Why it’s hard to know if you have a limiting belief (and how to make it far easier)

Wart Ointment Wholesale
Into the Weird Adult Video Emporium
The Colon Care Co-Op

If you visited the East West Market in Vancouver and used one of the store’s plastic bags, you would have walked away with bags that had these and other embarrassing titles printed on them. In fact, the store owner, David Kwan, hoped to truly shame patrons of his store to get them to start bringing their own bags. Did this work?

Would you be so embarrassed to walk away with one of these bags that you would remember to bring a cloth bag to the store next time?

If you’re anything like hundreds of others who started to frequent the store, you wouldn’t. You see this strategy, instead of pushing customers away from plastic bags, caused many more to come to the store and pay five cents each to get one. It can be quite a challenge to figure out in advance how people will respond to something new. And it can be similarly difficult to determine whether you have certain beliefs that can get in your way. We’re often just not sure.

Why is this so hard to find our beliefs and how do we overcome this difficulty?

There’s a simple reason. It has to do with what we think we should believe vs what we actually believe. When Morty worked with corporate clients years ago, he found that many managers micromanaged their direct reports. When he asked them what they believed about managing people they would repeat the accepted wisdom – A manager should empower employees.

But if that’s what they believed, why did they do the exact opposite?

They would tell employees what to do. They would check up on them to see if they were doing what they’d been asked to do. They would solve problems for them. This isn’t the behavior of an empowering manager.

So one way to know if we have a limiting belief is to look at our behavior.

We might know that we are intelligent and capable, but if we’re putting off challenging activities, we might have beliefs that cause us to doubt ourselves. We might know that we’re important but we might still have beliefs that have us feel less than others.

Another way to know if you have a limiting belief is to say the words out loud. Say out loud “I’m a monkey” then say “I’m a table” next say “I’m a house.” What did you notice? Did those statements feel true? Were you able to just notice if you believed them or not?

Now try on a few other statements.

Say “I’m not good enough” “Mistakes and failure are bad” “I’m not important.” How does saying these statements compare to saying the others? If they feel different, what does that difference tell you? If you noticed a sense of recognition, a sense of truth, a nodding of the head or an emotional response, then it’s likely you have one of these beliefs.

The first set of exercises in the Lefkoe Method Training 1 are all about developing awareness of what it’s like to have a belief or not have a belief.

We play around with all sorts of phrases such as “Lava is not dangerous” and “People can fly by flapping their arms.” It’s a lot of fun. And it’s fun with a purpose. The students get very deeply that all day long we are confronted with statements we believe or disbelieve and this awareness is the first step to mastering the belief elimination process.

In the course students get in touch with dozens of beliefs and eliminate them.

As a result, they experience big changes in their lives. But if you found a few beliefs while reading this article, how can you get rid of them?  Fortunately, you can get rid of the beliefs mentioned above with our free belief elimination program found at www.recreateyourlife.com/free

That program will guide you through the process of discovering how you formed the belief and help you make distinctions that free you from it. Your belief transforms from a statement that feels true on an emotional level to something that feels abstract, empty and even silly. To discover this change you say the belief out loud at the start of the process and at the end, but some have concerns about doing this.

They ask, “But if I say a limiting belief out loud, won’t that cause me to start believing it?”

So far we haven’t seen that. With our clients, we find that saying the belief out loud feels bad at first but after it’s eliminated they might say it several times to see if it’s really gone. The more they repeat the belief after eliminating it, the more they notice how empty it feels.

This reminds me of David Kwan’s store and those bags he gave his customers with the awful phrases on them.

Why weren’t people embarrassed to have them? It’s probably because they knew they didn’t really go to the Weird Adult Video Store or the Colon Care Co-Op. So the phrases were funny instead of shameful. And when a belief is eliminated, the effect is a similar transformation of meaning. You now know and truly feel that the belief isn’t true so it no longer concerns you.

To sum up:

It can be hard to get in touch with our limiting beliefs because we often have ideas about what we should believe

Our emotions and behavior are both indicators we have limiting beliefs

Our reaction to saying the words of a belief is another way we can notice a belief

Saying a belief over and over after it’s gone, won’t make you believe it. Instead, it helps you notice that it is gone.

Next step

In January 2020, the Lefkoe Method Training 1 (LMT 1) will go on sale again. In the LMT1 you learn the 8 steps to eliminating limiting beliefs. By the end of the course, you can eliminate a belief in 20-30 minutes. If you’re a coach, therapist or in a profession that allows you to coach or counsel others (or if you want to join such a profession), this training is ideal as you’ll be able to use it to help your clients make big changes in their lives. Some people do take it for self-help too as it’s quite a powerful tool. If you want to take the training, you must be on the waiting list first. Here’s the link to join the waiting list:

https://www.mortylefkoe.com/lmt1/lmt1-waiting-list.html

While you are on the list, you will also get a few goodies about eliminating beliefs.