Lefkoe Method Training 1 – The Waiting List is Still Open
I I enjoyed every minute of this very insightful course and I do recommend
it. During the eight weeks of the course, I gained much confi dence and I
learned all the skills and techniques necessary to master the Lefkoe Belief
Process. Three weeks ago, I started practicing the LBP on my sister, and
together we have already managed to eliminate a few beliefs she held
and change her creation. I am thrilled to know that I now have the ability to
change my life and the life of the people I love. I will forever be grateful to
Morty for changing my life and for empowering me to change others’ lives.
Veronique Bessard
Entrepreneur, Switzeland
The transcript of the video is included below.
Shelly: Hi, everyone. It’s Shelly Lefkoe, cofounder of the Lefkoe Institute, and I’m here again with my great friend, Letha Edwards, who is going to interview me.
Letha: Hi, everybody. Okay, cool, hi, hi, Shell. Hello, everyone. Let’s go ahead and jump into Being Intentional in Relationships this time, an important topic, I think, to most people. I know, Shelly, I’ve heard you talk about choosing relationships, of being intentional there, versus being intentional in relationships. Would you expound on that a little bit and give us the difference, please?
Shelly: Sure, so the first thing is most of us fall into our relationships. We become best friends with the kid next door or the kid that sits next to us in class. We go on a date, and we have a good time. We go on a couple of dates and have a good time, and the next thing you know, we’re in a relationship. What I think is incredibly important is to be intentional in choosing our relationships.
Shelly: I look at my life now, and I’m 69 years old. When I look, I don’t have drama queens in my life. I don’t have people who suck my energy. I don’t have those kind of people. I don’t have complainers. I have very conscious, loving people, who are there for me 100%, and as was my husband, as you all know.
Shelly: Choosing a relationship intentionally would be sitting down and actually look at, what are the qualities? What is important to me in a relationship? For example, when I was 31 years old, I was still single, and I was not settling. I did not want a small life. I wanted a very specific kind of life.
Shelly: When I looked at what I wanted in a man, I looked at what the most important things to me were. The first one was that he was open to personal growth, that he was somebody who was working on himself, because I never wanted to hear him say, “Well, that’s the way I am.” Now I have to live with that for the rest of my life.
Shelly: You have to look at what is important to you. For me, it was integrity. It was somebody who was affectionate; who was loving; who communicated, not somebody who pouted and walked away; somebody who was as committed to the relationship as I was. Look for yourself. What are my values? What are the things that are important to me? Kindness, empathy … Look at those qualities.
Shelly: Then you have your deal breakers. I always wanted somebody who was very funny. My husband was a lot of things, but funny was not one of them. Now, it doesn’t mean he was never funny, but it’s not an adjective I would’ve described him as. He was very serious, but he wanted to make a difference in life. He had a purpose. He was interesting. Morty was never dull. It was always something new, with Morty, and so I said, “Okay, that’s not that important to me that he be funny.” You look at your deal breakers, and then when you choose relationships, you choose them intentionally. That-
Letha: Shelly, why do you … Sorry. Why do you believe so many people are unhappy in relationships?
Shelly: Well, that’s the next piece. It’s when you’re intentional in your relationship, you look at how am I being in the relationship? Morty used to say, if you consciously created every day by looking at each other and intentionally falling in love, or intentionally appreciating your relationship.
Shelly: In our relationship, you are very, very, very good to me, and you were very much there for me when Morty died. I remember intentionally making sure you knew how much I appreciated you, and how could I be … How could I give back what you gave me? That’s being intentional. It’s being awake and thinking about, how am I being? What am I bringing to this party?
Shelly: I once was downstairs in my house, and I was having a fight with Morty, and I yelled at him. This was many, many, many years ago. My friend, who’s done a lot of relationship work, came downstairs, and she looked at me, and she said, “Who told you that you could speak to your beloved like that?” It rocked me to my core.
Shelly: Of course, the first thing I did was I looked at, what do I believe that has me yelling at the person that I love? Why would I do that? I had a belief that it’s okay to yell at people that you love, because I grew up in a family that was the most loving family on the earth, but we just yelled all the … We screamed at each other. “Ah, you don’t know what you’re talking about!” my father would say, or, “Oh, you can’t talk to me that way! Stop talking …” That’s how we talked to each other, and so I had a belief that it was okay.
Shelly: I got rid of that belief, and I said, “You know what? It’s not okay. It’s not okay to yell and scream at people that you love.” You could say, “I’m angry. I don’t like what you’re doing right now.” You can express your feelings, but you don’t have to yell and scream.
Letha: I think a lot of people really want what you just stated, but how do I get started?
Shelly: The first thing … This topic is a little easier, because it’s easier to see what beliefs I have. What would I have to believe to stay in a crappy relationship? Why would I let somebody abuse me or talk to me in a way that doesn’t work? Well, if I believed that I was important, and I was lovable, and I was worth it, I would stand up for myself. If I had the belief, it is okay to stand up for yourself, I would do that.
Shelly: I think that the most common self-esteem beliefs … I’m not good enough. I’m not worth it. I’m not lovable. I don’t matter. If I stand up for myself, I’ll get in trouble, or something bad will happen. If you just look at your childhood, what would have been the beliefs that you created about relationships? What did your parents’ relationship look like? You might have beliefs relationships don’t work, because your parents’ relationship didn’t work, or you might have beliefs about the other gender. Men can’t be trusted. Men are selfish.
Shelly: God, in 30 years, I have worked with women, who’ve had more wrong beliefs about men. I say, “Finish the sentence. Men are …” They go, “Selfish, self-centered, not to be trusted. Men are dangerous. Men are violent,” I mean, all kinds of things, and men have beliefs about women. “I’m not what women want. Women are not loving,” because they didn’t have loving mothers. “I’m not lovable.” The first thing is, sit down and say to yourself, “What beliefs do I have that would either keep me from choosing someone who is consistent with my values or that would keep me from being my full self in a relationship.”
Letha: Great idea.
Shelly: I wanted to also talk about something. My friend, Stewart, Stewart Emery, just wrote a book, called Who’s in Your Room? … Stewart Emery and my friend, Ivan Misner. It’s a very short book, but it’s wonderful, because it talks about stopping and looking at, who is in my room?
Shelly: If you were in a little room, and you had a door that only went one way, and people could come in, but they couldn’t go out, who would you bring in your room? Having intentional relationships is stopping and looking at, do I bring people in my room, who belittle me and demean me, or gossip about me, or are not giving and loving and kind and caring? The other thing that Stewart says, that I love, is, “If you knew how many breaths you had left in your body, how would you use them, and who would you use them on?”
Letha: How do I … Sorry. How do I get started working on my beliefs? How do people know what the step is to take? I’ve made my list, and either it didn’t work, or I wasn’t quite sure what to do next.
Shelly: If you think that you have beliefs in the way of you creating joyful, nurturing … My mother used to say, “Everything in life is relationship.” To me, it’s the most important thing in life. You can call me. You can … Sorry, don’t call me.
Shelly: If you find that you have beliefs in the way of you creating the relationship of your dreams, you can go to getasession.com and bookshelly.com to get on my calendar. I promise you, I will help you get whatever is in the way of your relationship … of you having the relationships that you want.
Letha: Sounds great, Shelly. Thank you.
Shelly: You’re welcome. Thank you.
Letha: All right.
Shelly: Thanks for listening, everybody. Hope this was valuable. See you again soon.
