Help With Identifying Belief

[rirvinmoorePSTEC User]

Hello all,

interesting conversation you're having. Mark, you've been asking some good questions. I would however like to point something out.

I notice that many of the posts on this thread talk about assertiveness as though it means being loud, obnoxious, or offensive. That sounds like evidence of a limiting belief to me. It's true that, compared to someone who's quiet and shy, someone “assertive” may be loud by comparison. But that on its own does not make someone a bad person!

As someone who used to be noticeably afflicted with ADD and Asperger's Syndrome, I can speak from personal experience here because I used to think and feel similar to the way Mark does now. I thought of myself as a chivalrous gentleman who treated women with respect and didn't even talk about things like sex. In fact, I assumed that every relationship I entered would be platonic, because sex sounded like some terrible thing that people did just to be mean to each other.

Taken to its logical conclusion, this is what girls call “Nice Guy Syndrome” and it is considered a bad thing. Now, you may think, “How can this be bad? I'm treating them with respect while all these other people are being jerks and mistreating women…” and so on. Let me explain why this perspective can be an obstacle to companionship, and why you can be more desirable without becoming a horrible person.

First: as already observed on this thread, SOMEBODY has to initiate contact. I personally don't understand why people think that men have to do this, but “being the man” has major benefits. Just like in business or any other thing you find yourself doing, some people are organized and on the ball, while others are not. By learning how to take initiative in various ways (and I had to learn-I was definitely not born with the skill) you show others that you can be relied on, and that you're capable of getting things done. You can never count on a stranger to take initiative, but you can count on yourself to do so. Like setting up a date–sooner or later, somebody (often the man) has to get decisive and say, “I like pizza. Let's go to Tony's Pizza and have our date there.” If you've already established that you both want to go somewhere, in all likelihood she'll say yes. If you don't, you could sit around for an hour before you even decide where you want to go. She could leave before you make up your mind and who knows? You might never see each other again.

That is one form of being assertive. It's not obnoxious or loud, it's just taking the logical next step.

Second, yes, there are a lot of jerks out there. But a lot of the guys you see flirting with girls– maybe loudly and somewhat obnoxiously–are successful with flirting because the girls are having fun and receiving attention. You can stand there and respect a woman all day, but unless you give her some kind of a reason to be around you, she won't stay interested for very long. Respect is not a reason to be interested in you; it is a prerequisite to human interaction. On the other hand, smiling, a sense of humor, and common interests like animals, fencing or literature are.

Also, when somebody says, “Women just like men who are total jerks,” what does that accomplish? You're not a total jerk, so if that's true, then you're out of the running. You might as well give up on relationships forever. (By the way, it's not true.) If that belief is true, then it would be literally impossible for you to get relationships. Many limiting beliefs blame some external factor over which you have no control-that's why they're limiting. An empowering belief is one where you can do something about it. “If I smile more than I usually do, maybe women would like me more.” See, you can do something about it.

Mind you, based on what you (Mark) have said, you probably find that hard. That's something you'll have to work on. I had to work on more stuff than I care to think about. But look at it this way: would you rather it take some work to succeed, or would you prefer success to be totally impossible?

Hope this helps.

[LisaPSTEC User]

Not ALL women like men who are jerks. I don't like men who are jerks the ones who like jerks are not stable and they are used to be taken advantage of which is why they gravitate toward jerks and jerks gravitate to women they can take advantage of. So women who know what they want in a man don't settle for jerks.
Like for me I made a list of what I want in a man and that is what I got. Which I forget to put certain things on my list that are important to me but I got exactly what I asked for, which is why I told you to write down what you want in a woman, and make sure you include EVERYTHING because you will get exactly what you ask for and only what you ask for so don't leave anything out.

[Troy ThomasonPSTEC User]

“Woman want jerks” is a limiting belief.
Women want MEN. The want someone who respects them but doesn't put them on a pedestal. They want a man who knows what he wants and isn't afraid to get it.
Confidence/assertiveness are very positive traits and you have seem to have a limiting belief regarding them.
Does confidence/assertiveness remind you of bullies? Just something to think about.

I've been in your shoes, (severe SAD, etc), you CAN overcome this!

Hope that helps

[MarkPSTEC User]

Troy and rirvinmoore, thanks for the comments. Since you both say you overcame your SAD/shyness/issues, how did you go about doing that?

Lisa, I realized a long time ago that with all that law of attraction stuff, at least for men, you need confidence to make it happen. I could sit here visualizing in detail the perfect partner all day, but I guarantee that she will not come into my life unless I make it happen – by either risking rejection over and over or putting myself in a lifestyle where she might be – and then risking rejection again there….So it's more about confidence in my opinion. How did you meet your partner?

I don't mean to get into semantics and we've gotten off topic here. The issue is whether PSTEC works or not. For me it seems to not work so I will find other solutions in that case.

[rirvinmoorePSTEC User]

Hi Mark,

There are two major things that helped me out. The one that sort of “fixed” my ADD/autism spectrum-related issues was going to a coach who dealt with limiting beliefs. The last time I checked, unfortunately, he was no longer doing coaching work, but his method was effective.
I am confident that effective use of PSTEC Negative will ultimately have the same results. In my experience, you remove the belief (some would say energy) first, and then your reality and behaviors and experience will improve. Just this past week I filled up six garbage bags with junk I no longer need–a sudden housecleaning binge is often a sign that your reality is improving.

Second, I learned the vast majority of my social skills from the new generation of pickup artists. I'm sure that sentence made a lot of people cringe, but here's the deal. There's a book called “Magic Bullets” by Love Systems that explains, in depth, how to achieve relationships with women. And it is not sleazy, creepy or “tricky.” It merely explains how relationships occur naturally, and then shows you how to make it happen for yourself.

The book is technically about meeting women, but coming from the autism spectrum and being unable to recognize social cues and norms, it was immensely helpful in teaching me to interact with people in general.

That is kind of an overview. I've got some more beliefs to rip up, but feel free to ask if you would like more clarification on something.

One more thing: I've been on the self-help track for about 6 years, and I've been working on limiting beliefs for 2-3 of those years. I have gotten impatient with apparent lack of progress many times. Don't be surprised if your problems don't all disappear right away. They might, but then again they might not. Look for the core beliefs, which (as said in the PN FAQ video) are often short, generalized phrases like “I hate myself.” By the way, if you haven't already, you probably need to use PSTEC Negative with the phrase “It is my belief that I hate myself.” That's the one that triggered the latest cleaning binge for me.

[Troy ThomasonPSTEC User]

I would also use PN on “I'm not good enough” “There's something wrong with me” and “I'm not important” They're all very common very limiting beliefs.

[PSTEC Accounts]

Hi Mark, I couldn't help but notice this line early in your discussion, “confidence and assertiveness is being rude, loud and disrespectful”
This belief would cause problems for sure so it's one I'd look to shift.

My suggestion is that you use PSTEC Negative and PSTEC Positive on this and then check results. 
Step 1 click track an imagined scenario of confidence and assertiveness whilst trying to feel anxiety . Step 2. PN “it is my belief that confidence is rude”
Step 3. PSTEC Positive: “I can be politely confident”

[Paul McCabePSTEC Pro and Forum Moderator]

I appreciate this is an old topic, but it raises some interesting points.

Mark, did you ever make any progress on this?

It seems to me that there isn't so much one CORE belief and conditionings affecting your behavior, but a series of beliefs and emotions/conditionings.

In simple terms, I think click tracking on ALL the scenarios that caused your distress would be the best place to start. Click track on everything that bothers you and keep doing this until, well, it bothers you no more.

Emotions and beliefs affect behavior and therefore it seems prudent to tackle emotions and beliefs head on. If you eliminate a belief, it can dramatically impact your emotion and future behaviors. But similarly, if you work on the “negative” emotions, there can be times when doing this can actually impact a belief. It makes sense, therefore, to be as thorough as possible.

I personally feel that most of our avoidant behaviors come down to emotional factors. “Rejection” never causes fear; it's the meaning we give to “rejection” that causes fear. If you approached a stranger knowing that they may not respond favorably to you but were comfortable with that…you'd undoubtedly do that more often.

In terms of beliefs, see how these ones resonate with you…

1) It's dangerous to speak to strangers

2) If I speak to a stranger, I'll be rejected

3) What makes me good enough is having other people think well of me

4) Not being in control is scary

5) I'm not confident

6) If people don't see me as confident, I'll be rejected

7) People don't like being approached

I'm not good enough

9) I'll never get what I want

10) People aren't interested in what I have to say

LOTS to work on here.

If you work through each of those, following the suggested usage of click tracking all the uncomfortable emotions first, running each of the beliefs above through PSTEC Negative (e.g . spend time with the counterexamples in PN) and then feeding your subconscious suggestions that run counter to these via PSTEC Positive (start with “allowing” new beliefs to outright countering the negatives)…I really do feel it would make a truly profound difference in how you experience yourself and life.

---

Paul McCabe – PSTEC Master Practitioner

http://www.lifestyleforchange.com

Please contact me anytime if you want any assistance in utilising PSTEC to help you live a life of tremendous freedom & possibility.

Recreate yourself with PSTEC.

Skype, Zoom, in-person & phone sessions available…

[Sally BakerPSTEC User]

Hi Mark, staying on topic you could recall a memory, event or conclusion you made when you felt you were assessed as being rude and focus on how that felt. It may not have been your intention but the message you told yourself was that they thought you were rude, agressive or words to that effect. Can you remember anything like that happening ? If you did then really focus on those feelings of being misunderstood, how that felt to you. Score it zero to ten and then run the click track while again staying focussed on the feelings.

If the feeling of being anxious that your intentions will be misunderstood feels familiar then write down a note of each one and score them too from zero to ten. Begin work on the highest score memory or event. Or use PSTEC 2015 to zap a whole heap of memories that engender the same emotion.

If your real task is actually over coming stage fright you can tackle that by breaking it down into elements. I.e. Waiting to go on stage for instance of walking into the spot light and really focus on how you feel at each part of the process and then use the click track on those either real or imagined feelings.

Good luck with tackling your issues. Sally

[Author]

Posts