Teaching Happiness

“Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life.”

— Omar Khayyam

Many of us struggle with creating happiness, motivation, and fulfillment, in large part because we weren't given the tools to successfully foster these things on a daily basis as part of our schooling.  It's never too late to learn, though, and that's what this blog and my work are all about.  It was refreshing, then, to read this week about how various governments are beginning to experiment with adding the development of important happiness-related skills to their school methodologies in order to help kids to be healthier mentally and emotionally, and perform better in school.  Predictably (I think) it works really well.  

Here's a link to the article I read, and I thought I'd just go ahead and pass it along this week.  I hope it serves as a reminder that increasing focus on learning things like giving ourselves credit for what we do well, feeling grateful, and empathizing with those around us has real and measurable positive results.  What can you do to model these results this week?

Is Now the Best Time for Change?

“Clever people master life; the wise illuminate it and create fresh difficulties. ”

— Emil Nolde

Last week we looked at some of the reasons why it can be difficult to create change in your life. We'll continue the same line of inquiry this week with some information about how our brains function and how we can best set ourselves up for success given their needs and limitations.  In his book Your Brain at Work, David Rock lays out the conclusions of a wide array of scientific studies on brain functioning. If you're someone who wants to be highly efficient and productive, you might want to read it yourself, but I'll let you in here on a few ideas it offers that are relevant to this discussion.  This is just a quick summary, so some of these concepts may not seem self-explanatory, but the evidence for them is there.

• Completing actions you know how to do on "autopilot" is easy for your body as it doesn't require the expenditure of much energy. Learning new things, on the other hand, is an energy-intensive activity that can quickly drain your brain's reserves
• Even processing new experiences when you're not trying to learn anything at all is taxing. Evolution has encouraged us to be wary of the new because anything unfamiliar might be a threat. Too much newness tends to ramp up our fight/flight/freeze response, which quickly exhausts resources and switches off our reasoning functions
• Dialing down internal distractions, otherwise known as "inhibition," is another demanding task that burns through resources quickly. Deliberately focusing on something to the exclusion of all else takes effort, so you can only do this effectively for a relatively short time before you'll need to take a break to refuel. Rock does not immediately specify, but food, sleep, deep breathing, and exercise all help us to recover from such efforts
• Switching focus back and forth  rapidly as we do when multi-tasking is also draining, and doing this decreases our efficiency such that studies show no net gain in efficiency.  Multi-tasking takes the same amount of time and energy as doing each task separately because of the efficiency we lose. It also decreases the quality of our work. The only exception to this is when one of the tasks is so ingrained as to be an "autopilot" task for you
• As much as we'd like to think that we can work at full attention all day, studies show that we only get a certain amount of highly effective thinking time per day.  This makes it essential to be smart about how we prioritize the most important tasks so they can be addressed during our most energized moments

I hope you're noticing the through-line that when we try to work against our physical needs, we make the likelihood of our success in creating new habits much harder than it has to be. I think there's a reason why so many people find that exercising or adding a daily practice to their lives works better first thing in the morning. Not only do scheduling surprises tend to get in the way less, but we tend to have the most physical/mental resources available to us before the day's onslaught of requests and requirements starts to bombard us and use them up.

How can you start to be more strategic about moving your most important and most demanding tasks to your highest-energy times of day? (Maybe these aren't typically morning for you—we're all different, and you should absolutely notice what works for you most consistently and leverage it for yourself as you continue to learn.)  How can you protect these times from random interruptions so that easier tasks only land outside of them?  Maybe that means turning off your phone during these periods of more intense work.  Maybe that means putting a Do Not Disturb sign on your door so that everyone in your house knows that this is private time.  Maybe you'll decide to get up a little earlier so that you can get started on your day when the world is quieter, or wait until after coffee and a healthy breakfast before attempting deep concentration.  I encourage you to start thinking about this and experiment with how these principles can help you move more quickly, and with less friction, toward your most exciting goals.  Life is busy, but with some intentional planning, we can often carve out more ways to be productive than it might seem if we just blunder through our days putting out fires.  And when you find a scheduling pattern that helps, celebrate it!  Small victories add up to bigger ones over time.

Can People Change?

“Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the furthest thing from it. Because cynics don’t learn anything. Because cynicism is a self-imposed blindness: a rejection of the world because we are afraid it will hurt us or disappoint us. Cynics always say ‘no.’ But saying ‘yes’ begins things. Saying ‘yes’ is how things grow.”

— Stephen Colbert

I don't know if you've noticed, but change is often frightening for humans, in part because we're wired for self-protection, and opening to change requires uncertainty; also, it's difficult to envision exactly who we will be on the other side of change, and that's  a threat to one's current life and personality—and can be interpreted as a threat to others in the immediate vicinity depending on their beliefs. I think it's out of these concerns that the "This is just who I am/how things are" excuse arises, and it's a goal killer. If you want to achieve anything on your bucket list, avoid giving yourself this "out" at all costs.

Now, I don't mean that you should feel bad about it if this is your first reaction to the idea of change. We all fall back on habitual defenses sometimes, and again, this is a survival mechanism that evolved for the sake of keeping the species alive. But if you hear this coming out of your mouth, just notice. In order to reach your aspirations, you'll need to address this attitude, and your reasons for digging in your heels in the face of the unknown. Fear can be incredibly potent, causing us to freeze even when doing so makes no logical sense, and even sometimes contradicting our deepest values. Yet it isn't totally in control overall. We retain conscious choice over the direction of our lives even when fear seems very big and loud.

When you feel stuck in your current position, fear is calling you to work through your objections because moving forward seems unsafe, and guess what's an amazing tool for helping you to gently calm your jitters about change? Tapping! But you knew that already! Through Tapping, we can much more easily allow the reasons for our fears (usually adverse experiences from the past) to raise their hands and be heard. When we allow these old truths to come to the fore, be expressed, and allowed to dissipate in intensity while we Tap, it's truly amazing how we can suddenly see things quite differently; stepping forward into position to grab new opportunities is not as big a deal as we thought it was just minutes before. Uncertainty feels more manageable, excitement for the new often surges, and we feel a renewed sense of possibility that allows enthusiasm to carry us forward. Once you're in this state, making plans that are both optimistic and reasonably balanced with appropriate self-protection is much easier. Your chances of success skyrocket, particularly when you're practiced enough in this process to repeat it whenever you find it necessary to get unstuck again. When you're your own one-person fear triage team, it's pretty hard to keep you down!

Nobody who has ever wowed the world with a game-changing invention, artistic vision, physical achievement, or other advance has just sat back down and allowed things to stay as they were instead of following their inspiration. Sometimes the road to success is long and strewn with frightening thoughts and symbols that need to be navigated under, over, or around. Nevertheless, growth is almost always possible. Make excuses now and then if they slip out, but then decide again when you've had a chance to think and take action to surface your fears. Fighting them takes a lot more energy than acknowledging, allowing, and transforming them before you swing into action. What have you been fearing and resisting? Maybe it's time to let yourself acknowledge the reasons why so you can address them start the process of forward motion. 

How about Some Good News?

“I am in the world feeling my way to light ‘amid the encircling gloom.’”

— Mahatma Gandhi

There are always so many voices trying to tell us that the world is going to hell in a handbasket.  Some people are addicted to external drama that can prevent them from noticing and dealing with their own back yards.  Business interests recognize that fear is a powerful motivator that can increase their profits when it's leveraged to make them seem absolutely necessary.  Some people just want to be seen as a savior, someone who has the answers so that others will follow and validate him/her.  Whatever the motivations behind them, dealing with all the messages we encounter daily that are filled with bad news can be a real bummer.  One of the ways you can regain some of your vitality and enthusiasm is by dialing down or tuning out the volume of those doom-and-gloom messages and finding opportunities to be aware of the ways in which life is good.

Life will always be a mix of dark and light, happy and sad.  It's smart to take prudent, practical steps to make ourselves safer and to think ahead about what will be needed in the future, but excessive worrying and stress destroys our happiness.  Eventually, it erodes our health too.  How about finding a few sources of news stories that make you feel good about your fellow humans and being alive in general?  Here's one, for instance, but there are many others.  There are also many people out there filling social media feeds with posts that will inspire and energize you.  Why not spend a few moments this week searching out a few sources of small joys that you can add to your every day?  This week's blog is short.  I suggest that you use the extra minutes you might normally have spent reading a longer one to go find some inspiration!

Energy Psychology

“We humans have lost the wisdom of genuinely resting and relaxing. We worry too much. We don’t allow our bodies to heal, and we don’t allow our minds and hearts to heal.”

— Nhat Hanh

This week, I want to simply recommend an article that covers a history of "energy psychology," (which is a broad umbrella that includes Tapping as well as many other modalities) and how various types of such interventions have been shown effective in trials:  Fighting the Fire: Emotions, Evolution, and the Future of Psychology.  One of the most interesting takeaways for me is the link between emotional trauma and major diseases, but there are many interesting points made that I thought my readers would find interesting.  Take a look and let me know what was most interesting to you!

Being Stuck ≠ Failure

“Keep on beginning and failing. Each time you fail, start all over again, and you will grow stronger until you have accomplished a purpose - not the one you began with perhaps, but one you’ll be glad to remember.”

— Anne Sullivan

Have you ever found yourself in the midst of a project that started to seem like it would never end?  In my experience, this is what stops people from getting to their goals more often than anything else. Once you start telling yourself that you'll never arrive where you want to go, your energy and creativity will dissipate, and you'll probably quit on your project and feel like you failed. 

Most likely, what actually happened there is that you encountered a problem you didn't know how to solve. That's it. Nothing irreparable happened, you just couldn't see a way forward, you panicked, and you jumped to a conclusion that may not have been true.  The problem isn't that you had the thought that your project was over—we all get discouraged sometimes—the problem is that you didn't have the coping mechanisms in place to weather the emotional storm and come back to the table in a sufficiently calm and creative state to rejig your plan.

This happens to the best of us, but it doesn't have to be a permanent state of affairs. We fall into this pattern and then do what we do for a few main reasons. Once you understand what they are, you can review them when you feel stuck to see which one applies, and most likely find a way around the problem.

1. Reflexive self-judgment. This is a bad habit we pick up from others when we're young, and if we don't find a way to arrest it, it remains a corrosive force in our lives. One of the reasons regular meditation can be so helpful is that the mind naturally has a tendency to assess and judge—that's what it's good at, and it's a helpful talent! Unfortunately, humans also have a tendency to believe that the mind is the totality of who we are. It makes sense, after all, given that the mind is a loud, constant voice that is always demanding our attention. Until you learn to calm it down, it's difficult to hear from the body, the heart (emotional self) or the spirit. Becoming aware that the analytical messages from your mind are not absolute truth, and can and should be rejected purposefully if they're not helpful, is a skill that takes some doing. It's also necessary if you're going to get out from under the thumb of the negative self-talk that the mind will blare at you when you're uncertain about what to do next. 
2. We have evolved to be highly risk averse. This also makes a lot of sense when staying alive is a daily struggle, but for people in developed countries that are not in the midst of war or other constant violence, our first reactions may be unnecessarily limiting; being outside one's comfort zone and trying new things can bring up intense fear that may be irrational, but has the power to stop us nonetheless. One of the reasons I love Tapping so much is that it can assist us in calming this fear/stress response when it's clearly not necessary or appropriate for the reality we're facing.
3. The gap between who we currently are and who we'd need to become in order to finish the project seems too large, and we get overwhelmed.  In order to progress in any process, we need to be able to toggle back and forth between the big-picture view and the granular view in which only the next task is primary. If we only look at the big picture, it's easy to become overwhelmed with the sum total of all things you still need to do, some of which you probably don't have any idea how to do yet. On the other hand, if you get too bogged down in the details, you'll start to get annoyed, lose inspiration, and want to throw in the towel.  You need to remember that other tasks are coming, some of which will be more fun, and refocus on what you're doing it all for.  A little fantasizing about reaching the goal can bring back the positivity you need. Knowing which view is most helpful at any given time takes practice, and it's a skill that, like any other, can be learned. We can also choose to get help with parts of a project we don't want to do! There's no rule that we have to struggle in silence, though we may have become convinced by someone else's poor belief system that receiving help is a sign of weakness. Cooperation helps everyone to win bigger and faster. It's smart to leverage it when you have the opportunity. Find someone with knowledge to share, find a buddy to help you stay motivated, find a coach or adviser to review overall strategy and implementation, or find a partner to share the burden and the glory of your project. Frustration and overwhelm can both be improved by teaming up with others.

These may not be the only things you feel stop your progress, but I bet they cover a lot of your most treacherous ground. Giving up on a project completely, or for the foreseeable future, may very rarely be a wise choice, but most of the time it leads to unnecessary heartbreak and disappointment that can be hard to recover from.  Before you consider quitting, take some time to breathe, think, rest, and allow your creativity to return. There's probably a solution if you're willing to persist.

Stalking the Wild Motivation

“Desire is the key to motivation, but it’s determination and commitment to an unrelenting pursuit of your goal—a commitment to excellence —that will enable you to attain the success you seek.”

— Mario Andretti

Motivation is a tricky animal. Just the concept of it tends to conjure up feelings of overwhelm, fatigue, and sometimes even shame as we remember the times we've tried to whip ourselves into shape in the name of it; many of us have been taught that motivation means harshness, activating our inner drill sergeant to yell repeatedly at us that life is not yet the way we want it, and we don't measure up, so we better get up and march. We think we need to hold on tight to disappointment, self-recrimination, and the knowledge of just how far we are from our goals—otherwise, we'll be lazy, useless people. Right?

Wrong. This is the best wisdom we've come up with over the course of thousands of years of hierarchical thinking and a habitual, homicidal imbalance between masculine- and feminine-energy processing. While this is not the worst effect of this long-term imbalance (not by a long shot), it is definitely counterproductive. It's not that there's no place for the inner drill sergeant, but over-reliance on it to the exclusion of other approaches to motivation will leave you exhausted and dispirited. It will also feed a vicious cycle in which you think the problem is hopelessly you:  You're not good enough, you're not capable, you're just lazy, and on and on.

Most people are actually far more motivated by positive feedback than by blame and negativity. Think about it—during the times in your life when you felt most fired up, energized, and active in the pursuit of a goal, was it because others were constantly berating and insulting you, or was it because things were going pretty well already and you felt a charge of optimism and excitement about a positive vision? If you're like most people, the answer is option two.

Natural motivation bubbles up from a wellspring of creativity and optimistic desire within. If you want to nurture it and foster its long-term health, look to divert anything that will disrupt its otherwise perpetual motion: Memories of past difficulties and the negative beliefs about yourself you've formed as a result; others' careless comments or active sniping at your goals that tempt you into destructive cynicism; bad habits that steal your physical vitality; the overwhelming noise and distraction of a busy world. We've examined all of these in previous blogs, so you can look for clues there as to how to minimize these distractions. Staying motivated is mostly about removing inappropriate influences and feeding your creative energy. This is your new job. Learn to love it and become expert at it.

If you find yourself trying to grit and muscle yourself to greater productivity, take a time-out and ask yourself why you don't want to take on your tasks right now. If you can acknowledge the reasons, you can do something about them. Are you grumpy because you skipped a meal and you need to eat something? Is it because you aren't getting any time to work on the things that actually excite you? Are you low on energy because you're sleep deprived? Are you resenting an interaction with someone that keeps playing in your head and distracting you?  Are you afraid of failing?  Whatever it is, maybe you can take action on it before you proceed. If not, you can at least start thinking about what changes you can make to help yourself out going forward. 

The more you clear away what's in the way of your natural enthusiasm, the more you automatically wake up with a pleasant desire for putting in some work toward what you want to create. Sometimes, you'll need to work on reprioritizing and giving your schedule something of a makeover. Sometimes, all you need is a few minutes of daily Tapping to express built-up emotion and relax your body (or meditation, or journaling, or painting, or prayer, or something else expressive and/or relaxing). We sometimes need to do things we don't enjoy in order to live and keep the lights on, but we always have power over how we're thinking and approaching our tasks. As we make more supportive choices, creativity and motivation can thrive.

Stopping the Insanity

“For fast-acting relief try slowing down.”

— Lily Tomlin

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?

Powering Up

“Energy and persistence conquer all things.”

— Benjamin Franklin

When you're working on goals that are important to you, no matter the area of your life under which they fall, you're always going to need as much energy as you can muster to keep moving through challenges that will inevitably arise throughout the process. If you can't keep up with the demands of your project physically (in which case your clarity of thinking, willpower, emotional stability, and ability to have faith that your daily actions will build to a final result will also suffer) then you won't have a chance of staying in the game long enough to win. Many of us have heard things like, "I'll sleep when I'm dead," or "I don't need food, just more coffee" uttered as a brag,  but imagine what those fueling their lives on bravado and nutritional vapor could do with the support of better choices, and how much happier, healthier, and more stable they could feel while doing it. Not to mention how much more pleasant things would be for those around them! Living out a constant cycle of mania and crash, or just one big crash created by years of imbalance, means that whatever your level of achievement, it's not sustainable. I don't know about you, but I'd rather be unstoppable for as long as I have left on this planet.

Some things we know about energy:

• Sleep is incredibly important for the human body, including the brain. If you don't get enough, the body doesn't heal and recharge itself, and you won't be able to think straight or exercise logic or self-control, not to mention creativity
• Move it or lose it. The more sedentary you are, the less energetic you will feel. You don't have to run marathons, but you need to move and stretch your body every day if you want it to feel good. Check out this article for some compelling information pulled from scientific studies about the incredible ways in which exercise helps you, and some tips on how to get the amount you need to achieve your health goals.
• In order to power all the activity your life requires, your body needs fuel, and not all fuels are the same. Will you fill it with dirty, gunky fuel that will stop up the works (cheap fast food loaded with synthetic chemicals and bad fats) or clean, whole foods that it will recognize and utilize as highly beneficial nutrients? If you want more energy, you know what the answer is. Now, I know that nutrition is one of the most confusing subjects out there for people, because there's so much conflicting information out there. Some of that makes more sense if you follow the money. In any case, I am convinced that the future of nutrition is customization for each unique person, because my body and lifestyle is not yours. My best recommendation is to make a commitment to eating organic, whole foods no matter what, and to experiment from there until you find what works for you. A visit to a professional nutritionist who is familiar with any dietary restrictions you may be working with (allergies, illness, religious restrictions, or what have you) can be one of the best investments you'll ever make, because in the quest for energy, many factors may change, but you will always have to eat. 
• The last of the most basic fuels for sustained energy is a sense of purpose. Quite simply, if you don't know what you're doing it all for, you'll give up when the going gets tough. A good life coach or other counselor can help you clarify this if you feel adrift, and help you stay focused on it over time. Any positive vision can provide this sense of purpose, whether it's focused on yourself, people you know, strangers in need, or the world. You decide what vision excites you, plus your level of commitment and the amount of effort you will dedicate, but you must be working toward something, or you'll feel blah and unmotivated.

Next week, we'll look at blocks to sustaining your energy that are less within your control, and how to deal with them and keep moving. Until then, pick an area mentioned above and take some action toward creating more energy!

The Functional Value of Compassion

“If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.”

— The Dalai Lama

Every major world religion upholds the importance of extending compassion to others. Usually, this is presented as the right and virtuous thing to do, to be done for its own sake. There's much to be said for that, but there's an additional argument to be made for the importance of compassion that is more mechanical, more specifically practical:  Without coming to a place of compassion for another person, it's not possible to fully forgive them for wrongs they've done—and without forgiveness, we remain both bound to and continually irritated by that person and their wrongs. In this state, we can never be free.

Compassion, then, becomes a way in which we give to ourselves, paying into our own freedom from the burdens of the past. If you want to lead a happy life, you can't dig in your heels and hold onto resentment against everyone and everything that ever contributed to your discomfort.  In fact, that's pretty much the recipe for a very unhappy life.  On the other hand, it's usually not enough to decide with your conscious mind to let someone off the hook. If you want to do a thorough job of it, you need to get your subconscious on board, and its job is first and foremost to protect you. Legitimately finding compassion for someone else requires that you heal sufficiently from the ill effects of their actions to be released from the hold of your own trauma enough to see beyond it. From a more whole perspective, you can see that this person is flawed, like every other human you know, including you. It becomes possible to understand, at least a little, what might have possessed them to behave in the way they did. This willingness tends to build momentum if we let it, reminding us of episodes precipitated by our own less-than-fabulous life choices, which in turn reminds us of how similar we all are, and primes us to let go of the past and want what's best for everyone in the future.

This is a very natural cycle, and becoming efficient at moving through it is one of the greatest keys to happiness you could ever find. The tough part is the personal healing. Frankly, emotional technologies have lagged so far behind physical, mental, and spiritual ones in modern society that there isn't a lot of guidance on the specific hows of accomplishing such healing. This is why I find EFT/meridian tapping techniques to be so exciting—they simplify the processing of events with emotional impact, facilitating rapid broadening of perspective in ways that are gentle, , and organic, and appropriate for the individual. This is what true emotional healing looks like, and most of us have been taught to struggle toward it by attempting to will it into being by sheer force. Sometimes people get there by persistence, through clear intent and continuing to stumble toward the goal, but this is a long and painful way toward forgiveness. When better ways are available, I want to make them available to others, and this is why I do what I do. The personal empowerment that results when you can step yourself forward at will through such a process is so freeing, and the world would be a vastly better place if no one felt stuck and alone with their most difficult emotions.  Tapping can help to spring us all from the old, outdated ties that mold us into the shapes born of past trauma.

Compassion and forgiveness are certainly virtuous on their own merits, and thinking of them as always the goal is a good way to keep ourselves on track to avoid the regrets that can result from our own actions. However, we cannot avoid the importance of emotional healing, and the self-serving bonus to our own happiness that accrues when do the work to facilitate it. It feels so much better to have the wherewithal, the resources, to extend generosity to others than to remain stuck in the tension and misery of trauma and resentment. The more you practice moving through the cycle, the more of your own energy you free up to spend on the things that bring joy and meaning to your life.

How Do I Work This Thing?

“The goal of spiritual practice is full recovery, and the only thing you need to recover from is a fractured sense of self.”

— Marianne Williamson

I'm often asked by clients, and those just starting to use EFT/Tapping, how they should Tap at home. You might know that it helps, and want to do more of it, but feel awkward about starting to use it more regularly. (This is normal when we're starting almost anything new—most things feel unnatural until we've logged some hours of practice.) Here's my advice, and I hope you use it to get more out of the time you have to rest and recharge each day. 

First of all, a quick disclaimer! Keep in mind that you should never tackle anything that feels too scary or overwhelming without assistance. Trust your judgment and intuition. If you become uncomfortable while Tapping, stop, breathe, and get help. Otherwise, you can't do it "wrong," so just do some when you have free moments, and you'll grow more comfortable with the process.

One of the easiest ways to start is with a simple "tap and rant" approach. When I first started Tapping, I did pretty much only this, and it felt great! The vast majority of us have been taught in so many ways and for so long to hide, disregard, and denigrate our emotions that we're used to shoving them down and doing our best to ignore them. This takes a ton of energy! When you start to let some of that built-up pressure vent using this technique, you'll likely find that it's pretty fun. All you have to do is tap on the points in the sequence for EFT and say whatever comes to mind, like "OMG I can't believe he said that to me! And how dare she behave like that? Who does she think she is? I'm so tired of all this. I just want to go back to bed and stay there for a week. And politicians, don't even get me started,"  etc. Really let it all out (and you should always do this where you won't be heard--whisper if you have to. You don't want to be editing yourself because someone else might hear you, and you also don't want to be causing stress to your relationships because someone heard something that wasn't meant for their ears when you were just blowing off steam).

There may need to be a lot of complaining mixed into your stream of thought, and that's perfectly fine; in fact, it's necessary to start with a statement of "what is" for you in order to get the best results. Often people are reticent to really indulge this, as it seems so negative, but if you go ahead, how you feel will usually quickly change. You may find surprising bolts of insight occurring to you, seemingly out of nowhere, that help you to change your perspective. But even if Tapping only seems to help a little, I'm always happy to take small gains too! Sometimes a small change is the difference between feeling completely overwhelmed and being able to move ahead with something or other that will create some positive momentum in your day. Baby steps are better than no steps!

Another simple technique is Tapping on body sensations. Say you've had a stressful day and you feel like there's a knot in your stomach. You can just describe the sensation as you Tap on the points, and allow yourself to notice if there's a particular emotion that seems to be associated with the physical sensation. If there is, you can describe that along with the physical feelings.  Be as specific as you can, and feel free to throw in your observations of any images, colors, shapes, textures, or sounds that help to describe the feeling. If you observe addition aspects of how you feel that seem separate from the first thing you noticed, you can put those aside for further Tapping after you get relief on the first item.  Keep in mind that when we Tap, we enter a space where the subconscious has a chance to speak to us, and not everything that comes up will make sense. Even if what you observe doesn't seem logical, try to go with it and follow where it leads. Sometimes within a few minutes of doing this, the feelings will change, and that's good.  Just keep describing what you sense and Tapping, and before long you'll probably feel a lot better. 

These two methods are the easiest ones to start with, but they're also just the tip of the iceberg. There's so much more to learn! Sometimes these bring you great relief; at others, you may plateau and feel stuck while using them. Usually this happens because there's a deeper issue underlying your current symptoms whose resolution needs a more nuanced approach. Sometimes you're just tired or dehydrated and need to take a break so you can come back to this later with more energy and patience. Resolve to keep practicing and learning, because facility with EFT can bring such transformational power to your life. Check out EmpowermentStrategies.net if you'd like further information.

The Nefariousness of Boredom

“When people are bored it is primarily with themselves.”

— Eric Hoffer

As you work on projects that are important to you over time, sometimes one of the hardest things to do is to resist overthinking things. Once you've determined your overall path and you've gotten down to applying yourself to your next steps, there are phases of a project in which you're working away, but not yet seeing results. Depending on the scope and complexity of your project, these can last quite a while. Since humans tend to prefer instant gratification, staying focused and energized throughout can be a challenge! The mind will tend to kick into high gear at some point and try to convince us that we must be doing something wrong. It shouldn't be taking this long! We should change something up, because this clearly isn't working!

In today's frenetic world, it does seem as though everything happens quickly, and that's what we should expect from the world and from ourselves. And yet, even those who seem to have attained easy success have tales to tell about preparation they've done in the background, usually over the course of many years. The current technological climate wants to convince us that every shiny new toy just pops into being as soon as a good idea is established.  We're shown quick and glamorous paths to glory, but again, these are never the whole story.  It's easy to measure ourselves against all these flashy examples and decide that there's something wrong with us when nothing is so easy in our day to day.  It's easy to become frantic as we feel the passage of time and to decide that we need to pick up the pace, even when there's a well-considered plan in place and it's unfolding accordingly.

Drawing up a realistic plan takes work.  Educating yourself on what steps will be needed in order to accomplish new goals and setting out time lines that are challenging, but still possible, takes boldness and vision.  Most of us don't do this enough, nor maintain a rhythm of checking in often to adjust and rework that vision.  But even if we do, it still takes discipline not to freak out when the process is boring and throw it all out the window.  Sometimes it's easier to deal with adversity than it is to deal with boredom—at least with adversity comes a certain amount of drama, which can bring a sense of zest to life even if it's unpleasant.  The periods in which the plan requires constant application but little reward can be the most treacherous, the times when our continuance is most precarious.

Since any big project has these periods, we need to find ways not to work up frustration or ennui so thick that it cancels out our momentum.  One of my recommendations here may sound a little silly, but it works, so I'll offer it anyway:  Be willing to be a little stupid.  Refuse to ruminate at length on your state and just keep going, even when it feels like a slog; when you overthink, you'll just annoy yourself and have a tendency to talk yourself out of both good moods and your commitment to the long haul.  Try distracting yourself from the boredom with some planned rewards.  These don't have to be anything grand or expensive—just playing some inspiring music every day can help buoy your spirits when it feels like you're going nowhere.  Planning some time with friends you always have fun with is key.  Taking a little time to move your body every day helps bust stress, and I'm not talking about running marathons (unless that's something you love).  You might just want to move and groove to some music when you take breaks from your project, because it feels good and gets some healthy blood flow going.  Take a walk around the block or to do an errand here and there.  Do some light reading or watch a movie to give your mind a break from your efforts.  Whatever it is, just keep in mind that when you're working on the more thankless parts of your project, you'll need some extra support to keep yourself going, and plan for it.

No matter what you're working toward in the long term, there will be times when the slowness of your progress will become demoralizing.  It happens to the best of us, and it is completely normal to become somewhat annoyed at these times.  If you can't seem to enjoy the work you have to do, then find other things to appreciate and enjoy.  Usually these dips will automatically correct themselves before too long if you're giving yourself support to get yourself through the difficulty. Know that you're not alone, and remind yourself what's at the end of all this effort, and why you wanted it in the first place.  Above all, keep going.  When you stretch yourself and refuse to give up, you do eventually get somewhere worth being, and that's what it's all about.  

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.”

— Tony Robbins

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. 

Refocusing to Win

“It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light.”

— Aristotle

Since many people are working on new habits this month, I wanted to take a moment to acknowledge that starting a new habit, or ending and old one, is hard! There are degrees of difficulty, obviously, but usually the things we tackle at the beginning of the year are the bigger challenges that we didn't find the gumption to address throughout the previous year, so I'll assume that you might really be challenging yourself right now. In that case, it will behoove you to accept that you may need some extra support to keep yourself focused on and engaged with the task at hand. In order to help you see that need for yourself, consider:

• When you're stretching yourself beyond your comfort zone toward a new state of being, you are likely to have at least moments in which you feel confused and overwhelmed. You don't really feel like the self you've previously known yourself to be, but you also don't yet feel like the "new and improved" version of yourself for whom the new habit is no longer a challenge. In fact, sometimes the path to getting there looks long and treacherous, and highly uncertain, right about now
• To state the obvious, being outside your comfort zone is uncomfortable! No one likes constant discomfort, and it's tough to endure unless you can see the clear link between it and the rapid approach of something you deeply want. If you're not doing things to keep that focus, it's easy to get knocked off track by the loudness of the discomfort in the moment, and by how much you don't like it. Even if you stay on track, constant challenge without instant gratification can be pretty tiring. You may find that you have less energy, and therefore productive time, for other things until you get over the hump in solidifying your new habit
• Many people are exercising more right now. Even though this eventually creates more energy than it uses if you stick with it, in the beginning, it doesn't feel good at all. Until your muscles strengthen, they hurt and protest. Toxins and hormones stored in fat cells hit your bloodstream and change your chemistry until they're processed out of your body. You need more rest to recover and keep going, and you may feel weaker than before you started exercising. Unless you're careful, methodical, and quite physically self-aware, it's easy to injure yourself when starting a new exercise regimen.

So what can we do about all of this?

• Actually write out (or type up) a statement of your goal and why you want it, in other words, include all the great feelings you'll feel if you achieve it. Yes, you, and yes, on paper or a computer, so that you can review it every day and remind yourself what all the effort and discomfort is for when the going gets tough. This will get you up and going when you really want to go back to bed rather than face the work your goal requires. Reading it will send a wave of positive energy rippling across your day, as long as you don't spend any time worrying about how you haven't achieved your goal yet—those thoughts will do the opposite. If they come up, acknowledge them, but don't indulge them
• Write out your top personal values in as much or as little detail as you like so you can read those daily as well. This will help you to remember who you really are when the outer stuff is getting rearranged and you feel confused. This is powerful. Don't discount it
• Give some thought to a few things you can dial back so you have more energy for making change in the early stage of your project, when it's most challenging
• Tell the important people in your life what you're doing so they can support you where possible
• Consider specifically not telling people you know who will not be supportive (or might even try to derail your progress). You have no obligation to cater your life to people who try to wreck the best efforts of those around them
• Team up with someone else who you can talk to about the ups and downs of what you're doing. Just being able to share what you're experiencing with someone else who is working on their own projects helps you to feel understood and seen as you work
• Make sure you add opportunities for fun into your schedule. Taking on new things shouldn't mean that you have no time left to blow off steam, rest, and rejuvenate. Striking a healthy balance is important for the long-term viability of your projects, because if you become exhausted and demoralized, your projects will be dead in the water.

It's great to meet a new year with enthusiasm, just make sure you're allowing yourself a little time to plan for the support you'll need in seeing your projects through to the successful outcomes you want. A lot of good intentions will fall to the wayside by the end of this month. With some planning and reinforcements, yours need not be among them!

Dancing with the Gods of Mischief

“You are not here merely to make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand.”

— Woodrow Wilson

Hello, dear readers, and welcome to 2018! In the first week of this new year, many of us will be thinking with renewed fervor of the creation of our most cherished goals. This week may bring you a fresh, more hopeful perspective on what's possible for you and for the world, which feels great. But you know how some years you decide to work toward new things and become quickly derailed from your forward motion? And then that kills your buzz and your motivation to keep at it until you actually get what you wanted? In the interests of helping you to preserve your happy sense of possibility, which is the motivational equivalent of perpetual motion, I offer you these thoughts this week.

We feel the sense of hopefulness about a new year in part because we can look ahead at a familiar unit of time with an intrinsic structure that has become familiar to us—seasons we've come to know, with their attached holidays and weather, clothing and habits, and it's fun to fill that container with an ideal vision. Creating something beautiful, something that sparkles with promise and expresses who we are at our very core, reminds us of the very best we carry within us. Of course that feels great! (Research has shown that the vast majority of people are far more efficiently motivated by positive feedback than by negative experiences, so this makes perfect sense.) At this particular time of year, we allow ourselves to get swept up in the the optimistic moment. Yet, as the year progresses, and our perfectly imagined plans start to go off track (which is inevitable), the structural integrity of our confidence begins to break down along with the structure of our idealized vision of the year. 

Instead of taking developments in stride and using them as an impetus to make course corrections, we may decide that we're falling behind, there's not enough time left to make the year into something satisfying!  We succumb to the mounting pressure to rectify the differences between vision and uncertain reality on a tight timeline.  Sometimes we don't even notice how much we're measuring our intrinsic value against how much of what we want is unfolding according to the schedule we imagined for the current year.  Just as age is only a number to which we attach conditioned meanings, often, without thinking, we may decide that not having accomplished something by a certain time of year must MEAN something about us or about our ability to accomplish it at all. If we allow this measurement to remain unconscious, we're far more likely to grind into the end of the year frustrated, grouchy, and not in the mood to celebrate the numerous holidays we might otherwise enjoy with gusto. 

Even for those whose lives look easy from the outside, it's very rare that any longer-term plan ever goes as expected. The nature of being human includes navigating constant surprise. The scope certainly varies, but unless you're a hermit, the constancy of the need to confront this dynamic does not.  Since this is a common denominator, it doesn't actually "mean" anything about you except that you're human. Success is not keeping every variable in your projects an inescapable chokehold—it's created by a willingness to confront every day's surprise with a willingness to put together pieces of a constantly morphing puzzle in the most constructive pattern you can engineer in that moment.  The more you try to cement the pieces to the game board, the more likely it is that the whole thing will rupture under unsustainable pressure and blow up in your face.

Here's what I recommend you do in order to keep up with the pace of natural and inevitable change that will permeate all your projects while  constantly feeding your enthusiasm:

• Plan to actually write down what you would most like to have happen this year and read this every day. The point of this is NEVER to make you feel anxious about what's not happening, but to remind you what's important to you, keep you focused on it, and galvanize your creativity around what you can do today to make some progress toward goals that excite you. Not because you really should, or you must, or you're a mess if you don't, but because this helps you to feel that you're really alive.
• Plan to take stock of where you are in relation to where you'd like to be at least once per month, perhaps on the first of the month so it's hard to forget. If you're disappointed about your progress, first of all, admit it! Then do something to address the situation. In light of the current factors in play, decide on a new timetable that seems challenging but possible. If you're stuck somewhere, do some research. Talk to someone you know who has applicable skills. Talk to an expert. Get help brainstorming from a group with diverse viewpoints. In short, reset and keep moving.
• Do something to address the emotions that have come up around what's happening or not happening. If you just let them sit there and fester, pressure will build and you'll be careening toward that grumpy-end-of-year situation, and worse, an unwillingness to persist for as long as it takes.  What helps you to feel better? Do it!
  • Hint: Exercise. Talk or write out your feelings. Allow yourself to mourn anything that's truly lost. Use Tapping/EFT to help you move through your emotions more comfortably, and regain balance and perspective.
• Not everything can be solved with more or harder work. We need to balance out our effort with play and restoration, which primes the pump of creativity and keeps us healthy. We need to breathe, laugh, and connect with others sometimes before we can solve intractable problems. We need sleep and nutritious food and plenty of water to be at our best. It's a lot to balance, to be sure. That's why improving your ability to greet each day with calm observation of what's happening before diving in is so important to constructing a productive response.
• Even if they're not what you envisioned, find ways to keep enjoying the seasons and their particular rewards.  There's something deeply satisfying about marking the passage of time that affects us all if you allow yourself to appreciate them.

It's great to use a new year as inspiration for new projects, but keep in mind that rigidity around deadlines you have chosen out of preference will demoralize you. Letting yourself become rigid is the one mistake that causes more people to quit positive new habits than anything else. The most successful people build confidence through constant interaction with changing circumstances. The more you challenge yourself to keep coming back to the table with constant effort despite confusion and setbacks, the more capacity you build for solving problems and racking up accomplishments. No worthy goal comes into being without the completion of many actions and small milestones along the way. Most goals take much longer to finish than we'd like them to, and must adjust to disruptions that feel like attacks on our free will and our happiness. Life isn't easy, but we persist because refusing to try to improve our lives is no fun. It's sad, boring, and feels like a waste of time to live without direction, and who needs that? Whatever you are able to accomplish this week, this month, this year, celebrate it, and all you've learned and become as you brought it forth. This learning is just as important to your happiness and future success as the product you were able to create, and as you keep at it, you grow more skilled and efficient and creative, and life grows ever more fulfilling.