So Much Happier Blog
The Emotional Pressure Cooker
“When we long for life without difficulties, remind us that oaks grow strong in contrary winds and diamonds are made under pressure.”
Last week I mentioned that most of us are trained through the way we’re socialized to minimize any emotions we feel that might be uncomfortable—for anyone, not just for us. The result is that we ourselves generally don’t know how we really feel and why, we don’t learn from our emotions, and we feel powerless to combat the rising tension that accumulates as we age over the persistent unresolved emotional gunk that we’ve swept under the rug.
When someone starts Tapping, they’re often surprised at the intensity of something they thought was relatively minor as we open it up and work through it. It’s well known by practitioners that the intensity of a targeted issue may seem to rise rather than abate in the first few rounds, but this is actually a result of the client tuning into what they’ve been studiously ignoring in the absence of productive tools and solutions. When further rounds are completed, and the heart of the issue is uncovered and addressed, the intensity will start to fall as expected. Then, when it dawns on the client how much relief s/he has experienced, s/he may feel a wave of gratitude, and hope that more relief is just around the corner. I feel this myself all the time when I Tap! It’s so encouraging to know that there are simple tools that can change everything about how you feel, and that every time you use them you’ll make some sort of progress.
It’s true that tuning into how we really feel may cause some momentary discomfort, but when we do this while Tapping, we’re able to vent some of the pressure that has built up and usually feel much better in the space of a few minutes to an hour. In addition, we are often able to gain some clarity about what we were afraid to look at. The meaning of the emotions we were avoiding starts to bubble up, and we see that we are being called to make new choices, either internally in the ways we think and judge, or externally by bringing new actions to our life’s circumstances. Emotions aren’t random. They arise for specific reasons, and unwinding their tangles draws us naturally down a path of healing and progress toward maturity and wisdom.
What if, instead of denigrating and denying how you feel, you could admit, befriend, and even celebrate your emotions without getting overwhelmed by or lost in them? What if doing so tapped you into your inherent brilliance and problem-solving capabilities? Wouldn’t that be a more peace-filled, fulfilling existence? Well, I’m here to tell you that all this is waiting for you when you get to Tapping. And good news—you can start anytime!
There’s a lot of shame drilled into us when we’re young about crying and about wanting love and attention that it’s inconvenient or difficult for the adults around us to give. Parenting is a tough, relentless job, and shaming is often a very effective tactic in shutting down an unruly child; it’s also a tactic that has been passed down through countless generations and seems to have proven its salt. However, a lifetime of suppressing powerful emotions, needs, and desires builds up internal pressure that contributes to all kinds of problems that only worsen the longer we allow the pressure to build. Shaming ourselves as adults, continuing the learned pattern, is a recipe for disaster for our health and happiness. Instead, we can learn to listen to what’s going on for us internally, and through self-compassion, gain clarity and strength, working productively with our emotions.
Should I Help?
“Condemn none: if you can stretch out a helping hand, do so. If you cannot, fold your hands, bless your brothers, and let them go their own way.”
All of us are good at some things and less good at others. In the areas where you’re highly competent, it can be tempting to attempt to “help” and guide others, basically just because you can; if you’re empathetic, and you’re aware of the pain that’s involved in someone else’s struggle, it can also seem like you have an obligation to help. The call toward alleviating suffering where you see it may be part of your spiritual outlook, or you may enjoy taking the opportunity to save others time and shorten their labors with your expertise. This desire generally comes from a kind-hearted place, and it spurs many of us to do a lot of good in the course of daily life. But is it ever inappropriate to help?
I think the answer to this comes down to respecting the concept of free will. “Help” is actually helpful only when it is offered and accepted freely, generously, and without coercion. The exception to the rule might be if someone is in a state of emergency and you either know the person well enough to recognize a need that they are not capable of handling, or you can clearly see that they are in legitimate danger of serious injury. Children too young to be aware of the consequences of their actions would also be an exception. Otherwise, difficult as it may be to see others struggle, it’s generally not your job to override someone else’s choices and timing. Once you’ve made yourself available for substantive assistance, it may be necessary to step back and allow them to learn through experience if that’s what they choose. Some lessons only stick if they’re learned this way anyway, frustrating as that might be to the observer!
Most spiritual traditions include the concept of acceptance—not as in, you must accept a condition you don’t like and never seek solutions, but as in, it’s important to be able to find a place of calm and acceptance within yourself. This might be through meditation, prayer, deep breathing, a physical practice like yoga, journaling, or whatever works for you. If you formulate a plan and take action without having done so first, you risk making decisions from a reactive, fearful place, which is not the best state from which to deliver your best and brightest offerings. If a life-and-death decision doesn't need to be made, and you don’t feel able to accept rejection of your help by the other person, then you might want to save the offer until you do. I also believe that there are times when it’s not appropriate to offer help because you are not capable of doing a good job with the task at that moment. If you are overwhelmed, very tired, or emotionally overwrought yourself, it’s probably best to attend to your own needs before trying to assist someone else. Another consideration is whether this particular person or situation seems like a good match for your skills and your passion. There is someone out there who would love to help in any given kind of situation, and leave the endeavor feeling wonderful and energized in some way. In other situations that same person would feel overwhelmed, frightened, and find themselves shutting down, becoming a burden themselves. It’s a good idea to get to know your strengths, and to consider whether this situation is one in which you can be helpful, or whether it requires skills and qualities you don’t possess. If someone needs a surgeon, and you’ve never had a day of medical training in your life, if you want to help, you need to spend your time in handling basic first aid and getting them to that surgeon—not trying to handle the situation yourself. Most people appreciate an offer of help when it comes from a calm desire to do them a good turn (even if there would be payment of some sort involved) rather than a need to have the offer accepted. When you bring a sense of distress and need into your offer, the person on the receiving end may feel that you’re trying to manipulate them, and run in the other direction! Then an opportunity that might have been rewarding for both parties is lost, at least temporarily.
On the other hand, if someone knows that you’re on the sidelines willing and waiting to help whenever they need it, that can be tremendously reassuring. When you don’t overstep or force yourself into their process, you become someone who will be very easy to turn to when the person is ready to accept help. In the meantime, you can just listen and celebrate the person’s wins, and still be a supportive part of getting them to the finish line. This can be quite challenging, and we may all become overzealous at times because of our own internal baggage; if you find that you have gone overboard, an apology and affirmation that you have faith in the other person goes a long way. Afterward it might be useful to take a look at why it was hard for you to remain calm in that situation, and do some work on that through Tapping or some other method you find helpful, to increase your ability to recognize that situation if it resurfaces and choose another way.
Helping others can be one of the most fulfilling aspects of living. It can be one of the best expressions of love for others, and it often brings joy and upliftment where there was struggle. Being able to be an effective part of this wonderful exchange is worth some occasional work and self-reflection. Building your skills around balanced helping will bring you the opportunity for more frequent fulfillment of this kind, and the opportunity to co-create better results with others. Next time you’re looking to help, see if you can do so from a calm, centered place and notice what happens when you do.
Getting Off That Crazy Wheel
“Enlightenment must come little by little - otherwise it would overwhelm.”
Most people I encounter these days feel as if they're always trying to do too much, that the world moves too fast, that they're always on the edge of falling behind and going under. We're a chronically overwhelmed culture. Now, get ready for a radical statement—part of the reason for this is that we ARE trying to do too much! When the sum total of everything you could be doing in any given moment is infinite, as it is in this age of "convenience," including 24/7 access to nearly all information ever collected, we suddenly need amazing focus and time management skills. And guess what? No one ever formally taught us any of these unless we grew up in a monastery, or with a parent with insanely effective natural organizational skills, in which case maybe we were lucky enough to have had mentors in these areas. Of course that's an exaggeration; you may have learned some excellent tidbits along these lines from any number of sources throughout your life, but it's a rare person who has been able to cobble together an effective set of strategies from these random references. The rest of us have to deal with the outrageous fortune that dumped an endless glut of opportunity in our laps, but with no way to turn off the fire hose when it all gets to be too much.
Since feeling chronically overwhelmed and ineffective doesn't feel like living a fulfilling life, we must find ways to do better. If you want to take back your life, it's time to get friendly with the concept of focus. There are two aspects I want to mention here: Inward focus and outward focus. The inward version is the one we practice in meditation when we observe our breathe or keep returning to a mantra—it's the ability to place our mind's awareness on, and continually bring it back to, a subject or a feeling of our choosing. Building this internal skill allows us to hone our capacity to spend time living in the calmest, best parts of ourselves, and therefore to have access to an ability to make the best possible choices, with the greatest possible sense of peace, in each moment. This is called sanity! Getting better at holding onto yours grants you a kind of personal power that's hard to describe, but imagine how great it would be to be able to choose your internal state more often than you react, automatically and without choice, to whatever assails you from your mental and emotional worlds.
The outward aspect of focus is the ability to deflect, in real time, distractions that bombard us from the outside world. Being able to do this efficiently all day long takes clarity (about your values and your purpose), intent, and relentless determination. While willpower is involved, a lot less of it is required when you've taken the time to write down your goals and priorities, and you remind yourself of them often so that in a moment of stress you can remember WHY a choice is right or wrong for you. Being clear about why you're choosing what you're choosing serves to inspire and galvanize you when you start to get confused. However, this constant decision making can still be exhausting when you have to do it all day! It's important to simplify where you can and find times each week when you can be restfully free of constant sifting and value judgments. This ability may also be hard to imagine, but I bet you've come across someone who seems able to stay functional even in the face of a whole lot of chaos, showing you that it is possible. If you have, think of that person as a model in this regard.
We also need those pesky time management skills mentioned above if we're going to succeed in getting things done when we choose to. These may include accurately estimating how long tasks will take, scheduling your time but not overscheduling yourself to the point where you burn out, transitioning between tasks in ways that assist you in refocusing, balancing your physical needs throughout the day so you don't crash, planning anew when things change so you can stay productive, managing your emotions when things aren't going your way, and others. Some of these you might already be good at, and some less so. When you think through the kinds of things that tend to stop you when you're working toward something you want, you'll probably be able to come up with your most likely challenges. Like all acquired skills, these take time to build, and you are a complex and ever-changing thing, so this work is never done. Choose just one or two of your personal challenges and start practicing improving your skills around them.
As you work, be patient with yourself. It's always annoying to feel like a beginner at something, but as I remind myself often, we've all been through the learning process many times. What feels painful and unlikely inevitably turns into something you can easily do on autopilot with practice. Over time, our capacities increase, and we can achieve heights that seemed vertigo inducing from former vantage points.
Whatever skills you think need your attention, there are probably lots of emotions, as well as habitual thoughts and negative self-talk, that come into play when they are challenged. This is where Tapping is absolutely brilliant in helping you to move through what's holding you back and come out the other side relieved—and often with new and revolutionary insights about why this thing has been hard for you and how that can change for you now. Humans are hard-wired to resist too much novelty because we have come to associate it with danger. You will always be working against the tendency toward caution because self-preservation is one of our most powerful drives. Dealing with the resistance that comes up when you attempt to make a change is a constant, never-ending process, so you might as well master techniques that can help you to do this quickly and with a sense of enjoyment and adventure. When you become comfortable with releasing unnecessary fear and immobility, the feeling of empowerment that results is amazing. I and my clients find this to be one of the best things about EFT/Tapping. Knowing that you can reduce your fear, overwhelm, and feelings of being stuck whenever you need to is truly something to be grateful for.
If you continue to work on your skills and your emotional management, you will eventually make progress. It may not be as rapid as you want, and it make take trials, errors, and seeming failures, but really, what's your alternative? We are evolutionary beings. We like to grow and test boundaries, even when doing so is scary. And human progress relies on our following this impulse. Failing to focus means that you will spend all your energy on recovery, and ultimately, that's not a lot of fun. This week, think about the ways in which you can work inward and outward focus, as well as better time management strategies, to create more available energy to feed into your goals and passions.
Stopping the Insanity
“For fast-acting relief try slowing down.”
In recent weeks, we've been touring the kinds of pressure we're all under in living a modern-day life, and there are many! Any time period in history has its challenges, to be sure, and living in these times is far from all bad; we can now benefit from many innovations that dial down the difficulties of just surviving in a way that previous generations could not; in fact, the knowledge that the Internet has made available on virtually all subjects has been a massive game changer that allows us to solve many problems much more quickly and thoroughly. It also allows nearly instant communication around the globe at low cost. This has fostered greater cultural understanding and cooperation than has ever been possible before. But as previously discussed, this new day has its own particular downsides. The pace at which we now live is causing a panoply of problems born of the stress of being pulled in so many directions at once.
So what do we do about this? Most of us know very well that we're stressed out way too much of the time—it feels like there's never enough time. And time is one of the only things we still can't manufacture. It seems like an impasse, a problem that inherently can't be solved.
It's easy to become frantic in trying to keep up with everything and then just lock into autopilot and repeat. This right here, friends, is the status we most need to disrupt. There are solutions that will work for you, but you'll need to proactively stop and take some of that precious time of yours to consider what they might be. Your presence, your intent, your actions, remain incredibly powerful. If you feel hopeless and frantic, it's because you've forgotten about them and become mired in other people's worlds.
The single most useful thing you can do is consider who you are, with all your strengths and weaknesses, and what you truly want at the deepest levels. This can sound like a radical proposal (doesn't this make you selfish, and really, how will it help anyway?) However, it's only by asking these questions that you find where you can be most effective. We all can't be good at everything, and the things we're not good at, or just flat out don't like, drain us of energy and motivation. Doing things we like and are good at, conversely, inspires and energizes us. We're more productive, we're happier and more pleasant to be around, and we can better adapt to challenge when we're not exhausted and dispirited. This is pretty common sense, but it can also seem too simple.
Then, you must take action. How can you support your long-term passions and goals on a day-to-day basis? Marking out time on your calendar for specific activities is also necessary if you're serious about making progress, because if you don't prioritize, you won't end up with any time for your high-importance activities. Further in this direction, decide to start noticing when you're on autopilot and remind yourself that small decisions matter. It may not always be clear what steps will help you to further your goals while still satisfying the important responsibilities you need to maintain, but you have to play if you want to win! When you're learning to tip the balance of your life toward conditions that support you, you will have to learn by doing, so just try something. Others may have helpful ideas for you, but only you know for sure what works for you. Over time, you get better at making good decisions as long as you're staying focused on your goals.
If clarity is your first need, your second is flexibility. It's hard to shake off daily disappointments, annoyances, and unfairness, but if you don't find a way, the changes you want to make will be over before they start. The experiences that life brings us, both good and bad, are extremely vivid, and letting go of the past is both a huge challenge and a necessity for maintaining a happy focus on goals. While there is a lot of information out there on how people stay calm and present in every moment, most of us are not actively taught these skills.
There are many approaches you can take to learning skills in this area. I suggest learning some sort of meditation technique (Tapping counts!), moving your body to stay healthy and generate endorphins, and getting adequate sleep and the best nutrition you can for your personal needs. Doing all of this together will build your ability to be flexible in the face of daily challenges. That may sound like a very tall order if you're currently living each day as a mad dash, but by using your priorities as a guide and making more of your decisions consciously, you can find ways to slowly whittle down the distractions bit by bit. You can reduce the pace at which irrelevant information and demands bombard you and guilt you into acting against your own knowledge about what would be best for you.
Most of us are hampered in our health and happiness by frequent overwhelm. We must take back our decision-making process from the chaos. We all know what it's like to wish for magical, total solutions, but life so rarely hands us those! Counting on one just showing up is a lovely fantasy, but not a good strategy for living the life we desire. With this in mind, what can you do today to make a new, more supportive decision about your tomorrow?
When You See It, Believe It
“The superior man is modest in his speech, but exceeds in his actions.”
The world can get pretty crazy, pretty overwhelming, and it can be very hard to know who to trust when it seems like there's an endless parade of people and businesses constantly—and loudly—vying for your attention. The stress of the constant stream of small decisions required to navigate through your day can be exhausting. Here's a simple trick we all probably know, but it bears repeating as an aid in making good decisions: Rely on what people do, not on what they say.
In the context of private relationships, this means that, though we all think and talk about many courses of action (some with great enthusiasm), we won't end up following all of these to successful completion. We all have to make value judgments in order to land on decisions about what to do with our limited time, and this happens in an ever-changing medium of context. While talk will tell you what people would like to do and experience, only their actions will reveal what they are willing to work and sacrifice for.
Some people's value judgments will be easy to understand. Others' will seem erratic and inscrutable to you. Still others' will be reprehensible in your eyes. It simplifies life and reduces stress to align yourself primarily with those whose actions you can mostly understand and approve of ("mostly" because let's be honest—no one is perfect, and everyone's viewpoint is slightly different based on the cauldron of experience, good, bad, and ugly, that has shaped them). While we can't expect faultless reliability or other flavors of perfection from anyone, we can expect that interactions with some people will feel good to us because they're fun to be around, and a good match for some of our most important values. Others won't. This matters. But if you're not also watching their long-term actions and allowing those to educate you about this person, you'll miss all the best indicators of where they're actually going.
Predicating your life on someone's potential rather than on who they actually are in this moment will open you up to a world of hurt and disappointment. I believe that people have boundless potential, but a happy life requires that you learn to choose relationships with people on a similar enough wavelength that you can love and enjoy them as they are now. By all means, challenge yourself to appreciate and love people who are outside your current comfort zone, but don't expect to live peacefully if you've allowed a whole bunch of people whose actions betray wildly incompatible values into your inner circle.
In a business context, you're looking for something similar—how does the business treat its customers? How do you feel when you interact with it, respected or played? Are its sales pitches showing you value that might help you and inviting you to participate, or seeking to manipulate you and your emotions through pressure and control tactics? How the business and its representatives behave is more important than the words, which may turn out to be acutely self-serving, just as any single person's may be.
As you move through your life, I hope you'll let the actions of others inform your actions, and that you'll find it a lot easier to make healthy decisions for yourself this way. It can cut down on the confusion in making all the judgment calls that make up a day in a modern life. Anything that provides clarity and greater ease so that we can all be less stressed and have more time to live out our purpose is definitely what I'm after! Feel free to comment below on how observing others' actions has helped you, or would have had you managed to do it!
Chasing Your Tail?
“To acquire knowledge, one must study; but to acquire wisdom, one must observe.”
Do you ever find yourself asking, “Why does this keep happening to me?” If so, you’re in good company! You may have encountered this kind of confusion many times. We all get stuck sometimes in patterns that aren’t helpful, but also aren’t easy to solve. You may have no idea what’s going on, or you may know exactly what the problem is and feel powerless to change your outcome. Assuming that you want to start getting better results when this is your complaint, read on. We’ll look at how to break out of a persistent pattern and move toward happier developments.
When you feel stuck, you’re probably also feeling frustration, anger, sadness, pessimism or hopelessness. Since good ideas don’t usually pop up in the midst of strong negative emotions, it’s best to work on changing your emotional state before working on your issue. You might do this by venting how you feel in any number of ways (writing it all down, talking with a friend who won’t mind hearing your tale of woe, working out to let off steam, etc.), or by just getting your mind off the subject for a while. If you’re tired, hungry, or thirsty, you may need to address those physical needs too. At a time when you can feel fresh physically, mentally, and emotionally, you’re more likely to be able to take a good look at what has happened or is happening with curiosity and openness to new insights and ideas.
When you’re ready, here are the steps I recommend for moving yourself forward.
1. Start with your mind, as it helps to figure out what your level of clarity is before troubleshooting. Think through your pattern and how it tends to show up in your life. How have the circumstances played out over time? Have recent experiences been very similar to those further in the past, or are they different lately? Have you made any progress at all on the issue? Can you see any way at all in which you may be contributing to the problem? Treat this like a full-on investigation—feel free to enlist the help of a supportive friend and really get your Sherlock on. Sometimes telling someone else about all the times something similar has occurred gives you a chance to have your experience validated as unusual, which can help you feel like it’s not just all in your head. Sometimes it’s just helpful to have someone there to help as you think about your problem, and bring a different perspective to illuminate aspects you might have missed.
This is a good time to brainstorm, meaning to toss around any wild idea that comes to mind about what’s happening and why, and then try it on to see whether it seems to have any merit. Trying to exaggerate, get creative, and make things outrageous to the point of silliness (without judging yourself) brings in an element of fun, which helps you to remember this is not the only thing in your life, and it may be possible to change things for the better.
2. Hopefully, you now have some clarity about what you know. If this is a case where you know exactly what the problem is and have some ideas about how change it, but you feel a lack of confidence or an unwillingness to try your best options, skip to #3. On the other hand, if you still feel thoroughly confused, it’s now time to find an expert. You can run an online search for information about your problem and see who has experience with this, and who’s offering information about it. You can visit a library or bookstore and see what information is available there. You could find a support group for people with a similar problem, and see if anyone there has valuable insight for you. You could talk to a coach or psychologist or religious counselor, depending on the nature of your issue, and see whether that helps you to gain clarity about your options. Once you have a better idea of how others have dealt with your issue, you should have some ideas about possible steps to take.
3. If the thought of taking any of the steps that would be part of your best ideas makes you want to have a meltdown, you need to go back to physical needs (do you need hydration or nutrition, sleep, exercise, stretching, or other attention to your physical body?) You don’t have to be in perfect condition to move forward, but if any of those physical needs is very loud, you’ll do better to address it first so you’re not distracted. Once those are taken care of, it’s time to look at your emotional state.
How you feel is a powerful indicator of other factors that might hold you back if not given some air time. You can want to make progress all you want with your mind, but if some part of you is afraid to because of previous experiences or outsized worries, you’re going to have a hard time getting anywhere. We’re so often taught by well-meaning mentors that we must ignore and power through fears and other emotions, but I find that emotions are often there for good reason. They may hold important information that can help us understand how to proceed in the most efficient way for our unique needs.
This is where the use of EFT can really save the day. If emotions come up when you consider taking some reasonable step toward a solution, Tapping can help you to get clear on why you feel the way you do; it can then help you to release the fear or other emotion that is keeping you feeling stuck. I’m not suggesting that this is a one-time endeavor, because change is often difficult, demanding, and scary. Emotional management is a crucial component in maintaining motivation and effective action at all times. A persistent fear, for instance, might be difficult or impossible to completely remove from your experience, but having a tool like EFT makes it much easier to keep coming back to a calm, more resourceful state; with it, you can take useful messages from your emotions and settle them with reassurance rather than ignoring or trying to dominate them out of existence.
4. Take action on some of those good ideas you came up with in other steps. There’s no substitute for experience and the feedback it results in. Keep reminding yourself that any change requires practice; your new action may not be a comfortable tool to use at will until you’ve experimented with it numerous times. You will probably make mistakes, or find some of the shortcomings of your new policy, and you will need to start back at #1 with anything that doesn’t work for reasons you can’t quite make out.
Then, rinse and repeat. Your life is unique, and solutions that are right for you may not be such that you can copy them directly from others. It may take a lot of experimentation and refinement to find what works best for you. That’s normal and ok. Only you can decide how to best be yourself! You get to choose how to express who you want to be in every moment, and that’s a privilege. It’s one of the exciting things about being alive. The willingness to concentrate on and truly observe your own life and experience makes understanding and innovation possible. If you want a life that is more to your liking, getting there must involve focus and observation—bringing your desires into being requires that you first notice what is true for you and what you want. While not everything can be solved with the mind, it is our best tool for beginning the process of appropriate and fulfilling change. I challenge you to start paying attention to what you’re not enjoying in life, and activate the power of your curiosity.