So Much Happier Blog
Feeling Reeeeeally Tired?
“History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives.”
Photo by Ethan Brooke
I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that this year has felt like an endless Groundhog Day-style slog for a lot of people. We’ve all had to adapt to major changes nearly overnight, and these changes have involved confusion and sacrifice. Much has been uncomfortable, frustrating, contentious, and challenging. Living in times when everyone is feeling these things has led to drops in efficiency across all of our activities, and interactions with other people that are increasingly strained by the pressures everyone is facing. We’re being called to think and function in new ways, and many people have been pushed over the edge past where they can find any sense of balance.
Times of intense challenge require innovation, as the “old way” of doing things will often no longer be effective or even tenable. Unfortunately, humans don’t seem to like change very much! Throughout history, there are endless examples of blind resistance to change that was doomed, yet the trend was to dig in and refuse to reckon with change anyway. It takes work to change our thinking, our habits, and to change our own sense of identity—which, because of the endless antics of the ego, can actually feel like a kind of death. Fun!
To cope with all of this challenge, we need tools to foster internal adaptation and resilience. Unfortunately, most of us have been told that the answer to everything related to mind and emotions is willpower, a.k.a. stubbornness. You’re “supposed to” be able to muscle through whatever comes up, and if not, well, you’re weak and useless. This thinking paints people into corners where they think they need to suffer in silence in order to be valuable. In fact, if we want to be the most effective (not to mention happy) people we can be, just the opposite is true! We need to acknowledge where we’re struggling, find ways to vent off and transform our emotions into useful knowledge, and take action to create healthier balance in our lives.
You probably know by now that I find Tapping to be one of the most effective tools in existence for helping us to do all of these things. It’s simple, direct, and it works on all levels, physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual. And it’s free to learn and use as a self-help tool whenever you need it. It does encompass a lot of techniques that take time to master, but just the simplest version can make all the difference in how you experience your every day. If you haven’t yet started to practice using it, I strongly recommend that now is the time to put in a few minutes here and there to remind yourself of the steps and practice.
One of the things I like best about Tapping is that we don’t need to try to force anything to happen in this medium. We just express the reality of what’s going on in our inner world, and allow change to happen organically while we Tap. How we feel is not just ok, but important, and allowing it can lead to illuminating understandings and change that naturally occurs in right timing for our capacity. Symptoms of stress may melt away, sleep may improve, and you may find yourself feeling a lot less resistance to appropriate change with continued use. (Those are side effects we can all live with!) The name for the specific version of meridian tapping in which I am trained is called EFT, Emotional Freedom Techniques, for good reason!
I also want to share an article this week that makes some excellent points about how much the sheer uncertainty of the current environment can wear on us. Of course life always involves uncertainty, but these are unusual times to be sure. I hope you find it a useful reminder that you are not alone, and that it’s ok to be feeling on edge right now. Just don’t forget that you have the power to help yourself feel better about whatever stresses are on your plate, maybe after just a few minutes of Tapping.
The Amplifying Power of Cooperation
“Competition has been shown to be useful up to a certain point and no further, but cooperation, which is the thing we must strive for today, begins where competition leaves off.”
Photo by Shane Rounce
Interestingly, though so many of us have been raised with the idea that nature is set up to reward “Survival of the Fittest,” and that this means a life of high-octane individualistic competition for all beings, this may not be the most observable truth. I just read an article postulating that even Darwin, credited as the author of this concept, didn’t mean it the way it has been passed down. While I’m not an expert here and have not read Darwin’s works directly, I wouldn’t be surprised if his observations had been oversimplified. The world around us is full of examples of ingenious interconnectedness and cooperation. Until very recently in human history, people lived in highly interdependent, necessarily cooperative groups/tribes because without modern technology, the tasks required for sustainable survival were well beyond the abilities of most single humans.
In modern times, we have been increasingly enabled to exist with less directly obvious interaction with others, so daily human interactions have dwindled. As a result, in the last century, there has been a remarkable increase in the symptoms of loneliness and a decrease in feelings of purpose and daily relevance. Many people feel less able to turn to reliable partners for support in times of difficulty. A lot fewer of us feel like we’re a part of a thriving, socially connected community. And now, we’re confronting a pandemic that requires yet more isolation, exacerbating a growing sense of loneliness for so many.
This is new territory, and we are evolving new ways to stay connected, like the Internet. Being able to connect to anyone with Internet service around the world expands the ways in which we can become interconnected to other people in meaningful ways across distance. However, it does not replace the depth of real-world, multi-dimensional relationships that many of us are lacking. The constant availability of vast amounts of information and opportunity of certain kinds may seem as though it should be enough to fulfill us, but somehow it’s just not. It often only adds to our feelings of stress and overwhelm rather than decreasing them as healthy relationships can do.
Healthy, balanced, cooperative relationships can assist us in creating better solutions to problems by allowing us access to a wider array of talents and ideas. They can broaden our sense of security, because we know that the people on the other end will be there when we’re truly in need, just as we will pitch in when they need something important. Healthy relationships assure us that others know, approve of, and care for us through the ups and downs; they help to give us a sense of daily purpose as we participate in supporting a network of people we like, and who are working toward goals we can approve of. Human beings are evolutionary, meaning that we have a natural drive toward learning, growth, and achievement, but we are also built to be social. If we are not tending to our social needs, we can feel just as empty as when there is no obvious path forward to the creation of better things for ourselves and those around us.
In this time of such great challenge to our social needs, it’s vital that we devote some focus and ingenuity to how we will tend to our social needs and those of the people we want to stay connected to. Part of self-care is caring for our relationships, and making sure that those we love know we’re available to them in whatever ways we can be. Relationships take time and effort to build and deepen, and they take more time and effort to maintain. If we neglect them, over time, their strength may falter and leave us feeling less grounded, less supported, less well. Many of us have been struggling to adjust to a host of new routines, pressures, and problems lately, and it’s hard to keep up with everything at once, but making sure we don’t drop out of our relationships is incredibly important.
If you’ve let this go by the wayside in the face of overwhelm, make sure you’re taking the time this week to reach out to someone whose presence in your life you cherish. It doesn’t have to take a lot of time, but you may find that you get great satisfaction out of even a short visit if you’re putting aside distractions and really showing up fully for it. Think about the ways in which you could cooperate to get more of what you want and need rather than trying to go it alone, and take satisfaction in the cooperation you’re already leveraging. Let yourself celebrate and feel good about what’s good in your life, what is supportive and going right even when so much is challenging. Healthy relationships are one of the best, most valuable things we can create, and they should be appreciated and nurtured.
What Was That Again?
“Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.”
One of the areas of greatest disconnect in relationships is around the concept of listening. Most people think they’re great at listening, and many people overestimate their expertise in this area! Being an effective active listener takes work. It takes dedication, focus, determination to avoid distractions, emotional management, generosity, and willingness to stretch your own boundaries in the cause of better understanding a fellow human being. It’s easy and quite common to go off on mental tangents while others are speaking, including starting to plan your own response before the other person has expressed their thoughts. It can be hard to be patient enough to endure, remaining present, without interrupting, especially when the speaker is not great at organizing their thoughts before speaking, but patience is required if you really want to build understanding.
One of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever heard regarding effective listening is to take notes, which makes it a lot harder to split your focus by indulging in your own flights of fancy at the same time or jump to conclusions. Taking notes helps to slow down a mind that tends toward hyperdrive. When you’ve fully heard the speaker out, that’s a better time to process what has been said and compose your own contribution for best relevance. And the best practice for active listening is to go back over the speaker’s points, repeating what you think you heard, and asking questions to make sure you’ve understood. Doing this ensures better comprehension, which assures your speaker that you are serious about receiving their communication—and it helps them to feel heard, which pretty much everyone loves.
Why bother? Well, the best relationships, whether with family, friends, colleagues, or new acquaintances, require respectful curiosity and the willingness to compromise. You can’t gather information, get to know someone more deeply, walk in someone else’s shoes for empathy, or keep up with others’ evolution over time without being proficient at listening. If your listening skills are sub-par, your relationships will remain shallow and confusing. In short, no listening, no meaningful relationships.
With this in mind, I thought I’d share an infographic on communication that I thought you might find interesting. It is intended for consumption in the business world, but the facts and figures apply broadly. As you read it, take note: Where do think you really fall the various scales that measure these skills? Might there be room for improvement? Which of these might you practice this week to start improving your relationships further?
Acupressure Points that May Help with Anxiousness
“Reality is the leading cause of stress among those in touch with it.”
This week I came across an article on some acupressure points that can be helpful for anxiety, and I wanted to share it with you. As you well know by now, my absolute favorite method for emotional management is Tapping, but anything accessible that can help us all dial down stress right now is crucial. If you want to try what this article suggests, you can apply pressure at a level that feels good to you, or you could tap on these if you prefer, and see if you get extra relief. Sometimes, you’ll find that a particular point feels amazing and really seems to get you extra-great results. At other times, you might want to spend a minute or two on each and see how that goes. Just be sure to heed the warnings about not using some of these if you’re pregnant. I also want to mention that the one on the back of the hand near the thumb has been known to induce nausea in my experience, so you might want to tread lightly with that one as well.
Here’s the link to the article. Note that natural health methodologies tend to be poorly funded because they don’t have huge, powerful industries behind them like drugs do, but Tapping can now claim a growing number of well-constructed studies showing that it works across a range of issues. Acupressure is derived from the same knowledge base, Traditional Chinese Medicine, some of the principles of which are echoed in a number of other traditional health systems established long before the Western version of scientific inquiry was born. When treated with respect and common sense, and pursued with appropriate education or consultation with experts, many of these natural approaches can be gentle and helpful.
As always, I wish you and yours health and peace, and the ability to keep working to make the world a better place even through the most challenging of times.
Where to Start?
“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.”
In last week’s blog, I wrote about how during these strange times, you may be able to find space for some activities that will support your renewal even during all the uncertainty. You may be the only thing you have the power to change right now, but changing yourself can be very powerful—it can initiate change that ripples out and affects everything and everyone around you. If you’d like to do this, you may be wondering how best to figure out what to work on. Most of us have lots of emotions, thoughts, and beliefs left over from previous life events that could be benefitted by Tapping, so how do you know what you should work on today? As long as you don’t choose anything that seems too big or scary, there’s really no wrong answer, but here are a few ways you can land on something that will feel fulfilling to make some progress on right away:
Ask yourself what has been bothering you lately. If we give ourselves a moment, most of us can pretty easily rattle off the things we’re worried, scared, annoyed, angry, or frustrated about at any given time. This does fluctuate, sometimes based on identifiable triggers, and sometimes in ways that are more unconscious and mysterious. Your answer today may be quite different than it was last week. If it’s one big thing, you can Tap on that. If it’s a lot of things, you might want to try the Tap and Rant technique, in which you just Tap through all the points and just vent all of it and how you feel about it.
If you’re focusing on one thing, you can just notice the emotion that bothers you and how it affects your body as you Tap, being as specific as you can about all the sensations you feel. As you Tap, the intensity should come down. You may need to be patient depending on how intense it is, and do multiple rounds of Tapping to get results.
You can also work through an event using the Tell the Story technique, in which you narrate the story of something unpleasant that happened, starting from a neutral place before anything really bothered you, and as soon as you feel any emotion or physical discomfort whatsoever, you pause telling the story and Tap. If you can reduce those feelings to a low number (two or lower on a zero-to-ten scale), then you can resume telling the story and pause to Tap whenever you start to feel anything again at a later point in the story. Once you can tell the story start to finish without feeling much of anything, you’re done with that event!
You can simply scan your body for any discomfort. If you find anything that stands out, you can try Tapping as you voice the sensations. Often what happens as you do this is that the sensation will move and change. After each Tapping round, you can reassess and notice what you feel now. This is called the “Chasing the Pain” technique, and it’s considered one of the Gentle Techniques in EFT. You don’t have to know why you’re feeling the sensation, you just Tap and describe it and how it transforms until hopefully you no longer feel discomfort. How this can be pretty surprising and defy all logic, but often it really helps.
You can also use the Personal Peace Procedure, in which you make notes on a whole bunch of things that bother you, and just pick one each time you Tap to work on. Over time, you can work through them one by one, and you’ll find that even a few minutes a day helps you erase your emotional reactiveness to them and cross things off your list. Eventually you should notice that you feel better and have more energy. Some people like to brainstorm a long list, but that can be overwhelming. You might prefer to just make a short list, and then brainstorm a new one when you finish with those initial items. Trust me, there will always be more to work on!
Remember that as you go, it’s important to be honest about what you feel and not try to force it to change, particularly when it’s at the high end of the intensity scale. If you try to immediately talk yourself out of your feelings as you Tap so you can avoid them, you won’t get good results. It’s necessary to just admit to what’s true and let the Tapping organically change how you feel. Most of the time, it will start to do that naturally within a few rounds.
You may sometimes get stuck at a plateau with something you’re working on. If the intensity came down at all, feel free to call this a win and give yourself a break. You can always come back to it later for another attempt, and sometimes your system needs time to adjust and reveal all the benefits you created.
You may also find that if you’ve worked on something multiple times and you’re not getting anywhere, it’s time for some help. Some things are just tricky to work on, and getting an outside perspective from a practitioner can help you solve the mystery of what’s going on with the right questions and the use of some more advanced techniques.
I hope this helps you venture into more frequent Tapping that will help you survive and thrive in challenging times. What’s better than something you can do anytime, for free, that feels good and supports your short- and long-term balance? Not much in my book!
Melting that Stress Away
This week I want to share an article about a recent study on the efficacy of EFT on stress relief. This study replicates a previous one that showed a significant decrease in cortisol (one of the main stress hormones) production, with an even better average result. This confirms what anyone who has actually learned and used Tapping knows, that it quickly helps to relieve stress and calm the body and mind. On the right side of the above linked page, you can access other studies about EFT’s efficacy as well. You may not want to wile away your day perusing these articles for fun, but if you need a reminder about why it’s highly practical to spend some time becoming comfortable with Tapping and weaving it into your daily routine, perhaps these articles will provide that for you. It’s my hope that you will use this incredible simple, free, supportive range of tools for your benefit always, but particularly at times of high stress and uncertainty, like the ones we’re living through right now.
Need reminder about how to do it? Head over to this page. It only takes a few minutes per day to start practicing and gaining confidence that you can improve your moods and functioning across the board with these techniques. A lot of people have more time right now, so you may have a perfect opportunity to spend a little time each day using Tapping to decrease your stress and clear your slate for a better day, no matter what you have going on. I would never want to be without the ability Tapping gives me to completely change how I feel about my current challenges in just minutes, and I hope it brings you the same kind of solace.
So Much Togetherness
“There is no such thing as fun for the whole family.”
If you are in one of the many places in the world that are self-isolating right now, then you have been experiencing multiple challenges. One of those is a LOT more time with family and pets who may be used to having a lot more space and alone time. I came across an article on how to keep the peace with you loved ones, and I thought I’d share it for your health and enjoyment!
You can find that here. In addition, know that anytime we undergo big changes to our routines and have to turn on a dime as we have recently, it’s very normal to feel confused, overwhelmed, frustrated, afraid, annoyed, and to be tempted to lash out at others. That doesn’t tend to go well, though, so I suggest you plan to do extra work on yourself and your inner life right now. Taking a little of the time you normally spend on commuting, doing errands, attending social engagements, etc. to do calming activities like taking a bath, writing in a journal, reading a good book, or Tapping can be a huge help in managing all the rapid change you’ve been enduring. Life will begin to pick up again at some point, but for now, don’t try to pretend this isn’t hard.
A Simple Way Toward All the Good Stuff
“If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.”
If you’re reading this, it’s at least partly because you like finding ways to make your life better, happier, and more inspiring through methods that only require a reasonable, doable amount of effort. Am I right? In this spirit, this week, I wanted to pass on a link to an article about something that is simple, yet so powerful in helping you to feel better about your life almost instantly.
There’s a lot more research happening these days on the powers of our behavior, including the internal behaviors of our thoughts and emotions. In this article, we get a short summary on some of the scientific findings about the power of making compassion an intentional part of our lives. Sometimes a simple outlook shift can change everything for the better, and prioritizing compassion is one of the most lauded shifts we can make. Compassion is referred to throughout human history across time, place, and culture as one of the most important components of a life well lived. If you want to increase your satisfaction, your relationships, your overall happiness, not to mention your contribution to making the world a better place, this is a shortcut that you can implement anytime for free just by how you think, and it opens the door to the creation of supportive action and habits.
A few thoughts from me:
Practicing compassion requires us to become aware of and care about another’s experience. This takes us out of ourselves and gives us a break from worrying about our own issues.
Humans are naturally social, and wired to help others. Problems arise when we over-give, so keeping an eye on balance is important, but when we’re in balance, sharing and giving feel great.
When we give in a way that answers what another truly needs, everyone’s happiness is amplified. Keying into what someone else needs may require putting aside our own opinions and preferences. If this is hard for you, Tapping can help you find your calm, centered place. From there, you will be more easily able to hear clearly and let the other person express themselves without jumping in with your own preconceptions. As mentioned above, prioritizing someone else’s needs may be a challenge, but it can also be a relief.
Listening is highly educational. You just might find that when you put a bit more attention on listening, you’ll learn a whole lot about how others think and experience the world, not to mention other random topics they’re concerned about, which may be interesting as well.
True leadership starts with listening, and if you both listen and act on what you hear with compassion (without losing yourself, because you’re an essential part of any interaction), you’ll be able to build a better life for yourself and begin to lead others to better things as well. How can you listen compassionately to someone else this week?
Reclaiming Polyanna
“Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence.”
Years ago, I heard Maryanne Williamson speak on the topic of the story of Polyanna (there’s an old Disney movie based on a novel if you’ve never heard of it. It’s about a little girl who stubbornly sees the good in everyone, and about how this affects the people she interacts with.) She talked about how it’s become fashionable to bash the title character’s perennial insistence on seeing the positive in all things—after all, isn’t someone like that pretty annoying in day-to-day life? Maybe inspiring in a short movie, but otherwise just too much? Marianne went on to point out, though, this little character’s immense power to transform the world around her, which plays out in the story. I thought it was a fantastic point. Would we rather complain and reserve our right to be cynical, or reach for more optimism and the tremendous power that follows?
In light of this awareness, I want to suggest that it’s a good season for thinking about closing down the year that is winding down, and envisioning the year ahead. As we do this, it behooves us to think about what results we were able to create, both positive and negative-seeming:
Where did we succeed, and what can we learn from these successes? What should we continue doing in order to repeat these successes, and what might we need to stop doing?
What successes might we have blown right by without noticing or celebrating, and what would be a meaningful way to celebrate these now?
Where did we fail, or mess up, and what can we learn from this?
Here’s where Polyanna comes in—if you’re having trouble seeing what you can take away from this that would be beneficial to you in the future, play a game with yourself where you give yourself permission to be as obnoxiously and stubbornly cheerful as you possibly can about everything you think of. Really go overboard and get ridiculous about it, practicing on other people’s life events. Then turn that back on the situation from your life and see what that kind of playful, exaggerated thinking can show you about it
Knowing what you know now, how would you go back and redo this situation if you could?
Is there still anything left undone about it that you’d like to wrap up? Maybe you just left the pieces where they lay, rather than cleaning up so you could move on as smoothly as possible. Now might be a good time to pick up the pieces and make peace with it one way or another
Try actually rehearsing mentally how what you learned can help you next time you’re in a situation where it would apply. Learning something new to the point where it’s immediately useful when you need it usually takes some repetition and practice
What can you give yourself credit for in that original “failure” scenario that perhaps you haven’t yet done? In what ways did you really try your best? Where did what you tried come very close to working? Where was bad luck involved, such that you couldn’t have foreseen or controlled certain factors with the knowledge you had?
Is there anyone you need to apologize to or make some other contact with in order to tie up loose ends?
Regardless of whether others have forgiven you, think about how you might forgive yourself. Sometimes we have to let others have their own feelings and their own timing, but we still have the power to decide that internally, we’ve suffered enough for the time being.
In taking stock of recent life lessons, it’s important to both acknowledge our progress and the things we still need to work on. It’s human nature to learn most things by doing, and without the emotional punch packed by the experience of failure, many things we would be likely not to learn at all—yet continuing to learn is often what makes us worthwhile people. As this year enters its final month, it’s a natural time to take stock so that we can let go of the old and allow the new room to grow in the new year. I hope you’ll be able to find a willingness to go easy on yourself, giving yourself proper credit, while still being willing to look clearly at where you were less awesome, make amends as needed, and learn from that. It is through finding this balance that we maintain a sane perspective on both ourselves and others around us, none of whom is perfect, but all of whom have value..
Where Am I Stuck?
“How few there are who have courage enough to own their faults, or resolution enough to mend them.”
Last week, we looked at the ways in which we tend to resist noticing where we could grow and improve for faster progress toward our goals. This is a very normal human behavior, but it keeps us from being everything we can. This week, I want to encourage you to think about where in your life you feel stuck, and what part in that you yourself may be playing.
It’s usually pretty easy to notice your pain points—often you probably spend much of your day mulling, even obsessing over them. Unless you’re a master at avoidance of your own emotions (and some people are), it probably isn’t hard for you to rattle off the things that are currently frustrating the heck out of you, and the situations you still don’t seem able to change no matter what you try. This is step one.
Step two can be harder because of the blind spots we’re all prone to. This is where I will ask you to think about the ways in which you may be contributing to the pain you’re experiencing, even if you haven’t been doing so consciously. Your first reaction might be, “I’m not! It’s the world, the industry, my family, etc.!” I’m sure that there are numerous factors playing into your situation, but are you sure you have NO hand in it? You might also wail that it’s all your fault, and that wouldn’t be true either. Life on Earth is a shared experience, and if you don’t live on a desert island, then nothing comes down to only you. The important thing is to get used to becoming open to observing where we have the power to choose differently, grow, and become more able to succeed in the ways we hope. So even when you’ve just had it with the factors that are not within your direct control, remember to think about any little part of the problem that could trace back to you. What would make you able to immediately solve this problem? Resources? Skills? Knowledge?
Once you have a better sense of this, you can start making a plan to work on those things that would be helpful and are within your control. This week, ask yourself what you would need to do to improve your own standing in the context of your most annoying problems. Next week we’ll talk about what to do with this information so that you can start moving forward again.
After a Fall
“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”
For the last couple of weeks I’ve been thinking about failure, so this week I wanted to talk about what happens afterward. As we’ve discussed, many of us have been taught to see failure as something to avoid at all costs, something that is dangerous, humiliating, and unacceptable; we think that if we fail, that means something about us and whether we’re good enough. Sensing that we have failed in any way may send us into a tailspin of emotions and self-recrimination that puts us off track for weeks, months, or even years. If we can find ways to overwrite some of our destructive programming about “failure,” we can shorten the path to more of what we really want to experience, and keep ourselves from feeling so much pain when it could be much less disruptive.
It’s natural to feel a rush of multiple emotions when life doesn’t go our way. There’s nothing wrong with that, and in fact, each emotion we feel can alert us to a different layer of the experience that it would be helpful for us to consider. Each one carries its own message about how we can keep learning in order to get closer to success. For instance, if anger is a part of your mix, perhaps you’re thinking that external forces are partly to blame, and with some thought, you might be able to learn a few things about how to dance more gracefully with the outside world next time you tangle with it; it also might indicate that you’re blaming yourself for doing something that you now see was a mistake. If you feel sad, it may be because you’re telling yourself that you can’t come back from this, or it was your last chance. Frustration may indicate that you’re starting to need a new strategy or a vacation to rest and renew before you head back out into the world again. No one likes to analyze their own part in a mess, but doing so can be incredibly revealing. Examining what happened and why is essential to future improvements.
Sometimes a balanced, grounded perspective can be hard to come by when you’re confronting feelings around failure, so enlisting the help of others to interpret your experiences can be a huge help. We all have habits of thought as well as blind spots that we’ll never notice if we don’t include outside perspectives. We all have a tendency to overreact in some areas, and only with clarity and practice can we learn to undo our old patterns. Allowing others to help helps us to find clarity, and helps us to build a support system that we can lean on as we work our way toward mastery.
Throughout the whole process of finding your more balanced perspective, Tapping can be such a relief! When you’re in the throes of that first round of emotion that arises when you perceive a failure, it can relatively quickly calm your reactions so that you can give yourself the space to think it all through with less judgment. As each layer of emotion is revealed, it can help you stay calmer as you work out which parts were yours and which were out of your control, and then dial all the emotional intensity down to workable levels. Once you have a better sense of what you think of the whole thing, it can help you to release any regrets you’re holding onto, and any fears about the future that have arisen as a result of your outcome. Once you’ve uncovered beliefs that are impacting your judgments about yourself and others, it can also help you find the origins of those beliefs in your earlier life and address old events that may be a part of your present-day habits and patterns. Depending on how spectacular your crash, finding peace may take a lot of Tapping, but the time you invest in it is worth it. It really can help you become free from the ill effects of painful circumstances that might otherwise keep dragging you down.
In truth, no one is born an expert at anything. While we all have innate talents, we all must build skills in any given area through practice, trial and error. Screwing up is not necessarily failure—most likely it’s just the unglamorous part of the process of gaining skills you need to progress. If you’re still alive, even the worst failures are not final! The more you can learn to calmly assess what has actually happened when you’re unhappy with results, the more quickly you can find clarity about where you went wrong, how to do damage control to salvage what you can from the wreckage, and start to create new and better opportunities for the next time around. And the lessons from experience tend to teach us far more, and stick with us much more effectively, than those we learn second hand, so you might eventually find that you can come to value your mistakes as well as your successes. Wisdom grows as a result of all of our experience, not just the fun ones!
Dealing with Failure
“Do the one thing you think you cannot do. Fail at it. Try again. Do better the second time. The only people who never tumble are those who never mount the high wire. This is your moment. Own it.”
One of the things we all spend a lot of time thinking and worrying about is, “Am I good enough?” This is completely normal, but it’s also one of the main producers of angst built into the human condition. The other great worry is, “Do I (and will I) have enough?” Years ago I heard a lecturer mention these two questions as those to which all mental and emotional pain will reduce. In my work and my wanderings, I have found this to be true. Both questions are absolutely pivotal to the experiences we have and want to have in life, and they are perennial. At no point will we be able to escape these two questions, no matter how good life gets. And one of the concepts that gets right to the heart of that first question is the concept of failure. What is it, how do we define it, and most importantly, how can we avoid it? Please God, let us avoid it.
Instead of learning how to deal most constructively with these worries as we grow and mature, we often find that our greatest influencers, our friends and family members, pile onto them with their own baggage—much of which was inherited from others in their lives. A vast amount of information about (not) being enough and having enough collects in our subconscious minds, and becomes the compass for our life decisions without our even realizing the problem. Which is that others have defined our sense of self and our ideas about our potential, sometimes so thoroughly that we will fight for this vision of ourselves and the world as absolute reality.
Unfortunately, because of their own beliefs about themselves and the world, parents often drill into us that it isn’t safe to fail, and that failure can be one of life’s greatest horrors. Now in some situations, this makes complete sense. Consequences are all about context, and if you live in a time and place where there really is intense scarcity to grapple with on a daily basis, and just surviving requires balancing on a razor’s edge, then this actually makes a lot of sense. We learn about what’s acceptable and good in any given culture through both observation and direct teaching from those around us, and survival requires our absorbing the rules of play. And by the way, much of human history really has been marked by the experience of struggles for survival in a harsh world. However, not all of us are actually having this experience today. If we’re not, the wisdom of behaving as though we are becomes truly questionable. But how do we undo the deep programming we’ve absorbed throughout our lives that can keep us locked into endless, circular existential worry about being enough and having enough?
I guess this week I’ve decided to go for the big questions that underlie the entire personal development sphere! And while I can’t solve all problems in a short blog, I can give you the main branches that I think can define a successful path forward, keeping in mind that these are highly reductionist. In other words, just because the broad outlines can be stated quickly doesn’t mean they are simple and can be done quickly!
The first branch is giving yourself permission. There may be many aspects to getting to this willingness in all the areas of your life, but ultimately, you are the only one who can decide that you should be free to live a happy life that expresses who you truly feel yourself to be.
The second is extending yourself the love and respect that all humans deserve, the acknowledgment that we are all potentially good and perfect at some level, whether you call that soul or inspiration or genius. If you see yourself this way, you have what you need to invest in your joy, your learning, your constant betterment in the ways that you yourself define. In this distraction-clogged world, clarity can’t solve everything, but it’s a fantastic start and a powerful compass as we make our daily decisions.
As you contemplate giving yourself permission, here are a few things to contemplate:
Your parents probably did the best they could with what they had, including their natural abilities and their own built-in baggage, even if the best they managed was pretty terrible
Parents, if conscious and sober, constantly bounce back and forth between their hopes and their worries for you. This can make them seem pretty nuts when you’re small! They want you to be enough and have enough, but they worry that if you stand out too much, your life may be much harder
They themselves were probably taught that most of us don’t have the luxury of failing, because if we do, it will be the end. We’ll be finished, we and our families will die, and all will be lost. Even if they wouldn’t phrase it this starkly, I promise you that these beliefs are in there
Everyone is carrying around So. Much. Baggage. From what has been passed down unconsciously for countless generations throughout human history. I wouldn’t have believed how much until I started Tapping and finding it all starting to stand out to me in startling detail
If they had had better teaching, encouragement, and better opportunities, their lives could have been wholly different. Do you think humans deserve these things? Might you?
So few people have had the luxury of time and enough opportunity to do the inner work necessary to consciously differentiate between what is truly them, and what is the muddiness passed down to them by others. But because of recent centuries of technological innovations, you may be better able to carve this out if you choose
Only you can choose to stand for the best of humanity and do the necessary work to wash off the past and everything that isn’t really yours.
If you decide to give yourself permission in this way, know that this is not something you will do only once. It will need to be a daily decision you make as your life continues to evolve and change. This might seem like a burden, but the sooner you come to accept it, the more you can build this pivotal habit.
Here are some thoughts to get you moving in positive directions as you begin to live a life in which you take your knowledge of who you really are and want to be and put it into action:
If you do assume that you are good and worthy of your own investment, what would you need in order to get beyond the limitations you’ve absorbed from people and from life events? While not everything can be planned in a linear fashion, some analysis of what you need is crucial to finding resources
Specifically, what holds you back from the things you secretly desire?
Where can you find information and other help that would move you through and beyond these impediments? What work will you need to do on the inside?
You may need to address the aftermath of difficult experiences in your life that have shaped your concept of self. Are you willing?
How might you rethink your concept of failure for the modern world and your own endeavors? Is there good that can come out of failure? Seek out autobiographical information about people you admire and find out how they failed before or after they succeeded, and how that changed them. How do others handle failures in ways that become constructive?
How do you personally define failure? Is a mistake failure? Or is failure only a word for something whose value we have not yet been able to see?
Be willing to ask yourself again every day what you need and stay flexible as new answers arise.
Failure can remain one of our greatest fears, or it can become a natural feature of life on Earth that may never be pleasant, but can become a powerful force for our learning and progress, as well as that of others with whom we communicate our experiences. Unfortunately, in order to see it this way, we will need to go up against a massive amount of programming and the constant opinions of others. It can be done, though, and it has the potential to yield untold dividends in freeing you from harmful and unnecessary limitations.
A Happy Give and Take
“Each day offers us the gift of being a special occasion if we can simply learn that as well as giving, it is blessed to receive with grace and a grateful heart.”
Last week I sent you a video on creating a culture of helpfulness. This week, I wanted to write a few words about how to strike a balance between giving and taking. As with many dualities, most people tend to naturally gravitate to one side of the giving/receiving spectrum more than the other. That’s normal and totally fine—we all have our own personalities and mixes of talents and challenges. Some of us find ourselves wanting to give to others all the time, and others of us tend to be more focused on our own goals and finding the help we need to bring them into being. Finding what is, for you, a good balance between the two is an important component in maintaining your relationships, which are a big part of maintaining your overall happiness.
Human beings are inherently social, and have evolved to be part of complex social systems. Throughout most of human history, people who were not willing to be part of a circle of giving and receiving were placing themselves in the dangerous position of not pulling their weight, and becoming superfluous. Someone who was not fully integrated into a tribe or village ran the risk of having to fend for themselves. In a harsh world that was difficult to survive, that was not an enviable position.
Times may be different, but most of us are more fulfilled when we have a strong social support systems made up of some close friends and family members who we can rely on, and to whose lives we can also contribute in meaningful ways. With this in mind, here are a few things to consider as you strive for your appropriate balance:
Do you tend to be very driven and focused on your projects and goals? If so, you may need to remind yourself to reach out to others, ask what’s going on with them, and remember that giving to others feels great
Do you tend to give, give, give, but never take much time for yourself? You may need to encourage yourself to carve out some time for things that help you to rest, renew, be inspired, and laugh
What skills do you have that others tend to remark on and appreciate? Chances are that these are skills you like to use, so when you’re ready to give, maybe those are the ones to offer. If not, you might want to start reminding those in your social circle about the skills you do most like to share
Are you good at receiving gracefully? Or do you tend to deflect? If you’re not comfortable receiving, you are denying others the satisfaction of contributing to your life as a way of expressing love and appreciation. Remember that you’re part of a circle, and allowing them to give to you is as much an act of love sometimes as giving is
If you’re not good at receiving, you might want to think about why, and then do some Tapping on what you discover
The same goes for giving if you don’t tend to enjoy it much. The reasons why may be worth some attention, as you’re leaving your own joy and satisfaction in giving on the table along with the benefits you could be offering to the world by sharing your talents
Some people are taught that asking for help is weak. This is pretty unfortunate, since it denies you the ability to receive the help that may be all around you, and it denies others the opportunity to help create progress
On the other hand, some are taught that it’s selfish to ask for anything. Also and unfortunate and unnatural idea!
Where do you fall on this spectrum? I hope this has gotten you thinking about the ways in which you could experience more satisfaction by finding the right balance of giving and receiving for where you are in your life right now. As we head toward the holiday season, it’s a good time to rethink how you’re operating in this area and make a few new decisions if you find that you’ve been out of balance.
Hierarchy or Helpfulness?
“Though force can protect in emergency, only justice, fairness, consideration and cooperation can finally lead men to the dawn of eternal peace.”
I bet you’ve noticed that it can be hard to find people in today’s world who seem interested in being helpful. This is, in some ways, remarkable in the context of human history, because until not that long ago, anyone who couldn’t cooperate couldn’t survive. The good of one’s tribe or village had to be a consideration in decision making, because it was extremely difficult to navigate the world alone. In the last several hundred years, advances in technology that were previously unthinkable have changed our living conditions beyond recognition. Those of us in countries with more access to such advances now can have a great deal more ease and independence in our lives, which has given rise to greater expressions of individuality. The prevailing philosophy has shifted to include what has amounted to an obsession with individual achievement.
Now, freeing people to use their creativity and produce the products of their unique visions has produced a lot of brilliant work, and there’s nothing wrong with that. On the other hand, obsession with doing everything individually has, it seems to me, produced a lot of loneliness, anxiety, and limitation for a lot of people too. Not everyone is wired to be a James Bond-style army of one. Humans evolved as social animals, and for most of us, it’s very difficult to feel as much alone as many people now do.
This week I want to share a video about cooperation that I watched this week, because I think it’s interesting and applicable to a lot of situations. It’s targeted to people in the business world, so if your interests don’t run along those lines, just hang in there until about four minutes in, when I think the importance to any group of people kicks in. The thesis is about how a commitment to helpfulness in yourself and those around you can change your ability to get more done, and more quickly. When we stop acting like only the obvious leader of any group has notable value to offer, we become more willing to both be helpful, and leverage the helpfulness of others, which is enormously powerful.
How can you augment the presence of this circle of helpfulness in your life? Think about that this week, and see what you notice about where you could use more of this, and how you might begin to create it. I’ll be writing more on this topic next week!
The Way, Way Back
“We will be more successful in all our endeavors if we can let go of the habit of running all the time, and take little pauses to relax and re-center ourselves. And we’ll also have a lot more joy in living.”
Last week we looked at how much we tend to avoid how we actually feel at any point in time, how this tends to create a life of stress and panic, and what we can start doing to turn that around. It’s true that learning to notice the signals from our bodies and emotions, and building nuanced language skills to describe them specifically, are building blocks in creating a happier, more peaceful experience. And these skills will serve us well for a lifetime in dealing with what’s happening in our internal worlds. This week, I want to add a dimension to the discussion that makes things more complicated, but also increases our chances of success in getting to that happier place.
Being able to tune into how you feel and work with it is tremendously helpful in empowering you to live a better day-to-day experience. On the other hand, Gary Craig, the founder of EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques), used to say, “The problem is never the problem.” In other words, the reason we react the way we do to current events in our lives usually goes back much farther than the event we’re dealing with now, usually to old patterns and traumas, sometimes from the very distant past. Being able to do something about those, then, is like finding the map to where all the treasure is buried!
Lucky for us, Tapping has been shown through both extensive use and scientific studies to be effective in dealing with old traumas as well as beliefs that result from patterns of experience. These are two areas in which it is generally most difficult for people to create lasting change. Before I mention some ideas on how to work at this deeper level, please note that big traumas are not generally something you should tackle on your own. Though Tapping can be used as a self-help tool in many cases, if something feels too big or scary for you to confront on your own, then don’t! Get help, and you’ll get faster, more comfortable results, feel supported, and deepen your skills with Tapping as you go.
If you find that you’re Tapping on something that isn’t reducing past a certain point, or that you seem to be working on very similar things over and over, chances are that you need to look to previous events for the foundation of your current problem. Here are some approaches that may help:
When you’re clear on your current issue, and you’ve gotten specific about the associated emotions you’re experiencing and how your body feels in response to those, ask yourself one of these questions:
What does this remind me of?
Who does this remind me of?
When have I felt this specific mix of emotions and sensations before? (If it’s all very familiar, when was the first time you can remember feeling like this, or the worst time?)
What does this seem like a metaphor for (as in, if your neck hurts, what in your life is a pain in the neck?)
In asking these questions, you may find more layers of your issue becoming clear to you. If you do realize new connections, your next step will be to Tap on the original event/cause and all the little pieces of your memory that bother you. These might be sounds, images, smells, words that were said, decisions you made about life as a result, or beliefs you took away from the event, as well as many other aspects. Try working on each aspect of what comes up for you one at a time until how you feel about it plummets in intensity, and when it doesn’t bother you much anymore, move on to the next. By targeting the root causes of your current issues this way with patience and attention to detail, you have a much better chance of feeling better about where you are in the present.
As you go about this kind of work, remember that we all have many, many distressing memories of varying intensity left over from past experiences, so you’re not going to clean them all up in a day! Even if what you’re working on feels thoroughly manageable, don’t go overboard and push yourself to take on too much all at once. We all have at least hundreds of unpleasant recollections that would probably benefit from Tapping. With the time you have, work with whatever seems most appropriate in the moment, celebrate whatever gains you’ve made in how you feel about the past, including any helpful realizations you’ve had, and come back to the rest at a later date. Any progress you can get to is valuable. If you get a sense that you’ve done enough for the day, or that today is not the right time to work on something specific, honor that intuition and make a note to come back to it later. It’s also helpful to keep notes on what you’ve worked on, since it’s easy to forget, and having a record is a way to be able to look back and appreciate yourself for all the good work you’ve done.
The more you address older patterns and root causes of why you feel and react the way you do, the more you’ll find that you can maintain a sense of calm as you go through your life, which will always include daily ups and downs. It’s hard to communicate just how much of a difference doing this kind of work can make over time, but if you give it a try, you’ll quickly start to see what I mean. Having the courage to get real about how you really feel and do something about it can be a challenge at first, but you will also find that as you practice, it becomes a tremendous relief to know that you have the opportunity to bring improvement to your emotional world, and to feel that happening every time you spend a few minutes Tapping.