So Much Happier Blog
I Can't Even
“You are responsible for the energy that you create for yourself, and you’re responsible for the energy that you bring to others.”
Often, the reasons we don’t make progress toward our biggest goals boil down to overwhelm. When life seems like it’s all just too much, we tend to shut down as soon as we think about taking action. When it seems like there are always way too many things to do in a finite number of hours each day, when change comes at you so fast it’s hard to prioritize strategically, when you’re under stress and chronically exhausted, you’re probably operating in a state of overwhelm. You feel stuck and confused, and optimism is hard to generate. This is not a powerful place from which to get things done.
Having just gone through a period of very low energy (I was scheduled to the max and got sick three times in short succession because I was determined to keep my commitments and rest later) I was reminded that the most basic level of countering overwhelm requires adequate physical energy. I remembered that the definition of energy in my high school biology class was paraphrased as “the ability to do work.” As a human, that ability requires other things too, but the physical energy part can’t be skipped. After my busy period wrapped up, it was a couple of weeks before I really felt alert, awake and alive again. In those weeks, I got tired early in the day, had less available willpower, greater challenges in finding my natural positivity and resourcefulness, and generally felt a total lack of desire to be productive. As soon as I had gotten some high-quality rest and allowed myself to recover, all of that started to improve. Moving my body helped to boost it all too, once I had the energy to do that. But it was so clear to me that without our own vital energy to pour into our projects, our goals are toast.
Nurturing your energy, therefore, should be primary in your quest for the things you want out of life! The pace of change is often far slower than we want it to be, so you probably won’t be able to create anything truly significant in a flame of short-term overwork. You’ll need to maintain a longer, slower burn in most cases. That means you’ll need to attend to these aspects of creating and maintaining adequate energy to do work:
Physical needs. Nutrition is key here. Sure, you can run your body on nothing but doughnuts, but this is going to short you of everything except a sugar high and subsequent crashes, and subsequent long-term breakdown. You need to work on gravitating to adequate amounts of lean proteins for your level of daily activity, plus plenty of veggies and some fruits throughout the day for all the rejuvenating micronutrients they offer. As much as possible of your diet should be certified organic so you’re not taking in unnecessary pesticides, hormones, and other toxins. If the multiplicity of conflicting views on what you should be eating has left you confused, consider consulting a nutritionist who shares your most important values around food. This can yield huge gains for decades to come.
Exercise. Your body wants and needs to move for optimal energy, balance, sleep, moods, and overall health. You don’t need to overdo it to see and feel results. Find something you don’t mind doing, even if you don’t love it—just do something.
Sleep. If you’re not getting enough, you’re trying to pursue excellence while mentally and physically impaired, and you’re leaving huge areas of your own capacity out of reach. Do what you can to set aside more time for sleep and solve problems you have with it. There may be periods of your life when you won’t get much sleep (such as the first year of a new child’s life), in which case you’ll need to minimize other goals to some extent if you want the process toward them to be something other than a disheartening struggle.
Emotional needs. It’s pretty hard to find the energy to knuckle down and get to work if you’re immobilized by fear, anxiety, grief, or other emotions. These are not just distractions, they’re sources of important information that can actually help you find a deeper sense of purpose and maintain a strong sense of self and what’s right for you. Tapping to the rescue! Of course there are other options that can be of help, but I’ve never found anything more efficient than EFT to help move, illuminate, and clear emotions.
Mental needs. The mind functions best in balance with all of your other parts, so bonus—your work in the other areas helps here too. We’re also learning that meditation helps the brain to function better. Being able to calm your mind gives it space to function without the unnecessary din of wild, reactive thinking. If sitting still and trying to get quiet internally feels too challenging, you can start with moving meditations like walking and repeating a rhythmic mantra, or spending some time every day consciously listening to and enjoying some soothing music. Tapping can help calm your thoughts too, and I consider it to be another type of moving meditation. Just sayin’.
Spiritual/Values-Based Needs. Humans are naturally social animals with a desire to participate in efforts larger than themselves. If you are not finding a way to do this in some way that feels appropriate and inspiring to you, then you’re disconnected from one of the greatest motivational engines you could ever harness. This doesn’t have to show up in a standard-looking religious or spiritual manner for you, but it does need to express what you consider to be your highest values, the best of who you are and want to be. As with exercise, baby steps are fine, just start something and see where the inspiration takes you.
Look, I know this is a lot to balance, and that’s why life is such a challenge. It’s ok to admit that! Working toward and constantly correcting this balance for yourself is a lifelong process of learning, and not something you ever achieve and put behind you. If you want to sustain the energy you’ll need to accomplish your goals, though, it’s the stuff of your daily assignment. Go forth and be energetic!
Ganging Up on Yourself?
“Though force can protect in emergency, only justice, fairness, consideration and cooperation can finally lead men to the dawn of eternal peace.”
I read an article this week that I found absolutely fascinating, and I wanted to share with you some of the content and how that relates to your relationship with yourself. The article described how Ecuador has done something very out-of-the-box to deal with gang-related violence. I know this might not seem relevant on a personal level, but stay with me here! Like most countries, it was not really getting anywhere in trying to eradicate the problems caused by gangs and their violent interactions. Over ten years ago, after a long negotiation process, Ecuador allowed gangs to “legalize,” or register as cultural groups, which could then qualify for grants and other assistance and partnerships with government. Large numbers of gang members decided to accept, and were able to implement programs that trained their members in the development of useful job skills, and provided other opportunities for community projects.
While this isn’t the only action the government took (apparently the police worked to become more trusted and integrated into communities as well) the murder rate plummeted to a third of its previous levels within that time. Some gang members did not accept, and the problems haven’t been completely eradicated, especially since the amount of money available for projects fluctuated in a changing economy) but the positive movement created by the policy seems to be quite real. Some of the people who had become enmeshed in the gangs jumped at the chance to accept better options when they were made available. When they could take their place in a group with a cohesive identity in a positive way, and know that it was possible to find decent jobs with new skills, they preferred to leave the old violence behind.
So to relate this back to yourself, ask yourself this question: What parts of myself do I vilify and reject as hopeless that might be harnessed for good if I listened to what they really need?
Maybe there’s a part of you that you’ve been unable to affect that habitually procrastinates. Procrastination is generally about fear, so what is this part of you afraid of? If you’re not sure, try Tapping while you ask this and just wait for an answer. Given time, you may find that you come up with a memory that explains the fear, or a situation you’re worried about that you’re convinced you couldn’t handle if it arose. If you eventually get an answer, you can address the fear and move beyond the habit, but not by trying to force that part of you into submission. That’s what we tend to try to do first, and often only, and it doesn’t work. When some part of us feels threatened, it will try to sabotage us out of taking the actions that might produce the results we fear, often on a subconscious level where it’s almost impossible to stop. It needs help in order to feel more resourceful, more capable of handling what may come up when you move beyond your comfort zone, and if you want to make progress, providing this help will be your task.
Or maybe you’re angry at your body for having a chronic issue or pain. What if, instead of railing at it daily and calling it ugly names, you were to start befriending it? What if you became committed to finding out what the pain is telling you, and trying to work with your body’s needs instead of trying to drag it around ignoring them with every fiber of your being?
What if, instead of being so chronically disgusted with your own limitations (we all have them!) you were willing to look at the ways in which they’ve shaped your perspective, your compassion, your life experience, in ways that could benefit you and those around you? You’re living a unique life, even on a planet with billions of people on it. You have unique messages and wisdom to share, though sometimes finding it takes some digging, because its source is disguised as hardship or frustration.
Cooperation often wastes less energy and yields more creative solutions that fighting. What part of you could you work on aligning yourself with this week in an effort to understand it better? You’ll get the best results if you can approach it as a neutral negotiator who comes to the table without preconceptions. What could this part of you be trying to indicate? What needs might it be trying to flag for you? What troubles might it save you in the future if you were to listen now, and actually deal with the friction that’s causing the wear and tear? And what actions might you take if you were to accept its message and needs as valid?
I wish you a steadily improving relationship with all the parts of yourself this week and beyond—one that allows you to constantly learn and thrive.
How Did I Get Here?
“Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where no seed has been, I have great faith in a seed... Convince me that you have a seed there, and I am prepared to expect wonders.”
Now that winter is out and it’s officially spring, we’re almost a quarter of the way through 2019. It’s a good time to stop and take stock of how things are going for you compared to any goals you may have set for the year. Without periodic analysis, you may not make the necessary course corrections to keep yourself moving forward efficiently; however, the context for your progress and the messages you take away from your analysis are important, not just the accuracy of the analysis itself.
Yes, it’s helpful to be clear and honest with yourself about how far you have (or haven’t) come, but it’s also important to notice the reasons why you may have gotten off track so that you can learn from your experience and do something useful about it. For instance, did you overestimate how much you could add to your daily routine while still keeping up the maintenance on everything you already like about your life? Did you get completely stuck somewhere, which prevented you from making your expected progress? Did you decide to take another opportunity, or go in a slightly different direction, so that you made a different kind of progress? And will you choose to see these happenings as failures, or will you mine them for the value they may have to offer?
If you got overwhelmed, maybe you need to break your goals down into smaller steps and try to accomplish a little less every day so you can avoid burnout. If you got stuck and didn’t know how to break your logjam, what can you do to solve that? If you branched out in an unexpected direction, will you need to go back to what you skipped later, and if so, when will that make sense? Taking the time to notice what happened allows you to calibrate to your current reality so that you can make clear, efficient decisions grounded in facts rather than muddling through each day confusedly hoping that all this effort will somehow be worth it someday. Creative, mindful tinkering may lead to real results, but blind muddling generally will not!
No process ever unfolds without surprises. This truth can be both frustrating and invigorating, and sometimes both at once! It can seem desirable to plan and execute everything to perfection, and after all, planning is absolutely necessary to peak productivity; on the other hand, fighting the need to adjust and remain flexible will only drain your energy, because life on planet Earth requires it. Where billions of people are running around exercising free will, it will often be hard to predict exact timing and results no matter how skilled you are at planning! If you want to reach your goals, you need to build in time for reflection, honest measurement of your progress, and strategic adjustments.
One last observation I’ll lob at you: Many of us try to gear up and start the new calendar year with a bang, but according to Traditional Chinese Medicine and other traditions, winter is a time to replenish yin energy, sleep, rest, and dream your ideas into being—it’s not the best time for massive action, pushing yourself, and trying to force timing. If you’ve had trouble with New Year’s resolutions you made at the turn of the year, it may be because you were using the collective habit and energy of those around you to try to fire up some change when what you really needed was some rest and restoration. You might need to just slow down your process a bit, or you might need to allow yourself a break, some space to clear your mind and let your natural enthusiasm start to bubble up again. Now will be a better time to start new things, but again, realize that effecting change takes time and patience. It’s not all about willpower, or trying to force your ideas into being. It’s about working with and remaining open to body, emotions, and spirit as well as mind. Change lasts when you take the time to get all your parts on board with the plan and help them adjust.
Wherever you find yourself in relationship to your goals, you know what to do. Examine why you’re there and what you need to do next to address your position. And don’t forget to Tap on any emotions, thoughts, or beliefs that come up as you do, which will help you to clear out internal blocks to seeing a clear path forward. Happy spring!
Ripples from Within
“To enjoy good health, to bring true happiness to one’s family, to bring peace to all, one must first discipline and control one’s own mind. If a man can control his mind he can find the way to Enlightenment, and all wisdom and virtue will naturally come to him.”
Sometimes, life happens. Despite best-laid plans, things come up and prevent the smooth flow of achievement we hoped for. Sometimes, disruptions come in packs, so that we feel like there’s an onslaught of resistance to our progress. This kind of confluence happens to all of us, as frustrating as that is.
More maddening still can be a similar kind of experience arising from the workings of internal factors. When what stops you is external, at least what’s happening is concrete and reasonably easy to explain to others! When it’s all happening inside you, it can be a lot harder to understand and deal with, in part because most of us have been brought up to think that we should be in control of the internal stuff—thoughts, emotions, even our bodily functions. And while we do have a lot of opportunity to optimize these through our daily choices, many aspects of the internal landscape are not necessarily within our conscious control. That’s why there’s a term for the subconscious, that which is not available to our conscious mind—and this portion of us is vast!
It’s therefore unreasonable to assume that our internal world will hold no surprises. And yet, as soon as many of us have an internal experience we don’t understand, we freak out, judge ourselves as weak or borderline crazy, and spiral down into further unnecessary stress about something that’s actually quite normal. Only if one is dead set on seeing oneself as mind only is it upsetting to deal with these other factors. Unfortunately, Western culture has emphasized the importance of mental functioning over all else for millennia, and has simultaneously vilified our more mysterious aspects. In doing so, it has discouraged our connection with our own underground stores of wisdom and intuition, and made us into an often shallow, ego-aligned culture that arrogantly insists that everything important happens in, and can be solved with, the mind.
There’s a lot of emerging scientific evidence in the field of epigenetics inviting us to acknowledge the influence of environment on gene expression and bodily function, and our thoughts and emotions are acknowledged to be a part of that environment. Given what we know about stress and its long-term corrosive effect on the body, I find this to be a pretty common-sense concept, and it seems obvious, then, that it would be smart to do what we can to see management of internal factors like thoughts and emotions as a necessary and logical aspect of managing our health and wellness.
One reason why many people never begin this venture is that, once you turn your attention inward, the amount of stored-up stuff can begin to seem overwhelming, like the lair of a lifelong hoarder! Make no mistake, it takes real courage to confront this backlog and not immediately run screaming. And yet, using a brilliant tool like Tapping can help us to take things a little, manageable bit at a time, and even enjoy and celebrate the process as we would with any other project. Things hidden in the subconscious can rise in helpful ways to the levels of your daily comprehension, allowing you to make better sense of yourself and your life. As you begin to manage your inner world habitually, you gain comfort, confidence, and skills that, like riding a bike, can serve you for a lifetime even if you take a break from them for a while now and then.
How about if we just start to notice when things seem out of balance in our internal world, and just give ourselves a little time to lovingly listen to the rumblings and express rather than repress? If you just allow yourself to Tap, breathe, and acknowledge how you feel, you might find that relief is easier than you thought possible. Everyone has to deal with challenging or confusing thoughts and emotions sometimes, but the more you make space for them and offer them some attention, the more you’ll find the value in this process and in the helpful information that accessing them will produce. When you feel unsettled, try doing just a couple of round of Tapping and see if it helps! Sometimes it really is that simple.
A Ton of Great Free Info!
“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.”
This week we interrupt our regularly scheduled programming for a special announcement. Every year, those who run one of the largest Web sites dedicated to Tapping, The Tapping Solution, run a tele-summit dedicated to showcasing experts using this amazing set of tools in various, interesting, and sometimes creative ways. It’s a great way to hear about what others are doing with it and get inspiration on techniques you might try in areas where you might not have thought to apply it. This year’s event starts today! I have no specific connection with this event, but I do participate every year because there’s always something to learn from the people who are interviewed. You can listen to the whole thing for free if you can make time to do so on their timeline. You can also choose to purchase the recordings if you prefer. Even if you you only end up catching one or two, I think you’ll find it to be a good use of your time.
If you want to sign up to receive all the information, you can do that here. Because this is my thing, I look forward to this every year and I totally geek out on the little turns of phrase and technique refinements the interviewees share. Maybe you can listen to every shred of content. Maybe you just want to check out one lecture with title that interests you. In any case, I hope you enjoy taking a look at the free content and come away with something that gets you a little more excited about making Tapping a part of your daily life. Thanks for reading, and for being someone who is willing to do the work to grow and improve your life. You make the world a better place!
The Movie Technique
“Even though you may want to move forward in your life, you may have one foot on the brakes. In order to be free, we must learn how to let go. Release the hurt. Release the fear. Refuse to entertain your old pain. The energy it takes to hang onto the past is holding you back from a new life. What is it you would let go of today?”
Last week we looked at an easy way to use Tapping to bring down the intensity of something that feels scary without having to get too close to it. This week, we’ll continue on with one of the best techniques to use once you’ve done that and feel ready to dive in and resolve it.
Once your target has been reduced in intensity on a subjective scale of 1-10 to a low number, around 3 or lower, you’re ready to start working with the Movie Technique, one of the most-used techniques under the EFT umbrella. To do this, make a distressing thing that happened into a movie that spans no more than a few minutes of run time. If you think your movie is longer than that, no problem—just break it up into smaller pieces so that each one is just a few minutes starting at a relatively neutral place, with only one or two emotional spikes within its time frame.
Next, you will imagine running this movie in your mind, and as soon as you feel any emotion at all rising in response to it, you PAUSE the movie and Tap on the emotions that came up and why. You might notice that they arise in response to an image, an aroma, a sound, or something else. It’s important to make these a part of your Tapping, as well as any feelings in your body that correspond to these emotions. You may find that you also notice imagery, sound, or other impressions that seem to correlate with the emotions that are not based on the movie, and it’s important to acknowledge these too. You may find that it’s clearest to work on one emotion or one visual or other sensory aspect at a time so that you can tell where it falls on the 1-10 scale after each Tapping round. The goal is to to work them all down to zero intensity and be able to rewind that tiny piece of your movie to the beginning and replay it, feeling no emotional intensity at all, before moving on to the next piece of the movie that brings up emotion.
Depending on how intense this movie was to begin with and how deeply this event has influenced you, you might have to work through it over the course of multiple sessions. It can take hours to reduce the charge on every little piece of your short movie so that you can finally run it without emotional reaction, but when you can do that, you’ll know you’ve really accomplished some major change! Often, once people have done this, they find that their perspective on the event naturally shifts and it doesn’t have the same limiting meaning to them that it did before. Releasing the burdens of old events is empowering to say the least.
As always with Tapping, don’t take on anything that feels like too much to tackle on your own, and take breaks whenever you want. You can come back to your target as many times as you need to. I do recommend that you stick with it, though. Getting to the other side of this process frees up a lot of energy and often brings a lot of relief and joy that is so worth the effort!
The Movie Technique is relatively simple to learn and use, but it can create amazing results. Work methodically, and I think you’ll notice big changes around old memories that may have been bothering you for a long time. Happy Tapping!
The Gentlest Approach
“Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.”
Valentine’s Day is just around the corner, and one of the most loving things you can do is to take care of yourself and how you feel if this is not your favorite holiday. If you’re at all dreading it, you might just want to do some Tapping around that this week to get yourself through what can be a tough time for a lot of people. It sometimes brings up feelings of discontent, disappointment, envy, or even heartbreak, and this can all be quite overwhelming in contrast with the romantic demonstrations that abound at this time of year. If you’re feeling any of these, your mission is just to give yourself some comfort around them, and that’s plenty. If you feel like you can take on more, or if some of those feelings are generated by a specific bad experience, then read on, as the below suggestions may help.
This week I’d like to take a look at a technique that is built for a very specific kind of situation. Before I do so, I want to caution you that you should never work on anything with Tapping/EFT that feels too big or scary without help, because you don’t have to. The whole point of using EFT is to save yourself pain and suffering! It’s not something you “power through,” it’s specifically built to to alleviate discomfort, but you need to know how to use it correctly in order to get the best results. Sometimes what you really need is the support of someone else who can guide you.
That said, this technique is great for working at a distance on something that feels very intense. It’s called the Tearless Trauma Technique. To use it, we start by selecting the thing that happened that you still have strong feelings about. Note that in Tapping, we always want a specific experience we’re working on to be something that only took a few minutes to happen in real life. No more than 10 minutes is a good guideline, and shorter is better. If you feel that your event encompasses a longer time frame, it’s best to break it up in smaller pieces, each with its own emotional spike. Once you’ve selected your event, you very studiously DO NOT think about it deeply, DO NOT try to re-experience it, DO NOT close your eyes and feel around in it, etc. You just stay in the here and now and just refer to the fact that it’s in there somewhere.
Next, with your eyes open, you just guess how intense your feelings around this would be IF you were to replay the “movie” of the event for yourself in your mind (which, again, you will not do right now) using a subjective scale of 0-10 where 0 is nothing and 10 is the most emotional charge you could possibly feel. Remember, this is a subjective scale, and it’s just for giving you a road map of where you’re starting out so that later you’ll know if you’ve made any progress. There’s no right answer, and no need to overthink it, just go with whatever pops into your mind.
Finally, you will go around the Tapping points repeating a phrase like, “This thing that happened.” In this case, unlike in most Tapping techniques, you actually DO NOT want to be more specific, you do not want to tune further into any emotions associated with the experience, and you don’t want to actually think about any of the details. Just make some reference to the thing that happened and Tap.
You may need to do several rounds of this kind of Tapping, stopping after each to see what your new guess for the intensity is. You should notice that eventually, when you guess again what the number might be IF you remembered some or all of the details of the event, your best guess goes down. You never want to try to force anything in Tapping, so if your number isn’t budging, that’s fine. Sometimes this very simple approach quickly helps. If not, you may need to try a different approach. Often, just switching to different language like, “This event has had a huge impact on my life and I’m scared to even think about it” as you Tap around the points will help, as you are understandably feeling something that needs to be acknowledged outright before your system will relax and you’ll start to feel safer to move forward.
If you’ve tried both of these linguistic approaches and given each one several rounds of Tapping to work but your best guess is still very high, then go no further. This is probably an experience you need help in addressing. However, if your guessed number is now between 1 and 3, you might want to allow yourself to just start imagining the very beginning of the scene and see what happens, giving yourself total license to stop and immediately open your eyes if you become uncomfortable. If your intensity is higher than you thought it would be, go back to the previous steps. However if the intensity really is manageable, now you can use another technique to work on resolving every little piece of it, and we’ll discuss how to do that next week.
Good luck with all of your Tapping efforts this week, and remember, if you ever come across anything that you’re too uncomfortable about, stop and take a break and come back to it later, work in smaller pieces, or just wait on that subject until you can get some help.
Ready for Your Shot?
Timing is tricky. In order to have a life that feels like it hums along and really works, it’s necessary to learn skills that help you to keep up with your goals and desires. You have to be reasonably ready for the opportunities you want when they come knocking, otherwise you don’t move forward. The challenge is that life is complex, with seemingly infinite numbers of moving parts to coordinate. It’s easy to be distracted and exhausted by less important factors before you invest your time and energy where you most want to—and that’s assuming you’ve been able to come to clarity on what you want in the first place.
Readiness requires work. I know this may not be what we all like to hear, but most of us don’t gain mastery at any skill set in a short period of time. It takes practice and the wisdom gained from experience over time to gain grounded confidence. Being willing to put in this work day after day, month after month, year after year, and so on, is a huge part of timing. “Overnight success” tends to happen to those who have done this unglamorous work in the background long before the spotlights and the acclaim showed up.
One of the most valuable skill sets that most of us don’t spend nearly enough time building is the constant acquisition of the knowledge and habits required to build and maintain our personal health and wellness, including physical fitness and vibrant energy as well as mental and emotional well being. You cannot excel when handed opportunities if you can’t get out of bed in the morning, right?
But the thing that probably frustrates humans more about timing than any other factor is the existence of all the elements we just can’t control. Earth is a pretty chaotic place, what with billions of people exercising free will to the best of their abilities all the time. Efforts to stand out, muster resources, find and team up with like-minded others, and keep all the basics of life spinning take a lot of doing. Sometimes external conditions seem prohibitive, or at least inhospitable. And when it seems like we’re not getting anywhere, we get frustrated.
We’ve all heard stories about people finding romance after long periods when such a thing seemed like it would never happen. Often, the timing of one or the other partner was such that they were in the midst of other occupations and not truly available until they finally came together. It may be that one or both seemed to wait forever, but eventually the waiting came to an end. Other areas of life are like this too. Sometimes the wait for the right conditions for success seems interminable and pointless. Yet if you fill your time as best you can, you are preparing for the moment that may yet arrive, even if well past your preferred due date.
Many things about life are mysterious. This may make us nuts, but we can never control everything—not even close! The best we can do is invest in ourselves and our goals, always learning and proceeding as best we can. There is no total certainty on this planet. We must manage our emotions around this if we wish to enjoy happiness despite never having absolutely everything we want. Because humans are pretty darn creative, it’s unlikely that you ever will. Learning to be ok with this and appreciate what you do have is at the core of allowing happiness in.
While you may feel that it’s hard to stand out among such a large population, the high number of others around you also offers you a high number of chances for collaboration. Sometimes finding the right partners or supporters makes all the difference in charting your course. As frustrating as it can be to wait for the right conditions for your success, you must keep going if you want it. Fill your downtime with friends, mental and emotional management techniques, fun, learning, and preparation, and when that chance arrives, you’ll be ready to latch onto it and make the very best of it. You can’t make timing work, but can make yourself ready—so do that! This is your part in supporting the magic of timing.
Ready, Set, Tap!
“When angry, count to four; when very angry, swear.”
Clients often ask me how long is the right amount of time to Tap when they’re on their own, and how they should approach it when they’re just getting started. As for the amount of time, I usually say, “However much time you have!” There’s really no wrong amount of time, unless your intent is to work on something with a big emotional charge—in that case, it’s best to give yourself plenty of time so you don’t feel rushed (and you may even want to get help with the process). But if you’re just looking to get some daily stress relief and manage emotions that come up over the course of your daily routine, then even a few minutes of Tapping can help you calm your body and your emotional state noticeably, so it never hurts to just do a round or two in the time you have.
One of the easiest techniques to use when you’re getting started with Tapping is the “Tap and rant” approach, in which there are really no rules, so you can just have fun with it. It works like this: You Tap your way around the points and vent everything that’s bothering you in no particular order. It really is that simple! I recommend that you pretend you’re talking to a sympathetic best friend who will relate to and be supportive of how you feel, and even enjoy the humor in any situation you’re describing. Initially what comes out of your mouth might sound very negative, with you complaining up, down, and sideways about any number of things, people, situations, etc. Usually we hold all of this in, and Tapping is a safe way to let it out without reinforcing the negativity; it’s designed to help you get those stuck feelings up and out so you can allow their intensity to dissipate. Note that this happens organically, and it cannot be forced, so it’s super important that as we Tap, we only say what really feels true. If we stick with it for a little while, generally the intensity just begins to subside on its own and our perspectives shift so that we can see things in a new light. Even if we only get a small amount of relief, it’s still a helpful way to spend a few minutes. Often when we have time to think about what’s bothering us, we tend to get upset about it all over again. With Tapping, we’re at least inching in the other direction!
As with all Tapping, it’s good to ask yourself before you start how intense what you’re about to work on feels. If it’s a general sense of stress and overwhelm, for instance, that’s fine. Give it a subjective number on a scale of zero to ten, where zero is no intensity and ten is the worst you could possibly imagine feeling. This way, after each round, you can take a deep breath, let it out, and ask yourself if the number has changed. When it does, you’ll get to feel how you made progress, and your confidence around Tapping will build. Sometimes, starting with a rant helps you to walk the perimeter of everything that’s on your mind, and map out what specific thing you might want to work on when you have more time. The best results through EFT generally happen when we’re getting specific and working patiently on that one specific thing until the intensity comes way down. However, in today’s busy world in this Information Age, many of us need a way to calm the too many thoughts that are rattling around in our heads all the livelong day before we can even focus enough to get specific about anything. That’s where a good rant comes in as a perfect place to start.
For many people, ranting and Tapping feels great once you’ve given yourself permission to actually voice the negative feelings you’ve been holding in. This becomes a whole lot of fun, and a huge relief. But every once in a while, I run across someone who finds it depressing rather than freeing to focus on the negative for too long. Remember how we don’t want to say anything that doesn’t feel true while Tapping? If this is you, you don’t have to dwell on the negative to the point where you don’t enjoy it; go ahead and acknowledge the negative, and then move to statements about how you’d like to feel differently. Even if you don’t know how or it doesn’t seem possible, just express willingness for these feelings to subside and Tap. That willingness puts you in a more receptive state, which helps the Tapping to work all the better.
There are lots of other more specific techniques under the umbrella of EFT, but for just a quick few rounds of Tapping, the rant can be a simple, easy way to go, especially when you’re first starting out and getting used to the whole idea of Tapping. Next time you have a few minutes where you won’t be overheard, and would like to bring a little more calm and sanity to your day, give it a try and see how it goes! Don’t be afraid to use colorful language and enjoy the process. You just might find that it becomes one of your favorite parts of your day!
What If I Can't Do It?
“A hero is someone who, in spite of weakness, doubt or not always knowing the answers, goes ahead and overcomes anyway.”
As we approach the last week of January, I bet you’ve noticed some (possibly pretty serious) resistance to continuing your actions toward your New Year’s resolutions or general 2019 goals. I wanted to chime in at this point and remind you that this is completely normal, and that no one who accomplishes anything requiring sustained effort is always certain that they will prevail. Uncertainty assails us all as we reach for more than we’ve accomplished in the past; only when we’ve proven that we can do something, usually repeatedly, does confidence really start to root. Those who succeed find a way to cope with the worry, uncertainty, and doubt and keep moving and adjusting, failing all the way forward if necessary.
While you may be able to hold onto your enthusiasm for a new project in the short run despite difficulties, as weeks and months wear on, it will be challenged. Below are some strategies for handling the inevitable . I hope they help you to envision how you will work through tougher times, but know that the possibilities are endless, and a chief part of your job as CEO of your life and your mission is to expand this list and figure out which strategies really hit the bullseye of what you need in the midst of challenge.
Have a statement of what you’re working toward and why, and read it multiple times per day. Be descriptive and really write out everything you expect to have and feel when you’ve accomplished your goal. When you read this, you should feel inspired and as though your mission is a wonderful expression of who you are. When you read it, do not give in to negative, detracting thoughts, but just remind yourself why you started this process and why you still want the goal
When something comes up that tempts you to just run screaming and give up, remind yourself that it’s ok and part of being human to get frustrated
Be prepared to tinker your way to new solutions that may be unique to you
On the other hand, be willing to learn from others who have covered similar ground, or parts of it—you never have to do anything without the benefit of wisdom from others, even if it’s just in the form of reading books on a topic somewhere in the realm of what you’re working on, or looking up how-to’s on technical instruction online
Practice taking care of yourself when the tough times rear their ugly heads. What really works for you when you’re feeling overwhelmed and disheartened?
Naps?
Baths?
Cooking a beautiful and at least partly healthy meal that you and others around you can enjoy?
Spending time with certain positive, loving, accepting people or pets who help you to feel seen for who you are at your core?
Spending some time on a creative, fun hobby that brings you joy?
Inspiring music or other forms of art that remind you of the better things about humanity, and who you are and wish to be?
Moving your body in ways you enjoy?
Hikes or walks in natural surroundings to get you outside in the air and sun?
Getting a massage or some acupuncture or visiting some other kind of professional healer-type person?
Talking out issues with a friend or therapist?
Finding a support group for whatever you might be experiencing?
Teaming up with someone else who may need help and support as they work on goals as well, or with a coach who can assist you with your process?
Finding ways to laugh more and bring some hilarity into your life (just not at yourself in a derogatory way, though)
Just trying something, anything, new in your leisure time to get out of a rut
Addressing your emotions specifically, with Tapping or something else that helps you express and move past difficult feelings and get back to creativity
Planning treats into your regular routine that don’t contradict your goals so you always have something to look forward to
Etc.!
It’s easy to think up ways in which you’d like to succeed, but often much harder to actually bring these to fruition. I hope you have an enjoyable time in reaching your goals this year, but if you struggle at any point, there’s absolutely nothing unusual about that, and it doesn’t mean you can’t get to the results you want. It just means you need to be crafty as you go up against your challenges and keep getting better at something related to your goals every week. The self-renewal piece absolutely counts, because it’s what will help you to sustain your resilience when everything seems like too much.
And now I’m taking my own advice and going to get ready to see a fantastic improv group in LA that made me and my companions laugh really hard last time we went. I’ve worked really hard this week and I deserve some downtime! What do you need at this moment, or what would be most helpful? That’s your job to figure out as you take action, receive feedback from the world, and regroup to surge forward again. No matter what you’re up against, you can find ways to keep moving toward your worthy goals in ever smarter and more effective ways. Striving toward things that are meaningful to you is part of what makes life worth it, so keep modifying your techniques and even your goals if you must, but don’t give up!
The Long, Slow Burn
“The difficult is what takes a little time; the impossible is what takes a little longer.”
Whatever the first weeks of 2019 have been like for you, and no matter what your goals are as you look ahead, I know without a doubt that there will be challenges in the cards for you. You probably know it too, and this knowledge can drive fears that may slow you down, confuse you, or just make the process of taking your daily actions a lot less fun. No one is immune from dreading issues that may arise, so we all need to find sources of inspiration to keep us going when things look drab, bleak, or otherwise not fun.
This week I wanted to share a great clip from motivational speaker Les Brown, who is full of wisdom and always entertaining. In this audio, he talks about how sometimes it takes so much longer than we want it to to get to our destination. Not only that, others may tell us that we’re getting nowhere fast, and we’re crazy to try. If you want that goal, you have to find ways to just keep at your efforts, knowing that there will be progress eventually. This may all sound fairly obvious, but I want you to hear his spin on this, because it’s memorable, and it may serve as one of those inspirations for you. If you don’t know his work, it may also give you someone else to follow for words of wisdom and inspiration, and most of us can use as many of these as we can get! Enjoy, and remember to Tap about and challenges that have already started to rear their heads in your path this year. We need both inspiration and learning, and constant acts of self-care in order to stay ready for our daily routines.
Pushing the Eject Button On Fear
“There is just one thing that makes your dream become impossible: the fear of failure.”
As we finish the first week of 2019, you may be fully invested in New Year’s resolutions; you may be already resisting yours; or perhaps you didn’t make them at all. Whatever you choose to do around this tradition, I believe that the most important thing is always to pursue your goals in a steady flow of self-acceptance, calmly learning and readjusting all along the way. If this sounds “soft” or unlikely to produce, that’s because we’ve all been so indoctrinated with the idea that we’re inherently lazy that we may think we have to ratchet ourselves up into a state of mania in order to make any progress; that we have to constantly channel our inner drill sergeant if we’re going to motivate ourselves; that nothing but constant a$$ kicking will get the job done.
Sadly, for most people, this is a terrible idea, born of an extremely cynical view of human nature and thousands of years of raw fear seeming to be the best life preserver in a harsh world. From a purely evolutionary standpoint, this idea may have served us well, but as modern humans we suddenly find ourselves in the opposite of our traditional state—rather than fighting the elements to survive on a daily basis, we now inhabit an overpopulated planet on which the most valuable skills are intellectual and social—the more able we are to learn quickly as technology changes, and to negotiate and de-escalate violence in favor of fair long-term solutions, the more equipped we are for life in today’s world. It turns out that turning harshness and shame on anyone, including ourselves, tends to foment anger and resentment. Inspiration and genuine excitement about creating a better future are exponentially more powerful as an engine for getting us up and going each day, and for moving us through blocks and setbacks that will arise in the course of any project; they also tend to naturally motivate others around us in positive ways without any additional effort, because enthusiasm is infectious!
One of the reasons people tend to resist working with specific goals is that they don’t feel up to dealing with disappointment—which, by the way, will be a part of any process. Sorry, but that’s life on this chaotic planet! Unfortunately, many of us learn from observing adults around us when we’re young that disappointment=impending failure and doom, and it means that we’re stupid/cursed/incapable, or whatever other counterproductive adjective may have been on the menu. The truth is that disappointment may come and go, but it doesn’t have to mean anything except that you’re still learning about how to succeed. Handling negative emotions as they arise, and moving on when you’ve absorbed the helpful message in the feedback you’ve received (and had a chance to rest and renew), is the name of the game. Anytime you take an underwhelming result as a referendum on who you are or what’s possible for you is when you begin a downward spiral that will cost you a lot of time and pain. Falling back into fear and harshness as a hard-wired self-preservation habit is understandable, since throughout so much of human history we didn’t have a lot of time or mental and emotional space in which to consider and practice the best ways to do things. Now, though, we have a lot more access to the higher mind, and we can choose to come off autopilot by noticing our self-talk, and how we’re feeling as we go about our days. Shining a light on our own patterns and being willing to address the ones that don’t serve us through Tapping or some other method that accelerates change will allow us to grow far more quickly and easily in the directions we choose for ourselves.
Whether you’ve made specific resolutions or not, remember that it’s rare for any project to speed forward to the finish line without impediments. One of the most valuable skill sets you can ever acquire is the discernment to note challenging emotions and the patience to follow a process that will resolve them, help you build experiential knowledge, and get yourself moving again. This skill set renders you basically unstoppable! On the other hand, if you don’t build it, you’ll keep repeating the same patterns over and over without understanding why you can’t ever seem to get out of a confusing loop you can’t even see. It sure can seem like there’s just something wrong with you if this is where you are, but that’s not it. You’re in the groove of some pretty ancient wiring that needs attention and replacement. It may not happen overnight, but you can change the way you operate and break out of the old, constrictive ruts. When you do, you’ll see the tendency to rail at yourself for your imperfections for what it is—an old, outdated habit that you can replace with far more effective and happiness-inducing mental software.
Welcome, 2019!
As we begin a new year, I decided to share a beautiful guest blog by my friend Lexi Soulios. I hope you’ll take in the energy of this blessing and return to it all year long when you need to feel refreshed (bookmark it for yourself if you’d like to do that). Enjoy, and I look forward to sharing all the blessings off 2019 with you!
GENTLE, LOVING BLESSINGS FOR YOU 💖
...as we leave the darkest days of the year behind.
✨ MAY YOU BE BOUNTIFUL in all things good and nourishing this year.
✨ May you see the support that's available and feel comfortable receiving, so that YOU CAN THRIVE.
🌿 May you remember each day to close your eyes and take a deeeeep breath...to fill your lungs with the MIRACLE OF *YOUR* LIFE.
✨ If fear and worry steal your ability to be in the present moment, may you realize that you are MORE THAN CAPABLE of handling any challenges you encounter.
✨ If shame weighs on your shoulders and caves in your chest, let your mind come upon a new curiosity about where that shame was born. YOU ARE GLORIOUS and GOOD and DESERVING OF SUNLIGHT ON YOUR FACE!
✨ If you often work to suppress an ever-present anger, please know that healthy anger CREATES NEEDED BOUNDARIES and PROTECTS LOVED ONES. If you have more anger than you can handle, may you notice if you’re carrying anger on behalf of someone else—and be able to give it back to them. (It’s theirs to handle.)
🌿 For every day that you step your feet onto our precious earth, may you feel your DIVINE RIGHT TO EXIST, to be exactly who you are, exactly where you are.
✨ May your world reflect back to you all the ways YOU ARE WANTED AND LOVED. 💗
✨ May you FEEL WORTHY and KNOW YOUR OWN VALUE.
✨ If you're calling in a new job, a new home, a new assistant, a new partner...may you realize that this person or situation you are praying for is praying for YOU too. 🙏🏼
YOU ARE THE ANSWER TO OTHER PEOPLE'S PRAYERS.
Every characteristic that is *uniquely you* is *uniquely right* for where you’re meant to be and who you’re meant to be with.
🌾 If you feel absolutely stuck and unable to move forward in the way you want, may you realize that every block in the way (of your wealth, your ideal partnership, your peace of mind, your joy) is not as formidable as it may seem.
BLOCKS CAN BE BROKEN DOWN INTO SMALLER BITS AND CLEARED.
🍃 May patterns of overwork, over-responsibility and over-giving disintegrate, and a more HARMONIOUS FLOW of give-and-take and BALANCE BE RESTORED in your field.
🌺 MAY YOU ALWAYS BE BLESSED with physical comforts, genuine connection, and plenty of sacred time for quiet and rest.
☀️ As the light returns to our hemisphere once again...
may your JOY GROW,
your PEACE OF MIND COME TO STAY,
and your HOPEFULNESS EXPAND INTO VISIONS OF THE ENDLESS POSSIBILITIES before you. 🌅
Wishing you and all your loved ones a wonderfully auspicious start to 2019.
Life's Too Short for Beige
“The word ‘courage,’ one of my favorite words, the root or the etymology of that word is ‘cour,’ which means heart. I think true courage is actually following your heart and not getting or succumbing to what other people’s definition of what your life should be. Live your life.”
We all have choices to make in the items we surround ourselves with—furniture, decor, clothing, tools, etc., and these impact us on a daily basis. When you’re in a moment of choice, what if you took an extra moment, an extra breath, and asked yourself whether there’s an equivalent item that would please you more because it has a feature you’d enjoy, such as color, texture, or additional functionality? What if you only chose to bring things into your daily experience if you felt great about doing so? What if you knew that everything you touched during the course of your day was the result of the best, most supportive choice you could have made at the time, and you could enjoy interacting with it as a gift from your earlier self?
Time and technology march on, and your things may wear out and need to be replaced. Nothing, no matter how great, is ever the ultimate anything. Not to mention that looking to things to supply happiness is not an effective strategy, as happiness comes mostly from within. Too much emphasis on the potential of things to solve all our problems is unrealistic. However, human beings embody an evolutionary dynamic, meaning that we seem to always be driven collectively toward learning, growth, and progress. We also tend to enjoy expressing our evolving preferences, both personally and collectively, in our life choices. There is definitely joy to be found in choosing what is beautiful, supportive, and in alignment with your truth. Why not incorporate conscious thought about this so that you’re getting the best return on your effort wherever possible?
Note that I’m not suggesting that it needs to take a lot of money to do this. Personally, I’m a practiced denizen of thrift stores and buy/sell/trade Web sites, because they help make my resources go farther. And for example, something small that has recently improved my daily experience quite noticeably is the installation of dimmer switches in the bathroom and bedroom so that we can wake up to gentler light rather than blinding a morning stupor right out of the gate! This was not expensive, but it’s a really lovely change that makes our early mornings a gentler, more enjoyable experience.
Another example is that I personally have a conscientious objection to beige. I just hate it; for me, it’s the embodiment of drabness and depressing lack of creativity. “But I love it,” you might be thinking! “It’s a restful, serene neutral color!” To which I say, good for you. Whatever floats your boat. I just won’t ever be painting it on my walls, because I’m into bright, rich colors that delight my particular eyeballs. It’s about making choices that look, feel, taste, smell, and sound inspiring to you. Usually, choosing your favorite color won’t cost you any more. I encourage you to insist on it.
Making small choices that will bring you a focus for your gratitude is an excellent policy. If you find that you’ve got items you’re not enjoying, see if you can donate, sell or trade them in favor of things that are a better fit for you. When you make future choices, take that extra moment to ask yourself whether this item is the best you can do right now (and apply just a little patience if not). This alone can help your creativity rise and supply other options. Be you, and honor what you truly enjoy. After all, life is too short and precious to waste on blah!
Dream or Dread?
“I have a new philosophy. I’m only going to dread one day at a time.”
Have you ever noticed that when you’re afraid of or dreading an event or confrontation, you rehearse it going negatively in your head many times beforehand? (Holiday dinner with crazy uncle Fred, for example!) You may not do this in every case, but I bet this pattern is familiar to you, because we all do it sometimes! Unfortunately, for numerous reasons, it’s not the best strategy if you want to set yourself up for success.
First, the emotional reasons. Imagining that the experience will go poorly, everything will fall apart, and you can’t win is likely to just fuel your dread of the event until you’re really miserable—not just about this, but about anything similar that happened in the past and that you’re afraid of recreating. This starts you rolling with a pervasive bad mood, which is likely to send you into a tailspin if anything else happens to annoy you; it may color your world through grunge-colored glasses so that it’s hard to enjoy the things that are genuinely good in your life. No one really wants to feel bad, but we create and exacerbate bad moods with our mental habits because we’re struggling with something we don’t see how to solve. Because we’re encountering things that are challenging. Because we’re used to treading subconscious grooves that we may not be aware are even there.
Physically, these unpleasant emotions create chemicals in your body—stress hormones and others—that cause a chain reaction, making it hard for you to do basic, necessary things (that the body can place on hold in an emergency) like digesting your food and thinking logically. Studies show that whether you’re a single cell or a human, you can’t be in defense mode and constructive/healing mode at the same time. Essentially, undue stress incapacitates you for everything but immediate self-preservation functions.
Which brings us to the mind. Brain science shows us that the more time you spend practicing something, the more robust your supporting neural pathways become. Your brain becomes habituated to doing that thing, so that’s it’s comfortable, easy, and likely in the future. It’s then a path of least resistance. This is helpful when what you’ve practiced is a positive skill or habit, but not so great when it’s your propensity to imagine and expect the worst. By the time the event you’ve been dreading happens, you’re primed to see and contribute to the worst result with your own expectations and actions. Even if it goes better than expected, you may come away from it with a sour taste in your mouth because of all the negative buildup and your tendency to be in the groove of those feelings you practiced so many times over before the scene ever unfolded.
Fortunately, this is just a bad habit that we tend to run without realizing we have a choice in the matter. We can choose to circumvent it and all of its dubious consequences with better choices, and achieve better results. First, we need to become determined to notice when we’re starting to project negative results. This may be challenging, but it gets easier with just a little practice. If you check in with yourself numerous times each day and become aware of your emotional states, chances are you’ll start to catch yourself rehearsing cycles of dread. You can remind yourself to do this in any number of ways, such as sticky notes, calendar reminders, phone alarms, etc. Eventually, you’ll catch yourself a lot faster and be able to arrest the pattern before it really takes hold, knowing that this worry won’t help you, and you need a better strategy.
You then have choices. The goal of meditation is often to rehearse a calm, neutral state so that it’s more natural to live without prejudgments, automatic emotional triggers, or preoccupations that block us from seeing what’s actually happening in each moment. You can shoot to come to each situation with a neutral, open, curious “beginner’s mind.” This is great for staying open to all of your creativity and capacity, and at the very least not making a challenging situation worse than it needs to be. Or, if you’re pretty good at keeping your cool already, you can shoot even higher and make your goal to actively improve your situation through intending the best possible experience for everyone, leading to the best long-term results for the world. When this is your intention, you may find yourself realizing as you rehearse that you need better skills and some help preparing for your challenge—but also feeling motivated to find what you need to grow into the person who can sail through the challenge with excellence rather than just skating by without disaster. Either of these choices is better than what you’re doing when you’re mindlessly worrying about the situation! Whichever you’re going to work with, you can then substitute imagining your upcoming challenge going easily and well using one of these two focuses.
These ideas may sound simple and relatively easy to implement, but they can be surprisingly tricky to habituate yourself to. There’s a lot that we do mentally on autopilot, so it really takes some effort to change your mental habits effectively in a global way. I encourage you to work on it anyway, because this effort pays better returns in the coin of happiness than most of the ways you could be spending your time. And, of course, when you find that you’re really stuck on a situation, don’t forget to Tap to reduce your fears, frustrations, and limited thinking around it. The mind can do a lot, but you can’t think yourself out of all your emotions and concerns. Sometimes you need direct intervention that aligns the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual parts of you in the face of difficulty. When you use all the tools you have and stick with it, you’ll find that you make progress, and over time, you gain confidence that you can handle more challenging situations, which reduces your overall stress.