A few videos to share with you today that will have you break old patterns and set you free to living a joyful life. Sounds too good to be true, but just wait…
Soooo….do you have any LIMITING BELIEFS?
Yeah, of course you do. We all have do and they usually drive us nuts!
Limiting beliefs show up as things like actions we take to sabotage our goals, keep us playing small when our dreams are big, have us not speak up in meetings or in personal relationships, hide out and generally doing crap we don’t really want to do, but keep doing over…and over…and over.
I’m going to assume beyond that we’re on the same page about what they are. If you want greater info about “limiting beliefs”, there are thousands of sites to teach you what they are and what creates them.
In my work as a coach I’m often asked for methods to replace, release or rid yourself of limiting beliefs. As you might imagine, having bulimia for 20 years and living in the perpetual binge purge, recovery/relapse cycle I had a few limiting beliefs I needed to change before I could stop that freakin’ insanity.
I found this great(!) yet casual series of 5 YouTube videos with two people I have a lot of respect for; Dr. Morty Lefkoe and Joe Vitale. Dr. Morty Lefkoe was world renowned for The Lefkoe Method of releasing old beliefs and you might recognize Joe Vitale because he was in the movie The Secret – awesome guys.
The video looks like it was shot while Joe and Morty were at a retreat and Morty walks Joe through the process he created 30 years ago and teaches on his website to release old limiting beliefs.
If you want to let go of some nagging limiting beliefs and create a breakthrough in your life, you won’t want to miss this!
Here are the 5 videos that make up the entire session and below them is my summary of Morty’s changing belief process. Take about 45 minutes total…and definitely worth watching!
The Lefkoe Method by Morty Lefkoe (heavily edited and paraphrased by me)
- Identify an undesirable pattern – what are you doing that you don’t want to be doing? The behavior (or symptom), not the belief itself. What is that nagging thing you do and want to stop doing or the thing you know you should be doing but can’t get yourself to get started or maintain.
- Acknowledge the source of behavior – Morty has the client discover and confirm/assume that the source of their behavior and feelings are their beliefs, not anything in reality. Client must be willing to accept that idea for the duration of the session while they’re working on the limiting belief.
- Finding the belief – The next step is asking the client what s/he believed, at the moment, that “logically” could account for undesirable pattern or behavior they’re looking to change. This step is designed to elicit one or more beliefs (client was probably not conscious of before they started the session – maybe, but maybe not) that logically would manifest as the undesirable pattern. Morty says that the underlying beliefs CAUSE the EFFECT of the behavior patterns. Thus, it’s impossible to change the effect without changing its cause.
- Source of Beliefs – Once the client realizes one of the causing beliefs they’re asked to say the words out loud to confirm that they actually hold this belief. Then, they’re asked to look for the earliest events they can remember that had them form the belief. Morty says “Fundamental beliefs about life and about oneself—for example, self-esteem-type beliefs—usually are formed before the age of six. For the most part they are based on interactions with our parents and other primary caretakers, if any. Beliefs in other areas of life, such as work and society, are formed at the time those areas of life are encountered.”
- Acknowledge and validate beliefs – it’s important to tell yourself or have the person helping you with this process validate the belief. It’s ok to have this belief! Then go into “ Can see how a younger version of yourself could have made that up and believed it into being?” This belief is often a reasonable interpretation of childhood circumstances. A young child, a young mind made up a story or an interpretation of what happened to them…and then they live as if it’s true.
- Discover other interpretations of those events – what else could those events have meant about the people involved and you? “The point here is not to convince the client that his belief is unreasonable, he just needs to realize that there are many different meanings, each one of which is logically consistent with the events he experienced.”
Seeing your beliefs in the world – “Did you see the belief in the world back then?” The distinction created by asking this is to help the client become aware they layered on the meaning, the story, the belief about this situation. “The principles that underlie this distinction are: Events have no inherent meaning. There’s no meaning in the world. All meaning is in our minds. All beliefs are merely the meaning we assign to events.”- A new reality appears – to help you see the meaning you made up is to ask: “Is it clear, right now, that you never saw the belief in the world?” After the client realized that they never really did see their belief in the world, Morty asked: “If you didn’t see I’m not good enough in the world, where has it been all these years?” He pointed to his head and replied: “In my mind.” You’ll see that in the video and I think this is the ah-ha moment for Joe Vitale. Great breakthrough moment!
- Creating possibility or consciously constructing a new reality – There is no meaning in the world…we make it up! This step is about asking “Did the events that led you to form the belief have a meaning before you gave them a meaning? Do they have an inherent meaning?”
These videos are a wonderful demonstration of the power of discovering and unlocking old limiting beliefs. Try this for yourself by following Morty’s process in the video or you can visit his website at http://www.recreateyourlife.com/free/ to eliminate a belief for free.
Leave a comment below to share your experience working with or struggling to overcome your limiting beliefs…