Morty Lefkoe on recognizing self-limiting beliefs

Morty Lefkoe notes how much power beliefs have to affect our actions, identity and esteem. He describes his therapeutic approach to eliminate the beliefs that cause our behavioral and emotional patterns.

“All meaning is in our minds. All beliefs are merely the meaning we assign to what we observe. Before I explain how this axiom and its corollaries can be the basis for a process that quickly and permanently eliminates beliefs, let me explain what I mean by ‘Events have no inherent meaning.’

Emily Browning, Jim Carrey, Liam Aiken in Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events “Please try the following mental exercise: Assume your parents were very critical of you most of the time and rarely acknowledged you for your achievements.

“No matter what you did, they focused on what you didn’t do and how you should have done better. If this was the pattern of their interactions with you, there literally would be thousands of them by the time you were six or seven years old.

“What would you have concluded about yourself by this time? If you are typical of most children, you would concluded that There’s something wrong with me or I’m not good enough.

“You would have experienced these beliefs as ‘the truth’ about you as a child. Today, as an adult, even though you might consciously realize the beliefs were silly and illogical, on some deep level you still would experience them as the truth about you.”

> From his article Behavior Change Doesn’t Have to be Difficult.

He is founder of Undo Public Speaking Fear – The Lefkoe Method.

Photo: Emily Browning, Jim Carrey, Liam Aiken in Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004).