So Much Happier Blog
Taking the Leap
“Everything has seasons, and we have to be able to recognize when something’s time has passed and be able to move into the next season. Everything that is alive requires pruning as well, which is a great metaphor for endings.”
Sometimes, your only job in a situation is to let go and allow a thing to exit your life. Depending on the circumstances, actually accomplishing this can be one of the hardest things you’ll ever do. There can be numerous reasons why we struggle with letting go, and it’s worth taking a look at them, because shining a light on the resistance usually helps us to find some clarity about what we’re doing and why. Once we have clarity, it’s easier to see what we need to do, and commit to doing it. When the task makes sense, we tend to feel better about taking action.
Here are the most common reasons we resist letting go of something (or someone):
Fear. If this is the best we’ve had yet, wouldn’t we be crazy to let it go? What if it’s our last chance? What if never find something this good again, let alone better? What if this was a fluke, a once-in-a-lifetime chance? This is fear talking. While it’s true that change is one of life’s only constants, and nothing will ever be exactly the same as this opportunity, just think about this for a minute. If you’re reading this, you live on a planet that is home to roughly seven and a half billion people, every one of those unique. Each of them wants roughly the same thing—safety, love, understanding, acceptance, validation. Each of them is constantly having new ideas about how they can be most successful at, and have the most fun in the process of, getting those things. Doesn’t it make sense that there are a lot of other people out there who want to go about those things in ways that you would appreciate? Let’s recall that seven and a half billion is a LOT of people. Some of those people you’d really like have available jobs to offer or recommend, they have hobbies, they want to be in relationships, they want to find ways to make the world a better place. When you’re holding on tightly, desperately, to something that isn’t right for you, you’re not out there finding your people where they are right now.
Deserving. On some level, not always immediately conscious, you may think you still need to “fix,” understand, or resolve something about your situation before it’s ok to let it go. Now, sometimes that’s a great idea. Feeling complete with a situation before you move on is a beautiful thing, and sometimes with a little thought and consideration, you can gain skills and wins for everyone involved. Honestly, though, in my experience, this is rare. Often we hope for concurrence from and peace with all parties involved in a situation, and getting to this may not be possible, because the only person you’re in control of is you. It takes two (or more) to tango, and to make peace holistically with a situation. Sometimes the best thing for everyone is for you to exit despite collective discomfort. In this case, you can be as clear and loving with your behavior as possible while still staying firm about your intentions, and then vote with your feet. The rest is not up to you. As far as the understanding piece, understanding and wisdom accrue in layers. Don’t you find that your understanding of situations from your past is exponentially more dimensional now because of the life experience you’ve amassed since then? This process will continue throughout your life. If there’s some key information you feel you need in order to make a good decision, fine, but you’re never going to resolve every possible loose end before it’s time for a change. And you deserve to make the best possible decision for yourself. Everyone does as long as they are not hurting others or violating their basic human rights—that’s what the concept of free will (balanced with a few moral considerations) is all about.
Disappointment. We tend to resist processing the reality that things we wanted did not materialize in the way we hoped, because if we really let that sink in, we’d have to feel the resulting sadness and loss, and then reimagine the future. It can be exhausting to go through all of this. On the other hand, it’s also exhausting to repress these feelings, we’re just not trained to notice this kind of energy drain and appreciate how it is aggregating over time! The answer is to learn tools that can assist you with breaking your discomfort into manageable chunks and handle releasing it in an appropriate manner. Enter EFT! This is my absolute favorite tool for the job. Not only does it help you get the job done efficiently, but it can also make the process more enjoyable and empowering than you might think. It can also facilitate better creative problem solving and faster leaps to new insights.
Beliefs. Whether consciously or unconsciously, we tend to encapsulate what we learn from a situation as a belief or two that we will hold as guiding principle going forward. If the new or reinforced beliefs are positive, as in, “I can and do choose to be in relationships only with people who are kind,” this is helpful to our development. If they’re limiting, as in, “People are jerks when you really get to know them,” we can wind up having big problems with trust, building new relationships, and having a social life that feels supportive. Often, these beliefs sneak by our conscious minds such that we don’t even realize that we could change our experience by rewriting them. Affirmations and mindfulness are excellent tools for working with mental habits and beliefs, but to address the deep emotional reasons why you formed those deep beliefs in the first place, we need tools for interacting with the subconscious, like Tapping, hypnosis, or NLP.
Real change takes work, but in my world, it’s always worth it! When you’re willing to do the work of becoming aware of, and releasing, the internal clutter produced by past events, the return is clarity, relief, increased energy, and greater wisdom. You may still need to go through various steps in transforming your relationships to the past, the present, and people (because no one’s development is ever complete), but you’ll be able to get unstuck and see more clearly along the way. Once you’ve handled your resistance to allowing positive change to happen, greater possibilities open up for you, and life stays fresh and interesting.
Believe You Can?
“Whether you believe you can do a thing or not, you are right.”
Last week we looked at the importance of changing beliefs in order to make better choices and foster balance in your life. Often, the reasons we don’t make good choices come down to either being unaware of our habits and where they come from (hint: Our beliefs!), or from failing to slow down long enough to make a new plan and take a few sane actions to get moving in the right direction. This week, we’ll explore how to do all of this using EFT, or Tapping.
We’re all so used to the idea that whenever there’s an issue confronting us, we need to “figure it out” with the mind; if we can’t, we may be tempted to give up in disgust and despair of solving the problem. What I’m about to offer is a non-linear approach that may stand usual assumptions on their heads. It may not seem like it could work because it doesn’t involve logical mental exertions. We will surely be using the mind, but in different ways than perhaps we usually do, and you may need to step aside from the mind sometimes as it flaps around in confusion and protest.
In order to find the causes of your behavior, we’re going to start with your body and your emotions. When you sit quietly and tune into these, what do you notice? What is bothering you? Particularly when you think about whatever is most uncomfortable, what emotions come up, and what sensations in your body seem connected to these emotions? Take a few deep breaths and be patient while you wait to see and feel what surfaces. Usually we exert so much pressure in trying to stay unaware of discomfort that this may seem like a pretty odd thing to do, but there’s a purpose here.
In the beginning, what you notice may be a confused jumble of a whole bunch of sensations, competing emotions, and related thoughts. When this is the case, I sometimes like to ask people to do a round or two of Tapping while “ranting,” basically just giving voice to everything that’s bothering them in no particular order, listing off everything that comes up without overthinking it. This allows us to tread the perimeter of the pile-up and get a general map of the landscape involved. It also helps with the “What do I say?” dilemma that sometimes stops people from actually beginning a Tapping practice, because you can’t do this wrong! Once the Tapping has helped to calm and focus you somewhat, it’s often easier to pick just one thing to work with. Tapping works best when we get very specific about something and focus on it singly until it shifts and changes, so this precess of getting specific is an important skill to build.
Once you have made a choice about one thing to target, you’ll want to describe the issue, write it down if you can, and note how intense the emotions are, as well as the sensations in your body, when you feel the emotion. Give the intensity a subjective number on a scale of 0-10 so you have a good sense of where you’re starting. Then, you’ll Tap around the points repeating a short reminder phrase that sums up or symbolizes the feelings for you. As you do this, you may notice that at some point, you have seemingly random thoughts that come up. Often, these are extremely relevant to what you’re focusing on, and can tell you more about your underlying beliefs and the life experiences when you took those on. If this happens, you can use one of the many Tapping techniques to work on the originating event and change how you feel about it. This does almost all of the work for you in changing a belief, though you may have to repeat it to address multiple experiences that have contributed to the belief.
Another tactic to try is to Tap on the statement of the problematic belief itself. For instance, Tap around the points while repeating, “There’s never enough time,” if that’s the belief you want to work on. When you give it a subjective intensity number, you’re rating it on a scale of 0-10 for how true it feels, where 10 is 100% true. As you do this, you may find that the number reduces, and/or you may find that, again, memories surface that will clarify where this came from. You can then work through those experiences to reduce their hold on you. Once you’ve done that, the belief change you want is often a natural byproduct of the work. Once the intensity of the belief is low, you can use Tapping to supercharge any affirmations you want to use around the issue going forward.
This is just a broad outline, but it should give you a good sense of a couple of useful approaches for working on limiting beliefs. As always with Tapping, you start with expressing what feels true, no matter how outrageously negative it may be, and you do not try to force a change. As you Tap and continue doing this, the change will begin to happen in its own timing, even if you don’t notice it right away. Take breaks if you need to and come back to it later. Try different approaches. Keep breathing. As long as you’re not taking on something that feels too big or otherwise overwhelming, just keep at it and eventually, there will be a shift. If you get stuck, find a practitioner and get some help. When you free yourself from limiting beliefs, great reserves of energy can be unleashed, and then your life can open up in ways you might never have imagined before. Take it from me that this is a triumphant experience, one that you can’t put a price on, and one that ripples through every area of your life adding joy and confidence that builds as you continue this kind of work.
The Accidental Maze of Meaning
“Beliefs have the power to create and the power to destroy. Human beings have the awesome ability to take any experience of their lives and create a meaning that disempowers them or one that can literally save their lives.”
I've written before about the importance of writing down your goals and periodically checking in on them so you can stay focused and adjust appropriately as conditions change. One of the most important reasons for this need is that the mind is constantly busy interpreting the events of your life, choosing meaning to assign to them in an effort to help you make sense of your world an keep yourself safe by learning from your experiences. However, this doesn't happen in a vacuum—it happens through the filters of all the previous choices it has made, both consciously and unconsciously, about the meaning of past events, and the stories it has evolved using all that assigned meaning using the data available to it. The interpretation is assigned so quickly, and beliefs based on it spring up so seamlessly, that we're generally not even aware that any of this is happening. We don't often feel a sense of involvement in the process, or the power to understand and change any of this, unless we're specifically working at being conscious of it. We certainly don't receive much instruction on it in the course of a standard education. And yet, intervening in this process for our own good is not outside the realm of our power, and in my experience, it's one of the most empowering things we can learn to do.
There are various techniques we can use to become more aware of our beliefs, as well as the interpretations from which they spring. Meditation, for instance, is an effective tool for becoming aware of many areas of your experience once you've built some basic proficiency with it, and decided where to point it. Talking to a friend with great listening skills, or a cognitive therapist if you need a professional, can help you to gain perspective on your beliefs. A skilled hypnotherapist can be a great help in this. Even just deciding that you want to become aware of this stuff and giving yourself some quiet time every day to jot down any realizations that come to mind can accomplish a great deal. My personal favorite method for increasing self-awareness is the use of Tapping techniques/EFT. I love it because it's a relatively simple self-help technique you can use anytime, and it facilitates the rise of understanding that would be slower to acquire through other methods; because it is a somatic technique (meaning it involves the body), it facilitates access to connections that techniques led solely by the mind never can.
When we use EFT, the mechanics of how we've assigned meaning to past events can quickly become clear in startling but cathartic ways. I can't tell you how many times I've found myself, or heard clients saying something like, "Now it all makes sense!" Realizations arise is organic ways we cannot plan, ways that are in appropriate timing for the current capacities of the person doing the Tapping. It's rare that in an hour-long session some doesn't include one of these illuminating moments. From here, we can look at the effects of previous choices and whether or not they currently serve us. We can keep the wisdom that resulted from past events, but make new decisions about what they mean, and what is possible, as well as how me will behave, in the future.
It is entirely possible, and sometimes even necessary, to realize or choose new meaning for a past event in order to move forward with your goals. Some beliefs are so foundational that holding them means you will not be able to get "there" from "here" because you believe you can't or that it's not safe to do so. While the conscious and unconscious self-sabotage that results when this is the case is often incredibly frustrating, it happens because the most primitive parts of the self are so strongly focused on self-preservation, and will use all means necessary to help us stay alive and safe. This is a worthy goal, obviously, but sometimes unconscious attempts at achieving it are misguided and rooted in outdated information.
If you are not regularly reviewing the state of your goals and of yourself in relation to them, how will you notice when you're stuck in a rut of past (many times unconscious) decisions about what's true and what's possible? Life is always changing all around us. There are sometimes conditions that seem to refuse, unnaturally, to change for an extended period of time, but how will you know when they finally do if you're not looking? How will you notice and leverage emerging opportunities if you're assuming the present will always be just like the past? (Hint: You won't!) When you do engage in this process, you notice when you keep coming up against barriers to progress in a specific area. With this awareness, the problem solving can begin, and we can keep track of whether our efforts are working as we continue to check in on progress regularly. While none of this is glamorous, nothing gets done in the long term without some version of this process being in use. The more you commit to doing it regularly and on purpose, the faster and more streamlined your progress can be. If you haven't already, write down some goals, and decide how often and when you will review your progress toward them. You may feel like you don't know what you're doing, but that's ok. You learn as you go, and you're not alone. In today's world, there are so many resources available to help you whenever you get stuck, but you have to start by admitting what you want and being willing to take some action and keep adjusting course to get there.
The Willingness to Leap
“All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous unpremeditated act without benefit of experience.”
So far we've addressed the mental and emotional areas of changing a negative belief. The next step in the process of changing a belief that I'd like to share is in the spiritual category. Sometimes when you've followed the steps I've outlined in the previous two weeks on addressing the mental and emotional realities underlying your belief, despite all your best efforts, there's a level at which you'll still plateau and feel stuck. I've found through my own experiences with myself and with clients that bringing whatever spiritual beliefs resonate with you into the process can significantly help in dissolving blocks. Specifically, I often find that asking something that feels larger than your own awareness for help can really pave the way for more rapid progress.
It seems to me that what's happening when we allow ourselves to ask for help on a spiritual level is that we are allowing the possibility of benign change that we don't need to control or immediately understand. Being in a state of openness can create a new kind of space in which synergistic progress becomes more likely. If you have a concept of God or other helpful unseen forces that works for you, Tapping while calling upon it can really get things moving. If you're an agnostic or atheist, try asking all the best, smartest parts of you to work together and help you to find new ways forward. Once you express this willingness to be assisted, you may find that whatever blocks have remained start to diminish without your having to do much of anything, and inspiration may strike. Sometimes all you'll feel is increased relaxation, but later, new, helpful ideas will come to you that will show you your next steps.
If you want to try this approach, remember that it's not mental or emotional. It requires only that you relax, breathe, and ask for help in whatever way seems natural for you as you Tap. If nothing seems to be happening as you try this, just calmly reiterate your request as you tap every point and focus on staying in that place of openness. If you do a few rounds this way and don't notice any change, feel free to keep going. You might also find that it feels great to then do a round or two of Tapping while affirming the most positive thing you can say about yourself, such as, "I'm continuing to do good work here, trying new things and sticking with this. I honor myself for my willingness to do what I can to progress." Even if you don't notice much of a difference, keep in mind that sometimes the effects of EFT are delayed—don't worry, and try to just stay in that state of willingness to receive help as you go about your daily routines. Sometimes people note that they thought Tapping didn't work, but then noticed, days later, that all of a sudden everything had changed. Frankly, staying in a relaxed, neutral state is a great thing to practice no matter what you're trying to accomplish; it helps to keep your mind and body in the most resourceful state possible, and it helps you to avoid gratuitous drama that would drain your energy and distract you from what's most important to you.
While asking for help may not seem like a sure winner, it can be quite powerful. At some of the times when I have felt the most stuck, this approach has helped me to get to a new place, even if it took a few days for a new pattern to settle in. It's a great way to start or end an EFT session, so don't forget to give it a try the next time you Tap. You may find that it opens up new perspectives for you in surprising ways.
Below the Surface
“Honestly, sometimes I get really fed up of my subconscious—it’s like it’s got a mind of its own.”
Now that you're clear about the beliefs you'd like to change, and have done some mental work (see last week's blog if you don't know what I'm talking about), what's the next step...? Now, I recommend working on the emotional side of things. Modern culture heavily emphasizes the mind in problem solving, so that's what many of us think is the alpha and the omega of making progress in anything, but your belief work won't hold if you don't address your emotional realities. These are deeply seated in your psyche and your body, and they will block your progress past a certain point. The great thing is that with effective tools like hypnosis or EFT, you can reach and work with the subconscious realm of old, ingrained emotions and patterns, which is where these blocks, and the power to create lasting change, reside.
You can do this work alongside the mental work (affirmations, for example). Ideally, all of your efforts will coordinate with and support each other. Assuming that you wrote out all the reasons you have the undesirable belief you're working on, the next step is to address each reason. There are other ways to do this, but since my favorite method is EFT, we'll be using that as the framework here. Using the same example as last week, if you believe you're too old to get in shape, one of your reasons might be that you think you have bad genes. In that case, you can do some Tapping for "I have bad genes"; this is a good start, but it's general, and the best results in EFT come from getting as specific as you can. Ask yourself: Why is this reason true, and what makes you sure? Look for your proof in specific events that have happened to you, like someone in your family having a traumatic experience that illustrates this, or someone important to you telling you this with a lot of conviction and emotion at a key moment for you. When you use EFT on these specific experiences, you are dismantling the support for your limiting belief one reason at a time. If you don't take on this work, all the mental work in the world won't usually get you permanent results, because you have these powerful emotional realities hanging on in the world of the subconscious. You may have to work on multiple supporting events in turn in order to start feeling different about each reason, but you may not have to work on everything similar that's ever happened because of the Generalization Effect, in EFT terms. Translation: To some extent, working on one event in a series tends to bring down the intensity of all of them.
As always, if anything feels too big or too confusing for you to handle alone, get help. There are numerous ways to do this, and so many great resources available to you. If you really want to make progress toward your goals, you will need to break the cycle of avoidance that tempts us all and do at least some of this work. You might as well figure out whether you're more likely to tackle it on your own or with others, and get started. Doing something new will always engender some feelings of awkwardness and discomfort, but in this case, the payoff can make the discomfort you endure worth every second in the long term.
I do want to be realistic and tell you that the process of working through all the reasons that support your belief can take some time. Depending on how much time and energy you devote to this, you will move forward if you use EFT faithfully, but you may not see instant results. Try not to quit before you see any. Sometimes you just need to keep at it. How much work will be needed varies widely from person to person and from subject to subject for each person. I also want to mention that sometimes, we hold onto a limiting belief because we get overwhelmed when we consider moving forward without it, and we use the belief as a shield against change. You may be frustrated by your difficulty with making progress in the past, but keep in mind that this behavior is designed to protect us. Humans evolved to be highly risk averse out of self-preservation, one of the strongest drives there is. Sure, you can try to fight this if you want, but you'll make yourself miserable and waste a lot of energy if you go that route. You can't discipline or shame yourself into confidence—I find that partnering up with the side of you that's afraid and trying to keep you alive (even if that's an overreaction) is the smarter and simpler way to go. Often you'll learn something new about what's been motivating you underneath the surface of things when you allow yourself to be open to it. Try asking yourself, "What's the worst thing that could happen if I no longer had this belief?" Once you have an answer, or several, treat each one as its own separate reason using the process outlined above.
This is the basics of working on the emotional glue that keeps old, outdated beliefs in place. If you don't have a good grasp on how to do the Tapping, review that before you attempt it, and always use common sense, pay attention to the signs your body is giving you, and don't overdo it. Otherwise, give it a try and see how including emotional work can help your beliefs to quickly evolve in the most positive way!
When What You Believe Doesn't Help
“Once you replace negative thoughts with positive ones, you’ll start having positive results.”
If you're someone who reads my blog regularly, chances are you're aware enough to know that you have a belief or two (or 20!) that are holding you back from being the happiest, most successful possible version of yourself. It's completely normal to pick up less-than-optimal habits and patterns from others, particularly when you're a child and don't even notice it's happening, though this can happen at any time of life. Those habits then stick around until you do specific work to change them. It's all well and good to know this, but what do you do about it? How can you permanently change a belief that might be based on years of conditioning, including examples you've observed and powerful formative experiences you've had personally?
I won't pretend that we can just wave a magic wand and presto, a limiting belief is gone! On the other hand, sometimes it seems like changing these deeply ingrained beliefs must take a Herculean effort, and that need not be true either if you're willing to use the best tools for the job. Here are my suggestions for taking an inclusive approach that will get all of the parts of you on board. An action in one area will help you to progress, but when you work in all areas, everything happens faster and is more likely to solidify into permanent change.
First, get clear on what you'd like to change and why. There might be numerous beliefs you'd like to rewrite, but pick one! You can get to them each in turn, but without focus, you won't get much done. Let's say, for instance, that the belief you've chosen is, "I'm too old to get in shape." Now, spend some time with your mind. Write down all the reasons this is true for you. Are all your family members who are older obese? Do you feel like you have too many aches and pains to move your body? You can probably come up with a ton of reasons, so keep writing until you feel like you've gotten them out, however bad they sound. It might seem overly negative to really reach for more reasons past the most obvious ones, but trust me, this stuff is gold when it comes to making change possible for yourself. You need to know what's in your mind on autopilot when you're not looking if you want to have a chance at working with it.
When you've dug deep and you feel like you have a good picture of what you believe and why, it's time to think through these reasons (Part I). When you think about them consciously, do you truly believe each one? It can be helpful to ask, "Whose voice is this, and when did I learn it?" Also, "Would I give a close friend this advice?" Sometimes you'll find that you don't fully believe these tapes that play in your head. The process of changing any part you still do believe will need to include purposely challenging the old messages when you find yourself thinking disempowering thoughts. When you find yourself (using our example) thinking that there's no exercise you can do that won't cause you to injure yourself, you'll need to interrupt that with something like, "Wait a minute. That's the old belief talking. Surely there's something I can do to move my body a little that is gentle enough to start building strength and balance without injury. I can start with some searching online for gentle exercise and see what I find. Other people get into shape all the time, and I can too." But even the items you don't consciously believe may still continue to influence you because they're ingrained and habitual.
One excellent tool for fostering change is the use of affirmations. These are positive statements of the new beliefs you'd like to have that you repeat daily until they become new habits. In order to find these, you can look at the negative beliefs and reasons you wrote down in the first step and write out the most opposite inspiring statement you can for each one. Then you simply say them out loud at least once per day. Affirmations have gotten a bad rap lately, but I find them to be a useful support in the midst of change. It's a sort of self-coaching that reminds you where you're going and helps you to try on the feeling of a new belief until it seems more natural. I'll warn you that if you really need an affirmation, you won't even want to say it out loud--the new statement will sound ridiculous and embarrassing! But give it a few days and you'll stop needing to squirm uncomfortably when you say it and consider actually holding that more positive belief. This step alone will not get the job fully done. The mind is a fantastic tool, but it can't solve all our problems alone because it's not the only part of us. This is why some people have taken to claiming that affirmations don't work, but they can be, in my experience, a powerful element in your strategy. More on how to work with other parts of you in later blogs.
Another great way to support the changes you're looking to make with your mind include feeding it new information, like reading or listening to books that will expand your knowledge about the subject at hand. You could read about how to start slowly and get into shape at a healthy pace while avoiding injuries. There are many guides out there on workouts for almost every person and situation. You also might want to read biographies or articles about other people who have done what you want to do. Most of the time, there are many people with experience who can help you along with inspiration and the fruits of their own labor. Knowing that others have been through the same thing, and learning about how they triumphed, is a supportive way to teach your mind that more is possible for you.
It can also be hugely helpful to find at least one other person who is working on the same kind of challenge with whom you can share the journey, the highs and lows, and make the effort more fun. When you can enjoy your efforts, you'll be much more able to stick with the program than if you're trying to muscle through on willpower alone. Joining with others can also help you harness the positive powers of both cooperation and friendly competition. Just make sure that person is also willing to put in effort on the mental side of things and making an effort to stay positive. Partnering with someone who is not doing the inner work to make change last can be more of a downer than an inspiration. You want to put yourself in proximity to people who will cheer you on and have your back when you're having trouble staying the course.
This week has been about supporting change with the mind because this is what our culture tends to offer first, and sometimes only, as the way to make change happen. Much of this probably sounded familiar and fairly logical. In the coming weeks, we'll look at how to bring the rest of you to bear in supporting change so that you're allowing the process to ripple across all parts of you. If you do the work to isolate a belief and the reasons you hold onto it this week, you'll get more out of the weeks to come, so make you sure you take the time to do that now. I also encourage you to experiment with affirmations, and even if it seems goofy, try to have fun with them as a way to start practicing the new. You're on your way to a new, more empowering belief already!
Free Your Mind
“The historic ascent of humanity, taken as a whole, may be summarized as a succession of victories of consciousness over blind forces - in nature, in society, in man himself.”
When dealing with a long-term challenge, even if you find that you're well on the way to a solution, it's often true that nothing happens as quickly as you want it to. Problems that you acquired over time will usually take time to solve. The thorniest part of addressing them is often dealing with the daily disappointment, or even heartbreak, of still having the problem despite all your efforts. One of the most powerful things you can ever do is condition yourself to celebrate even your smallest wins rather than bemoaning your losses and worrying about how you will confront tomorrow. This may also be one of the hardest things you'll ever learn to do. It sounds very simple, but is, for most people, astonishingly difficult. It also changes everything about how you experience your life and what is possible for you, once you understand and become practiced at it.
When you think about what a downer it is to harp on what's not working, it makes a lot of sense that consciously focusing on the progress you're making instead would be more helpful. (I'm sure you've spent time around someone who complains all the time. I bet you can't wait to get away from that person when it's someone else.) Unfortunately, your mind is most likely in the habit of worrying about what might go wrong, including everything that ever has for you before. This may be due both to Nature and to Nurture—it's a rare family situation that teaches children only to be aware of risk for practical reasons, but otherwise steeps them in confidence and zest for challenge. Usually there's a lot of "you can't" and "don't you dare" and "what if" mixed in in frenzied tones. It might all be protective and well meaning, but sometimes it's also other things like power plays and unconscious panic. As far as Nature, the mind is designed in part to protect us from risk, and in addition to running the the stressful thinking patterns we learned from others, it tends toward obsession over possible risk as a survival mechanism. If you want to counter these powerful formative and ingrained forces, expect it to take some doing. And here's the kicker: The work you do, if you really want to succeed, can't all be done in and with the mind. Uh oh! Wait, doesn't that make this all of a sudden a lot more complicated? Yes, my friend, it sure does. And that's why it ends up being difficult!
Focusing on progress rather than fueling your every moment on fearful thinking requires work that goes to the very nature of being alive, to all your notions about how safe you are, and what human nature is all about. These reside not only in your conscious mind, where it becomes apparent what your basic beliefs are if you just choose to start becoming more aware of them, but also in the subconscious parts of your mind, where your body and spirit are much more involved. You may be starting to wonder what the use is of my opening up these complexities, since rarely does anyone teach us what it's like to deal in the coin of these realms of us. Because of the personal journey I've been on, I know from experience that a deep well of experience and belief that you're probably unacquainted with is running your life far more than you would believe if I tried to tell you at this moment.
It might sound like I'm trying to scare you or manipulate you, but I'm not. I want you to understand that, from what I've found, a better quality of life, less stress and more confidence, result from clearing out chaff that is weighing you down in ways you can't even see. While there are many wonderful ideas, systems, and people out there in the world doing good work, nothing I have found has ever done for me what EFT/Tapping does in facilitating this clearing out. Because it's a self-help tool, you are in the driver's seat as far as how you use it and on what. You also often become aware of profound understanding and shifts in how you think and feel as you use it. This process is empowering in ways I can't describe. You really have to experience it in order to fully understand what I'm saying. Once you start to get on a roll with this clearing out process, it's amazing how much easier it becomes to think in more constructive ways so that you can enjoy a more happy, vibrant life. I've said it before, but I'll say it again—there's little else I can recommend that would be more helpful to creating more of what you want than learning the basics and making a practice of using EFT. As you do, you will encounter and clear out impediments that will help you greatly. I'm betting that some of what you find there will also surprise you as it did me, and that the process of removing its charge will thrill you as well.
When you can spend more time using your mind in positive ways, you make fewer decisions out of fear and more out of inspiration, and the healthy desire to create better conditions for yourself and others. As long as you're trying to accomplish everything with your mind, you're missing out on the power that can be yours when you get other important parts of you on board. As you use Tapping, you will also tend to naturally build compassion for others that will make you even more effective in understanding and communicating with them. So much can be gained from this practice, so don't put it off! Learn it, love it, and live it!
It's Not You, It's Me
“Love yourself first and everything else falls into line. You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world.”
In last week’s blog, we looked at how disappointments large and small, sustained over time, can tempt us to take on limiting and destructive beliefs about ourselves and the world. This week I want to focus on a related tendency I’ve observed, equally as problematic and possibly even more pervasive. This is the tendency that many of us have to feel disappointment or frustration, and then turn it quickly and harshly back against ourselves as anger.
In her excellent book Tapping into Wealth, Margaret Lynch includes some great work on how to notice what you’ve decided certain experiences mean about you, who you are and what is possible for you. Uncovering the beliefs about yourself that came about in response to difficult events can be a real eye-opener, because while the beliefs may seem quite familiar when you think about it, you may have no idea where they came from or why they’re there. They probably just seem true, the way things are. Working with these beliefs and reshaping them is a revolutionary experience that can change the entire tenor of your life. However, it’s just as important to look forward and find ways of not forming brand-new limiting beliefs every passing day, and this can be even more tricky. You have to notice how it happens to stop doing it.
I recently had an experience through which I realized very clearly how vicious my self-talk can become when I’m upset or disappointed about something. It wasn’t even triggered by anything all that important, just something that was causing me some garden-variety stress and annoyance that I was tapping about, and I suddenly had a vivid memory of being a young child that seemed connected to the problem at hand. I was probably under ten years old in the memory, and I was so angry and frustrated at myself because there was a skill I was trying to learn that I just could not do correctly yet. All the feelings of frustration, and a seemingly disproportionate sense of rage, as well as feelings of being trapped, welled up. (I never cease to be amazed that such a volume of emotion can be stored and flare with a vengeance when an old memory is triggered, even one you haven’t thought of in years, and that now seems unimportant from an intellectual standpoint!) In this memory, I was just so angry at myself, and I felt that anger in the present as a physical burning sensation all throughout my torso. I remember telling myself that I couldn’t do anything right, and that I’d never learn the new skill because I was just hopeless.
I’m not sure where I got all this, because my parents really tried to encourage us to be positive, persistent, and to put in the work when we were trying to learn something. Who knows? We all get angry and frustrated, and maybe I was just tired and burned out that day. Whatever the reason for the pattern, I recognized this as something I do from time to time internally to this day, and I barely even notice it happening. I generally don’t stop to think about it, and I’ve never seen it so clearly as I did in this memory. I kept tapping on the anger, frustration, and the feeling of being trapped until it all subsided. I was left with a resolve to watch for this habit of thought in the future and work to arrest negative self-talk when I get frustrated by something. I also felt much less concerned with the thing that was contributing to my original stress and annoyance in the present day.
It’s obvious to me in retrospect that when we’re learning new skills, we always have to endure a period of rank incompetence, which really isn’t any fun, but is completely normal. No one is born with skills at, really, anything. Learning is always a process; just because we can’t do something on the first try, that doesn’t mean we’re not able to learn it at all, or that we’re stupid, or useless, or anything else dire. But in the moment, when emotion overtakes us, we’re not thinking logically. We’re far more likely to overreact and decide that our current difficulties “mean” something about us that they don’t actually mean at all. Boy, did I ever do that in that childhood memory! If we can gain clarity about some of the formative experiences that set a negative pattern for us, that creates a path toward undoing them by targeting those experiences with tapping, or NLP, or hypnosis, or some other technique that involves both the memories and a physical element. Techniques that involve the body have proven to be the most successful in creating positive emotional change that sticks.
Next time you find that you’re ranting at yourself when you’re angry or frustrated, ask yourself what this feeling of self-recrimination reminds you of, and think back to the earliest time you can remember feeling something like this. You might be surprised at the answer you get from the old memory banks, and the outdated anger at yourself you might still be holding onto. If you haven’t learned how to tap, hop to it! It’s easy, and I know I’m grateful for it every day that I use it to ease my stresses, whether old or new. When you diminish the power of old emotions, it can be astonishing how your current emotions will calm as well. And keeping your current emotions from spiraling too far out of control diminishes the likelihood that you will reinforce habits of reflexive anger at yourself that have no earthly use in the creation of a happy life.
The Way Toward Heath
“I believe that the greatest gift you can give your family and the world is a healthy you.”
In the pursuit of a life that feels safe and secure, health is an extremely important topic. Few things can be such a distraction from a life lived on our own terms as physical pain or disease, or emotional or mental pain and dysfunction. Tending to our health is not as simple as building walls around our property or choosing our friends wisely (though these things may have their complexities). I would have to say that there is more misinformation and confusion around what sustains health than in virtually any other area of inquiry I can think of. Most of us are disheartened by the sheer volume of contradictions we encounter as we do our best to take care of ourselves and our families, and the fear-mongering rhetoric designed to sell us things pertaining to our health. There is more information available than ever before in history, but no clear consensus on what works, and we are in danger of becoming overwhelmed and giving up entirely on having the experience of balance and vitality we’re after.
Many of us did experience vibrant health as children. If so, we have a memory of what that felt like, at least. We know what the best-case scenario is, and we can try to recreate and support it with our best efforts. Those of us who didn’t may feel that the quest to gain it has about as much chance of success as a search for a legendary pirate’s treasure chest. How can you find something you’re not even sure is really possible? More on this later. But chances are, if you’re out of your teens, that you may have encountered some sort of health challenge, whether that’s an old injury that just never healed quite right or a chronic issue that you haven’t been fully able to resolve.
Once we’ve had this experience of an unwanted problem that interrupts our physical, mental, or emotional functioning, fear of what the future may hold often creeps in. After all, if this could blindside us, what else is in store in this life? If the body can betray us in this way, how can we ever trust it again? Of course, we may have been taught to have an adversarial relationship with our bodies before there was ever injury or meaningful illness in our lives. We learn early from our families and communities about what our bodies do, what they mean, what we can expect from them. If we see people around us suffering and feeling disempowered about maintaining and renewing health, then we come to believe that the body is fragile, and that our health is already eroding with each birthday. We hear messages about how as we get older, aches, pains, and illness are inevitable. Aging starts to sound like a bad deal for us, something to dread. Does this sound to you like a helpful mindset for living in successful partnership with your body, mind, and emotions?
If you notice that you have negative beliefs about your ability to enjoy health, working to be healthy, or taking appropriate care of your mind, body, emotions, and spirit, what can you do about that? As they say in Alcoholics Anonymous, admitting you have a problem is the first step. Once you’re aware that there are conditions in place in yourself that you don’t prefer, congratulations! You are now in a position to do something about it. While these beliefs remain unconscious and unexamined, your life is likely to proceed in much the same familiar direction. Becoming aware of disempowering beliefs can be painful and frightening, as this tends to stir up uncomfortable memories and the emotions that go with them. This is where it might be a good idea to get help from someone more experienced, whether that’s a psychologist, a spiritual counselor, a coach, or a book about someone else who went through something similar and can give helpful guidance. There is enough evidence now about the very real effect that our thoughts, beliefs and emotional states have on our long-term health that we should all be taking these into account and finding new ways to optimize them if we’re serious about supporting lifelong health.
Vast numbers of books have been written, and will continue to be, about the mechanics of what you MUST do to create and maintain health. I am not going to enter the fray here by trying to give you some seven-step process to perpetual perfection. As someone with some experience in dealing with chronic physical pain from different sources over the course of years, I feel that the most important thing I can add to the collective pool of knowledge is that we are each unique. There is no one-size-fits-all solution. I give you permission now to stop looking for it. Now, before you wail in despair that managing your own health without a formal education in medicine is too large a project for you to be taking on, let me ask you, how does it feel to be clueless about how to maintain your health? What if you could, little by little over time, learn what your body needs until you felt your energy, harmony, and confidence beginning to overflow?
The truth is, of course, that you can. This doesn’t happen overnight, but if you decide that it’s what you want, and start thinking in this way, you will start compiling information that will help you in your quest. You’ll start to notice that you feel better when you eat certain foods, sleep for a certain amount of hours starting and ending at certain times, do certain kinds of physical activity. You’ll notice that you have more energy after spending time with certain people and less after spending time with others; some activities are more energizing, others more draining. What most of us feel best with is the creation of balance, such that you intersperse these so that you never end a day feeling too drained, and you always add in some things that energize and uplift you to keep you going. If you’re going to eat things you know aren’t good for you, at least you learn to balance that with making sure you get some high-quality nutrition into your body every day. It’s the noticing and the intention to support your own health that will begin to swing your trajectory in a wide arc, over time, into an entirely new direction. Those two things have more power than you might believe. They don’t seem like the solution to anything when you’re desperate and in pain, but they are the long-term solution to finding what you need in order to thrive. Most of us do our best to ignore pain signals from our bodies, minds, and emotions in favor of remaining functional, because this is what we’re taught to do. We think there’s no point in dwelling on the negative or opening up to the experience of what the pain has to tell us because we haven’t considered that there might be wisdom there. If you have a helpful technique to use, often there is, and it’s not necessarily hard to find (ahem…Tapping…or meditation or journaling or any number of others). As you have some success in observing, implementing small changes, and feeling positive results, it will be easier to keep activating that intent to continue learning and implementing your way to vigorous health.
If you’ve never had the experience of health that you want, or it’s been a long time since you have, and you’re feeling disappointed and pessimistic, you will need to work on your ability to trust—trust that the world is large enough to contain the ideas and guidance you want, trust that you are capable of learning and growing, and trust your body to communicate to you when you are doing something right and when you may be contributing negatively to the issue at hand. Read stories or watch movies about others who have triumphed in any situation for inspiration. Allow yourself to relax for at least a few minutes a day and imagine how good it will feel to, well, feel good; really allow yourself to enjoy the experience of imagining this. Enlist the support of others in reminding you of problems you’ve solved in the past, and all the fine qualities you have that can help you in moving forward this time. Make sure you’re bringing some humor into your life by listening to one of the many brilliant comedians working today, spending time with someone who makes you laugh, or doing anything that tickles your funny bone. Humor is essential to getting through hard times, and has profound healing powers of its own.
If you want to speed up you progress, then, as with anything, it’s a great idea to go do some research on what people who are considered to be successful in this arena have to offer. Read stories about others who have had similar challenges to yours, or who are just passionate about health and sharing what they’ve learned. Search for experts in relevant medical fields. Find local health practitioners, including natural health experts like nutritionists and acupuncturists, who are highly rated online and seek their expertise. Just remember that you are not everyone else. What has worked for many others may not work for you, and vice versa. If you’re really after health security, you’ll need to commit to firing up a lifelong curiosity about how to support your health as you continue to balance all the other areas of your life.
I wish I could say that I have all the answers and I can make it easy for you from this day forward to maintain glowing good health throughout your life. I believe that the truth is that you are the only one who can chart the appropriate path to this goal, but there is support available for you every step of the way. No one else could do this for you even if they wanted to, because the responsibility for the choices you make every day will always rest with you. I think you’ll find that over time, as you grow to trust in your ability to care for yourself successfully, you’ll enjoy the ability to make your own choices and strike your own balance as a privilege. The process will cease to be so overwhelming and become more satisfying, and you will become a source of information and guidance for others. With no disrespect to the wisdom inherent in the Star Trek franchise, I say that I think that in today’s world the healthy functioning of the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual unit is really still the final frontier, practically speaking. Most of us aren’t ready to move beyond this challenge into the realm of space—currently an inspiring, fantastical, glorious avoidance of the fact that we’re not even able to get our basic selves together! We still have so much to learn about doing a decent job of being healthy humans on this planet. This is a challenge that’s worthy of us too. By all means, let’s keep dreaming big, but let’s also do the work to buoy ourselves up long enough to get to our biggest goals by attending to the unglamorous bits too. May you have the most radiant health this week, this month, this life! Feel free to comment below on anything you find to be a particularly helpful part of your own health regimen for the benefit of others.