Happy New Year. I hope you had a wonderful break, a great time with family and friends and you are looking forward to a super year for 2009. I also hope you have found these sessions helpful.
I thought it would be worth looking at our beliefs this week, since they are so instrumental in creating our world.
Our behaviors are often directly influenced by of our beliefs. Beliefs are instrumental in creating the world we live in. All of us have a set of beliefs that influence our lives, probably even more than we realize.
Some beliefs are collective beliefs and serve as the foundations of our institutions like government. We believe in democracy. We believe that the government will look after us. Then we have beliefs in our banking system, our education, healthcare, policing. We have strong beliefs about our biology that significantly influence our approach to medicine, therapies, how we see disease, our diets. In fact our beliefs have changed incredibly in the area of food, with new knowledge on transfats, on chemicals leaching from plastics, on cholesterol, the consumption of red meat. Our beliefs in science are also changing, with most of our scientific beliefs based on
Beliefs tend to change with new information and new learning. Beliefs tend to change with geography and change from culture to culture.
We now know the world isn’t flat, that we are not the centre of the universe, that you can’t tell the sex of an unborn child by hanging and swinging a wedding ring over the pregnant mother’s belly, and that you can’t catch aids by coming into contact with someone who has it. In fact almost all our beliefs have changed over time and the ones we hold today, for sure will change as we get new information.
Our world has taken a belief pill, an ugly belief pill that perpetuates a lie; that makes us believe in lack, that there isn’t enough to go around, that there isn’t enough money, enough time, and enough resources.
It makes us believe things like we aren’t important, we don’t deserve success, that we are not worthy of prosperity, not worthy of respect, don’t deserve happiness. It conditions us to believe that we are less than we actually are.
A belief is nothing more than chronic thinking. If a thought is ongoing, repetitive, unchanged, then it becomes a truth. A truth for the moment. Your belief will be supported and re-inforced by events and evidence. And you will individually or collectively re-inforce these beliefs by the events you create and the evidence you see. In fact you can become oblivious to evidence that says the contrary because your belief is so strong it does not allow you to see it. Beliefs rely on your interpretation of what you see. Often, in fact in most if not all cases, the belief is created by the observer through their interpretation of what they see. This interpretation can be drastically affected by the filters the observer uses and sees the world through.
Many of the beliefs we hold are formed when we are very young and have significant influence over our reality. Each person’s beliefs can be different because their experiences differ, but there are some common beliefs and common themes that run through most of us.
When we were learning how to walk, it did not matter to us how often we failed. Failing was part of the learning process. We did not see our inability as failures. We didn’t care how others felt about our inability to walk. It didn’t even enter our minds. We probably fell hundreds, if not thousands of times before we could make that first step properly, balanced upright, standing with a little support on two legs. It took persistence, it took strengthening of muscles, it took practice, it took the training of muscle memory and it took, I guess you could say, failing over and over and over before we began walking and feeling the experience of what it was like to put our two feet together over and over, totally balanced, making our way across the room, or from one end of the coffee table to the other. Failure was something we did not know. This thinking did not exist anywhere in our reality
Yet through conditioning many of us have learned that failure and mistakes are wrong and this belief has forever affected our lives, our behavior, our thinking and even our judgment and in the process this changed the reality we create and experience. Negative beliefs, such as I’m not good enough, I’m not important, I can’t do it, relationships don’t work, I’m powerless and I’m not worthy. These beliefs have created a negative self-esteem that leads to dysfunctional behavior.
These beliefs are not a true reflection of us and I know we know this rationally, but many of us have been conditioned to believe and therefore our behaviors reflect these beliefs. Many of us may not realize our true magnificence. That we truly are unlimited in our potential. We do not understand how powerful each of us is in creating whatever world we want to live in. That within us is the wherewithal to create whatever we want and have a life of abundance, joy, peace, happiness, and prosperity. That within us are gifts that when brought to the surface, will contribute to a positive world – to contribute to the business we work in, the team we work with, our relationships, our customers, our community.
What is important is to understand that our conditioning has had a negative impact on our beliefs. And that with practice and using some of the great techniques in this world, we can change our beliefs.
There are a number of techniques that work to change and/or eliminate negative beliefs. One technique that works for many people is called the Lefkoe technique. The Lefkoe technique was developed by Morty Lefkoe some twenty years ago. It is a process that has helped tens of thousands of people change their beliefs of how they see themselves and in the process helped them carve out a new and amazing life. And the process works in a short and painless time frame.
Most, if not all, of our beliefs have emerged from childhood in our interpretation of events that have occurred over and over again to form “the truth” rather than “a truth”.
Morty Lefkoe has developed an effective and proven method that he has practiced and refined to eliminate each dysfunctional belief within 15-30 minutes. The method is described in his book in fascinating detail with case studies.
One key point that Morty makes is that the method can be applied to all situations especially parenting and business.
In business the hardest thing is change - or is it? Actually it comes back to the root beliefs in individuals. Why change when you think that what you are doing today is the best thing. If you can address this core belief present in many people, then change becomes easy. Everyone wants to do the right thing and succeed. The trick is to find the key.
Persuasion never works because it does not address the core beliefs.I recommend his 200 page book and the course that Morty offers on-line or actual facilitations. Its worth noting that there have also been various trials to prove that the method works.
There are other methods of changing beliefs and releasing the emotional blocks that get in the way of creating the business world and the life we all want. This is an area where many people have some difficulty in believing these therapies work, because they really are quite simple in their techniques. Our world has forged a belief that things must be complicated to work. In fact we spend a lot of time complicating everything in our lives, but as Albert Einstein once put it so beautifully, “If the answer is simple, God has spoken.”
Further investigation will help you uncover and select what is best for you. There are techniques such as the Sedona Method and EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique), the Healing Codes and Energy Healing that are effective. What you need to do is some investigation and decide on one or a combination of techniques that you can use.
If anyone has other techniques, please share these with the group.
If we could all change the beliefs we are holding about the state of our world right now and begin to create positive, and non-judgmental feelings of prosperity, abundance, cooperation, and respect, we would create from a state of limitless possibilities, and you would be amazed at what positive changes we would see in our lives, our businesses, our countries and in our world. Try it – let’s be the first – and our outlooks will have an impact on everyone else.
Have a great day. Here’s a little video on prosperity to help you “feel” more prosperous.
Best always.
