How to Use Your Emotions to Change Your Life, part 1
Today I am delighted to start giving you something here I’ve been wanting to share for months! This is the first segment in a series of posts about an amazing personal growth tool that can make a huge difference in your life, without having to buy anything, using only your own mind, body, and energy!
It’s called Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT). You may have read about it on my Methods page, or heard about it elsewhere. It’s an Energy Psychology process that has gained a lot of popularity in the last few years, and I have personally found it incredibly powerful in my healing and coaching work and in my own growth. While it is helpful and sometimes crucial to have a coach, you can absolutely do this on your own to heal, learn, and grow in any area of your life!
Why you want to know how to do this for yourself:
Unless you are a rare individual who has already learned how to harness your emotional energy to enhance your life, you probably routinely get taken over by negative thoughts and emotional reactions to all kinds of situations.
*Your partner or boss criticizes you, and you feel angry or hurt.
*You want to attract something or someone into your life and don’t think you’ll ever get it, so you feel sad or disheartened.
*You're always hurting or sick or exhausted and can't seem to get to a better level of health
These are all subconscious patterns embedded in the mind, emotions, and body. They are part of a response system in the body that is designed to keep us safe. Avoiding physical harm is obviously important, but in today’s world, we apply these response patterns inappropriately, getting stuck in ways of being that can be detrimental to our health and happiness.
By inappropriate, I mean that the patterns we carry cause us to create, attract, and experience similar situations over and over, even if we think we don’t like them, and even if we’re getting hurt. The situations may not look the same at first glance, at least not if you’re the one in them, (your friends can probably see the connections). The similarity between different situations that are an expression of a pattern is primarily in the ways you feel about it.
Does this sound familiar at all? Is it resonating?
Now, there’s nothing objectively wrong with getting caught in emotional reactions, and there’s nothing wrong with attracting or creating the same negative experiences over and over. Many people will stay in self-defeating patterns their whole life, never even realizing what is happening, wondering why they just can’t get a break, feeling like victims of others, or of fate.
And that’s okay. Those people are still learning and growing simply by being alive. Maybe they’ll have an epiphany about how to transform their way of being moments before dying, and it will change their whole perspective on the meaning of their life. Or maybe it will come ten lifetimes from now. It’s all FINE. In a universe of energy, which is where we live, there's no true "dying" anyway, only changes of form and vibration.
However…
If you want the best and juiciest and freshest experiences you can get in this life, if you want true free will in your decisions and actions, if you want to change and grow at an accelerated rate, there are many tools at your disposal, and a wealth of free information available, on changing your life from within. I’m not going to barrage you now,
I just want to give you this one amazing gift: EFT.
I didn’t invent it. I certainly don’t know all there is to know about it, but I use it often and successfully, and it has enabled me to change patterns in myself that had me stuck for years. I have added and emphasized some elements of the process based on my training, experience, and what I have found to work best, and know this technique to be highly effective.
~What is Emotional Freedom Technique?~
EFT is an inner technology for changing your patterns so that you will create a better life for yourself. It was developed by Gary Craig, an engineer, and expanded upon an earlier process energy tapping process. The process involves tapping lightly on acupuncture points and talking.
There are so many great things about this practice- It’s powerful! It's fun! It's easy to do!
You can heal all kinds of things in your body and life with it- for free! You get to be yourself, your real self without any masks. You get to let out all the thoughts and feelings and curses and fears you’ve been holding inside, too scared to even acknowledge, let alone express.
You get to let go and open to a loving universe, and a joyful life.
I’m going to give you a basic process now. I’ll go into more details and nuances in a future article. This is plenty to start with.
Are you ready?
Step 1- Define the Problem
Think of a problem you’re having- it can be anything. Maybe your head hurts. Maybe you’re mad at someone. Maybe you’re broke and don’t know how you’re going to pay the rent. Maybe you’re depressed because think you’ll never find that perfect partner.
On a scale from 1 to 10, with ten being the most intense level of feeling, rate how much this problem is bothering you. Write the number down.
Think of how you’d like to be feeling instead. Be general with this. Take a few notes.
Step 2- Start Tapping
Choose a tapping hand; it doesn’t matter which. With a fingertip, tap gently on a special point on the side of your other hand. The point is on the outside (pinky) edge of your hand, just below the pinky knuckle. It’s an acupuncture point that helps the muscles, tendons and the mind all to relax. Tap at whatever speed feels comfortable and relaxed for you.
Step 3- Setup Phrase
While continuing to tap, say out loud at least three times. “Even though I’m having/feeling/experiencing [insert problem], I deeply and completely love, accept, and trust myself, and I know the universe/God/Spirit/my highest self is taking care of me.”
You can change this statement to make it your own, but keep to the general framework, and use the words “love, accept, trust, believe in, respect,“ etc. You don’t need to use the exact same words each time. Search for the phrase that makes you feel something.
Example: “I even though I don’t have enough money to pay my rent and it’s due in 3 days, I deeply and completely love, accept, and trust myself, and I know that somehow things will work out for my highest good.”
Step 4- Talk and Tap
When you have said this setup phrase at least three times (and many more if you want) while tapping on the point, just let yourself talk. Talk out loud. Say anything and everything that is bothering you, scaring you, pissing you off, discouraging you, etc. Get it all out. All the bitchiness, pettiness, crabbiness, jealousy, blame, frustration. FEEL IT. The frustration of not being able to feel those good feelings you noted in step 1. Thinking that God hates/has abandoned/is punishing you. Whenever you want, throw in another setup phrase as you’re talking.
Keep going until you’re bored. This may be after just a few minutes or after as much as half an hour or more. You’ll know when you’ve run out of steam.
Step 5- Concluding the Process
To bring the process to a close, you’ll repeat some words just like in the setup phrase, but now forgiving yourself and everyone else for all the suffering you’ve been carrying.
For example “Even though I was carrying so much fear, doubt, anger, and frustration about not having enough money, I deeply and completely love, accept, trust, believe in, and forgive myself, and I know the universe/God/Spirit/my highest self is bringing good things to me.”
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Take a few deep breaths and check in with how you’re feeling about your initial “problem”. Rate your intensity with it again from 1 to 10 and compare your new number to where you started out.
This is important to give you a sense of how effectively you’re using with this technology. The idea is for the intensity of negativity or pain to be lower.
Try this and give it some practice. I’ll be expanding on the process in an upcoming article, and it will be really helpful to you to get acquainted with this basic format now.
EFT has made a huge difference in my life and the lives of my clients. I’ve experienced or witnessed rapid shifts from anger and fear to love and peace, physical pain relief, enhanced self-confidence, weight loss, and much more.
Try it! Tell me how it goes in the comment space below! And feel free to send questions as well. Thanks for being here.
Wishing you more joy every day!
David
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