The billionaire and the B+
He listed his accomplishments like a Wikipedia page — companies, jets, homes, the meeting at the White House. After half an hour I looked him in the eye and said, "So you believe you're not enough." He cried.
Underneath the empire was a little boy who'd brought home a report card of all A's and one B+. His father had looked at it and asked, "Why didn't you get an A in that class?" Decades of striving. Billions of dollars. All trying to earn a B+ that had never been the point.
No amount of doing will ever fix a wound about being.
The ice cream cone in a cup
She told me she'd had a perfect childhood. No trauma. No reason to feel unlovable. We went looking anyway. She was five. Family kitchen. Grandpa scooping ice cream cones for all the cousins. When he got to her, he put hers in a cup.
"Why was MINE the one in the cup?" The tears came. Fifty-four years of believing she wasn't enough, wasn't lovable — and somewhere in that kitchen, the lie had been installed. We pulled back the camera. There was an empty ice cream cone box in the trash. Grandpa had run out of cones. Her brother got the last one because everyone knew Bobby hated cones.
It wasn't about her. It never was. It almost never is.
The Jenga stack of false beliefs
The ice cream cone moment wasn't really about the ice cream cone. It was symbolic — one of a thousand small comparisons a youngest sibling makes to older siblings she can't possibly match. The session was about pulling the right brick out of a stack of false beliefs and watching the whole tower of "I'm not enough" come down.
You don't have to dismantle the lie brick by brick. Find the keystone and the tower falls.
The cancer client who chose to thrive
Her doctor had just told her she had three months to live. She came in wanting hypnosis to attack the cancer cells. I told her I didn't know if we could cure the cancer — but I knew for sure we could get rid of the fear. If we did that, she'd be free to truly live, however long she had.
She lived three years. She didn't survive — she thrived. Because once she knew her soul was safe, the body could either heal or not, and either way she was okay.
Fear is the prison. Belief #7 is the key.
F.E.A.R.
False Evidence Appearing Real. The acronym is corny, but it lands because it's true. Almost everything we fear never happens. And the things we worry about? Worry has never once prevented them. Worry is praying for what you don't want — putting your energy into the very outcome you're trying to avoid.
If something needs to be addressed, address it. Otherwise, you're just rehearsing the lie.