The Power of Our Beliefs
March 31st, 2009This blog invites you to participate in a contest with prizes for the three people whose responses we believe will be the most beneficial to our readers. In order to allow time for you to respond and for us to select the winners, the next blog will be published in about two to three weeks.
Psychology of Money believes that although the global economy is beyond our control, there are many things we can do to convert financial stress and worry into confidence and empowerment. One of the most
Bruce Lipton, Ph. D., has been a cellular biologist for over twenty years. In his 2005 book, The Biology of Belief, he reports his breakthrough research about how when we truly believe something, we secrete a chemical in our cells. This chemical sends a message throughout our body to manifest the belief. It must be a genuine belief with which we truly resonate —superficial positive thinking or wishful thinking will not suffice.Examples include The Secret, Think and Grow Rich, Psycho-Cybernetics, The Power of Positive Thinking, etc.
This chemical actually influences how we program ourselves to behave in one direction vs. another, i.e. Prosperity Thinking vs. Poverty Thinking. When our beliefs help to create the result we are thinking and feeling, we call that the self-fulfilling prophecy. Many people have written best-selling books about how this phenomenon operates to manifest success with money and work.
Dr. Lipton explains how this chemical works in the human body with what is called the placebo effect. As most of you know, the placebo effect occurs when a treatment or medicine helps some people to feel better even though its ingredients are biologically inactive.
We found a fascinating study that demonstrates the power of the placebo effect. In 2002, the New England Journal of Medicine published an article by Dr. Mosely. He did a study of dividing patients needing knee surgery to relieve severe, debilitating pain into three groups.
The first two groups received different surgeries that were known to relieve the pain while the third group received “fake” surgery. Members of the third group were cut in their knees superficially with three incisions like the patients who received knee surgery and were then sewn up forty minutes later like the other two real surgery groups.
The two groups receiving the real surgery got better as expected. The surprise was the placebo group with the fake surgery had the same improvement. One of the patients in the placebo group who walked with a cane before the fake surgery stopped using the cane. More remarkably, he was actually able to play basketball shortly afterward!
How would you like to give up the metaphorical canes and crutches you’ve been using (i.e. your Poverty Thinking beliefs)? With your permission, participation and perseverance, we believe we can support and guide you how to do so in these blogs. The financial cost to you? Zero. The cost of your time? Minimal.
We invite all of you to participate. No matter how you’re feeling at this moment, you can seize this opportunity now.
Follow-Up Activities:
1) Think of an example in which your Prosperity Thinking manifested a successful self-fulfilling prophecy with money or work.
2) Think of an example in which your Poverty Thinking manifested a negative self-fulfilling prophecy with money or work.
3) Briefly describe what you learned about money and/or about yourself from these examples.
The Gift of Giving: E-mail us and win!
Just for fun, we will turn your responses to the above activities into a contest. We will give a gift to the three people whose responses we believe will be most beneficial to our readers.
The gift is the one-hour Intro CD to Psychology of Money ($19 value)and will include free shipping and handling in the U. S. This CD is the best audio or video introduction to our proprietary work and includes exercises, case stories and tools to empower your money mind set and financial success. It also includes Dr. Gottfurcht telling the unique story of what inspired him at age nine to develop Psychology of Money.
We, also, will publish the responses of one of the three winners of the Intro CD in the next blog.
Please send your responses to psychmoney@aol.com
What if your response is the one chosen to be in our next blog? If you would like to be personally identified, mention your name and city (or country if you live outside of the United States) in your e-mail. If, however, you want to remain anonymous, just say so.
In many of the upcoming blogs, we will share with you the specific Psychology of Money tools we use with clients so we may support you to enhance your financial, relationship and life success.
With appreciation, we are looking forward to hearing from you.
- James W. Gottfurcht, Ph.D.
- Zoreh Gottfurcht
Food for Thought: One Man’s Story for Dealing with the Bad Economy
February 22nd, 2009
“Last night Jo Ann and I spent the evening at the local food pantry. (This was the first evening it had ever opened — and we did so without advance notice or promotion.) Here in our little town of Branson, we had 17 families show up between the hours of 6 and 8 PM. The range was from transient and homeless to large families who had recently lost their homes and those living in motel rooms. Aside from food, a four year old received a warm winter coat (as did about another 12 people) and a homeless man (distinguished-looking and proud), who had just been released from the hospital, received a set of clothing, shoes, and a sleeping bag and blanket to keep warm in the car in which he was living. (20 degrees here last night).”
“Here’s the key — afterwards we were hungry and had planned to stop at a restaurant for dinner. Neither of us could do that, after what we had seen. We went home and just sort of foraged for a late dinner — I simply had cereal — which would have been a luxury to those we had just served.”
Now think about when you last did something like Jack did? How did you feel afterward? Did it increase your feelings of abundance and Prosperity Thinking? Did it reduce your feelings of scarcity and Poverty Thinking? Did you feel more empowered or victimized? If you felt the former types of feelings, we suggest you do something like what Jack did. What can you do to help someone in your community to feel better about today’s bad economy? Now take action, and do it!
Regular Blog post are scheduled to start in early March 2009.
We look forward to taking a more active role in supporting you during these extremely challenging financial times.
James W. Gottfurcht, Ph.D.
Zoreh Gottfurcht
