Shelly Lefkoe - Eliminating Beliefs

Anytime you have a negative emotion, stop and ask yourself, what happened? My partner didn't kiss me hello. What meaning did I give it? They don't love me anymore. What else could it mean? They had a hard day. Come up with one other meaning and then get the event has no inherent meaning. You don't know anything for sure because something happened. Meaning is what we attach to it, right? People always say to me, well, the events only have the meaning I give it. No, they don't. The events don't have meaning. The meaning is still in your mind. So it has that meaning for you, but the events don't have the meaning.

Welcome to the mindtrax podcast with breakthrough ideas to live your best life possible and how to make it happen. I'm Paul Shealy and today we will be joined by Shelley Lefkoe. Shelly Lefkoe is the co founder of the Lefkoe Institute, a San Francisco Bay Area firm whose mission is to significantly improve the quality of life on the planet. She has helped thousands of clients worldwide recreate their lives by ridding themselves of problems and eliminating emotional patterns. Her programs have reached over 150,000 people worldwide.

Foreign.

Good to be with you. Thanks for joining the podcast.

Oh, it is my pleasure. It is so wonderful to be with you.

Oh, we have had quite a history of being together through the years, certainly with the Transformational Leadership Council and all the time with you and your beautiful husband Morty that we've had dinners together and hung out and I'll never forget I was introduced to the work that you're we're going to be sharing here by Morty when he showed up for the first time at a TLC meeting so years ago. Yeah, how about that? And you know, I want to say I really love your book hitting the wall. Great. It's so easy to follow. Everybody absolutely needs to have this as a part of the way they think about their lives and creating the benefits and changes that they want. And to that point, I mean, you work with people to really help make changes so that we can all live into our full expression and into the dreams that we have for our lives. And it's really based on the idea of belief. So before we get into details of it, let's just take a moment to define in your model of the world, what is a belief or what are beliefs?

Yeah, I love that question. And thank you. Thank you for how beautifully you spoke to what my life is about. Having people live as their free expressions and living into their dreams. That was beautiful.

I love the question Paul. Because I read a lot about people who talk about beliefs. You know, 20 years ago, 35 years ago, when we created this. When Morty created this process, people used to say, you mean religious beliefs? What do you mean, beliefs? And so a lot of people confuse beliefs and patterns. So they say, I have a belief that I'm a procrastinator. Procrastinating is a pattern. So a belief is a statement about reality that we hold as the truth.

A pattern is observable. A belief is not. So a pattern is what you actually want to change. Nobody cares about eliminating beliefs. That's a means to an end. What you care about is getting rid of procrastination, or I can't speak up for myself, or I stay in crappy relationships, or I. Or I don't go for it in life. Whatever going for it would look like, whether it's in the area of relationships or the area of career, we kind of settle. We kind of stop really playing life full out. And so what the work, my work is about is about getting rid of the unconscious, mostly unconscious beliefs that keep us from. From having being our full expression of ourselves.

So beliefs are keeping us in the patterns is that.

Yes. Well, beliefs actually cause the patterns.

Okay, good.

So a pattern, whatever your pattern, there are behavioral patterns and emotional patterns. So an emotional pattern would be I have anxiety or depression. You know, I worry about things. That's an emotional pattern. A behavioral pattern is I do something I don't want to do, or I don't do something I want to do, or I have something I don't want to have, or I don't want to have something I have. So those are behavioral patterns. Underlying those patterns are these beliefs. So you take a pattern like fear of public speaking. It's the only pattern that has the same beliefs for every person.

I swear to God. I have a client in Saudi Arabia. I have a client in Uganda. If they have a fear of public speaking, it's the same 11 beliefs and conditioning.

Wow. Okay, so.

I'm getting this. And the distinctions that you're making, I think are really important. When I say, are there any things that you want to do, you know you can do, but you're not doing? What's behind that not doing is what I call a disorienting dilemma where part of me wants to and part of me doesn't, and the part of me that doesn't or pulls me back are those unconscious beliefs. Is that how I'm understanding it?

Exactly.

Okay, so one of the things that you say the difference between your work and traditional self improvement work is that when we think about improvement, we think about information plus motivation equals change. So if you want to change your life, just get the right information, be sufficiently motivated, rah rah, let's go. And then the change will take place. But what you do is you say information plus motivation minus beliefs.

Yes.

So could you say what is that? Subtractive nature of beliefs.

Yeah, it's so interesting. I just did a.

A little kind of workshop with Jim Quick.

Last week and I asked the people, it was a 30 people mastermind group. And I asked them and they were high level people, right. People who are pretty successful. And I said, how many people have ever been to a workshop and learned something fabulous? And you came out jazzed and motivated and like, oh my God, I can't wait three days later the notes are in the drawer and there was no change. Anybody ever have that experience? Every single hand went up. Because it is impossible to sustain behavior that's inconsistent with your beliefs.

Say that again.

It is impossible to sustain behavior that is inconsistent with your beliefs.

And you know what's so cool about that is if you're behaving in a way that's inconsistent with your commitment, what you want any of that instantly, you now know there's a thread connecting to a self defeating belief of some kind. Self limiting.

Yeah. You know I talk a lot about in the book, I talk about watering all the plants. Right. It's a great metaphor. Right. I just came up with it one day and I said, if you had a lot of plants in your house, would you ever water just one. And everyone says no. And I said, why not? And they say, well, because the other ones would die. And I said, or they wilt and they'd be hanging. And we look at our lives and there are people who are workaholics. So the beliefs that underlie workaholism is so the most, the two most common beliefs that people have, I'll tell you the five, but the two I'm not good enough and I'm not important. What separates us, what makes us different, are what I call survival strategy beliefs. So I'm not. And this is why I'm going to talk about affirmations. Okay? So, so here's my belief. I'm not good enough. Right. And I have that.

And what makes me good enough is achieving things. And I'll tell you in a minute how beliefs get formed and why they stay with us throughout 15 years of therapy. So here's my. I'm not Good enough. What makes me good enough is achieving things. Right.

Working hard.

Working hard. So now I have this beach ball that I have to keep underwater. Do you ever try to keep a beach ball underwater?

Yeah, pretty tough.

That's what acting inconsistently with your beliefs is, like, so exhausting. It's exhausting. And if you believe what makes me good enough is working hard or achieving things or being successful in having people like me. Yeah, that's what ran my. That was the belief that what makes me good enough is having other people think well of me. That's the belief that runs most people's lives. Ran my life. We will throw our kids under a bus in a restaurant because we're worried about people that we will never see again what they think of us. It's insane. Right? But when you. When I got rid of that belief, I got my. That's when I was able to be my authentic self. That's freedom in front of 600. That's freedom. Because what people think of me no longer defines me. So it's not that I don't care. If you told me you didn't love me anymore, I would be like, oh, my God, I feel so really sad. But it doesn't mean I'm not good enough. It doesn't mean anything about me. So that's the power. And I want to get into in a. Before we finish, I really want to give your listeners a tool that will really help them in their lives. So going back to what makes me good enough are my achievements now all of a sudden, I don't know. I had a client, he said, I don't know my kids. I keep promising I'm going to be at their events. I don't show up. My second wife is ready to leave me. I'm on the COVID of business publications. I'm worth $10 million. When is it going to be enough? Never. Because your achievements don't make you good enough. Having people think well of you don't make you good enough. Taking care of people. If you're the oldest in a big family, you got acknowledged for taking care of people. So your whole life's about taking care of people. So the thing about beliefs, Paul, is that it keeps you driven and a victim and not at choice.

Nice, good, good distinction. And. And that's why I also want to make a distinction, because some beliefs are really helpful. There are beliefs that can liberate us. It's not like we have to eliminate beliefs.

But a lot of beliefs also limit us. One of the things I really Love about your work is you make a distinction about what's reality and what's an abstraction. And a lot of times we see our beliefs as reality. I mean this is just the way things are. And until we shift our meaning making how we're making meaning of our lives, we. Well, of course I can't go to my kids performance. Of course I can't give my wife the time she wants.

I'm too busy.

I'm an important person. I'm on the COVID of the magazine. Right. So what is this? How does someone begin to distinguish a difference between what's real and what's just an abstract idea that's become a belief that's running our lives?

Yeah. So the secret sauce to my work is so I'll make an assertion. You cannot. It isn't. So I don't want to use a double negative. It's impossible to not believe something you think you saw.

Okay, so I saw a cat. I saw a cat.

And if somebody said to me Paul Sheely doesn't wear glasses, I'd say no, he does. And they'd say no he doesn't. I'd say I was with him yesterday and he had glasses. So you know, you couldn't talk me into it. We think that we see our beliefs in the world. So let me give you an example, okay? You think that Jack, or we have a mutual friend Jack and Jack doesn't like you. And you and I are standing and talking and Jack walks by and he doesn't say hello to you. You would say to me, see, I told you he doesn't like me. It is as if you just saw Jack doesn't like you. But what you really saw was Jack walk by you without saying hello.

So then we have to put some kind of meaning to that.

Yes. So hold that thought. I'm going to go there in a second, but I want to back up first.

Okay?

So I'm going to make a distinction between two words, beliefs and meaning. Because they the same and they're different. So when you come into. So first of all, anything you could see has a color, shape and location. Okay? My water bottle has a color, shape and location. And you look in everybody listening, look around. Anything you can see has a color, shape and location. Right. You cannot see a belief. That's why I said you could see a pattern. I can see you procrastinate. I can see you not speak up for yourself. I could see you be anxious or depressed. But you cannot see I'm not good enough or life is hard Or I'll never get what I want, or I don't matter, or money is scarce and hard to get. You cannot see beliefs. Nice when I take people back, right? So we come into this world as a little ball of consciousness and we don't know anything about ourselves, life, people or the world. And we show up in this little world. It's like, you know, the elephant story. Depending on where you touch the elephant, that's what you think an elephant is. Well, we come into this world in this, there's a mother and a mother, a mother and a father, a father, a single mother, whatever your family structure was.

And every child, now you have children, but you have grandchildren. And you know when your grandchildren see your children, they run to them. And I ask people, Paul, in every country around the world, literally, what does your child do when you walk in the house? And they say, they run to me. And I say, what do they want? They want three things. Affection. And I love that it's alliterated. Affection, attention and acknowledgement. Every child alive wants those three things.

I think every adult alive would really appreciate those two.

So now I ask, what is every child? What is the one word question that every child asks all day long?

Why?

Why? And people who don't have children answer that. Why can't I live up to my parents expectations? Why are they criticizing me? Oh, I see. I'm not good enough. Why is my father working all the time or my mother's never home? Why are they looking at their iPhones while they're talking to me?

Why did they get a divorce?

Oh, that's right. Why did they get a divorce? Relationships don't work. Work. It's my fault.

Exactly.

I'm bad. I'm not good enough. If you ignore your kid, I'm not important. If you don't give them kisses and hugs, I'm not lovable. If you're complaining and oh God, we can't pay the bills they think they're seeing. Life is hard, money is scarce and hard to get. And so these beliefs stay with us throughout our whole lives because we think we saw them.

So the first response is ouch. And the second response is I'm so glad you figured out how to shift.

How to get rid of them. Exactly. Now I want to make. So now I'll go to the next thing you said. I'm going to make a distinction, okay.

Make a bunch of distinctions. But let me start with this one. Beliefs get formed in the past.

Meaning gets formed in the moment.

Oh, you know what, I gotta stop you for a sec? Because I was familiar with your work when Morty introduced it to me. And I remember him calling me up and said, paul, there's this next thing about occurrence.

Yes.

When he started speaking about it, I just went, oh, yes. Meaning occurs. We place meaning. Right. And I just, I just love. This is such a cool differentiator.

Yeah, it is. Because. And that's why we want to get rid of beliefs. Because beliefs are the past, determine the meaning that you're going to give events. So if you have a belief, dogs are dangerous, and a dog comes into the room, you're going to give it the meaning, he's going to bite you and then you're going to feel fear. So second distinction. All of our feelings come from the meaning we give events.

Okay.

All feelings, all feelings, all emotions are from the meaning we give events. So man is walking down the street, walks past you. It has no meaning. What are you going to feel?

Yep. Not a thing.

Not a thing. You give it the meaning. He's dangerous. What are you going to feel?

Fear.

You give it the meaning. He'll protect me. What are you going to feel?

I want to be around this guy.

You'll feel safe. Right? Right. So it's the meaning that you give events that determine your emotions.

And you're going to finish a thought there. I have an important story that will amplify this. So go ahead, finish that.

Perfect. So.

Now here's the. Okay, so everybody just breathe and I'm going to say something and I'm going to explain it so you don't get really upset. Events. So if you're in a room and somebody every. Everybody do this with me. If you're in a room and somebody you know comes in and doesn't say hello to you, what might you automatically think?

Me?

Yeah.

They're self absorbed.

Perfect. Now everybody listening, said they're rude, they didn't see me, they don't like me, I did something wrong. Where did all of those meanings come from? Beliefs, yes, ultimately. But the meaning comes from your mind.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay. They don't like me. It's going to be, oh, it's going to be a bad day. That comes from your mind, right?

Yeah. That's why all of our suffering is created.

Exactly. So no one cares. Right. So if meaning is in your mind, in your head, do events have inherent meaning?

Not at all.

No. Another way of saying that is it's not that they don't matter. It's not that they don't have consequences, but events have no Inherent meaning. In other words, we don't know anything for sure because something happened.

That's what no meaning implies. My husband died. Paul knows he was the most exquisite human being. We had an amazing marriage. I was devastated when he died.

Yeah, everybody knew he was an exquisite human being. Right.

And the fact that he died doesn't mean. And here are some of the meanings I gave it. I'm going to starve to death. I don't know how to run a business. I didn't know the difference between a P and L and a balance sheet. I'm going to starve to death. Well, maybe I'll never be happy again. I'm never going to love again. I'm going to. No one's going to want me. So the events have no meaning. We don't know anything for sure because something happens. Now, you tell me your story, and then I'll tell you how to get rid of any negative emotion in one minute.

Oh, that's cool. I hate to put it off, but there was a woman that was at a gathering, and she found out that the surprise party for the person coming to that gathering.

Was that the woman coming had a dog. And she was really freaked out because she has horrible allergic responses to dogs. She has gone anaphylactic and she's been hospitalized. And she's. And she was going on about this. I looked at her and I said.

Do you remember when that first happened? Were you under stress.

And was there a dog in the area?

And it was so classic. She was in a stressful situation. There was a dog in that same place. She broke out in the hive. She started going into anaphylaxis and doesn't have anything to do with a dog. So I said, would you like to have that removed? She said, you could do that? I said, sure, come on into the other room. I'll do a quick session with you. Remove the belief. And guess what? The dog was loving her up. She had no problem. I talked to her for a couple of days after. Never had another problem. It was just gone. But to the point that you're making, it's more than just a shift in our behavior. It can shift our biology. It could shift for sure, everything about us. For example, doctors like to say, oh, you know, this treatment is going to hurt a lot, and there's probably going to be a lot of pain and swelling afterwards, and there's going to be discomfort. And, you know, there's only a percent of people that survive this. Here's the mortality rates, right? And they give you all this information. Why? Because they just want to prepare for the worst, unfortunately. What does the mind do with all of that? Right. It begins placing all kind of meaning. It starts putting it all on them. And it creates all kinds of obstacles to the very healing that the body is perfectly capable of having. Right?

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah. And that's why doctors very rarely now will say, you have three months to live anymore. Because guess what? If you believe that's true.

So again, beliefs get formed in the past. Beliefs you have to go through a pro. Not have to. But the way I get rid of beliefs is you go through a process, but you get rid of an emotion in a moment. Anytime you have a negative emotion, stop and ask yourself, I'm going to give you two ways to do it my way. I mean, there's six ways. We have a course where we teach this. It's called the occurring course.

What happened?

My partner didn't kiss me hello. What meaning did I give it? They don't love me anymore. What else could it mean? They had a hard day. Come up with one other meaning and then get. The event has no inherent meaning. You don't know anything for sure because something happened.

Okay, so we start with whatever feeling is going on.

What happens.

We notice what the interpretation is. We come up with some alternative interpretations.

Yeah. First, the event. And you asked me before, what's the difference between, you know, what you can.

See, what's real, what's an abstraction, and what's reality?

An event is real. Somebody walked by and didn't say hello. You can see that that's real. You know, my husband died. That's real. That's reality. Right. Meaning is what we attach to it. Right. People always say to me, well, the events only have the meaning I give it. No, they don't. The events don't have meaning. The meaning is still in your mind. It has that meaning for you, but the events don't have the meaning.

Oh, good. I love that. Yeah. Really good distinction. Okay, so we have a feeling. We think about the event that occurred just before the feeling. We recognize what meaning we assign to it, that it's okay. And we think of alternative interpretations.

Yeah, just one. So you see, it's not the truth, and it kind of. You shift how you look at it and. And then get the second way, Morty's way, which, when very smart like you and my husband, you can do it this way. What happened?

The big sale didn't come through. What meaning did I give it? My business is going to go under.

Just stop and get my business is going to go under is in your mind, it's not in the events. And just make that distinction. And that's all you have to do.

Wow. Yeah. And the wonderful thing about recognizing this, it brings me back to the work that my teacher, Arnold Patton, who I started studying with in the early 80s, he ended up being a coach of mine, worked with me for a year and a half and what he kept saying was, you can have anything, you can have it all.

Based on your beliefs. And so every time I would come up with a self limiting belief, he would whack me with a very simple statement which was, if that's what you believe, because then I get to see that I'm actually creating the result I'm living. Yeah. Because that's an. It's consistent with the beliefs that I'm holding. So really we're, we're looking at shifting these kinds of beliefs.

Shifting. I don't use the word shifting. I use the word eliminating.

Eliminate.

I also just want to make a quick distinction because I know you'll love this, because I know you well.

Yes, yes.

You made a statement at the beginning, which I think is accurate. There you have beliefs that work for you. You know, Richard Branson might have the belief there's no amount of money you can have, you know, that you can't have. There are beliefs. You know, I have a belief that I don't catch things. My mother always told me that. So I don't get the flu. I didn't get Covid. I just don't catch things.

Right.

We don't have allergies and we don't get depressed. Those were things, things my mother told me and I just believe her. Right.

So there are beliefs that support your life. However, comma, my husband said all beliefs by definition are limiting because if something is true, then something is not. A belief is a box. Right. And inside the box, people can't be trusted. Trusting people is not a possibility. But when you eliminate that box, when you eliminate the belief, what changes is now there are lots of possibilities. You still have to choose them. See, I did a money course for learning strategies. We talked about money beliefs. You can get rid of the belief that money is evil or, you know, money's not spiritual, or.

People with money are, you know.

Cruel or whatever your beliefs are about money and get rid of them. But you still have to choose other possibilities. You have to choose to do things that will now generate money. It's not going to just fall from the sky because you eliminated a belief.

Well, maybe it could.

It could. Absolutely.

Pennies from heaven.

Okay, so I want to take a little bit of a side turn on all this, because.

Every once in a while, I will encounter a belief in someone else.

And it's not mine to do anything with. However.

I can sense that it might not lead to better choices in our society. So, for example.

People in more holistic health think all Western medicine is bad. Right. And they won't go to treatment or diagnosis when something's wrong with them. And if they had, they might have detected the problem, which ended up killing him. Right. Friend of mine.

Just got the diagnosis of a stage four cancer. And if he hadn't had that belief about not wanting to ever go see a medical doctor, he might have had a different outcome. Right. Caught it sooner.

Totally.

Another one is the idea that the election was stolen. Another one would be climate science is fake. What can a person do when you encounter those kind of beliefs? You're not going to change someone else's belief.

Nope. Yeah, that's one of the hardest questions, Paul, and that's what my husband.

Was so.

Committed to. You know, peace in the Middle East. Jews are bad. Arabs are bad. They want to kill. All Jews want to kill me or all Arabs want to kill me. Those are beliefs.

Well, and how many tens of thousands of years does. Do these beliefs stay in human relations without ever changing?

Yes. People always say to me, oh, I've had this belief for a really long time. It's ingrained. People always say, and I open. I say, if I open you up, is that belief in there. Is it in your liver or your solar plexus? It's not ingrained. It's in your mind. But why it's there is Israel's this tiny little country. All the people around them seem to not like them. So the kids grow up with the belief Arabs hate us. And that's not true. There are Arabs that don't hate them. And there are all kinds of. And you know better than anybody, there are all kinds of peace things in Arab and Israeli things that they're putting together in schools and kids and whatever. So I don't know the answer. What I do know for certain is.

Sometimes.

You have to allow.

Someone their journey. Right. So I have. We have a very, very good friend. We have a couple of friends who've had cancer, and a few of them did treatment and they're fine. And all the ones who believe I'm not. Western medicine is bad. It's just bad. And I'm not getting chemo, including My husband are dead. So our beliefs are very, very powerful. And if, for me, the whole idea of getting rid of beliefs is, again, make choices based on what you truly want. My husband did not want to live with the side effects of chemo. He didn't want to have his brain or his neuropathy or whatever it was. He made a choice. It wasn't just based on Western medicine is bad. Right. And at the end, he did do treatment. But we do have friends who had that belief. Now, I said to Bonnie.

May I talk to you about this? And she said, no.

The choice she wasn't willing to take a look at.

She was not willing to take a look at it and do it differently. Now, if I go to. If I had an opportunity. We worked with prisoners, and we produced statistically significant behavior changes in. In. I think it was 15 weeks in incarcerated men.

Yeah. And I really want. I want to underscore that what you're talking about is in your book, and it's beautifully presented and statistics really worth taking a look at. So thank you.

Fascinating how your beliefs correlate with your behavior.

Yeah.

A very dangerous belief that parents impart on their children by punishing them is, if I do something bad, I deserve to be punished. And this guy had the belief, if I do something bad, I deserve to be punished. And the way to be punished is to beat. So he became a wife beater, and he was in prison for beating women. And when he did this, got rid of this belief, he said, it never occurred to me to not be, but now I see that there are other ways. Right.

So that's an important part of this work, is that while the beliefs are running our behaviors, they also prevent us from seeing choices other than what it is that we're holding as belief.

Totally got it.

Yeah.

Totally inside a box. Can't see possibilities. I had the most fascinating experience. I had a very good friend whose father was a violent alcoholic and used to beat up her mother. And we were in Fire island, and I was telling a story about Morty and I that was very, very beautiful, something he did and said. And all of a sudden she said, shelly, we had. So she and I had just had a session, and we got rid of the belief. Men are selfish, men are violent, women don't have power.

Men have all the power. And she got rid of all the Relationships don't work. We had a couple of sessions, and so she said, I've heard you tell that story. This is the third time. It's the first time I ever heard it. I never heard it before. So she heard the words, but she couldn't get it.

There was no meaning in it.

Exactly. But like you said, you can't see something inconsistent with your beliefs. So if you see a man who's a good man, you'll say, oh, either he's full of shit or he's just an anomaly, or there's only one Paul Sheely in the world. Nobody else is like that. So you can't see, oh, there are great men because you think you saw there aren't.

Nice. Good. So we're really talking about liberating humanity to make the choices that are going to work for us going forward.

And, you know, I really don't want to get political, but I do want to illuminate something because it's the power of beliefs. Donald Trump said I could kill somebody on Fifth Avenue and get away with it. He believes that.

And no matter what he does, he gets away with it. I mean, so far, so. And the people who believe in any politician, they believe the election is stolen, and no amount of evidence can get them to see that it's not because they think they saw. Donald Trump said the election was stolen and they think they saw it was okay. And as long as they do, it's not going anyplace.

And so every feeling.

Comes up, there's an event just before that feeling. Right.

And you give meaning.

That's right, yeah. Putting meaning. So I want to underscore this idea that you, in your book, give a reference to a website. Also on this podcast, we have that website shown.

Exactly. And you're going to take us through the process of eliminating a belief. Now, when I hear you do your work, it's not just a belief that's associated with a dysfunctional pattern. It's usually a series of them. So this. Are you inviting us to go through it as many times as we want, or how does that work?

Yeah. So you'll pick one of three most common beliefs that people have. I'm not good enough. I'm not important. And mistakes and failures are bad. And this is important to say evidence doesn't get rid of beliefs. I worked with five Harvard PhDs who had the belief I'm stupid. So the first one, when that happened for the first time, I said, wait a minute, don't you have a PhD from Harvard? And he goes, oh, yeah. He said, I conned my way through Harvard.

Oh, my goodness. So it's what we call the imposter syndrome, right?

Totally.

Just stays with them. Yeah.

Yes. So even if you Know mistakes. I knew mistakes and failures weren't bad. I could have taught a course. I read every book. I know the names of all the books. I know about Michael Jordan. I know every story. It didn't matter until I got rid of the belief. Mistakes and failures are bad. It ran my life.

Thank you. Yeah, thank you. So this is an important lesson for me. Your work isn't about changing beliefs or shifting beliefs. It's eliminating beliefs so that we can see other choices that are available.

Yeah, yeah. So you could go through the process over and over just plugging in your own beliefs. Now, what you just said is important. You can eliminate beliefs, but you want to eliminate a pattern. So the secret is finding the specific beliefs that caused the specific pattern. Because when you get rid of the beliefs, the pattern goes away. When I talk to new clients, the first thing I say to them is, I'm a results girl. Right? It's like Paralympicals, right? They produce results. You lay there. I can't go to sleep. I'm listening to my Paralympical. I hear my friend Paul in one ear, in the other ear, and then I go to sleep. So we want to produce results, right. It's very important to us to not just take people down roads where they're going to end up with nothing. So.

So getting rid of the patterns is the results.

Excellent. So we're going to wrap it up. As much as, you know, you and I could continue chatting about this and sharing cool ideas forever and ever. It's such good work. And.

As a parting idea, just to help our listener understand that they really do have the power to make these changes within them, what is perhaps one of the overarching benefits that people report about the Lefkoe method and the occurring method? What? The occurring process. What is it that they can take with them?

Yeah.

I don't want to say to believe, but perhaps as a choice going forward, how to live their lives.

Yeah. Well, there's three answers to that. When you get rid of beliefs. So when I got rid of the belief, what makes me good enough is having other people think well of me. I could live my authentic self. I could wear the kind of outfit that I want to wear without worrying, what's this one going to say? What's that? I'm going to think. And I can. I can put out a video and know somebody may not like it. Or, you know, there are people who love me because I'm. You know, I say to them, you want to talk, go to therapy. You don't talk here and there My clients love that there are people who wouldn't work with me if I paid them right. So when. When you get rid of beliefs, what people say is, I'm free. I feel free. I feel free to speak up. I feel free to express myself. I feel free to walk out. My daughter, cute little daughter who's not even certified yet. I have two daughters, both involved in. In the work. But my daughter in Hawaii.

Had this client, and the woman just left an abusive marriage, which she said she. She told my daughter she wasn't going to leave because he'll kill her. And she is actually hiding out now. But she left the marriage and she left a toxic job in six sessions. It's like. And that's my kid, who's not even certified yet. So that's what people get from eliminating beliefs.

They get freedom.

Freedom. When you eliminate. Sorry. When you learn and you start practicing the occurring, get rid of beliefs, you won't give meaning. So that's easy. However, things happen to us all day long when people do the occurring course, Paul, they come out like gurus. And what I say I got from the occurring is, no one can make me feel anything. You can't make me angry. You can't make me scream. And so my father and my brother used to say things to me like, you're an idiot. You don't know what you're talking about. And I would get defensive. You can't talk to me like that. And so they. They owned me. They could press my buttons, right? I was a little victim. Now they could say anything they want. And when I got rid of the belief, what makes me good enough is having other people think well of me. I don't need their approval anymore. So it's like me watching a puppet show. Oh, they just called me stupid. Oh, isn't that interesting? But it has no meaning because the belief went away. I don't give meaning, and now I'm free. People say, I don't fight with my spouse anymore. I don't care. I don't. I'm not afraid of my boss anymore. Because when you stop, when you. You can't stop giving meaning. We're meaning making machines. But you can dissolve the meaning that you give. That's another distinction. You know, I have led the course 28 times, so I don't give a lot of meaning. But for most of us, we want to dissolve the meaning that we give. And then you're free. You have the power. Nobody can get you anymore. And I love not being a victim.

That's the Best. Yeah, yeah.

And then there's something we haven't talked about yet, which I'll say in one minute, at the end of the. Every session, I say to people, where did that belief come from? Or those beliefs? And because we eliminate a bunch in a session, I made them up. Oh, I create my beliefs. I'm not good enough. I'm not important. I have a hard life. Is hard. I am these beliefs. Then you go, no, you created these beliefs. But notice your life is consistent with your beliefs. So if you create your beliefs and your beliefs create your life, what does that make you?

And they say, I'm the creator of my life.

Right on.

And then I have them close their eyes and see you come into this world as a little ball of consciousness before you create any distinctions about yourself, life, or people. Do any exist?

No. In that space, what's possible?

What limitations do you have in that space?

None.

Beautiful.

What you get from that is you are limitless possibility. And you created a creation called Paul and Shelley, who have limitations, but you created them.

Gorgeous. Yay. Applause all around. Drop the mic, walk off the stage.

Thank you so much, Shelley. This is beautiful. I think you've packed it all in there. Thanks so much. Really appreciate you.

Oh, thank you for having me, honey. I love you so much.

Peace and blessings.

Foreign.

I hope you enjoyed our conversation with Shelly Lefkoe. You can learn more about shelly@www.mortylefco.com. that's www.m o r t y l e f k o e dot com. And now in the second part of the podcast, it's just you and me. I'll tell you how to use the paralyminal Sessions and the MindTrax app to easily handle obstacles and move toward the success you want, especially as it relates to Shelley's message. If you're new to the relaxing paralyminal audio sessions, they use breakthrough technologies to.

Activate your whole mind at only 20.

Minutes to help improve any area of your life. Let's get going.

Hi and welcome to this. Follow on to my conversation with Shelley Lefkoe, where we were exploring the idea of eliminating beliefs, not just changing beliefs and shifting beliefs, which is how I had mentally thought of it, but actually eliminating beliefs. Because then you get to really recognize that from a place of freedom, you can choose your way forward. You're not limited to the beliefs that have held you back from the expression of your life that you always have been meant to have. You're born into the world as a creator of the world that you see here's. Your opportunity to really live into that. So exciting dialogue I felt, and the ways paraliminals can help you with these.

Processes and get you to where you want to go make a ton of sense to me. And I've taken it in four different areas. First is the idea of eliminating beliefs. Now, I don't have a paraliminal yet with Shelly Lefko, at least not at the time that this is recorded. However, I do have a couple of parallel that really may be able to assist in the idea of eliminating beliefs. The other area is framing our experiences in new ways. In other words, changing the way we put meaning on the experiences that we have. Meaning that occurs. Third is choosing a new way forward in any area of your life where you may have been blocked in the past and finally creating your life. So let's get into it. First area, eliminating beliefs. I do have paraliminal called belief. It's perfect for this. Specifically the session. A.

Part of that paraliminal recording is about taking any self limiting belief that may be operating in your life and shifting it by framing each part of the events that put it into your life, framing it differently and recognizing, whoa, there are a lot of other ways of interpreting what actually happened. In those early moments in my life where I was forming those beliefs, I have a choice about it.

The second parallel that could be very helpful is called breaking the habit. Now, the first line in breaking a habit is you can't break a habit. You can only establish a new one. But to the point that Shelley was making, it's about patterns. There's beliefs and there's patterns, and our beliefs support the patterns that we have been engaging in. If you want to break the habit of any pattern, you have the ability to do that. So that paralympical will take you step by step in a way producing a new behavioral repertoire, a new set of behaviors you could engage in, choices you can make to create the life that you're going for. Very powerful one.

The second area is the area I called framing our experiences in new ways. Because whatever frame we put around an experience becomes an essence meaning that holds a belief in place. So if we want to shift that and eliminate beliefs and have new ways of going forward, you can do so. And the new history generator paraliminal is the ideal one for that. Because you really see that the beliefs that you hold, the meanings that you've made on your life experience up until now, have been created as a result of a lack of information about what actually happened. And as memory drifts and our beliefs about those memories stay in place. We can actually shift that. The deletions, distortions and generalizations that occurred to create the memory that we have. You can shift that. You can have a new frame around what is happening in your life today, A new frame around what happened to you in the past. And realize that you're the one that's framing it. You can create a new way of being. Another para liminal, very helpful, is called fresh start. It's the idea, Shelley talked about it, that beliefs are about the past. Meaning is what we create in the now going forward. And so fresh start is taking us in this now moment, Realizing every new moment is a fresh start to create the life that we're choosing to live. Really good one. I did it with Bill Harris. I just love it. And the third parallel in this area, framing our experiences in new ways, is the self love paralleliminal, where you connect with your past self and your future self. This now moment, you get all the parts of you together to choose how you would like to live into the future. Really neat. So it's a healing, a blessing or releasing of the past. And it's a welcoming of the future that you're choosing to live.

Great parallel. The third area is choosing a new way forward. So we've talked about eliminating beliefs, talked about framing our experiences in new ways. Now that you have that freedom, what will you choose? So certainly the new Action generator paralleliminal is a great one. You've decided what it is, Put it into action, live into it, make it happen. Second one is called New Behavior Generator, which in a way is session A on that parallel is about framing whatever is going on with you in a new way. It's a technique called reframing, which looks at the positive intention of the behaviors you're now engaging in and says, could you get those positive intentions met in new and creative ways? Obviously the answer is yes. But how? Now you can allow your mind to generate really cool new ways thinking about getting your needs met. And then session B on the new behavior generator is about installing those new ways of being doing in your life. And it's through a process called modeling. So you take someone who really does it well and you engage in those similar behaviors. Great paraliminal, I call it a self improvement course in a single parallel. It's really good. The third parallel, which is kind of a cool one, is that you might not really have on your radar. It's called instantaneous personal magnetism.

So this life of vitality and richness and power that you could Live generally is getting leaked out because we engage in behaviors that aren't really so supportive. So you can let go of those old behaviors and really establish how you want to show up. So, like the new action generator, like the new behavior generator, instantaneous personal magnetism really allows you to show up in your power every single day. The fourth and final area is the idea of creating your life. Now, honestly, every parallel is devoted to helping you create your life. So I think you could pick any area of your life where you would like new behaviors, find a new way forward, choose anew, create the life that you imagine. And there's a Paralympical that will help you with that. Because Paralympicals are helping you gain access to resources that are here. And because you are the creator of your life, get access to those resources and start creating it. That said, the top of the list of Paralympicals in this area would be prosperity, because it really helps you remember the universe is abundant. You have access to that abundance. Use prosperity paralliminal to create your life as you want.

The second one, and again, this one might not be on your radar. It's called Youthful Vitality. Youthful Vitality, Basically, it's created using a science called neoteny, which is the science of the retention of juvenile characteristics into adulthood. In other words, what is a childlike curiosity, right? What is a childlike joyfulness to live each day? And so there are, I think there's 13 different qualities that you can choose from in order to help you create the life that you want. Resources that you might not have been getting access to, which will really help you take the next steps forward. So youthful Vitality, if you've never heard it and remember the little case card that goes with it, the little manual that attends it will describe all of these qualities and how you could use them. So check that out as well as you're listening to the youthful vitality parallel. Well, that's it. Eliminate beliefs that don't serve you and choose the life that you want to live. It's a pleasure working with you. Enjoy paraliminal technology on your MindTrax app. We'll see you again soon.

Thank you for joining me today. I applaud your willingness to maximize your potential. You can easily use the paraliminal audio sessions in the MindTrax app to stimulate your non conscious mind, I.e. your inner mind, to reduce any resistance in your life and to propel you toward the success you want. Go to www.mindtracks.com.

Go.

These amazing audio tools have helped millions, and I encourage you to bring them into your world today. Be sure to be back for more episodes of the mindtrax podcast. You'll find insightful conversations with authors, experts and thought leaders all devoted to improving your life's experience. Thank you again for being here on our MindTrax podcast.

Sam.

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