So Much Happier Blog
"Stuff" That's Not Yours
“When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but creatures of emotion.”
Unless you’re a hermit on a mountaintop, you have to deal with the ups and downs of the other people in your life, and surrounding you on this planet. Doing so is one of the biggest long-term challenges we face. I mean, imagine if everyone else in the world was completely at peace, and all you had to worry about was your own thoughts, emotions, and projects! Life would surely be a lot simpler! Come to think of it, that’s a pretty nice fantasy that might rank up there with an endless beach vacation. But it sure isn’t the life we live.
In reality, all the people around us are striving and often struggling with plenty of their own challenges. They’ve built up a lifetime of experiences that influence them in the present. They are working through confusion and old, unprocessed emotions just as we are. Even if they’re all doing their utter best, being around them won’t always be easy. You know how sometimes you can walk into a room and just feel immediately that there’s a dangerous charge in the air? Or take one look at someone’s face and realize that you’ve landed in the middle of a whole situation not of your making? Uh oh. Now what do you do?
There are, of course, many ways to react to someone else’s outpouring of emotion. Many of them are not terribly helpful, and you’ve probably tried and failed enough in this arena to know exactly what I mean. Sometimes it seems like you just can’t win around others’ big emotions! The good news is that, the more you do your own work on how you feel about your own old stuff, the easier it is not to be inappropriately drawn into other people’s emotions about theirs. It’s not that you’ll lose your ability to be compassionate, and offer that person empathy regarding their situation, but you won’t be automatically dragged down by what they’re experiencing. This is much better for everyone. You won’t be exhausted by reflexively getting upset whenever someone around you is; you’ll also stay more resourceful when someone else is in need. They can go through their own experiences while having someone more stable in the room, who can better support them for not having metaphorically jumped into the hole with them. Everything becomes a bit easier when you can be calmer. When you don’t immediately get upset around someone emotional, you have a lot more leeway to find better options for responding.
The best way I’ve ever found to de-fang our knee-jerk responses to others’ emotional overwhelm is to use Tapping to work on past events from our lives that still rankle and form the stuff of our greatest regrets and resentments. We all make mistakes, and so do the people who have come into contact with us at every point in our lives. Even someone who has lived the tamest possible life will have collected some unfortunate, hurtful experiences. Some people will have many more. Tapping doesn’t erase bad memories, but it does make them a lot less painful, and it also helps us to put them into healthier context. This, in turn, makes it easier to understand and forgive the others involved so that we can feel free of limitations that came into being as a direct result of those experiences.
You’re always going to be aware of other people’s emotional stuff, but you can build your ability not to be too distressed by someone else’s emotional state when it has little or nothing to do with you. People who are addicted to drama might not like your new, calmer demeanor, but only you get to decide what level of emotional involvement is right and balanced for you in any situation. As long as you’re still able to offer sympathy and caring, most people will appreciate your ability to remain grounded and open rather than reactive around their emotions. This frees them to feel as they do without worrying that you are very negatively impacted, and outbursts become easier for everyone to deal with and recover from. When we fear emotions less, they can become the useful signposts they are meant to be, and we can all live more balanced lives together.
Remembering to Tap
“All the things that are worth doing take time. ”
Do you “forget” to Tap? I have noticed that, even when someone has become aware of the usefulness of a tool such as Tapping, s/he is likely to remain resistant to using it consistently. While there may be many reasons for this (the pace of modern life, which makes it hard to find time for new endeavors; the fact that new habits take time to take hold; a societal notion that devoting time to self-care is profoundly selfish; etc.), I think one of the most limiting reasons is the human tendency to resist anything unpleasant—and emotions are often initially unpleasant. In fact, that’s part of their most basic value! They pack a punch! They have the power to get our attention, flagging us down when our own values are being violated to an unacceptable extent. We could be using them as an early warning signal that some action is appropriate, decide what needs to be done, and do it. It’s so simple, really. Instead, we’ve been miseducated to revile, deny and stuff down any hint of normal emotion until it builds up and explodes, or slowly, silently contributes to the development of long-term illness. Not exactly the stuff of genius.
It’s true that in order to work with your emotions, it’s necessary to become conscious of them. You don’t have to dive in and wallow, but you do need to allow awareness of your emotions to rise to the level of your conscious mind. In doing so, you will experience some discomfort. But you experience emotional discomfort anyway in the course of a normal day—you just don’t normally make room to address emotions when they arise within a constructive framework. When you intentionally open a path for your emotions to communicate with you, and then Tap through what shows up, you relieve any building pressure, free up previously trapped energy for more useful purposes, and gain clarity on what you want and how you might create it.
Back to the initial discomfort of actually allowing yourself to feel your emotions, then. When you start your Tapping process, you may need to just acknowledge that you’re not enjoying yourself. It’s ok to start with something like, “I hate this,” or “I feel selfish,” or “I feel ridiculous.” Once you get going, you should find that the emotions you’re working on reduce in intensity until it’s more of a relief to Tap on them. Instead of waiting until they’re debilitating, you’ll find yourself more drawn to early intervention. With practice, you’ll build confidence that when you take a little time for Tapping, the initial rush of emotion you uncover will soon become a source of helpful insights, and wane to more manageable levels.
When you know that you’re not powerless in the face of your more difficult emotions, working with them becomes, if not a pleasure, at least a far more fulfilling part of your life. Even if I know that I’m about to choose an experience in which I’m going to need to rant and rave, or cry, or realize my own misdeeds while I Tap, I would prefer to regularly do that than to bottle everything up to avoid these moments. I’ve learned to look forward to the catharsis and the calm I experience afterward, as well as the physical relaxation that replaces the stress and tension of avoidance. Not to mention my evolution toward a calmer, more resourceful resting state, which allows me to live my daily life without such wild swings of unnecessarily loud emotion.
If you’ve been reading for a while, and you still avoid Tapping, ask yourself why. Whatever your reason, I promise that it’s Tappable! Start with that, and when you’ve reduced it, pick something else that’s bothering you and Tap away. So much more calmness and peace await you!
Too...Much...Information!
“It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information.”
One of the most challenging things about being alive at this time in history is the fire hose of information and pure distraction that we’re all drinking from every day. The sheer number of advertisements we’re bombarded with everywhere we look and listen can make it hard to direct our own attention for very long. If you have goals and important projects underway, this can be a problem! Without focused, sustained time spent on your highest priorities, you’re not likely to make much progress. You need energy, willpower, and all of your creative faculties to keep pushing forward, and the endless firehose will erode all three if you’re not careful.
Studies have shown that we have a limited amount of willpower each day. If you’re burning through yours on evaluating everything the world at large wants you to pay attention to each day, you’re leaving less willpower for yourself. This is why having an information policy for yourself is crucial to your long-term success. You do, in fact, have the power to decide and enforce such a policy. You do not have an obligation to spend your time sifting through a bunch of unsolicited muck when what you really need is time for your own plans. You don’t have to be rude to anyone, but you do need to be clear and firm with those who want your time and give you nothing you want in return.
So why don’t you set these boundaries already (assuming you’re not already perfect at this)? Are you afraid people will be mad at you? Afraid you’ll miss out on something important? Always in search of shiny new adventures? Spare a thought for why you are where you are with the flow of information and distraction in your life and see if you can gain some clarity. Once you see what’s going on for you, think about what you can do about it. Here are a few things you may need to do to come into balance with your environment and improve your focus on areas of your choosing:
Practice saying a firm, but polite no. There are few things as empowering as becoming an expert at this! What if you were able to do so with a smile, a light heart, and an expression of gratitude for an opportunity you’re not choosing—and no internal conflict. It is possible. Just practice! And remember that it’s ok to enjoy, even revel in, your power to choose your path in life. This is a privilege, and your building a life you love, focused on things you’re passionate about, will bless many others, not just you. It will also light the way for others to do the same.
Decide when you will check your phone/e-mail, and make sure you allow for enough time in between for you to sink into tasks and actually get things done. Put your phone on silent and out of sight during this time so it’s not a distraction, and minimize your e-mail if you’re on a computer. If you listen to music while you work, find a way to make it ad free.
Schedule the most important work of your day early, whether that’s exercising, meal planning, or a work proposal that needs to represent you at the top of your game. Then, as you use up your willpower, you’ll be doing so where it counts and not on a bunch of random stuff thrown at you by strangers.
Schedule time for browsing through information that’s relevant to your life, or just enjoyable, toward the end of your day, when you’ve accomplished important daily goals. If you need help limiting this time, set an alarm when you start and have a plan for what you’ll do next when the alarm goes off. Automation can really help in the later part of your day when your willpower is in tatters!
Minimize unnecessary decision making by planning meals ahead. See if you can find other decision processes to streamline as well.
If you’re afraid of missing things, see if you can brainstorm a way to share tasks with others. Maybe you can each keep an eye on a separate area and share anything important that arises with the others. Specialization is necessary when it’s impossible for any one person to stay on top of everything alone.
These are just a few ideas. How else might you manage the flow of information in your life and foster your ability and your inclination to focus? This is a lifelong process, so just work to notice where you could make new choices and gain some traction for your priorities. And don’t forget to share anything you come up with in the comments below!
The Limits of Logic
“If your emotional abilities aren’t in hand, if you don’t have self-awareness, if you are not able to manage your distressing emotions, if you can’t have empathy and have effective relationships, then no matter how smart you are, you are not going to get very far.”
I talk a lot about emotions in these blogs (mostly because they constitute a maligned and often forcibly ignored area of human functioning), but since there’s a highly symbiotic relationship between thoughts and emotions, it’s important to note the role of the mind in working on emotions. I remember the first time I encountered the assertion that thoughts come before and cause emotions. It was an intriguing idea, and one that I have found to be mostly true in practice.
It’s not always this simple—for example, when you lose a loved one, what causes pain is mostly the thought of separation from that person, and possibly thoughts about what seems left undone between you, but there can be a very physical component. Physical touch creates soothing, “happy” chemicals to be produced in the body. If this was someone you lived in close proximity with, the loss of daily physical touch as well as the ease of access to a supportive relationship can also be powerful factors in how you feel.
Even so, the mind does have a great deal of useful power that can be harnessed when your goal is to clear old emotions from your system and stop generating so many of the “difficult” emotions that result from our minds engaging in negative thought loops. For instance, if you decide to watch for and consciously stop yourself from indulging when you notice that you’re harping on negative, destructive, or hostile thoughts, you’ll notice two things: One, that this is way harder than you thought it would be, and two, that when you do this throughout the day, you do actually feel better and have more energy.
Note that the goal is not to stop feeling emotions—they serve useful purposes, the most obvious of which is to jolt us, in a way that’s difficult to ignore, into noticing when a situation needs our attention. When anger rises in response to a situation, this generally tells us that we perceive an injustice or threat here that we need to get ready for or find a way to right once it has occurred. We may need to apply strategy, communication skills that need to be practiced, and set boundaries or enforce them. This is another place where the mind can kick in and help. Its job is not to “silence” the emotion, but to assist in the creation of a strategy once you’ve understood what the emotion has to say. The mind can remember past strategies that worked for you and others, as well as the Tapping techniques that you can use to deescalate your emotional responses once you no longer need them as signposts!
It is also not the mind’s job to “figure out” the emotions and what they mean. If you try to stand distant from your emotions and never engage them, your mind will try to solve everything on its own. This is partly because this is what it does—it always thinks it knows best—and partly because we’ve been taught to rely heavily on it. In most developed countries, the value of the mind is emphasized over all other parts of the self; mental intelligence and computations, logical, linear thinking, and precise memory are prized as the highest and best abilities to which humans should aspire. While the mind is immensely powerful, as my partner Andrew likes to put it, it’s not the right tool for every job! It can be great at processing a vast amount of information and distilling it down to a useful result using the filters you have in place. You may be aware of many of these filters, such as the values and beliefs you would use as examples of what’s important to you. There are also filters of which you are less aware—those held in place by your subconscious because of events and messages you don’t even remember. The mind uses its power within this framework. As with a computer, when you don’t like its results, you need to consider the underlying code, and the limitations of the system.
Only by entering the world of symbol and engaging with our emotions can we access their most comprehensive messages in ways that are suited to us. When we allow ourselves to actually feel our emotions, we can find connections to past events that would not have been evident through pure logic. We might suddenly perceive how a current situation feels the way it does because of something that happened in childhood that felt very similar. Realizing this gives us a chance to do the work of healing old trauma so that it doesn’t have to dictate our future. It allows us to think through the ways in which this situation, and we ourselves, are not the same as the past situation and person. The “past you” probably didn’t have the knowledge, experience, and resources at her fingertips that you now have.
Once you feel vividly what would need to change for you to handle your current situation better, the mind can help you hone the plan to create space for the healing you need, and fill in gaps in your resources. It helps to give it very specific tasks, though! Instead of asking an extremely open-ended question like, “How can I get what I want,” it may work better to add conditions, such as, “How can I get my money back from this chronic cheater in a way that will succeed but still allow me to feel good about myself and stay out of trouble with the law?” If you ask an open-ended question, the mind will usually spit out an answer very quickly, but it’s likely to be a bad solution that may leave you feeling judged and cornered. Even if you did add conditions, you may need to keep adding new ones when you see the flaws in what your mind initially suggests.
By identifying the valuable, unique function of the emotions, and knowing the limits of the mind in comprehending them and their non-linear messages, we clarify what is needed in each moment. Is this a time for checking in with the emotions about what is needed in a deep sense, or is this just a time to add conditions in order to refine a plan? Try to notice the difference this week and see if this clarifies your tasks.
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.
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, 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!
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.
Your Grateful Presence
“Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.”
In the U.S., last week we celebrated Thanksgiving, a holiday entwined with the seasonal return of nature’s harvest and plenty. Generally, we congregate with family and friends and eat way too much. We have leftovers for days. It’s a lot of fun if you like that sort of thing! The underlying meaning of the thing may be getting a bit lost in the holiday trappings, though, so this week I decided to slow down the view to make sure we don’t just blow right past it.
Nowadays most of us don’t farm our own produce, so we’re not focused, out of self-preservation, on minute natural rhythms the way humans have been throughout recent history. It’s easy to work oneself into a pace at which such things seem to fade into an irrelevant background blur, and the time of year barely enters the picture. Yet, leaving behind our ability to notice and relish the delights of each season removes a powerful tool for grounding, presence in the moment, and pure enjoyment. When we pretend that it doesn’t matter that this planet and its cycles are the backdrop for our experiences, we’re not fully here, and time can pass with a monotony that flattens out what can be most zestful about being alive. The enticing, mysterious, unique fragrances you encounter when hiking a trail at various times of year, for instance. A bright, clear blue sky, or one filled with clouds that sunshine occasionally streaks through in a burst of rays. The singing of birds and insects only present for a time. The arresting invigoration of a cold snap versus the soothing warmth of a summer breeze. Life is not only about technology! It’s also about being a physical, sensual being.
Our relationships with others can often pull us down to earth as well, reminding us to feel grateful for what’s good. Others surprise, delight, and challenge us in ways that will always keep life interesting. These interactions stir things up and keep us reaching for greater joys and better solutions. No one alone can produce a harvest as spectacular as one created in cooperation with worthy partners. Even poor interactions with others remind us of who we do and don’t want to be, which can spur us onward if we keep moving.
As long as you’re not in a life-and-death situation, it’s never a bad time to look around and notice what is unique to this moment. What’s going on in the outdoors today? What weather will you be dressing for, and what can you notice about it rather than completely avoiding its features? What kinds of fun have you had, or could you have, in it? What fruits and vegetables are in season, and how can you enjoy them right now? Who are you most grateful for and how can you express your feelings to them? Who is it that you can’t stand, and what does this have to teach you of tolerance or the courage to act?
By endeavoring to find gratitude throughout the year, even in the bleaker times, we fan the flames of inspiration. We practice awareness of our environment, which helps us to unlock opportunities we otherwise wouldn’t notice. We practice happiness, which can be a result of a diverse skill set and good old-fashioned effort and focus, not just of things going our way. We help others around us to enjoy the fruits of harvesting the moment and what it can offer us rather than only lamenting what is absent. When we do this, we can feel richer without much in our circumstances changing, and this is a kind of power that, in turn, can change everything.
Your Line in the Sand
“Daring to set boundaries is about having the courage to love ourselves, even when we risk disappointing others.”
Most people know that it’s supposedly a good thing to set up appropriate boundaries in relationships, but setting them, and more importantly policing them, can seem like a bewildering process in which all targets are constantly moving. Becoming comfortable with communicating your boundaries ultimately takes self-knowledge and confidence, as well as discipline and faith. This can all seem like a pretty tall order! Since every one of us is different, we can learn from each other, but mastery only comes with practice in listening to our inner indicators on how much is too much of anything. Our emotions are a huge portion of these indicators, and we ignore them at our peril. If we don’t receive and act on their messages, relationships crumble. The pursuit of balance within relationships may be laborious work, but the creation of it is an essential element of any real peace and happiness.
A lot of people who are empathetic find it difficult to say no, either because they’re afraid of conflict, or because they just prefer to make others happy whenever possible because it’s more fulfilling—a noble goal. Of course, too much investment in making others happy (needing positive outcomes too much) usually ends up yielding annoyance in you and everyone around you. Neediness is not much fun to experience from any angle. If you need an outcome that is not within your control, your happiness will always be at the mercy of others and of fate, and you will always feel like a victim to some extent. On the other hand, when someone comes at you with a great deal of need about something, you might feel an overwhelming sense that they are trying to manipulate you, or that if you say no you’ll be proving that you’re a bad person…after all, this person NEEDS something you might be able to give or contribute to. The values fostered by one’s religious and cultural influences can amplify the discomfort by teaching us that we should always give to someone in need. Yet, obviously, one person can never be all things to all people, especially on a planet with billions of other people on it. It would be possible to very quickly over-give to the point of the annihilation of your energy and physical resources, which would not be at all helpful to anyone in the long run. This is what setting boundaries is all about.
I read an interesting article once about Mother Teresa that revealed her personal struggles. Despite being a massively inspiring presence on the world stage, demonstrating selfless love and compassion in the extreme for the poor and needy over a lifetime of religious service, and cutting a truly saintly figure, she apparently quietly battled depression for decades. Now, there can obviously be many contributing factors when someone is affected by clinical depression, including chemical issues that may be independent of the effects of mental, emotional, and spiritual life experiences. However, there is a growing understanding that, most often, there are strong experiential factors that go into creating someone’s depression. I personally don’t find it at all surprising that someone who worked tirelessly amid the most unfortunate people, in the most poverty-stricken areas, having taken personal vows of poverty and service, might have gotten pretty burned out emotionally from seeing all that suffering. I have to wonder if she took breaks. I wonder if she had sympathetic friends to laugh with sometimes to keep from constantly and solely mourning over what she saw on a daily basis. I wonder if she sought the help she needed. Even someone saintly is still in a human body, having a human experience, and subject to human emotions that need to be managed.
Most of us are not so saintly. We’re just normal humans living our lives and trying to make something good come of them. I’m not saying that we can’t do great things, but first, I think we need to understand the importance of sustaining ourselves. We need to learn how to operate our bodies sensibly so that we have a chance at health and stable moods. We need to learn to observe and learn from our experiences so that we can gain enough maturity to go beyond merely surviving. We need to learn that both caring for ourselves and caring for others are necessary if we want to be powerful sources of good. And we need to learn that without bringing rejuvenating and joyful experiences into our everyday experience, we will quickly become depleted, desperate, and even dangerous individuals.
When you can successfully cultivate your own overall balance, then it becomes easier to understand how much you can give to others before you need to retreat and renew. It becomes easier to notice which kinds of service to others are so much fun that you can happily do them all day long, and which kinds you come to dread because your strengths and weaknesses make you unsuitable for them. From a place of balance, it’s easier to admit what kind of tool you are and where you can be of most use rather than trying to prove that you can do absolutely whatever is asked of you at all times. And it’s easier to notice when something is making you uncomfortable because it’s going against your most important personal values, which will drain you very quickly every time.
Here are some recommendations for growing your capacity to set and insist on the honoring of your personal boundaries:
Learn to pay close attention to your emotions. They are one of your best indicators of how much you can currently handle. You can practice stretching your comfort zone over time, but if you do too much too fast without building in recovery, you’re likely to fold.
Make working on the quality of your nutrition, sleep, and exercise a non-negotiable part of every day. No two days are the same, so you’ll always be adjusting, and there’s no need to be a perfectionist, just don’t ignore these basics.
If saying no is hard for you, practice, practice, practice. Start with strangers if that’s easier. When you can execute a simple, cheerful “No thank you” response to random requests at will (when appropriate), you can start replicating that in higher-stakes relationships through more practice.
When your “no” affects others, it will be appropriate to give a short explanation, compassionate to both yourself and the other, about why this is your answer. Still, firmness is your goal. Being honest about what you can actually handle will serve everyone better than your saying yes and then collapsing midstream.
Cultivate friends with whom you can discuss the confusing situations that arise in life. No one should have to go it alone, and seeking other viewpoints can often help us make far better decisions than we could have arrived at alone.
Keep in mind that in order to have the space to give what you most want to, you have to keep yourself from always being so full up that you just can’t take on one more opportunity, no matter how perfect a match it seems for you.
Know that while you must take responsibility for yourself and your own actions because you’re the only one who can, you can’t take responsibility for everyone and everything else. Not knowing your boundaries amounts to hubris. Everyone else has a part to play too, so let them, and encourage them to seek their own balance.
Celebrate often both what you are able to give to others, and the ways in which you give to yourself. Allow yourself time to rest and play, then do it all again.
Practice Makes Progress
“Pessimism leads to weakness, optimism to power.”
This week, I came across an interesting article that speaks to our growing understanding of neural plasticity, or the brain’s ability to change and grow all throughout the course of a human life. So much for the difficulties of teaching old “dogs” new tricks! If you’re using the old standard line, “This is just how I am,” to justify a lack of effort to become who you wish to be, take heart—with some attention and effort, you can actually change habits and outcomes. In fact, there are a lot of interesting nuggets in this article, each one of which is worthy of note, but I wanted to call your attention specifically to the greater efficacy of happy people, and to your ability to move in the direction of greater happiness through simple practice.
Take a romp through this resource when you have a moment, and feel free to leave a comment about what you find most interesting, or what you’re going to do to start changing negative mental habits that drag down your efficacy. You don’t have to be perfect right away, just pick something to work on and start!
Becoming Your Own Ultimate Pit Crew
“Genius is the ability to renew one’s emotions in daily experience.”
The world is filled with a whole lot of stuff that I bet you think is not ideal, to say the least. Things you can’t stand, things that make no sense, things that are unjust, stupid, and hurtful to you. How do I know? Because it’s the same for all of us. We live on a planet of incredible diversity, conflicting forces, and even chaos. The upside is that we have a lot of opportunity to experience an astonishing range of experiences. The downside is that many of those will not be pleasant.
One of the greatest challenges of coping with such variety and unpleasantness is in preserving your energy in the face of all the friction between you and the world around you. Experiencing continual conflict can be, and often is, exhausting for many of the people I work with. Feeling chronically depleted is demoralizing, and life can seem to devolve into nothing but a disappointing slog if we don’t find ways to preserve and rejuvenate our energy. We all want to feel alive, vital, and enthusiastic about life. How do we get there when we’re challenged so often?
Here are a few of my essential tips for preserving your vital life energy for the things and people you care about most:
Address your emotional realities before they snowball into giant, flashing, wailing signs that you need to pay attention. Suppressing emotion uses a ton of energy that is far better used elsewhere. Allow yourself to consider what that emotion is there to tell you, and then take steps to allow yourself to resolve the emotion for the time being (hint: Tap!) Note that this NOT the last time you’ll feel this emotion, because you will inevitable get off balance again! That’s life. But being able to calm yourself, get the message, and heal so you can move on is priceless. Finally, make new plans about changing the situation that gave rise to the emotion, or your reaction to it, in some way. This is how progress happens—through human beings exhibiting the courage to make new decisions and try new things.
Think about your thoughts, the stories you tell yourself, and start noticing the ways in which the ones you think most often aren’t serving you. You can change these. Perhaps not overnight, but more quickly than you might think once you decide to become aware of them and start working to consciously shift them. Our thoughts feed us constant, powerful messages about what’s possible for us. If you allow your stories to be of a negative and limiting variety, it will be difficult to find the energy to make good decisions and take effective action. Tapping can be a tremendous help here too in speeding the process of changing beliefs that have been created by your life experience.
Take care of your physical needs. Sleep, move your body, and keep working toward a more nutritious and less junk-foodie diet. There’s no way around these if you want sustained energy, vitality, and stable moods (which, all together, increase your capacity for achievement and living your greatness). Period.
Get clear on what’s important and most inspiring to you, and remind yourself of these priorities daily. If your life doesn’t feel meaningful, you’ll struggle with energy as surely as if you were sleeping and eating poorly. Humans are designed to express their talents and preferences in constructive ways. If you don’t, you won’t be able to muster enthusiasm for life.
Most of these actions don’t take a lot of time, just some thought and planning. You must carve out time for all of them regularly, though. As soon as you start dropping the ball on these, you’re starting a downward spiral that makes it extremely difficult to meet life’s many challenges with the grace under pressure that helps you preserve choices and create the best results. What we want is to be in a zone in which challenge doesn’t feel like a major assault, just the normal friction (from which you know how to recover) of living life in a world not entirely of your making. With some daily attention to these essentials, this is firmly within your grasp.