things for myself must be selfish. And selfish is bad.
That conclusion doesn’t stay a conclusion for long. It becomes a belief. A statement about reality that feels absolutely, unquestionably true.
And from that point on, everything gets filtered through it.
The box is built.
Why you can’t see the box from inside it
This is the part that surprises people most.
Once a belief is formed, we don’t experience it as a belief. We experience it as reality. We think we’re simply seeing the world as it is.
For Denise, it didn’t feel like she had a belief about asking. It felt like asking for things for herself actually was selfish. Like that was just an obvious fact about how the world works. She could see clearly that asking for things at work was different — that was for the team, for the mission, for something bigger than herself. But asking her husband for more time alone? That was just for her. And that felt like too much.
Have you ever held back from asking for something — more support, more connection, more of what you actually need — and told yourself you didn’t want to be a burden? Or felt a quiet guilt when you put your own needs first? Or found it much easier to give than to receive?
That might be your box.
You formed this belief a long time ago, doing your best to make sense of your world. It’s not who you are — it’s what you concluded.
And no amount of evidence will talk you out of it. That’s the thing about beliefs — they don’t respond to logic. I’ve worked with people who could list ten good reasons why asking for help is healthy and still couldn’t bring themselves to do it. Because evidence doesn’t reach beliefs. Beliefs run deeper than that.
The invisible workaround
Now here’s where it gets interesting.
Beliefs like Denise’s are painful to live with. So we build workarounds.
If asking for yourself feels selfish, you find ways to frame every request as being for someone else. You become the person who always gives, always accommodates, always puts others first. And you tell yourself a story about it: I’m just a generous person. I don’t need much. I like making other people happy.
It can look a lot like virtue.
But underneath it is a box. And the cost of living inside it is real. Needs go unmet. Resentment quietly builds. And you’re left, like Denise, waiting and hoping — but not quite able to say the thing that would actually change anything.
I’ve seen this show up in marriages, in friendships, in families. They give and give and give — not from abundance, but because asking, even from the people closest to them, feels genuinely dangerous.
I understand this firsthand. My own box was built around what other people thought of me. My survival strategy belief was what makes me good enough is having other people think well of me. My whole life was quietly orchestrated around impressions. I wouldn’t dress too outlandishly. I’d carefully manage what I said and how I said it. I didn’t even realize I was doing it.
When I finally eliminated that belief, I called it my Martin Luther King Jr. moment.
Because I was free.
I could walk into a room of hundreds of people and simply be there. No impression management. No performance. Just present with whoever was in front of me.
That’s what getting out of the box feels like. The box disappears. The space where it was doesn’t fill with something new — it just opens. That’s the closest I can describe it.
There is a way out
The Lefkoe Belief Process — the method Morty and I developed over decades of work — doesn’t ask you to push through the discomfort or convince yourself that asking is okay.
It goes back to the source.
Back to the events that seemed to prove the belief. Back to the conclusions you drew as a child. And it walks you through a simple but powerful set of realizations — that there were other ways to interpret what happened. That your mother’s reaction said something about her, not about the nature of having needs. That you never actually saw “asking is selfish” out in the world. You only saw her behavior. Her words. Her face.
The belief was a meaning you made. A child’s best explanation for what her mother’s face kept telling her. It was never a fact about the world — it was the story that made sense at the time.
And once you truly get that — once you see it clearly — the belief can’t hold the same weight anymore.
Managing a belief means carrying it while trying not to act on it. The Lefkoe process eliminates it — so there’s nothing left to manage.
That’s when the box disappears.
And possibilities open up that you couldn’t even see from inside it.
She asked because the belief was gone. Not suppressed, not reasoned around — gone. She didn’t have to talk herself into it. She just did it.
She told her husband she missed him. That she wanted more time with him. Just the two of them.
“It’s the strangest thing,” she told me afterward. “I kept waiting to feel selfish. But I didn’t feel anything except… normal. Like this is just how people talk to each other.”
That’s exactly it.
The box was gone. And she could finally see what had always been available to her.
If you’re reading this and something in you is whispering this might be me, I’d love to talk.
In a free strategy session, we’ll look at what you truly want, identify the patterns that keep getting in your way, and see if working together might be the right next step for you.
