The LoveWorks Solution Podcast

Do you feel seen?

For way too many people, the answer to those questions is No. 

Feeling seen is feeling (not just a visual). It's akin to feeling ... 

• Heard

In a Psychology Today article titled, Feeling Understood Is Even More Important Than Feeling Loved,Leon Seltzer, PhD, says, “Not feeling that others really know us can leave us feeling hopelessly estranged from the rest of humanity. It may well be that feeling understood is a prerequisite for our other desires to be satisfyingly fulfilled.” 

When you don't feel seen, you might feel ... 

• Invisible

Which is extremely common in today's society. Just talk to young adults going through high school. Many of them will report (we know many who do) that they feel like no one notices them, or even cares if they show up or not. 

Feeling seen is a human need, right up there with food, water, and shelter. Ok, you might not physically die if you don’t feel seen, but you’ll begin to die inside. It’s a need that has to be fulfilled for us to function effectively in the world, and certainly for us to feel safe, loved, cared for.

However, most of us don’t openly acknowledge that we have this need to feel seen. So we put ourselves in a catch 22. I have a need, but I can’t openly get it satisfied.

So we try to get it taken care of in subversive manners. We might do things like ... 

• Keep fighting to be seen

But all these ways of being seen have significant “side-effects”, they create their own secondary problems, which now need to be dealt with, and typically further worsens your feeling of not being seen. 

So how do you get seen and help others be seen?

How you can help yourself be seen:

• Look for where appreciation IS

• I felt seen by Sonika when she brought me tea yesterday, and I thanked her for it.

• Appreciate others. Speak what you like about your partner, kids, or friends. 

How you can help someone else be seen (which in turn helps YOU to feel seen too):

• Make eye contact

• When your partner says, "Did you see this cool thing on Facebook", it's a bid for your attention. Join with them for a short while. Say, "Yeah, that's really cool".

In the 2004 movie, Shall We Dance, Susan Sarandon’s character asks a man played by Richard Jenkins, “Why is it that we get married?” He says, “Passion!” To which she replies, “No, it’s because we need a witness to our lives. There’s billions of people on the planet, what does one individual life really mean. In a marriage, you’re saying, ‘Your life will not go unnoticed”

In being witnessed, our lives become real. Our existence is confirmed. Contrast that to when we feel no one would even notice if we were gone, it’s as if we don’t exist.

Here’s to you feeling seen, and helping others to feel seen!

For a great uplifting story about being seen and validated, watch the short film, Validation, here ...  

This is Part 2/2 of How Men Use Or Lose Power In Relationship

The men’s retreat I mention in the podcast can be found here (note: there’s an early-reg deal happening right now): https://loveworksforyou.com/mens-retreat-jan-2020

What a man’s partners can do to help him

1. Offer general appreciations and affirmations of him being a good man

Also in this podcast, I share some more questions and comments from listeners. Check out the podcast for full details.

Here's the quick summary, but remember to listen to the podcast for the full content. 

“Men, you have the power to make or break a relationship … Research shows that what men do in a relationship is, by a large margin, the crucial factor that separates a great relationship from a failed one …. The data proves that a man’s actions are the key variable that determines whether a relationship succeeds or fails”. Said Dr. John Gottman, et al, in the book A Man’s Guide To Women.

That’s worth repeating: Men have the power to make or break a relationship.

I’m gearing up for a small private retreat for men called Power and Heart, where men get to explore how to express their masculine power in their relationships and lives. Where men get to discover what their personal version of being powerful looks like. Not what society, or Hollywood, or their partner say they should be. More info here …

In preparing for this retreat, I’m talking to men and women about what it means for a man to show up powerfully in relationship, about what happens when he does, and what happens when he doesn’t.

Because we have seen thousands of men and women, couples and individuals, both in individual coaching and the workshops we lead  - We being Sonika and myself - we have a lot of insight into men’s relationships; insight about what works well, what doesn’t work, and what can be done differently to make things better.

My intention with this podcast episode it to support my fellow brothers to have an experience of being powerful and confident and open, in their lives in general, and in their intimate relationships in particular. It’s also my intention that this episode helps those who are in relationship with men, wives, girlfriends, husbands, partners or others, to better understand why their men do what they do, and how they can more loving, satisfying relationships with the men in their lives.

Even though we are all unique humans beings, based on my experience there are near-universal complaints from partners about their men, and there are near-universal complaints men have about their partners.

The #1 complaint about men: He’s not there for me, I don’t feel safe, I can’t trust him.

The #1 complaint from men: It doesn’t matter what I do, I can’t win. She’s never happy

A man told me, “I feel like a second rate citizen in my house” . Ouch. That should never be the case.

He was a classic Mr Nice Guy, works hard, provides, works some more, gets a promotion to keep up with the increasing costs of the good life he wants his wife and kids to enjoy: but somehow, his wife never feels he gives anything. And he just keeps accommodating, trying to provide more and work harder.

That’s one common example of a man working really hard, but somehow not being in his power and achieving the success in his marriage that he’s striving for.

There are many ways we might define power and being a powerful man.

A recent definition I heard states that a man who owns his shadow as well as his gifts; a man who is accountable for his actions, and a man who keeps his agreements and promises; that is a man in his power.

When it comes to relationships, there are certain qualities a powerful man has:

• Be present with what is happening in the moment

A powerful man holds certain beliefs as well (or some version of these):

• My wants and needs are ok

Some of the ways you as a man can watch for losing your power in relationship. These “symptoms” always create trouble for you and/or your partner:

1. You hate it when your wife/girlfriend/partner gets upset and emotional about something. Especially when it's about you or something you did. When that happens, you just want to get the hell out of there, or make it stop.   

1. Man who said, “Gimme a band of robbers anytime. But when my 5-ft-1 wife gets mad, I run”

Some of what you as a man can do to be grounded in your power and get what you want.

1. Own your wants and needs, and speak them. Dare to go directly for what you want. Don’t second guess your desires, thinking stuff like, “Naa, it’s not that important, I’ll get by, never mind”, when in actuality it’s important to you.

Turned out this episode has so much material I decided to make this episode Part 1 of 2. I will complete in Part 2, with more details about what a man’s partner can do to help him ground in his power and create more satisfying relationships.

For this episode, we have a present for you:

The material Sonika's talking about has been turned into an E-book which includes the 100 questions for intimacy-creating conversations that she mentions. 

Simply go download the ebook and you'll have it forever. It's free (and we do ask you for your email address to get the ebook). 

Download the ebook here: loveworksforyou.com/100-questions

When couples or family members experience conflict, it is easy to rush into generalities.

"You never help me around the house! I always have to do everything myself!"

It is almost automatic to generalize when we feel triggered, hurt or angry. Unfortunately, there are many problems with this habit that prevent us from resolving our conflicts and coming back to love and harmony with our partners and loved ones.

When something happens that we don’t want, e.g. when someone doesn’t keep an agreement or says ‘no’ to a request or need, our mind gets instantly flooded with past memories of times when we felt similarly. Old beliefs of not being lovable or deserving bubble up from the deep and we find ourselves awash in a bleak sea of negativity. Our unhappiness and dissatisfaction skews our current world-view, and suddenly our entire relationship sucks and has always sucked. We begin to see disheartening and frightening patterns.

We can’t help but share our newfound thinking, the connections we are making between what is happening now and what has happened in the past. We might focus solely on the person we are in conflict with and where that person has always been the same (“You have never helped around the house!”), or we might broaden our connections to include previous partners (“All three of my husbands never wanted to help around the house”), or we might even go all the way back to our childhood (“My dad never helped around the house either! I can’t believe I have created the same exact pattern with you!”)

We typically share these “insights” in the middle of being upset or triggered, which is not particularly helpful, to put it diplomatically. The problem with bringing up the past is that you are no longer dealing with a specific breakdown or problem, no longer focused on the one problem that is presenting itself at the moment. Your focus shifts away from productive solution discovery, away from actions and steps that will help you resolve the conflict and get what you want. Instead, you spiral downwards, into what some call “circling the drain”.

Generalizing and bringing up the past also reinforces your sense of powerlessness. When you generalize, you effectively blow your problem up to unfixable proportions. You add weight to negative stories you have about yourself and others. Once you get lost in these general loops of negativity and complaint, you will likely feel more and more powerless and victimized, because all of the evidence you gather from past similar experiences essentially prove the unworkability of your current situation.

Not only do you feel powerless, but your partner feels powerless too. When your partner feels negatively characterized, pigeonholed, or blamed, they will naturally resist your view and defend themselves and their actions. When they hear your negatively biased view of them or the past, they will want to correct your perception by blasting you with evidence to the contrary, proving their side of the story. They will be reluctant to hear you and your concerns, and will likewise be uninspired to work with you to create win/win solutions to the presenting issue. This is the recipe for pointless arguing.

What to do instead?

Stay away from lumping whatever you are experiencing now with similar instances from the past. Keep your focus on the specific issue, problem or breakdown at hand, and work it all the way through to completion. Resolution and changes occur when you break things down to specifics - to specific steps - to something you can do or say or think differently right NOW.

You can start a conversation by saying …

“When __ (specific instance) happened,

Granted, there are a myriad variations depending on the specific situation, but hopefully you can see from the example that you are only talking about one specific instance, not bringing up the past or making sweeping generalizations.

This kind of communication has a much better shot at a positive result than, “You never help around here! My dad was just like that! I always have to do everything myself!”

Beware of your mind’s tendency to look for generalities and patterns when you’re feeling triggered. Reaction = Re-Action, meaning we are re-enacting an old story from times past. Which is just to say, that whenever you are upset, i.e. “in reaction”, you ARE in the past! You aren't in the present moment!

By using the example above, you help yourself to stay in the present moment, and you help yourself work an issue all the way through to a workable solution. Try it. And if by chance you do see patterns, or if resentments and hurts from the past do come up that need to be discussed, healed, or released, talk about those separately at a different time, one at a time, until they are worked through all the way to completion.

Use your awareness to powerfully generate specific action steps you can take NOW to create change. And don’t hesitate to get support from a professional if they feel too big to resolve on your own. While there are several more actions you can take to work problems through all the way to completion, keeping your focus on the specific problem at hand, avoiding generalizations and not talking about the past will go far to help you resolve conflicts.

Lastly, if you want a chance to work out actual conflicts with support, learn cutting edge tools, and gain a totally different view and skill set around conflict resolution, check out our Gift Of Conflict workshop, Nov 10-11, in Auburn, CA. This is an advanced workshop and normally for members only, but when space allows, we open up a few seats to the public. Contact us right away if you are interested.

Am I in the right relationship? Is my marriage worth fighting for? Are we ever going to be in love again? I love my partner, but I don’t feel that feeling anymore. I love my partner, but our sex is lacking. I love my partner but I’m not IN love.

So … should I stay I should I go? Should we split up or stay together?

This dilemma haunts a good many people, in long-term marriages as well as brand-new or budding relationships. It’s genuinely unsettling when you don’t feel secure about the future of your relationship.

Whereas this dilemma shows up in many varieties, one common example was presented by a woman Sonika coached this week. She said, “Well, I love my husband, we’re a great team, we’re really good with our kids and family, we support each other, we’re good friends …. BUT … I’m not in love; I don’t feel that feeling, I don’t feel the passion anymore”.

We hear this story from both men and women, young and old, in new relationships or thirty-year marriages.

When this doubt is present for you, it comes with a host of other questions, such as …

• Should we split up?

Having these kinds of questions banging around in your head creates anxiety, stress, and a sense of “unsettledness”. It’s natural for us to want to eliminate those questions and get them answered asap!

However, this presents a new problem. When your relationship isn’t working the way you want it to, you’re missing certain FEELING. Call it in-love, passion, zest, aliveness, it goes by many names. Bottom line, you’re missing a feeling. How you try and fix that is by THINKING your way to an answer. In other words, you get “in your head” about it, trying to figure it out. But when you “get in your head”, you also pull away from your partner and from you out of it. When you’re haunted by “should I stay or should I go”, you compromise your own commitment, in effect jumping from one side of the fence to now sitting squarely ON the fence. And as we all know, sitting on the fence is painful.

Plus, the doubt created by these questions creates an energetic and emotional “leak” in your relationship, which to both parties feels like lessened commitment, which again compromise the trust you’ve built together.

So what is it we’re looking for you when you begin to wonder if you should look outside your current relationship?

This aspect is very elegantly covered by Esther Perel who talks about the two concurrent, but opposing, needs we have in relationship. Think of them as being on opposite ends of a spectrum, which on end has Intimacy, and on the opposite end, Passion. We need both, but they work against one another. In a brand-new, just-fallen-in-love kind of relationship, there’s lots of passion. Passion is fueled by newness, uncertainty, risk, danger, adventure, and the unknown. But there’s not yet a lot of intimacy, which is fueled by honesty, familiarity, routine, safety, closeness, and predictability.

In the example I mentioned in the beginning, the woman has boatloads of intimacy, safety, and predictability, but longs for more passion, risk, edginess, and spontaneity. But you can easily imagine that if she decides to leave her marriage (which she still might), she’ll be freed up to pursue newness with someone else, but will have lost, partly or wholly, all the intimacy, familiarity, and safety she’s built with her husband over many years.

What to do then?

Well, there’s more in the podcast itself, but here’s a couple of really good questions to ask yourself, which will often open up new actions and insights for you:

• How would I were totally committed and I didn’t even have the option to leave?

Those questions help you plug the energetic and emotional “leaks”, which is a faster way to get the clarity you seek. Whether the outcome eventually will be you staying or leaving, jumping in fully gets you the clarity faster.

We have a sort of rule of thumb about this question, Should I stay or should I go?

If you’re not ready to move out tomorrow, and if the questions are still rattling around in your head, you’re not done yet. Until you’re ready to walk out, be in all the way. You can trust the answer to present itself in due time.

At our Give Yourself To Love workshop, both couples and singles can learn how to drop down into the experience they long for, and quickly, too. Plus identify with great clarity what is it they really, truly want, and get a chance to connect heart to heart. Often, this weekend experience will clear up your doubts altogether.

Check it out here …

9 tips and insight on how to make and keep a woman happy. But before I say another word, here’s a very big disclaimer … and I’m going to get this out of the way, so I don’t have to preface every statement with another disclaimer, and thus bore you to death!

Whenever we talk about what women like or what men like, or how women or men think, and so on, we’re always generalizing. Which means, it’s not true for everyone. If you’re a woman listening, you might hear me say that women love this or that thing, and you might not relate to it at all, that’s to be expected and totally fine. Also, because I say that women like this or that, it doesn’t mean that men wouldn’t also like the same thing. As a very real example, you’ll hear me say that women have a huge priority and desire for connection. That does not mean that men don’t also desire connection … I for one want that very much. But in contrast to my wife, connection is not my primary desire and I’m am not nearly as motived by it as Sonika, and many women with her, is. Also, as part of the disclaimer … I’m a straight male married to a women, so that’s the vantage point I’m speaking from. 

Let’s dive in …

I was coaching a man the other day who told me his girlfriend and him were in a breakdown. His girlfriend had said to him, “well, you convince me why we should be together”. He said, as the logical, good-natured, speak-the-truth kinda man he is, he said, “I don’t think I should have to convince you - we should both want to be here because we like each other”.

That didn’t go over very well.

In matters of love and intimacy, when you are a man in relationship with a woman, much of the time you cannot expect to make success with your own way of thinking. In this example, my client’s answer is perfectly logical, I’d even agree with his sentiment.

Without going too deep into the differences between men and women - and there are many - let me just give you a great general principle when you’re relating to a woman: Think not so much in terms of what is the “right” thing to do, or what is “logical” or what makes sense. Rather, think in terms of what would open the situation up to more love. What would open her heart more, maybe put a smile on her face. That’s a really useful rule of thumb.

I want this episode to be practical, so I’m going to share useable tips, and where relevant, I’ll include some background to deepen the understanding.

The first tip is what I just said is a good general rule of thumb. To focus more on what would open the situation up to more love, than on what is logical and accurate. Like my client above who said, “I don’t think I should have to convince you … “ and so forth. What would have opened that situation up to more love is for him to say, “I love you, honey! I know we’ve had some trouble, but I am here with you, and I’m here for you, and I want to be with you. I’m not letting you go, we can work this out, you and me!”

When she says, “convince me why we should be together”, she’s not looking for a rational reason for sticking together. She’s looking for reassurance that he still likes her, that he still wants her. It’s as if, after every breakdown or disconnect, she needs to know if he chooses her all over again. Women really like feeling chosen, like you picked her out of all the other women you could have chosen, you picked her.

I’ll list the tips below, in short form. Notice there’s more to the story, get the full content by listening to the episode.

Tip #2: Make her feel chosen and special, by doing things like …

• Speak compliments and acknowledgments

Tip #3: Make her feel held. (Feeling “held” is a somewhat nebulous concept for some, but I promise your woman will know exactly if she feels held or not). Ways to help her feel held …

• Be with her in emotional situations. Don’t check out, don’t fix, don’t defend, don’t distract, just BE there with her.

Tip #4: Don’t take her emotions personally

• One of the qualities women consistently tell us they love in their partners is the ability to be with her while she’s having feelings about something. Men often get scared of her emotions, hence try to make them go away.

Tip #5: Pay attention, be “tuned into her”

• The technical term is Attunement, having a conscious sense of how your partner feels and how she’s doing right now.

Tip #6: Be helpful

• For some, this might sound like old news. But I can’t tell you how many women have the ongoing complaint that their boyfriend or husband is like “having another kid around.”

Tip #7:  Take initiative. Do things like …

• Initiate activities. Simple stuff, go to the movies, out for dinner.

Tip #8: Play with her. Actually, play, period.

• If you’re a man who’s anything like me, you know you can sometimes be quite serious and somber. Left to my own devices, I don’t really play much. I don’t think too much about having fun. Having fun is not one of the values I reach for in life. That’s not say I don’t like playing and having fun, it’s just that if I don’t put some conscious attention on it, I’ll just work, work, work, and forget about playing.

Tip #9: Be accountable with your word and your time.

• In short, that translates to doing what you say you’ll be doing. Showing up when and where you said you’d be showing up. Participating in your relationship in the ways you say will participate. Don’t make agreements you can’t keep. It’s better to say, “I’m sorry, I can’t meet you at 7 because I’m working that night”, than it is to say, “Sure, see you then” and then not show up.

Like I said in the beginning, some of the actions and tips I’ve shared here today for how to make her happy may sound very simple, so that when you hear them, you go, “Oh yeah, that’s easy, I know that”. But the real question is, are you DOING this?

There’s a very simple method to answer that question. Just look at the woman you are in relationship with and ask you yourself, Is she happy? Is she happy with me? Are WE happy?

Of course her happiness depends on all kinds of factors that are her sole responsibility, but make no mistake, you as her partner can play a very big role in making her happiness easy and abundant, or difficult and elusive.

Hope that was useful, I’ll see you next time.

When we make love with our partner, I believe we secretly long to have a shared soul-merging experience of eternity and bliss with our beloved. We seek nothing less than to lose ourselves completely in love and to be consumed wholeheartedly in pleasure, uniting the physical and spiritual, the human and the divine, in a grand climactic ecstasy of spiritual oneness.

Unfortunately, for most of us, sex is a hurried rush of routine under blankets in the dark, devoid of a miraculous transcendent experience. We enter and leave our sexual encounters already disappointed and vaguely dissatisfied by the mundaneness of our love and pleasure expressions. Many of us wonder if we aren’t missing out on something really important.

I used to think that high transcendental sex wasn’t possible in this life, that it was but a fanciful dream relegated to some afterlife, romance novels, artful porn flicks, or experienced Tantrikas. It wasn’t until I fell in love with Christian and experienced the profundity of sex that I discovered that not only was blissful sex possible, it was entirely re-creatable.

What is transcendent sex? It is a blissful magical extraordinary experience in lovemaking where one enters into an altered state of the Infinite that transcends time and place; where body and spirit, self and other, blur in a mystical realm of non-duality; where high pleasure states and orgasmic energy streams ripple through the entire body unencumbered (not just the genitals); where high emotional embodied states of love, bliss, and ecstasy extend beyond the five senses.

I will attempt here to discuss how to have high transcendental sex with your partner – whether new lover, beloved soul mate, or long time spouse. Much of what I will write here requires a shift in focus and the patient development of new relationship and sex practices, as well as attunement to the moment without expectation or goal (probably the hardest part). 

I will be sharing many aspects and tips for how enjoy this kind of sexual experience.

Among many aspects, I will share how to …

• Expand your definition of sex

Listen to the entire podcast to get the full picture.

As you practice this, remember that most of us have been impacted by an abundance of negative sex messages from our family and culture, or perhaps direct sexual abuse, and very few of us have had any sex education at all. As a result, our reticence to fully express ourselves in sex is understandable. Truth is, it takes time to learn new ways to be in sex, and it takes time and practice to create an experience of High Sex with another.

So please be gentle with yourself and your partner or partners. Take risks where you can. Little actions, like making sounds when you orgasm if you are usually silent, or turning your partner over for a new position, or making eye contact and breathing in unison with your partner, will altogether ultimately open you up to more and more pleasure over time. 

Here’s to your enjoyment and bliss:)

“Online dating is a full-time job”. Said by a friend of mine, a good-looking, conscious, kind man with a great job and great income. An “eligible bachelor”, if I ever met one.

This episode is about dating, with special emphasis on online dating. There are a lot of cool things about online dating, and likewise a lot of challenges and pitfalls which translates to frustration and heartache for singles looking to create relationships — perhaps you’ve been there?

Some of the amazing benefits about online dating:

• It’s easier than ever to find people to meet and date. You can literally do it from anywhere, anytime.

 If you look up “online dating statistics”, you’ll find all kinds of interesting material.

 For example, on eHarmony’s website, you can read that … 

• 50% of the US population consists of single adults. That means it’s never the case that there aren’t enough good men or women out there for you to be in relationship with. “There are no good men or women out there” is basically a lame excuse, along the lines of “I didn’t have time”.

That last stat is important, because it tells you that online dating is only one - and not the most important - way to meet people.

The stat about how 53% of people lie on their profiles illustrate one of the main difficulties with online dating. Actually this is an issue with dating in general, but greatly exacerbated by online dating.

The issue is what I call Dating, Amazon.com Style. We go dating online like we shop for products on Amazon. We quickly scan the photo, then the product specs and details, and buy it or not. It’s normal we’re scrolling through hundreds of items before we choose one.

The sheer number of potential dates gives rise to profile fatigue, or as one of my friends called it, indecision overwhelm. It’s the same thing that happens when you to the supermarket to buy peanut butter, jam, or bread. You are faced with so many options that it’s hard to decide. And studies now show that even when you choose an item, you’re not satisfied with, because you know it’s likely it could have been better.

Same thing happens in online dating. Because we aware how many options there are, and because there is so much information we can sort and filter people by, even when we pick someone to date, it’s hard to get rid of the nagging doubt that we could be - maybe even should be, deserve to be! - with someone who is more loving, sexier, better off, healthier, better looking, and more like us.

We all have a “list” of what we want in a partner. Some write it down, some just have one in their mind, but it’s a list all the same. The list is full of specs, or “must-haves”, criteria by which we sort the potentials. Things like, must love dogs, must be into personal growth, must be vegetarian, must work out, must love traveling, must make $100K a year, must be certain age, and many more.

This list, combined with the ease of scrolling through hundreds of profiles, turn human beings into two-dimensional “products” that seemingly consist of only of a few pictures and some specs. But of course, human beings are so much more complex, deep, rich, and multi-facetted than can be present on a profile.

Just think about your own profile. How well does it tell the full story of who you are as a human being?

You can also be sure that the same way you sift through people, and discard them based on their age, height, looks, income, religion, and interests, is also being done towards you.

Now, it’s not to say it’s a bad thing to have preferences and be looking for someone you are a good match for. It’s just that there’s normally a big difference between what we think we want and what we really want. Sonika & I have been teaching a method to distinguish the two for years. In the entertaining and enlightening book about dating by Aziz Ansari, Modern Romance, he quotes a study for saying, “The kind of partner people said they were looking for didn’t match up with the kind of partner they were actually interested in”.

Some of the things I share for what to instead to make a better dating experience for yourself are … 

• Remember online dating is just one - and not the most important - way people meet. If you don’t like it, don’t worry, there’s still hope.

There’s much more in the podcast … hope this is helpful, and I’m rooting for your enjoyable dating experience.

“To succeed, we must first believe that we can”. Michael Korda                                                                       

The article with this podcast was originally published in a book Sonika co-authored, Seize Your Opportunities: How To Live Your Life Without Limits. 

There is no doubt that what we believe influences who we are, affects the choices we make and ultimately determines the results we produce. Beliefs shape what we see, what we experience and what we expect. More than anything else, they determine how we feel.

If we want to increase our effectiveness in business, empower our relationships and enhance our joy in life, we need to improve the quality of our thinking. We need to shift our limiting beliefs to empowering ones, replace negative thoughts with positive thoughts and nurture internal conversations that inspire us to risk living our full potential. We must acquire the beliefs of winners if we are to be a winner, the beliefs of successful entrepreneurs if we wish to be a successful entrepreneur. We must work as much, if not more, with our minds as with our behaviors if we are to create ourselves anew in any context – business, marriage, sports, health, school, family, work, etc.

What is a Belief?

A belief is a recurrently practiced thought that is held as true or real. It is a statement we repeat over and over to ourselves, consciously or unconsciously, until it becomes second nature. Beliefs are so successfully and habitually reinforced that they become an unconscious insidious force that filters how we view, experience and manifest reality. We are so accustomed to these filters that we don’t realize we never experience the world as it is; in fact, most beliefs go unnoticed and unexamined our entire lives. Despite this fact, beliefs have great power - they have been known to heal us, kill us, motivate us, immobilize us and inspire us. Our very happiness and success depends on what we believe.

Luckily, beliefs can be examined and changed. Any old belief can be replaced with a new practiced thought.

How Do I Decide Which Beliefs to Change?

In order to shift a negative belief to a positive life-affirming one, we must first take stock of the disempowering beliefs that grip us. Observation is always the first key to changing any unwanted behavior. It is through observation that we can bring unconscious beliefs up to conscious awareness and then decide which ones we want to actively change. The best way to bring to the surface beliefs you would like to change is through self-examination.

You can discover and examine your beliefs best by journaling and noticing what you write about. Pick any topic to explore - business, life, relationship, yourself, your children, health, sex, religion, money - and you will see beliefs all over the place! Write a narrative and simply go back through your writing and notice what beliefs lie hidden throughout.

Or talk out loud with someone who will take on the role of helping you listen for and pull out beliefs as you do. We are often blind to our own beliefs, so an outside ear can be extremely valuable in helping us uncover unconscious thought patterns. Have your partner repeat back or write down the beliefs they hear.

As you explore a topic, notice specifically where you are unhappy or dissatisfied. Unhappiness is our biggest clue that we are holding beliefs that are inconsistent with who we want to be. Use complaints, upsets, disappointments, fears, etc. to point you to beliefs you wish to change. Anger, fear, panic, doubt, depression, sadness, resentment – all intense feelings are tied to strong beliefs, so anytime you are feeling intense emotion, it is a good time to notice what you are thinking.

Ask yourself questions. What don’t you like about who you are or what you do? What experience in your life do you wish to change? Or spout off a list of what you think you can’t do. Say why you aren’t more successful. Complaints and upsets are imbued with limiting negative beliefs.

You can also pay attention to yourself in unpleasant situations, especially at times when you feel emotionally disabled or immobilized from taking some action you really want to take. There is nothing like being in the middle of an unpleasant experience to take note of the thoughts and beliefs that are running haphazardly through your mind!

Another powerful way to discover your operating beliefs is to listen to winners and successful entrepreneurs talk about their beliefs. Sometimes hearing what someone else believes will make you aware of the gap between what they think and what you think. For example, I recently heard a very successful entrepreneur say that he assumes everyone he meets wants to buy from him, wants to be his partner and wants him to fulfill his dreams. When he walks up to the door of a potential prospect, he imagines a red carpet laid out for him. Hearing this made me aware of contrasting beliefs I have about myself in comparison and gave me some powerful beliefs to aspire to.

How Do I Go About Shifting Negative Beliefs?

There are several ways to successfully change beliefs. These ten strategies are not presented in any particular order. Feel free to read through them and choose whichever ones appeal to you most for changing your beliefs.

Remember, a belief is a practiced thought that is held as true. Question the truth of it, and it breaks down. As a result, in the strategies that follow, many questions are asked. If you merely read the questions and avoid asking them yourself, you will not get the power of them. Be sure to pick a belief of your own that you want to change and sink into the questions and processes presented here. If you do, you will experience profound changes in how you think and thereby open up limitless new possibilities for yourself.

In the many strategies that follow, and for purposes of illustration, we are going to work with changing the belief, “I can’t make enough money”.

1. Examine your belief: Question its validity; create doubt.

A first step to shifting a belief is to non-judgmentally and curiously inquire into the belief. Sometimes examining a belief is enough to shed new light on old thinking and break a belief apart. Ask questions, like: “Why do I believe this? What evidence or proof do I have to support the truth of this belief? Where did this belief come from? When was the first time I remember thinking this thought? Did my parents have a similar belief?

If you believe you can’t make enough money, you are likely to uncover other supporting beliefs. “I can’t afford to take a long vacation” or “I still have lots of credit card debt”. But even these, when inquired into with questions, will eventually break down what appears to be a grounded belief into an irrational one. For example, you could ask, “Why do I think I don’t make enough money just because I have credit card debt?” Or “Why do I think I can’t afford a long vacation?”

Keep breaking the belief down into tiny little bits. Every generalization will break itself at some point. “Is it true all the time? According to whom? Was there ever a time when I did make enough money? What would happen if I was wrong about this belief and I did make enough money? What is true about the statement, I can make enough money?” Keep going until you have poked holes in your belief and created doubt about it.

1. Look for evidence to the contrary.

We do not see things as they are. Everything is filtered through our beliefs. Since we are never seeing the world as it is, we filter out conflicting evidence to our belief. We only see what fits with our belief, that which proves the belief. So a great way to dismantle a belief is to look for evidence to the contrary. You might say, “Well, it’s no that I couldn’t pay bills last month, I just couldn’t pay more on all my credit cards like I usually do. Oh, and I did make more money last month than I have ever made before.”

When you look for evidence to the contrary, you pave the way for a new belief. You present evidence to support and strengthen your new belief while simultaneously weakening the old unwanted belief.

1. Re-frame the belief.

An event has no meaning on its own. It just is. People give events meaning according to their beliefs, values, like and dislikes. In other words, the meaning of an experience is dependent on the context and who’s experiencing it.

Reframing is changing the way you perceive an event and so changing the meaning. When the meaning changes, the response and behavior changes also.

An example of reframing “I can’t make enough money” might be “I am so great at always creating new dreams to spend money on that I am always wanting to make more money”. Now, the negative frame around “I can’t make enough money” has changed to a positive one and the belief has new meaning.

1. Explore the gift behind your belief.

One of the most potent questions you can ask about your belief is “What is my belief giving me? What is good about my believing this?” There are always benefits to our negative beliefs, gifts we receive.

One tool I have used in my coaching practice to help people access gifts they receive from their negative belief is to ask, “If some part of you were giving you this experience to help you learn something, to help you grow or empower you in some way, what do you think there is here for you to learn?” This is a very powerful question to ask and may pull out a hidden opportunity for you to use this belief to expand yourself beyond what you may have previously thought possible.

Another way to get at what your negative belief gives you is by enthusiastically exaggerating your belief, to embrace it as good, to release your resistance to it. “I love that I can’t make enough money! Yippee! It is so great that I don’t have all the money I want!” Then explore in an upbeat mood, “What is great about not having enough money? What do I love about not having enough money?” You might respond with, “I don’t have to pay taxes! I get to only work 10 hours a week! I’m inspired to go make more money than ever.”Once I loaned someone a lot of money with a high rate of return and he couldn’t pay me back as promised. My belief that I was foolish and bad with money, which was the source of my having given him the unsecured loan in the first place, was reinforced. The gift of my belief, upon examination, was that I got to blame him for my financial situation rather than take responsibility for myself. As a result of seeing the gift of my negative belief, I was inspired and motivated to believe otherwise and to make money on my own like never before. Armed with my new belief, I went from making $1,000 a month to well over $10,000 a month in just six months!

1. Take 100% responsibility for your belief.

Most disempowering beliefs give us an excuse to not take action, to stay safe, to resist change, to blame others or situations for our experience of reality. We get validation for being and staying exactly where we are with many of our unworkable beliefs. For instance, you may just prefer to blame and complain rather than to actually take the actions necessary to bring more money into your life. So what you get out of believing this thought gives you an excuse to not act. We are often more comfortable with taking a victim stance than being 100% responsible for what we believe, feel and do.

Ask yourself what you get to be right about by having this belief. Who or what do you want to keep blaming for your current situation? Take responsibility. Choose your belief. Say from a powerful place, “I want to believe I can’t make enough money. I love that I can’t make enough money.” Or better yet, explain to someone how you make sure you don’t make enough money. An interesting thing happens when you take responsibility for and choose your beliefs. The moment you own a belief as yours, take responsibility for creating it and for keeping it alive for all it gives, you in that same moment become aware of your power to change it.

There was a time when I was in a battered relationship and I was quite accustomed to thinking of myself as a victim. That all changed dramatically one day when I described in great detail all of the things I did and said to keep myself a victim in my relationship. Soon afterward I ended that relationship and never again created a relationship where I was victimized. Taking responsibility had me see how much power I had in that situation and I couldn’t help but use that same power to create big changes!

1. Declare the desired belief as though it were already true now.

A belief like “I can’t make enough money”, is merely a practiced and well-rehearsed thought. That is all it is. Every part of us is wired, however, to think a habituated thought is true.

One way to shift your negative belief is to state the new desired belief as if it were already true now. “I can and do make more than enough money.” Speak it out loud. Feel the power and possibility of this new belief. Focus on what you want to be true with all of your attention as if it were already a reality.

Add strength to your belief by looking for evidence of where it is already true. (You will have already done some of this when you looked for contrary evidence to your old belief.) Speak the evidence you find out loud. You might say, “I do pay my bills every month. I have $4000 in my retirement account. I make more money now than I ever have before. I pay more than the minimum balance on my credit cards every month”. The more solid the evidence you find, the more congruent your new belief will feel to you.

1. Utilize the power of visualization. See your new belief played out in your mind.

Visualization, which is sometimes referred to as the "theater of the mind," is the ability to see, in your mind's eye, some event that you know will take place in the future. The mind doesn’t know the difference between an imagined and actual occurrence and there have been studies carried out that show an improvement in performance when visualization is used.

When visualizing, it is better to use all of your senses as if you are really living your vision, not just observing or remembering it. Successful visualization requires not just thinking the right thoughts, but also feeling the emotions and vividly imagining the behaviors. Seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling, and tasting should be part of your “theater play” in your mind.

When ready, close your eyes and ask yourself, “Who would I be without this old belief”? Really feel and see yourself without this belief. What would you be like? What might you believe instead? Then, imagine your new belief being played out in your day-to-day life. Visualize your bank account with a higher balance. See yourself getting more clients or prospects, or your boss giving you a raise. Imagine higher sales commissions and company awards for having made the most in your company. Hear the applause. Feel the feelings associated with your visual experience. Make it as real in your mind as you can.

Whatever story you have imagined sets the stage for what you experience in life. It is very beneficial to write your vision in story form of how you want your life to be. Write out a narrative of what you are accomplishing and experiencing with your new belief. You can look one, two, five, ten, twenty years out, and write a different story from each vantage point. What are you doing? How much money are you bringing in? Write about your credit cards being paid off and going on a long vacation. Include how much money you have been able to save up and the fun, good things you have been able to buy or do because of your increased revenue. Write about everything as if it were already true now. You add great strength to new beliefs with present-time narratives to live into and read over and over again. It is especially fun years later to read them over and see how much of what you wrote you have actually created!

1. Living in the Question.

Most of us are trained to think that the way to change a belief is to have a change in some outside stimulus first. For instance, you might think the way to change your “I can’t make enough money” belief is to first have enough money. Once you have enough money, then you will be able to do the things you want to do with money, and only then will you believe or experience that you make enough money. This is another way of saying, “I need to be presented with new evidence first in order to believe a new thought.” In a diagram, this line of thinking would be illustrated as: Have à Do à Be.

In actuality, changes in belief and behavior occur in the opposite order: Be à Do à Have. First, we need to become and experience as true what we want, then take action consistent with that experience and only then will we have the outer manifestation of what we are wanting.

One way to practice “being” is to do what I call “living in the question”. It is my favorite way to shift beliefs. The question to live into has the following form: “If I knew ________, how would I be now? What would I say now? What would I do now?” To make it specific to our example, you would ask, “If I knew I could make enough money, how would I be now? What would I say now? What would I do now?”

What I love about this question is that it tricks the mind. By asking an “If” question, old beliefs are temporarily suspended and you can bypass the usual resistance of the mind to new ways of thinking. Not only that, but you have to actually imagine what you are asking before you can answer the question! You have to see yourself making enough money before you can say what you would be doing if you were making enough money. Your mind is now smack dab in the middle of a new vision, a new belief possibility, and your mind didn’t even know it!

The beauty of the unconscious mind is that it will always answer whatever question it is asked. So, when you ask the question, “If I could make enough money, what would I be doing now?” an answer will invariably arise. Now the most important part of this question is the word “now”. You don’t want to answer this question with some un-useful, disconnected generalization, which is what you will get if you don’t include the word “now”. You want to come up with an answer that will inspire you to take some new action in this moment, an action that will in turn provide you with more evidence to reinforce and strengthen this new belief.

For instance, your mind might answer, “If I knew I could make enough money, I would make more sales calls”. If that is the case, follow up your response to that question with action. Actually go make more sales calls. This is why I call this strategy “living in the question”. It is a question to live into, a question to ask several times a day, a question to take action on the answers to as you receive them. When you repeatedly “live into” the question and take action accordingly, you will over time find that you have indeed added more evidence to back up and reinforce your new belief.

1. Act as if.

This takes visualization and puts it into action. Pretending you already believe something new has great power and backing it up with posture and action helps you embody a new belief more fully. Acting as if something is already true, in short, helps you believe it.

“Acting as if” calls you not only to imagine who and how you would be if you already believed what you want to believe, but to ask yourself what you would do differently if you already fully embodied this new belief. Where “living in the question” calls for new actions in the moment if the belief were true, “acting as if” calls you take actions now as if you already embodied these new beliefs. Act now like you already are your imagined future self. Act right now like you already can and do make enough money. Carry big bills in your wallet. Offer to pay someone’s meal. Tell someone you will attend an expensive seminar. Walk with your head up high. Attend a business meeting in a suit.

Then bump it up a notch. Ask how you would act and what you would do if you already made much more than enough money. You might stay at a fancy hotel, or fly first class, or wear a nice suit, or ride in a limo. “Acting as if” might manifest as you walking into a fancy hotel in a nice suit and ordering a drink at the hotel bar like you were a wealthy person staying at the hotel, or test driving a fancy car or checking out million dollar homes available for sale in your area.

 You will be amazed how “acting as if” helps to convince you that your new belief is real.

1. Get support.

Be with people who believe what you want to believe. Hang around successful folks who are already living the life you want to live. Remember, you become like the people you are around. Or said another way, your network = your net worth. So get yourself a coach or a mentor. Join a class or a group of people who are moving consistent with the beliefs you want to embody. All successful people have outside support. These chosen support networks will be a source of hope and inspiration for you when you fall back into old belief patterns and habits.

To get support, we often need to be willing to be uncomfortable. When we are with people who live beyond our beliefs, dreams and current lifestyle, we often feel uneasy. Old beliefs are brought to the surface, and oft times, we feel bad in the face of them. To avoid feeling bad, we avoid the very situations that would nourish us to rise to our full potential. And sometimes, we just plain have a hard time asking for help. We think we ought to be able to produce massive change all by ourselves. But as is commonly known, most every successful person has support. If you are serious about shifting significant beliefs so you can life the life of your dreams, then be sure to secure support for yourself.

Summary

Beliefs can change in an instant or it can take years. How long it takes depends on what you believe [pun intended]. The important thing is that you can change them. You can believe anything you want.

Shifting beliefs is the most powerful thing you can do for yourself to bring more joy and success and love into your life. When you successfully change a belief from a constrictive one to a more expansive one, your entire world changes. What once felt like a closed door will suddenly feel like an open window, a breath of fresh air, an unlimited space of possibility. There is nothing you can’t do or be when you choose and line up with beliefs that are matched up with your full potential, with who you are meant to be.

Give yourself the gift of change. Choose a new thought. Experience the wonder of living beyond belief.