Why Should I Eliminate A Belief?

Every once in a while after someone asks me what I do and I reply, “I help people eliminate beliefs,” I am asked: “Why would I want to eliminate a belief?”

There are at least good four answers to that question, which I will describe in this blog post. If you would like to improve the quality of your life and increase your range of possibilities, I think you will find this discussion very useful.

1. Virtually all the problems you have in life, behavioral or emotional, stem mainly from your beliefs (and sometimes some conditioning). So if you want to get rid of problems, you need to eliminate the relevant beliefs. Beliefs cause serious problems such as depression, eating disorders, and chronic anxiety, and common problems such as procrastination, relationship issues, and doing things just to get people’s approval.

Getting rid of the relevant beliefs may not be the only way to get rid of such problems, but it certainly is one of simplest and fastest ways. In this situation, getting rid of beliefs is not an end in itself, but a means to a very desirable end.

2. A second reason to eliminate a belief is to be able to use the Who Am I Really? (WAIR?) Process to create and experience a shift in one’s identity from “self” (one’s body, beliefs, thoughts, feelings, and behavior) to “SELF” (as consciousness, as a spiritual being) in a matter of minutes. Such a shift typically requires years of meditation. Some workshops claim to be able to provide that experience in several concentrated days. The Lefkoe Belief Process (LBP) assists people to make that shift in less than 30 minutes the first time and in less than 10 minutes thereafter.

After using the WAIR? Process, people generally say that they experience nothing is missing, anything is possible, and they have no limitations. When asked to describe this experience in their own words, people say: powerful, serene, calm, peaceful, whole, complete, satisfied, empowered, nothing missing, no limitations and unlimited possibilities.

Because the WAIR? Process requires that you have eliminated at least one belief with the LBP in order for it to work, the incredible value of the state change it produces is a second good reason for eliminating a belief.

3. The first two reasons for eliminating beliefs are a means to another end. The third reason for eliminating a belief is an end in itself: We literally create new possibilities in our lives—a brand new reality—by eliminating limiting beliefs.

Let me give you an example. Assume you had the beliefs: I’m not loveable. Relationships don’t work. Men/women can’t be trusted.

With these beliefs, what are the possibilities that you could have a really good, nurturing, long-term romantic relationship? … Slim to nil, right?

Now let’s assume you use the LBP to completely eliminate those beliefs. Can you see you have just created the possibility of a good, nurturing, long-term relationship that literally didn’t exist before? There is no guarantee you will ever find such a relationship, but the possibility exists now that didn’t exist before.

This is one of the most powerful consequences of eliminating beliefs: You not only change your behavior and feelings, you actually change the reality you live in.

Let me remind you of something I wrote in an earlier blog post to make this idea completely clear. Let’s assume you held the following beliefs: You have to work hard to make money. I’m not deserving. I’ll never have enough money. /There is never enough money. Money is a struggle. Life is difficult. Your reality with these beliefs does not include the possibility of acquiring wealth easily, if at all. Without those beliefs the possibility comes into existence.

The possibilities that exist in your reality are defined by your beliefs. When you say something is impossible it actually becomes impossible for you. If you believe Life is difficult, you will experience things not going the way you wanted them to go as upsetting obstacles rather than exciting opportunities. If you believe I’m not capable or I’m not competent, would you likely try to do something you weren’t sure you could do? And if you tried, do you think you would succeed with these beliefs?

Imagine that each belief you hold is like a circle and you are limited to the behavior and feelings that are present in that circle. Anything outside the circle is not possible for you. In the illustration below, your range of possibilities is represented by the black space inside the circle.

When you have more than one belief, the other beliefs overlap each other, making the space available to you smaller and smaller as the number of beliefs increase.

In this illustration your range of possibilities is represented by the small black area in the middle. Imagine further that each of these three overlapping boxes represents one of the three relationship beliefs I listed above. Can you see that these three beliefs leave you very few possibilities for a nurturing, long-term relationship?

Now imagine eliminating these beliefs one at a time. Can you see that the space of possibilities increases as each belief is eliminated?

When all the beliefs are gone, you are no longer limited to the space inside the circles because there are no more circles. Every possibility outside the circles that had been unavailable to you before is now available and the space of possibilities becomes infinite. In other words, there are no self-imposed limitations remaining.

Shelly likes to use the metaphor of a room full of furniture. Each piece of furniture represents a belief, so if the room is full of chairs, tables, and sofas, there is virtually no room to move around. And you can’t get to the door to leave the room. Each piece of furniture (each belief) that you remove gives you more possibilities for movement. And when the last piece of furniture is removed, you gain access to the door and can leave the room. At which point there are no restrictions on your movement at all.

I have used the term “limiting beliefs” in the past. In fact all beliefs are limitations in that you are limited to that which is consistent with that belief and anything inconsistent is impossible. To use a silly example, if you believe Everything always works out for me, you do not have the possibility of things not working out for you, which could rob you of the ability to make mistakes and learn from them or learn how to transcend difficult situations. This may not be a belief you want to eliminate, but it still is a “limitation.”

I could devote an entire blog post to a discussion of this point. Suffice to say, as you eliminate beliefs, you increase possibilities in your life.

Notice that you don’t have to do anything (other than eliminate the belief) in order to create a new possibility and literally change your reality. Your reality changes automatically after the belief(s) has been eliminated.

4. In addition to changes in an individual’s life that result from eliminating beliefs, organizational change and social change also can be effected by eliminated the beliefs that govern those areas.

When I do workshops for CEOs I tell them that the biggest barrier their organization faces is not in the world (competition, government, costs, etc.), but in the minds of their employees.

For example, if most of the people in a company believe that something is impossible—such as outsourcing, raising capital, finding qualified new employees, or reaching a certain sales or earnings target—that belief becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy, because the employees will operate according to a reality consistent with their beliefs. If something is impossible, there is no sense in trying to do it.

In my blog post on November 17, 2009, I showed how the health care system that exists today is a function of a series of beliefs and how changing the system totally will be virtually impossible without eliminating those beliefs. I also showed how if those beliefs are eliminated and new beliefs created in their place, the health care system will change naturally to be consistent with those new beliefs.

I look forward to the day when people become so clear of the importance of beliefs that everyone learns about them in school, parents realize that their job is to help their children form positive beliefs, and social and organizational change is effected by changing the existing beliefs.

Thanks for reading my blog. Do you agree or disagree with the points I made in this post? Why? Do you have something to add? Your comments will add value for thousands of readers.

If you haven’t yet eliminated at least one of your limiting self-esteem beliefs using the Lefkoe Belief Process, go to htp://www.recreateyourlife.com/free where you can eliminate one limiting belief free.

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Copyright © 2009 Morty Lefkoe