Procrastinators Anonymous is a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength and hope with each other that they may solve their common problem and help others to recover from chronic procrastination.
Lefkoe Method & Talking to Monsters
I am a long-time on and off member on this site. I recently used two methods new to me to address decades-old issues of procrastination. I have tried many, many strategies over the years. While it has only been about 10 days since I tried these things, the results have been so dramatic that I felt I had to post about them here.
The Lefkoe Method is a process for eliminating negative beliefs. Morty Lefkoe, who developed this process, has made it accessible to eliminate three negative beliefs for free (i.e., "mistakes and failure are bad," "I am not good enough," "I am not important"). The URL is http://www.recreateyourlife.com/free/. The process takes about 30 minutes. The belief I eliminated (I've only done one so far) was "mistakes and failure are bad."
The other thing I did the same day was to have a conversation with some of my "monsters" (i.e., blocks) a la Havi Brooks. http://www.fluentself.com/blog/personal/the-negotiator-the-monster-and-t...
Because I did both of these things at approximately the same time, I can't tell with certainty which was more valuable. My belief is that they worked in synergy.
The result is that I have been wildly productive on both difficult tasks and mundane tasks, things I've been putting off for years and things I've been putting off for days. And, best of all, it has been almost entirely painless. I have just easily gone down my list of things to do and done things one after another. I am truly eager to do my work. I billed more hours last week than I have maybe ever billed in seven years of doing the kind of work I do. I also worked for a good portion of the past two weekends on financial stuff that I really need to do but that I have found to be so stressful that I have just been avoiding it since about April 2009. I will say that for a brief period of time (minutes) on both weekends, this financial stuff had me in tears. BUT I was able to stay focused, push through, calm down, and continue working, getting quickly back to it feeling painless. For me, this is unheard of.
I feel transformed in a lasting way. Of course, only time will tell. And I had intended not to post about this til 30 days passed, but I'm feeling so good, I just had to share.
Mollie
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fudoshin: thanks : 8:08pm
Oddly enough I did not find this helpful and I'm not sure what to do. Because I found myself saying that I still held the beliefs afterward. I've gone through the program at least three times, thus far, and I feel like his online program is predicated on the idea that one's parents never said that that belief were true. Whereas, I had a parent (and substitute parents) who openly said either straightforwardly or in an almost identical way: "You are not good enough," and "Mistakes and failure are bad." So while he does consider that events have no inherent meaning, if the person who is traumatizing you says the belief, that does not make it an invention of your mind, especially if you hear things like that, as well as, "You don't look good," over and over again. His program seems predicated on the idea that one's parents never said anything to support the belief. Of course, I can believe that they were wrong, but to say that these events had no meaning other than the one I attributed is wrong as well, because when someone acts a certain way, an action is a form of communication, esp. if my parent communicated the negative belief while she performed the traumatizing action. So I'm not sure what to do with this program, but thanks for sharing it.
I have also done the 'who am I really' portion of his program on two different negative beliefs, and while I find it freeing to entertain that all of my beliefs are self-written (perhaps). (I mean, maybe I was just parotting actual beliefs I heard.) But even if I entertain that my beliefs are self-written and that all of my requirements of myself are predicated on my own belief system that I've authored. . . that does not change the fact that I live in a society, where certain things are required to get X. For instance, I can edit or dispense of my belief that I need a B.A. in English to be a valuable person, but if I want to get one, I need to do a certain amount of course work at a university. I can decide in my own head how well I appreciate the degree from that university, but it doesn't change the fact that society does have certain rules and requirements of me if I want X. Of course I don't need X to be a learned person, but- part of what the word "learned" means implies a notion of society and its requirements imposed on me. An education is not a self-imposed agenda. You don't study merely what you think is interesting or important, but what people in general find important for learning. Learning is defined as more of a social thing. So if I want to be 'learned' or 'scholarly', if that's my goal, then I must respect some sort of canon of literature, as opposed to just my own thoughts. Nevertheless, perhaps the fact that I can even argue against or find fault with this method is a testament to the fact that I can think independently, that I have a core self, an understanding that does not rely upon others' opinions.I just want to say thanks for posting this, even if I don't feel it shake me of my beliefs completely, I am glad of what it has enlightened me about.
Contacting Morty Lefkoe
fudo_shin - I wonder if you would want to contact Morty Lefkoe directly to raise with him this question about what your parent and substitute parents said and did and how/if the Lefkoe Method could work under those circumstances. I mention this because I had a follow-up question after going through the video twice, and I wound up posting a question on Morty's blog about it. He emailed me back, and we had an email exchange over a couple days that I found to be very useful. (I should say that the name I used on the blog was different from my name here, so he couldn't have known I was the same person when he emailed pro about responding to my post here.) Thanks for posting.
reply to Mollie from Morty Lefkoe [advertisement]
Morty Lefkoe asked me to post this message in response to Mollie. I didn't give him access directly because only procrastinators have access to the site. It's an advertisement, but I thought that was okay in light of Mollie's post. -pro.
Hi Mollie,
Thanks so much for mentioning our belief-eliminating process in your post. I wanted to let you know we have a DVD that is guaranteed to eliminate procrastination. It has helped hundreds of people. We offer a full refund for a year if the procrastination isn’t eliminated totally.
It works by eliminating the beliefs and conditionings that cause it. And to prove you can permanently can eliminate beliefs, we put up the site you tried where anyone can eliminate three of the most common beliefs without any charge at http://recreateyourlife.com.
For info about the DVD product and for an explanation on how procrastination is caused by beliefs, check out http://www.recreateyourlife.com/store/procrastination.php.
Regards, Morty Lefkoe
Thanks, pro
I appreciate you posting Morty Lefkoe's response, pro. He's also got a blog at http://www.mortylefkoe.com/, which I've read some of. I continue to find the Lefkoe Method to be incredibly valuable and am making an amazing amount of progress, especially on work-related and financial tasks, which are the areas I was most behind on.
(((thanks mollie2007)))
I appreciate the links and the feedback! Appreciate it. Best regards as always, tracy-la