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Negative emotions like anxiety can be really painful. I know because I felt anxiety and many other negative feelings intensely and frequently for most of my life. My depression seemed to take over my entire mind and body. It seemed to envelope me so completely that I felt as if there were no way to escape it. I also felt as if it would never end. My anxiety and depression was so great in my 20s that I thought about ending my life on many occasions.
Based upon the thousands of communications we’ve received in the past few years (and those we’ve read on several personal growth forums), it appears that many people are overwhelmed by negative feelings.
Although I’ve written about negative emotions several times in the past, see (https://www.mortylefkoe.com/neg-emotions/# and https://www.mortylefkoe.com/live-state-bliss/#), today I want to discuss emotions in a slightly different way in order to help free you from any that may be running your life.
Emotions seem justified
Have you noticed that we usually think our emotions are communicating some information, for example, if we feel afraid to take action, the fear seems to be telling us that taking action is dangerous? If we feel angry at something someone did, the anger seems to be telling us that that person did something to hurt us?
This results in us both wanting to get rid of the emotion because it feels so bad and, at the same time, wanting to hold on to the emotion because it seems we are “right” to feel it given our appraisal of the events. For example, did you ever notice that if you view doing something you’ve never done before as risky, it “makes sense” for you to feel anxiety? It’s almost as if you “should” feel anxious in that situation. If you think someone treated you unfairly, don’t you feel as if you “should” feel angry at them?
You create your feelings
If reality were really causing our emotions, this reaction would make perfect sense. In fact, however, because events have no inherent meaning, events can’t cause us to feel anything. Most feelings are the result of the meaning we attribute to events, not the events themselves.
For example, losing a job has no inherent meaning. It could mean we will never find another job and become destitute. It could mean it will take a lot of time and effort to find a job. It could mean we will find a better job where we will be much happier. It could mean we will change careers and discover we care more about the new career (and job) than we ever did about the old one. What does losing your job really mean? Until you give it a meaning, it has no inherent meaning.
If you give losing your job the meaning that you will never find another good one, you will be incredibly anxious. If you give it the meaning that you can now change careers to do what you always wanted to do and had been afraid to try, you will feel excited and turned on. And if you give the event no meaning at all, you will feel nothing at all.
Therefore, your feelings tell you nothing about yourself, life, reality, the future, etc. Your feelings tell you only one thing: That you have given meaning to an event. No meaning, no feelings.
And if your feelings are the result of the meaning you have given an event, then you create your feelings. And that news is about as good as you can get. Why? Because if you create your feelings, you can get rid of them.
As I’ve explained in detail before, when you distinguish the meaning you give events from the events themselves, the meaning will literally dissolve. And when the meaning dissolves, the emotions it causes will dissolve also. (See a short video that introduces my occurring course that describes in detail how this process works. http://occurringcourse.com. Please ignore the information about the scholarship, as the course isn’t being offered at this time.)
When you master the ability to make that distinction, you will have mastered life. I rarely experience anxiety or any other negative emotion any more. And if I can do it, you can too.
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copyright ©2012 Morty Lefkoe
Thank you for your instructions, Morty! I walk a little taller now, and choose to let my mates actions be his actions. He has a right to express his opinions and feelings. And I have a right to let him, and choose to interpret his actions and mumblings, as his actions and mumblings. Before, I would have been upset that he was upset. I choose not to put myself through that anymore. Maybe if I don’t react to his actions, he will quite acting like that, since it gathers him no attention. On the other hand, I will choose to be proactive, and show my affection for him for no reason, more frequently. Doing both of these, I expect to find more peace in my home.
Bless you for your work, Morty!
Hi Morty,
I have to be honest with you…I really gave your program my all and it has not worked for me. I was baffled by this for a while because your method makes so much sense and I really wanted it to work for me. I realized that there’s a part of me that was resisting it for some weird reason. Recently, I came up on something that explained why this might have happened. I found that there is a sensory learning style (which you base your approach on) and an intuitive learning style (which I utilize along with an estimated 30% of the population). Here’s the article that I read, which explains the differences between the 2 styles: http://geniusawakening.com/blog/learning-styles/
I think that your method challenged the way that my brain is wired. I can equate it to trying to convert a left-handed person to being a right-handed person. I say this because you utilize sensory information (e.g. ‘Did you really see it?), instead of intuitive information, which I’ve relied upon my entire life. I think that learning how to accept and efficiently use my intuitive learning style would be a lot easier and effective than trying to change the way my brain operates. What are your thoughts on this?
Regards,
Ana
Hi Ana,
We’ve worked directly with over 13,000 people and 150,000 have used our online program.
I’ve never heard anyone before you in 28 years say it didn’t work for them because they were intuitive. You still “see” things in the world. The belief is there because you think you saw it. When you realize you didn’t it will disappear. If you are emotionally kinesthetic it will disappear when you realize you created the original feeling.
Love, Morty
Hi Morty,
Thanks for the response. I understand what you’re saying and I agree with you. What I meant though, was if you teach people to only rely on their 5 senses (in your case, it’s more like 1 sense – the sense of sight), they might apply this not only in past circumstances, but also in the future. We are all creatures of habit and what we practice becomes habit. So, if you rely only on your five senses on a continuous basis, you might do this in all situations. Therefore, if someone is about to walk into a building and gets a bad feeling about it, since they can’t can’t see anything wrong with the building, they might ignore that inner feeling and walk into it. As that building catches fire, they might wonder why they didn’t listen to their feeling. You understand what I’m saying? If we practice being rational all the time, we might lose that sensitivity to that inner voice that keeps us out of trouble. I agree with you that we must look at our past and come to rational conclusions, but how much of what we practice in the now affects our future way of looking at things? I know that my ‘irrational’ 6th sense kept me out of a lot sticky situations throughout my life. This same 6th sense formed conclusions about past events that sometimes were wrong and at other times were right. Telling it that it doesn’t know anything about past events because you never ‘saw it’ with your physical eyes might serve to silence that inner voice in the future. If that inner voice or inner feeling was continuously wrong in the past, then how can you trust it in the future? I guess that this is where my hesitation in trusting the whole process comes from. Just some thoughts…I’d love to hear your opinion about this.
Regards,
Ana
P.S. I’m not tying to get my money back for the program or criticize the effectiveness of it for the 150,000 people that have used it. I’m sure that this has been a lifesaver for many and I commend you on the work you do. I’m just trying to get some answers to a personal development dilemma.
Hi Ana,
You are confusing a process to eliminate beliefs with a way of dealing with life. You spend a few minutes eliminating a belief by realizing you did not see what you thought you saw. That does not develop any habits or foreclose using intuition.
I’ve eliminated hundreds of beliefs and I still operate out of intuition much of the time. My intuition has not been silenced as a result of eliminating beliefs.
In fact most of the processes I’ve created came from intuition, not logic.
Love, Morty
Mr. Morty,
I love your posts. They help countless others as well as myself. I wanted to comment and say to keep up the great work and that the “nay-sayers” have to post on here. There is a balance to be maintained in this universe so as long as you’re doing something positive, the negative isn’t too far behind. I plan to pursue the personal development field once as I graduate, I thank you for inspiring me on my journey.
Thanks,
Eric
Hi, please add a “Print Friendly” option to your posts along with the email, twitter and other links. I like to save things on my desktop for later reference by sending the Print Friendly version to Microsoft OneNote. Sending the page usually doesn’t work as well because it includes every link on the page and often does not format well.
Thank you.
Yes, this is great. It’s so easy to get swept up by feelings, and they seem to “point to” a certain reality. I wouldn’t be angry unless something was wrong, right? But seeing that the feeling has nothing to do with reality is so powerful and freeing! I always used to admire people who didn’t get angry in the same situation I did, and wondered how they did it – were they more advanced beings than I was? Did they just not care? Were they passive and resigned? Now I can see that they simply weren’t giving the same meaning to the events that I was! And since I did the Occurring Course, I have a lot less negative feelings running me, and when I do have them, I have a strong ability to process and dissolve them. I highly recommend this course to anyone reading this, sign up to find out when it’s offered next time.
Great post Marty very helpful indeed,I wish you all the business and more because have a lot of good to offer perhaps,you should just ignore and not post the negative comments because its your page ,and people have nothing nice to say they should not say it here.its sad that the people who need the most help wont take it like miserable Mike
Thanks for the post Morty. You seem to be the only person in the world who actually understands’ this stuff. I’ve read dozens of personal growth books in my life. However, I’ve benefited more from your work than anything else I’ve EVER tried. Your process and insight are a breath of fresh air.
Hi, Morty, I have had panic disorder which stabilized but now that I’m looking for my first permanent job I get fearful because I’m actually afraid that my anxiety would relapse causing me to lose my job. And if I lose my job it would really be difficult to find another job ever again because employers discriminate against employees who have been fired before (how is this a belief? I think discrimination is a very real fact). And I would probably have to become self-employed, which I dislike the idea a lot.
I know this is catastrophic thinking but isn’t it reality that once a working record is stained it would be close to impossible to get a job with so many other jobseekers having clean and proper records (unless I don’t declare).
Ok I would say that what I said above is imaginary and it has not happened yet but I’m just concerned.
Thanks in advance if there’s any advice regarding this. :)
This topic are making great conversation Mike. I will agree with Morty, what you are doing is exactly as to what Morty is saying not to do, you are putting meaning to this event and creating a negative feeling, remember the event has no inherent meaning.
Mike,
Maybe once you inspire positive change in tens of thousands of people you can tell Morty to “watch your words.” But until then, maybe you should read his many other blog posts which are filled with positive and inspiring ideas before writing a comment like that.
Morty, great post today. I look forward to your emails! Thanks for everything!
I second Alex’s response. Way to realizeand empower others that events are neither positive nor negative. That a person always has a choice on how they respond to an event. Waves of circumstance, however dire they may seem, a person always has a choice on how to respond to them, which in turn allows for emotions to follow those positive decisions. Way to be a hero for many Morty!!
Dear Morty,
Read your blog again. Watch your words. Your words are very powerful to those who read them. You can choose to write about positive events that your feelings attract, or you can choose to write about negative events your feelings attract. Your entire blog was unbalanced with negative, unfriendly words. If you want to use fear to gain business, then keep writing this blog this way. If you evver choose to write about inspiring ways your process helps eliminate unwanted feelings, then throw in a few words like: inspiring, motivating, powerful, persistent, compassion, understandings, and joy! Count the number of words you have in your blog that could be conspiring fear to the common man. Count how many positive words are in your blog that enhance and motivate the common man. Are you in balance?
Just saying,
Mike
Hi Mike,
Thanks for taking the time to comment. Good point.
In this particular post I was focusing on the negative feelings we so often feel, where they come from, and what to do to get rid of them. I’m not trying to get business, I’m trying to help people deal with something unpleasant in their lives. I actually tell you what to do in the post and give you a link to an instructional video.
Yes, we do have positive feelings and they’re great. And sometimes I write about love and how to create unconditional love, but that wasn’t the point of this post.
Love, Morty
You’re the best, Morty.