Tapping Q & A - Getting the most out of tapping and EFT

One of my favorite questions when interviewing someone about their tapping journey is, "If you could share one piece of advice with your younger self, what would that advice be?" For some reason I was reflecting on that question recently, not for someone I was interviewing, but for myself. The piece of advice that I would give to Gene-the-beginner-tapper would be to go more slowly. This week in th...

Finding a balance between taking responsibility for our lives and taking too much responsibility for what is going on is a tricky matter. Taking too much responsibility may seem like a silly notion, but it can happen in many ways. One of these ways is when we refuse to allow ourselves grace or forgiveness. We recognize that we have made a mistake and then, whether consciously or unconsciously, we...

One of the ideas that really makes my clients bristle is the possibility that their self-sabotaging behaviors are guided by their system's well-meaning intention to keep them safe. They question, "How is it possible that my subconscious mind thinks it is trying to keep me safe when all it is doing is making my life harder?" That is a great question because it feels counterintuitive that our desire...

For some issues, tracking progress is simple. I can tell if my desk is less cluttered, if I can lift more weight while working out, or if I am making more sales in my business. That is because these examples are measured in hard metrics, or in other words, cold, hard numbers. Changes that are measured in soft metrics are more difficult to track. For example, it is much harder to quantify growth in...

One of our biggest struggles in creating transformation and change in our lives is those moments where we know WHAT to do, we know HOW to do it, and we know WHY it is valuable to take an action…and yet we just don't. It is obvious what the next step is and for some reason we don't take it. Then, as a bonus, we beat ourselves up for not taking action. So as well as not moving forward, we feel bad f...

One of Marianne Williamson's most cited quotes starts "Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure." It is quoted so often because of how deeply it resonates, speaking directly to the contradiction that is part of our lived human experience. On one hand we want to live an authentic and rich life…on the other hand, our subconscious mind ju...

Letting ourselves down is one of the deepest betrayals that we humans can experience. It feels like such a harsh gut punch when it is something we know we should have been able to do. After we let ourselves down in such a powerful way, our subconscious will do everything in its power, through resistance to take action so as to keep us safe. It reasons that since it was so painful to let ourselves...

The words change and improve are very close in meaning. While both are associated with transformation, they do not mean exactly the same thing. Improvement is about keeping something but doing it in a better way; change is about doing something in a new way. In the transformational arena we long for change, but in doing this we sometimes diminish the value of improvement. This week in the podcast,...

Not all stress is created equal. There are those hyper stressful times, like driving on icy roads in a snowstorm at rush hour. It is super intense in the moment and then when it ends, it is over! Then there is the low-grade stress of something that is taking a long time and is hanging over your head. The example I think of from my own life is doing my business taxes. I'm not especially good at doi...

One of the most consistent struggles my clients have is coming up with the "right" words. The problem is there is no such thing as the right words when it comes to tapping. Instead there are useful words and unuseful words. I am consistently surprised at some of the types of words that end up being useful. One such type of surprising words is when we are tapping on phrases that we intellectually k...

Grief is unlike all other emotions when it comes to tapping. Every other negative emotion is something we can step out of. I can stop feeling angry, frustrated, or overwhelmed. Grief on the other hand is something that we are going to feel forever. Twenty years after a loved one has died we are still going to feel pangs of grief. Instead of leaving grief, we have an evolving relationship to it and...

We often refer to tapping for stress and feeling overwhelmed as emotional first aid. That is because we are applying a tool for quick relief in the moment in the same way we would use first aid for a physical injury. But there is one key difference between first aid and emotional first aid. When we are physically injured, our first thought is "I need to take care of this right now!" When we need e...

A number of years ago I was visiting my friend "Mike" and his family. Mike asked his youngest son, who was about five at the time, to tidy his room before dinner. His son replied, in the most overwrought and dramatic voice possible, "But whyyyyyyyyyyyy? I am just going to make it messy again!" I can relate! There are SO MANY tasks on my to-do list that I dislike doing and there are even some that...

There is a huge difference between bouncing back from being tired and being exhausted. When we are tired, we simply need to refill our tank. When we are exhausted, we first have to recover from being exhausted before we can even consider refilling our tank. In this week's podcast, I share seven simple ways you can help yourself when you are feeling exhausted or emotionally drained. And the great t...

One of the hardest parts of being a caring person is witnessing others in pain. When we see someone struggling, it feels natural to want to step in and help. With that being said, there is a fine line between being helpful and taking responsibility for someone else's suffering. This becomes doubly hard where emotional burdens are concerned. While we might be able to assist with practical struggles...

There is this moment in every tapper's life when we move from "This tapping thing is amazing" to "Oh my goodness there are soooooo many issues for me to tap on. Every time I clear one issue I find four more!" It's easy to feel frustrated and demotivated when this happens. You might even stop tapping altogether because it feels like the tapping is creating more problems than it is solving (when we...

Over the years, so many of my clients and students have told me that two of the biggest obstacles preventing them from sitting down to tap are having too many issues so that they don't know where to start, and the fear that their emotions will be too big to handle when tapping. It makes total sense that these obstacles make it hard for us to tap because they are both rooted in our subconscious min...

Even though we might not be conscious of it, every time we sit down to tap, our desire is for total, instantaneous, eternal transformation. While our desire makes a lot of sense, there are two obstacles in our way. First, we don't always have access to total, instantaneous, eternal transformation. For better or worse, sometimes transformation just takes time. Second, swift transformation isn't alw...

Sometimes tapping feels nothing short of magical! We are struggling with an issue or an emotion and then, after a few rounds of tapping, we feel so much better. This transformation can feel profound to the extent that the world actually looks different. (That is not an exaggeration. My clients often report how the world literally looks brighter and more welcoming after tapping.) Then there are tho...

One of the fundamentals I repeatedly return to when I am working with clients or teaching practitioners is: We emotionally respond to the world in the way that we describe it. That is to say, the words we use when talking about our lives impact how we feel about our lives or a particular situation. Recently, I have started adding the word "feel" when I describe what I am thinking, feeling or exper...

For the longest time, I found tapping for feeling overwhelmed one of my most frustrating issues. The reason it was so frustrating is because no matter how many times I tapped for overwhelm, it always came back. Sometimes it came back multiple times in the same day. When we aren't making the progress we want, it is easy to get frustrated with the fact that "I have to tap for overwhelm again!" We no...

One of the most commonly used tools in transformation and healing is affirmations. When I did a quick internet search on the "history of affirmation," the first article I clicked on started with the line, "The first recorded use of affirmations dates back to the ancient Egyptian civilization. Affirmations were inscribed on amulets and other objects." BUT affirmations don't just work. For an affirm...

The dawning of a new year is a great time for reflection and planning. We have the chance to see what we would like to release, what we would like to change, and what we would like to add to our lives. Something that causes me the most frustration is when I have created a vision for the life I want to live and then end up not making it reality because of self-sabotage. One of the biggest causes of...

In episode #634 a few weeks ago, I shared with you five easy steps to make tapping part of your daily routine. The more often we tap, the better it is for us. (Yes, that might be the most obvious thing I have ever written!) Once we are tapping on the regular (even if it isn't daily), the way in which we track our sessions can help us to get even more out of every tapping session. This week in the...

One of the realities of our relentlessly connected world is our ability to know what is happening anywhere in the world in an instant. For the most part, this is great. It is an opportunity for us to connect with and learn from people we would never have had the opportunity to meet a generation ago. At the same time, constant and instantaneous updates on everything that is going wrong in the world...