Authorpreneur Dashboard – Laurie Weiss
Letting It Go
Self-Help
Revolutionary quick and easy new process lets you rapidly release anxiety and toxic stress, using only words!
Newly Revised and Updated
Letting It Go: Relieve Anxiety and Toxic Stress in Just a Few Minutes Using Only Words (Rapid Relief with Logosynthesis®)" is the ultimate resource for anyone seeking to find inner peace and relief from stress and anxiety.
This groundbreaking book teaches readers the transformative power of Logosynthesis®, a cutting-edge approach to healing that helps individuals release negative emotions and limiting beliefs in just a few minutes. With practical exercises and step-by-step guidance, readers will learn how to use Logosynthesis® to overcome anxiety and toxic stress, and find lasting peace and happiness.
Whether you're struggling with a difficult situation or simply need to unwind after a long day, "Letting It Go" is the go-to resource for rapid relief and profound transformation. Discover the life-changing power of Logosynthesis® and take the first step towards a happier, more peaceful life today.
The highly effective new process in this book makes it easy for you to:
• Stop worrying about things you can’t control.
• Manage challenging situations.
• Stop imagining disasters.
• Turn off the thoughts that keep you awake at night.
• Transform your anxiety into relaxation.
This process has been called a tool, a form of prayer, and magical. Created by Swiss psychologist Dr. Willem Lammers, he calls it a guided self-change technique. It’s been used by psychotherapists and coaches since 2005 throughout Europe to help their clients eliminate stress, anxiety and worry.
If you hate being told to just let go of things that bother you—without telling you how—you will love this book! Get your copy now!
Book Bubbles from Letting It Go
Tech Problems Driving You Mad? Read This Now!
I get way too angry when my technology changes, and something I used to do easily no longer works. As a psychotherapist, I know that anger is natural increase of energy that arises when something gets in the way of getting what I want. It’s energy to use to solve the problem. Sadly, my technical skills are often lacking, and it often takes a long time before I can figure out what is wrong or get help to fix the problem. In the meantime, I stay angry and complain to anyone who will listen. One evening when I was in the middle of trying to solve 3 different problems, I realized that on some level, I believe that being angry will fix the technology. Of course, I know it won’t, but that doesn’t change the underlying belief. I also have an equally irrational belief that food, especially chocolate, will fix most problems. I have learned that the process I teach you in “Letting It Go” helps. I insert the phrase, “this belief that chocolate will fix being tired” (if that’s the problem,) in the 3 magic sentences. This usually frees me to solve whatever problem I am avoiding. That night I tried using the phrase “this belief that anger will make things change,” in the sentences. I immediately felt calmer and figured out how to solve one problem. It only takes a few minutes to use this process, and it works. Get the book and learn how now.
Who Told You You're Not Enough?
A very long time ago, early in my professional career, I stumbled over someone’s foot in a meeting. I apologized, saying, “I’m sorry, I’m so clumsy.” Almost immediately an older man said, “Who told you that you were clumsy?” It was a challenge that led me to realize that both my parents had referred to me as a clumsy child. I believed them. Back then I was deeply involved in learning Transactional Analysis (TA), a powerful method for understanding, predicting and changing human behavior. It was and is a very useful set of tools and I have written about it extensively in some of the books you will find on my website, http://www.LaurieWeiss.com . I used TA to eventually release that limiting belief. We have all experienced having someone else describe us in some way and we have created beliefs that inhibit our growth and leave us feeling inadequate or broken in some way. You are not stuck with those beliefs for the rest of your life. It used to be a long, challenging and often painful process to drop limiting beliefs. It is much easier now. The three sentences of the basic Logosynthesis® procedure (a much newer process than TA), that I teach you to use in this book, make it simple. Once you have identified the limiting belief, you use it with those sentences. The belief often dissolves right there. Sometimes it’s a bit more complicated. The book leads you throug
Ready to Scream at Inefficiency? Me Too!
Are you frustrated by how long it takes to get things done? I am too! It used to be easy to renew my driver’s license, but for the sake of efficiency, the office near my home is scheduled to close and reopen in a new location. The “convenient” online renewal was apparently not an option. Because of my age, I needed a statement that I had passed an eye exam within the past 6 months, and I got the notice 7months after my last exam. I tried to find out if the old office was still open. The website had conflicting answers. Then I tried to get an answer by phone. The AI voice I finally reached said “you have stumped me; I will connect you to a real person.” The phone rang and another AI voice said, “we are too busy to take your call, call back another time,” and hung up! This happened twice and it took about 6 more frustrating steps to accomplish my goal. I know you run into things like this too. I am convinced that the world is wrong, but that belief only serves to make me cranky. To regain my equilibrium, I use the 3 sentences you learn in this book. And the problem that almost always needs to be released is “this belief that the world should be different.” It works for me and will probably work for you too. Try it now!
Break Free from Haunting Memories Today
Have you ever wished you could forget an experience? Some things have such an intense emotional impact that they get stuck in your brains. You replay them over and over again and wish you could think about something else, but you can’t. You may even dream about them. For me, it was an exceptionally violent scene in a movie. Ethan was in a near-fatal motorcycle accident. Morgan kept replaying her boyfriend’s nasty accusation that led to their breakup. It can happen to anyone at any time. It took me many years for the emotional impact of the movie scene to recede. As a college student, I had no tools to manage it, and I was a little ashamed of reacting that way. Ethan and Morgan were luckier, they were students in one of my introductory courses where I taught an introduction to Logosynthesis, the material in this book. When we asked Ethan about the worst part of his experience. It was his realization, in a vividly imagined picture, that his son would see him in his casket. For Morgan, the worst thing was the expression of hate on her ex-boyfriend’s face. We led each of them through the 3 sentences, focusing on the worst part of the experience they kept replaying. Each one of them reported a feeling of relief and a week later they could each remember the traumatic incidents without any emotional distress. You don’t need to suffer like I did. Learn the process in the book, now.
Seasickness Cure: My Astonishing Discovery
I am with about 30 colleagues and find myself telling the stories of how I became so excited by learning about Logosynthesis 14 years ago that I didn’t retire, I was 70 years old then and surprised myself by starting a whole new phase of my career that led me to write this book. In a few days I will be doing a more formal presentation and telling the stories about how I learned to help my psychotherapy and coaching clients dissolve the energy blocks that prevented them from finding peace and joy in their lives. I’ll be telling the stories of being astonished at the results when I began to use this powerful tool to help people I encountered in everyday situations. Like the time I was able to help a woman who had been seasick on every boat she had ever been on enjoy our cruise with no further problems. And we did it during a cocktail party in just a few minutes. I was a complete novice at the time, had almost no idea of what I was doing and had just offered to practice on people who volunteered. I was so excited that I kept studying, but never forgot how simple it was to learn. After I was certified as a professional practitioner, I got permission to write a book to help anyone learn to use the “magic sentences” in their own lives. This book! You can learn too! It’s very easy. Start now!
Change Your Future, Not the Past
Sometimes, when you think you want to let something go but keep holding on anyway, a part of you has another agenda. That part of you secretly thinks that you can magically change the outcome of something that happened in the past--if only.... If only you had said something different, if only you were stronger, if only you had left the party a few minutes earlier, then things would be different. If you want to let go of remembering how angry you are because of the way someone treated you, you may have to let go of the fantasy that, somehow, something you say or do now will change what happened back then. It won't! What happened can't be changed. What can be changed is your fantasy or secret belief or secret hope that you have the power to fix the past. Once you let go of the fantasy, letting go of the original event will be much easier. You can use the power of the simple process you will find in this book to release that fantasy in just a few minutes. The freedom you feel will last indefinitely. Get your copy now.
Secret to Breaking Free Revealed
Lisa told me she wanted to start doing things for herself but couldn’t seem to get started. It had been several months since her mother had died, and she was free from the overwhelming caretaking responsibilities she had willing accepted. Since time and money were not a problem, we started looking at what was keeping her from doing what she wanted and really needed to do. She finally said, “I wonder if it has something to do with what I did last time I had this much freedom. I really went wild then. I’m too embarrassed to tell you some of the stuff I did.” I asked her to list what she wanted to do for herself now and the list was pretty tame: visit an old friend, buy some new clothes, get a personal trainer. Last time turned out to have been 30 years ago, back when she had also been drinking heavily. We used the 3-sentence process you’ll learn when you read “Letting It Go” using the phrase “this belief that I will act irresponsibility.” She immediately realized that she had no interest at all in doing the old embarrassing things and was anxious to get started on her new list. We all carry many old, limiting beliefs that we may not even remember until we feel stuck about something. You can often easily discover what old belief is in the way. This 3-sentence process makes it easy to free yourself and move on. Get started now!
Perfection Paralysis? Break Free Today!
I needed to let go of making the one perfect choice and decide to choose something that is good enough. It happened this way. 50 or so years ago my husband and I purchased a wooden hot tub. We loved relaxing in it for a few minutes nearly every evening and it became an important part of unwinding and being together. We used it for about 30 years and needed to replace it and did with another wooden hot tub. Now, 20 years later, the second hot tub must be replaced, and we need to choose something more ecological. What we didn’t know is how many, many, many choices we have and how hard it is to find unbiased advice about those choices. It is also a lot harder to get ageing bodies into and out of these wonderful creations. After spending hours visiting dealers, climbing in and out of sample (empty) tubs, and doing online research, it’s time to choose. I still struggle with the limiting belief that my choice must be perfect. That would mean devoting many days to the search. I won’t do that, so we have chosen something we think will work. Then, I needed to neutralize the belief that there is a perfect choice. I used the 3 sentences and now feel comfortable making a good enough, but imperfect choice. When you get stuck trying to be perfect, the sentences will help you too. It’s easy! Read the book now.
Transform Pain: Reclaim Your Happiness!
I knew my mother was coming to visit so I replaced the window curtains in my living room because the last time she visited, she told me how bad the old ones looked. When she arrived, she didn’t even notice the change, or at least, she never said anything about it. My mother died over 30 years ago, but as I sat down to write about letting things go, this memory surfaced. I remembered my disappointment that she didn’t give me the attention I was expecting that long-ago day. I also remember being resentful when others didn’t give me the attention I thought I deserved. It took a long time to release my resentment about this incident. I didn’t have the tools I have now. When I did release it, I stopped feeling resentful about other imagined slights. Are you someone who uses old memories like this to hold a grudge and recycle old anger and resentment? Many of my readers have told me about releasing energy frozen in memories of old hurtful situations. That energy no longer leaks out when they encounter minor incidents now. When you use the magic sentences you learn in “Letting It Go” to reclaim your energy from those old memories, it is much easier to move through current challenging interactions and stay focused on what brings you joy. Learn how now. You’ll be amazed at how easy it is.
Running on Fumes? Read This!
This week I learned an unwelcome lesson. I am no longer capable of doing many things I could once do easily. In short, my firm belief that age just a number, simply isn’t true. Let me explain. I have been super busy, mostly doing things I love to do, for many weeks. Then a week ago I had a minor surgical procedure that left an uncomfortable bandage on my face for a week. Instead of bouncing back and getting on with my life, I couldn’t concentrate, I couldn’t remember where I had put things in the kitchen or on my computer, and I started getting appointments mixed up! I panicked, thinking it really is time to retire completely and I don’t want to. Then I had coffee with a friend who listened and said, “You’re running on fumes.” I cried. She had nailed the problem. I simply had used up my energy reserves. I can’t meet my old expectations of how much I can do. I used the three magic sentences I teach in “Letting It Go” using “this belief that I am superwoman” as my target. I felt better immediately. No, I don’t need to retire completely. Yes, I am 84 years old, and it is time to stop trying to do all the things I have been aiming for. I need to reorder my priorities. One thing I will keep is the writing I enjoy so much. Do you need to give up something too? Read the Book.
Graduation Surprise: Mom's New Reality
I just read a note from a widowed mom whose whole family just celebrated her youngest child’s graduation from high school. She exalted in a job well done, recognizing that she too is entering an entirely new phase of her life. At the same time, she isn’t quite sure how to make the transition. I empathized. I remember my shock at my own uncontrollable sobbing after leaving my youngest child in her new college dorm room. At the time I had no idea why. In retrospect, it wasn’t about the separation, she had already been away traveling for 6 months. It was much more about what I was letting go. Yes, celebrations of young people moving on also force the parents to let go of many things. One thing is obviously your role as the one who feels responsible—whether or not you are doesn’t matter. Another is your old relationship with your child. These things still exist but in a new, unfamiliar form that hasn’t yet been clarified. Still another is your definition of who you are now. This mom is musing that she may also need something, perhaps a celebration, to mark the change in her life. It’s a great idea! If letting go seems harder than it should be, try using the process in “Letting It Go,” focused on the old roles of your life and your beliefs about them. I wish I had it available when I was going through my own happy transitions.
Childhood Fantasies Shaping Lives
A magazine for children who are just learning to read had a regular feature called “I used to think.” Kids put things together in very strange and different ways. You may think that the misunderstandings that are so common in childhood are just cute, but the truth is, they can shape your life. Because I know this, I have always considered it very important to help children understand the world as well as they possibly can. The problem is that many decisions you make as a child are unknown to the adults who cared for you so those untrue or partially true beliefs continue to exist. It is nobody's fault. It is just a part of how people work. So if something in your life is not working the way you want it to, it makes sense to check out what the fundamental belief about the world that drives that situation might be. Not too long ago it was very difficult to change that fundamental belief, even if you know, logically, that it does not make sense. Now, using the Logosynthesis process described in this book, changing the belief is as simple as repeating 3 sentences and letting your higher wisdom rearrange things and dissolve what no longer serves you. Get your copy of “Letting It Go” now and see how simple the process really is.
Defeat Travel Tension: Unlock Inner Peace
Sitting at the gate in the airport, wondering when my plane is going to board, wondering if I will miss my connection, I realize that I am not alone. Everyone around me is looking at the clock and the door to the ramp and the tension is so thick you can almost see it. It’s 45 minutes past departure time and we are completely powerless. I’ve been through this scenario many times. Travel is a very uncertain endeavor. I practice self-care by reminding myself that I have the luxury of allowing extra time for my arrival. Others aren’t so lucky. I have another powerful tool for self-care. I think about what is disturbing me the most right now. Often, it’s images of standing in line and waiting interminably for rebooking. I used to try to calm myself by remembering that I had survived this and worse in the past. It sort of worked, but not very well. Now my tool is the Logosynthesis basic procedure which I show you how to do in “Letting It Go: Relieve Anxiety and Toxic Stress in Just a Few Minutes Using Only Words (Rapid Relief with Logosynthesis®).” It only takes a few minutes to say the 3 sentences to myself and my stress disappears almost completely. Even as I say the sentences, I recognize how much stress and tension I have acquired from other people. I let that go too. Get the book, learn the tool, and you can relax too. I
Freedom From Unrealistic Expectations
Do you do things as well as they need to be done, or are you trying for perfection? Is anyone else as hard on you as you are on yourself? Maybe it’s time to examine why you are exhausting yourself trying to live up to impossibly high standards. Most of the time those standards come from fantasies you create when you are exposed to media examples of others who seem to effortlessly manage their lives. It doesn’t really matter if the media is television, movies, magazines or social media—it isn’t real. Next time you feel stressed because you think you don’t measure up, think about when you figured out that you were supposed to be a certain way. It could even have been watching super-hero cartoons when you were a kid. Then, try using the 3 Logosynthesis sentences to reclaim your energy from the fantasy that you can do “that”, whatever “that” is. Pay special attention to sentence 2 which helps you remove the outside, “non-me” energy from your entire system. You are releasing the energy you have picked up from other people, places and things. This frees you to use your energy to figure out what you and your family really want and need. You will be amazed at how the stress you have learned to create for yourself simply evaporates. Be sure to check out the simple instructions in “Letting It Go.” Grab a copy now, while you are thinking about it.
Stop the World, I Want to Get Off!
How is your world supposed to be? Is it that way? Do you hear yourself or someone else saying things like, “There’s not supposed to be so much traffic!” Or “It should be easier to find a parking space or _______ shouldn’t cost this much!” I confess, my favorite complaint is how websites keep changing their password requirements. You probably know intellectually that we live in a world of constant change. Emotionally we want things we like to stay the same, and things we don’t like to change. Usually, I can shrug off an irritating change and get on with my life, but sometimes it’s hard to let go of my unpleasant reactions. One theory I have heard recently is that all of us are more susceptible to these reactions because we have not released the trauma of living through the pandemic. It could be, but I still don’t like those reactions. Logosynthesis helps. Saying the 3 sentences I teach you to use in Letting It Go with my focus on “this belief that the world should be different” or on the specific “this belief that they shouldn’t change password requirements,” immediately releases the reason for my reaction and I feel better. Try it yourself. It may seem silly to focus on something so minor, but it’s a great way to practice using this powerful process, so when you experience some major reaction, you’ve developed the skill to manage it effectively. Get your copy and discover how easy it is.
Fearless Speaking Starts Here!
Are you afraid to speak in public? Lots of people are. Some are uncomfortable and can manage their fear with deep breathing. Others, like Melissa, are terrified. When we talked about how her body felt when she contemplated sharing her project with her team, she reported that her chest felt so tight she could hardly breathe. When I offered to lead her through the Logosynthesis sentences I show you how to us in Letting It Go, she gratefully accepted. After repeating the first sentence focused on “this tightness in my chest,” she started to cry. I reminded her to just keep breathing and that energy was moving and after a few minutes she was ready to continue. We continued through the other two sentences, and I asked what she had experienced. Melissa described how she had flashed back to a scene on a playground where she was carrying one of her favorite books. Another child had knocked the book out of her hands and ridiculed her for wanting to read. From that time on, she had hidden her brilliance from others. We repeated the sentences focused on “this scene on the playground.” When we were done, she smiled and said, “Now it’s safe to show them who I am!” Her presentation went beautifully. The process is easy to learn from this book, and if you would like to experience a video of me leading you through the sentences focused on speaking in public, you can. Just go to http://www.BooksbyLaurie.com/speak .
Unmask Weight Secrets: Journey to Real Change
I reluctantly stepped on the scale last week and was unhappy but not really surprised. I suspected that I had been fooling myself by imitating my husband and eating sweet desserts with almost every lunch and dinner. Of course, I rationalized that if I only ate a little bit, I wouldn’t gain weight. After all, he eats three times the sweets that I do and never gains weight. I was ignoring my practice of paying close attention to when I felt full enough to satisfy my body hunger. The problem was that I was relieving unavoidable stress with food—again! I know better but I chose fantasies instead of reality. Using the three magic sentences of the Logosynthesis basic process, I retrieved my energy from these fantasies: • The fantasy that I can eat whatever I want and not gain weight. • The fantasy that food will solve my problems. • The fantasy that I need a daily dose of dark chocolate. • I notice that now I’m paying more attention to eating only when I am physically hungry and stopping when I have had enough. If you are struggling to lose weight, take some time to figure out your fantasies and use the sentences to retrieve the energy that holds them in place. Logosynthesis may not help you to lose weight, but it will help to make it easier to follow your own healthy eating plan. Get your copy of Letting it Go today.
Beat Anxiety at Its Core
You probably don’t know the real source of the anxiety you feel. I was recently working with a woman who works as a virtual assistant to several different clients. She thought that she was anxious because she couldn’t keep up with her clients’ requests for help. She described the big lump she felt in her stomach and how feeling it caused her to work even more slowly. I asked if she remembered the first time she experienced this feeling and tears welled in her eyes. She remembered the time when she was juggling college, two jobs, and caring for her mother who was being treated for cancer. She first felt that physical feeling at a moment when she told herself, “I just can’t do this.” She said the 3 basic Logosynthesis sentences you learn in this book, using “the moment when I told myself I Just can’t do this” as her focus. A few minutes later she sat up straighter and said, “I did do it and it happened a long time ago. I can do this job and I can tell my clients no!” You may be able to remember when your distress started also. If you do, it is a fast route to recovering your energy that you used to manage the old situation. If you don’t remember, then use your own physical symptoms as a focus and notice what happens. Releasing your anxiety may be much easier than you imagine.
Dissolve Anger: Fast & Easy
Today I could not keep up with a fitness class I have been attending for 3 years. I felt very angry at the substitute teacher who had created a class focused almost entirely on my weakest muscle group. I originally joined the class to strengthen my hips. I am doing well, and my last doctor’s visit gave me very positive feedback. But this teacher focused about 90% of the 60-minute class on hip movements. About halfway through I was so sore, I needed to stop doing the exercises. The question for me is why was I so angry? After all, I did take care of myself by stopping and no one else in the class cares what I do or don’t do. I realized that I was angry about “all the times someone paid no attention to what I needed.” As I was saying the 3 Logosynthesis sentences you’ll learn to use in this book, one of the scenes I remembered was being in the last few hikers to arrive at a group rest stop. As soon as we arrived the leader started up again, so we got no rest. The faster hikers rested. We didn’t! It wasn’t fair! I finished the process and felt relaxed and peaceful. This is just one of the small ways I use this process to reclaim my energy and equilibrium when I overreact to something. You can too. It’s fast and easy. Get your copy and start now!
Major Disruption? Unleash Resilience
I’ve spent the past 10 minutes blotting spilled tea from the carpet in my office. I needed to let go of my plan to get started writing this piece. I also let go of what I intended to write because I realized just how many things I need to let go of every day. The real challenge is to let go of each one gracefully and revise my plans instead of just getting upset. How do you manage to let go when: • Traffic is unusually heavy, and you know you will be late for an important meeting? • Your spouse or child breaks your cherished possession? • A good friend breaks a promise? • You get the flu just before you expect to leave on vacation? • Your phone stops working? Sometimes it’s easy, you revise your plans and solve the problem. Sometimes you are so upset that someone tells you, “Just let it go!” And you wish you could, but you don’t know how! As a psychotherapist I learned and practiced many ways of letting go of negative emotions and awful memories. Some worked better than others. Then a friend showed me something so new and different that I was stunned. It worked so quickly and so painlessly that I found it hard to accept. Six years later, after I had become trained to use and teach this method, I knew how easily anyone could learn to use it, so I wrote this book. The reviews say it works. Get your copy now.
Crack the Code to Release Anxiety
Do you notice when you are starting to feel anxious. When I work with a client to help release anxiety, I watch and listen carefully for signals that the conversation has touched a deep level of truth. It is only then that I know that my client's Self or deep awareness is accessible. The signals I hear may be a change in intensity, in pitch or in tempo. My own attention shifts and I may say to myself, "what just happened?" I may focus on a particular phase while the conversation continues. If our conversation is only through sound though, I miss a lot of information. When I see my client, I see a hint of tears or a slight smile. I see crossed arms or a foot suddenly start to sway. Again I wonder, "what was that?" I don't know any details about what those signals mean. We all can and do respond to those signals in each other regularly. Sometimes our response is to pretend we don't notice. When you send signals like that to others, you can become aware of them too. DON'T IGNORE THOSE SIGNALS! They mean that your Self is sending you a message. When you pay attention to those messages you learn where you have frozen the energy that is creating the anxiety you need to release. Get your own copy of Letting It Go and learn how to release that energy quickly and easily.
Unleash Your Real Body Image
I didn’t walk to the end of the beach. I wanted to. It is one of my favorite places in this resort where we purchased a time share nearly 20 years ago. I walked there most mornings years ago, but now getting back would be a struggle. Age isn’t just a number anymore and my image of myself as vibrant, physically strong woman just doesn’t match reality. So many self-help articles talk about how to stay healthy and toned and put off the changes that come to our bodies naturally. They don’t talk about the need to adapt to inevitable physical changes, whether those changes come through childbirth, accident, illness or simply getting older. Giving up the belief that how I used to be is how I am supposed to be is part of the process. It’s not always easy. Especially when all those product advertisements tell us it doesn't have to be this way. They lie! Using the 3 magic sentences in the Basic Logosynthesis Process I teach in this book helps a lot. I reclaimed my energy from the belief that I should be able to walk to the end of the beach. And some healing and recovery is possible. My regular workouts under professional guidance really helped. I am so grateful that this year I can walk much further than I could a year ago and I can even walk up all those stairs to my room again! Learn this amazing process now. It’s really easy.
Why Don’t They Stop This Stupidity?
If I were running the world, things would be a lot different than they are now! My fantasy of how they would be keeps changing, but it always involves some fundamentals: no more killing or grabbing what isn’t yours, or vandalism or stupidity! You get the picture, and almost everyone I know has similar ideas, although our ideas about the specifics sometimes differ a lot. I often feel angry, sad, or depressed and hopeless over stories in the news. I imagine that you do too. I try to distract myself by thinking about other happier things. Sometimes that works and sometimes chocolate helps. Then I learn about something else that is breaking down and the cycle starts again. Personal disruptions also feed into this unrest. We just needed to have some major electrical upgrades to our 65-year-old house and the workmen completely messed up my usual routines. I know I’m not alone. I can’t fix the problems of the world. But the 3 magic Logosynthesis sentences frequently help me manage my reactions to learning about all the things I wish were different. I insert the phrase, “this belief that the world should be different” into each sentence. I usually feel relaxed and peaceful after I spend a few minutes doing this process. If you are trying to manage your own reactions to your world, try it yourself. It’s easy to learn. You’ll find a step-by-step explanation of how to use the sentences in “Letting It Go.” Get started today.
Stymied by Another Belief
Do you wish life would go back to normal? When we were kids, we got to play outside all day. Little kids walked to school with an older kid watching out for them. Now you can get into trouble if your children are not constantly supervised. We used to get lots of ads with our daily newspapers. Now very few people even read daily newspapers and our ads follow us around online. Is it wrong or is it just different? Sometimes it’s very hard to tell the difference. Our brains seem to be wired to recognize the way we experience something the FIRST time as right. Yet the world is changing faster now than it ever has before. That makes so much of what we experience every day just feel wrong! I long for “the good old days” and I imagine that you do too. Yet, there is no way that those days, and the way we experienced them, is ever coming back. A way to come to terms with this reality is to let go of the belief that things should be different. It may be easier said than done, but the three magic sentences in this book can help a lot. I find that retrieving my energy bound in “this belief that the world should be different” makes a big difference. After all, it’s only our own belief about the world that keeps us angry and stuck instead of engaging with life the way it is right now.
Find Serenity Amidst Chaos
The images in the news have been so awful recently that I am not the only one I know who wishes there was some way to escape the knowledge of the devastation happening in the world. In fact, when I was sitting on my beautiful patio, I wondered why I felt so sad and irritable. When I figured out that it was about the helpless civilians being killed in both Israel and Palestine, I realized that letting my energy stay stuck there did no one any good. I was so grateful for the tool I have shared with you in this book, the magic sentences that allow me to reclaim my energy so I could not only feel better but help others also. I said aloud, “I retrieve my energy bound up in these things I can’t change and take it to the right place in myself.” and I felt some things shift. I followed with the other 2 sentences, inserting “these things I can’t change” into each sentence. I felt lighter with each sentence. The whole process is clearly described in the book. You can use it immediately. I have also found it helpful to release the images of devastation that find their way into my nightmares. Suffering about things that are completely out of our control helps no one. Logosynthesis helps empower the famous Serenity Prayer “to have the serenity to accept the things I cannot change and the courage to change the things I can…
Reclaim Your Energy: Defeat Forces of Change
Some people love change. I’m not one of them. Once I find a dish at a restaurant that I like, I tend to feel disappointed when it’s not on the menu the next time I try to order it. I feel frustrated when the grocery store reorganizes the space and disrupts my familiar shopping patterns. Yes, I adapt. Most of the time it takes just a few deep breaths and I move on. Sometimes I need to commiserate with a friend before I let go of these small expectations. But bigger changes can be far more challenging. What about you? Do sudden changes in plans throw you off balance? If you keep thinking about your disappointment or feeling angry at the forces responsible for the changes, here is a way to help regain your equilibrium. First realize that you had a belief that the original plan would happen. Then say aloud the sentence, “I retrieve all my energy bound up in the belief that this (event) would happen, and I take my energy to the right place in myself.” Notice how your body and thoughts respond to this sentence. Follow this sentence with the other two found in this book. I was amazed how differently I felt the first time I tried this. I hope you will be also.
Retire Rules that Keep You Stuck
Are you angry when someone cuts in line in front of you? Probably. Most of us feel that way although we don’t show it. We cover up out feelings and say politely, “the end of the line is over there.” If you are anything like me, you feel embarrassed if you are the one who is redirected to the end of the line, especially when you didn’t notice the line in the first place. We are all following, and expecting others to follow, lots of unwritten rules. Take turns, don’t show feelings, be polite, etc. are social rules drilled into us as children. Following these rules lets us live comfortably with lots of other people. You also have special rules you learned in your own family. Some were spoken aloud, and some taught by example and others you figured out for yourself. Rules like don’t show certain feelings like anger or fear, always smile (no matter what else is happening), don’t talk about certain things, etc. Some of those rules get in your way now, but it’s hard to stop following them. Each time you try you feel embarrassed or even ashamed. The three sentences in the revolutionary process I teach you to use in “Letting It Go” can actually help you to free yourself from these old rules. Simply use the phrase “the rule that I should never show fear” or whatever the rule is, into the sentences. I’ll show you how. Just follow the simple steps. Start now.
When Responsibility Becomes Exhaustion
Sometimes a limiting belief is all that stands between you and your peace of mind. Robin, a highly responsible business owner and mom did a fantastic job of managing the business and family until her spouse and business partner faced a serious illness. When we talked, she was exhausted. She was still managing everything, and her spouse’s prognosis was excellent. Still, she was overwhelmed by the stress of the extra medical appointments and worries about missing some important detail either at work or at home. Robin had always been super-organized and able to easily keep up with her busy life and she had responsible help at work. Her friends had offered help also. She was still managing well, but she felt as if she was stretched to her limits. As we explored, she said, “I know I have help but I still believe that if I don’t do it, it won’t get done.” OOPS! The old belief was keeping her from relaxing and letting others know how much help she really did need. She said the 3 Logosynthesis sentences, using “this belief that if I don’t do it, it won’t get done” as the trigger for her distress. As she ended, she felt an enormous weight lift from her shoulders. When we talked again a few weeks later, she was still busy, getting lots of help, and no longer exhausted. “Letting It Go” is an instruction manual for learning this process. Start now and let go of your limiting beliefs.
Shatter Prejudgment: Embrace Authenticity
Do you live with a constant stream of judgmental thoughts that you know better than to say aloud? I certainly do. Anyone who grew up with grown-ups telling them what is right and wrong was taught prejudice, which means prejudgment. It's a way of teaching us to be safe in the world. We need to be able to judge what will make us acceptable to the people around us. The problem is there's so many of those judgments are completely outdated. I find myself judging people by the clothes they wear, how tight they are, and the amount of skin they show. These are long outdated standards. My worst judgments are saved for my family. I've learned to say only positive things about what my husband or my daughter or my grandchildren are wearing. But when I go out with them, I keep wanting to correct them—for their own good, of course. That's where I find Logosynthesis, the process I teach in this book, very helpful. I’ve learned to take my energy back from the critical voices in my mind and use the three sentences to quiet the chatter. That's one of the everyday uses of the process that can have a major impact on my own comfort. If you experience similar annoying chatter, I urge you to experiment with the sentences and see what happens. Get your copy of the revised edition of “Letting It Go” right away.
Relinquish Frustration, Embrace Serenity
Sometimes I forget that the Logosynthesis tool I write and teach about is something of a miracle. I’m so used to helping people release long-standing problems quickly and easily that it seems normal to do so. But I sometimes need to be reminded to use it for myself. Whenever I run into a computer problem that needs tech-support, I feel betrayed. You see, I was once promised that that I would never have to have these conversations. So, along with my lack of skill, I have the fantasy that someone else should be doing it. So, it’s not surprising that after a full five hours dealing with various technicians, and one 10 minute wait that stretched into an hour, and that our dinner had been an hour and half late because of the mess, my head was spinning. Not only that, but the last technician kept asking questions I couldn’t answer and was quite inpatient with me and I kept telling myself how mean he was. You get the picture; my emotions were something like those of a frustrated eight-year-old. My ever-patient husband, who had been sympathizing with me all day and made the pizza for dinner, suggested that it was time for Logosynthesis. It certainly was! After saying the three sentences focused on the events of the afternoon, I was completely relaxed. I slept well, had pleasant dreams, and woke up completely refreshed. Rereading this, I can see that my next growth task is to release the fantasy.
Are You Sure You're Guilty?
When anything didn’t work out perfectly, Janice felt guilty and apologized for causing the problem. She apologized a lot. And when she wished she could do something for herself she felt guilty about that too. She barely remembered that once she was sure she caused her parents’ divorce. It happened when she was in kindergarten, and she “knew” that they were yelling at each other because of the note from her teacher. Rational? Of course not! But she believed it. From then on, she tried hard to be good because she was afraid of causing more problems. Being good meant following rules, getting good grades, graduating, getting a good job and marrying a nice young man. Being good was such a habit that she almost always deferred to what others wanted. Janice isn’t alone. Kids adopt completely irrational beliefs when they are faced with things they don’t understand. If you did that you know that those beliefs persist, even when you know they don’t make any sense at all. And they shape your life. It seems almost miraculous that saying 3 sentences about “this belief that I am guilty of…” can suddenly let you dissolve that belief. I did not believe it was possible until I saw it happen again and again. That’s why I learned more about Logosynthesis, the process that uses these sentences, and eventually wrote “Letting It Go” to share that information. Get your copy and try it yourself.
Scam Victim to Self-Discovery
I was scammed! I knew I was taking a risk, but I thought I had checked out the available information and decided to go ahead anyhow. I read a story on Facebook about a couple deciding to go out of business and placed an order for 4 beautiful, very reasonably priced t-shirts. When they arrived, 3 of them were not as advertised. I tried to return them. They explained how hard and expensive it would be to send the shirts back to China and would not tell me how to do it. China??? After 6 sets of emails where I was first offered 10% of the amount I paid, I was ready to go to my credit card company. But first, I decided to leave a warning about that company online. While doing so, I made a discovery that once would have devastated me emotionally. I made a mistake when I researched the company the first time. I misspelled their name when I entered it into the search engine. I read Continuety as Continuity. There were lots of warnings online! Instead of berating myself for my mistake, this time I was amused. Dyslexia strikes again. I used the Logosynthesis process to take my energy out of the entire situation, accepted another “final offer” to refund 25% of the cost of the misrepresented items and relaxed. Lesson: Check bargains carefully and read both books in my “Rapid Relief with Logosynthesis” series to avoid suffering about making a mistake.
Beyond Mistakes Embrace Self-Acceptance
I discovered my sunglasses were missing when I reached for them as we stepped out of a shopping mall into the bright sunshine. I had taken them off to go into a parking garage and apparently forgotten to put them back in my purse before I got out of the car. I groaned at the idea of walking the full block back to the car when we were about to start walking to the art fair, we where we would be walking a lot for the next hour or so. I pictured the console where I often put them down when I temporarily remove them and decided not to go back. To make a long story short several hours later when we went back to the car the sunglasses weren't there. My self-talk became brutal. “I was lazy for not going back to the car. I should have been more careful. I was dumb for thinking they were in the car.” I thought I had given up that type of self-criticism years ago. I didn't expect to be triggered by making a decision that turned out badly, but I certainly was. Within 5 minutes I was using the three sentences I teach in “Letting It Go,” to take my energy back from “this situation around losing the best sunglasses I have ever owned.” That worked. The self-talk stopped. Two days later I bought myself beautiful new sunglasses. Get your copy and learn to turn off your own negative small-talk—anytime!
Let Go of Tech Support that Sucks Energy
You know the drill! Something doesn’t work the way it should. You call. The wait is only 5 minutes. You can handle that. You hear music you hate. You get to the telephone tree, tell the machine your issue and finally reach a tech. The tech asks for your id information, speaking rapidly with an accent you can barely understand. You answer. The tech asks, “How are you today?” and says your name. When I answer honestly, “I’m frustrated by this problem, that’s why I called, I am invited to explain my problem. The tech suggests I do several things I have already tried that didn’t work. I do them again and they don’t work again. I’m told to stay on the line I will be transferred to someone who knows more. I repeat the entire process with another tech whom I have even more trouble understanding. By the time the call ends, whether the problem is solved or not, I may feel more frustrated and my energy is almost always depleted. If that’s true for you too, try this. Once I get off the phone, I take a few minutes to reclaim my energy from the mess. I say the 3 sentences in the basic process I teach you to use in this book. I start with “I retrieve my energy bound up in this tech support call and take it to the right place in myself.” In a few minutes, I feel much better. You will too.
Words for Self-Healing
I am often asked whether the simple verbal process of Logosynthesis can help someone with a physical problem. I never know exactly how to answer. I have watched Dr. Willem Lammers, developer of this process, help someone release a years-long painful physical problem in less than an hour. He is a highly skilled master therapist and master of Logosynthesis. I too, as a highly skilled therapist and Logosynthesis practitioner have helped a very few people release recent physical trauma and speed their healing from surgical procedures. I know that using it this way won’t cause harm, but I also know that I have no idea whether or not it will have much of an impact. On the other hand, I can usually stop migraine headaches in myself from progressing beyond their warning signals by saying the 3 sentences and withdrawing my energy from “whatever is causing these migraine warning signals.” I think, but I am not sure, that I have stopped incipient cold symptoms from developing into a full cold using the same method. It is hard to measure something that does not happen. So, my answer is a qualified “maybe.” However, as I said, using Logosynthesis does not cause harm, so I urge you to go ahead and experiment yourself. If you don’t have your copy of “Letting It Go” yet, order it right now and follow the detailed instructions. It is quick and easy to learn and you can use it almost immediately.
Quick Relief Lasting Change: Experience Magic
I was first exposed to Logosynthesis, the method I present in this book, over a decade ago. When I released the first edition of this book, it still seemed like a miracle to me. Now, many years later, I sometimes forget just how miraculous it is. Rereading some of the early published reviews reminds me of how easy to learn and incredibly powerful it can be for almost anyone. This early review reassured me that I had, as I intended, created a book that could help a casual reader experience quick relief from long-standing problems. “I found this amazing little book to be a startling exception to the old axiom “If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.” The idea that you can make powerful changes in your life, completely banish old ideas and thought patterns that have been bothering you for a lifetime, just by reciting a few simple sentences, definitely seems too-good-to-be-true. Yet having tried this simple technique myself, and having watched others use it as well, I have seen some life-changing results. Fears and phobias, limiting thoughts and ideas, seem to just magically fade away. Quite amazing, really. I am an engineer and know next to nothing about how these psychological things work, but seeing first-hand the changes in myself and others, I can heartily recommend Logosynthesis, and especially as it is presented in this clear, easy-to-read and easy-to-apply “how-to” book. Enjoy!” Get your copy and experience the magic yourself.
Easily Overcoming Dental Anxiety
If a visit to the dentist is stressful for you, keep reading! My friend and fellow Logosynthesis practitioner Alan Rojas Yacolca, wrote this about using the process I teach in “Letting It Go” to help make things easier. “Today I am getting a root canal at the dentist and thought of exploring and sharing some quick ideas about how Logosynthesis can make your experience at the dentist calm, safe, and even pleasant. If you are familiar with the basic protocol, here are some common experiences and triggers at the dentist you can process with Logosynthesis. 1. The sound of the dental drill. 2. The burning/heat sensation of the drilled tooth. 3. The instruments in your mouth (drill, drain, etc). To me, it felt invasive. 4. The smell of the room, or the anesthesia. 5. The words or facial gestures of the doctor. They may also struggle while they do their job and observing this may be triggering. 6. The flavor/taste in your mouth while getting an x-ray, getting a dental mold, or even the taste of the glove that touched your mouth. 7. The presence of other people pacing in the waiting room. The waiting room can be a field filled with stress (that is not yours!). 8. What you anticipate may happen in the session. 9. What you heard from others about the dentist experience. 10. Your past experiences at the dentist. Which other trigger would you process with Logosynthesis? Have a nice day, Alan”
I Didn't Think It Would Work
What do you do when things are not going the way you expect them to? Maybe the delivery didn’t come at the time it was promised. Maybe the grocery store is out of eggs. Maybe your friend got the date wrong and left you sitting alone in the coffee shop. My first step is to try to fix what is wrong. Much too often, that just doesn't work. My fall-back position used to be to fume and complain to whomever would listen to me. And I could stay angry for a long time. It took a lot of energy. When someone told me to “just let it go,” I simply didn’t know how. Do you get frustrated and hold on to unsolvable problems too? I was amazed when I used the process I teach in this book the first time. I did not expect it to work, but a few minutes later I had trouble remembering what I was upset about! The 3 Logosynthesis sentences didn’t even make sense to me when I was invited to repeat them, but I did it as an experiment and they worked anyhow. And it only took a few minutes. I invite you to try the process for yourself, especially if you have trouble “just letting it go.” Get a copy of “Letting It Go,” follow the simple instructions, and join the others who enjoy the freedom and relief it brings.
It’s Not in The Book
But one of the most important reasons I originally learned Logosynthesis is that I immediately understood what a huge difference it could make in treating trauma. Most of my career has involved working with survivors of trauma. Some of them had no idea that childhood experiences had any impact on their adult lives. I remember one man saying, “I had a pretty ordinary childhood. My father only broke my arm once.” I think he was in therapy because his wife said divorce was the alternative. She wasn’t willing to keep tolerating his angry, rigid behavior. Like many abuse survivors, he didn’t remember, and didn’t want to remember the pain he had suffered, but the only way we knew how to heal the pain then was to help him re-experience it in a safe place. Logosynthesis offers an alternative, much gentler way to heal! It is no longer necessary to re-experience that pain to release it. Now we can help release the energy that protects you from the pain by guiding you through the sentences of the basic Logosynthesis method I explain in “Letting It Go.” While this book is about using the method yourself for ordinary stress, I strongly recommend you seek professional help before addressing any significant trauma. Use this book to practice and learn to trust what happens. Then, if you are ready to go deeper, go to the listing of professionals at the website listed and find the help you need.
Break Free from Limiting Beliefs
Do old beliefs keep you stuck in patterns of thought and behavior that prevent you from achieving your goals? Limiting beliefs are a form of frozen energy that most of us create for self-preservation when our resources are limited. Fortunately, the powerful technique called Logosynthesis taught in “Letting It Go” can help you resolve these limiting beliefs. You can learn this simple and effective way to release the frozen energy that’s trapped in those beliefs. To use Logosynthesis this way, you first need to identify the belief that is holding you back. Then, you can use the process to release the energy that’s trapped in that belief. The Logosynthesis process involves these simple steps: 1. Focus on the limiting belief and the physical sensations that it creates in your body. 2. Insert a simple phrase into the first sentence to release the energy that is trapped in the belief. For example, you might say "I retrieve all of my energy that is trapped in the belief that I am not good enough and take it to the right place in myself." 3. Speak the sentence and notice what happens. 4. Complete the process by using the phase in the two additional Logosynthesis sentences. Its surprisingly simple to free yourself from the patterns of thought that lead to behavior that has been holding you back. Remember, limiting beliefs are not facts - they are simply frozen energy that you can release and use for something more positive.
You CAN Actually Let It Go
In the six years between the original publication of “Letting It Go” and this newly revised edition, many things have changed in the Logosynthesis world. Yet the basic process described in this book has remained largely the same. Over 100 reviews of the original edition testify to how many people have found the process incredibly easy and effective to relieve stress and anxiety. Some report life-changing experiences! The changes in the main body of this book reflect important updates in some of the current language of the Logosynthesis community. It applied the process to retrieving the energy frozen when we encountered challenges we didn’t have the resources to manage at different times in our lives. Many more professionals have become practitioners and the pandemic led to developing an international, online training program. “Letting It Go” was the first English Logosynthesis book written by anyone besides Dr. Willem Lammers, discoverer and developer of this amazing process. Now there are books by other practitioners available applying Logosynthesis to specific areas: money, business, education, and even a picture book for children. And Dr Lammers has written a series of books that are much more accessible than his original offerings. I have added a sample of one of those areas, a book I wrote with Dr. Lammers, about reliving blocks to achieving prosperity, to this book. This is still the simplest introduction. Read it, learn the simple basic process, and easily let go of stubborn problems. Get your copy now!
Letting It Go
Self-Help
If you’re tired of being told to just let go of things that bother you—but you don’t know how—you will love this book! Using this brief, step-by-step guide, discover three little-known, magical sentences to effortlessly release anxiety and toxic stress in just minutes and reclaim the joy in your life. The revolutionary new technique revealed in Letting It Go: Relieve Anxiety and Toxic Stress in Just a Few Minutes Using Only Words (Rapid Relief with Logosynthesis®) shows you how to actually let go of whatever is bothering you—easily, effectively and often permanently. In an ever-faster moving world, people often feel like their lives are falling apart. They secretly worry that not being able to keep up means there is something wrong with them. This reassuring, easily understood explanation of complicated psychological information reveals how normal it is to feel this way—how everyone’s energy naturally gets stuck in the process of growing up and learning to manage the world. The challenge of letting go of that old, stuck energy becomes manageable. You are hugely relieved as you discover you can easily learn and apply this process yourself—either privately or with a learning partner. Then you experience the freedom that comes from effortlessly managing previously distressing situations and even forget to worry about things you used to obsess about. This leads to reclaiming the life energy and the joy you long for.
Book Bubbles from Letting It Go
Release Self-limiting Beliefs
What do you believe that is keeping you from enjoying your life? I am not talking about something you have concluded from your own experience. I mean a belief you accepted from someone else without thinking about it. It might be something you heard when you were small. I was told I was clumsy by loving parents, and I believed it until one day someone I respected asked me “who told you that you were clumsy?” The truth is that I never learned some physical skills because I was expected to “act like a lady” so most physical activity was discouraged. When I did try things, of course I looked clumsy, and they commented on it. When I did get to a school where gym class was required, I was always picked last for team sports. That reinforced the belief that I was indeed clumsy. It took me many years to learn to overcome that old belief and still more to become skilled in some physical activities. I loved aerobic step classes when I was in my 40s. Now, when I discover an old, unexamined belief that holds me back from enjoying something, I try using the “magic sentences” I teach in “Letting It Go,” and often, the conviction I once held simply vanishes. When I explore the new activity with someone who is willing to teach me about it, I often enjoy it. Logosynthesis helps you release more than stress and anxiety. Get the book and try it yourself.
Be Afraid! Be Very Afraid!
When I watched Jurassic Park for the first time my body felt like a tight rubber band. I knew that I was completely safe in my theater seat, but even if I closed my eyes my body kept reacting to the signals the music was sending. Now, I sometimes discover that my body is feeling a similar way for no apparent reason. Does yours? I usually skim the headlines of an online newspaper every morning. Today, I stopped to notice what I was reading. Many of the headlines told of major and minor disasters. Many of the others warned of disasters to come. TV headlines are even worse! My body is reacting again, this time to less obvious signals from my environment. I keep being informed that there's danger. There is but most of it isn't related to me, and there's nothing I can do about it. Nevertheless, my energy is frozen because I'm faced with a threat that I can't manage and I'm trying to protect myself. When I notice my sign of frozen energy, my tense body, the tool I use to release that frozen energy and relax again is what I teach in this book. Read the book! Write down the three sentences, so you will always have a tool to use when you are stressed and feeling anxious because you're being told to be afraid!
I Hate This Mess!
The floor of my daughter’s room was littered with piles of clean and dirty clothes, , books, games and empty plates. That condition may be ordinary for a 14-year-old’s room, but I hated it. I kept trying to get her to clean it. Surprise! Nothing much changed. Finally, she agreed to clear a path to the door every night and clear it to be vacuumed every two weeks. I kept the door closed the remainder of the time. If I had the tools that I have now, over 30 years later, I would have spent much less energy gritting my teeth. It’s common to want someone you care about to change something they don’t want to change, especially if you are sure that what they are doing is bad for their health or well-being. The something can be putting the cover back on the toothpaste or stopping excessive drinking. But when you have exhausted yourself trying to get them to change, it is probably time for you to let it go. That’s where the amazing process in this book comes in. The trigger for your misery is the belief that you have the power to change another person. Using “this belief that I can change (name)” in each of the three sentences will help you release the energy you have stuck in the belief, and you will finally feel relief. (My daughter grew up to be a professional organizer.) Get “Letting It Go” now!
Some Suffering Really is Optional
The purpose of my work has always been to end unnecessary suffering! In 2010, after a 40-year career as a psychotherapist and coach, I experienced a new method that astonished me, Logosynthesis. As I studied it and started using it, my clients completed their work dramatically faster and with much, much less pain. When I taught it in workshops, participants quickly learned to apply it on their own, without professional help. Wow! I had to share it, so, with the support of the developer of Logosynthesis, Dr. Willem Lammers, “Letting It Go” was born. Now, years later, with a revised edition recently published, I am thrilled with the results. Excerpts from 4 of over 100 reader reviews include: “My 22-year-old son, who has been suffering for several years with depression, read Dr. Weiss' book. He has been able to move on from a place where he had been obsessively stuck for a long time and has begun to move forward with his plans and dreams for his life.” “Seems too-good-to-be-true…fears and phobias, limiting thoughts and ideas, seem to just magically fade away.” “The directions are so clear I was able to put the technique to use immediately. It is already transforming my life!” “Decades of suffering gone in less than an hour.” Try it yourself. It’s easier than you imagine!
When You Can't Just Forget It
Have you ever seen something you wish you could unsee? In Barbara Kingsolver’s amazing book, Demon Copperhead, two children, ages 11 and 13, who can’t stop thinking about difficult experiences, talk about people telling them to just think different thoughts. They decide that they can’t just do it—they need brain-Lysol. I used to feel stuck that way too. I couldn’t even get images from scary horror movies out of my head when I was accidentally exposed to them. When I learned that Logosynthesis, the process I give step by step instructions for in this book, could help me ‘unsee’, or take the emotional charge out of those images, I didn’t really believe it. The first test came when I couldn’t stop thinking about the image of having a very unpleasant conversation a few hours earlier. I said the 3 sentences and forgot about the encounter until the next day when I marveled that I had forgotten it for so many hours. Later, I removed all the emotional baggage involved with a memory of staring at a crack in the floor as my father berated me for a mistake. I can still remember the incident, but it no longer upsets me. So, if you need brain-Lysol, get Letting It Go , follow the instructions, and ‘unsee’ your own troubling memory.
Listen to Messages from Yourself
Have you ever wondered why you suddenly start to think about an experience from long ago for no particular reason? It may be your brain trying to remind you of something it would be useful to pay attention to in your current life. One of my clients started to think about an incident from her childhood when she was surprised because her mother could not afford to buy her something she wanted. It wasn’t an especially painful memory, but we were puzzled about why it suddenly surfaced. We used the three Logosynthesis sentences to explore the energy that was frozen in the memory. When she retrieved her energy from the memory, she realized that it would be very useful if she took care of some banking business she had forgotten about. We can’t predict exactly what will happen when you use this process. Often you simply release something and feel relieved and relaxed. Sometimes you have physical reactions like yawning or quivering or even crying. Sometimes you don’t experience anything at the time but notice something later. Sometimes other information about other frozen energy comes into your awareness. No matter what happens, it won’t hurt you. And the reviews of “Letting It Go” show that many people who try it experience great benefit. Get your copy and start exploring now.
Travel Anxiety?
I used to dread air travel. The noise and crowds drained my energy and exhausted me, or so I thought at the time. But something strange happened after my first exploration of Logosynthesis—the process I explain in “Letting It Go: Relieve Anxiety and Toxic Stress in Just a Few Minutes Using Only Words.” I barely noticed the nine hour, two flight trip home from Halifax, Nova Scotia to Denver, Colorado! I didn’t figure out why until three years later when I discovered a note “being squished on the subway” in an unfamiliar handwriting. Then I remembered having trouble imagining where my problem with air travel had come from in a practice exercise. I had thought of a seemingly unrelated experience; riding the subway at rush hour when I was eight years old and being packed tightly between big people. We had experimented with “being squished…” in the process. I did not seem to have any response and completely forgot about it, but we had released long-frozen energy from that experience. It was that recovered energy I needed to manage air travel comfortably, and 12 years later, I still do. Think about what part of travel makes you feel anxious. Insert a brief description into the sentences in this book, and, hopefully, your anxiety will vanish too.
Holiday Stress!
Holiday Stress! Worried about how to get everything done? Anxious about the conversations getting out of hand at the party? Trying to figure out how to make sure everyone is happy and no one’s feelings get hurt? Wondering if those two people can be in the same room without renewing their lifetime battle? Welcome to the holiday season. You are not alone. Please, please take time for yourself. It isn’t your job to fix things for everyone else, even if you think it is. Each time you feel overwhelmed by imagining what you need to do to, take that picture and go to chapter 7 of “Letting It Go: Relieve Anxiety and Toxic Stress in Just a Few Minutes Using Only Words.” Use a brief description of what you imagine and insert it into the space in each sentence. Say the sentences and be sure to take time to let the words work. Feel the relaxation. I hope this helps you relax and actually enjoy your holidays.
Anxiety is Not a Disease
Today’s newsletter from my local hospital starts with the question “Do you have anxiety?” Then it links to an article that answers the question this way. “If you have anxiety, you may feel symptoms associated with your mind like nervousness, distraction or repetitive thoughts. Are physical symptoms common with anxiety too? Yes, absolutely…” I agree with the description of symptoms but labeling them as “having anxiety” is saying you have a disease. From a Logosynthesis perspective, ANXIETY IS NOT A DISEASE! Anxiety is a temporary feeling you experience. It’s often a response to encountering something, either in reality or in your imagination, that is similar to or reminds you of an experience you once did not have enough resources to manage. Then, you froze your energy to protect yourself. Your brain automatically takes care of alerting you to potential danger and you feel anxious. The three Logosynthesis sentences allow you to get that stuck, frozen energy moving again and the annoying symptoms vanish. It is an amazingly simple process that astonished me when I learned about it. I wrote “Letting It Go: Relieve Anxiety and Toxic Stress in Just a Few Minutes Using Only Words” to share the good news that now anyone can learn to easily manage their own anxious feelings. Just read it and follow the simple instructions.
Accepting What I Can't Change
While driving around appreciating the beautiful fall colors, my husband and I stopped at the trailhead of one of our favorite hiking spots. We have been blessed to live close to the foothills of the Rocky Mountains for over 50 years and have been to the top of this trail many times. It’s only a little over a mile on a steep uphill path. This time I looked up the trail wishfully, knowing that it’s unlikely that we will ever again see the view from the top. Ageing has taken its toll of our bodies. Neither his back nor my hip is strong enough to make it very far up the trail. And no matter how faithfully we exercise, we won’t become appreciably stronger. Once again, my world is the way it is—not the way I wish it was or the way I think it’s supposed to be. Since the beginning of the pandemic, I have faced many disappointments when encountering a reality I simply don’t want to be real. I prefer to not make myself miserably, so I focus on “this fantasy of how the world is supposed to be” while saying the 3 Logosynthesis sentences and move on. This book has the instructions for you too to release things you can’t change. Get your copy now.
Stress, Stress and MORE STRESS
As the US midterm elections approach, we are inundated with advertising threatening disaster if the wrong party wins, AND Russia is threatening to use nuclear weapons, AND inflation is making everything more expensive. The resulting STRESS is a real and a growing threat for all of us. Other problems are causing intense pressure in other parts of the world. Everyone is stressed! There is lots of evidence that besides the short tempers, interrupted sleep, and problems caused by being distracted, STRESS can cause real physical illness. I keep seeing suggestions in the media on ways to reduce the stress that plagues us, but one of the most effective methods available is still known to just a handful of people. When I first heard about Logosynthesis, I dismissed it. It just didn’t make any sense to me. Then, months later I experienced how amazingly quickly and easily repeating a few sentences caused me to deeply relax. I was converted. The more I studied the method, the more I was convinced that I needed to share it. That led me to write this book to teach my readers how to experience it for themselves. It works! This is a perfect time to remember to use it yourself. Then buy several copies and share them with your family and friends.
Letting Go of Souvenirs
I hate to let go of things that remind me of happy memories. When I collect earrings, that’s not a problem, but this week I was forced to confront the literal overflow of another collection. Two big boxes of that collection jumped off a shelf and scattered their contents around my office while I was in another room. Before Covid, one of my favorite activities was attending conferences where I could learn and/or teach the latest information about professional topics and hang out with my friends and colleagues from around the region, the country, and the world. At most conferences I was presented with some type of useful bag to carry my conference program and paraphernalia. Each bag marked with the title, date and city became a marvelous, (useful??) souvenir! And I had too many bags to stuff back into those boxes! It made logical sense, but not emotional sense to sort them and let at least some of them go. Thank heavens for the Logosynthesis process I share in “Letting It Go.” As my housekeeper rejoiced that she could share the excess with her friends, I wanted to snatch them back. I used the three sentences, relaxed, and forgot about my “loss.” If you have extra stuff you want to release, try my method. It works!
Small Frustrations Still Matter
Did you know that you can use the 3 magic Logosynthesis sentences to let go of the stress that come from small frustrations that pile up into major energy drains? Your frustration may be someone leaving the refrigerator door open again! Or taking off work for the promised visit from the repair person who never comes—or tech support—or almost anything. Sometimes those are mine too. Today mine was almost comical, but frustrating, nevertheless. I went out to pick tomatoes and the ground was muddy, so I needed to come in to change my shoes—a minor inconvenience. Then I needed to squat down to get things off the lowest branches. That worked just fine, but once down, I discovered that getting up isn’t nearly as easy as it used to be. In fact, it wasn’t easy at all. I got stuck pointed downhill where I was working against gravity. I had to crawl around on the wet grass instead of simply getting gracefully to my feet. Even 10 years ago that would not have been a problem, but approaching 83, it definitely is. I used the Logosynthesis sentences helped reclaim my energy from the belief that my body should work the way it used to. The tomatoes are delicious. Read “Letting It Go” and release your stress now.
Dissolve Those Scary Images
Tonight, I was accused of being brave. My accuser was another guest on this wonderful Danube River cruise who loves structured excursions and being escorted from one interesting place to another. My husband and I will stay in Budapest for two additional, ‘unprotected’ days before flying home. I have considered what risks may exist and taken the precaution of choosing a highly rated hotel. Beyond that, I know I will be in a large European city where many people speak English. I have been in other large cities with unfamiliar languages and found that when I need help its readily available. I am not at all frightened and therefore don’t consider myself at all brave. I have felt brave when traveling to some exotic places, even on protected tours, because I created scary images of the terrible things that might happen to me and went anyhow. Now when I find myself starting to create images of a difficult or frightening experience that probably won’t happen, I have a better tool. I use the ‘magic’ Logosynthesis sentences to reclaim my energy from those images. The images usually vanish so completely that I forgot they exist. I don’t need to be brave, I’m calm. This book helps you learn to calm yourself amazingly quickly. Get your copy and get started now.
Grief Matters!
What have you lost? In this pandemic and its aftermath, we’ve all lost something. Some loses of course are far more devastating than others. Losing a family member may seem nothing like not being able to celebrate a graduation. It’s even less like losing the experience of easily replacing a broken item instead of learning its unavailable because of “supply chain issues.” You may tell yourself that some loses are minor and shouldn’t matter, but they do! You expect to feel grief over big loses, but you may believe that there is something wrong with you for feeling nostalgia and grief for the way things used to be. There isn’t. It’s normal! We all do it unless we work to cover up the feelings and they sneak out again, transformed to anxiety and/or depression. You can grieve for lost opportunities, lost dreams and lost time. Grieving means releasing the energy you have in something that is irretrievably gone. You simply can’t get it back—it’s completely impossible. Tears help you release the energy. So do the Logosynthesis sentences. The energy must be released to be reclaimed and used for another purpose. Trying to hold on by replaying what should or might have been only increases suffering. Doing the work of Letting It Go ultimately increases your available energy.
Not Guilty
I learned an important life lesson this week, thanks to Logosynthesis, the process I teach you to use in this book. I learned the difference between remembering that I am not guilty and KNOWING that I am not guilty. Growing up, while learning to become a responsible adult, I accidently learned that someone is always to blame when things go wrong, and it’s usually me. When I was to blame, I felt guilty. As an adult, I learned that guilt is useful to inspire a change in behavior. Once that is done, it has served its purpose and can be dropped. I sometimes needed to remember to use the 3 sentences to release that unnecessary guilt. This week I made a ginormous mistake on my computer. Wonderful techie grandchildren helped me understand what I had done and supported me in fixing the problem. When I started to blame myself, I could not. I realized that it was NOT a ‘stupid’ mistake. I thought I completely understood what I was doing, and I did not know that I was missing an important piece of information. I used the process to reclaim my energy from “this belief that I am to blame for mistakes” and felt incredibly light and free. (My robust backup program only took 36 hours to restore my files.)
Make Your Work Less Stressful
Do you see yourself as a perfectionist, a people-pleaser, a procrastinator, a micromanager, or someone who always needs to be busy? Would others say you show those traits? A recent huffpost.com article describes “5 Work Personality Traits That Are Actually Forms of Anxiety.” So, if any of those characteristics are making your work life harder than it needs to be, using the 3 sentences the way I demonstrate in Letting It Go could help a lot. The first thing to do is to change the way you describe yourself. Each of these traits describes something you do instead of something you are. Instead of being a perfectionist, you are a person who strives to do things perfectly. Instead of labeling yourself a procrastinator, you are a person who puts off doing certain things, etc. Then, ask yourself, what do you imagine will happen if you make a mistake with a task you are struggling with of if you actually did a task you are putting off. That will give you a hint about what you are anxious about. The free program, Reduce Worry Starting Now at http://www.LaurieWeiss.com will help you explore this further. Make sure to grab your copy of Letting It Go (to learn to) Relieve Anxiety and Toxic Stress in Just a Few Minutes Using Only Words.
When Just Do It Isn't Enough
Elaine kept putting off making an appointment to get her teeth cleaned. She would add it to her list of things to do but forget to call until the office was closed. Or she would think about doing it when she was driving somewhere. She meant to make the appointment, but just didn’t get around to it. When I asked why she didn’t want to go, she protested that she did want to. Then she told me how much she hated the feeling of having the hygienist poke around in her mouth. I suggested that she experiment with using the 3 magic Logosynthesis sentences about her experience with the hygienist. She decided to use “this experience of having my mouth poked” as the trigger. Once she completed the process, she remembered to call the dentist’s office the following day. Are you procrastinating about doing something you know is important? It might be because you expect something unpleasant to happen if you go ahead and do it. If that’s the case, then reclaiming your energy from your image of the worst thing you think might happen will probably help. Full instructions about how to use the sentences are in “Letting It Go: Relieve Anxiety and Toxic Stress in Just a Few Minutes Using Only Words (Rapid Relief with Logosynthesis®)”
When Change Causes Stress
Are you having a hard time because things keep changing? I am, and so are several friends I talked with after my water exercise class today. The carpet cleaner didn’t come at the scheduled time—and pushed the time later twice before finally rescheduling for another day. The online call didn’t ever connect and our emails trying to straighten it out didn’t help. The scheduled package delivery never came and my friend who took off work and waited for it all day learned later that someone had decided not to deliver it because she would not be there. Another friend’s family gathering had to be changed because the flight was delayed, and on and on and on. Before I learned to use the three Logosynthesis sentences to regain my equilibrium after these arbitrary changes, I used to be completely derailed by them. Now, I have learned to “retrieve my energy from my expectation that (this—whatever it is) will happen…” The process makes an enormous difference to my peace of mind. If you use the sentences taught in “Letting It Go”, using your “expectations of something” to fill in the blanks, it will probably make your life more comfortable also. Reclaim your energy from the unnecessary stress caused by your reaction to unexpected changes. You will be glad you did.
A Daily Reboot
Have you ever tried using the three sentences of basic Logosynthesis as a regular ongoing practice in your life? I confess that I only do this sporadically, but when I do I find it very centering and healing. It’s especially useful at times when I am stressed or struggling. Here’s how. Simply quiet your mind and ask yourself, “What do I need to let go of today?” Notice whatever emotion, scene or memory arises. Say each of the sentences using a few words or phrases to represent whatever triggers that experience. Be sure to allow time for the words to work after saying each sentence. You may find that there are several things that are keeping you from experiencing peace and joy on any given day. That’s OK. Just do a set of sentences for each trigger. Lately, I find that I must release images from the news. I also need to release the images of legislators who refuse to act on the simple gun safety background checks that are desired by over 80% of the US population. Those are my issues. Yours are probably entirely different. For complete instructions on using the Logosynthesis process, be sure to get your copy of "Letting It Go: Relieve Anxiety and Toxic Stress in Just a Few Minutes Using Only Words."
Today I Lost It!
I was instantly steaming mad! I was prepared to join a Zoom call in about 5 minutes, as a guest on a podcast when I checked my email one last time and found a notice from my host about a time change. It had arrived about 10 minutes earlier, but I had stepped away from my computer for some final preparations. The first time I read the notice I thought he was simply confirming the time, but the time was a over an hour later. I was confused, thought there was an error, reread the notice and discovered that it was a reschedule for 3 weeks and 1 hour later. That’s when I felt the wave of anger wash over me! One of my old “hot buttons” is disrespect. After 12 years of using Logosynthesis, I seldom react so strongly, but this time I did. My thoughts were something like, “How dare he disrespect my professional time! If he needed to change the time, he should have done it hours ago! Etc.” I didn’t even think about the gift of an hour to finish another project—for at least a minute. When I remembered, I still needed to calm the adrenaline rush. I used the 3 sentences, immediately relaxed, and went on to complete the other project.
Let Go of Real Stuff
How do you manage to release cherished possessions that you are ambivalent about letting go? I have lived in the same home for over 50 years and have things I no longer need or use tucked away in closets and drawers. Until recently, those things included a doll and many doll clothes I made when I was about 10 years old. I have two children with young adult children of their own. None of my children or grandchildren had any interest in this doll. When a friend told me about how much his granddaughters loved dolls, I decided to give it to them. That decision made good logical sense, but emotionally, I was torn. I decided to preserve my memory through photographs, but still had trouble. Finally, I used the 3 Logosynthesis sentences and learned why it was so difficult. I discovered that the doll clothes represented evidence of my creativity as a child. Another set of sentences allowed me to release the belief that I needed tangible evidence of my creativity and I was then able to let the doll and the clothes go to a new home. Use the sentences yourself with possessions you are ambivalent about releasing. It will make it much easier to move on. Get your instructions in the “Letting It Go” book.
Tech Support Didn't Help
When do you give up with tech support? My husband likes to remind me that if you dance with a bear, the bear leads. So… After months of effort trying to complete what I thought would be an easy task, I am ready to stop trying to argue with Amazon and finally LET IT GO! I’ve lost track of the number of phone calls and emails and different techs I have talked to who promised that the problem would be fixed. One or two even helped me understand what was happening. I finally got an email from a supervisor saying sorry, but it is against their policy to give me what I want. You see, I published a REVISED and UPDATED EDITION of “Letting It Go” in January, but at first, Amazon would not show anyone it existed. Instead, they kept the 2016 print edition linked to the 2022 ebook edition. When that finally got sorted out, I noticed that half of my 101 reviews had disappeared! Yikes! Someone finally explained that half were with the old edition and half with the new edition. I decided that I’d done everything I could and used the magic sentences to free my energy. Try doing it yourself next time you know it’s time for you to just let a problem go.
Not What I Expected!
I didn’t get what I expected! My reformer Pilates teacher would be gone and suggested that I try out a mat Pilates class while she was away. I did the more difficult mat class several years ago, but the last couple of years have been physically challenging and I wanted to be sure this class would suit me. I checked it out carefully and was assured that it was what I was looking for—focused on the classical movements. I arrived on time, removed my shoes, set up my mat, and waited. One of the other fitness teachers hurried into the room and announced that the regular teacher had a sick child and had asked her to substitute on very short notice. All my careful preparation was completely useless! The class was NOT what I expected, needed or wanted! It was fast and rhythmic instead of slow and meditative. I was quite unhappy. That’s the problem with expectations, sometimes they simply aren’t met. In fact, that happens way too often to suit me. The choice becomes to hold on to the disappointment or let it go and move on. Often, easier said than done. I use the Logosynthesis process I teach in this book to let go and move on. Try it yourself. It works amazingly well.
Releasing Beliefs
I have used the letting go process I teach, Logosynthesis, to release far more than anxiety and toxic stress in my life. Today I am letting go of the notion (belief) that I should only share thoughts about the material in this first book in the “Rapid Relief with Logosynthesis” series. The next book in the series is about letting go of beliefs and experiences that interfere with experiencing the abundance of the world. The third, as yet unstarted, book will be about letting go of stuff. I have also let go of the belief that I will write it any time soon, if at all. I will keep you posted. My current task is to let go of the over-busy way I have been living my life. This too is about letting go of a set of beliefs about how much I need to contribute to the world before I can relax and play. I adopted those beliefs a long time ago. They made sense at the time and have been very useful, but now, in my 80s, they no longer serve me. Using the powerful Logosynthesis sentences has helped me release many beliefs I unconsciously adopted because I once concluded that I needed them. Try it yourself and release old beliefs you no longer need.
Numbing Out
What would you do if the three people you loved and depended on for emotional support died within two years? Nancy told me her story when she was deciding which of my ‘Rapid Relief with Logosynthesis’ books to buy. She had lost her husband, her sister and her mother so quickly that she had not been able to fully experience her grief for any of them. Instead, she had simply, in her words, “numbed out.” She became depressed, could barely function, and now, after 11 years of learning to release her grief in psychotherapy, she was doing well. From an energetic perspective, she had frozen the grief because she had no support to experience it and let it run its course. Sadly, even as the pandemic eases, too many people have been numbed by painful losses. Logosynthesis can help anyone to release the frozen energy and heal from some of the most painful aspects of losing a loved one and find peace again. Nancy chose to get “Letting It Go” to learn to use the process whenever she needs it. If you are numbing out in any part of your life, get a copy yourself and try it. And if you know anyone who is trying to recover from a loss, give them a copy too.
The Idea Makes Me Sick!
Madison didn’t know which was worse, the intense pain in her mouth from the dying nerve in her tooth or the nausea she felt when she contemplated getting the root canal the dentist had prescribed for treating it. Logic wasn’t helping. Her dentist had explained the procedure and why it would end her pain, the appointment was set, and she was nearly paralyzed with terror. I asked her what part of the upcoming procedure scared her the most. She told me, “I can just see the thing poking inside my gums and it freaks me out! I feel like barfing each time I think about it.” Even though she knew from experience that the anesthetic injection would block the pain of the dentist’s work, this image that she had created of what the work would look like was triggering her intense reactions. Her imaginative mind had embellished the situation while trying to protect her—and it had nothing to do with logic. She repeated the 3 Logosynthesis® sentences, including “this image of the thing inside my gums” as the trigger. After she was done, I asked what had happened to the image and she was surprised to discover that she couldn’t see it any longer. No more image, no more nausea! She almost slept through the root canal procedure.
Change Happens
Things just keep changing, whether I want them to or not! My favorite restaurant closes. The special cookies I love are no longer available. My reliable and relied on part time assistant takes a full-time job and can’t work with me anymore. Part of me wants to stomp my feet and scream that “things shouldn’t change!” My refrain “things shouldn’t change” is an old belief, left over from childhood when my world seemed much more stable than it does now. If you had a relatively stable childhood like I did, you might be saying the same thing to yourself. Whenever I hear myself complaining this way, I find the 3 Logosynthesis® sentences I teach you to use in Letting It Go help a lot. I retrieve my energy from “this belief that things shouldn’t change” is the basic trigger. Often this process will deactivate a belief that never returns, but in these cases, the belief seem to be specific with each new loss. Beliefs like “this belief that my favorite restaurant will always be there” or “this belief that my assistant will stay forever” are triggers that lead to my distress. Although I have listed rather trivial changes, yours may be much more intense and significant. The same process will help. Just try it and notice what happens.
No More Awful Images
I live in Colorado and have been reading about how the victims of the huge fire that destroyed over 1000 homes can’t get the devastating images of destruction out of their thoughts. The problem is completely understandable. We’ve all had the experience of replaying an uncomfortable experience repeatedly. Our brains are affected by strong emotional reactions to something that we witness, whether or not we are directly involved. I can still recall a violent scene in a movie I saw over 60 years ago although it took years to release its power to make me cringe. Now I can release the impact of those experiences quickly and easily. Since I learned to use Logosynthesis, the powerful process described in Letting It Go, to resolve (and dissolve) disturbing images, I want others who suffer to be able to do the same thing. That’s one of the main reasons I wrote the book. The process is very simple. You remember the image which could be a sound, physical sensation, smell or taste as well as a picture. Then you say 3 sentences using a few words to represent the image in each sentence. Most people who do this for the first time are amazed at the changes. I have volunteered to work with fire victims. I hope I can do so.
Will It or Won't It...?
Until the latest Covid surge, I was eagerly looking forward to my first cruise in over two years. I love cruise vacations because every staff member I meet is focused on helping me have a safe, enjoyable vacation. This cruise is extra special because it’s also a seminar for writers and book publishers. My husband and I are vulnerable, vaccinated and boosted, and now, once again, masked, cautious and avoiding crowds. Yet friends who take the same precautions are still getting Omicron. The CDC says “Don’t!” My friends say, “What are you going to do about the cruise?” The newspaper says this surge may soon recede. I have had fantasies of both being isolated in a cabin with Covid and of cancelling everything. Once, the uncertainty would have been almost intolerable. Instead, I keep using the 3 magic Logosynthesis sentences to dissolve each fantasy as it emerges. So far, it’s working. I am living my life as if everything will go as planned. If it doesn’t, I will feel disappointed for a while and then I will use the sentences again, to take back my energy from my fantasy of a wonderful trip. If your fantasies of what might or might not happen are causing you distress, try using this process to help stay focused on your present life.
Let Go of That Belief
Sometimes what you believe makes a bad situation worse. That can be especially true when YOU BELIEVE THAT DOING EVERYTHING RIGHT WILL KEEP YOU SAFE. • People who get the Omicron variant of Covid, despite being vaccinated and taking precautions, feel betrayed. • Others who can’t get the postponed medical care they need and have planned for because of overcrowded hospitals are frustrated and angry. They spend energy blaming unvaccinated people who are ill and taking up hospital space. • When a long-awaited vacation is canceled again because of virus related travel restrictions, you feel duped by promises that the world would be safe by now and it isn’t, and you blame public health officials for your disappointment. You didn’t get what you thought you deserved in any of these situations. The reasons are complicated, and it may seem easier to be angry and blame someone than to accept things as they are. You us energy to manage each situation whether you blame someone else for it was simply accept it. Blaming takes extra energy. Sometimes accepting disappointing situations can be a real challenge, but IT IS POSSIBLE TO LET GO OF BELIEFS THAT NO LONGER SERVE YOU. When you use the magical sentences in this book to reclaim your energy from beliefs that cause you distress, you’ll feel better.
Procrastination of Something Else?
“I don’t want to; nobody can make me! I’ll do it when I am dammed good and ready!” So many different demands on your time, it’s no wonder that you avoid some of the most difficult or unpleasant tasks. Then you feel stressed and kick yourself for procrastinating. Procrastination often means that you are struggling with energy that is stuck somewhere instead of moving freely. The quote above is the prescription I have used for myself and offered to countless clients and students when they complained that they couldn’t seem to stop procrastinating. Sometimes it works just to say that statement aloud about a particular topic, whether it is make the bed, send the Christmas cards, or finish my homework. “I don’t want to” is telling the truth. So is “nobody can make me.” “I’ll do it” is acknowledging that you WILL get it done. “When I’m dammed good and ready” is also telling the truth. It won’t get done until then, and it feels good to say so aloud and reclaim your power. Often you don’t want to do something because you imagine a painful or unpleasant experience—either in the doing or someone’s reaction to your task. That is where your energy is stuck. Then, use the Logosynthesis sentences to help you free your energy and move on.
Disappointed Again?
Are you struggling with little annoyances that you think shouldn’t bother you, but do? Where I live, masks are once again required when I go grocery shopping and I hate having my breathing restricted. I am disappointed that an in-person party I was looking forward to has been changed to a Zoom meeting. When I shop, items I like are out of stock. I imagine you too are having similar experiences as the waves of the pandemic come and go. No one thing is very big, but as they pile up, they tend to drain your energy. Being disappointed usually means that you have imagined what is going to happen in the future, and that you will feel happy or comfortable when it happens. A bit of your energy is tied up in preparation for and anticipation of something pleasant. You begin to feel a little sad, tired and perhaps angry as the disappointments pile up. The three sentences that are the core of Logosynthesis can help you reclaim the energy you have tied up in all those little losses. Use each little disappointment to fill in the blanks, like “my picture of hugging my friends at the party.” Get the instructions in this book and get another copy to share with a friend who is also struggling.
When You're Disappointed...
Are you someone who is often disappointed when what actually happens during the holiday season is not as wonderful as you hope it will be? If this is a problem for you, using the Logosynthesis basic sentences can help. When you hold a vivid picture in your imagination of what you expect to see, hear and feel, it becomes the trigger for your disappointment. In that case, your “fill in the blank” trigger phrase is “this image of how it should be.” Your first sentence becomes “I retrieve all my energy bound up in this image and take it to the right place in my Self.” Just remember that the “I” in this case is your essence or higher self—not your ego that tries to make things happen. When you just experience that what disappoints you is wrong in some way, a very effective trigger phrase to insert into the sentences is “this belief that the world should be different.” This phrase is also useful when you are grieving a loss of some kind, as so many of us are from the effects of this pandemic. Wishing for something or someone that is irretrievably lost to you freezes your energy and you need that energy moving freely to live your life to the fullest now.
I Am OK If...
What old rules do you try to follow to keep believing that you are a good and worthy person? It’s not a trick question. These rules represent frozen energy from situations that overwhelmed you as a child. I found one of these old rules this morning when I discovered that I had completely forgotten to a commitment to write one of these “bubbles” every week. My frozen energy is the old belief that I figured out long ago, “I am OK if I don’t make mistakes.” When I make a mistake, no matter what reason for it, I feel a touch of remembered panic. Fortunately, I have used the magic Logosynthesis sentences to dissolve most of that old belief, even though there are tiny bits left. This mistake can easily be fixed. Others can’t, so learning to live with mistakes without extra panic has been important for me. Where is your frozen energy? For many people it’s “I am OK as long as I please others.” For some it’s “I am only OK if I try hard to do everything.” There are many other beliefs like these that lead to guilt, shame or anxiety when you miss the mark. Release your own frozen energy quickly and easily with the basic Logosynthesis tools that are revealed in this book.
Store Your Book Where???
I surprised myself when I made a suggestion to someone today. I suggested that she store her copy of “Letting It Go: Relieve Anxiety and Toxic Stress in Just a Few Minutes Using Only Words” where she keeps the medication she uses when she feels anxious. She wants to give up this using the medication. She only uses it occasionally now and would like to try using the three magic sentences of the Logosynthesis process before she decides whether or not to take a pill. She commented that when she uses the sentences, she feels relief much faster than she does when using the medication. The problem I hope my suggestion solves is that many new users of this powerful process forget that it exists when they are feeling the most stressed. I certainly had that problem when I was a new user. I think this would also be a good idea to try with any substance or activity you normally use for stress relief. I immediately think of food, cigarettes and video games. You could store the book or a card with your reminder to “Try Logosynthesis” or even with the 3 sentences printed on it. I would love to here how this idea works for you. You can email me directly at Laurie at LaurieWeiss.com. I will respond.
I Forgot My Own Rules
I forgot to write my usual blog post last week. I really did. I didn’t even remember that I had forgotten until my husband, who does the technical posting for me, asked me about it. Besides that, I didn’t post any professional article on Facebook or Medium as I usually do, and I let the Amazon ads for my books lapse! I was busy having fun instead, but that is another story. I did not plan this break, it just happened, which would be fine except for some leftover old rules I’ve been following for so long I had forgotten they were rules. Once I realized my lapse, I heard my father’s voice criticizing me. He died 30 years ago, so, of course, the voice was my own. I was criticized harshly for making innocent mistakes when I was a teenager, so I learned to remember all my commitments—a useful skill most of the time. But that leftover harsh voice was probably unnecessary in the first place, and I hate hearing it now. I used the 3 basic Logosynthesis sentences to reclaim the energy frozen in that old experience and relaxed. The voice retreated and I started thinking about my priorities. After so many months of pandemic limited activity, fun is now included in the priority list.
Do I Need a Witness?
Yesterday I used the basic Logosynthesis process when I could not stop thinking about a slightly uncomfortable encounter I had earlier in the day. I had been judging my own actions about both protecting and not protecting my own boundaries. The process worked and I didn’t give the encounter another thought until this morning when I was in the car with my husband, returning to the place where the encounter occurred. Then I started obsessing about it again. Jonathan is also a Master Logosynthesis Practitioner and I shared my story with him. We searched for what was still undone, couldn’t find anything, and I realized that the difference was that the entire issue was no longer a secret. Sharing it was what had been left out and was now complete. Later I was reminded of a Brené Brown technique of sharing old feelings of shame with a “shame-buddy” as part of a process to resolve them. I wondered if my experience was similar to this process. Once I shared something after my initial work, it vanished. Logosynthesis can certainly be used alone as a self-coaching technique. However, it was originally developed as a tool a therapist could use. I think that it may be important to use it with a “buddy” when a problem isn’t easily resolved.
Exhausted and Distracted?
Tania wanted coaching because she felt exhausted most of the time and she was afraid she was about to lose her job because she was so distracted. She was exhausted because she was committed to completing a community project while working full time and providing emotional support to her recently widowed mother. Her teenage son’s behavior was also worrying her, and she kept thinking about how to help him. On the surface, it looked like a problem of how to organize her time, but that wasn’t it at all. When I asked about her dad’s death, she said she kept trying not to think about how hard it had been to help with his care. Tania was using so much energy to keep from remembering those painful moments that she didn’t have enough left over to manage her life. When I helped her remove her energy from those memories and reclaim it for herself, her exhaustion disappeared. Do you ever find yourself trying to get away from painful or scary thoughts by keeping so busy you feel worn out? Do you compound the problem by criticizing yourself for not being able to focus on some other important task? If that describes you, learning to use the Logosynthesis® process can help you reclaim your energy too.
It Happened In 6th Grade
Yes, the past does matter. Comfortably reading a fiction book in the middle of the afternoon, taking some much-needed quiet time, I started to feel just a bit uneasy. When I explored my discomfort, I realized that it was related to relaxing during my usual productive time. Suddenly, I was pulled back 70 years—to being a regretful 6th grader. In 1950 I was usually a ‘good girl’ but somehow, I had earned the dreaded punishment of writing 25 “STATEMENTS.” I was dutifully writing, “If my 6th grade work does not keep me profitably busy, this work, although not profitable, will at least keep my busy.” Yikes!!! I was still trying to please my 6th grade teacher. I know that kind of flashback is a common marker of frozen energy from the past. What I had not quite realized is that I was still trying to avoid punishment through my normal patterns of being productive. I describe how we accidently acquire completely unnecessary patterns in this book along with the simplest way I know of to let them go. Of course, I repeated the 3 Logosynthesis sentences, using that long-ago scene as the trigger. I relaxed and continued to enjoy my book. This tool is so easy to use. Learn how, and release your own leftover, unnecessary discomfort.
Vaccination Reluctance
I’ve been very curious about why people are not getting vaccinated. Aside from political beliefs, I have seen reports of all kinds of reasons, which often seem to be coverups for “I’m afraid…” When you’re afraid of something, you may not want to admit it for many different reasons. You may not even be exactly sure what you’re afraid of. You might feel a vague sense of unease—often as a feeling of tension or other discomfort in some part of your body. Instead of focusing on that tension it may be more comfortable to just try to think about something else. You can come up with reasons for avoiding the thing (maybe getting vaccinated) that stimulates the uncomfortable feeling. You become “too busy” to learn more about it or you decide it really isn’t important in your life. If you decide to explore your unease you will probably discover either a mind picture of something bad that has not happened yet, like feeling pain or panic when you get a shot or having a bad reaction afterwards, or a memory of something unpleasant that did happen once. There are free tools (Reduce Worry Starting Now) for exploring this process and learning to use the ‘magic’ sentences I describe in this book at http://www.LaurieWeiss.com to help release that fear.
I Don't Want to Keep Thinking About This!
Yesterday, for the second time in 3 days, we searched for our ‘delivered’ newspaper and couldn’t find it. We called the delivery service and they promised to send one out. They didn’t, but the carrier did deliver it today. It came with a nasty note from the carrier, along with today’s paper. The note said, “How did you manage to lose yesterday’s paper?” I agreed with my husband that calling and complaining about the note was not worth the time and energy it would take. BUT I KEPT THINKING ABOUT how WRONG the carrier was and how he should be reprimanded and given additional training in customer service. I recognized how thinking that way was keeping me from enjoying my morning and wanted to blame the carrier for upsetting my routine for the second morning in a row. I knew how self-defeating the process was, but I couldn’t seem to stop. Fortunately, I did remember that I know a way to stop the silliness whose only effect was to make me feel righteous and unhappy. I used the 3 Logosynthesis sentences that are explained in this book and those thoughts vanished. I didn’t think of the note again until I was thinking about what I could write about this afternoon. Try the sentences yourself next time your mind gets stuck.
Expectations: Useful or Not?
Sometimes expecting something to be a particular way is very useful. Now that we are planning vacations again, imagining what is going to happen helps us prepare for it. When you’re planning a trip to the beach, packing swimsuits and sunscreen because you expect swimming on warm sunny days is useful. But what happens if the weather is cool and rainy? Did you consider this possibility too? Did you bring a sweatshirt, an umbrella and some playing cards along with your beach prep? If you did, you are probably feeling a little disappointed but managing just fine. But if all your anticipated scenarios involve sunshine, you may be feeling stressed, angry and/or cheated. Your picture of how things should be interferes with your ability to respond to what actually IS. This is a time to recognize that your expectations, those pictures of sunshine, are triggering an unpleasant reaction. If you want to change your reaction, you can work hard to count your blessings and focus on something positive. You could also retrieve and reclaim your energy from the images of sunshine using the 3 sentences you learn in this book. Then your negative reactions will disappear, and you’ll be able to respond to your current circumstances. This process works any time you react to unmet expectations.
Old Stories Cause Stress
Feeling stress is a part of being human. Human brains are wired to store signs of danger. Your brain is always scanning for threats that match those the signs you have stored. This alertness was important for survival when we lived in the jungle. The problem is that that your brain’s jungle survival skills can cause problems in the complicated world you live in now. You believed that things were especially dangerous when you didn’t have the resources to cope with them when they happened. You still react to those things as if they were dangerous, even though you have far more resources than you did when you were a child. You make up stories about the world that explain why it is dangerous. That’s completely natural, but the problem is that you believe those stories, even if you created them when you were 6 years old. You feel stressed when you react to the stories you’ve made up. It used to take a skilled therapist to help you discover and deactivate those stories, so they no longer cause stress. Now there are many things you can do to deactivate some of them yourself. This book is an introduction to Logosynthesis, the most powerful and easiest to use method I know of. Use it to reduce your stress now.
Meltdown
Recently, many things went wrong for me at the same time! Most of them where electronic—I won’t go into the details here—none were life or health threatening—but I was approaching meltdown. I definitely wasn’t thinking clearly. I am generally pretty calm, but I had activated all kinds of old messages, blaming myself, blaming my webmaster, blaming my internet provider and imagining several different kinds of disastrous outcomes. If you get into situations like this, what I did next may be useful to you. I tried to use the Logosynthesis sentences about my sad story, “this internet mess.” Not much happened until I recognized that it wasn’t the mess, the real cause of my upset was my belief that I had (unknowingly) broken a promise to my clients. My energy was stuck in “the belief that breaking a promise is a disaster.” When I used the sentences again, with that as the trigger, I felt calmer and almost immediately thought of several ways I could manage the situation—which turned out not to be such a disaster after all. The lesson for me, once again, (and for you too—if it fits) is that any upset is not necessarily about the external situation, it’s about the belief I may have about that situation.
Post Vaccination Anxiety
Isn’t being vaccinated supposed to make me feel less anxious? Why does this feel so weird. We met in person after we were vaccinated but we were all wearing masks and it took courage to take them off. These are some of the comments I have been hearing lately. Digging a little deeper, it seems that most vaccinated people are now more worried about breaking the new social rules than they are about Covid 19. It is entering a new area of uncharted territory. How is the vaccinated class supposed to relate to those who are less fortunate? Nobody really knows and you need to make it up as you go along. And, after so long distancing from others, you are out of practice about how to reconnect. And it’s not just you—it’s like we are all trying to figure out a new set of rules together and we are each a bit nervous about doing it wrong. Logosynthesis and the 3 core sentences you learn to use in Letting It Go will help. Identifying whose disapproval, you worry about will help you identify the trigger you can start with. Then other images and memories may lead you to older scenes you barely remember. Just follow the simple steps and notice how the anxiety dissolves.
Energy, Not Stories
While talking about how active engaged people can use Logosynthesis®, the methodology I share in this book, “Letting It Go,” a participant on the Zoom meeting wrote “OMG I need this” in the chat. I was thrilled. I think she recognized that if she shifted her perspective about how she could find relief from stress her life could be so much easier. At least, I hope so. I am making up a story about her and I really don’t have any idea about her motivation. All I really know is that she was attending a program and wrote that statement in the chat. But my mind, like yours, tried to fill in the blanks. Sometimes the stories we make up help us feel safe and happy and sometimes they can make us miserable. Even if you recognize that a story you are telling yourself isn’t necessarily true, it may be hard to let it go. That is where this amazing process comes in. When you start looking at the story as simply frozen energy, you can use the power of the words in the three simple sentences of the basic Logosynthesis process to release the energy that is stuck and relax. Get started today. You too can be amazed--and much happier.
Brainwashed!!!
“She has been brainwashed! I just can’t get through to her anymore.” I heard a frustrated woman say this about her sister. Several others chimed in about their frustration in trying to talk to someone who is tuned into different information about the world than they are. Each is completely convinced that the other is WRONG! The conversation went on to explore how it might be possible to “get through to” these brainwashed people. Clearly lots of energy was tied up both in experiencing and trying to solve the problems. I was reminded of my therapy clients who wanted to tell me how WRONG their parents were. Not surprisingly, when they stopped trying to prove themselves RIGHT, they often noticed how much more rational their parents had become. The three core Logosynthesis sentences* provide a wonderful, gentle path to allow anyone to remove personal energy that is stuck in doing the impossible task of changing someone else’s mind. I suggest inserting the trigger phrases, “this belief that she is wrong” or “this belief that it’s my responsibility to change how he is thinking” into the core sentences. That not only retrieves your own energy but allows you to see and interact with the other person differently. Learn different ways to use the sentences* in the “Letting It Go” book.
Falling Off the Wagon
Are you feeling guilty because your self-discipline is fading? If you are, you can join the crowd of people who are ultimately failing to follow the instructions written in thousands of books and promoted by untold organizations. Sure, you can follow the instructions for a while and look successful, but you are human, and all humans are ultimately motivated to feel as safe and comfortable as possible. So, after a while, you “fall off the wagon.” What you and I believe keeps us safe is different because we’ve each had different experiences that seem threatening during our lives. You freeze a tiny bit of your life energy each time you feel threatened, and you feel uncomfortable whenever you get close to that energy for the rest of your life. The self-discipline advocates bring you closer to that frozen energy. So, when you are tired at the end of a day, you just want to avoid the discomfort of approaching the frozen energy. The only way to make lasting change is to remove that little energy block you created to keep you safe. It used to be quite challenging to do that. Now, using the 3 Logosynthesis sentences, you can release that block quickly and gently. Once the block is gone, there is nothing left to avoid, and change becomes easy.
Reclaim Your Energy
“Who told you that you were clumsy?” That question, asked when I had stumbled and excused myself with a self-depreciating-statement of “Excuse me, I am just clumsy.” changed my life. It was the first time I realized that I was parroting someone else’s belief about me. The answer was that both my parents had affirmed my clumsiness. That conversation happened many years ago and it was the start of learning to recognize and let go of the beliefs about myself that I had simply accepted from the all-powerful people in my life. Their energy had been frozen into my energy system without any conscious action from me. It happens to all of us when we are children, dependent on others to explain the world to us. It took me years of hard work to discover and release much of the frozen energy in my system. I was amazed when I discovered that Logosynthesis® could help me release and reclaim that energy in minutes by saying just 3 sentences. I wrote “Letting It Go” when I realized that this process did not need to be reserved for professionals, but no books existed that made it available for ordinary people. If your energy is stuck in limiting beliefs you adopted from others, you can use it too. I wrote it for you.
Stopping Scary Thoughts
I read advice columnists to learn what people are worried about. Today a woman was distressed because she frequently worried that her husband or baby would die. The columnist reassured her that many people have such thoughts, especially while living through a pandemic. But the advice she offered about what to do next just made me sad. She told the woman that any time she had those thoughts she should divert her attention by smelling her baby's head. That will probably work, but it doesn't do anything about the real problem of the recurring, scary images. The columnist does not know how easily those thoughts can be permanently banished. (I have written to tell her about Logosynthesis but have had no response.) Those thoughts represent frozen energy, possibly triggered when the worried woman thought about how important her husband and baby were to her own happiness and then imagined being without them. (That is just speculation on my part.) In any case, just using the 3 basic Logosynthesis sentences using the scary image of life without one of her loved ones as the trigger would probably provide permanent relief. I just wish that I could let that woman know about this remarkable process. Letting It Go gives you information about the sentences and how to use them.
Catastrophizing
Are you catastrophizing more than usual? If you are, you’re not alone. A recent Huffington Post article noted that this is one of the top 12 anxiety reactions people are experiencing as they live through this pandemic. Sadly though, worry doesn’t magically keep those bad things from happening. And when you spend time imagining the terrible things that might happen in the future, you lose the chance to respond to what is happening around you now. I know that I am sad about my losses over the past few months. My world is not as I expected it to be or want it to be. I long for close contact with my family and friends and it just isn’t available right now. I suspect that is happening to you also. The more you focus on what you’ve lost and might lose in the future, the worse you are likely to feel. Imagining the worst keeps you isolated from connecting to both your own deepest Self and to others. And it takes a lot of your energy to try to manage your anxious feelings. And you may not know how to change. I invite you to learn to use the Logosynthesis process to reclaim your energy from those scenarios. Then you’ll be able to enjoy what is still available now.
Forget Doing It Right
Have you ever watched a baby learn to walk? She will take a tentative step or two, lose her balance, sit down suddenly, get distracted and crawl a bit. Then, perhaps, she'll pull herself up and repeat the process. I have never seen a baby suffer because she plops down almost as often as she takes steps. Yet I have seen too many people who are so afraid of making a mistake or doing something imperfectly, that they miss out on the benefits of using Logosynthesis. (I talk about Logosynthesis here because that is the subject of "Letting It Go." This really applies to learning almost anything new.) This process is very forgiving. If you experiment with it and notice what happens, you will quickly discover that whatever you do, you learn something useful about yourself. The real trick is to learn to simply trust that your true Self will guide you. The more you relax, the easier it will be. There is no correct response. Don’t try to make anything in particular happen. This is about focusing on something you find distressing to allow a process of reclaiming your frozen energy to get started. Experiencing a big shift or nothing at all are both just fine. Relax, get started, and play with the process.
Positive Beliefs Cause Stress Too
Are you stressed because the holidays will be so different in this year of the pandemic? Are you sad because you are physically isolated from friends and family? Maybe you are longing for the fun of the seasonal parties that are currently forbidden, lest they spread the virus even further and faster. You may be making things worse because of energy frozen into beliefs that things are "supposed to be" a different way than they actually are. Surprisingly, the things you are taught to believe to help you feel safe and comfortable in the world are also triggers for suffering. You usually don’t notice the energy frozen into those positive beliefs about the way things should be. Beliefs like families should be together or we should celebrate together or I should be able to see others’ faces all keep some of your energy frozen. It can’t flow freely and be used to address ordinary daily life. Using the 3 Logosynthesis sentences to release the energy in those positive, healthy beliefs will help you reclaim the energy and drain the stress. State your trigger as ‘this belief that I should spend the holidays with my family’ or something similar. Say the sentences, reclaim your energy and release the stress. You can download the sentences at http://www.BooksByLaurie.com/guide
Maybe You Really Are Safe
Sometimes it seems that everything is a threat to you or to something or someone you love. That happens even when you know logically that everything is okay. It does not mean there is something wrong with you, it just means that your brain is doing it’s best to protect you from the dangers your ancestors lived with thousands of years ago. They needed to be constantly alert to survive. Throughout your life, your brain has been creating a library of experiences that once seemed threatening to you—just so it can react quickly if a similar experience shows us again. Each time you encountered something that seemed threatening, you took a bit of your life energy to store it securely in the library. Now the library is filled with a lifetime of these packets of stored energy. Whenever you encounter something that is even a little like your stored experience, your brain perceives a threat and goes on full alert to warn you of danger. The problem is that much of the information stored in the library is out of date and no longer useful. Now you can clear out that old information Using the words in the Logosynthesis sentences helps you to dissolve those frozen energy packets, reclaim the energy, and feel safer and more relaxed.
Release Stress A Little at a Time
2020--If you read any newspaper or watch any news during this pandemic, you are stressed. So am I and so are my friends. If you are anything like most people I know, each new report of another disaster leads you to create another image of something awful that might happen to you or the people you care about. You do your best to take care of yourself, but those images of "what if..." keep piling up. It’s even worse if you are living through illness or economic hardship or climate disaster--those images are of what has actually happened. Each of those images steals another little bit of energy. You may feel more and more exhausted because you are using up your energy reserves. It may feel like an insurmountable problem, but with Logosynthesis, each time you say the 3 sentences and use one of those recently acquired images as the trigger for your current reactions, you can reclaim a little bit of that frozen energy. Many people who are new to this process search for the perfect trigger and don’t get full benefit from this wonderful tool. Just start anywhere. Everything you do will help. Find the sentences in my book, Letting It Go, and in the free Reduce Worry program at LaurieWeiss.com and many other places. Just start!
Are You Scaring Yourself?
What stories have created in the past that are causing you to feel anxious now? We all create stories to try to explain the world to ourselves. We are especially likely to do this when we are under stress that we don’t have any other way to manage. Each story freezes a bit of energy that keeps you stuck. Even worse, right now much current media is spreading stories designed to scare you and manipulate you into feeling helpless. This may pull you right back to another time in your life when you really were helpless and adds to feeling stuck. If you were not allowed to choose what you wanted to do, and instead told to do what someone else believed was best for you, you may have decided (made up a story) that you aren’t smart enough to figure things out for yourself. But a critical-thinking part of you gets lost (frozen.) It rarely occurs to you to question what others tell you. Now, when the story on social media says you should believe something outrageous, you simply feel scared and pass it on to your friends. When you can use Logosynthesis to reclaim your frozen energy, you learn to think about what is best for you. You no longer need to believe the story you created.
An Easier Way to Relieve Anxiety
Do you ever wonder why relieving emotional pain seems so complicated? I suspect it has something to do with people trying to protect themselves from things they don't understand. Logosyntheis, the rapid stress and anxiety release process taught in "Letting It Go," is NOT COMPLICATED! It is actually very easy to learn the basic process as a personal, self-care procedure. In the past 15 years, we have lots of evidence that it is quick, safe and effective. Yet many traditional care delivery systems avoid trying new things. The reason given is that they are not researched based or "proven" to be effective. Another is that most traditional systems are based on managing “symptoms,” for example, anxiety or depression. Logosyntheis focuses on the trigger for the symptoms. This trigger is often an image of something painful, real or imagined, that we use energy to try to protect ourselves from experiencing. Encountering that stored energy causes the symptoms, the experience of anxiety, depression or other problems. However, once words are used to gently dissolve that frozen energy, the symptoms disappear. This is the unusual way of relieving suffering that is so relatively new that the research has not yet been done. However, since the process is harmless, many people are discovering its’ effectiveness through books like this. You can too.
Is This You?
I keep reading newspaper articles about how, in this time of Covid, more than half the adults in the US are experiencing anxiety, depression, or other mental health problems. From some perspectives, including mine, these are actually normal reactions to the stress we are all experiencing. That does not make them any less distressing. It is difficult not to react immediately when your safety seems to be threatened. Biologically, that is a healthy, built in survival mechanism. However, you may not have had an opportunity to learn about what to do AFTER your immediate reaction. Your fear reaction then becomes persistent anxiety. Often your reaction includes imagining awful things that might happen, but probably won't. And it is hard to release those images. The 3 sentences of the basic Logosynthesis process help most people remove those troubling images and relax. Contact and physical interaction with other humans is also a biological need. Yet the pandemic keeps many of us isolated from each other. Zoom is better than no contact but does not fully substitute for what we really need. We don’t know when this situation will change. We imagine it continuing forever and feel depressed. Again, Logosynthesis helps you reclaim your energy from those images and feel more comfortable. This book has instructions for using Logosynthesis. Start now.
Is This You?
I keep reading newspaper articles about how, in this time of Covid, more than half the adults in the US are experiencing anxiety, depression, or other mental health problems. From some perspectives, including mine, these are actually normal reactions to the stress we are all experiencing. That does not make them any less distressing. It is difficult not to react immediately when your safety seems to be threatened. Biologically, that is a healthy, built in survival mechanism. However, you may not have had an opportunity to learn about what to do AFTER your immediate reaction. Your fear reaction then becomes persistent anxiety. Often your reaction includes imagining awful things that might happen, but probably won't. And it is hard to release those images. The 3 sentences of the basic Logosynthesis process help most people remove those troubling images and relax. Contact and physical interaction with other humans is also a biological need. Yet the pandemic keeps many of us isolated from each other. Zoom is better than no contact, but does not fully substitute for what we really need. We don’t know when this situation will change. We imagine it continuing forever and feel depressed. Again, Logosynthesis helps you reclaim your energy from those images and feel more comfortable. This book has instructions for using this tool. Start now.
Most People Don't Believe...
Most people don't believe that you can heal deep pain from trauma without a long and painful struggle. I didn't either, until I helped a young woman do just that. (You can read about the how I did it in the excerpt you either see here or can find at the end of this article.) This happened when I was just beginning to experiment with using Logosynthesis in my clinical practice. My amazement at the power of words to reorganize deep trauma led me to explore it further and eventually to want to share this power with as many people as possible. Now newspaper articles are lamenting the amount of anxiety so many people are feeling because of the repeated traumas of living in world where Covid has made it impossible to rely on things we used to take for granted. The amount of pain many people are trying to deal with is overwhelming. When I wrote “Letting it Go” and “Embrace Prosperity,” my goal was to encourage people who were in pain to experiment with using this powerful but very simple process to relieve their own suffering-- before the current upheaval in the world. If you are currently experimenting with this process, let these books help you. If not, get your copy and get started now.
“Amazing”…A Reader’s Experience
This is edited from a review. “Our life energy gets stuck when something painful or overwhelming happens to us. We FREEZE to protect ourselves from this pain. There are SO many modalities that claim to help us release this stuck emotional energy… I would say that this is the simplest method by far. I typed a cheat-sheet with the 4 sentences and made a list of triggers and use it daily. I can feel the energy moving in my body. I also take notes and write down images that come up (out of nowhere) for me, so I can say the 4 sentences on those images too. My example: My trigger (X) was: "this fear that has been with me since I can remember" So I sat quietly with each sentence like she instructs. Suddenly an image popped up of me as a young child falling into my grandma's fireplace. WOW! That was Not in my conscious mind. My subconscious mind actually brought up this image as a cause of my fear. I then did the sentences on that image and anything else that came up in the quiet between the sentences. I must say I felt lighter after the process. I do think it will take time going through my triggers, it is not an overnight cure.”
Doing It Yourself
Babies don't arrive with instruction manuals. No matter what even reasonably skilled and well-meaning parents do, by the time you grow up, you are aware of things you wish they had done differently. You may be very angry at your parents for their "failures" or completely sympathetic with them, but still, your job is to clear up whatever gets in the way of letting your true Self guide your life. That means learning to recognize and neutralize reactions that interfere with your life. There are dozens of systems available to help you do the job and if you are reading this you have probably explored many of them. Logosynthesis, the system introduced in Letting It Go, is the easiest and most elegant I had experienced when I encountered it 10 years ago, after a 40-year career as a psychotherapist. I was delighted recently when another author, who takes seriously the job of clearing away her old blocks, told me that she and a friend had been meeting weekly for over a year, using this book as a guide to continuing their self-development work. They had been exploring other tools when she bought a copy of Letting It Go, and then bought another for her friend. The excerpt linked to this article has tips on using Logosynthesis, without professional help.
Notice the Miracles
I don’t indulge in my favorite treats every day. If I did, I would get used to them and they would no longer bring me the extraordinary pleasure they do when I only enjoy them occasionally. It’s all too easy for me to get accustomed to miracles. We all do it when we connect so easily electronically. We only tend to notice when they don’t work properly. In the 10 years since I was first exposed to Logosynthesis, I have gotten so accustomed to daily miracles that I barely notice them. I was reminded of this recently when supervising students practicing Logosynthesis yesterday. The client was a highly skilled professional coach who felt paralyzed in developing the next phase of her business. The guide was a coach who is just learning to use the Logosynthesis process and did so rather awkwardly. The client described feeling stuck as having a tight band around her shoulders. Despite the fumbling, the Logosynthesis process worked spectacularly! In a few sentences the band dissolved and she was dumbfounded, thrilled and ready to take the next step in her business. At the end of the session the client was still saying “I can’t believe what just happened.” Her excitement and wonder reminded me of mine when I experienced my first Logosynthesis miracle.
Replaying Violent Images?
Is your mind replaying horrific electronic images you have seen in recent news reports? Lately I have been hearing people say, "I just wish I could stop thinking about..." and then they name some recorded video of still another vision of violence. If I know they have read about the process in this book, Logosynthesis, I gently remind them that they can use the image as the trigger they insert into the 3 sentences and reclaim their own energy from the image. Those people usually thank me for the reminder and feel better quickly. (When I first learned to use this process, I too would forget to use it when I needed it most. I am not sure why. Perhaps I forgot because it is so different from anything I had done in the past to reduce stress. In any case I needed a reminder too.) When I overhear acquaintances or strangers talking about trying to manage this kind of stress, I want to tell them that there is an easier way. If I can, sometimes I share information or offer to help on the spot. Most of the time, though, I just wish I could share how easy it can be to release those disturbing images. Have you tried to use the sentences yet? If not, learn how now!
Unfairly Attacked…Now What?
"I still don't understand how I went in five days from being praised and thanked to being accused..." This professional woman went on to explain why she felt she needed to defend herself on social media. Undoubtedly, she was being attacked unfairly and I can completely sympathize with her outrage and confusion. Yet, I fear that she is in a losing situation. She, like others who are attacked in similar situations, has no real power to make anything change. Her attackers will not change their opinions and she already has many supporters. She is likely to keep exerting energy on this until she exhausts herself. I am not implying that some instances of injustice are not worth fighting to change. The problem here is that she feels like she can't let go--that she has no choice except to continue this fight. She is not aware that the 3 Logosynthesis sentences focused on the trigger of being unfairly attacked would help her reclaim her energy that is stuck in this situation. She could then use that energy to clearly think about her options and decide what to do next. Using this powerful process to retrieve her energy from its current frantic focus takes just a few minutes. Anyone can easily learn how! Just follow these instructions.
Trying to Change the Past?
Are you longing to rewind the clock to a time when you never needed to think about whether it was safe to be with a group of your friends? You are not alone. Right now it's hard to stop believing that life should be the way it was just a few months ago. Yet life is not that way now and it is not likely to be that way again for quite some time. And just thinking about the situation often triggers grief and anger. In this book segment, Ron released his energy from trying to solve an impossible problem like this one by using the Logosynthesis sentences that are taught in Letting It Go. You can get a quick intro to the work at www.BooksByLaurie.com/guide. Most people still believe that you need to keep living with the discomfort of resentment and disappointments replaying themselves over and over again. Fortunately, that isn't true anymore. Learning to use this process is much easier than you think. You will be amazed at what you can learn and start using in just an hour or two. For many people, the belief that triggers so much negative emotion is a variety of, “Life should be the way it used to be.” Try putting that into the sentences and just notice what happens.
Changing Your Story
Do you now need to wear a mask when you are in a public indoor space? I do. When I wear it, I feel somewhat physically uncomfortable, but I tell myself it is to keep others safe from any virus infection I might spread. I am reassured that their masks keep their possible infections away from me. Early in this pandemic public health officials said mask wearing should be reserved for people who had symptoms or were in contact with people who had symptoms. Then the fact emerged that infections were spread by infected people before they show symptoms caused the advice to change to masks for everyone. Most people I know share my belief, but I do encounter strangers in stores who refuse to wear masks. Some ridicule the officials who changed their stories and insist that they have other motives for their new advice... Some people easily adapt to new information and others are incensed by it. When you don't have enough resources to manage an overwhelming situation, like navigating this strange new world, you freeze your energy around your personal explanation of the situation to protect yourself. If you are someone whose anxiety is triggered when stories change, use the Logosyntheis sentences to retrieve your energy from the old story and make space to accept new information.
Responding or Over-reacting?
Today I have no answers--only questions about responses and reactions to the forced social distancing so many of us have been experiencing. I am among the privileged, and you probably are too. I am "locked down" in a pleasant home with electronic contact with most of the same people with whom I regularly interact. I know I am blessed and yet I am sad. Yesterday, we bent the rules and went for a drive and saw the awakening spring in our beautiful Colorado foothills. I was surprised that my first reaction was tears. I am still not sure why. Perhaps because experiencing that loveliness tapped into a reservoir of frozen painful feelings of loss I have been trying to ignore while making the best of my own situation. Realistically, my life works. I am usually happy and productive. And yet my ability to enjoy safe human contact with others will not return for many more months and I am sad. I use trigger phrases like "this belief that the world should be different" in the Logosynthesis sentences and they help release some locked energy. Yet I still wonder if the sadness that remains is a way of responding to a longing for the past or just a signal that there is no substitute for the energy of physical contact.
Hiding Grief?
As the chiropractor worked on my aching back, I decided to use focus on releasing whatever was the stimulus for those painfully tight muscles. I really was not sure there was any reason besides the lack of my usual physical activity in the swimming pool that had been closed for two weeks. However, I have discovered that often, when I say the Logosynthesis sentences with a general description of the trigger, a more specific description emerges. I focused on "whatever is causing these tight muscles." As I said the first sentence, I felt an overwhelming sense of grief and loss. As I continued through the sentences, I realized how much I missed the regular hugs I normally share with my grandchildren and many of my friends. During this time of the necessary physical isolation to protect everyone from this virus, I have kept myself busy and productive. I have stayed in contact with important people electronically and focused on my blessings. While doing that I have also apparently been freezing my energy about my painful feeling of loss. I did another round of sentences with a new target, "this belief that the world should be different than it is." By the time I finished, I still felt sad, but the overwhelming grief was gone. My back is feeling better too.
Overreacting?
You have lots of reasons for feeling stressed and anxious in today's uncertain world. But some of this anxiety may be much worse because of past experiences you barely remember. If you wonder why people around you aren't as upset as you are or if you find yourself feeling very judgmental about others who are not following the rules the way you are, suspect that this is the problem. Often, when you have encounter something difficult or scary, someone helps you solve the problem and you know what do when you run into a similar problem. Unfortunately, sometimes nobody is there to help, you feel overwhelmed, have no idea what to do, so you do your best to forget about it and pay attention to something easier. You use some of your energy to keep that painful memory from messing up your daily life. But then, when something intense happens that is in some way like the early situation you tried to forget, you overreact! You suspect something is strange, but you can’t figure it out. That overreaction happens because the overwhelm from the time nobody could help intensifies your reaction to what is happening now. It’s easier than you think to untangle. How to untangle it is explained clearly in this book. Get it now.
Tools to Reduce Worry Now
In a world suddenly turned upside down, in ways only science fiction and horror writers could have imagined, I am touched by so many people lovingly offering what help they can give. I too have an offering—actually, two offerings. We have all lost our sense of security and predictability! No one knows what will happen next, but the warnings are dire, and we respond by creating images of the worst possible outcomes for ourselves and those we love. And sometimes those images are intrusive and hard to erase. Depending on your own preferences, one (or both) of these offerings will help you release these images and find more energy to manage this situation. • Dr. Willem Lammers and members of the international Logosynthesis community have released a deeply meditative video, Coping with Corona – Reduce Stress and Fear in 30 minutes! https://tinyurl.com/rsqxb3v • If you prefer something more logical, I am offering a process you can learn and use repeatedly to dissolve those intrusive images. 7 Steps to Reduce Worry Starting NOW, www.laurieweiss.com/reduceworry You can do this process in less than 10 minutes a day, with a daily email reminder. If you prefer a faster pace, you can also complete it all at once, in about an hour. Please share these anywhere you wish. Stay safe and healthy!
Virus Anxiety?
If you're feeling stressed and anxious because of the uncertainty about the coronavirus, you are certainly not alone. In the absence of information about what is going to happen, most of us create stories, and images of what might happen. In some cases, that's quite useful. If you listen to professional advice to prepare for a possible quarantine, you can picture what supplies you will need as you imagine moving through several weeks of at home isolation. Then you can shop accordingly and stockpile what you need. Too often though, the stories and images we create are based on worst case scenarios that are unlikely to happen. And those images scare us!!! If you, like me, are someone who tends to do this, you start to feel stressed and anxious. Then, the news stories tend to reinforce the stories (fantasies really) that you are imagining and your anxiety builds. I have respiratory problems that are pretty well managed, but I noticed imagining images of me, in a hospital on a respirator. I used the Logosynthesis sentences to dissolve those images. and they disappeared. Now Dr. Willem Lammers, developer of Logosynthesis is offering even more help. See Coping with Corona at https://tinyurl.com/rkg6s5o
Stories Matter
I don't know anyone who doesn't like to listen to stories. Do you? (OK, I don't mean long, drawn out, pointless narratives. I mean a story with a beginning, a middle and an end.) I learn from stories and I teach through stories. I learned about this young woman from the story her mom told me when she made the initial appointment for her daughter. I learned her daughter's story by asking questions and listening carefully for her answers. The story she told herself kept her from asking for protection when she needed it. Using the Logosynthesis sentences allowed her to let go of that story freed her to create a new one. Then, my telling the story of my work with her allowed me to teach you about how valuable this process was in healing a long -standing trauma--even without knowing all the details of the story. What are the stories you tell yourself that no longer serve you? Is it time for you to experiment with using this process to let them go?
Stories Store Energy
In a recent class, one student, Janie, admitted that she had trouble starting difficult tasks. As we explored the issue, she described how she was afraid that she would not be able to do them well enough to meet her own extremely high standards. Knowing that she had a very common problem, did not help. Lots of people procrastinate because they are afraid of not being able to accomplish the result they want. The important question is what story you tell yourself to explain why you need to reach this particular goal and what will happen if you don't. In Janie's case, she remembered a very dismissive college professor. He told her she should transfer to an easier class because she would not be able to pass his demanding one. Janie was furious and determined to prove him wrong. She did exemplary work and earned the highest grades in the class. BUT the story she told herself was that she would fail if she did not always produce perfect work. When she remembered the scene with the professor and used the 3 sentences to retrieve her energy from her story, she stopped procrastinating. What stories are you telling yourself that no longer serve you?
Read This Now!
As I put the finishing touches on the next book in what is becoming a Logosynthesis series, I am feeling blessed by the support of friends, colleagues and people I hardly know. This praise for Letting It Go, written several years ago, reminds me of what an incredible difference this simple to learn process has made in so many people's lives. If you are not yet one of them, you owe it to yourself to explore what it can do for you. The investment in money and time is very small and the potential for personal enrichment--in relaxation, peace and joy is huge. This is a gateway to an international community of fellow self-explorers. They include an incredibly wide range of people--from casual explorers to seasoned professional helpers. This book is a gateway. I invite you to join us. Oh, the new book? Embrace Prosperity: Resolve Blocks to Experiencing Abundance. It will be available within the next few weeks.
Resentment Reboot
"I'll never forgive _________ for _____________." How would you fill in the blanks? I often overhear this line in casual conversation as I sit in restaurants or other public places. Who wronged you? Sometimes those actions really did great harm--for people who were abused or neglected as children. Sometimes the harm is pretty minor. It took me a very long time to forgive my mother for giving away my science fiction book collection when I went away to college. The problem with never forgiving is that it does more damage to the person holding on to the resentment than to the person who is being resented. But it's not easy to let go. If you are holding on, a part of your energy is stuck, and you don't have it available to use for other things. Yet, until the Logosynthesis sentences were discovered, it also took a lot of focused attention to let go over and over again, until the change became permanent. Now it's pretty easy. All you need to do is insert the image of what happened into 3 sentences and say them aloud. Usually the resentment simply melts away. Letting It Go will teach you the sentences and how to use them. Get your copy now.
My Mother's Voice
I overslept this morning and a voice from my past arrived so vividly that I decided to share it with you. Remember, I have been involved in self-growth activities for about 50 years, so "I should know better," but I am no different than anyone else. It isn't about knowing, it's about being human. I intended to attend an early Yoga class but forgot to set my alarm. I thought about what to do and heard my mother’s voice in my mind strongly urging me to keep my commitment. The problem was that if I did that, I would not be able to eat breakfast. And I had a busy day planned. Like you, reducing unnecessary stress is high on my list of priorities. Logically it made sense to go to a later class, but the voice persisted. Fortunately, the Logosynthesis sentences are an important part of my world. I used "my mother’s voice telling me to keep my commitment" as a trigger and inserted it into the sentences. I felt immediate relief, ate breakfast and went to the later class. Try it yourself next time you hear a voice from your past you would like to release.
More About Stuff!
Did you try letting go of material things? I did--and saying the sentences helped a lot. I knew I had lots of energy stuck in an overcrowded closet! I avoided thinking about it, but when I did, I felt overwhelmed and anxious. My daughter agreed to help me weed out things that were not being used. Most of them were perfectly good and fit just fine, but I was choosing different things to wear on a regular basis. She was logical. I was conflicted. Each time we put something into the discard pile, I felt sad and remembered it’s history and I wanted to retrieve it--after all, I still liked it. She left me with a pile of clothes nearly 3 feet tall with instructions to put the discards into large bags and donate them to charity. Finally, I took my own advice and used the sentences with the trigger, "these clothes and all they represent." I felt immediate relief. Later, a friend promised to deliver them to a place where they would be immediately made available to people who could use them. I was relieved and happy as she drove away with the full bags. How about you? Will using this process help you release material things you no longer need? Try it and let me know.
Let Go? Really?
Some thoughts on letting go of stuff. A friend said she was going to experiment with using the Logosynthesis sentences to let go of physical possessions as she downsizes to move to a new city. Since I have lived in the same house for 50 years and also have problems letting go of possessions, trying the process on objects seems like a good idea. My first attempt was on a set of dishes that is still in my cabinet. As I used "these brown dishes" as a trigger and said each sentence, I remembered how I got attached to them in the first place. As a young married couple with very little money, we spotted these handmade dishes in a tiny new store. We loved them! They symbolized living abundantly! We managed to scrape together the money to buy them and used them to entertain friends. We have not actually used them in many years, but releasing them apparently got connected with holding on to a part of my life that has long since passed. As I continued saying the sentences and remembering, I realized that keeping the memories is not the same as keeping the dishes and I will be happy to release them. Try this yourself and let me know how it works!
Why Are You Reacting?
This is the critical question. It may seem like a mystery, but it does not need to be. My own reaction is wanting chocolate. When I am in that state, I think I know that chocolate will solve whatever is causing my stress now. Fortunately, I also know it won't solve my problem. I can usually tell the difference between having a taste for chocolate--wanting to appreciate its actual taste--and wanting to just eat it--the sooner the better. Recently I noticed my stress signal and stopped to consider why I was feeling so upset. Especially because everything seemed to be going well in my life. I finally realized that I was feeling stressed whenever I read a newspaper or listened to the news. The current political situation is so toxic that I kept visualizing scenes of disaster. The scenes I was visualizing were the actual trigger for my distress. The news articles themselves were mostly words and other people’s opinions. I used the scenes as the trigger in the sentences, repeated the sentences, and felt better almost immediately. I also decided to stop exposing myself to so much of what stimulated my imagination. Then I ate a single square of chocolate and enjoyed it thoroughly.
Practice to Learn
Yes, I have heard that perfect practice does make perfect--in sports. That is not what we are aiming for here. In meditation and other awareness focused work, practice is not meant to produce perfection. Instead it is meant to instill a way of being in the world that serves your development as a human being. Learning Logosynthesis follows this model. Your task is to learn to use the 3 Logosynthesis sentences. Most students of this process do memorize the sentences but that isn't required. You can always read them. Just reading about using the sentences can't teach you about the impact they are likely to have on your life. You need to practice using them in different situations--and the more frequently, the better. So the next time you experience stress or anxiety, take a few minutes to clarify what real or imagined sight, sound or other memory triggered your experience. Summarize that trigger in a few words and use that summary in the sentences. You won't know how it impacts you until you try it. And you are just learning--not striving to make anything in particular happen. More complete instructions are in this book. If you don’t have a copy yet, get it now.
Release Your Story
You are human--therefore you try to explain the world to yourself by telling yourself stories. We all do this. Humans have been doing it since the dawn of history. Just think about the ancient cave paintings which archaeologists show us the story lines. Many of these stories are an attempt to make the world make sense and to keep us safe. But a common problem is that, without information and guidance, these stories often have very little to do with the actual world of cause and effect that we live in. This is especially true when you try to make sense of overwhelming things that happen before you are 5 years old. Your brain is very immature, and you often can't tell the difference between something that is real and something you imagine. Just think about the monsters that you knew lived in the closet. If no loving adult helps you sort things out, you may keep on believing the story into adulthood and keep barricading the closet door. Your energy is tied up in that story and not available to help you manage the real world. It makes sense to examine those stories and release the energy stored in the ones that no longer serve us.
Dissolve That Stress
Stress is inevitable and you probably have lots of different ways of managing it during this very, very busy season. But if you are anything like me, sometimes it makes you want to run and hide. While hiding, it's a very good idea to think about what is triggering your reaction right now. Are you imagining being criticized for getting something wrong? If so, by whom? You can use the imagined sound of their voice as the focus of the 3 Logosynthesis sentences. Try it and just feel yourself relax. Or are you picturing a child's disappointed face if you can't afford the perfect toy she has on her wish list? Again, use the image as the focus of the sentences and watch your energy shift. If you want a copy of the sentences you can photograph and keep with you on your phone, here is a link to the download gift, Quick Start Guide: Using Logosynthesis to Release Anxiety, Stress and Worry at BooksByLaurie.com/guide Please download a copy for yourself today.
Energy You Don't Need
The process of Logosynthesis is about using words to open a pathway for energy to move. Many of my clients and students understand quite well how to take their own energy into a situation and leave it there. It makes complete sense. You give your energy to something when it grabs your attention and your attention stays focused on that event or person. It is harder to understand how you acquire someone else's energy. One way to understand this is when you remember being a child and your parents said something to you that you hated. You made a vow to never, ever say that horrible thing to your own children. Then, as a parent yourself, when you were stressed about something, those exact (horrible) words came tumbling out of your mouth! Yikes! When you were under stress as a child in that situation, you picked up your parent's energy and had been carrying it around ever since. You can use the second Logosynthesis sentence to return that energy to its source. "Where it truly belongs." It might not even belong to your parents, it might have come to them from somewhere else, so we use a more general term. What we know for certain is that you no longer need it and can let it go.
Giving Up Anger
It can be frightening to give up an old behavior pattern, even if keeping it causes problems. And suffering, seeing yourself as a victim is one of those patterns. The first pattern I was invited to give up was anger. I was living in a new city with a new group of friends and studying Transactional Analysis. I habitually used anger to get what I wanted in the world. I had learned to use it in a family and a culture that heard anger as a message that something was important. It was also a sign of strength. I was fearful that without it, I would be ignored. I agreed to experiment by avoiding using angry words and body language for a week. I was quite surprised when I discovered that asking for what I wanted instead of demanding it still got me what I wanted. And the people I asked seemed to treat me better afterwards. I reported my results and agreed to make the change permanent. I still get angry sometimes, but instead of manipulating others, I use that energy to solve problems You can easily release an old pattern using the Logosynthesis tools and you too can discover an even better way to operate in the world. And with Logosynthesis, the process is faster and easier.
Release Control without Damage
I asked an engineer friend to review my new Experience Abundance (with Logosynthesis) book and he asked, "Where is the right place in myself?" This is a fairly common question from people who operate almost entirely in a logical bubble. I know the immense value of logic. Not only that, but as a young science teacher, I was proud of training my students to think logically. It took a while to recognize that there is more besides logic for understanding the world. When I read Lawrence LeShan's book, Alternate Realities I began to understand much more clearly that what we believe about how things work makes it much easier for things to work that way. When we acknowledge that we are spiritual beings/energy systems, with our core True Self connected to all that is, by whatever name we call it, it is easier (but not impossible) to allow energy practices to work--as Logosynthesis does. And trying to figure out, logically, where that is, does not help at all. What does help is simply to relax and notice how your emotions and body respond to the words in each sentence and to allow your True Self to manage the rest.
Finding Triggers to Target
Early in my Logosynthesis practice, I wanted to stop thinking about an unpleasant encounter earlier in the day. I said the sentences using "that nasty man" as the target. Suddenly I found myself thinking about someone who had bullied me when I was in 5th grade. That is where I had frozen the energy that triggered my discomfort that morning. When I said the sentences again, targeting her, the obsessive thoughts vanished. But, before I said the sentences the first time, I had no idea that anyone from my distant past was involved. I did not identify the best trigger the first time around--and the process still worked for me. The lesson here is to not be concerned about finding the perfect target for your sentences. If you’re using Logosynthesis for your own growth, it is perfectly fine to just start with whatever you think happened just before you felt distressed. It probably won't be the clearest or best possible description of the trigger that needs to be dissolved, but it will be good enough to get you started. As you use this trigger in the sentences, you are likely to remember something else that is more precisely triggering your distress. Logosynthesis professionals can find very precise triggers to use as targets. You can locate Certified Practitioners at http://www.Logosynthesis.International/professionals/
Forget Stress? Really?
I recently read that 52% of Americans felt stressed in the 24 hours before they answered a survey! Are you one of them? If you are, it is now a lot easier to let go of the stress than you (or me) ever imagined it could be. Since the evening described here I have completely changed my response to situations that used to exhaust me. I learned the 3 sentences to say when I noticed that I was feeling tense or ruminating about a situation. Incidentally, I also learned to get rid of songs that kept replaying themselves in my head, but that's another story. When I say the sentences I have written about in this book, I often completely forget whatever was troubling me a few minutes before. I can retrieve the memory if I want to, but not the feeling that goes with it. Lots of others have had a similar experience and you can too. There are complete instructions available in this book and I am told that it is quite easy to learn to use them. You can get started right now.
Yes, It Works
I don't know exactly what I am talking about when I talk about energy. Yet this word is part of my daily conversation. I came back from an afternoon appointment and I said to my husband, "My energy is dragging and I'm hungry." After I had a snack, I felt re-energized. A friend of mine read auras--energy that surrounds our bodies that is sometimes visible. I have only seen an aura once. Yet, in an experiment, when we both shared casual conversations with the same people and compared our impressions of their energy, we had noticed pretty much the same things. Perceiving yourself or another person as an energy system seems as strange as imagining each of us as food processing systems. We are, we just don't usually focus on that aspect of our being. Still, I can perceive when energy shifts, and I imagine that you can also. Sometimes I can say specifically that tight muscles have loosened. Other times I generally feel lighter. I have studied different ways, physical (Yoga) and emotional (Psychotherapy) and now I have a new, faster and more targeted way to help those changes happen. If you are trying to shift your energy, try using the Logosynthesis process yourself. It has made a big difference for a growing number of people.
To Be in Control--or Not!
I automatically try to control as much as I possibly can. It's a habit. It makes me feel like I am in charge of things--whether I am or not. Do you do this too? Right now, I am noticing more problems than usual about this. I brought my computer out to my beautiful, quiet patio to enjoy being outside. However, the vine that shades my space is dropping flower petals on my computer keyboard and my head. The bees love the flower petals and are plentiful. Sometimes they get too close for comfort. One just landed on my keyboard. I keep hearing sirens. (There is a fire station and a hospital emergency room close by.) And now the neighbor's dog just started to bark. All this reminds me that I am definitely not in charge. It's a good lesson. I can either fight what is happening or relax and keep focused on my intention, to complete this note for you. When you use the tools I offer in this book, staying focused on your intention instead of trying to make things work the way you think they should will serve you best. Sometimes I use the sentences with the trigger, 'this belief that I am in control." You might try it and notice what happens.
The Power of 3 Sentences
Most people are awed when they first experience the power of the 3 Logosynthesis sentences. My husband and I recently presented an introduction to this method to a group of about 30 professional psychotherapists and coaches. When they asked to see a demonstration one experienced therapist volunteered to see if she could relieve her anxiety about a presentation she was making later in the day. After a few questions it became clear that her feeling of anxiety was triggered by a picture she had imagined of people ridiculing her. We used that image as the focus of the sentences. After repeating the first sentence, retrieving her energy from this image, energy started moving through her body and she began to shake. Participants were startled by how quickly the energy started to move. When she returned the energy she had acquired from others, her breathing calmed, By the time she had repeated the third sentence, retrieving her reactions to this imagined image of being ridiculed when she spoke, she was relaxed and smiling. Later in the day she delivered a wonderful presentation without any hint of anxiety. She was thrilled and so were we. Do try it for yourself. The book is readily available in ebook, print and audio formats. Get your copy now and start right away.
Why Can't I Just Let It Go?
Do you keep reliving bad experiences and wish you could just stop? Or maybe other people are sick of hearing your stories of how mean your (ex) best friend was to you or how your boss yells at you. Sometimes those memories come up at the most inopportune times and even stop you from going places you used to enjoy. There are lots of reasons you hold on to things like that. The most important one is that a part of your brain is built to protect you from repeating disasters. Lots of things in your everyday life trigger reminders of past disasters to keep you alert to the faintest possibility of having them happen again. Another reason is that you are always trying to complete things and many of these incidents are incomplete. You never got to say how angry you were. You were never comforted. Your boss never apologized. A part of you holds on to the belief or fantasy that you need to remember those incidents in order to complete them. Now you can actually let go of these memories with 3 simple sentences. Get your copy of this book and learn how now.
Is Suffering Optional?
Have you ever been hurt and spent a long time afterwards reminding all your friends and acquaintances how miserable you felt? You all suffered about it and maybe you still do. The first time I heard about the concept that Suffering is Optional, I did not believe that it could possibly be true. Then I learned the difference between pain, which is all too real, and the option to not make it worse than it is and to choose to do something else instead. I learned that if I kept replaying the memory of a former good friend treating me badly, I suffered. However, if I read a good book instead of replaying the memory, I felt much better. Sometimes I would remember, and the pain came back, but generally, I could control the situation. Then I learned Logosynthesis and with 3 simple sentences, I drained all my energy out of the memory, and could remember what happened without any pain at all. Then, suffering truly became optional. Now, if I keep thinking about any hurt, I use the process and get on with other things. All the instructions you need to do the same are in this book. So, if you would like to make suffering optional for yourself, get your copy and get started right now.
Just Try It!
Sometimes you experience a moment that changes the direction of your life. It happened to me in 2010. 9 years have passed since I first experienced the power of words to dissolve a long-standing problem in just a few minutes. At that time, I was planning to retire, but I was so intrigued I wanted to learn more. The more I learned, the more I discovered how using this new tool could build on a 40-year career of practicing psychotherapy to allow me to help relieve pain faster than ever before. Several years into this process, I realized that many more ordinary, non-professional people could use this tool to help themselves. And for many problems, they did not even need to work with a therapist. All they needed was access to the tool. When Dr. Willem Lammers, developer of Logosynthesis, suggested I write this book to make it easy for anyone to learn this simple, powerful process, I eagerly accepted the challenge. The experience of my readers attests to my success. If you have not yet tried Logosynthesis for yourself, I urge you to get your copy of this book today. It's a tool that really works.
Shame Hurts
John Bradshaw defined shame as the conviction that you--your very existence is a mistake. He once told me that his book, "Healing the Shame that Binds You" was the one that sold the most copies. Shame may be a natural reaction to being interrupted when you are doing something that is pleasurable. For example, a preschooler used his mother's lipstick to draw pictures on walls. She yelled and scared him, he couldn't manage it and reacted by feeling shame and freezing energy when nobody consoled him. The Logosynthesis sentences and processes in this book will help you release that frozen energy. Toxic shame is something else. When you are told over and over again that you are bad, useless, a slut or worse by someone who has power over you--like an alcoholic parent in a rage--you certainly don't have the resources to protect yourself. You might try to manage by pretending to be somewhere else--or that you are a rock--or trying to be good so the barrage will stop. That may stop the immediate pain, but it never goes away. It stays hidden but it takes life energy to keep a lid on the hurt. In this case, a Logosynthesis Practitioner can help you carefully release this recurrent trauma.
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Stories are just Stories
I have found it very easy to make up stories about how people don't like me. I recognize and dismiss those stories quickly these days but before Logosynthesis, it was difficult to do. I think it started the summer after 6th grade. I was invited to be in a club which I loved. After summer vacation, I was told that the club had disbanded. Later I learned that the same girls had formed a new club just like the last one, only this time I wasn't invited. At the time, I was devastated. The story I told myself was that they didn't like me because I was defective in some way. Nobody told me that this is just what girls this age typically do to each other or that I there might be a different explanation. When something similar happened to our daughter, my husband and I helped her create a different kind of story. We talked about how she was trying to be someone she wasn't in order to please those girls and suggested she find girls more like herself. She did and as far as I know, had no residual problems. If you have stories that still trouble you, learning to use the special Logosynthesis sentences will help you reclaim your energy to create better stories for yourself.
Phone Tree Victim
Have you ever been caught in a phone tree for way too long? Once the problem gets solved, do you feel happy and relieved, or are you still angry because of the time you were forced to spend waiting? Judging from the stories I hear in casual conversation; most people find the left-over anger doesn't just go away. They are angry because they still feel like helpless victims of another person's incompetence. There is no satisfactory ending and it is hard to let go and move on. Is that how you feel? If we examine the behind this persistent anger, it's usually something like, "It shouldn't be this way!" As long as you hold on to that belief, you keep on feeling angry. When you find a way to release the belief, the anger evaporates. If you say the three Logosynthesis sentences to reclaim your energy from this belief, chances are very good that it will evaporate. The target you should use is "This belief that the world should be different." Before you say the sentences, remember details of what the worst part of your wait was like. After you say the sentences, go back to your memory and notice what has changed. You'll find complete details in this book. Get your copy now.
Meet Your Self
Who is your Self anyway? I like to think of my Self as core part of me that is a part of and somewhat separated from Essence or All That Is or Universal Energy or Oneness. Pretty confusing to talk about. One way I think of the part of and separate from is likening it to my fingers and my hand. My fingers are distinct and yet they are an integral part of my hand. A spiritual practice I learned over 30 years ago is writing a daily journal to my Self to learn to connect with and use my inner wisdom. I address my Self as Friend and start each entry ‘Dear Friend...’ I write of things that I am trying to understand or make decisions about. I sign each letter, "Love, Laurie." Then I pause, wait and write a brief response using the following form. ‘Dear friend...’ and sign the letter ‘your Friend.’ I have no idea if this practice would be as valuable to you as it has been to me, but I invite you to try it. I know that over the years, listening and doing things that are congruent with my Self, rather than letting ego steer my decisions, has definitely helped me stay aware of my own connection to Essence.
Words Release Anxiety
Your target in Logosynthesis is the thing you experience just before you feel anxious or upset in some other way. It is the place where you froze some of your energy because you didn't have the resources to manage that experience sometime in the past. Your target is also the identification of that memory, often of an event, but sometimes of a smell or sound or picture that is the most uncomfortable thing about some event, put into words. Those are the words you insert into the 3 "magic" sentences that make all the difference. It is saying these sentences, complete with target, that allows you to reclaim your energy so you can use it in your life now. When you do this process, something changes in amazing ways. You can usually remember the experience that used to cause you distress and feel completely calm about the whole thing. I did not believe this was possible until I tried it myself. (Actually, someone helped me the first time.) If you are skeptical like me, I suggest you experiment and enjoy this amazing experience of freedom.
Old Trauma, New Problem
Trauma, that you may think was resolved long ago, can still have a surprising impact on your life today. There was a clear demonstration of that problem with a couple I saw recently. They were having "communication problems." That phrase is in quotes because most couples I have seen throughout my career consider that the reason they come to counseling. For more information about relationships, check my other books. Back to this couple. After 30 years together she was startled to discover that the reason she withdrew from a conversation came from mistreatment in 2 earlier marriages. He wanted desperately to discuss solving various day to day problems and she enjoyed those conversations when they managed to have them. But often, she felt disrespected by his responses to her ideas. Actually, he liked her ideas and challenged them to examine them more closely. She thought he was sending a message that she was stupid, so she withdrew. Why this thought??? Two previous husbands had abused her in different ways, but both had frequently told her that she was stupid. Now, any hint of disagreement led to her own interpretation that she was stupid. We created a target focusing on previous abuse. She felt better and he agreed to monitor himself and first say, “let’s discuss this.”
A Mysterious Reaction
I love the quote from Brene Brown. I love it because I know that it can be very scary to go back and remember some past experiences. I also know how helpful it can be to do so. It's especially helpful at the times you are startled by your own strong reaction to something. Once, years ago when I was much younger and much more flexible than I am now, I had a strange experience in a yoga class. The teacher instructed us to come out of one pose by doing a somersault. I hesitated, and after some encouragement, I did the move and immediately started crying hysterically. Certainly, a strange, strong reaction! When I explored the reaction later, during a therapy training session, I discovered that I had frozen feelings from a pretty mild childhood trauma. My father had lost his grip on me in the surf and I had momentarily been submerged and tumbled. It probably lasted no more than a few seconds. Apparently I had been brave and stifled the reaction that poured out so many years later. Knowing solved the mystery but not the problem. I still hated to be upside down. Now it would be simple to use the Logosynthesis words to free that energy and heal the trauma.
I Appreciate...
I recently had the opportunity to explore many wonders of science and technology. I was awed when I was privileged to see a machine that is used for preparing a cancer patients blood for a stem cell transplant. I certainly have no understanding of the technology that went into creating such a wonder. Yet I know people's lives have been extended because they trusted this process. I know that the creation of this machine did not occur spontaneously. It was built in small increments upon previously available technology. An example of this is the centrifuges that have been available for a very long time. I used them in my first lab assistant career right after I graduated from college over 50 years ago. The principle remains the same but the refinements and technology are amazing. Logosynthesis was not developed in a vacuum. Although the intuitive awareness of Dr. Willem Lammers brought the process to us, his intuition arose after many years of studying many different ways of supporting individual growth and change. I am grateful that I have the opportunity to share this development with all of you.
What Pushes Your Buttons?
A reader recently asked me to help her find a target for the 3 'magic' Logosynthesis sentences. As we talked about different buttons that triggered her distress. She had lots of stories to share. Nothing particularly stressful had happened to her and yet she was feeling some intense responses to incidents that she considered pretty minor. As I listened closely to understand what all those incidents might have in common, I heard her refer to a fundamental belief about how the world worked. I don't have permission to share her fundamental belief but a sample of other beliefs might be: Everyone is my friend. If I do what is right, everything will be okay. The man should be in charge of his family. People are not to be trusted. I am not enough. There are many others--most of them not particularly logical. With this reader/client, she inserted "this belief that..." into the sentences. When I asked her about her experience, she looked a bit stunned, said "I guess it's not always true," and began to sob. Giving up a cherished belief caused grief, and, it opened the possibility of change that has the potential for much greater happiness.
Little Stuff Adds Up
You have an opportunity to freeze energy almost every day of your life. It takes attention to manage your life and research has shown that the amount of attention we have available over a period of time is actually limited. It can be renewed by rest, meditation, time in nature, etc, but it's like only having a certain amount of money to spend each day. When it's used up, you need to figure out ways to manage without it. Giving something your attention is a way of using your available energy. Once your supply is getting low, you have less energy to respond to demands on your time and you react emotionally instead. You know those reactions are likely to get you into trouble at work or with another person, so you just quickly bury the whole messy business and go on to something else. That’s how you freeze energy. If you do this often enough, it will probably lead to problems later. Things like exhaustion and burn out are some common results. Taking time to reclaim that frozen energy using the Logosynthesis sentences can keep the problems from building up. You'll know when you need to do this when those negative experiences resurface and get stuck in your mind. Take time to let them go!
It's A Scary Story
Do you feel anxious about something that hasn't happened and probably never will? You're not alone. When you were around 4 or 5 years old you learned to make up stories to explain the complicated world to yourself. Sometimes those stories were scary, like monsters under the bed. You could use stories like that to keep you from following your impulses to do things you 'knew' or imagined would get you in trouble--like getting out of bed and playing with your toys. Sometimes you froze your energy around those stories into beliefs about who you are and what you deserve in the world. That frozen energy can be released using the 3 Logosynthesis sentences. When you feel anxious about something that might happen you have created a scary story that may or may not have something to do with reality. You react to your stories just as if they were real because that is the way people work. It does not mean there is anything wrong with you--it just means you are trying to explain your reaction to something. You can use the sentences here too. Use them to take your energy out of the story you are telling yourself and free it to have available to use to do whatever you want or need to do.
Professional Help Helps
This week I have had sessions with two very different clients who had been practicing Logosynthesis after reading this book. Each of them contacted me for a similar reason, they are each facing anxiety about an important current challenge that is rooted in the past and that neither of them could seem to change by themselves. They each explained how they believed that a (very different) traumatic incident in the past was related to the current challenge. In each case, they were not sure what to target because the past incident was complicated. My work with each of them involved uncovering the parts of the incidents that had caused them each the most pain and working with that frozen energy. Each time we used the sentences about a certain part of the original trauma, the amount of distress they experienced diminished just slightly. And each time a new memory or image would emerge as a new target. Eventually, in each case, the distress disappeared and they each felt ready to address the new challenges in their lives. Sometimes this work is simple, but sometimes it can be quite complex. Don't hesitate to ask for help when you need it. Like these clients, your relief can be much closer than you imagine.
Teens! Yikes!
I was recently talking about teenagers who are currently rebelling against schoolwork with several of my friends. Truly a frustrating situation for parents and grandparents and anyone who cares about the kids and how what they are doing now will impact their lives in the future. Looking back on successful and productive lives, we started reminiscing about our own, very varied, experiences as teens. We ranged from one with an unrecognized learning disability whom everyone, including himself, thought was stupid, to me who was a college bound honor student. Through various routes, we had all arrived safely at that day. And we all had baggage, frozen energy, related to those early experiences. We had all told ourselves stories about what we believed it was necessary for us to do because of our situations. My friend had a story about needing to be sneaky and hide his learning problems from others. I had a story about always needing to do my best which led to exhaustion and guilt, depending on the situation. Our conclusion was that whatever happens, no matter how well intended, we were all entirely capable of putting a spin on it that was, perhaps, temporarily useful in the short term, but froze energy that needed to be reclaimed later.
Procrastination? Frozen Energy? Ambivalence?
"I don't want to...!" "Nobody can make me...!" "I'll do it when I am damn good and ready!" A very useful set of phrases for finding out why I (or anyone else) is procrastinating. I don't want to make that phone call! I really don't! I hate telephone trees and waiting and listening to loud, obnoxious music while someone lies to me about how important I am to them. I know I need the information I might get if I wait long enough and I have it on my list and I do have time--I just keep forgetting! Nobody can make me make the phone call. I acknowledge my own power. I am in charge. My energy might be stuck or frozen in a past experience of waiting. I can use the Logosynthesis sentences to free my frozen energy. I acknowledge that I will do it--eventually--when certain conditions are met. Once those conditions of being damn good and ready have been met, I will make the call. Or maybe I will find another way to get the information I need. Sometimes all I need to do to release my energy is acknowledge my ambivalence. Sometimes I need more. Try this and see how the process works for you.
Overreaction for a Reason
Years ago, my yoga instructor insisted that I was strong enough to do a somersault. I was, but the instant I was upside down, I started to cry hysterically. I had absolutely no idea why! Clearly a mysterious overreaction. What I did know is that I had avoided being upside down for as long as I could remember. Exploring this in a psychotherapy group I found myself remembering an experience from very early in my life when I was accidentally tumbled in the surf. That incident probably lasted a few seconds until I was rescued, but it clearly overwhelmed my resources to cope with or explain my terror. I froze the energy and to avoid activating it, avoided similar physical experiences. When you find yourself overreacting to an otherwise ordinary situation, it's probably because of frozen energy from somewhere in your past. Using the incident that preceded the overreaction as a target for the Logosynthesis sentences will help you reclaim your frozen energy. I often find that when the sentences are used, some of the resulting images and memories are of a past incident where you did not have the resources to cope with a difficult situation. Using the sentences with that target usually resolves the problem so you are no longer triggered by similar situations in the present.
Just Do It!
What are you waiting for? We all make excuses for not trying something new, different and perhaps, a little uncomfortable. I am not leaving myself out of this. It is a favorite strategy of mine. I get all ready to do something but keep finding reasons to wait. Circumstances are not quite perfect. I don't have the exact right problem to use this on. For me, now, it's about making short videos. I will get past this and you can too. Once a friend and I spent months passing a "Just do it!" button back and forth. We were each doing a major project--mine was my PhD dissertation. Both projects were hard. We supported each other until the projects were complete--and she gave the button to someone else who needed it. So, what kind of support do you need to make the small investment in yourself of learning to let go of stress by using the Logosynthesis sentences? In the final chapter of this book, excerpted here, I offer tips to help you get started. No, you can't predict what will happen. Neither can I. But whatever you are facing is probably a memory of something you have already survived. If you run into trouble, contact me directly. I will help.
Discovering Your Story
You made up stories just like Emily's. It is almost impossible to release the effects of stories like this until you discover what they are. Almost anything can trigger the memory. Distress can lead you to it, like it did Emily or you can stumble on it in different ways. I did when I tried to release another issue. Like many of my readers, I strongly believe that because I am so blessed it is my responsibility to share my blessings by helping fix problems in the world. As my energy diminishes with age, I simply can no longer help by doing some things I used to do. I used the sentences to let go of a nagging guilt and was surprised by this memory: I was sobbing very quietly, under the covers because I had been told that one of my best friends was in the hospital with polio. I was about 8 and I knew my parents were worried and I didn't know what to do. The story I told myself was about being responsible for helping. I needed help to learn to manage being sand and helpless. I didn't ask, didn't get it and froze my energy instead. I wasn't responsible then and I am not responsible now for fixing things that are beyond my control.
Ask For Help
Stress can overwhelm you at any time in your life. But when you recognize it when it is happening, you can avoid freezing your energy to contain your pain. I was reminded of this recently when a family member became gravely ill. Of course, I felt my own personal stress, but the overwhelming stress came from my need and ability to support other family members who were more directly impacted by the situation. I thoroughly depleted my energy when I gave them the help they needed. At other times in my life I might have been stoic and buried my own pain so that I could be there for others. I could have kept functioning but frozen my energy. However, understanding the process of the damage frozen energy can inflict I did something different. Since my resources were depleted, I called on my good friends who knew nothing about the situation and asked for their emotional (energetic) support. I am blessed with friends who are loving and caring and were more than happy to listen and offer me what I needed--and offer prayers for the ill family member as well. Fortunately, our worst fears were not realized. He has recovered sufficiently to be with us a while longer. And I am left with gratitude instead of frozen energy.
Empower Yourself!
The very first book I wrote was eventually published under the name, "I Don't Need Therapy but Where Do I Turn For Answers?" My company is Empowerment Systems. The theme of my professional life has been to help people to help themselves whenever possible. That is why I wrote this book. The Logosynthesis tool can be an amazingly powerful way to start to take charge of your own emotional life. In my experience, learning to use any new tool can be a challenge. That is why I worked to make this book as easy to use as possible. However, you need to practice using any almost tool before you can use it comfortably. In the last chapter I offer a list of tips that will make it easier to learn to make this tool a part of your life. Use the tool! Use the tips! Create a more peaceful and joyful life for yourself. (And, of course, you don't always need to do it yourself. If you need help, a link to a list of Certified Logosynthesis Practitioners is included in the book.)
Letters To My True SELF
A very long time ago, I was given an assignment to do while I participated in a yearlong training program. Every morning I was to write a letter to my true Self. Then wait to listen for the answer and write that answer as a letter from my true Self back to me. Over 30 years later, I am still doing this. The I and me are the self I usually live with. It is the self that lives inside my own skin. Over the years I have said lots about my frustrations and feelings. My true Self is the part that goes beyond my skin and connects with the love and wisdom of the universe. In my letters that begin DEAR FRIEND, I do my best to tell my story which often includes where my energy is obviously stuck. The answers I get are often just a few words long and remind me of how to stay focused on the most important aspects of my world. They are signed, YOUR FRIEND. Since I learned to use Logosynthesis, the energy release and reclamation system I teach in this book, as I write, I notice the stuck places and include a note that I will use the process to release the energy. My FRIEND writes back to affirm my decision.
Practice, Practice, Practice
When I was 9 years old I remember being reduced to tears by an argument with my grandmother about how to dry a glass. She wanted to show me a new and easier way but it was different and hard for me to manage. I still like to feel competent. When I start something new, or something I have not done for a long time, I feel awkward. When I feel awkward I am readily distracted. Sometimes I even manage to forget that I was trying something new and go right back to doing whatever I was doing before. When I was learning to use Logosynthesis to recover my energy from the various places it was stuck, I was definitely awkward. My targets weren't right. I got the sentences mixed up. I started doing other things after I had said one sentence and never got back to the next sentence, and most of all, I completely forgot about my new tool when it would have been very helpful to use it. I needed to be reminded. Like other tools, this one only works if you remember to practice enough to feel competent when you use it, and then use it to resolve your own stuck energy often known as anxiety and stress.
Don't Believe Everything You Think
I am in the process of completing a really big project. I am working on republishing much of my earlier work as a series called Secrets of Happy Relationships. One morning the "end of project self-talk" came on full blast, before I was even completely awake. The chatter included, "The competition in this field is huge. Who do you think needs this anyway? This won't work. It's not your usual kind of series...." and much more that I don't want to share because you might believe it and none of it is true. Fortunately, I quickly noticed the pattern. It is common and sometimes associated with "Fear of Success." I have been through it before as have many of my author friends. Its just a story we tell ourselves in response to the stress of consciously and carefully completing our work. This time I managed it with Logosynthesis. I said the sentences and the energy in the story dissipated immediately. If I had believed the story, I could have used it as justification to delay the release of the project until I had reviewed it one more time--or maybe worse. It's easy to believe stories like this but I urge you to consider using these tools and just letting them go. Just remember, don't believe everything you think."
Reclaim Lost Energy
Are there times when you feel yourself just dragging? Have you noticed how differently you feel when you are excited and energetic? Would you like to have that energy available whenever you want it? I don't know about you, but I often feel draggy about doing things I should do. I may even want to do them, but something holds me back. When I examine what that something is, I often discover that, sometime in my past, I had a difficult time managing a similar situation. I used to lose my energy when I needed to ask someone for a favor. Exploring, I discovered that in the past I was told it was not polite to ask—that I was supposed to wait until something was offered. I have seen children in the grocery store learning a similar lesson. A busy mom, frustrated by a child asking for everything she sees, snaps "Stop begging or you won't get anything." If mom carries out her threat, the child freezes the asking energy. Years later, the energy is still frozen. Letting It Go contains a blueprint for discovering where you froze your energy and how to release it using only three simple sentences. If this is one of your challenges, read the book to find a way to reclaim the energy your frozen energy.
Unnecessary Protection
Would you accept the advice of a 4-year-old about how you ought to life your life now? I doubt that you would consciously choose to do that, but you may be doing it anyhow. Melissa learned that she was allowing the 4-year-old she had once been to influence her life. When she was 4 her mother became seriously ill and Melissa was told she needed to be quiet and not bother her mother. She did the best she could, but the day she lost control of herself and screamed about wanting a special toy. That day her mother was hospitalized and disappeared from Melissa’s life for many weeks. Melissa concluded that by wanting something for herself she had made her mother sicker. To try to protect herself she decided that wanting things was dangerous. She did her best to never want anything again. She essentially froze her 'wanting energy.' As an adult woman she lived a life of serving others and never asked for anything for herself, unknowingly following the advice of her 4-year-old self. It wasn't until she learned to use Logosynthesis to reclaim her frozen 'wanting energy', that she was able to again realize that she was worthy of wanting things for herself instead of just caring for others.
Instead of Control
Most processes of guided self-change like coaching, cognitive behavior therapy and many self-help books are about learning to control your behavior. You are encouraged to choose goals and behave in ways to help you achieve your goals. If you’re not doing the right thing, you’re supposed to change that behavior and do something that is more effective in helping you move in your chosen direction. This is very useful when it works, but unfortunately, most of the time it only works for a short time. That's because it addresses only one small part of who you really are. Your logical self. The larger part of who you are consists of your emotional self. Some systems call that part the elephant while your logical side is the rider. It is a great analogy showing the different power of each part. It is hard to move an elephant in a direction the elephant does not want to go!!! So how can we help the elephant change its mind and want something different? That’s where Logosynthesis, the process taught in this book comes in. There is a core Self to each one of us that knows what we need. Most of the time we ignore that still, small voice. Learn this process to let your Self direct your lasting growth.
Inventing Chapter One
Writing may be an addiction. It's about being addicted to the incredible feeling that comes from helping you, my reader, improve your life. The more readers I reach, the better I feel. Writing a book only happens when there is something important that I understand and that I know you and many others don't. I want all of you to know what it is and use it to transform some part of your lives. My first challenge is to convince you, that I have something really useful for you and that it will be worth your time to learn about it. So, in the very first few words, I need to intrigue you. In this book I do that by reminding you of a problem in your life that you would love to solve--in this case, how to stop feeling so anxious. Then I need to convince you that I have a useful way to help you solve that problem. What better way to do this than to tell you a story about myself and how I solved a similar problem. That also gives me a way to introduce myself and help you feel hopeful that I can actually help you. That’s what the first chapter is for. Then I need to build each succeeding chapter to fulfill my promise.
It Takes a Village...
It takes a village, or at least a team, to produce a book and to do lots of other things. There are some things that I can do myself, but they are easier and work better when I have support. So if you are trying to be strong instead of asking for help in any area, keep reading. Many months ago, my primary care physician discovered that my EKG was problematic. I have always taken very good care of myself and I was shocked. I shared the information with my husband and a very few good friends. Months later when the Cardiologist decided I needed to have a scary (to me) procedure, my inclination was to keep it to myself and a few close friends. I struggled and finally found myself writing and sharing about it in a writing group. The outpouring of loving support was overwhelming. That gave me courage to share with others and ask for their support. The experience was amazing. Knowing how love surrounded me helped me move peacefully through the process. It worked! I am better and with far more energy than I have had in a long time. And I am so grateful! So, when you need help, let your village know.
Making the Hard Part Easier
Some things are simple but not easy. Sometimes it is a challenge to figure out just what it is that you react to by feeling anxious or stressed. Those feelings are triggered by something but sometimes they seem to come out of thin air. That is one of the reasons I developed a free 7-day Challenge to help anyone learn to reduce worry, stress and anxiety in a very short time. It takes about 10 minutes a day and you get reminders each day. Of course, you can do it at your own speed. Just save the reminders and open them when you have time. Some people would rather do the challenge all at once and that is fine too. You can get more information and a link to receive your own subscription to Secrets of Reducing Unnecessary Worry at www.LaurieWeiss.com/Challenge Get it now! FREE
Skinny, Rich, Happy???
I love the book title, If How-Tos Were Enough... because it refers to a prevalent FALSE belief that willpower and information is all it takes to accomplish anything. That goes along with demeaning people who just can't make some things work that way. We all set our automatic pilots when we were children. We may have reset them if we encountered trauma sometime later in life, but we each have a part of our brain wired to protect us from anything that part of the brain considers dangerous. Our willpower does as much good as trying to change the locked in direction of the automatic pilot of a boat or plane. You can pull it in the direction you want it to go and hold tight. It will go that way for a while until you get tired and let go. Then it reverts back to automatic. It takes a different process to reset your brain's automatic pilot. There are many ways to do this--its just that willpower isn't one of them. Logosynthesis, the process I teach you in this book, is one of them. One of the most simple and effective ways discovered so far. It is easy to learn and practice. You just need to do is learn it and remember to use it.
Creating and Recreating Stories
Who influenced the stories you told yourself as a child? Much of my career as a Psychotherapist has been about helping clients answer that question and then decide whether they would still listen to those influencers today. Those stories matter, and it is important to decide whether or not they are still useful guides for your thoughts, feelings and behaviors. Sometimes those stories about yourself were created under distressing circumstances when you had very little power to change what was happening. Instead, you used the little power you had to try to explain to yourself what has happened to you. As I write this now, we are being bombarded by words and images that are reawakening long forgotten or suppressed memories of distressing past events. If that is happening for you, I hope you take the time to re-examine the stories you told yourself when those events took place. Use t his time to re-examine how those stories have impacted your life and decide whether you would like to create new stories that are more useful to you now. Use the process described in this book to help you release the old stories to make space for the new ones.
Take That First Step
Many of my clients describe themselves as control freaks and judge themselves very harshly. They want to be certain that they can control the results of whatever they do. The problem is, it is impossible to know in advance exactly what will happen when you use this procedure. That’s why much of Letting It Go is focused on explaining why and how this procedure will be useful despite its unpredictability. It is all about releasing immediate control of your experience to your deepest Essence so that your experience can be guided from a part of yourself that is devoted to what is best for you. When I wrote the specific instructions about how to use the Logosynthesis sentences to relieve your own anxiety or stress I wanted to do three things. • First, I wanted to make the entire process very easy to use. • Second, I wanted to help readers understand that the results of saying the sentences are very variable and unpredictable. • Third, I wanted to help my readers avoid any kind of judgement about either the process or themselves. Happily, judging by the reviews, I succeeded. Readers have reported following the instructions, despite their initial skepticism, allowed them to release difficult experiences and memories easily and quickly.
Signals
When I work with a client to help release anxiety, I watch and listen carefully for signals that the conversation has touched a deep level of truth. It is only then that I know that my client's Self or deep awareness is accessible. The signals I hear may be a change in intensity, in pitch or in tempo. My own attention shifts and I may say to myself, "what just happened?" I may focus on a particular phase while the conversation continues. If our conversation is only through sound though, I miss a lot of information. When I see my client, I see a hint of tears or a slight smile. I see crossed arms or a foot suddenly start to sway. Again I wonder, "what was that?" I don't know any details about what those signals mean. We all can and do respond to those signals in each other regularly. Sometimes our response is to pretend we don't notice. When you send signals like that to others, you can become aware of them too. DON'T IGNORE THOSE SIGNALS! They mean that your Self is sending you a message. When you pay attention to those messages you learn where you have frozen the energy that is creating the anxiety you need to release.
Beyond Body and Mind
I did not write these eloquent words. This description is written by Dr. Willem Lammers of Switzerland who discovered and developed Logosynthesis, an elegant new energy therapy. Dr. Lammers asked me to write this self-help book about his discovery to make this process for relieving anxiety quickly and easily because he wanted to make it available to as many people as possile. He honored me by writing this Preface. Logosynthesis is spreading quickly through Europe and has been used in Canada as well. It is just beginning to become known in the United States. Unlike many professional tools, you really can learn to use this process yourself--from this book--in just an hour or two. It is a deceptively simple tool. You just need to identify the image of what concerns you, say three sentences and allow the time to notice how you respond to each one. Readers have been astonished at the power of the tool to help them let go of problems that have caused them distress. In the hands of a trained professional it is even more powerful and has been used to relieve many deep and long-lasting challenges. Everything you need to get started is in this book. Try it yourself and experience its magic.
Unraveling Mysteries
Sometimes what you are afraid of is obvious and makes sense. At other times it is a complete mystery. You react to something because it is similar to something distressing that happened in the past. The problem is, it is much more comfortable to not think about those events and so you use some of your life energy to freeze or wall off your memory of those events. Sometimes you remember the event but hide the emotions associated with it deep within yourself. Sometimes you remember everything but never think of it being related to your current fear. Often just using the Logosynthesis sentences about your current distress is enough to bring those connections to your attention. When that happens, using the sentences on the unraveled mysteries will quickly recover your lost energy and help you solve your current problem.
What Are You Letting Go?
The first time I watched someone lead a volunteer through the Logosynthesis process during a workshop, it did not make much sense. When you try to figure out how to remove your energy from a memory or a disaster that you only imagine, you can't--and I was busily trying to figure it out. The part of us that figures things out in order to manage our world is sometimes called the ego. Many spiritual traditions urge us to strive to move beyond the ego and experience the world in a different way. However, the ego is an important tool for managing ourselves and our worlds and most people cling to using it to handle the problems of living in the world. The first time I actually experienced this process working (Chapter1), I realized that this was something different. I experienced something deeper, my essence, doing something my ego did not know how to so. I still don't know how to make Logosynthesis work. Instead I had to let it work. Somehow these words activate essence, that part of us that experiences the unity beyond the separation of all things. It is that essence that manages to shift energy and allow the words to help us find peace.
Suppose It Is All Only Energy
Looking at your life as a problem of energy flow makes blaming yourself for what might not be working rather obsolete. Nobody is to blame for your response to stress. It comes from your innate physiology and the circumstances you encounter and the resources you have available to manage that stress. When the energy of a difficult experience overwhelms your ability to process it, you freeze that energy to protect yourself. It is bumping into the frozen energy that causes you to feel anxious. A part of your brain says to stay away from those frozen places. The problem is those brain places are awakened when something happens that is something like the stress you couldn't manage in the first place. It could be a sound, a smell, a sight or a memory or fantasy that comes too close to the frozen energy. In using the Logosynthesis sentences, we dissolve the frozen energy so your system no longer feels like it needs protection. There is no blame and no shame. It's just freeing frozen energy you can use to enjoy your life now.
Avoiding Failure
It took me many months to create the habit of using Logosynthesis routinely when I felt upset. I would either do nothing or use the tools I already had been using for years. I would simply forget that this tool was available to me. Often my husband, also studying this process, would remind me, "Use the sentences." Then I put copies of the sentences in various places where I would stumble across them. Eventually I would be replaying a scene in my mind and remember that I could easily turn it off if I wanted too. Then I realized that I sometimes wanted to keep suffering instead of solving the problem. Somehow, my distress allowed me some kind of reward. (Chocolate!) Eventually I decided I either could just get my goodie, whatever it was, just because I wanted it, and simply said the sentences about what was bothering me. If you want to avoid failure in using this powerful tool to release your own anxiety and toxic stress you too will need to practice using it on a fairly regular basis. You will also need to set up some reminder systems so that Logosynthesis eventually becomes a part of your life.
Target Hunting
Selecting an appropriate target is the heart of using this amazing process. It answers the question of what is causing this discomfort. However, is is NOT important to get it right the first time. My first practice session completely ended my persistent discomfort with air travel. When I returned home from my first Logosynthesis training , I noticed that I did not feel nearly as overstimulated by the day long trip as I had felt in the past. I didn't really understand why because I didn't remember this experience for several years. I forgot that my first target was something about my discomfort with plane travel. Not much happened when I said the 3 sentences. When I was asked about my experience of sitting quietly and simply noticing my internal responses, I reported remembering a childhood experience of riding a subway train at rush hour. The experience was “these bodies pushing in on me and squishing me.” That became my second target. Often people start with one target and while they say the sentences a very strong image or memory appears. Sometimes its the remembered sound of someone's voice saying particular words or even a remembered smell. The new memory then becomes a powerful focus for saying all the sentences again. My second target made the difference.
Letting Go of Stuff
Tucked away in the bottom of a closet I have a very beautiful and very dilapidated, stained white cashmere sweater. It has elaborate beading showing the initials of my maiden name. One of my cats once discovered it tucked into a half-zipped garment bag and decided it was a wonderful place to deliver her kittens. Yes, today I'm talking about letting go of physical stuff. Logosynthesis works for that too--but only if I take time to do it. Even with physical things, maybe especially with physical things, my attachments persist. That is often because stuff represents much more than what it is. So what does this object represent to me? It was an engagement gift from my mother-in-law who did the beading 58 years ago. She died a few years later. I never got to know her very well. It is time for me to let go of lots of stuff. I will say the 3 Logosynthesis sentences to recover my energy from this sweater, and perhaps from my fantasies about my mother-in-law, and then let it go. If you are having a hard time getting rid of stuff, you may want to try the same process. The target, in this case, “this beaded sweater,” can be followed by the words “and all that it represents.”
Experiment Yields Results
An email I received this morning blew me away. A gentleman in his late 60's shared the impact of experimenting with Logosynthesis. He writes, "For some time I have been trying to cope with Meige Syndrome" (involuntary, irregular muscle contractions – of the lower face, jaw and neck, as well as of the eye.) ... after reading about Logosynthesis "started to realize that I was trying to cope with a pattern of symptoms rather than looking toward underlying sources of the problem." In his letter he describes how the problem got worse over the years and the many different methods that have brought him only partial and temporary relief of symptoms. "Following your suggestions in _Letting It Go_, I have begun using Logosynthesis one "slice" at a time on various specific 'targets' as I recognize them. I can report very significant improvements in the ability to relax tension in the body ..." [This] "has been the most promising light for me so far in finding my way out of this affliction!" I am thrilled with this information and the hope this process provides. Please experiment with it and share what you learn.
Finding Your Target
Everyone I teach to use this process experiences finding the frozen energy as a challenge. I did too when I was learning to think this way. That's because we tend to think about our own discomfort instead of what causes that discomfort. Once, before I had even considered becoming a psychotherapist, I witnessed a demonstration by the late Dr. Eric Berne, author of the famous book, Games People Play. He was showing what most people think is the problem by pounding on the thumb of one hand with his other fist and loudly proclaiming, "Dr., my thumb hurts!" Dr. Berne clearly demonstrated that the patient (or in this case, all of us students) is focused on the pain in the thumb, not on the pounding fist that is causing the pain or on whatever belief the patient holds that compels him to use his fist in that way. In order to learn to use Logosynthesis successfully, it is important to learn to notice either the fist or the belief driving it. Throughout this book I have offered lots of examples of how to focus this way. In addition, I have created a tool, a 7-day challenge, Secrets of Reducing Unnecessary Worry, you can download free to practice this kind of thinking. Get it at www.LaurieWeiss.com/7daychallenge.
What Are You Tolerating?
I often have someone offer me water or a cough drop when I have not even noticed I am coughing. I have a chronic cough that is being treated medically and this note is not about that. I'm just using it as an example of what a coach calls a toleration--something that is somewhat annoying that remains a part of my life. Often, like the woman in this example, we all tolerate things because we simply don't have the tools to remove them from our lives. Or we may believe that it would be difficult or expensive in time or money or other resources to take effective action. I've noticed that in book reviews of Letting It Go, readers are reporting that they are using what they learn to let go of many things they have been tolerating for years. I am doing so also. I remember an old resentment or, sometimes, a compulsion, and realize that I no longer need to tolerate it being a part of my life. I do the Logosynthesis process and usually it simply evaporates. It doesn't work on everything though. I can release a desire for sweets pretty quickly, but the cough is still persisting.
This Really Works
How do you spread the word about something new that can make a big difference in people's lives without being dismissed as a crank, weirdo or fanatic? I am thrilled to share this week's news that Dr. Willem Lammers, the discoverer and developer of Logosynthesis has successfully accomplished this feat. At the recent Energy Psychology Conference in Florida, Logosynthesis won the jury's award and Dr. Lammers received the Association for Comprehensive Energy Psychology (ACEP) prize "for a major contribution to the field" on 5th May. Logosynthesis has now reached a new level of visibility and recognition in the field of Energy Psychology, which will open up more opportunities for further research activities. The professionals working with this process has steadily increased over the past 12 years. Most of these professionals are in Europe and there are still very few in the United States and a growing number in Canada. We are all very excited about this boost which will help enable Logosynthesis to enhance the lives of more and more people. When you start to practice the simple but profound technique taught in this book, you too can experience the joy of knowing your own essence.
A Miraculous Transformation?
I used to respond to--get triggered by--the noise and crowds in airports. I would feel tense and stressed, and would spend energy trying to block out my awareness of what was happening around me. I would arrive home exhausted. After a Logosynthesis session when I thought nothing had happened, I spent the next day flying home and did not even notice the hubbub. I can remember my previous upset and exhaustion, but I have now gone 8 years without reacting that way. When a partner in a workshop helped me identify a target for releasing my upset about air travel, I had a vague memory of a scene when I was 8-years-old and in a New York subway train at rush-hour. I experienced "being squished." I didn't even remember that part of my work until several years later when I found some notes from the session. All I knew was that I responded very differently to air travel. The explanation for this (what seemed to me) miraculous transformation is that I had frozen my energy during that overwhelming experience when I was 8-years-old and had already learned to act like a “good girl” and not show my feelings. By saying the 3 Logosynthesis sentences, I had reclaimed my frozen energy.
Tracking Your Own Story
Sometimes it is hidden in plain view but you can't see it until someone points it out to you. Fortunately, that happened to me when I was about 30. I was attending a meeting of professionals for the first time and stumbled over someone's protruding feet as I approached my seat. "I'm sorry. I'm just so clumsy." was my automatic response. One of the senior people at the meeting, that was partially about the stories we create, asked a question that illuminated a story that I was completely unaware of. He asked, "Who told you you were clumsy?" Once I thought about the answer I realized that my father and other members of my family had been teasing me and laughing at me for being clumsy ever since I was a small child. I adopted their story about me and accepted it as truth. Much later, after I had finally learned some physical skills, I learned that many people need to be taught those physical skills and that my abilities were well within the normal range. I was not especially clumsy after all. Are you accepting as truth limiting stories that you created from a uninformed experience in your past? Listening to your own language and assumptions may help you to recognize it.
There Is So Much More
Stress and anxiety relief can often be a do-it-yourself project. For many simple things you encounter, all you need is to learn, and practice using, tools like the ones offered in this book. And yesterday I was reminded of what incredible work people have been doing in this field to help people who are so traumatized by stress that they can barely function. I spent the day attending a virtual workshop with Peter A. Levine, Ph.D., developer of Somatic Experiencing, a body focused treatment for toxic stress. His work, the work of Bessel Van der Kolk, M.D. and others on the cutting edge of this field have so much to offer and so much to teach about healing that I am awed. This field is certainly worth many lifetimes of study and I am thrilled to learn more about how many different areas are being carefully examined. If you are someone who struggles to maintain your equilibrium on a moment by moment basis, please seek the help of an experienced therapist who is integrating and applying the information in Logosynthesis or one of the other developing fields. Healing is definitely possible and does not need to involve indefinite drug use.
Trusting Without Understanding
After nearly a year of attending The Mystery School with Jean Houston I was very confused. I was different in ways that pleased me but I did not understand how the change had happened. I did not know exactly why I flew 2000 miles across the country once a month to do the strange things that were a part of the process of this training. I only knew that I felt extremely drawn, almost compelled to be there. I also trusted that nothing Jean did would be harmful to me. This trust was based on a personal experience 10 years earlier, on reading her books and on the experience of a thoughtful friend. I was very fortunate that when I enrolled in this process, I had been invited by another trusted teacher, Dr. Lawrence LeShan, to consult with him about my experiences. As I sat in Larry's office he questioned me carefully about how I had changed. Then he congratulated me for moving into the next stage of my maturation. I had accomplished a major growth step simply by following appropriate instructions. Maybe that is one of the reasons I was open to learning about Logosynthesis. I hope you are willing to experiment with this very safe process to allow it to change your life.
Hold On or Let Go?
Holding on to something familiar makes you feel safe. There is nothing at all wrong with that. You are a human being and that is what humans do, both physically and emotionally. When you're little you literally cling to your parents. As you get a little bigger you may cling to a familiar blanket or toy to manage anxiety in an unfamiliar situation. Then you hold on to familiar ideas. In kindergarten, my son and one of his friends almost came to blows when one claimed that the tooth fairy was really Mom. You may even have been told how wrong it would be to give up this belief. You are afraid of not belonging--of being excluded from your friends or family if you give up some old belief. Furthermore, you suspect that you will feel strange and uncomfortable without your belief (or memory or object or hope.) Then you watch your favorite media which also reminds you of how important it is to keep holding on. You feel even more anxious about letting go. The truth is that learning to let go opens you to new growth and possibilities and actually relieves that anxiety. Use the tools in this book to help you experience the joy and freedom that comes with this new skill.
Mistakes are Okay
Creating the right word or phrase to use as a target for the Logosynthesis sentences is a challenge for most people. Don't let that stop you from playing with the process. The worst thing that can happen to you if you do this "wrong" is nothing. You will be left with exactly the same frozen energy you started with. Even when nothing much happens when you practice the process you may have what seems like a random thought. Instead of dismissing it, consider the possibility that that thought is a clue to a more useful target. One of the beauties of this process is that you can't predict the outcome. You simply choose the best target description that you can and trust that your essence or higher self will use it in the best way it possibly can. Some people have immediate and strong responses when they experience the process. Others experience little or nothing to let them know if something shifted. The way I usually find out is that I completely forget about the challenge I was trying to manage. I sometimes don't even notice that I have forgotten until I am reminded several days later. So go ahead and practice the process described in the book. At the very least, you will learn something about yourself.
Stories: Small and Large
As a psychotherapist, I have worked with Life Scripts for at least 45 years. A Life Script is a story we each create at a time in life when our understanding of cause and effect is very limited. We take many small experiences like Emily's and by the time we have finished grade school we have usually decided what kind of person we are and what happens to people like us in the world. We make plans for our lives that sound a lot like "because of these experiences I need to act in this way." We more or less unconsciously create a plan or "script" that leads us to do certain things and avoid doing certain other things throughout our lives. Occasionally these plans are dangerous or even lethal when people have experienced abuse or neglect as children. More often these plans are simply limiting. They show up as limiting beliefs in your life. They make sense in the situation you are in when you make the decisions that lead to these beliefs. It is only later in life that you may feel the uncomfortable effects of living by them. You can use the Logosynthesis process described in this book to effectively dissolve these beliefs and regain your life options.
One Bite At a Time
I have had several emails lately from readers who are afraid Logosynthesis won't work for them because they are trying to release too many things at the same time. This tool simply does not work that way in a do-it-yourself situation. It is more like eating the elephant one bite at a time. I know that for many people, the distress you are experiencing feels like being weighed down by an elephant. Still, you need to start practicing with small things. You can't predict what images or thoughts will arise any time you say the sentences. Often those thoughts will dissolve as you proceed through the process. If they don't, they become excellent targets for future practice. I often think of healing as taking an unknown path through an unknown terrain to an unknown destination. Start small, with something that is a current irritation as a target. Be as specific as possible and just notice what happens. Chances are good that you will start a growing and healing process.
A Long Time Ago
I recently received a note from someone who was reading this book. It was headed "A Long Time Ago." He wrote of an old memory of his wife of 42 years. The memory was of watching his wife with a different young man at a time she had rejected him in favor of the other man. Although things had obviously changed and she eventually chose him, he wrote that he was still disturbed by the picture of that old event that is still coming into his awareness over 42 years later. This is a vivid example of freezing energy when you are overwhelmed by an event that you don't have the resources to manage. As a young man he may have felt overwhelmed by feelings of jealousy and helplessness at the sight of a girl he felt so attracted to with someone else. Since he did not have a way to process those feelings, he froze them. Now the image he kept seeing was the message about the frozen energy. The image represents far more than the actual scene it shows. But it’s not necessary to know the full story of what else the image represents to recover the frozen energy. Logosynthesis uses just 3 sentences that include words describing his image, to reclaim his frozen energy.
What Is Important Here?
I keep getting emails from readers telling me they have followed the steps in this book and experienced remarkable relief from anxiety and stress. Then, occasionally someone asks me why the process works. And my answer is, "I don't really know." Part of me thinks it is important to know. After all, as an undergraduate, I studied to be a scientist. As a healer, I know many things that truly help people change the way they feel and act have no rational explanations. Logosynthesis may eventually be scientifically validated. I certainly hope so. I also know that while our toolkit for understanding our brains and minds is constantly expanding, it is also very limited. I once heard a prominent scientist answer a question by saying, "We don't have the tools to measure that yet." I loved her answer! It is important to keep asking the question and looking for answers. But not knowing something yet doesn't mean anything is wrong with what we are doing. It just means we are still exploring. It may be even more important to keep practicing the process. Whether or not we understand why it works, we can become more skilled in working with it to relieve pain and find the joy we seek.
Practice!
When I first learned about the powerful Logosynthesis process, I printed out the sentences onto an index card. I put the card in a drawer near my computer--and left it there! At the times I really needed to release stress, I often simply forgot about this powerful resource. Even now, when it has become an important part of my life, I find myself making notes in my journal about things I need to "Logo." I still forget sometimes. As I was writing this book, I knew I needed to do something to encourage my readers to PRACTICE! This entire chapter is filled with suggestions and readers still forget once an immediate crisis has passed. I have even used "anything that keeps me from remembering this tool," as a target. I think the best way to have this tool available when you need it is to make practice a regular part of your day. The way I use it is at bedtime when I am reviewing my day. I can easily notice one item that still holds stuck energy. I usually do it quickly and sleep better because of it. When is a time in your routine where you can put in some practice time?
How Can You Tell if This Works?
You know intuitively when something is draining your energy. All you need to do is pay attention to your self-talk. I hear myself saying things like, "It's tiring just to be in the room with her." I also hear, "I just can't stop thinking about this situation." I bet you do too. When I was learning to use this process, I was repeatedly surprised by how quickly the Logosynthesis process let me release my energy from the stuck places and how easy it was to not even notice anything had happened. People have different responses to the process. Some experience intense waves of shifting energy. Not me--usually I don't notice a thing right away. It is sort of a non-experience and I wonder if anything has changed. Then, a short time later, I may notice that the pictures and conversation in my mind have shifted. My self-talk has changed and I am no longer putting any energy into the problem that I had been focused on. This low key experience is like a delayed action response and if you experience it, don't let it worry you. It does help to keep notes to remind yourself about what you have done. Otherwise you may totally forget that you ever had that particular problem.
I Am Grateful
Writing this book was taking an unknown path to an imagined destination and I was incredibly grateful when my early readers gave me feedback that let me hope I had accomplished my goal. I was trying to take a deceptively simple technique that nobody fully understands and explain it so that naive readers might use it to change their relationships to stress and suffering. This process, the integration of many very complex thought lines, had already helped me make important changes in my work and my personal life. I felt like I was walking a thin line between old and new views of the change process itself and doing my best to honor both perspectives. I am grateful to the colleagues and friends around the world who acted as sounding boards for me as I wrote the pieces that made up this book. Yet, I practically held my breath when I asked new people to read the complete manuscript. I am especially grateful to Dr. Willem Lammers of Switzerland, who originally discovered this process, helped me learn it, and asked me to create this book in the first place. And I am grateful that he has now taken the resulting work and had it translated and distributed in German.
Releasing Unneeded Protection
Finding a new way to look at life challenges is the core to rapid anxiety relief. Most conventional self-growth training says to look at the story of what happened that is creating or has created distress in your life. Then examine the story in detail and learn to relate to it in a new way. This can be painful and take a lot of time. Logosynthesis is different. It is not about the story!!! It is about where you have stored the frozen life energy when you could not manage the problem when you originally encountered it. One way of looking at this is that you once did something to create a protective shield to take care of yourself. Now that shield is getting in your way. Instead of looking at why you created the shield, you use the sentences to dismantle the shield. The reason you created the shield in the first place may have been forgotten long ago. In any case, spending energy on why you built a shield or wall that you no longer need is not an especially good use of your current energy. You use the sentences to let it go.
What's Energy???
A very logical-minded individual asked me to explain this word that I use so frequently. I started by saying I don't really know. Wikipedia has pages on the topic. It starts with a ability to get something done. It is a "conserved quality" of something. It goes on to list 14 different forms of physical energy. Yikes! Then there are ideas like human energy and chi--and we sort of understand that those words are an attempt to explain an experience we all share. We know when we feel able to be present and engage with the world and each other. We know when we can barely drag ourselves to our next activity. We know that quality is revived with food, drink and human contact. It's something we share yet it is almost impossible to define. Yet, I talk about your energy being stuck and you understand, or at least sort of understand what I am saying and can use my words to help change your life. Every now and then I realize that there is much more happening than I understand and that that is still OK. We are traveling this path together.
Magic?
I have always loved this quote. There are so many things I have accepted because people I trusted told me they were possible. Often those things worked and sometimes they didn't. Sometimes I understood why, but more often, I shrugged and moved on. We as human beings are way too complex for us to fully understand on biological, biochemical, physical and social levels. Once, I was privileged to hear the late Candice Pert answer a question most other distinguished scientists would have dismissed. She said, "We don't have the technical tools to examine that, yet!" I offer Logosynthesis in this book from this perspective. It is a method that has been extremely helpful for many people. I have personally observed its usefulness for myself and others. I offer it for you to experiment with and to learn whether it is useful for you.
Don't Believe What You Think
Jack and Jill, a popular children's magazine ran a feature called, "I Used to Think..." where an 8-year-old could contribute a story about an old misconception about the world. Beliefs like "the tree-tops touch the sky' and 'my mom always knows where I am' were common. I watched 2 6-year old boys almost come to blows about whether the tooth fairy was real, and I simply could not convince a 4-year-old that it was a cartoon character and not he who had smashed the monster. It is completely normal for children to believe this way. And it's the job of parents and other care takers to gently help kids to understand how the world really works. The problem comes when children don't talk about their beliefs about the world--especially when they are under stress. Parents often accidentally cause cause the stress by making threats or promises or simply repeating ordinary statements like 'boys don't cry' or 'stop asking for stuff.' If you were on the receiving end of experiences like this, and most of us were, they may still be shaping your view of the world. It may be time to start really listening to the stories you tell yourself and see if they are causing unnecessary anxiety or stress in your life.
Too Much Stuff
I need to reorganize my kitchen. My consultant looked and commented that I have lots of stuff I probably don't need. She is absolutely right. Yet, I don't want to let it go! I know why. My parents lived through the depression and taught me to conserve everything because I might need it someday. That is still true I suppose. More important, I carry the memory of their disapproval, left over from anytime I wasted a resource, frozen deep within myself. They actually did manage to downsize and release a lot of their stuff, but I was not close by to witness their doing so. The frozen energy from many years ago is still impacting my life today. I know I can and eventually will take on this challenge and use the Logosynthesis process to help me release the stuck energy. Meanwhile, I still have overstuffed cabinets and drawers. Did you read this because you too have too much stuff? Do you know why you are holding on and where your energy is stuck? Are you willing to find out? And are you willing to join me in the challenge of letting it go?
I Believe in Magic
While reading science fiction as a teenager, I believed that I could learn to do the special things the heroines of the stories could do--if I could only find the right teacher. In the course of my life and career I have been blessed to find many such teachers. One of the most important things I learned is that there is much more depth and complexity in the world than I can possibly understand. Another important lesson is that if you engage in certain practices while holding certain beliefs about the world, unusual things can happen almost routinely. A third, critically important lesson is to "not kill the question." That means to keep thinking and experimenting instead of labeling things and deciding I know an answer. It is this background that enabled me to embrace Logosynthesis and share its benefits with my readers, my clients and my students. I invite you to accept the magic and experience the process. Most people who do benefit from it.
It's Not Your Fault
You may think that the misunderstandings that are so common in childhood are just cute, but the truth is, they can shape your life. Because I know this, I have always considered it very important to help children understand the world as well as they possibly can. The problem is that many decisions you make as a child are unknown to the adults who cared for you so those untrue or partially true beliefs continue to exist. It is nobody's fault. It is just a part of how people work. So if something in your life is not working the way you want it to, it makes sense to check out what the fundamental belief about the world that drives that situation might be. Not too long ago it was very difficult to change that fundamental belief, even if you know, logically, that it does not make sense. Now, using the Logosynthesis process described in this book, changing the belief is as simple as repeating 3 sentences and letting your higher wisdom rearrange things and dissolve what no longer serves you.
Your Stories, Your Life
You continue to make up stories to make sense of the world throughout your life. Often the stories are linked together by a common theme. If you were a child with an older sibling you often experienced not doing a task as well as someone else. The task might be climbing a tree or reading a story or making a peanut butter sandwich. The task doesn't matter, the experience of not doing things as well as someone else might lead to creating the story or belief, "I am not good enough." That story is retold in a new format every time you have a challenge learning something new. The basic story and belief is automatically reinforced. Fortunately, since you created the story in the first place, once you learn to notice telling it to yourself, you have the power to change it. Until recently, changing your story involved a complicated process of learning to focus and refocus on a different story and/or re-experiencing the painful emotions that led you to create the story in the first place. The Logosynthesis process you learn in this book is a very powerful way to help you change your story, permanently!
Doing It is Easy
The actual process of saying the three sentences aloud is very simple. The reason I don't simply put those sentences into one on these short pieces is that the critical issue is learning to direct those sentences to a useful target. Choosing such a target takes much more understanding of how you freeze your energy than just saying the sentences. One of my biggest challenges has been to find ways to help my readers find the targets they need to easily reclaim their frozen energy. I recently created a 7-Day Challenge, "Secrets of Reducing Unnecessary Worry" to help you learn to create useful targets. It takes less than 10 minutes/day and it does include the sentences and instructions about using them. You are welcome to use this process yourself. It will cost you your email address so I can send you the material and reminders about using it. It will also cost you a bit over an hour of your time, spread over the 7 days of your choice. That's the only cost. You do it your way. It is entirely self-paced. You can get more information and register at www.LaurieWeiss.com/7daychallenge . Register right now while you are thinking about it.
Everyday Living Feels Overwhelming
In his amazingly comprehensive book, "Thank You for Being Late," Thomas Friedman has a chapter called "Just Too Dammed Fast." I feel that way a lot of the time. Do you? In revisiting this book, I realize that I did not include needing to release the small trauma's we encounter every day. I just read someone's Facebook post about frustration with 'unnecessary' changes to Skype. Just as you get familiar and comfortable with operating your favorite device, you are forced to upgrade to the next operating system. Everything changes instantly! And the world is getting faster every day. It's hard to adapt instantly to all of those minor traumas you face daily. And these stresses add up to a general wariness and anxiety for many people. Unless you are in the small percentage of people who love change, your sense of safety and security is challenged repeatedly. You need to let go of these daily mini-traumas just to live comfortably!
Blame Your Brain
Do you feel guilty or ashamed because you just can't let go? Or do you get angry when someone assumes that letting go of what is troubling you should be easy? Lots of people react in these ways because most of us don't realize that no matter how much will power we apply to trying to really let go, it just doesn't work. That is because your brain is hard-wired to be hyper-sensitive to threats. It carefully stores any and all information about potential threats in a system that is something like a library. When a new situation comes up, your brain automatically compares it to all stored situations in order to warn you to protect yourself from danger. Once something goes into the library, you need very special tools to get it out. Will power is not one of those tools. It is sort of like trying to use a hammer to saw a piece of wood. It just doesn't do the job. You need a different tool. The Logosynthesis process I teach in this book is one of the few special tools that actually works.
Protection Matters
When have you been in a stressful situation? Did you have the resources you needed to resolve the problem or did you close down a part of yourself for self-protection? I still remember a scene from my pediatrician's office when I was 4 or 5 years old. I was terrified at the prospect of the nurse pricking my finger to get a drop of blood! I screamed and balled my hands into tight fists. I buried my face in my mother's midsection. Finally the situation was resolved when the nurse uncurled a finger and got the sample without my even noticing. I was too busy screaming. When I was told it was over, I remember being surprised. I don't remember any further scenes ever, even when I had a series of allergy shots. I had the help and protection I needed to eventually manage that situation. But WHAT IF??? What if my mother had not been both sympathetic and loving? What if she or the nurse had yelled at me to shut up? What if I had been alone with the nurse? In any of those situations I could easily have been overwhelmed by something an adult would consider a minor inconvenience. If you were not protected, your energy may still be stuck in an incident you barely remember.
What's Your Story?
Emily's story is really about who she is and what she needs to do to have a right to be in the world. We all create stories that explain the world to us when we are children. Some are more or less benign like "I will grow up, get married and live happily ever after." But even that simple story line can be pretty limiting when it does not match the reality of having to work at any relationship to make it successful. Other stories are less happy. This might be "I will need to work hard for every single thing I get and never have time for fun." Some are even tragic like "I will die young just like my father did." In every case the story helps guide decisions you make about how to live your everyday life and limits your options. What story do you tell yourself about your life? Is it "I need to keep my feelings to myself?" or perhaps, "I would lose my friends if I did not do what they expect?" or perhaps, "I can't afford to take a vacation?" Whatever it is, consider giving it up and making fresh choices with more possibilities. The information about how to reclaim your energy from your stories will help.
Evolving This Book
How can I explain this astonishingly simple, profound experience in a way that makes it possible for a naive reader to take this strange new concept and actually use it? I pondered this question for a full year after I was asked to write a Logosynthesis book for a general audience. I wanted to create a user-friendly experience that bridged several cultures because this process is much better known in Europe than it is in the US. And I wanted my audience to know the good news that transformation no longer needs to be painful. Since I actually had been teaching this process for several years, I had developed a process that my students seemed to like. But that process involved being able to tell about my own experiences while encouraging those students to try the process themselves and adapting it to each one's prior experience. How could those students experiences be translated into a useful form? Finally I asked for help--on Facebook--and volunteers from 7 different countries joined my “Little Logosynthesis Book” team and agreed to read and comment on each chapter I created. With their help, this book emerged. I was thrilled when early readers affirmed that together we created a practical and usable book that actually guides the reader to experience this potentially life-changing process.
Your Past Has Power
So many self-help programs pretend that all it takes is willpower and planning to make a big difference in your life. What they neglect is that you need to reset the automatic pilot you created by telling yourself stories about why things happened when you were small. Otherwise every change you make will be temporary and easily undone. You created these stories with an immature brain that was doing your very best to make sense of your world and your relationship to your world. These stories helped you manage situations where you felt threatened in some way, whether the threat was real or imagined. I have spent my career as a psychotherapist helping my clients uncover and rewrite these stories in order to reset their automatic pilots. Now that reset can be accomplished faster and with much less drama and trauma using Logosynthesis, the process I teach you to use in this book. Once you reset your automatic pilot, permanent change can occur, sometimes almost effortlessly.
Stories Freeze Energy
What story do you tell yourself over and over again? I'll bet you can't even identify it as a story. The first time I realized that something I thought was a fact was just a story, I was stunned. I was 30 years old and taking part in a professional seminar as a Junior High School teacher. I accidentally bumped a real Psychologist as I was getting up to get coffee and said, "Excuse me, I am so clumsy." Instead of responding politely he looked at me and asked, "Who told you that you were clumsy?" I was stunned! I stammered something about my parents calling me clumsy. By the time the meeting ended, I had become aware that, "I'm clumsy" was simply something I had been told and had very little to do with reality. It was a story I told myself that kept me from learning physical skills. My energy was frozen in the story. After I learned it was just someone else's story about me that I was telling myself, I was able to take back my energy and use it to learn skills I could have learned many years earlier. What limiting stories are you telling yourself that you simply heard from someone else? Would you like to reclaim your energy from those stories?
Parents Are Just People
Are you still blaming your parents for what they did or did not do when you were growing up? Are you older now than they were when you froze your energy in response to their behavior? I remember the day that it occurred to me that my parents were just ordinary people living in a fairly restrictive world when I was a child. I could see how they were doing the best they could to show their obvious love for me, even though some of what I learned from them was causing me problems in achieving my own goals. I felt a profound sense of relief at that moment and my (then) current struggle with them simply evaporated. If you have not been privileged to experience such a moment, it would probably be useful to focus the sentences you learn in this book on some of the scenes you remember where your parents did not give you what you needed at the time. Keeping that energy frozen only holds you back from having the joy you could be experiencing in your life right now.
Worry = Stuck Energy
I just skimmed another magazine article about worry. The author's conclusion is we all do it, it's not good for us, and we should stop by thinking happy thoughts and doing good deeds. OK, I am being a bit glib, but basically that is what seems to be the common view of how to manage this kind of suffering. The truth of course is much more complex. Worry is a sign that your energy is stuck in some situation in the past or in anticipating some situation in the future. How it got stuck in the first place and how to release it is an ongoing challenge. Talk psychotherapy, which I have practiced for 45 years, addresses this issue by trying to understand what happened to freeze the energy in the past. The hope is that by understanding what happened, you will be able to let go of the worry and use the energy for other things. This approach works often enough to keep doing it. The problem is both clients and therapists focus on the story rather than the stuck energy. Since learning the approach I describe here, we can now release the frozen energy much more quickly and easily.
Really? Wow!
As a psychotherapist for 45 years I “know” from experience that people are affected by things that happened to them when they were children. Now scientific validation shows the correlation between “adverse childhood experiences” and problems later in life. The Center for Disease Control-Kaiser Permanente Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study is one of the largest investigations of childhood abuse and neglect and later-life health and well-being. www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/acestudy/ From 1995 to 1997 over 17,000 people received physical exams and completed confidential surveys about their childhood experiences and current health status and behaviors. And ACE’s are common!!! Almost two-thirds of participants reported at least one ACE, and more than one in five reported three or more ACEs. I believe each ACE is a childhood experience that most children do not have sufficient resources to manage. Therefor they freeze their energy to protect themselves. I believe that learning to release the frozen energy helps protect us from the otherwise negative effects shown in the study. The research shows that as the number of ACEs increases so does the risk for a long list of difficulties in adult life. The list includes addictions of all kinds, depression, financial stress, many physical illnesses and many types of violence. If this fascinates you the way it does me, start with the link above and explore.
Control Only Interferes
When you learn to use this process, you don't get to decide what outcome you want and do something to produce it. The conscious part of you can't (and eventually learns not to even bother trying) to rearrange your energy. As a Logosynthesis practitioner I had to learn that I could neither predict nor control the outcome when I worked with my clients. As a psychotherapist and as a business owner and manager, I found that disconcerting at first. Many people do. We are accustomed to trying to plan, predict and control our lives and are often encouraged to do so. And that process works just often enough to make us believe that we are somehow failing if we we aren’t in control. Trying to control what happens when using these three sentences slows down the process of self-healing that Logosynthesis activates. What works best is to trust your deepest and truest Self to know and do what is best for you.
Sharing Excitement
Miracles are now so routine in my life that I barely realize how impactful they are. I wrote this a few months after learning about this tool, when I was still awed by it. "I am being willingly seduced by the power of a new tool that appears to help people make remarkably rapid positive changes in their lives." In our first "Logosynthesis Self-Coaching Study Group" we learned how easily we could teach interested people to use a few focused sentences to dissolve their reactions to past, present or anticipated stressful situations. One of the participants shared with us. "My first experience of it was a demonstration working with my wife, Barbara, on her tendency to overreact to what she sees when she's a passenger in a car. This is something I had experienced for many years and which seemed to be getting worse. It happened frequently and involved a stomping foot or that gasp somebody might make as they suddenly see the train that's about to take them out. It stopped completely after the one five or ten minute process. Barbara expressed her own amazement for days afterward. She continues to ride with remarkable equanimity, especiallywhen you consider that my driving habits haven't changed." Woody M. It used to take us many client sessions to accomplish similar results.
Forgiving Wasn't Enough
Denise told me that she had let go of the experience of being sexually abused as a child and had forgiven her abuser. So she was shocked when a recent event had re-awakened all of her feelings about that horrible time in her life. As we explored what had happened she described feeling intensely unworthy and dirty. We used the process described in this book to release the belief we uncovered--the belief that she was responsible for being hurt. Ten minutes later the belief and feelings that went with it were gone. Three weeks later she was still doing fine and, reviewing the situation, she discovered that she had followed instructions about how to manage forgiveness as an adult. The problem was that the part of her that had frozen her energy to protect herself from an impossible to manage situation, had not been Wasaddressed with those useful "how to" instructions. It took releasing the frozen energy to truly find peace.
Holding On To Magic
Are you still angry about the times your Dad promised to show up at your game and didn't? How about the times that your Mom insisted that you stay home and babysit when you wanted to be with your friends? Often you hold onto resentments like this because you felt helpless and decided that someday, some way, that mean parent would realize how badly you had been treated and apologize. Holding onto those resentments is a way of freezing energy. Noticing when you resent something in the past that nothing can possibly change can be a signal to you of a place where you can reclaim that frozen energy. It helps if you get clear about the fantasy or belief that goes along with the original resentment. Is it that the culprit will be sorry and change? Is it that you will get back at them in some way? Once you understand that secret hope, then you can use the Logosynthesis process to reclaim your frozen energy.
Protection Becomes the Problem
Not processing difficult situations to release frozen energy can cause later problems. Almost every addiction, whether it is to alcohol, drugs, food or even work started as a way to help you feel better when you had an uncomfortable experience. The experience could have been the stress of living in a home where you witnessed emotional or physical violence and drinking alcohol or using drugs helped you relax. Or you could have learned to distract yourself from the stress with work. Or perhaps when you were small, each time you experienced difficulty you were consoled with cookies and you learned that food was the way to feel better. The problem in each case is that it takes more and more of the pain relieving substance to produce the same amount of relief and you then need the substance just to feel normal. Healing from an addiction is a complicated process. Often releasing your energy from the original problem reduces the pressure to use the substance to try to feel better.
Reacting is Natural
If letting go is such a challenge, why bother to do it at all? Many people don't. If you are among the 54% of people in the US who have not experienced "adverse childhood experiences" and don't mind putting up with occasional upsets, that is certainly a valid choice. If you are reading this though, you probably find that current reactions to past difficulties are causing problems in your life. Research shows that the more of those adverse experiences you have experienced, such as: *parents or guardians who divorced, separated, died, or were jailed, *witnessing any violent behavior *living with anyone with mental health or addictions, the more likely you are to have mental and physical problems. Fortunately it is now much easier to recover your energy from your reactions to those events and prevent the serious after-effects of those problems. This book will show you how using just the power of words will allow you to reclaim your life energy from those reactions.
It May Not Be An Emergency
Is it about road rage or something someone close to you says? It doesn't matter. It's hard to stay in control! When it happens to me, I am usually shocked at what I want to say and do--often about something I had long since forgotten about. My brain is hijacked (a Daniel Goleman term) and on one level, I am certain I must fight, or run, or freeze! When I wait a few seconds my thinking mind catches up and sometimes I can figure out how to respond in a rational way. I thought there was nothing I could do about this except learn to breathe deeply until I stopped shaking. I was wrong! The right words can unhook this reaction. Just 3 sentences with the correct target can change everything.
Change is Challenging
If you are fairly comfortable in your life, occasional experiences of anxiety and depression may not bother you. You believe this is just the way things are. It's especially true if you believe that it will be difficult and time consuming to change. Yet holding on to old resentments, fears, and hopes can sap your energy. If you are very uncomfortable in your life you may want to change but fear delving into the trauma of your past that leads to your comfort discomfort. Until I discovered Logosynthesis, the process I teach in this book, I had to work very hard to help my clients take on the challenge and to help them cope with the discomfort they experienced. Thankfully, that pain and difficulty no longer is required. Saying the special sentences that focus on the cause of your discomfort is easy to do, and the discomfort is often minimal or non-existent.
You Forget That You Forgot
You often feel anxious when something reminds you of the things that overwhelmed you at some time in your past. That's especially true if you tried to manage a difficult situation by freezing your energy and deciding to never think about something again. Then you conveniently forgot that you ever made the decision. It is like having a double lock on a door to try to stay safe. You probably have a lot more resources now than you had at the time you made those decisions. Even if you don't, those locks have side effects that cause other problems. Psychotherapists and other healers have been working toward helping you examine and/or reset your reactions to those experiences for a very long time. The process of Logosynthesis is the most effective way I have ever encountered to allow this reset to happen. After it happens, the anxiety and other side effects vanish.
Release That Fantasy
Sometimes, when you think you want to let something go but keep holding on anyway, a part of you has another agenda. That part of you secretly thinks that you can magically change the outcome of something that happened in the past--if only.... If only you had said something different, if only you were stronger, if only you had left the party a few minutes earlier, then things would be different. If you want to let go of remembering how angry you are because of the way someone treated you, you may have to let go of the fantasy that, somehow, something you say or do now will change what happened back then. It won't! What happened, can't be changed. What can be changed is your fantasy or secret belief or secret hope that you have the power to fix the past. Once you let go of the fantasy, letting go of the original event will be much easier.
You Need Tools
The nursery was ready and it was time, but it didn't go as planned. Over 50 years ago my first baby was stillborn. I was in total shock and disbelief. I had done everything "right" throughout the pregnancy and could not even imagine the idea of not coming home from the hospital with a baby. I was numb at first, then incredibly sad and disillusioned. Most people I met tried to console me with some variation of, "You’re young and healthy, you can have another one." I was just supposed to let it go but I couldn't. Not only was I grieving but my whole view of how the world worked was destroyed. Most loses are not as life-shattering as that one, but still, it can be really hard to let go and move on. Even a tiny loss can cause us to get stuck. Fortunately, a good therapist helped me move back into the world then. About 10 years and 2 healthy children later I encountered a process that finally allowed me to truly let go. Now, thankfully, we have the tools to let go much more quickly and with much less pain. I want you to have them. Please read this book and make those tools a part of your life.
Finding the why
When you use the Logosynthesis sentences, you need to insert a target which represents whatever is causing the disruption in your energy flow. Today one of my clients was doing her best to cope with changes she is experiencing in many areas of her life. She reported doing well most of the time but overreacting to some simple things like roads being blocked for repairs that inconvenienced her. The flow of her life energy was definitely disrupted. She recognized that she was "on edge" because of other changes in her life. Yet many of those changes were natural and expected. When we explored where her energy was stuck we discovered that while one part of her was moving forward, another part was being critical--not of herself or other people but of the basic idea that things are changing. The target that we chose was "this belief that the world should not be changing." I guided her through the sentences and she experienced relief, acceptance and relaxation. This book is designed to help you develop the skill of finding a useful target for the sentences so you can use them to re-balance your own energy.
How To... Isn't Enough!
I love the title of this book, "If How-Tos Were Enough We Would All Be Skinny, Rich and Happy." Every time I open my email someone is telling me how to do something I want to do in some fantastic new way. I want those things done and sometimes I even sign up for them, yet I rarely complete them. When I look at why, I remember unfinished sewing projects hanging on the back of my door when I was a teenager. I finished the things that were coming together the way I had pictured them. I managed to never get around to finishing those that were not really working out. My mother nagged me to finish them. I knew how to finish them, but I really did not want to finish them. Yet no one told me what to do when I knew something was not working. I had to wait till much later in my life to learn to let go! And obviously, I am still learning!
Flashbacks happen...
Today I did the physical motion of paddling a boat while taking a Pilates class. I was immediately vividly aware of paddling a boat under very challenging conditions on a lake in Alaska during a tourist expedition. That experience exhausted me so thoroughly that I became vulnerable to a virus. That virus took me out of my normal life for 3 uncomfortable months. The Alaska experience happened 10 years ago and I had not re-experienced that paddling memory in at least 9 years. It was triggered simply by a taking a similar physical position! That kind of flashback can happen to anyone, anytime. When the flashback is to a traumatic experience, the Logosynthesis process described in this book can relieve the discomfort of the feelings associated with the memory.
Break the Cycle
A remarkable book I just finished, Sickened: The True Story of a Lost Childhood, by Julie Gregory tells in painful detail about how much of one child's life energy was frozen in an attempt to survive an impossible situation. This book vividly highlights just how dependent children are. As an adult it takes many difficult years for this damaged child to reclaim her own life and disentangle herself from her own life-preserving responses to this pervasive trauma. As children we trust, love and want to obey. We have little concept of any way to experience the world outside the one our parents believe in and explain to us. In Julie's case, her mother defined her as sick when she was not. Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy. Even in much less toxic situations parents who carry scars from their own pasts often can't provide the resources their children need. And so the cycle continues. We each need to reclaim the energy we used to protect ourselves. The process shared in Letting It Go helps each user reclaim the energy frozen in the struggle to get what we need in the wold.
Share This Book
I want so much for this book to help readers ease unnecessary suffering. That is the reason I wrote it. I know from my professional and personal work with Logosynthesis and reader reviews that the process works and readers have been using it successfully. I keep thinking about all the people it could help If they knew about it. One way to spread the word is to to get it into libraries. The process of preparing and explaining why this book, among all the hundreds of thousands available deserves a space on a library shelf is detailed and time consuming—and I am doing it. You can help by asking your librarian to add it to your library collection. Then tell your friends it is available. Of course, the more reviews there are, the easier it is to convince new readers to give it a try. If you have left a review, thank you very much. If not, please go to wherever you READ reviews and add a bit about your experience with the book or the process.
Target Practice
A professional coach who is using Logosynthesis to release her own stress told me that what she really needed was "target practice." Others nodded in agreement. Yet a few days later many many of my personal growth students, came up with useful, significant targets for themselves in just a few minutes of discussion after hearing some of the sample targets in Chapter 6. They were very clear about where their energy was stuck. Maybe the professionals are so used to looking for deeper meaning that they over-complicate things. It isn't difficult to listen to the running conversation you are having with yourself. Anything that you keep thinking about probably has frozen energy that would make an excellent target for the Logosynthesis sentences.
Money, etc.
We have so much energy frozen into our experiences and beliefs about money that sometimes I wonder how anyone can successfully manage his/her financial life. Maybe that is because negative experiences about money are so painful. Energy gets stuck when things don't work, not when they do. So when you are a child and want something but can't have it because it cost too much all kinds of glitches can happen. Of course every commercial screen you see encourages that want! You can be shamed by a parent who says, "Do you think I'm made of money?" You can make up a story that you don't deserve what you want because there is something wrong with you. You can make up a story about how a mean parent is depriving you of something. If you are lucky you get a useful educational experience about saving and spending. Logosynthesis can help release the stuck energy. It is so useful that we have even taught a day long workshop to help people sort out this issue.
Releasing Trauma
Ongoing research about trauma is helping me to understand that our brains store traumatic images differently than they store ordinary memories. Traumatic memories are stored in disconnected fragments instead of coherent stories. That may be because all of those details in one place would be too overwhelming to manage. That is also part of the reason those traumatic memories are so hard to "just let go." It's as if you want to assemble a jigsaw puzzle, but some of the pieces are in a kitchen drawer while others are under your pillow and most of the others are in a box in the closet. Before I had Logosynthesis as a tool, I thought it was necessary to assemble all the pieces of the trauma to let it go. Then I learned how to help a client release a single important piece of the stored traumatic memory. Amazingly, once this was done, the rest of the assembly job became unnecessary.
Complain or Suffer in Silence
Do you ever wonder what makes it so easy for some people to send back food that isn't properly prepared at a restaurant while to others, the very thought of sending it back causes intense anxiety so they suffer in silence? It probably has something to do with a past event or events you have completely forgotten about. When we feel overwhelmed by something we can't manage, we often solve the problem by quickly putting it out of our awareness--forgetting that it even existed. This effectively freezes energy around that problem. So if you were ignored or punished or shamed when you complained about something long ago, your brain registered that as something to avoid forever. When you might like something to change now, you feel anxious without knowing it's about a forgotten incident or pattern from your history.
Resentment = Frozen Energy
Ouch! I heard myself thinking "I still resent that..." and realized how much energy I had frozen into something I had tried to change and simply couldn't. Many of my clients hold resentments about things they have not even tried to change. In any case, resentment is a way of saying I want to stay angry about this--whatever this may be. Resenting something often involves the hidden fantasy that if I stay angry it will hurt the person or thing that did not do what I expected or wanted. The Logosynthesis sentences can be very effective in retrieving the energy that is frozen into any kind of resentment. Just listen for the word "resent" and use it as a signal that your energy is waiting there for you to retrieve it.
Stuck Phone--Frozen Energy
My iphone froze on day 2 of a 10-day vacation. I spent hours following every on-line protocol I could find to get it going again--to no avail. Finally my husband took over talking to tech support on his phone and as I sat waiting for the verdict and upset about the wasted vacation time, I heard a voice in my mind saying "You're a bad girl." At the same time I experienced a wash of shame! Wow! Where did that come from??? I first thought defensively--"I didn't do anything wrong!" Then realized I had just stumbled on a piece of stuck energy. It did not really matter where it came from. I used the target "this experience of believing I am a bad girl" with the Logosynthesis sentences and felt better immediately. The phone has a hardware problem and I will get it repaired or replaced when I get home.
Ass U Me
One of the first things I learned about using Logosynthesis as a tool to help others reduce anxiety is to not assume anything. Here I am trying to help my reader understand that nobody knows what anybody else is really thinking or feeling! By showing how wrong my assumption was about what was troubling my friend, I hope my reader will be reminded of how easy it is to make mistakes. Of course, the solution is easy! Just ask! Ask yourself, ask your learning partner--"what part of this distresses you the MOST?" That is most likely to be the best clue to finding a useful target. I used my friend's answer to get the target so perfectly that she completely forgot what she was scared about.
Find the Target
During a recent discussion of using this process, one of the participants said, "If you hear a target in what I am saying, tell me." As a very experienced professional it is now fairly easy for me to find the target to use in this simple process. But I have struggled to find an easy way to help my students and my readers find their own targets. One of the simplest ways I have discovered is to start paying attention to emotional intensity. That intensity usually shows up when you come close to a disturbing memory or anticipate a possible problem in the future. Once the target is identified it becomes easy to do the work.
Feelings Have Triggers
A feeling or emotion is a natural response to something you experience. The experience can be real or imagined. It can be happening now, remembered from your past, or anticipated in the future. Most systems for change focus on changing your feelings. Logosynthesis (this process) has a different focus--the real or imagined experience that triggered your feeling. Your stuck energy is located in the experience that comes just before your emotional response.
Find Your Lost Energy
Are you tired? Losing energy is such a common experience that most people barely notice it. Of course, the activities of your daily life regularly use up your energy. The problem is that you often put a lot of energy into worrying about things you can't control, trying to make perfect decisions when good enough is good enough and other useless pursuits. This process is a quick and easy way to find and reclaim this lost energy. It will also help you just stop doing those energy draining activities.
Energy Gets Stuck
Energy either flows naturally or it gets stuck. This image makes sense to almost everyone. You can understand the image because you have seen the flow of water changed or stopped in many different situations. And you know how to release the flow again by removing whatever is interfering with the flow. It is a problem with a solution. When your energy is stuck it does not mean there is something wrong with you. It is simply a problem of releasing what interferes with your energy flow.
No More Re-traumatization!
When I was just starting to use Logosynthesis in my practice I was used to being very cautious about asking for information about traumatic situations. That's because clients were reluctant to even think about the past because of the pain it evoked. When I learned to ask a different kind of question about the situation I was surprised at how easy it was for my 17-year-old client to remember and talk about his part of her experience.
Stress Useful or Toxic?
Experiencing stress, whether it comes from our own urge to grow and explore or from some outside source, can be either helpful or toxic. When you have the resources to manage a stressful challenge, you may feel a sense of excitement and success as you master a new skill. But you live in a complicated, challenging world and if you don't have the resources you need, the stress becomes toxic. I wrote this book to help you learn a new way to release that stress.
Your True Self
Listening to your true Self is a lot like what many people call listening to your heart or listening to your inner wisdom. Some people even call it listening to your gut. The important part here is learning to pay attention to your inner guidance. That means learning to know the difference between impulses and reactions and a quieter, more subtle messaging system. I hope these few paragraphs help you tune in. Just remember, your true Self is not your ego.
Defusing Criticism
The Logosynthesis sentences still seem magical to me. It isn't at all unusual for someone to trip on some present event that reminds them of a past trauma. During most of the years I practiced psychotherapy it could have taken several sessions of skilled work as a therapist to help my client detach from that trauma. And it probably would have involved him re-experiencing the original trauma. Now, using the sentences, the process is so simple and painless that it can be done in just a few minutes.
Protection???
Encapsulated pain consumes your available energy. The more energy you used to protect yourself from difficult situations in the past, the less you have available to live your life now. When you feel exhausted, depressed and stuck, it may be because so much energy is stuck protecting yourself from situations you could now manage easily. This book is about helping you reclaim that energy to use in your life now--and to do it simply and easily.
Holding On is Easiest
Letting go for a baby means the slow process of becoming an independent human being. But this process shows up in lots of other ways. I have been fascinated at all the times everyone needs to go through this process in everyday life. I am not sure why it's easier for some people than for others. Some people love cleaning out their closets and keeping only things they love. Others, like me, keep thinking, "I might want this someday." It's a strange truth that sometimes we even need to let go of happy things to make room for whatever comes next.
No Perfect Parents
I once read a book that said something like, "you surivied--your parents did their job" and since I was still blaming my parents for what their imperfections had done to me, I was a bit resentful. I hope this helps clear up the expectation that anyone can give another human being everything he or she needs. You react to an imperfect environment by doing the best you can using the limited resources you have at the time. That means shutting down your awareness of it by locking up some of your energy. You have more resources now and it's time to reclaim that energy to use now!
Over-reacting!!!
Once upon a time--a long time ago--I over-reacted regularly. I had no idea that my energy was stuck in experiences of being criticized by my father. Now, It's embarrassingly easy to identify because I would yell at my husband for relatively small infractions. Not returning my scissors to the right drawer was enough to set me off. So was putting away the pots in the wrong place. Serving my leftovers when it was his turn to cook would make me furious. I finally learned to be less territorial when he pointed out that I could choose between having his help in household chores or doing everything myself so it would be done correctly! I had to bite my tongue for years before I learned that I was safe even if everything was not the way my father would have wanted it to be. I was criticizing my husband the way my father had criticized me! Now, Logosynthesis makes it easy to remove my father's energy from where it had become frozen within me.
Tuning In to your Self
I have a long history of trying to disregard the signals my true Self sends me. Maybe you do to. My own favorite way of tuning out those signals is to eat. I have known clients to use every kind of addictive and compulsive to block these important messages. I think our fantasies of what would happen if we tuned in can seem truly overwhelming. In reality, I have experienced doing so as fascinating detective work. I hope reading about this makes it easier for you to notice the messages of your true Self and find the joy of reconnecting with your essence.
Thinking Differently
When you learn to do something in order, step by step, you learn to think like everyone else. I have always had trouble with this kind of learning so I had an advantage in learning this new process--Logosynthesis. I like thinking differently. When you learn healing skills you learn to focus on relieving suffering.Psychotherapists are trained to relieve the symptom by helping the client understand why it occurs. Much of western medicine uses medication to relieve symptoms each time they occur. Logosynthesis focuses on what the client experiences just before the symptom occurs--the trigger for the symptom. Once the trigger is identified we use words to dissolve it. Once the trigger is gone, it no longer can stimulate the symptom.
Holding On Is Easier...
Holding on is easier...at first. Letting go and realizing that I will still be OK without the support is still tough for me so when I wrote this part I wanted to emphasize that this is a normal cycle for everyone. Nearly 50 years after the fact I can still remember my interrupted sleep when my son was a baby learning to pull himself up on the side of his crib. At 5 am I would stagger into the other room, unhook his tiny fists, lay him down, pat his back and try to soothe him back to sleep. I would go back to bed, doze off, hear more wails and repeat the cycle! I was holding on too--to the idea that he should learn faster and let me sleep. I learned, he learned and we repeated the struggle in hundreds of not thousands of ways over the years...
My Tools Have Evolved
I love doing psychotherapy because it requires me to be "in the zone" with my clients. And I get to hear their fascinating and sometimes heartbreaking life stories. Now, using Logosynthesis as a tool, I still need to be "in the zone" but we no longer need to go through the painful and traumatic stories in order to relieve distress. All we need to know is what is triggering the client's current distress. Once we know that, saying the sentences and reclaiming the energy stuck in the trigger usually provides relief.
Energy Gets Stuck
I discovered a bit of my own stuck energy many years ago in a yoga class. I was about 30. My teacher encouraged me to do a somersault, saying I was strong enough to do it. I resisted but finally tried it. When I was upside down I started to sob and kept sobbing for a long time. I had no idea why. Later, while studying psychotherapy I connected to the source of the problem. When I was about 4 I was in the surf with my father, he lost his grip on me and I was tossed upside down in salt water for what was probably a few seconds. I don't know what happened immediately afterwards, but 26 years later the trauma associated with the energy that got stuck was triggered by a similar (unusual) physical position.
Not exactly PTSD but...
Past stress does not need to be particularly traumatic to cause current problems. But the truth is that most people have no idea that much current anxiety and stress have very little to do with current events. When you did not have enough resources (love, attention and support from others) when something difficult happened, you tried to manage your distress by focusing on something else. When something current reminds you of your past distress you feel it again. Knowing that is the first step to healing the past so it does not interfere with the present.
Suffering Is Unnecessary???
Before I learned this process I could and would re-tell my stories of being wronged to whomever would listen. I liked telling my stories! And my friends would listen and share their stories too! A wonderful experience of mutual sharing and support. I knew I should let those stories go, but I just couldn't stop thinking about them. After I learned how easy it was to take my energy out of the story--not exactly forget the story--it just stopped mattering very much--I was no longer very interested in sharing it. I had to find new things to talk to my friends about...
It's About Your Energy Flow
It's not too much of a challenge for me to learn to think of problems as disturbances in the flow of energy. After all, I grew up reading Science Fiction and watching Star Trek. The biggest challenge was to help my readers disengage from thinking about external forces as the source of stress and anxiety that need to be managed. Instead I needed to help them see those events as markers that just direct us to the area we can actually impact--the places energy is blocked. This is the first section in which the idea of blockage in personal energy flow is introduced as important for relief. I develop it throughout the book.
In The Beginning
I love the first sentence of this section. It is a part of the preface written by Dr. Willem Lammers, the discoverer of Logosynthesis, the rapid anxiety relief method described in this book. I was a bit reluctant to ask Dr. Lammers for this preface because my approach to teaching his material is so different from his. After all he is a European academic with incredibly deep knowledge of many different areas of healing. I am a non-traditionally trained psychotherapist and adult educator. In any case, I was thrilled with his response and I am delighted to share it with you here.
Discovery
These are the words of Dr. Willem Lammers, the discoverer of Logosynthesis, the anxiety relieving process described in this book. His discovery was accidental--an intuitive jump he could only make from such a rich professional heritage. I am a professional colleague of Dr. Lammers in the International Transactional Analysis Association. When I was first introduced to this revolutionary method though, I dismissed it. It was not until I experienced it for myself that I understand how powerful it is. My goal is to share that understanding with you so that you can experience that power in your own life.
It Takes a Team
I used a team of volunteers to help me create and refine this book. Some were professional Logosynthesis practitioners from around the world who readily agreed to join my closed Facebook group. They were all very encouraging but I was concerned about whether someone who knew nothing about this revolutionary new process would find the material useful. Several people in my own community graciously agreed to read the work in progress and give me feedback about it. Karen was one of them. The next response is from a wonderful Swiss corporate consultant who gave me feedback about how to make this more useful to her clients. I am so grateful to all who helped me complete this project.
It's All About Your Energy
Truly, when most people look at their distress as a problem in energy flow, the problem becomes easier to solve. Instead of blaming yourself or someone else because of some interpretation--or misinterpretation--or what is happening around you or has happened in the past, you just look for stuck energy. The process for actually releasing the stuck energy involves ONLY using words to guide your true Self to to do the job. Once your energy is flowing again, you simply move on.
This Experiment Worked!
As I reread this section I remember how uncertain I was about even telling my good friends about this unusual approach to healing. I did not quite believe in it myself. I only knew that I had experienced some startling personal impacts when a professional friend used it with me. The training we had traveled over 2100 miles each way to attend had been somewhat confusing and results there seemed minor. All I was certain about was that the worst thing that could happen was nothing at all.
I Was Amazed
This passage tells the story of how I got hooked on this incredibly simple and profound new process. I had heard about it before but didn't sound very plausible to me so I dismissed it. I want to show my readers the results others have experienced to understand the benefits of learning more. I have been a therapist for 45 years. These results continue to startle me even after studying and using the process for over 5 years.
Toxic Stress Creates Anxiety
Many of my readers are ashamed of being stressed, feeling anxious and feeling exhausted. I want them to know that these kinds of problems are almost universal challenge for people trying to manage busy lives. This book is about a surprising, recent discovery that allows readers to manage these problems far more easily than every before. Although this is a powerful tool for psychotherapists, coaches and other people helpers to use in their work, almost anyone who wants to can use this book to learn to apply this new rapid stress-relief process to their own lives.
Embrace Prosperity
Self-Help
Are You Sabotaging Your Own Prosperity? When your own limiting beliefs about money keep you from using the information and resources you already have, you never feel financially secure. • Dissolve beliefs that interfere with your financial effectiveness • Reclaim energy you waste worrying about money and not doing anything about it • Start using the information about creating wealth that you already have • Confidently make financial decisions that support your highest priorities • Uncover and enjoy what truly gives you pleasure You deserve the joy and satisfaction of knowing you’re creating your own financial security! Discover and use the three magic Logosynthesis sentences that have opened these doors for thousands of individuals around the world. “Embrace Prosperity: Resolve Blocks to Experiencing Abundance reveals the savvy secrets of eliminating blocks to financial success with just a few words. Brilliant!” Dame Doria Cordova, Owner/CEO of Money & You® / Excellerated Business Schools®
Book Bubbles from Embrace Prosperity
Your Money Story Is Keeping You Stuck
Does the description “one foot on the gas pedal and one foot on the break” resonate with you? The woman who described her conflict about earning money described it that way. She had the potential to earn lots of money and a limiting belief that rich people are pushy, self-centered and dishonest. A man agreed that the description applied to him too. His conflict was different though. He owned a business designed to be profitable but his belief that money doesn’t buy happiness kept him from making important business decisions. He feared that if he had money, he wouldn’t be happy. These limiting beliefs are conclusions you reach, usually when you’re a child, from your own life experiences. Even when you recognize a belief as no longer useful and want to get rid of it, it tends to be sticky. There are lots of different theories about what to do to drop those beliefs. Many of them don’t work. As one author titled his book, “If How-tos Were Enough, We Would All Be Skinny, Rich and Happy.” As a psychotherapist, I spent 40 years using the best strategies I knew to help clients drop those beliefs. The process was often long and painful. Then I learned the process we teach in this book to dissolve those beliefs that keep you stuck. I had trouble believing how quick and easy it was, but it really did work. Read this book and experience it yourself! Free yourself to enjoy prosperity now.
Are We Losing Control with Digital Pay
I am not a digital native. What I am is a bumbling digital grandma who has only recently started to share my cell phone number with people outside of my family. I have been highly suspicious of using that phone for any financial business. When I won a drawing and the prize was a gift card I received by email, I was in new territory. The instructions were to load it into Apple Pay—an app I knew about but didn’t understand--on my phone. I followed the instructions. Several months later I remembered it at a time when I could use it. We were out to lunch, and I opened it. I told the waiter I had it but did not know what to do next. He took my phone, looked at it, touched it to his machine nodded and handed it back. After I entered the tip, I asked what to do next. He said, “That’s all, you’re done.” It felt more like waving a magic wand than spending money. If it is this easy for many people to spend money, I wonder if it’s easier to lose track of how much is spent. Does it make it easier to spend more than you intend to? Or am I just way behind the times? What do you think? What is money anyway? If it’s not bills and coins, is it just pixels? Embrace Prosperity describes how others have answered this question and so much more.
I Fell for It—And You Might Too!
I was manipulated and I succumbed. I recently shopped at one of my favorite chain clothing stores. I had seen some wide leg jeans I wanted in an online advertisement and wanted to check the quality and fit. Besides, I had two different coupons I wanted to use before they expired. The jeans were in stock. They fit and were exactly what I was looking for. During the check-out process, the clerk informed me that the new company policy was to only allow the use of a single coupon per transaction. This was a change I didn’t expect. I used the highest value coupon and completed my purchase. Then I asked the clerk if I could use the second coupon if I bought something else. “Yes, as long as it’s a different transaction.” I found a nice top on the sale rack and using my second coupon, bought that too. I did not need the top; I wasn’t looking for it. I intended to buy only one item but bought two instead. I like the top and could easily afford it, but I would not have even looked at it if the store had not changed its policy. What do you think? Was my anger at the company for changing their policy without informing me worth the small additional profit they got from my additional purchase? What would you have done? Embrace Prosperity helps you recognize manipulation and make decisions that fit your own needs and values. Read it now!
Money Myths You Didn’t Know You Had
Why do people have such strange reactions when the subject of money comes up? That’s a question I started asking myself as early as 1975. Back then I was a young psychotherapist with about 5 years of experience and thrilled to be able to explore such questions. The Age of Aquarius, the seventies, was a very exciting time for the development of new ways of understanding human growth and potential. One tool was script analysis, developed in the Transactional Analysis Community. Essentially, how do we create the semi-hidden life plans that we develop as children and use as an unconscious blueprint for living our lives. Those plans are created out of both the verbal instructions from our caretakers and the things we observe going on around us and our reactions to those things. Some of my colleagues and I began examining money scripts. We asked ourselves and our clients what we had been told about money when we were children, and whether what we observed matched the verbal messages. Often, they didn’t and it was confusing. The conclusions we reached sometimes interfered with learning to manage our financial lives. What did you learn? How does it impact you now? This book will help you look at how the answers to these questions affect your life now, and what you can do to make different choices if you want to. Get started now.
Burning Rubber: Disaster or Opportunity?
Burning rubber smoke poured out of my old, trusty Vitamix! I was making protein smoothies for me and my husband when the smell invaded the kitchen. Of course, I unplugged it, cleaned the powered black residue from everything I touched, and called for help. The tech led me through several steps and determined that the container was completely worn out. My records with the company showed that I had been using that machine for almost exactly 9 YEARS! I’ve depended on it almost daily for the entire time. He offered me options, all of which were costly. Before I learned to embrace prosperity, I would have simply taken the least expensive option, replace the container. Instead, I chose to order a new machine that has almost all the same features I use regularly, but a different shape that I had been admiring for some time. It cost only an extra hundred dollars. Vitamix is a great company! Buying my first machine over 20 years ago was a major investment, and I simply bought their one consumer model. I upgraded it when that one wore out. Now there are many fancy models I don’t need or want. I was pleased that the tech/salesman could show me exactly what I wanted, and I didn’t need to agonize over my decision. Enjoying abundance means GETTING WHAT IS RIGHT FOR ME, and sometimes sorting that out is a challenge. Learn to meet that challenge in your life! Read the book now!
Were You Lied to About Money?
What are 3 things you remember hearing about money when you were growing up? Mine were: “Money doesn’t grow on trees.” “Do you think we’re made of money?” and “Save your money and spend it on big, important things.” What did those messages mean to you when you heard them? Do you think those things were helpful to you then? Are they still helpful or are they outdated? I decided that the first two messages meant stop asking for stuff we can’t afford. I was a good kid and obeyed. The truth is, I never lacked for anything important, and I certainly didn’t need a drawer full of cashmere sweaters like some of my friends bragged about. I resented those things when I heard them, and they probably helped me spend money on the things I really value. The unhelpful part was an outmoded belief in scarcity. The final message meant I could save my babysitting money and buy myself a sewing machine when I was 12 and pay my college tuition. The unhelpful part being trained to forgo the small things that make life more fun. Now it’s your turn. What are your answers? “Embrace Prosperity: Resolve Blocks to Experiencing Abundance” helps you discover the unhelpful remnants of those childhood experiences and remove their current impact from your life easily and effectively. When you do the simple Practicing Abundance activities in each chapter, you begin to create the abundant life that you deserve. Get your copy now!
The Grocery Argument That Changed Everything
When I complained to my husband that only half of the grocery receipt I was reviewing was for groceries and the other half consisted of treats only he enjoyed, he asked me a question I couldn’t answer. We are very different. I am an aware shopper. I often buy what I use regularly when it’s “on special,” meaning its low price point. I rarely run out of things or need to buy them at the often artificially higher price points. He puts things into the cart whenever they appeal to him. I can afford the higher prices, but I learned to do this over 60 years ago, and I see no reason to change this habit. Besides, I hate the manipulative tactics of most grocery chains. I also tend to space out my own edible treats because I enjoy them more that way. When my complaint tried to impose my values on my husband, he asked me, “Why shouldn’t I have exactly what I want whenever I want it? We can easily afford it.” I couldn’t answer with anything but old rules that I thought I had long since discarded. When I used the 3 sentences of the procedure we teach in “Embrace Prosperity” I realized that I had been so busy managing “important stuff” that I had been forgetting about doing things I really enjoy. When I started remembering and enjoying my own special treats, my critical thoughts disappeared. Use this process to learn what’s behind your own critical thoughts.
Shocking Ways You Waste Money
I discovered I was spending several hundred dollars a month and not getting much value for my money. What about you. What do you pay for without even thinking about it? • Your favorite brand of potato chips? • A new book by a favorite author? • A daily latte? • Concert tickets? • Or maybe your subscriptions to entertainment channels? Are these things you really value or just the result of something you once did and just kept on doing because it never occurred to you to stop? If you are anything like me, you have probably done several of these things. So many things compete for your attention it’s easy to “go on automatic.” If you find yourself short of money or feel like you just can’t get ahead, these are places where your money may be leaking away, or not serving you as well as it could. When you are meeting your financial goals and can easily afford these things, it may still be worthwhile to review what you are doing. I find that many things I just don’t want to spend my time and energy doing, like reviewing my spending habits, are valuable, and so I do them anyway. If you have trouble doing this, “Embrace Prosperity” will help you figure out both your values and the limiting beliefs that keep you stuck. Start now! You deserve to enjoy the abundance that becoming conscious and aware of your financial choices will bring you.
Prosperity Awaits: Learn the Secrets
Our pergola needs major repairs. One end of the open lattice over our patio is collapsing because the beautiful vine that covers it has become so overwhelmingly heavy that it has broken the structure. I wish I could show you a picture. Parts of the vine look like tree trunks. The contractor and the arborist will meet to discuss what to do next week, and I know it will cost a LOT of money to make the necessary repairs. Yet now that we have found highly recommended professionals to do those repairs, I am calm. I am so grateful that we spent the time and energy to take care of our financial life years ago. Most years we were able to fully fund our retirement accounts and found highly competent advisors to help us manage those accounts. Now we have plenty of money to cover unexpected expenses without upsetting our comfortable lifestyle. We didn’t really pay attention to our financial future until we were approaching our 40s. I am thankful that our grandchildren, in their late teens and early 20s, are already thinking about these issues. It is never too late to embrace prosperity, but the earlier you start, the easier and more fun it will be. Dr. Lammers and I wrote this book to help you easily resolve your limiting beliefs about money that block your path to financial success. Get the book now! Use it as a resource to start on your own path to prosperity.
5. Money Myths: What's Keeping You Stuck?
Just for fun, I asked ChatGPT for common limiting beliefs about money. Here is the list it came up with. • Money is the root of all evil. • Rich people are greedy and dishonest. • I don't deserve to be wealthy. • There is never enough money. • Making money requires too much hard work. • Money can't buy happiness. • I will never be good at managing money. • You have to take advantage of others to get rich. • I'm not smart enough to be wealthy. • It's selfish to want more money. I have known people who firmly believe each of these statements. Each time someone says one of these statements aloud, I hear the statement followed by an excuse to either avoid doing something positive financially or to do something that will keep them stuck financially. Read the list again and notice which one you have either said to yourself or heard when you were a child. When you say it, what does it give you an excuse to do or not even try to do? Now try an experiment. Fill in the blank in the following sentence with that statement. “I retrieve all my energy bound up in the belief that ______________________________ and take it to the right place in myself.” Now sit quietly and notice your thoughts and feelings. What did you learn? We share the other 2 sentences in the basic process we teach in “Embrace Prosperity” so you can release this belief and move toward your own success. Start now!
Buffet FOMO: Anxiety's Food Frenzy
There is nothing like eating at an all-you-can-eat restaurant to stimulate my FOMO (fear of missing out.) Maybe it has something to do with my table companions who include 4 young men who delight in inhaling huge amounts of food. Last night I watched as the waitress brought huge trays of sushi to the other end of the table and it disappeared in seconds. I know our tray is coming and there will be ample for me too, but somehow, I worry and when it comes, my normal, carefully nurtured eating habits disappear. I try to eat as much as my body needs, and then stop. Last night though, my eyes took the lead, and I ate because the food looked so appealing and, on some primitive level, I was afraid they would swoop down from the other end of the table and devour our food also. In short, I was both afraid I wouldn’t get my share and eating more than was comfortable for me because of the overstimulation. Neither thought process serves me very well, but as we wrote “Embrace Prosperity” many people live their financial lives from that perspective. If you are struggling to catch up, or to keep up with some ideal from social media instead of instead of thinking about what fits best for you, perhaps you really need a new way to approach your life. We give you lots of ways to practice abundance and discover your best path. Get started today.
Money Mistake Unleashes Inner Demons
True confessions today. I am on a cruise, discovered I had made a money mistake, and was suddenly hijacked by all my gremlins and old scarcity messages. It happened this way. The ship’s excursions were sold out by the time I looked at them, and so I chose a tour that sounded wonderful with another reputable company. Of course I had to pre-pay the non-refundable fee. As we docked, I pulled out my map app to see how to get to the meeting place. The route was an hour away from the dock, and the timing would have made it impossible to get back to the ship on time. There was no way to do it. The money was gone and I was berating myself for my mistake. After about 15 minutes of this pointless activity, I remembered that I could use the process we teach in “Embrace Prosperity: Resolve Blocks to Experiencing Abundance.” Yes, I have been using this process for 12 years, and it took me that long to remember it! When I finally did say the 3 sentences, I felt better immediately and started figuring out how to solve the problem. My husband and I left the ship, stopped at the tourist information booth, and walked to a 17th century fort that was one of the main attractions of the port. We enjoyed ourselves thoroughly. You too can leave your gremilns in the dust. Read the book and learn how.
Shatter Money Shame: Unleash Your Truth!
“Shame is one of the biggest barriers to people shifting their financial behaviors.” This quote, from Brad Klontz, a psychologist, certified financial planner, and researcher of money disorders, stopped me in my tracks. It fits perfectly with the reaction of a client who was trying to figure out how to break the habit of supporting a family member who was chronically broke. After we used the 3 Logosynthesis sentences about a belief that she was supposed to take care of everyone, she said, “I should have called you a year ago.” She knew that she was not really helping either of them by providing resources that kept the family member from assuming responsibility for herself but was ashamed to let others know how stuck she felt. She certainly isn’t alone. I have been reluctant to share my own financial missteps with others. Victims of scammers are often ashamed of having been caught in the scam. And yet, when we share, we find out that others have made similar mistakes. If you are struggling and reluctant to ask for help, try using “this belief that I am dumb/stupid/different” in the sentences. Use whatever words you are using to berate yourself. You may discover that outdated family messages are holding you back. In that case, use that message as a trigger and do the sentences again. Then find help to solve whatever the problem happens to be. Read “Embrace Prosperity.” It’s full of ideas to help you.
Embrace Prosperity: Rewrite Your Money Story
Are you someone who feels like no matter how much money you make you will never have enough? Leanne had a great job, was contributing to her savings and retirement accounts, but constantly worried about running out of money. Instead of enjoying her life, she kept obsessing about how she could accumulate more. When we tried to figure out why she was so concerned about this, she told me how her father wanted her to marry a rich man who would take care of her. Once we sorted this out, she learned to use the 3 powerful Logosynthesis sentences to reclaim her energy from her father’s messages and what they represented. Whild doing the process she realized that his hidden message was that she would never be able to take care of herself. She reclaimed her energy from that message too. A few weeks later Leanne was relaxed and happily enjoying her abundant life. Do you know the reason you worry about having enough money? If you are stuck in a low-paying -job, you may realistically need to figure out how to get more education or training to improve your situation. If you picture yourself stuck, you can use the sentences to take your energy out of the old picture and have it available to use in a better way. Finding and deactivating the trigger for your fear of scarcity will help you feel better and make whatever changes you need to make. Read Embrace Prosperity and learn how.
Empty Choices? Break Free Now!
Are you making choices that help you live abundantly? If you aren’t clear about what you really enjoy, you might be unhappy because you have lots of what isn’t really what you want. I confess, I have learned this lesson repeatedly. My lessons have come mostly from getting carried away with beautiful clothes at great prices. When they don’t feel soft on my skin, they hang in my closet until I give them away. On the other side, I once found a coat I loved. At half price, it still cost double what I intended to spend. I bought it and wore it almost daily every winter for about 10 years. With practice I have learned important lessons. Since I don’t enjoy alcohol, getting a vacation package that includes all you can drink is useless for me. If I only use my hotel room for sleeping, showering, and changing clothes, a fancy hotel room won’t especially help me enjoy my vacation. I do much better paying a premium price for a fantastic tour and sleeping in an ordinary clean comfortable room. If you have been going along with the crowd instead of thinking about what truly helps you enjoy your life, you’ll love our chapter titled, “How Much is Enough Now?” And that’s only one of the many ways we help you “Embrace Prosperity: Resolve Blocks to Experiencing Abundance.” Get your copy now and dive in.
Dreams Into Dollars! Your Money, Your Way!
Who is your financial advisor? It might be mom and dad. My parents taught me to save my money for big purchases. That was useful, but it didn’t let me spend money on fun things which is also important. They shared absolutely nothing about growing money by investing. Maybe it’s someone at work. The consultant who set up our first business told us to open retirement accounts and regularly add to them. That worked too. Maybe you have a 401k account, and like us, have no idea whether the investments in it are right for you. A financial workshop advised me to regularly put some money into an interest-bearing account and spend the interest for fun activities. I did and the account kept growing. Maybe it’s a book or website. I read a book on investing, got excited, did research and found a highly rated mutual fund to replace the savings account. I spent the dividends. Do you follow random advice? We tried that too and lost money in real estate investments we didn’t understand. Do you have a registered financial advisor? The accountant for our business referred us to one many years ago, and thanks to following his advice, we no longer must work for our money—it works for us. Decide if the financial advisor you are using now is the one you need, and if not, find the one who will help you reach your goals. Reading “Embrace Prosperity” will help figure it out. Start now.
Your Journey to Prosperity
I love to travel, but until recently I had someone else make all the complicated arrangements. Now it’s my turn and I discovered that I have a lot to learn! First, the price of airline tickets shocked me. Second, the complexity of the choices was stunning. I managed to find tickets that were hundreds of dollars less than the price I was originally quoted. The secret was to find the right person to ask for the help I needed. And grocery shopping has become an adversarial relationship. The store ads say one thing, but I need to use the apps and spend time navigating the online maze to get the promised prices. It’s much easier to give up paying attention to details and just get what I want. It’s no wonder that so many people don’t want to spend the time and energy to focus on the mechanics of creating abundance for themselves. Navigating the financial world does take attention and energy, so it’s easy to understand why you have not started to do it. Struggling with beliefs that say you’ll never be successful, or you are not worth it, makes it even harder. If you are ready to turn things around for yourself and embrace the prosperity you dream about, we can help you. “Embrace Prosperity” will lead you step by step into a new way of releasing the limiting beliefs and using your energy to create the financial life you want and need. Get your copy now.
Crack the Code:Unlock Your Path to Prosperity
Where are you on your money journey? Did your parents tell you to save money? Mine did. I was supposed to save for college. In fact, from the time I was about 13, most extra money that I acquired went into my college fund. My spending money came from my allowance. Once, I got permission to use some of my saving to buy a sewing machine, otherwise, babysitting money, and finally earnings from part time jobs all got saved. I learned a valuable lesson. If you save your money, you can get “big” things. BUT that was pretty much all I learned from my parents. It wasn’t nearly enough. As a young adult, living with my new husband, we learned how to get the best values; stretching what little money we had. Any extra first went for vacations, and when we had a bit more, my husband wanted to use it for camera equipment. That finally led to negotiating and sharing extra money: his, hers and our accounts. I saved most of mine, he spent his. When we started our business, our advisor told us to set up a retirement account, so we did. We still had very little idea of anything besides earn and spend. Classes about using money to create money came much later. Learning to create abundance came even later. Every step was important! Wherever you are on your journey, “Embrace Prosperity” can help you get ready for your next step. Get started now.
From Bullying to Billionaire
What happens to you when you are child has an enormous impact on your adult life, and that includes your financial life too. I just finished reading Walter Issacson’s incredible biography of Elon Musk, the richest man in the world. Musk is responsible for the creation of Tesla automobiles and Starlink satellites as well as numerous other amazing innovations. Musk grew up in a very tough environment. His father’s belief was that tearing down a child in every way possible would cause him to become tough enough to survive in a dangerous world. He developed few social skills and was also bullied in school, so he learned to bury his emotions and routinely bully others. His innate genius and powerful vision of how the world should evolve, and what seemed to me a desire to prove his father wrong, led him to take extreme risks with huge potential rewards. He enrolled others to help him by bullying them to actually perform tasks they considered impossible. His life is filled with drama, and he is rarely happy. Others react to being insulted and bullied as children by deciding they can never be successful, avoiding all risks, taking jobs they hate and feeling bored, angry and helpless. You are probably somewhere between those extremes. You can learn about how your own childhood experiences impact your financial situation by doing the Practicing Abundance exercises in EMBRACE PROSPERITY. You can also learn to dissolve the limiting beliefs you discover quickly and easily.
Woman Unleashes Truth: System Overhaul Needed
Today I witnessed a very brave woman risk speaking a truth aloud that others had been thinking but afraid to express. She said that the system doesn’t work and needs to be changed, and that she could no longer continue her work within the old system. Sometimes your prosperity is stymied because you keep trying to work within a system that made sense in another time or place. Teachers whose salary structure used to allow them to rent nice homes close to the schools that employ them can no longer afford to live in those communities because rents have risen because property values are higher because, because, because… The reasons are far too complicated for most of us to fully understand. If you believe that you should be able to figure out how to make it work, you feel frustrated and depressed. It’s hard to recognize this situation when everyone around you seems to believe something different. It’s even harder to speak about it because you imagine terrible consequences for your audacity. Sometimes your fears are warranted, sometimes not. The Logosynthesis basic process in this book offers you a way to reclaim your energy (and courage) from your imagined outcomes. Read the book and explore this further on my website, LaurieWeiss.com The woman who spoke up today discovered that her fantasies of a negative outcome were completely wrong. Others in the meeting agreed with her observations, thanked her for speaking out, and looked for ways to address the problems.
Manifest Your Money Dreams Today
How does money come into your life? That’s not a trick question. Yet, it’s a very different question than what do you do for a living? When you were a child, you may have received an allowance as a gift from your parents. Some adults still receive their money from life partners, parents, trust funds or others. Perhaps you had to earn your allowance by doing chores. It did not come into your life automatically. You may have had experience babysitting or cutting lawns and receiving money from neighbors. Now most of your money may come from earning a paycheck from an employer or you may work independently and receive pay for services directly or as tips. Or money may come to you from a government program that you are entitled to for one of many possible reasons. These all seemed very normal to me when I was a young woman. I was very startled when I asked someone what she did for a living, and she explained that she had investments and did not need to do anything—her money just came to her. Then I read “The Richest Man in Babylon” and learned that money could make money and that it was possible to let accumulated money give me money without being used up. Magic??? The story of that lesson and many others is in “Embrace Prosperity: Resolve Blocks to Experiencing Abundance.” Read it to learn to expand the ways money comes to you now.
Ditch the Distractions: Embrace
Have you ever bought anything from a print catalog, especially one with beautiful pictures and inviting descriptions? Are you as inundated by follow up mailings as I am? And are you, like me, tempted to order things you don’t need when you are offered one incredible bargain after another? One of my limiting beliefs is that more stuff is good. It’s a leftover from childhood. I grew up eagerly anticipating the arrival of each Sears Catalog, so I think I am especially susceptible to the promises of what we used to call the “wish book.” Then, I only had a few things and needed new school clothes each year. Now, my closets and shelves are bursting. Then my budget was limited by my mom. Now, I can easily afford anything I want. Then abundance was having enough and perhaps a little extra. Now abundance is measured differently, because my challenge is having enough space, not enough stuff. Do you share my all-too-common limiting belief? Would your life be enhanced by more stuff or more space? Enjoying abundance and prosperity means different things to each one of us. In “Embrace Prosperity: Resolve Blocks to Experiencing Abundance” we have lots of activities to help you figure out just what abundance means to you. When you take your energy back from all those temptations you are free to focus it where it will create the most joy and satisfaction for you now, wherever you are in your life’s journey.
Game Teaches 19-Year-Old to Retire Early!
Playing a board game with my husband and 4 young adults (ages 19-25), I was delighted to watch my 19-year-old grandson carefully calculating how his game character could pay off all his debts to become financially free. That is, his character could stop working for a salary and have enough money coming in from investments to cover all his expenses. I don’t know about you, but at 19 I had no clue that it was possible to do anything except work to earn the money you needed to live on. In fact, when I was around 35, I was somewhat confused when I asked a young couple what kind of work they did, and they told me they had made some profitable investments and spent most of their time playing. Although I was dutifully contributing to my own retirement account, I didn’t really understand the concept of financial independence until I began playing this same board game myself shortly after it’s 1996 release. Playing a game was a lot easier than trying to wade through boring books about investing, both for me and for these young people. I describe The Cashflow Game and other resources in Embrace Prosperity: Resolve Blocks to Experiencing Abundance. This book helps you recognize and change your own limiting beliefs about money. And doing so can be easy and fun. You and your friends can all make this an exciting journey you take together. Get started by ordering your own book now.
How to Avoid Spending Traps
Do you ever wonder why it’s so hard to think logically about money? Emotions tend to win out over logic even when you know better. It happens to almost everyone. Advertisers take advantage of that human condition. And now that the holiday season is almost here, catalogs promising wonderful things are only part of what is drawing our attention. The child in each of us wants to believe all the promises and wants everything. And what is more, we suffer from FOMO, fear of missing out! I wish I were immune, but I am not! So here are some tips we can use to take care of ourselves, especially before making large purchases. 1. Instead of immediately buying something that attracts you, wait a while. go for a walk, look at other things, or sleep on it. 2. Read reviews from other purchasers and not just the ones quoted by the advertiser. 3. If you can, look up the item in a search engine. (My grandchildren showed me how one high end catalog doubled the price of fancy electronic things.) 4. Talk to someone you trust about a perspective purchase, or check out “complaints about…” 5. Use the 3 magic Logosynthesis sentences to take you energy out of “this fantasy about how having xxx will make me feel.” These tips will help you use the thinking part of yourself instead of just your emotions. You’ll be much happier with your decisions if you use at least some of them.
My Money Monsters Attacked
My own money gremlins caught up with me yesterday. It took me a full page of journal writing to figure out what was going on and several hours more to come to what to do about it. I started to order a $90 item from a catalogue and spent some time looking at ways to bring my order to $100 so I would meet the minimum for free shipping. When I learned that the free shipping offer had been cancelled, I couldn’t bring myself to pay the extra $15 shipping fee and cancelled my order. This is especially strange because I really want the item which was something of a splurge for me. I can easily afford it and will never notice spending the extra $15. What I learned is that I had activated an old belief which was once an important protection for my family. The belief is basically that “you can only be extravagant if you get something at a bargain price.” It made sense when my family had very little extra money and I frequently heard “money doesn’t grow on trees” from my parents. My parents died over 30 years ago! I used the 3 sentences we teach in the book to release the old, outdated belief which was interfering with my experience of prosperity. After all the personal work I have done, it startles me when something like this turns up, but it does! It happens to everyone! Get the book and free yourself now!
From $5.99 to $8.99: Are You Shocked?
Over 60 years ago, early in my marriage, my husband was a graduate student, and I held an entry level job. We had very little money and I shopped carefully and prepared most of our food at home. Now, I have plenty of money and prepared and partially prepared food is readily available and delicious. I often serve it instead of cooking from scratch. Yesterday, as I reviewed some of my favorite dishes in the prepared food section, I discovered that what I remembered costing $5.99 now cost $8.99. There might have been an intermediate price hike, but somehow this startled me. I reminded myself that there’s a reason for this inflation. Wages for workers at every step of the process have been increasing. The cost of raw food has also been increasing. No wonder I’m being charged more. It makes perfectly good sense but I’m still shocked. It’s clear that my mind and my emotions don’t match. This is a case where I’m reacting to an old picture. I know I can be angry about inflation, but I can’t do anything about it. I wanted to let go of the picture in my mind about how things are supposed to be that was causing my distress. I did this by saying the three sentences we teach that resolve the blocks to experiencing abundance. To resolve your own blocks, get your copy of “Embrace Prosperity” and let us show you how to do this.
Unlock Abundance with These Secrets!
I recently reconnected with a friend who has taught me many lessons about embracing prosperity over the past 35 years. This friend has never had an abundance of money. She has earned a PhD, survived a life-threatening illness, lost her home during the 2008 banking scandal and has been living in affordable senior housing for over a decade. Yet she has traveled the world, learning with, and teaching important information to people who owned much more property than she did. As we reminisced, she described her excitement about the things she had studied while raising children alone by running an in-home daycare center to make ends meet. And she reminded me of how blessed we have been. I grew up with material advantages but was taught that resources were limited. I was taught to believe in scarcity. My friend grew up with few financial resources but somehow learned to believe that there were abundant resources and all she needed to do was find ways to access them, and she did. She believed in abundance. It took me many years to change my limiting belief from in scarcity to abundance and watching my friend certainly helped. It doesn’t need to take you nearly that long. The almost magical process Dr. Lammers and I teach in “Embrace Prosperity: Resolve Blocks to Experiencing Abundance” can help you resolve your own limiting beliefs very quickly. First, we help you identify those beliefs. Then you can often resolve them in minutes! Start NOW!
Work? Play? Both? You Get to Choose!
“I was leading a group shark diving the first time I saw a whale.” The captain of the 18-passenger whale-watching boat explained how he came to be doing this unusual job. He was happy to receive our tips, but they were clearly not the reason he was “working.” His work and play are almost indistinguishable from each other. He clearly loves what he is doing. Do you? Prosperity isn’t always about money. Sometimes true prosperity is about much more than financial goals, although often, having enough money allows you to live a life you love now. When we asked the captain what he did between whale-watching seasons, he told us that he would probably lead more shark diving trips. He is in the minority of people who truly love their work. Chances are that you have reasons, like raising kids or other responsibilities that keep you tied to work you don’t love right now. If you do, are you making plans for what may come next? Knowing your own values and what you do love to do can help you choose to move in the direction of living a joyful and prosperous life. If you are saying “I could never manage that,” then it’s definitely time to recognize and remove whatever is in your way. Read “Embrace Prosperity: Resolve Blocks to Experiencing Abundance” and redirect your life journey so that you too can live the life of your dreams.
Discover Your True Money Priorities
Do you collect Gazingus pins? Uh? What the heck is a Gazingus pin? I didn’t know either until I listened to a recording by Joe Dominguez that asked that question. It turned out that I definitely did collect them. Joe, whose work was later published in a wonderful, now classic, book about money, defined a Gazingus pin as something you bought automatically and stuffed into a drawer and left there. Mine turned out to be proof sets of US coins. These are specially made extra sharp regular coins, sealed in plastic, produced every year by the mint. They are for looking at, not spending. They are supposed to increase in value, but they are so common that the increase is very, very small. Once I started collecting them, I bought them faithfully each time a new set was released. Joe’s whole point was that becoming conscious about how you use your resources makes a major difference in your long-term prosperity. What are your Gazingus pins? The world has changed in the years since I heard those recordings. I think today’s Gazingus pins are likely to be found on our monthly charge bills. How many subscriptions do you pay for every month without even thinking about whether you still use them? When you shift to being conscious about how you use your money, you have more of it to spend on things you truly enjoy. It’s another way for you to “Embrace Prosperity.” Get your copy now.
Unlock Prosperity Overcome Financial Disaster
When you believe you’ll never have enough, it is easy to stay stuck in a life of one financial disaster after another. All you need to do is tell yourself that you would rather maintain your freedom than live with those unreasonably demanding bosses, resolve to survive as an artist doing what you love, and blame others for your misfortune. It’s even easier when you live in a bubble where most of your friends have similar beliefs and experiences. If you begin to suspect that your own beliefs may have something to do with your financial problems, what then? There are lots of good instruction manuals available for improving your financial life. I loved one called “How to Get Out of Debt, Stay out of Debt and Live Prosperously.” But until you free yourself from that limiting belief, it’s incredibly easy to sabotage your own progress. RESOLVING THAT LIMITING BELIEF IS CRUCIAL! That is one reason we wrote “Embrace Prosperity: Resolve Blocks to Experiencing Abundance.” When you practice the simple process we teach, saying 3 sentences focused on those beliefs and noticing your responses, things start to shift. It becomes much easier to stick to whatever program you choose to rebuild your life. I hope the talented artist I visited with recently uses the process to help her create the life she always thought was beyond her reach.
Panic to Power: Embrace True Abundance
Experiencing abundance is about much more than money. I had a great lesson about that today. Yesterday, I discovered two major problems with my computer. My first response was to panic, my second, just a few minutes later, was to go into Google and describe each of the problems. I was able to make sense of the results for one of the problems, but the other was extremely technical and I didn’t know the meaning of many of the words. I decided I would address the problems today, but when this morning came, I started to panic again. I imagined trying to follow complicated instructions and was nearly in tears. Logosynthesis to the rescue. I said the first sentence using “these computer problems” as my trigger. When I took the time to breathe, I realized that the real trigger was “this fantasy that I have to do everything myself.” I did all three sentences using the fantasy is my trigger and felt relaxed enough to do the other things on my schedule. I solved one problem following Google’s instructions. Then, I called Geek Squad. It took quite a while and the problem being managed by a second technician, but the problem was solved! The abundance I needed was an abundance of help. When I was able to release my fantasy, I was able to find the abundance of help that I needed. “Embrace Prosperity: Resolve Blocks to Experiencing Abundance” will help you get what you need too. Grab yours now!
Unlock the Path to Financial Intimacy
A NerdWallet survey on financial infidelity reported that more than two in five Americans Who have a significant other say that they've withheld or lied about financial information to a partner. They’re untruthful about outstanding depts, income, spending and credit scores. If you or your partner finds it hard to share this kind of information, it can cause major problems in your relationship. So WHY is this such a common problem? The same article by Erin El Issa suggests that is important to share information about how your family handled money as well as your financial goals before you get married. I think it’s important to share that information throughout your relationship. But having these conversations is often a challenge too! It’s especially likely to be a problem if your head is filled with old beliefs about money that keep you stuck. When you take the time to think about what you automatically say to yourself and others about money you’ll begin to see why. Your beliefs may come from things you heard regularly in your family and community when you were a child. They may also come from difficult experiences like living in poverty or being cheated. Releasing these old beliefs is easier than you might imagine. “Embrace Prosperity: Resolve Blocks to Experiencing Abundance” shows you how. Then you can make use of the good advice that comes from so many sources like the NerdWallet article, and truly enjoy the abundance you crave. Start now!
LEARNED Financial Helplessness is Real
Jan felt overwhelmed and helpless every time she thought about answering the questions to create a 401k account in her new job. She kept telling herself that she would never be able to understand this financial stuff and she would probably lose out, whatever she decided. She had a vivid memory of her mom telling her that women always got screwed when it came to money matters. She knew her mother’s divorce settlement had been a financial disaster and that her mother bitterly resented needing to work so hard to support them. When a friend suggested reading “Embrace Prosperity,” Jan wondered what good it could possibly do. Very soon after she started the book, she realized how she had come to accept her mother’s limiting beliefs about money. When she read the stories in the book and realized her belief about being helpless might not have anything to do with her own true abilities, she felt a glimmer of hope. Perhaps she could learn to take control of her own finances. As she practiced using the special sentences to resolve the limiting beliefs she had adopted automatically, she was amazed at how much easier it was to read the papers that explained her 401k choices. She was able to talk to her friend about what she now understood and clarified what she wanted to do. If you suspect your own limiting beliefs about money are holding you back, grab the book now and change your life.
Unlock Abundance
Do you balance your checkbook regularly? Do you have a routine to manage your bills? Do you pay your credit card balance in full every month or are you following a plan to allow you to do so? If you can answer yes to all these questions, you are on a path to embracing prosperity. If you answered no, why not? If you are not managing these important tasks, you may be sabotaging your own prosperity. When you know you should be doing something, but often don’t do it, it probably means something about doing “that thing” triggers uncomfortable feelings. Even just thinking about “that thing” is enough to cause those feelings. So its lots easier to forget about doing “that thing,” or being too busy to do it, or feeling overwhelmed whenever you think about it. Just telling yourself to do it doesn’t work. You need a different strategy. You may even have tried different ways to get yourself to follow through, but the uncomfortable feelings keep coming back. “Embrace Prosperity” provides something entirely different. The processes you learn to stop the self-sabotage helps you eliminate your uncomfortable reactions. That makes it a lot easier to do these tasks and take control of your financial life. And the basic process is simple to learn and only takes a few minutes. You deserve the power and peace that comes with knowing you are managing your life. Get your book now and resolve your blocks to experiencing that power and peace.
Free Yourself and Thrive
A money coach I know suggests to her followers that they affirm to themselves statements such as I am enough, I have enough, there is enough and we are enough. Although I certainly hope that you believe all those statements, I suspect you don't. The problem is that many of us have deeply held memories, beliefs and fantasies that we are not enough and there is not enough and that we will never have enough. These beliefs are based upon experiences that were either explicitly stated in the family you grew up in or conclusions you reached based on your lifetime of experiences. Just saying you have a new belief isn't enough to change any of those ingrained problematic beliefs. However, that doesn't mean that these beliefs can't be changed. That’s because they are connected to deeply emotional experiences of your acceptance and maybe even your survival. Psychotherapy used to be one of the few ways we knew to release those old beliefs. Newer methods of energy work can make changing these beliefs faster. Dr. Lammers discovered specific sentences for releasing the energy that holds the old belief in place. Get your copy of “Embrace Prosperity,” and learn how to use those special words to free yourself from the old limiting beliefs that are keeping you stuck. We encourage you to experiment a little at a time and learn to use the three sentences to claim the joy and prosperity you deserve.
Discover Secrets of Getting Rich
If we’re so smart, how come we aren’t rich? That’s a question several of my professional friends asked ourselves a very long time ago. We all had thriving professional practices and made comfortable incomes. That question led to an exploration that eventually allowed my husband and I to retire comfortably. If being rich means we don’t NEED to consider money when we make most choices in our lives, we are rich now. We still pay attention to different aspects of our financial lives though. It’s an important habit. The exploration of that question also eventually led to the publication of Embrace Prosperity: Resolve Blocks to Experiencing Abundance. There were many reasons why we (and probably you) were not rich. Two main ones stand out. First is our family histories and the beliefs we developed because of them. We all had been raised with the idea that money was scarce with family sayings like “Money doesn’t grow on trees.” Second is we had very little practical information about how money worked. We knew how to earn, spend, and save for special things and that was about all. There is so much more to creating wealth. Once we understood those challenges, we learned to overcome them. That’s what this book is about. If you want to enjoy abundance and prosperity you need to learn to recognize and meet both challenges in your own life. This book is designed to show you how. Grab your copy and start now!
Is It Worth Your Money?
The best advice about shopping I ever accepted came in 1986. I was in India, traveling with a large study group and we were repeatedly approached by vendors of all kinds of exotic and beautiful temptations. I had fallen in love with a white, cashmere, gossamer thin, shawl. It was called a ring scarf because it was so finely made you could pull it through a ring you happened to be wearing. It cost much more money than I was prepared to spend. The oldest woman on the trip, who was in her 80s, told me, “If you love it, buy it, because you will never see anything like it again.” I took her advice and have loved using it for over 35 years. I have used that advice several times since then. Once I saw a very expensive coat reduced to half-price. At that price it cost twice as much as I had expected to pay. I bought it and enjoyed wearing it daily for many winters. Obviously, this advice is not useful for most consumer items, and I have made mistakes buying bargains that I rarely used and didn’t enjoy. Learning what really brings me pleasure or makes my life easier is the key. If you are interested in taking my friend’s advice, some of the “Practicing Abundance” activities in “Embrace Prosperity” will make it easier. Pay special attention to learning to tell the difference between a hum and a beckon. It will help with those important choices.
We Won’t Go Back
Dinner was expensive and we were disappointed. The service was pleasant, but the food was very, very ordinary. This led me to question what is really valuable to me. One way to look at it is what I am willing to spend money on. This can be a real indication of what I value. I'm happy to go to a local restaurant with predictably tasty but very plain food and decent service. I guess I value the taste rather than the atmosphere. I am willing to pay $90 for a theater ticket but I'm appalled when I hear about people paying over $500 for a single concert ticket. If you are willing to pay $500 for a concert ticket that says something about your values. Fun is worth different amounts to different people. I don't pretend to be clear about this and you probably aren't either. Why are some people willing to spend $10 for a simple breakfast but complain bitterly about paying over $3 for a dozen eggs? Do you face similar dilemmas? It's so easy to get caught up in buying things just because other people are doing it too. If it's not something that's valuable to you, you may be sabotaging your own financial well-being and not experiencing living in abundance. “Embrace Prosperity” is designed to help you discover your own definition of true prosperity and abundance. You'll find it's well worth your time to learn what practicing abundance means to you. Get started now.
Mastering Your Money Mindset
I have discovered chatGPT, which could be a new and fascinating way to create bubbles. I am learning by playing with it and I want to share it with you. I first asked it to suggest a list of topics I could write about related to “Embrace Prosperity: Resolve Blocks to Experiencing Abundance.” This was the result. I think some work well. My responses are in parenthesis. 1. What's Holding You Back from Prosperity? Identifying and Resolving Blocks with Logosynthesis 2. How to Use Logosynthesis to Overcome Negative Money Beliefs and Attract (Allow) Abundance 3. The Mind-Body Connection to Abundance: How Logosynthesis Can Help You Align Your Thoughts and Actions (Logosynthesis, alone, doesn’t do this.) 4. How to Tap into the Energy of Abundance: The Logosynthesis Process for Releasing Trapped Emotions (Maybe—we can release what triggers emotions.) 5. Building a Prosperity Mindset: Tips and Techniques from "Embrace Prosperity" and Logosynthesis 6. From Scarcity to Abundance: Using Logosynthesis to Transform Your Relationship with Money (I like this, it’s a big topic.) 7. Creating a Vision for Prosperity: How to Use Logosynthesis to Manifest Your Dreams 8. Overcoming Fear and Anxiety Around Money: How Logosynthesis Can Help You Find Peace and Confidence 9. The Power of Gratitude in Attracting Abundance: Logosynthesis Techniques for Cultivating a Thankful Mindset (Logosynthesis can help resolve resentments and make space for gratitude.) 10. Breaking Free from Limiting Beliefs About Money: How Logosynthesis Can Help You Achieve Financial Freedom What do you want to know about?
Escape Your Inner Critic
Do you bounce between listening to conflicting internal voices where one tells you that you should be saving more money and another that says it’s OK to indulge yourself? Then, after you’ve “been good” for a while, you splurge, regret it, and the voice telling you to save takes over again. But you can’t really save very much because you’re still paying for your indulgence. If you wish you could get off that merry-go-round but can’t figure out how, “Embrace Prosperity” can help you shut down both voices and start to follow your own chosen path. It’s easier than you imagine. It will help if you can figure out where your internal messages came from. Sometimes one parent kept telling the other to quit spending money on fun things, and the other protested. Even that information isn’t necessary. “Embrace Prosperity” has instructions on how to put a description of each voice into 3 different sentences that may not make much sense to your everyday self. Those sentences help access your essence (your inner wisdom?) Amazingly enough, the process can erase that inner conflict. I know, it sounds like magic and many people have called the process magical, as they use it to resolve limiting beliefs and make choices that allow them to bring abundance into their lives. Get a copy for yourself and spend just a few hours changing your life.
End Self-sabotaging Procrastination
I won’t ask if you procrastination. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t. I do it when I have a task I don’t especially want to do but, for some very good reason, it needs to be done. I usually wait for a while and then get around to it. The only harm it causes is draining my energy thinking about doing the task instead of feeling comfortable. Self-sabotaging procrastination involves avoiding doing something important indefinitely and not knowing exactly why. Sometimes it’s making excuses to put off important health care. The real reason may be that you’re imagining learning something you don’t want to know. Self-sabotaging procrastination might mean not taking steps to apply for a new job, even thought you know your current one isn’t a good fit, and you could make more money, learn and grow somewhere else. You may have a fantasy that you aren’t good enough or nobody would hire you or your coworkers would be angry at you for leaving. One way to get past the procrastination is to clearly state your imagined worst outcome of taking the action you have been avoiding. Then put that statement into the 3 “magic” Logosynthesis sentences. You will probably be pleasantly surprised as your resistance dissolves. I have watched many people use this process to complete the tasks they’ve been avoiding and free energy to enjoy their lives. You can too. Read “Embrace Prosperity” and learn how easy it is!
Sometimes Less is More
I am a bit embarrassed to admit that I needed my daughter’s help to face a harsh (to me) truth. The truth is that I am never going to be able to fit into some of the pants I enjoyed wearing before the pandemic. I tried them on in her presence. They did not zip! It’s not just the stubborn 5 pounds that have glued themselves to my shrinking frame. It is also the ageing process that changes a woman’s body, despite sound eating and exercise habits. I now have an abundance of empty hangers and space in my closet. I also had an opportunity to recognize that my hoarding behavior, left over from growing up with parents who came of age during the depression, does not serve me or anyone else. Using the Logosynthesis process we describe in “Embrace Prosperity: Resolve Blocks to Experiencing Abundance,” I reclaimed my energy from the belief that I could ever again have the body I had even 10 years ago. With relief and gratitude, I watched my daughter carry away the clothes that no longer fit to donate to people who could enjoy wearing them. I realized once again that I have more than enough. My life now is much more about comfort than professional image. Recognizing and accepting that creates true abundance, with energy released to enjoy what truly matters now.
Scarcity: Belief or Reality?
“I have all the time in the world to do everything I want to do, with plenty of time left over.” This sign sits in a prominent place on my desk! I no longer experience a scarcity of money. However, I still struggle with scarcity—scarcity of time and energy. The reality is that as an 80 something year old woman with some of the physical limitations that come with ageing, I am unable to repeat many of wonderful past experiences. And yet I know that scarcity is a belief system. It’s a belief system that can rob me of my experience of abundance if I let it. Another reality is that I my life, so far, has been abundant beyond my wildest imagination. I have spent time exploring parts of the world I never expected to see and had incredible conversations with amazing people. I am reminded of a public official I knew who used a wheelchair and had to be helped with his most basic physical needs. One of the most positive and inspirational people I have ever encountered, he said that his accident eliminated 90% of things he could do, but the 10% still available were more than enough. In “Embrace Prosperity” I describe a way to use affirmations like my sign to remind me of the triggers to my beliefs of scarcity. Then I use the 3 Logosynthesis sentences to resolve those negative beliefs and again enjoy abundance. Read the book and reclaim your own abundance.
When Your Belief Sabotages Your Prosperity
Is something you believe getting in the way of your prosperity? In today's complex world I often hear statements like… • I can’t understand it—it’s just too complicated. • My husband/wife takes care of that. • This isn’t important (without reading it.) It’s true that some things aren’t important and some are really complicated. The problem is when the belief keeps you from even evaluating how to solve a problem. The consequences may be you fail to install the upgrade on your device, have your identity stolen and need to spend time and money to correct the problem. Your spouse gets sick and you don’t know how to pay the important bills that are due. You throw away a check because you think it’s junk mail. These are all things that people have experienced! If you pay attention, you can learn to recognize times your belief keeps you from doing or learning important things. And you can use the three Logosynthesis sentences to neutralize it so you can take action when you need to. Use the words that describe the belief to complete each sentence. “This belief that it’s too complicated for me to understand,” “this belief that I will never need to manage money,” and “this belief that I can ignore my mail” are all examples of frozen energy that interfere with prosperity. When you read “Embrace Prosperity: Resolve Blocks to Experiencing Abundance,” you’ll find easy, detailed instructions for identifying and releasing these beliefs. Get you copy now!
Release Hidden Money Blocks
A reviewer of Embrace Prosperity: Resolve Blocks to Experiencing Abundance posted this on Amazon “It was easy to read and understand and helped me release money blocks I never knew I had. Money blocks I found and resolved: - Earning more means killing yourself & sacrificing everything else, including love - It's impossible to have everything you want - I don't deserve what I want” These are blocks that might keep someone from taking the risk of seeking or accepting a higher paying job. These blocks might also belong to a workaholic who sacrifices everything to provide for others. It’s hard to tell without more information. But what both positions have in common is keeping the writer from experiencing and enjoying all life has to offer. When you keep on behaving in a way that seems right to you and step back and examine it, you may discover it’s not really true. That is a block. It might have been true for whomever explained the world to you before you were independent enough to reach your own conclusions. Or you may have figured it out for yourself based on incorrect evidence when you were trying to make sense of the world. In any case the belief keeps you from embracing the prosperity that could be yours. When you follow the roadmap in this book, you can identify and release whatever blocks are holding you back from your own dreams. Get started today!
Do You Really Want This?
Do you buy things you don’t really need or like just because they are on sale and regret it later? I used to do that. I had unworn clothing in my closet with the tags still attached years after I bought it. There were also way too many strange, marked down items sitting on my pantry shelves. When I figured out why I did this, I was able to use the tools I have to change this strange behavior. You see, saving money and getting a good deal was very important to my parents. My mother taught me how and when to get the most for my money. Often, having this skill was very useful. Sometimes though, when I just bought things because they were a great deal, I was just trying to please my parents—even many years after they had died. So, if your shopping behavior is causing problems, think about where you learned it. To change it, you can use the information about the old learning or belief that triggers your urges and put them into the 3 magic sentences. You will reclaim your energy to use now. Then, when you find a great deal, you can decide if it really something that fits into your life now. Read “Embrace Prosperity” and learn how now.
Buying What Brings You Joy
My mother, who had worked as a department store buyer, taught me to look at marked down items before I looked at those at regular price. It made a lot of sense to do so when I needed to use my resources very carefully. Now it’s a habit that sometimes brings me what I consider gifts from the universe. Years ago, this practice led me to a very expensive coat. I had intended to spend a certain amount of money to get a new coat. This one was on the sale rack. It was reduced to half-price. However, half-price was roughly twice what I expected to spend. I loved the coat. It was perfect. I looked at others that were adequate, but I kept coming back to that one. Finally, I decided to just get it. It turned out to be a great decision. I wore it almost every day for more than 10 winters and enjoyed it thoroughly—until it just wore out. That was one of my first experiences of consciously choosing to experience abundance. By the time I wrote “Embrace Prosperity,” making choices that allow me to regularly experience a lifestyle that feels good to me was a habit. I want you to enjoy similar experiences. Get your copy now and start practicing today.
Reset Your Money Anxiety Autopilot
Is your autopilot set on scarcity or abundance? It doesn’t really matter how much money your family of origin possessed. Lots of people always felt that they had enough of everything they needed. Looking back, they say “We had very little money, but I never thought about being poor.” They embrace abundance. Many people from well-off families are constantly worrying about not having enough. They only feel happy when they know they have purchased something at the lowest possible price. No matter how much they have, they never feel comfortable. It depends a lot on what you heard and believed when you were a child. If you heard “Money doesn’t grow on trees.” or “We’re not made of money.” or similar statements regularly, you learned that there is never enough. That process set your autopilot on scarcity. To embrace abundance in your life, you need to reset the autopilot. There are lots of books on various methods that take lots of time and energy to reshape those frozen old beliefs. A simpler, much faster, and more effective way is to use the magic sentences used repeatedly in “Embrace Prosperity: Resolve Blocks to Experiencing Abundance.” Get a copy and start practicing reclaiming your energy from the old beliefs. You’ll be amazed at the change you experience.
Over-responsible?
Not everyone loves preparing for the holiday season. Many dread it because they are trying to live up to an imaginary standard of “how it is supposed to be.” The standard may be an image of your mother seeming to effortlessly produce holiday goodies, managing the shopping and creating wonderful family gatherings. Or, if your holiday memories are chaotic, you may imagine being able to create peace and serenity in a family where the same argument comes up each time you get together. Being over-responsible by spending way too much time and energy to make this winter holiday season wonderful for everyone around you is a trap you can escape! You can find relief by reclaiming your energy from the belief that “it is supposed to be” a certain way. First imagine a picture of the perfect scene you are trying so hard to create. Then use the 3 sentences that are the core of Logosynthesis to reclaim your energy from the fantasy embodied in the picture. Start with “I retrieve all my energy bound up in this picture of …” and go on from there. In a few minutes you are likely to have a very different image of how you can relax and let others contribute to creating something ordinary and abundant for everyone—including you.
Embracing Your Own Prosperity
What does embracing prosperity mean to you? Tonight, while thinking about some happy memories, I realized that there have been times when I have truly been delighted with a level of prosperity that very little to do with spending a lot of money. My husband and I enjoy exploring new places and have been able to do so frequently. When we were first married, we enjoyed tent camping. After we had out second child, travel became too complicated, and we were rarely able to get away. Things changed when we decided we could get a babysitter and travel to a (very simple) hotel on a beach in Mexico. I vividly remember the feeling of sitting on the beach and watching the waiter coming toward us with the beer and shrimp we had ordered. We were both delighted. In retrospect, this was wholeheartedly embracing our prosperity. Sometimes embracing prosperity is as simple as enjoying the peace and pleasure of being in my own living room and knowing I have enough of everything I need. I have also been blessed to have many experiences of feeling the wonder of “Wow, I am really doing this!” I hope you have too. The “Practicing Abundance” sections of this book will you experience lots more.
Do You Love What You Do?
Would you continue to do the work you do if you weren't getting paid for it? Reading a recent article about the flow state reminded me of an argument I had with my sister a decade or so ago. We were both past retirement age, she was happily retired and volunteering her considerable skill to assist an important community organization. She kept insisting that I should retire, and I kept questioning her logic. “Why should I retire from work that I loved to do work that didn't especially interest me?” When I work with clients, I need to set a timer to remind me when it's time to stop. I don't notice the time passing because I'm so involved with the work. When I'm writing a book, I often experience the same phenomena, but I don't bother to set the timer. I don't have to do this work; I get to do this work! Working allows me to be in the flow state. The flow state occurs only when you're doing something that you're highly skilled at and when you're doing it in a way that challenges that high skill level. Are you lucky enough to have work that engages you this way? If you're not, try doing the Timeline Experiment in chapter 5 of “Embrace Prosperity.”
When Prosperity Isn’t Just Money
Do you equate prosperity with money? The book value of the car I drive is less than $3000! Yet, driving it is still a treat for me and it still looks and acts almost as wonderfully as it did when I bought it (used) in 2011. It was the car of my dreams then, and I still don’t even want to think about replacing it. On the other hand, I am eagerly waiting for my new iPad to arrive in a couple of days. I’d been struggling with trying to make the old one respond properly for months but nothing seemed to work. I mentioned this to a tech savvy young woman who simply asked, “How old is it?” I couldn’t answer. Then she said, “Those things are designed to last only about 3 years.” I checked my records and discovered I had been using it for 6 years. The next morning, I researched reviews of the newest models and discovered that the one I really wanted was one of the most expensive models. A few more clicks turned up that model at an excellent price and I ordered it immediately. To me, prosperity is about knowing what has value to me and being able to have it. What does it mean to you?
But I Want It
I confess! I am still attracted to bright shiny objects. It is hard for me to resist wonderful sounding offers to buy attractive stuff for “fantastic low prices.” I also want to sign up for great offers of vacations to places that, on reflection, are not really something that fits what I like to do most. Then there are special offers for courses that would make me smarter or give me information I really could use. The problem is that I really don’t have the time or energy to unpack them and do the work involved. Fortunately, I have learned to usually tell the difference between things I really want and will benefit from and attractive offers of things that are not truly valuable to me. I label the first as hums and the second as beckons. Often, I put off deciding whether to buy something until I have been doing something else for a while. Then I come back and see if my perspective has changed. Sometimes, when I have trouble releasing a beckon, I use the three Logosynthesis sentences to reclaim my energy from the bright shiny object in question. And sometimes I really do want it, buy it, and enjoy it thoroughly. Learn more about how to use my system in “Embrace Prosperity.”
How Much Is Enough?
Right now, a gift bottle of wine, 2 tiny bottles of liquor and 4 bags of paprika are on my kitchen table. I also seem to have accumulated 4 extra low-quality headphones as well as a beautiful scarf with the print of a Klimt painting, and so many photos I don’t know how to sort them. This is my “loot” from a long-awaited river cruise on the Danube with a few extra days in Prague and Budapest. I saw so many other things I was tempted to bring home and would not be able to use or store. Mostly, what I want is the abundance of memories created by the experiences I enjoyed. My favorite memory is of the 3 hours I spent with a lovely man I have worked with online for several years who lives in Budapest. Now we know much more about each other than we could possibly share in working emails, and I have a much richer understanding of how our cultures are both alike and different. What do you bring home and cherish from your travels? (Travels both near and far all count.) What is enough for you? Explore the different ways you can experience abundance with the activities we suggest in “Embrace Prosperity: Resolve Blocks to Experiencing Abundance.” Start today.
Enjoying the Results
Written from a beautiful hotel room in Prague. My husband, Jonathan, and I are enjoying our 60th anniversary trip postponed 2 years because of Covid. So instead, we are celebrating our 62nd anniversary. Today we spent touring the sights of this magnificent city. I am awed that some of the places we visited were built over 1000 years ago. Tomorrow, we take a more serious tone and visit a notorious concentration camp where thousands of people lost their lives 70 years ago. This is a necessary pilgrimage but followed by a more enjoyable excursion. The following day we start a weeklong cruise on the Danube River!!! Many adventures await us. When we complete that, we visit Budapest for an additional few days before returning home to Colorado. It is wonderful to know that we can easily afford this trip. I am not even looking at the prices of all the extras that come with this kind of travel. We have followed the lessons I’ve learned about embracing prosperity and enjoying abundance in our lives and are enjoying the rewards. I wish you similar joyful experiences! Get your copy of Embrace Prosperity: Resolve Blocks to Experiencing Abundance and start practicing abundance in the very first chapter.
Money Messages Matter
Suppose you wrote down everything you had heard about money before you were 18 years old; what messages would you remember most vividly? Even now, I can vividly remember hearing these things from my parents: • I’m not made of money. • Money doesn’t grow on trees. • Save your money for college. • Don’t buy it until it goes on sale. • Marry a rich man. I also heard things from my surrounding: • Ladies shouldn’t think about money. • Men are supposed to support the family. • You don’t need to study that; you’re just going to get married. So, I learned to be super thrifty, married a graduate student who didn’t expect to ever make much money and basically, expected to manage scarcity for the rest of my life. What do your messages show and what did they lead you to think and do about money? Are those messages helpful to you now or do they get in your way? Read this excerpt from “Embrace Prosperity: Resolve Blocks to Experiencing Abundance” and learn some interesting messages others heard. And if what you heard no longer serves you, read the entire book and learn to embrace new possibilities in your financial life. It’s easier than you imagine.
Grab Your Dream!
I just spent a lot of money to change an airline reservation so I can spend a few extra days in Budapest, a place on my bucket list. This should have been managed months ago, but a mistake was undiscovered until the last minute. I am pleased that I only thought about doing it for a second or two before I told the travel agent to go ahead! I flashed on two things; first, hearing “you only regret the things you don’t do”. The second was a 30-year-old memory of seeing an unbelievably light cashmere ring shawl during a tour of India. I was so fine, you could pull it through a ring. It cost far more than I was comfortable spending! An older woman on the trip told me, “If you love it, buy it. You will never have another opportunity.” I took her advice and have been enjoying wearing it for 30 years! I will be forever grateful for her wisdom and help moving past a scarcity barrier in my life. If your dreams are blocked by mental barriers, one of Dr. Lammer’s powerful processes in “Embrace Prosperity” can help you identify and dissolve them. Use “The Timeline Experiment” in chapter 5. You will be amazed at how quickly you experience your options differently.
But I Need It Now!
My husband’s family and my own had very different approaches to finances and so it shouldn’t have been a surprise that we had disagreements about how to use credit. We were surprised anyway because we assumed that we thought alike, and we didn’t. (There’s lots more about relationships, see my Secrets of Happy Relationships series.) He wanted to buy now and pay later so we could use things while we paid for them. I was adamant that you should save up for something you want and pay in full and clear your credit balance each month. His approach is based on how our brains actually work. We automatically focus on survival and pleasure in the moment, not in the future. We want to live in the here and now. We’re built that way. I learned that the “right” thing do was to delay gratification for a long-term reward. It’s not the natural way but needs to be learned. It is one important basis for long-term financial stability. When you focus on what is most important in your life now you can enjoy abundance in lots of different areas and still learn about making your money work for you. “Embrace Prosperity: Resolve Blocks to Experiencing Abundance” shows you how to get started.
Saving Money vs Saving Energy
Yesterday I saved 20% of my grocery bill by carefully reading the ads and downloading the coupons for items I use regularly. I felt as if I had accomplished something important. Today I wondered why I was so pleased to have saved about $12. Reading ads and clipping coupons is a habit, developed when I supported us while my new husband was in graduate school over 60 years ago. I was proud to be able to shop frugally and live well on so little money. The truth is saving that amount of money really doesn’t make any difference in my life. I have abundant resources and can easily afford what I want. I wondered if I am making good use of my energy by spending it trying to save a few dollars. Then I realized that in this world of one crazy news headline after another, and so many people enduring so much suffering, shopping carefully serves an entirely different purpose. It gives me a sense of control of one tiny piece of the external world. My own lesson is to enjoy the shopping game for the satisfaction it provides. The money I save is simply a small bonus. I use a different tool, the 3 Logosynthesis sentences, to stop worrying about things I can’t control in any way.
What Matters Now?
If you wonder how to even imagine prosperity and abundance when so many things cost so much more than you paid even a few months ago, you have lots of company. This is an uncomfortable situation for almost everyone in many places in the world. There is lots of advice about how to manage practical ways to stretch your available money in many places. Drive less, shop with a list, find inexpensive entertainment, etc. are all useful tips, but basically reinforce the idea of scarcity. It can also be a time of adventure and new learning. Do you know what is most important to you now? Abundance is not necessarily measured in money; it can be in doing work you love, in having rich relationships with all kinds of people, or listening to music. What is it for you? I just enjoyed a free community concert where families were picnicking, and children were racing around and dancing together. What a delightful evening—all for the cost of driving a few miles. True abundance for me. I had young children, and not very much money during the period of stagflation 40 years ago. Looking back, I don’t remember any particular hardship or problems. This will pass too. The activities in "Embrace Prosperity" will help you focus on what matters now.
Being Wealthy Means…
What does being wealthy mean to YOU? If you can’t answer this question easily, you’re in good company. Very few people seem to have a ready answer. A long-term coaching client was sharing how excited he was about his current success. Over a year ago he reorganized his business life by deciding to give up his dream of creating a successful organization. Instead, he functioned as a solopreneur and now had almost completely paid off the debt he accrued by trying to create the organization. In his early 60s, he was thinking about how long he needs to keep working, to accumulate enough money to retire. When I asked how much he had in mind, he named a very large number. My personal experience of being comfortably retired on far fewer assets than he was imagining was not relevant, so I did not mention it. I asked how he had arrived at that number, and he told me, through meditation. He had not checked with a financial professional. It was just his idea of wealth. We talked further and he decided that it was time to review his position with a financial planner he respected to get a better understanding of his situation. How about you? What do you need next to create abundance? Read “Embrace Prosperity,” it will help.
Navigating a Negative News Environment
I was asked a challenging question when I was a guest on an online program explaining the power of Logosynthesis. The focus of the program was creating abundance for as many people as possible in the world. Many participants were actively pursuing projects to do that. The questioner described having a hard time staying positive while feeling crushed by all the negative news. She asked me how I managed this problem. My offer to demonstrate how using this powerful 3-sentence process to help was enthusiastically accepted. Since there were so many people participating, I decided to use “this pervasive negativity” in each of the sentences and we proceeded to demonstrate the process. The first sentence focused on reclaiming your energy from the pervasive negativity. The second sentence focuses on removing that outside energy from your personal energy field and the third sentence reclaims your energy from your reactions to this pervasive negativity. Many people reported significant relief. If this is a problem you face, find the exact sentences in “Embrace Prosperity” and do the process yourself. I consider myself an ambassador whose job is to relieve suffering by introducing as many people as possible to Logosynthesis. If you have a program or book club seeking guest speakers, contact me to see if I can fit you into my schedule. https://linktr.ee/laurieweiss
When Scarcity is Real
I have lived with the availability of such an overwhelming abundance and variety of stuff that that I had nearly forgotten that sometimes scarcity is real. I started to remember during the pandemic when toilet paper was nearly impossible to find in stores. Now when I shop at a grocery store, I don’t even expect to find everything on my list. I buy what is available today instead of what I think I want. And what I buy costs so much more than I expect to pay! I was almost 5 years old when World War II ended. I have vague memories of rationing and being taught that I could not have certain things because they simply were not available. And, as an adult, I remember living with very little money and needing to make decisions based on what I could afford. Still, I have never been forced to go hungry or unsheltered. I have always been blessed to have enough, and rarely felt deprived. Perhaps enjoying abundance in a time of scarcity means giving up expectations of how things “should be” and focusing on how they actually are. Each chapter of Embrace Prosperity includes a section about Practicing Abundance. Those suggestions will help you manage this economic storm. Get started now. It will help.
Goldilocks Got it Right
Goldilocks insisted on getting it right. Not too hard, not too soft, not too hot, not too cold, but just right! I often wish I could emulate her more often. Sometimes it’s easy to grab something that is familiar, whether it is really right or not. And sometimes I am so overwhelmed by choices that I get confused and either don’t do anything or get something just based on price. If it’s a bargain, it must be the right choice—right? No, wrong. I have had too much experience discovering that the bargain shirt does not work with anything else I own and simply hangs in the closet until I give it away. This applies to experiences as well as objects. Is it worth it to upgrade the airline tickets? It depends—on lots of factors. How long is the flight? Does it make the difference between arriving refreshed or exhausted? You can experience abundance, even with limited resources, when you learn to notice the choices you make and learn to make the distinctions that matter most for you. Do your choices bring you the comfort and satisfaction and joy you deserve? "Embrace Prosperity" is filled with activities that help you learn to experience abundance in more and more parts of your life. Start now.
INFLATION!!!
Are you panicking about inflation? Even if you have enough now, your memories of grownups worrying about money when you were a child, may be triggering this fear now! Certainly, everything costs more and the money you must spend buys you less than it did even a few months ago. That is the situation all over North America and Europe. It may be much worse in other places because of the war in the Ukraine. The constant news stories keep reminding us that we should be worried. Talking about prosperity and abundance at a time like this may seem very weird. Yet the fortunate truth for many of us is that we have far more than we need to be comfortable and happy. While our money doesn’t go as far, we have enough to take care of ourselves, even if we buy fewer things. I know many people do need real help. If you are one of them, please ask for what you need in your community. There are resources available. Meanwhile, learning to focus on what is most important to your own sense of having enough is very important right now. So is using the Logosynthesis process to release the discomfort bound up in those old experiences. Chapters 3 and 6 in Embrace Prosperity will be most helpful now.
Was This the Right Decision?
I compromised. My new jeans arrived yesterday. They fit perfectly and were exactly what I originally intended to order in every way except one. They were a different color. When I went to order on the website, I was offered a flash sale price of about 20% of what I had expected to pay for the style I wanted—in brick red instead of grey. I bought the ones on sale, and now that I have them, I realize that the red ones are not nearly as versatile as the grey ones would have been. I am not sure I made the best decision. I can still easily buy the grey ones, but now they would crowd my storage space which means making space by giving something away. That means acknowledging that some of my old jeans are too tight to feel comfortable anymore. Financial decisions are about so much more than money! I am still influenced by frozen energy from being taught to look for bargains and from years of limited resources. This is a minor decision, but you may be faced with much more important choices. Becoming aware of your own frozen energy about financial issues can make a huge difference to your own ultimate satisfaction. “Embrace Prosperity” helps you identify and release that frozen energy.
Discover Hidden Gifts
I routinely check mark down racks. It’s not out of a sense of scarcity but, instead, about wondering what abundant gift the universe has for me today. I’m still following my mother’s valuable instructions. She taught me to always check the marked down section when I am shopping. She was a department store buyer and knew that is where the best values might be found. Yesterday, I discovered an unbelievably cheap toaster oven in a damaged box. It cost less than my husband and I had just spent for lunch. Perfect! I had been bothered by our old, marginally effective appliance for a while, but hadn’t gotten around to doing anything about it. I like being reminded that the abundance I enjoy does not necessarily cost very much money. I was reminded again of energy draining value of unsolved problems because I felt an immediate energy boost when I saw it on my counter. A growing edge for me is taking the time to identify and zap the little things that don’t work in my life. Often, they take very few resources to fix. We designed "Embrace Prosperity: Resolve Blocks to Experiencing Abundance" to help you experience the joy of abundance also. Get your copy and start doing the easy activities that will help you fulfill your dreams.
Mine to Keep?
Say this aloud: “Part of all I earn is mine to keep.” What happens? What thoughts does that statement stimulate for you? Do you simply think about the ways in which it’s true for you like I did? When I said it, I immediately thought of my first financial independence account that has given me extra money for luxuries and continues to grow. I have not added to it for many years. I just keep it and accept the rewards. Or maybe you thought, I need to spend every penny just to get by! Or perhaps every extra penny goes into saving for a vacation or a down payment on a car or house. Or maybe you think about how the statement could possibly be, or become, true for you. Just thinking about things like this can be the beginning of embracing abundance. It breaks old patterns of thinking that keep you in a rut and opens new possibilities. You can start small like I did. The details of my experiment are on page 150 of Embrace Prosperity. Choose whichever of the statements in this excerpt appeals to you and think about how it could become true in your life. Use the special sentences to resolve any blocks to allowing you to start creating abundance for yourself.
When Affirmations Don't Work
Lots of prosperity programs rely on affirmations, the process of positively stating the outcome you desire as if it had already been achieved, to help you achieve your goals. I once heard guru Tony Robbins state that affirmation without action is hallucination. My own experience is that one of the greatest benefits of using affirmations is to allow me to become aware of my barriers to achieving my goals. Sometimes I have discovered that I don’t even believe that it’s possible to achieve the goal. When I was first offered the affirmation, “I deserve to be wealthy,” I learned how vehemently I resisted believing that statement. It didn’t make sense to me at all. I “knew” that earning a living took lots of energy and, besides, people like me “never” got wealthy. My original instructions were to keep repeating that affirmation by saying it and writing it until I believed it. It took many months before I even began to question my old beliefs and ask myself things like, “well, why not?” For a long time, it seemed as if the affirmation wasn’t working at all. Now, using a combination of the affirmation process and the Logosynthesis process described in EMBRACE PROSPERITY, the resistance can be resolved in just a few minutes. Learn how here.
Inflation
“Bread shouldn’t cost seven dollars a loaf! And a pair of jeans shouldn’t cost $90. And I shouldn’t have to pay 30% more for services than I did just a year ago.” When I take a step back and listen to the chatter in my mind, I realize that I’ve adopted set of rules about how the world should be. Unfortunately, the rules have very little to do with reality. The rules are remnants of experiences I’ve had in the past. I feel safer when the world is the way I expect it to be. Yet, the world keeps changing. My energy keeps getting stuck in these beliefs. Does yours? The more stuck I feel, the more I want to protect myself. I want to blame others for the state of the world that isn’t the way I want it to be. After all, my mind chatters away, inflation shouldn’t be happening! When I listen I feel depressed. Using Logosynthesis helps me reclaim my energy from these beliefs where it’s stuck. I start with “I retrieve all my energy bound up in this belief that the world should be different and take it to the right place in myself.” You’ll find the rest of the process inside this book. Try it yourself. Reclaim your energy too.
Happy Financial Independence Day
What do the words financial independence mean to you? Have you even heard of the concept? Financial independence means having enough money coming in on a regular basis to cover your living expenses without having to perform work to get that money. One way to get there is to make a habit of investing some of, rather than spending all the money you earn. It’s easier to do if you know why you’re doing it. (My parents told me to save my money, but they didn’t tell me why.) Some people talk about retiring in their 40s as a goal. That doesn’t necessarily mean retiring and stopping working, period. For many it means leaving the well-paying job they don’t like so that they can spend time doing something they love or making the world a better place. When you know how you want to spend your time when you no longer need to work for your money, then you’re saving and investing to achieve that goal. If you listen to the voices in your head that repeat beliefs that that tell you this is impossible, it will be very hard to do. We’ve written this book to help you discover what’s most important to you and to identify and release those voices. It’s easier than you think. Start now.
Wishes
“I wish that tonight you close your eyes for a moment to dream and imagine everything you want in your life. And then open them and enjoy the joy of sharing with those around you today with love.” This beautiful sentiment from my colleague Alan Rojas in Peru reflects more than just prosperity and abundance. When I dream of EVERYTHING I want, my dreams go far beyond material comfort for myself and my family and I imagine that yours do too. On a big scale, I dream of a post-pandemic world where so many lives are no longer disrupted by illness and fear. I dream that the senseless quest for power and the anger of the powerless and the destructiveness wrought by both sides in this struggle simply vanish. And I dream of a world full of conscious people who care for our planet and each other. Sadly, these big dreams are unlikely to be fulfilled in my lifetime. And so, on a smaller scale I dream of continuing the blessings me and my loved ones already enjoy. We are blessed by material comforts of all varieties, but far more importantly, by the love and caring of each other and of so many others. Close your eyes, imagine what you wish for, and appreciate and share your own blessings.
Imagine Experiencing Abundance
What do you do that brings the money you need to live into your life? Answering, “I work” isn’t enough. Think about what you actually do. The answer could be I talk to people on the telephone about how to solve problems. It could be I sweep the floor, or I attend classes, think, and write papers about those classes. Maybe it’s nothing, I have already done the active work and now my financial investments produce enough money to cover my everyday living expenses. Have you ever even considered this as a possibility? Does having money without working seem like a complete impossibility? Or maybe something for the far distant future? Would you continue to do what you do now even if you didn’t need the money? If not, how will you spend your time when having enough money is no longer an issue for you? Lots of questions to think about that lead to understanding what abundance means to you and what kinds of steps you can start taking now to experience abundance in your life. If you don’t know where to start, Embrace Prosperity: Resolve Blocks to Experiencing Abundance has lots of activities to help you find your answers. Just reading helps some, but the real key to success is found by digging into the activities. Have fun!
But It's Such a Bargain!
I confess, I love to find great values on clothes and buy them. And I am very good at it. I have enjoyed using some of my prizes for many years. Yes, it’s like a game. I learned the game from my mother who was a ladies sportswear buyer for a large New York department store before I was born. I taught it to my children, and my college-age grandson recently proudly told me about how he dresses well on thrift store bargains. There are downsides to this game. I’ve made mistakes and have given away some things with the sales tags still on them. I currently own many more clothes than I need and it’s much easier to buy more than let go of what I already own. And, like many retired people, I now wear sweats a lot of the time. Now I need to remember, “it’s great but I have no place to use it” about many things. When I struggled to release the old, no longer useful belief, that “I should get this because it’s such a great value” I used the Logosynthesis sentences to help me let go. What once useful belief do you need to release? This book shows you how to recognize and release it. Get started now.
Prices Are Higher! Now What?
Are you scared when you see the prices rising for almost everything? It’s getting easier every day to imagine not being able to cover your expenses. Maybe you imagine giving up the fun things you enjoy to pay for necessities. The truth is that you may need to re-evaluate how you are using your resources because of this very real situation, but imagining how awful things could become makes thinking clearly much harder than it needs to be. Imagining future problems leaves you vulnerable to the limiting beliefs about scarcity you learned as a child. Back then you had very access to different ways of thinking about money and what it means in your life. Right now, I suggest that whenever you experience one of those fantasies about the awful things that are going to happen because of inflation, you use the Logosynthesis sentences to dissolve those images. Start by finding the worst or scariest part of your fantasy and describe it in a few words. Then use those words to fill in the blanks in the sentences. Say the sentences aloud, with time between each sentence to let your energy shift and discover the immense relief this can bring. You will find the sentences in the excerpt and clear instructions for using them inside this book.
How Do You Shop?
I was shocked when I learned that some people don’t bother to look at prices when they shop for groceries. They simply put whatever looks good into the basket and pay without even noticing the cost. I identify more easily with those who count every penny. The difference, of course, is whether your resources are abundant enough to easily cover your basic expenses or whether you need to spend your life energy focused on meeting your need for food, shelter and other essentials. I have been at both ends of the spectrum. Newly married, just graduated from college, my husband and I needed to manage our lives on my entry level salary and his tiny graduate school stipend. We counted every penny. I learned to shop carefully and search out the best values for our money. Now, our resources are abundant and spending an additional dollar or even 10 dollars on a luxury item will not hurt our finances at all. Yet I still use the skills and habits I developed in those early days. I automatically compare unit prices—the cost of each serving, not each package. I did need to release the energy I had in the old belief that “there’s no extra money.” Using the powerful words we share here, makes releasing any belief easy and painless.
Imagine Financial Security
I was recently invited to purchase a $40 pair of jeans for only $10/month in one of my favorite online stores. Now almost everyone can afford $10/month, so I am sure lots of people buy them almost automatically—without thinking about it. A recent article in the New York Times discussed how some people automatically upgrade their phones every time a newer version with more bells and whistles is released. The article also discussed the ultimate cost of such inexpensive purchases. You see, if you are like most of us, you never learn about alternative choices that involve not spending the money on automatic small purchases at all and using it instead to invest in your long-term financial security. If that idea triggers thoughts of “that’s too complicated” or “I never have money left over to invest,” you probably harbor limiting beliefs about wealth and prosperity that will keep you from achieving abundance in your life. It doesn’t need to be this way. “Embrace Prosperity: Resolve Blocks to Experiencing Abundance” is designed to help you recognize those limiting beliefs and dissolve them once and for all, so that you can clarify what abundance means to you and free your energy to achieve your goals. My long-gone limiting belief was “investing is too complicated.” Discover and release yours today.
Useful Skill or Useless Habit?
Shopping is work if I really need something. I would much rather experience the fun of finding a bargain when I’m wandering around “just looking.” There is a good, historical explanation for this. I learned it from my mother. I almost literally grew up in department stores and was taught to be aware of which month which category of stuff goes on sale. You see, my parents met at a graduate school of retailing during the depression. My mom earned her MBA in retailing when she was 22 years old. Before I was born, she was a buyer for a big department store. My dad became a department store manager when I was 9 years old. I’ve saved lots of money this way. My mom approved, and I enjoyed having wonderful things even when I had a very little money. But this shopping skill has a downside too. I’ve wasted money on stuff I couldn’t really use, just because it was a bargain. And, until recently, I had a really hard time buying some things at full price even when I could easily afford them. Sometimes old habits just don’t make sense any longer. When they don’t, I use the Logosynthesis® sentences to release them and move on. Use this book to help release your old, useless money habits too.
Real Scarcity: Now What?
Yesterday, when I paid the young woman who had just painted my toenails, the price had was $15. It had been $10 when I was there just weeks before. When I commented, she said that the price of everything is going up. Yes, I see that happening. I even sort of understand why. When we were quarantined, we couldn’t spend money on the things we usually buy and now want to buy again. But the pandemic kept people from working and producing the parts necessary for many objects we want, and so fewer things were produced, so lots of stuff we like is scarce. When you are competing with others who want the same stuff the person willing to pay more for it, gets it. So, prices are going up. Maybe it is finally time to stop measuring abundance by the things we can buy. What makes you feel like you have abundance—more than enough? For me it is meaningful contact with people. Zoom is a great substitute, but hugs are better. For you it might be a special kind of food, or the ability to sleep as late as you want to or being around growing things. Isn’t it time to reorganize your energy to get that instead of focusing on what is in short supply?
Money Comes...and Goes
Where do you get most of your money? How would you feel about answering that question in a group of strangers whom you would like to get to know better? Suppose that group was meeting to learn how to be mutually supportive? Could you simply answer, “from my salary as a…"? Perhaps you would answer, “from the fees I charge my clients” or “my spouse supports our family financially.” Would you be comfortable sharing that information with strangers who were also sharing, or would you feel embarrassed? I attended such a meeting and, while most people talked about working for their money, my answer was that mine comes from my retirement investments in my IRA. The US government requires that I withdraw a certain amount each year, whether I need it or not. I spent many years working for my money like most of the people in the meeting, and I was lucky enough to follow the advice I received about saving for retirement when I was barely starting my career. If you have been given similar advice, but haven’t followed it yet, why not? If you have a reasonably good source of income but can’t get around to saving money, it may be because self-limiting beliefs are keeping you from experiencing abundance. This book helps you resolve those beliefs.
Change Limiting Beliefs--Fast
About 25 years ago Lew, a man with a seemingly overwhelming debt signed up for one of my intensive coaching programs. His debt came trying to save his failing business and the accompanying loss of his self-confidence. We worked together very intensively, with weekly calls, big challenges and daily check-ins for about 6 weeks. When the program was complete, Lew had regained his confidence and refocused his energy. Two years later, after intensive work, he had retired his debt and was now doing well. Three months ago, another client, Max, had major problems in his small firm and had to give up his own salary to pay his employees. A key employee was resigning, and Max was wrestling with the financially sensible idea of closing the business entirely and serving his clients on his own. But he was stopped from taking this rational step by the idea that he would be admitting that his business had failed, which meant (to him) that he was a failure. We used the Logosynthesis process taught in this book to dissolve the belief that he would be a failure if he stopped trying to make the business succeed. Yesterday he reported that he was almost out of debt, financially stable, and happy! Dissolving the limiting belief in a few minutes made the difference.
Why Ask for Help?
How do you feel about asking for help? Are you someone who is embarrassed because you can’t do something yourself? Do you comfortably ask for and accept help when you are uncertain about how to do something, or can’t manage a task by yourself? Do you only ask someone you know well for help or are you comfortable asking anyone who is around? Those are all food for thought questions. Yesterday someone asked me what message I would like to shout to the rooftops, and “It’s OK to ask for help!” was an important part of it. It’s super important because the myth that people (you) should be strong may be the myth that is keeping you from having the joy and success you want. If you don’t know how to release that myth, use the sentences used in this “Rapid Relief with Logosynthesis®” series of books. You could have missed learning important information during any part of your lifetime. Besides that, things change. Many things are so complicated that experts don’t fully understand them. It’s OK, it happens to everybody. And many people consider it a compliment when someone askes them for assistance. Do you? When you read “Embrace Prosperity: Resolve Blocks to Experiencing Abundance,” ask for whatever help you need to achieve your goals.
HACKED!!!
I was shocked to learn that the contents of this book had been stolen. I learned about it when I stole a quick look at Facebook just before a scheduled appointment with my occasional office assistant. When she arrived, I was frantically searching my computer for more information. I was definitely reacting instead of responding rationally. I wasn’t thinking clearly and continued my search for a few more minutes. Then I realized that the two hours during which I needed her help were passing quickly. I knew that the hacking problem didn’t need immediate attention, but my thoughts were still swirling, and I couldn’t focus. I stopped and used the Logosynthesis process from this book and immediately felt calmer. By the time we had completed our first task, I was focused again. We continued and completed the work I had planned. After she left, I calmly resumed my search for information. Online friends helped and I learned that 5 different versions of this book were posted on Amazon in at least 4 different countries. I contacted Amazon and two phone calls and several emails later had fully reported the problem. I am assured it will be resolved in a couple of days. Final thoughts: Learn Logosynthesis! If the book is worth stealing, it is certainly worth buying and reading!
Priceless
What experience has changed your life? I got hooked on writing books when a reader of my first book left a phone message thanking me for writing something that changed her life. I was thrilled, and it just happened again. A book review was titled “Life Changing Experience.” These words are extracted from this very complimentary review. “This … not only addresses areas where abundance is blocked and energy is frozen, it also looks deeply into the possible causes, the early blocks that get put into our programming before we even know how to think critically about what we are being fed. … provides seamless ways of releasing the frozen energy around the blocks thereby allowing the flow of abundance to take place wherever one has become stuck. It's a beautiful, compassionate, empathetic path filled with love and a deep desire to release the human condition from bondage. This process is priceless …” When I thanked the writer, she responded: “… I learned more about prosperity and unlocking blocks and money management from you in an hour than I did from tons of training and studying the subject. … I also love your writing style, which is fresh and open and safe, and the way you compose such clear, concise, short sentences.” Could using this approach change your life too?
Too Many Choices
I sometimes resent the energy it takes to be a consumer. Having too many choices takes too much of my energy. When I complained about being attacked by mosquitos, a friend sent me a link to a bug-zapper gadget, saying she had heard about it, but not tried it. It seemed like a good idea because I am sensitive to chemicals and ordinary repellents are apparently worse for me than for the mosquitos. I have learned to be suspicious of outrageous claims, so I immediately checked for reviews of that gadget. There were none—just glowing ad copy repeated in several places. I did find reviews of similar items on Amazon, and after using an hour to compare features and prices, selected one and ordered it. I have been using it. As far as I can tell, it has yet to zap a mosquito. This all takes mental energy, bandwidth, and the more I use it on that, the less I have for other things. Writing this, I realize I need to reclaim my energy from this experience. I will do that using the process explained in this book. Do you enjoy shopping, or hate it? Or is it somewhere in between? Let me know.
Getting Rich
“It’s not the having, it’s the getting.” Found in a Chinese fortune cookie. So often the emphasis of “get rich now” advertising is just about having the money. It does not talk at all about the life you must lead to “get rich.” My husband and I once succumbed to this lure. While working as psychotherapists we decided to purchase rental property. Although we hired managers to take care of the rental business, somehow it was taking more and more of our time. And we (especially my husband) kept needing to do things we did not enjoy, like fixing toilets that were not really broken, in the middle of the night, after the manager quit. We did increase our wealth, but we were unhappy. Finally, we were confronted by our wise accountant who suggested that we do the business we loved, psychotherapy, and leave the wealth building to people who loved to manage money. When we found a suitable financial advisor, we were able to relax. We saved half of everything we earned (after expenses) for taxes and investment. It worked. We are now comfortably and happily retired with more money than we ever imagined. Use this book help you figure out what is most important to you, so you can be both happy and financially successful too.
Sticker Shock
My husband and I are enjoying a vacation at a beautiful, somewhat isolated ski resort at the very start of their summer season. It’s a time share exchange: comfortable room, tiny kitchen space with a microwave and mini-refrigerator. Our usual vacation pattern is to enjoy one meal a day at a restaurant and to prepare our own food at breakfast and lunch or dinner. We usually sample various local food sources. Here, our choices are very limited. There are only one or two restaurants open for any meal at the resort and meals cost about double what we normally pay! The prices at the small grocery store are equally high. We can easily manage the extra cost. My struggle is with my own value system. My depression era parents instilled a belief that I should spend money thoughtfully and get the best possible value each dollar spent. Now, each time I look at a menu I hear echoes of judgement in my own mind. The Logosynthesis sentences taught in this book help me remove energy from these judgements and accept the reason for the high prices. However, when we drove 10 miles down the canyon to the nearest town, I noticed how much more comfortable I felt eating wonderful Indian food at an ordinary restaurant.
Where Can I Find Financial Advice?
A friend asked me how to get good financial advice. She had read this book and realized that she needed to assess how much money she could safely withdraw from her Roth IRA. She was frustrated with the person assigned to advise her. When she told me what he had told her, I could understand her frustration. His dismissive advice sounded wrong to me, but I am NOT a financial professional. I knew that her situation was very different than mine and my own advisor required a larger minimum account than she had, so I was not sure where to send her. I decided to ask my advisor for a referral for her. I explained that my friend’s financial circumstances were quite modest. He offered to meet with her himself and help her figure out what to do next. That meeting is happening today, and I am thrilled. I know she will get top notch advice from someone who is not trying to sell her something or take advantage of her. It’s never too early or to late to get the advice you need. Take a risk and ask! Ask a more financially aware person where to start to find an independent advisor. Others want you to be successful! And, of course, read this book. It will help.
Find Financial Freedom: Change Your Story
“For me, ultimate freedom is the goal. Money is a nice by-product of that goal. Ultimate freedom means reaching a point in your life where you can do the things you want, with money being a tertiary consideration. It’s third or fourth own your list in terms of the factors considered whenever you make a decision.” Benson Wong, MoneyFreedomGuy.com When I read this statement in one of Benson’s newsletters, all I could say was YES! I agree completely. I also agree with him when he urges others to “change your money story.” However, you may have already tried to do that but had a problem following those instructions. It’s hard to follow instructions to change a story that you put on automatic pilot when you were a child. You can turn the wheel, but each time you let go, it just pops back into the old position. You need to reset the automatic pilot—but how? Another way of looking at “automatic pilot” is as frozen life energy. When something was uncomfortable or overwhelming, it made sense to freeze that energy to protect yourself. Logosynthesis, the process we teach in “Embrace Prosperity: Resolve Blocks to Experiencing Abundance,” uses the power of words to release that frozen energy in just a few minutes. It’s easy to learn. Get your copy now.
Is Scarcity Just a Limiting Belief?
Are you someone who feels as if you never have enough money—no matter how much money you have in your life? When you experience that uncomfortable feeling, you tend to constantly focus on how to make more—or to keep from losing what you already have. That focus keeps you from enjoying what you have now. It also keeps you from planning realistically for the future. I deliberately used the word ‘feel’ here, but the truth is, that type of feeling is not really a feeling at all. It is a belief, and often it is a belief that has very little relationship to reality. It may be a conclusion you reached about the world when you were a child. Often when children, who haven’t yet developed much reasoning skill, overhear adult conversations, strange things happen. This is especially true when they hear emotional arguments. When those arguments are about money, they reach conclusions based on very fragmented and often inaccurate information. Those conclusions become the limiting beliefs that keep you stuck in scarcity, unable to even recognize the abundance you could enjoy. We wrote Embrace Prosperity: Resolve Blocks to Experiencing Abundance to help you recognize and resolve those limiting beliefs so you can experience the joy and abundance you crave. It is easier than you think. Start now!
Retirement Mystery
My husband and I started making required minimum withdrawals from our retirement accounts 14 years ago. (Yes, we are that old ????) I was shocked when looked at where we stand now. The records I saw started when we transferred our retirement funds into this system 20 years ago, although we started saving money for retirement when we were in our 30s. We follow the advice of a conservative financial advisor and are mostly invested in a variety of mutual funds. He has constantly reminded us that markets go up and down and to hang in there during the bad times, such as the 2008 recession when the funds lost almost half their value. The numbers I looked at showed that we had already withdrawn about 90% of the money we started with! But what is even more shocking is that our funds are currently worth nearly double the amount that we started with 20 years ago. Logically, I understand what happened. Emotionally it feels like magic. I share this because way too many people keep making excuses about why they can’t save for retirement. Their own blind spots about money keep them from doing what they know is important. Our book, “Embrace Prosperity: Resolve Blocks to Experiencing Abundance” helps you get past those blocks. Get your copy now!
Asking Makes a Difference
Is trying to meet others’ expectations interfering with your personal experience of abundance? It may be easier for you to do what other people want than to think about what you want and risk the consequences of stating your own wants and asking for anyone else to help you get what would be truly satisfying to you. You won’t experience abundance unless what you receive is aligned with what you want, whether it is an experience or an object. The problem is often what you imagine another person—a friend, a parent or a spouse—will do if you ask for what you want. Your imagination may be based on some memory about what happened when you were assertive in the past or it may be pure conjecture on your part. In any case, you have energy stuck in that image. You need that energy to flow freely in order to use it to achieve your own satisfaction. In Embrace Prosperity, we help you focus on what is most important to you and then help you find where your energy is stuck and how to use the Logosynthesis® methods to free your energy for your own use—to ask—and receive! So, if you are ready to look at your abundance issues in an entirely different way, get started now.
Decision Paralysis?
How often are you so scared of making a mistake that you freeze and do nothing? You might do this by gathering so much information about possible choices that you feel confused and exhausted and promise yourself you will decide later, but later never comes. When I get into the second position, it is usually because I am trying to make the perfect decision. Sometimes I can take much too long to decide which item to buy at the grocery store because I am trying to make the best possible choice. I have even been known to give up because I can’t decide. On the surface it makes no sense at all. The decision will make no noticeable difference in the quality of my life. When I look more carefully though, I see a teen-aged me staring at a crack while my father berates me for making a mistake. I have used the Logosynthesis sentences in the past to recover my energy from that scene, but sometimes the old habit of trying for perfection reappears and I need to use the sentences again. Even this near magical process does not work perfectly—and that is okay! Just use it as often as you need it and enjoy the relief and relaxation. We wrote this to help you learn how!
It's Your Choice Now!
A belief in scarcity is not your fault. When you are small you have very little idea that you could possibly think differently than the people who take care of you. After all, they explain the world to you—usually because they want you to be safe and happy. As co-authors of this book, Willem and I decided to share our very different personal journeys from experiencing scarcity to experiencing abundance in our lives. We both grew up in loving families who, because of outside circumstances, did not have a lot of money. Along the way, we followed the instructions we were given—until we didn’t. What we were doing led to the recognition that different beliefs about money existed in the world than the ones we had been taught. It happened to Willem in a flash of insight and to me more gradually, but it happened because we were each attending to our own personal growth and development. We wrote this book to help you experience similar awakening experiences. The book is filled with activities to help you examine and release the experiences that keep you stuck in your old beliefs about the world. You’ll learn how to use Logosynthesis©, to deliberately release those beliefs much more quickly than we could. Get your copy and start right away!
Getting Out of Your Own Way
Have you ever tried to see your back in the mirror? If you twist enough you can see some parts of it but generally, it doesn’t work very well. Sometimes trying to see what is stopping you from getting something you want produces the same result. When you are on a path to achieve something and somehow, something repeatedly gets in your way, it just may be something you don’t understand about yourself. You may be struggling with a limiting belief about yourself or the world you adopted long ago and no longer even remember. Carolyn, approaching retirement age, believed that when she put money in the bank it disappeared—forever. She knew she believed that when she was a child but had no idea how much that idea kept her from enjoying the benefits she had earned. You can read her story and tidbits about many other people in “Embrace Prosperity: Resolve Blocks to Experiencing Abundance.” We wrote the book to share how these ordinary people were able to see their own limiting beliefs and RESOLVE them. Activities we share helped them, and can help you, use the amazing power of just 3 sentences to move past the ways you keep yourself from fully enjoying life. Don’t wait any longer. Get started now.
Unexpected Expenses
We had a miserable, smelly sewage backup in our basement last week. The plumber came and cleared the line and suggested we call the mitigation company to repair the damage. When the company representative checked the problem, he showed us the that the walls were damaged and contaminated and parts of them needed to be replaced. Then he told us that home insurance usually covered that kind of damage. After a quick Better Business Bureau check and a call to our insurance company we told him to go ahead. They cleaned the worst part of the mess removed wall segments and set up drying fans. Now we are awaiting a call from the reconstruction crew. For us, what could have been a major disaster has become merely an inconvenience. Still, we have a $1500 deductible to cover before the insurance company will pay for anything. That is where prosperity comes in. We have a reserve so covering that extra expense won’t impact anything else we choose to do. One definition of prosperity is to have a large enough reserve that unexpected expenses like car repairs, and medical bills can be easily managed. Willem and I created Embrace Prosperity to show you how to remove your blocks to creating prosperity in your own life. Get your copy today.
Should I or Shouldn't I?
Should I or shouldn’t I take the time to do the physical therapy exercises prescribed to help me strengthen my back? Of course, I should, but… I was overscheduled and only had a few minutes between appointments, and I was tired and hungry. I had not checked my messages in at least 4 hours and expected some information relevant to my next meeting. But I had made a commitment to do the exercises… Once again, the urgent won out over the important—I skipped the exercises right then. And I skipped them once more during the day. I did manage to fit most of them in before I finally got to bed. I found the energy to do the exercises, even though I was tired because they are part of a bigger vision; to enjoy traveling again soon. If I can’t walk comfortably, I can’t enjoy many of the things I love doing. Do you face similar dilemmas? How can you change the pattern of skipping something that has a long-term benefit because of a short-term commitment? If you are having trouble doing what will help you fulfil your vision doing The Timeline Experiment in Embrace Prosperity: Resolve Blocks to Experiencing Abundance is a wonderful tool to help you find the energy you need to create your dream.
Do you have a plan?
Do you have a plan to create financial independence? Do you even know what those words mean? I didn’t until I was in my 40s. Financial independence means getting the money you need to live on without needing to work for pay or be dependent on others. Just imagine waking up every day and choosing how you will spend your time without needing to work! There are lots of different ways to do this, but it rarely happens accidentally. An amazing abundance of resources are available to help you achieve this goal. But, and it’s a big but, if you believe you should be thinking of other things, or that money is dirty, or that you’ll always need to struggle for your money, you will never learn to use those resources. That’s because your energy is frozen into patterns that do not serve you, and you may not even be aware of the problem. That’s why we wrote Embrace Prosperity: Resolve Blocks to Experiencing Abundance (Rapid Relief with Logosynthesis.) We know how common this is, and that you can learn to release that frozen energy using the power of the Logosynthesis sentences. And it isn’t nearly as hard or scary as you imagine. Release the blocks and start planning for your financial independence now. You can do it!
Imagine Feeling Financial Secure
Imagine that you woke up tomorrow feeling financially stable and secure. What would be different in your life? Would your THOUGHTS change? Maybe instead of thinking about whether you could afford to repair your car you would just think about the most convenient time to bring it into the repair shop. Maybe you would think about having dinner delivered instead of wondering how you will find time to cook it. Would you FEEL any different than you do now? Maybe instead of feeling tense and worried when think about how you are going to pay for the medication your doctor suggested, you will feel excited that you can finally get the relief you need. What would you DO differently? Would you buy exactly what you want instead of looking for the best possible deal and hoping it goes on sale soon? Would you work less? Would you hire a housekeeping service so you would have more free time? There is a big difference between worrying about scarcity and enjoying abundance. It is different for you than it is for anyone else. Getting clear about what you value and dissolving the barriers to getting it can be an exciting adventure. Start now and do the activities explained in Embrace Prosperity that will move you closer to your imagined experience.
Worried About Debt?
Are you someone who keeps planning to set up a plan to pay off your credit cards or some other debt, but never seems to get around to it? Of course, there are reasons—an unexpected repair bill, a special occasion—but somehow you just can’t manage to get it done. Do you know that the things you learned (or didn’t learn) about money when you were a child may be the reason you can’t seem to reach your goals? I was reminded of this when I read an article, “12 Money Mistakes You’re Teaching Your Kids” (huffpost.com). The first mistake is that money is a taboo topic. If it’s never talked about, you learn to muddle through on your own. Until recently it was very difficult to overcome a belief that boils down to “I shouldn’t talk about money.” Now, using the basic Logosynthesis sentences, it is quick, easy, and painless to release this belief and others that keep you stuck and block you from doing the things you keep intending to do. Please read "Embrace Prosperity: Resolve Blocks to Experiencing Abundance" and learn to do this yourself so you can begin your own journey to participating in the coming post-pandemic prosperity and creating the abundance you want and deserve.
Having Enough
Don't feel ashamed of being stuck in scarcity. In much of the world, you’re surrounded by a culture that repeatedly tells you that you don't have enough. Small children happily share anything they have. They must be taught to hoard what they have because there is not enough. They don’t understand that the family needs to use money to replace the possessions they would give away to others. That’s the beginning. Everything becomes a competition. In grade school, only the group that gets done first gets the reward. Later, grading is on a curve and you’re always wondering where you fit. You are urged to get more and more stuff, with the promise that it will bring you happiness. Of course, it won't... If I let down my own awareness, I am prone to feeling guilty because I am not buying enough stuff to make my contribution to something...I am not sure what. Becoming aware of the energy fields around you is one step toward reclaiming your own energy and searching for what will bring true joy and satisfaction. Discovering your true life work is another. This becomes your lifetime guideline. Use Embrace Prosperity, to learn how Logosynthesis processes can help you take these steps and engage in learning how to experience and achieve true abundance for yourself.
Imagine Financial Freedom
Imagine yourself managing unexpected expenses calmly and easily. Is that easy for you to do, or do you immediately think of lots of reasons why that couldn’t possibly happen? Almost everyone immediately thinks of obstacles that need to be surmounted before they have enough resources to be that comfortable. The truth is that there are lots of very real obstacles to achieving financial security. Some of those obstacles are truly beyond your control. Covid 19 has created huge financial problems for many people, but the end of the pandemic is in sight. Many of the obstacles you thought of have much more to do with your own beliefs. Those beliefs keep you stuck instead of exploring possibilities in a world in which some people seem to easily achieve their goals and others are repeatedly frustrated. When you examine those beliefs about not having enough time, knowledge, skill, or luck, you’ll probably realize how much they are based on other people’s views of the world. If you change the beliefs that keep you from seeing new possibilities, there is a real option for creating a different future for yourself. Using Logosynthesis® makes it much easier to resolve the beliefs that block you from experiencing abundance. We created Embrace Prosperity: Resolve Blocks to Experiencing Abundance to help you navigate your journey.
Money Talk Taboos
Claudia wanted to know if she would be able to retire. She and her husband talked to a financial advisor who asked them to list how much money they had saved. She tried to make a list of their financial assets, but her husband kept finding excuses to avoid giving her the information that only he knew. Do you ever wonder why it's hard to talk about money? I learned that I shouldn’t ask money questions many years ago when my mother kept changing the subject when I wanted to know why we couldn't afford something. I had to freeze that curious part of myself to not get into trouble in my family. I’ll bet something similar happened to you. In one way or another you learned to avoid talking about money. So now, unless you have learned differently, you may find it hard to talk to anyone about money matters, whether they are trivial or very, very important. If you want to create and enjoy prosperity, it is important to have those conversations. You need to release your own blocked and frozen energy to get information and make useful financial decisions. You’ll find the information you need about how to use Logosynthesis to release your blocks to having those conversations in Embrace Prosperity: Resolve Blocks to Experiencing Abundance.
Are Values Changing in this Time of Covid?
Has this pandemic has changed the way you think about abundance? I was surprised by one of my own reactions today. I stopped at a big box store to pick up a gift that I had ordered on the internet. I noticed how bright the store was and how it was filled with bright, colorful things. I was not in a hurry and the store was not crowded. Everyone I saw was observing appropriate precautions. BC (Before Covid), whenever I had a few minutes in a place like this I would thoroughly enjoy wandering around, looking at the creative displays and finding things to take home with me. Today was different. I actually cringed! I had absolutely no desire to look at anything. I knew I did not need anything. I picked up my packages and left quickly. As I drove away, I passed by several other places where I once might have stopped and brought home some sort of a treat to share with friends. Instead of stopping I went directly home. I am not sure whether this is a permanent shift in what I value—which I know is connection with others—or a temporary reaction to something else. I will pay attention. I urge you to notice your own behaviors. Are you changing too?
Early Money Experiences Matter
Is something you learned about money when you were a child making you sabotage your finances today? One way to check is to think about what you heard about money when your parents were talking to each other or their friends about the subject. Were they worrying about how they were going to pay the bills? Were they arguing about one person spending too much? Were they complaining that they couldn’t get ahead? What conclusions did you reach when you overheard these conversations? Perhaps that money is scarce. Perhaps that you should not ask for anything? Perhaps that you should spend money quickly before someone else did. What happened when you asked for money or for something you wanted? Were you told you had to earn it yourself? Did you get whatever you asked for? Were you told that money does not grow on trees? All of these things have a lasting impact on you. You might simply make decisions about what your financial life is going to be like based on all the things you experienced about money then. Once you make those decisions, they become frozen instructions you faithfully follow and never think about again. The activities in Embrace Prosperity give you a roadmap to examine and change those frozen blocks to experiencing abundance in your life now.
Financial Independence???
What would you decide if you could save over $200 by having a surgical procedure on a deeply meaningful religious holiday? Of course, it would depend on your financial situation and your personal religious commitment. There is no right answer to this question. But suppose you did not even need to consider the money? I am grateful that when I needed to make this decision, I immediately said to schedule the procedure at the time that allowed me to participate in the religious observance. It was not always this way! My parents survived the depression and taught me to be thrifty and save my money for important things, like college. That could never have enabled me to become financially independent. In fact, I did not even know what financial independence meant. Do you? I was severely limited by the well-meaning instructions I dutifully followed. And I might never have even known it if I had not stumbled across a workshop that told me I needed a financial independence account and how to start one. It can take years to learn what holds you back from experiencing the kind of abundance that is possible for you. Or you can discover and release those blocks quickly and make good use of the information you already have. Start reading Experiencing Abundance now.
Unexpected Consequences
I solved the challenge of too much month and not enough money long ago. Successfully mastering lessons about money lets me live comfortably without needing to constantly focus on creating an income, but other areas of my life are still rather messy. Living in the same house for 50 years has created the challenge of too much stuff and not enough space. (I really am letting stuff go a bit at a time.) I struggle with the challenge of too much information and not enough time every day, and now I have another rather unusual challenge. My deep desire now is to share what I have learned that helps people create a world in which children get what they need to survive and thrive. Lately, that translates into publishing the Secrets of Happy Relationships book series and the Rapid Relief with Logosynthesis® series. All of these books are now available in audio, as well as ebook and print formats. When a colleague showed me how to make the audio books available on many platforms, I jumped at the chance. Now I am challenged by the unexpected consequences of my choice. To invite book reviews, each book comes with 100 free audio books. Now I need to figure out how to give away 900 audio books. Share your ideas here: Laurie@LaurieWeiss.com
Choosing Abundance
Every time I go into my living room, I see a beautiful, hand knotted Tibetan rug. It brings life to an otherwise unremarkable room. I didn’t plan to buy it. It seemed like an extravagant purchase, and I still experience abundance each time I encounter it. I stumbled across it when we were on vacation. I couldn’t decide whether it truly resonated with me or if I wanted it just because of the merchant’s sales pitch. We left the shop continue to explore and I asked myself the question "Is this a beckon or a hum?" It’s a question I often explore. It helps me decide whether the choice I am considering is right for me. A beckon is the pull of energy coming from outside myself; the “non-me energy” that is addressed in the second of the three Logosynthesis sentences. It influences me to move away from essence, the core of my being. A hum is something that arises from within and guides me toward something that enhances my life and my connection to essence. Sometimes it takes time to decide which is which—and cost isn’t relevant. Beckons tend to fade when I get out of their range. I couldn’t stop thinking about the rug and an hour later we returned and bought it. I’m glad I did.
What Do You Really Want?
My definition of abundance is changing. I once considered having lots of attractive clothes important, and I used to love to shop for more. But now, as a friend observed, my clothes are on vacation. In this time of Covid, I rarely leave my home for anyplace besides a grocery store, exercise or a health maintenance appointment of some kind. I live in a very casual place where wearing jeans or shorts is normal for those activities. I no longer have multiple opportunities to “play dress-up.” And so, I have needed to shift my energy to other things. Once those opportunities were not available, I recognized that what mattered in those “dress-up” occasions was the richness of human connections I enjoyed. Now, I was threatened with a scarcity of people. In this new way of living, nurturing those connections that I am still able to manage, mostly electronically, takes much more time and energy. When I do walk by a clothing store, I am not very interested in going in. How has your life changed? Are there things that you used to value that are no longer important. If you are trying to sort out these changes, read Embrace Prosperity: Resolve Blocks to Experiencing Abundance and discover what prosperity means to you now.
Money, Yikes!
Do you talk to anyone about money? Maybe it's your parents. Mine told me, "Money doesn't grow on trees." Perhaps it's a colleague, "How much more do they expect us to cut back?" or your spouse, "How much did you say you spent on THAT?" Or perhaps you avoid the subject entirely and keep hoping everything will be fine or feeling scared that disaster is just around the corner. How do the beliefs these statements and thoughts represent help you create a happy and satisfying life? For most people the answer is “not very much.” Do you suspect that you could do a much better job addressing your financial life, if only... The "if only" is different for different people. It's often related to needing more time or having information you can trust. In any case, your energy is blocked, and you are not doing what you are pretty sure would improve your life. It isn’t as hard as you think to reclaim that blocked energy and start using it for improving your situation. The excerpt from Embrace Prosperity: Resolve Blocks to Experiencing Abundance that I have included with this article contains one of the many “Practicing Abundance” activities included in the book to help you get started reclaiming your energy. Get the excerpt and start right away.
Why Bother?
Why bother? In a world that is so very different than we expected it to be, it is very hard for many people to stay motivated. When Elaine took a 48-hour "vacation" from her phone, she realized how she had been neglecting the jewelry making that had been so important to her before…before the pandemic had turned the world upside down. The store that sold her creations had not re-opened and and probably never would. People weren’t buying clothes and jewelry anyway, because the events where they would show off those things had been cancelled. Her energy was frozen, and she had been using the distractions in her phone to avoid thinking about how discouraged she felt. When we explored the triggers for this situation, we discovered a belief that “nothing I do matters.” When she repeated the three Logosynthesis sentences focused on that belief, she remembered a scene where her father had insisted that she study something ‘useful’ in school instead of pursuing her dream of becoming an artist. Once we recovered her energy that had been locked in that memory, she started to think about new possibilities. If you suspect that your energy is stuck somewhere, I invite you to try the “Practicing Abundance” exercise that is included in this excerpt from “Embrace Prosperity.”
Increase Your Bandwidth
Do you have less energy now than you had when you did not need to think about how to safely navigate your world to avoid being exposed to the virus? If so, you are part of a growing crowd. At a virtual community meeting this morning, several participants shared how tired they were. After many months of living in the world of Covid 19, they did not want to pay attention to details of long- term planning. Their attention was focused much more on details of daily life. They were all surviving comfortably, but no one seemed to be thriving. I was reminded of the research about 'bandwidth' that I visited while preparing this book, Embrace Prosperity, and are described in this excerpt. We were looking at how others viewed the problem of personal financial sabotage. When examined as an issue of each of us having a finite amount of mental resources, it made sense. When you use your resources to ensure your safety, you don’t have them available for other things. Fortunately, you can increase your bandwidth and start making your life easier now (and later.) Old beliefs that no longer serve you contribute to the energy drain. Practicing the simple abundance exercises we offer in this book let you reclaim that energy to use now.
Using What You Know
Have you taken a class about money management? Have you carefully studied methods to get more clients or customers? Do you have books on your shelves about how to get rich? Is this information that you have learned but have not gotten around to using yet? You tell yourself you will, but for whatever reason, you just don't! You are certainly not alone. A client recently told me that it took him 4 years to take action on an important money decision. And he didn't do it until he realized that his vision of the risk involved was connected to his grandfather. When he imagined would happen if he did what he knew was important for him to do, he flashed on the family story of his grandfather who had lost money in what he believed was a safe investment. The day after he used the Logosynthesis sentences to retrieve his energy from this story he took the first step toward his goal. The sentences are at the end of the excerpt that accompanies this article, and information about how to use them to resolve whatever blocks you may have to experiencing abundance in your own life are in Embrace Prosperity Book. Get your copy now and start using the information you have already collected to achieve your dreams.
Post-Pandemic Prosperity
Have you noticed the shift in focus from 'how do we get through this' to what is going to happen next? The media has shifted its attention, people are figuring out how to come out of quarantine, and the trees are now fully leafed out where I live. We are beginning to re-imagine our futures. Some people will be trying to re-create the past but when I asked, "How will you measure prosperity once the pandemic is over?" on Facebook, not one of the 16 people who responded mentioned money. (You can see the post at facebook.com/laurieweiss on May 25th. Abundance may be measured differently from now on. What is available to us has certainly changed over the past few months. Since nobody really knows how things are going to be a few months from now, this is an ideal time to think about what you want most. If you know your life mission it is easier to imagine what abundance will look like for you and to start (or continue) to work toward it. If you keep thinking about what you have lost, the Logosynthesis process we explain in Embrace Prosperity can help you reclaim your energy and move on into your creativity. It will also show you a variety of ways to start experiencing abundance now.
Why Not Now?
"How can you think about abundance at a time like this?" We are in a situation that is new to all of us, and old messages are rampant! When we don't know what is going to happen next, we are extra vulnerable to these old, unexamined beliefs we have picked up from others. When your safety is threatened, you try to protect yourself. Those voices from the past may seem like a refuge, but you’re vulnerable to getting stuck in unexamined beliefs that really don't help solve anything. What makes it worse for me is that during the time I feel most threatened , and need the tools I have used in the past to regain my equilibrium, it is hard to remember that those tools exist. Fortunately, I do eventually remember. I hope you do too. If you have used the 3 Logosynthesis sentences to help you release those old, limiting beliefs, you know how powerful they are. Use this as a reminder to use them regularly. If you don’t yet have this tool, this book will help you learn to use it. What better time is there to learn to release old beliefs that keep you from making the best possible use of this in between time to learn to take better care of yourself?
Measuring Prosperity
Can you measure prosperity with toilet paper? How do you think the idea that you might run out of toilet paper unless you bought a huge supply got started? I remember being warned prepare for the pandemic by having enough supplies on hand to last for two weeks. Paper goods were mentioned as part of those supplies. Did you start to feel a little bit anxious? I know I did. Apparently some people were more anxious than others. In fact, they must have been terrified. Instead of buying what they needed for a few weeks, they bought much, much more. That buying created the scarcity they feared. Suddenly there was not enough for the rest of us, so searching for more became an obsession--even for people who already had a supply. Is it possible that the belief that you need more and more money to have enough is just as unnecessary as the belief that you need more and more toilet paper to be safe? If you usually think your prosperity depends on how much money you have, maybe it's time to think differently. When you reclaim your own energy and start thinking of other possible ways you may be prosperous, you'll discover that you may be far more prosperous than you imagined.
It Isn't Fair!
I have recently had conversations with two different, highly skilled, professional women about how their former husbands had cheated them and left them in dire financial straits. Each woman was, quite naturally, frightened about the future and both were feeling frustrated and exhausted. One was jumping from distraction to distraction and getting very little done. She told me details of all the ways she had done the right thing in her life but had been so unfairly treated. Her energy was frozen in "this belief that life should be fair" and I helped her release the frozen energy using the Logosynthesis sentences and she immediately felt more focused. The other was blaming herself for blindly accepting her husband’s deceptions over the years. She was focused and intent on solving her problem, but in the current time of pandemic, nothing was working. Her energy was frozen in "this belief that I should have known what was happening." Using that trigger as she said the sentences let her relax and slow down and rest. In times of uncertainty, it often feels like the safest thing to do is to stick to what you "know" is true. Unfortunately, this may be an old belief that has very little to do with your current situation. Try releasing it and see what happens.
Scared of Scarcity?
"What am I going to do today that I will be glad that I did 3 months from now?" I heard this on a webinar that was urging me to respond to this changed (and scary) world by using my time to get ready for what is coming next. I was already doing that. I have been avoiding working on updating my website for months and now I am deep into doing it. That speaker clearly does not believe in scarcity. He, like me, is an author and expects lots of people to read his books in the future. So, if you are someone who cowers when the finances of your world are disrupted, you are certainly not alone. But some people cower more than others. It's not their fault--or yours. Uncertainty is rampant AND IF YOU HAVE BEEN TAUGHT TO BELIEVE IN SCARCITY, you are reacting to it. Do you want to learn a new way to respond--to truly embrace what is possible? I know this may seem like a strange time to think about abundance but during this pause, why not? Decide what you will do now that you will be glad you did in 3 months. Reading this book will help. Get yours now.
Introducing Embrace Prosperity
How do I introduce this new book? I found lots of passages I want to share but decided to just let you in on the beginning—chapter 1. The first time I put a book into the world, I was terrified about how exposed I was. I wondered whether anyone would read it. I wondered if anyone would like it. I wondered what people would think of me! That was a long time ago. The book (about Codependency) is still selling and over time sold 40,000 copies. But that experience of terror seems to be quite common among first time authors. That was the last time I did a book with a co-author. For book #13, my experience is much less scary. Two professionals can offer checks and balances, but I still wonder how this new offering will be received. One reason it’s easier for me now, is that I ask for lots of early reader feedback, and the feedback really helps. The reviews that are beginning to come in are quite wonderful. If you are one of the many people who wishes you were not so stressed about money, learning a completely new way to deal with that stress will make a huge difference. I invite you to get your copy right away.
Reconnect to Rescue Your Marriage
Parenting & Relationships
Is Your Marriage in Trouble? Would you like to know how to stay together when everything seems to be falling apart? Reconnect to Rescue Your Marriage: Avoid Divorce and Feel Loved Again has critical information for you. Dr. Weiss reveals thoughtful answers to questions asked by frustrated and scared men and women in desperate situations. Get expert advice on how to figure out: • What does it mean when you hear, “I want more romance?” • How can just one person save a marriage? • Should I ignore my partner's affair? Would you like to know what to do next? Reconnect to Rescue Your Marriage will guide you. Discover how to feel loved and connected to your spouse, avoid divorce and have a happy and successful marriage, starting right now. ‘Here are practical and insightful solutions to problems committed couples encounter in relationships. You’ll recognize yourself and benefit from the new perspectives you find in this gem of a book.” ----Dr. Jim and Ruth Sharon, Authors, Secrets of a Soulful Marriage: Creating and Sustaining a Loving, Sacred Relationship
Book Bubbles from Reconnect to Rescue Your Marriage
Can We Get Past this Affair?
If you are asking this question, you are definitely not alone. You're probably wondering if you should stay or leave your marriage. Being able to tell the difference between false hope and the real possibility of forgiveness makes a huge difference. Read this book now and learn what to look for. Get your copy now.
Is She Still Mad at Me?
So you just had a fight. You were both letting off steam and now you're done. You just want both of you to feel better but you can't figure out to reconnect! And it just keeps happening. Ouch! This book helps you figure out what to do next. Click the order link and start reading your copy now.
More Romance???
I tried to post the Contents of this book that is newly posted to Bublish. I couldn't. To see that you will need to go to the "look inside the book" feature elsewhere. Meanwhile, here is a sample. If you feel disconnected from your partner, the answers to questions others have asked will probably help you reconnect. Check it out.
Stop Arguing and Start Talking
Parenting & Relationships
Are You Squabbling Instead of Communicating? Do you spiral into an argument whenever you try to talk about problems? Are you afraid the only answer is divorce? Would you like to get your relationship back on track? If you are ready to learn to have the conversations that build happy relationships, this resource-rich book will show you how!
Book Bubbles from Stop Arguing and Start Talking
Blindsided!
Actually, we were both blindsided by our own assumptions about what marriage was supposed to be like. If that happened to you too, this book will help you sort out what you believe from what is actually happening--and help you talk about it too. Start reading it today! Get your copy now.
Why Not Talk About It?
Are you afraid that if you try to talk about a problem with your husband (or wife) that you'll end up in an argument instead of a conversation? Does that mean that problems never get solved? That's why I wrote this book. Get your copy now!
Never-ending Argument?
Learning how to recognize and get out of this situation is one of the most powerful marriage counseling tools I use with couples. If your arguments go around in circles and you never solve anything, this is the book in this series that you need now. Don't wait. Read it and learn to avoid this relationship killing trap.
Being Happy Together
Parenting & Relationships
Are You Ready to Renew Your Relationship? Would you like to dissolve resentments and create the closeness you long for with your life partner? Being Happy Together: What to Do to Keep Love Alive shows you how to focus on what's right in your relationship and what you and your partner want to create together. In less than 10 minutes each day you'll learn: • How to tell the difference between a serious relationship problem and ordinary growing pains • Secrets to rescue relationships that are in trouble • What to do instead of fighting, so you'll feel loved and supported by your life partner • How to recognize the five natural stages of your relationship development so you both can safely navigate it to the next stage • 18 surprising ways to give each other what you really want most Order your copy and get started right now!
Book Bubbles from Being Happy Together
Feeling Pressured?
Do you agree to do things you really don't want to do? Then do you spend your time trying to figure out how to escape from your commitment? It may be time to find a different way. Try this and if you like it, there are another 124 activities in this book. Grab your copy now.
Are You The Doormat?
Sometimes letting someone else win an argument just to keep the peace is the worst possible thing you can do for your marriage. Sometimes it's the best. How the heck are you supposed to know which is witch? This book is deceptive. Doing these simple activities will make a big difference! Start with this and get the book to learn about 124 more ways to be happy together. Get your copy now.
After the Honeymoon
Once the honeymoon is over and you realize that happily ever after is not what you thought it would be, it doesn't mean there is anything wrong with either of you. It just means it's time to learn new skills in order to build a healthy and vibrant relationship. Get a copy of this book and learn how you can do it together in less than an hour a week.
Relationship Tips
Parenting & Relationships
Do You Dream of Having an Incredibly Fulfilling Life Partnership? Get ready to deeply connect with the love of your life. Relationship Tips for Life Partners delivers the essential keys to grow beyond any limits you have and make your dreams come true. Discover these tested tips that couples use to create partnerships as you manage and negotiate challenges in: • Communication • Assigning and Doing Tasks • Setting Necessary Boundaries • Money Matters • And much, much more! These are the gateways you need to have the deep, loving conversations that build a relationship where you share both love and respect in your life together. “This is an amazingly helpful book. I have used the tips as an author/columnist on marriage issues, and after many years in my own marriage, my husband and I found them powerful in creating a deeper, stronger and even more loving relationship.” Dottie Lamm, MSW, Author, Daddy on Board
Book Bubbles from Relationship Tips
Oops!
One couple complained about finger painting with chocolate pudding. "You should have told us to have clean sheets ready!!!" You never know where playing together will lead. Give it a try! Use these tips to create the relationship you really want! Get your copy today.
Too Serious?
Life happens. It's way too easy to get involved in just doing what needs to be done. Here are just 3 of the tips that focus on doing what it takes to keep your relationship growing and glowing. Get your copy now!
Money a Problem?
I remember figuring out that my husband was managing to spend all our extra money on camera equipment--just because it took me longer to decide what I wanted. We needed to talk about it! It took a while to figure out how. Most people hate to discuss money issues and those issues often are huge challenges in relationships. Here are some of the tips we figured out and have used for many years. Get this book now and learn what works!
Need to Have a Difficult Conversation?
Here are 4 tips that are the crux of having a successful outcome to a difficult conversation. You may already practice them in a working situation. Allow the time it takes to practice with the one you love. Honor your partner by making sure you listen before you respond.
A Different Kind of Relationship
This book was born from frustration and edited with love by many people. If you follow the tips in this brief book, you will probably transform your relationship. And none of them are difficult.
Stop Poisoning Your Marriage
Parenting & Relationships
Is Your Marriage At Risk?If either your or your spouse believes that:•A relationship will only work with the right person.•If a relationship is right, you shouldn’t have to work at it.•If you really loved me, I wouldn’t have to tell you what I want.•Falling out of love means that the relationship is in trouble.•You should avoid hurting your partner’s feelings in order to preserve your relationship.Your marriage is heading for trouble! Real relationships get messy because, even though you think your life partner is just like you, he or she isn't. You are two different people trying to meet the challenge of creating and maintaining a happy and loving relationship without much useful information. Stop Poisoning Your Marriage, this brief, no nonsense, information packed little book, will help you sort out the misconceptions, misunderstandings and challenges of creating the happy, loving and long-lasting relationship you desire and deserve! “This takes "demystifying" relationships to a whole new level. Bravo!” Terri Wilber, CHt, CNLP, Director, Pacesetter Leadership Dynamics, Program Director, PSI Seminars Get your copy now!
Book Bubbles from Stop Poisoning Your Marriage
Myths Wreck Relationships!
If you think you absolutely know what you are supposed to do to create a happy relationship, you may be in for an unpleasant surprise. There is an incredible amount of sensationalism and "fake news" available in the media to keep you confused. Read this book to help you sort out myths from reality. Get your copy now.
Are Feelings Sacred?
Feelings (emotions) are a very important part of being human. But when you let them rule your relationship you are probably in for trouble.
No Need To Panic
So many people panic when they realize they are no longer in love or even worse when they discover that their new spouse is no longer in love with them. Nobody has told them that this is completely normal. This is the time to start building the loving relationship that will truly support both of you.
Working or Playing?
Working at a relationship sounds a little grim. It isn't--and it shouldn't be. It is more like paying attention and not taking each other for granted. It's about figuring out what makes you both happy and being sure to keep doing that.
This Doesn't Work
Don't you wish someone understood you so completely that they simply provided what you want without you needing to do anything at all? Me too--at least sometimes. Sadly, it just doesn't work that way. It's one of the biggest marriage myths around.
Myths Murder Marriage
When Jim Edwards offered to interview us about why so many marriages fail, we were thrilled. But the interview stayed hidden until some of my clients demanded that I make it available. This book is an almost verbatim transcript of that interview.
Being Married
Parenting & Relationships
Are You Ready to Discover Secrets About Marriage Women Need to Know but Seldom Share? Marriage doesn’t come with a manual! Once you get married there are always surprises. When dozens of women shared answers to the question, “What do you wish you had known before you were married?” they discovered they had lots in common. What they shared in Being Married: Secrets Women Wish They Knew will help you have a happier and more satisfying marriage! • Would you like to avoid the heartbreak of making poor choices? • Do you know what triggers you should NEVER ignore – before or after you’re married? • Can you tell the difference between his culture and values and yours? Learning that the fairy tales about marriage are usually not the truth is especially important for women contemplating getting or staying married.
Book Bubbles from Being Married
Unlock the Path to Financial Intimacy
A NerdWallet survey on financial infidelity reported that more than two in five Americans Who have a significant other say that they've withheld or lied about financial information to a partner. They’re untruthful about outstanding depts, income, spending and credit scores. If you or your partner finds it hard to share this kind of information, it can cause major problems in your relationship. So WHY is this such a common problem? The same article by Erin El Issa suggests that is important to share information about how your family handled money as well as your financial goals before you get married. I think it’s important to share that information throughout your relationship. But having these conversations is often a challenge too! It’s especially likely to be a problem if your head is filled with old beliefs about money that keep you stuck. When you take the time to think about what you automatically say to yourself and others about money you’ll begin to see why. Your beliefs may come from things you heard regularly in your family and community when you were a child. They may also come from difficult experiences like living in poverty or being cheated. Releasing these old beliefs is easier than you might imagine. Another of my books, “Embrace Prosperity: Resolve Blocks to Experiencing Abundance” shows you how. Both that and "Being Married" will help. Start now!
I Didn't Think I Married His Family
Marriage is full of surprises. If you are wondering if other women feel the way you do, this is the book you need to read. I know this is longer than the other books in this series, but reviewers assure you it's really worth your time. Get your copy today!
How Can Two Become One?
If you are secretly wondering what marriage is really like or if your marriage really is different... If you believe it is possible for two to become one... If you are afraid this is your only chance... You need to learn the secrets about marriage that other women share here. Don't wait! Get your copy today.
Beyond Nice
When you meet someone new you are each probably trying to impress each other. You naturally show off the qualities you hope will impress your new acquaintance. So does he. It make take a long time to move past this step. Read Being Married to learn what may be beneath the nice surface.
Staying Yourself
Do you think you need to lose yourself in order to keep your relationship or lose your relationship in order to keep yourself? This myth simply isn't true anymore. But you no longer need to do figure out how by yourself. Read this book and let other women share what they have learned.
Insights From Other Women
What do you wish you knew about being married. I have had women married up to 49 years tell me how helpful they found this book. Learning what other women experience can go a long way to relieving the isolation we all experience.
No Golden Rule
Yikes, the golden rule doesn't work very well. When you give others what you like best, they rarely give it back. When you give them what they like best, they are happier and may give you what you like. This is especially true when you are married to each other.
The Right Way To...
When I got married, I knew the right way to do things. Did you? Sometimes looking at why you believe something is right gives you interesting insights.
He Can't Make You Whole
When two try to become one each needs to give up important parts of themselves. That is a setup for future heartbreak. There is a better way!
A Deceptive Myth
When I asked "What do you wish you had known before you were married?" women from 8 different countries shared similar answers. This was one of the most common...
I Am Glad I Wrote This
I almost didn't write this book, that was originally published as "99 Things Women Wish They Knew Before Saying 'I Do.'" The publisher wanted me to fit her series and I was not sure I wanted to and I did not want to do the work of distilling what I knew women needed to know. Then a friend said, "We'll help you." and I realized that I could ask other women, lots of them, to answer my basic question. Actually, there were two questions: "Have you ever been married?" and, if the answer was yes, "What do you wish you had known before you got married?" I had a wonderful time doing the research. I asked the question wherever I was--in the locker room at the Y, in a sewing circle, waiting in line at the post office--you get the idea. The discussions were incredible. On line answers came from 8 different countries, and the resulting distillation of information provided women with information they really needed. The reviews were great. Read it, enjoy--and learn!
Perfect Partner
Parenting & Relationships
Are You Ready to Get Married? Struggling to decide if this is the right man? Wondering if this is the right time and if you will ever really find your soul mate? Find the answers to these critical questions in Are You My Perfect Partner: To Marry or Not to Marry …. Avoid making a huge mistake. Do you wish you knew: • If you should want to get married • What it’s like to be married • Is he the right one for you to marry If you're serious about wanting to make the best possible decision, if you want a satisfying and fulfilling marriage, and if you want to avoid becoming a divorce statistic, you’ll need the answers in this book.
Book Bubbles from Perfect Partner
Making Hard Choices
It is so much easier to go along with what people expect you to do about marriage than to follow your dream. But women (and men) who give in usually report that they wish they hadn't. Learn to think clearly about your options in this book. Get your copy now.
Listen to Your Intuition
Elizabeth is desperately hoping that the answer is no, but she knows intuitively that the answer is yes. Here's why!
It's Different Now!
What you believe about marriage may not be true any longer. According to the US Census, in 1978, 59% of 18-34-year-olds were married. in 2018 that number had dropped to only 29%. There are lots of reasons for that change but the bottom line is that you don't need to rush into marriage. Use the Secrets of Happy Relationships Series to learn more about what you need to know about getting married.
Talk About It
One of the most common problems couples bring to a marriage counselor is "We just don't communicate!" It's critical to learn to talk about important things before you get married.
We Set the Date, but...
The scariest thing to think about here is what is likely to happen if Elizabeth doesn't cancel the wedding...
Marriage is a Choice
Getting married used to be for everyone. It is now much more of an individual choice. Now, whether you want or expect to get married depends a lot on your life experiences up until today. If you have had the experience of coming from a family where your parents expected you to go to college--and you did, you are much more likely to expect to marry at some time in your future. On the other hand, if you started your independent life right after high school, or even before that, then you probably have friends who are not particularly interested in marriage. These are social trends and I am not judging, just reporting about them. I don't know why, I just have seen lots of statistics about what seems to be happening. Of course, trends do not speak for individuals and no matter what your background, you may fall into the marrying or not-marrying group. Personally, I believe that deciding to have children is an excellent reason to decide to marry. Children do best when they have loving relationships with adults who care for them. Being married is one way of committing to stay in a relationship and grow together and be there for each other and for your children.
Making the Right Choice
I have posted an entire chapter here. The solution I suggest can be applied to lots of challenges. Try it yourself--even if your challenge is to make a decision about something entirely different.
Is This Normal?
It is normal to wonder if you are normal. Whether it makes sense or not, we tend to see if we are like other people. We want to fit in and be accepted. It's important to balance this wish with the understanding that there are so many extra forces pushing you to pay attention to what others are doing and to try to fit in, that it's way too easy to lose your connection with who you are and what is right for you. You need to know this, whether or not it will help you get accepted by others. Successfully finding your way in the world is really a balancing act. It's a little bit of trying to answer questions over and over again. Who am I? Who are they? What do I want/need right now (this changes constantly)? How do I fit in? It gets easier with practice, but there is no right answer. You can even learn to enjoy it as much as you enjoyed the swing and teeter-totter when you were a kid.
New Book, New Series
Wow! Returning to my roots as a marriage counselor and relationship coach is exciting! I have actually never stopped working in this area. I love helping clients sort out important relationship challenges. Relationships, like all living things, grow or die. Very few people understand the normal life cycle of healthy and ultimately happy relationship development. This new series, Secrets of Happy Relationship provides advice to individuals and couples throughout this natural, and sometimes rocky, development. The first book in the series is now available for pre-order. "Are You My Perfect Partner" contain updated versions of writings and ideas put into an easily digestible form to help you navigate your relationship challenges. In this book I answer real questions that both women and men have asked as they decide if this is really the right person to take this important step of actually committing to marry now.
