Sometimes an issue is demanding your attention. You might be thinking about it all the time. Or you’re having the feelings that are connected to it. Possibly your body is clamoring for help in connection with it. Or maybe your mind, body AND emotions are continuously reminding you of the problem.

Meanwhile, the rest of your life says, “Now is not the time.” You can’t just drop everything to deal with the challenge that’s front and center in your consciousness. But you can’t get the issue off your mind.We’ve all been there.

What Are You Going To Do?

Here is a technique that works very well to give you relief. This is not a way to deny what’s bothering you. And it’s not a way to push it away or bury it. This is a healthy, beneficial way to be able to give your attention to the rest of your life for now, while committing to follow through with your issue later. It works whether you’re planning to use EFT, prayer, journaling, counseling, or talking with a friend.

Follow These Steps

It’s a simple process, but it’s important to include each one of these steps. Shortcuts don’t really work. Here’s what you do:

1. Make an appointment with yourself or your practitioner to address the issue. If you’re making the appointment with yourself, pick a specific date and time — a REAL appointment.
2. Set aside any frustration about it. Really. Just set it aside. Thank your system/body/mind/heart for the information that this issue wants your attention. (Good to do this out loud. If that’s not possible, do it in writing.)
3. Tell your body-mind that you are not ignoring it or telling it to be quiet. You are letting it know that you have set a specific time to give the issue the attention it wants, and name that date and time. (Again, out loud is good; writing is a second choice.) If you have to wait to contact the practitioner, set the time that you will make that contact.
4. Gently let your body-mind know that you’re now going to use your focus and energy for other things. Say thanks again, and move on with your life.
5. CRITICAL: Keep your appointment with yourself to address the issue. If you don’t, this technique won’t work for you next time. Your body/mind will remember that you didn’t keep your commitment, so that issue will stay in your face – or at least continue affecting your life in an unwanted way — until you deal with it.

This has worked every time for me for years and the people I recommend it to – without fail. Just remember, the make-it-or-break-it step is that last one: keeping your commitment.

Give it a try and let us know your experience with it with a comment below.

How well do you keep commitments you make? The consequences can be really big for not following through when other people are involved. Relationships are affected by it. Trust is affected – not only your trust in yourself, but other people’s conclusions about how trustworthy you are. This is a big deal. All those judgments come into play about being dependable, reliable, responsible. Yikes! There’s a lot hanging in the balance.

The Commitment Challenge

So what’s the problem here? Why is it a struggle to keep commitments to other people? For many of us, it’s a simple matter of promising too much. Promising unconsciously without really stopping to think. Not wanting to say no, so we say yes to too many things.

It’s often not a matter of not wanting to keep commitments. It’s just making commitments in such a way that our abilities don’t match our intentions. We’re over-committed without the personal resources to follow through – and by resources I mean time, energy and motivation.

How many times do you look at your calendar and make a commitment just because there’s an unfilled spot on the calendar? It LOOKS like you have the resources to pull it off, but that’s really just a time slot.

Where’s your energy and motivation going to come from when you have no fun time built in? No wonder when the time comes, you can’t pull it together to keep that commitment. It’s mostly a matter of logistics. Where EFT can help is to eliminate some of the emotions and beliefs that drive us to commit beyond our capabilities.

How EFT Can Help

Let’s do some EFT rounds to help with this over-committed problem, so you can make commitments in a way that works better for you.

- Even though I commit to so many things that I can’t follow through on them all, I want to love and accept myself anyway.
- Even though it feels like I should be able to do all these things, but it’s not working out that way, I want to appreciate myself anyway – and that feels hard to do.
- Even though I get mad at myself for not keeping all my commitments, I want to accept myself anyway, because I’m really doing the best I can – same way I always do

• My calendar is full, but I hate to say no.
• It seems like I ought to be able to get all these things done.
• Other people can pull this off. Why can’t I?
• It’s just how things are these days. We’re all really busy.
• I just need to work harder and manage my time better.
• Nobody else can do these things.
• It’s selfish to want to have time to myself.
• I feel terrible when I can’t keep my commitments.
• It seems like it’s happening more often.
• I’ve just got too much to handle.
• Maybe if I kept a better calendar system.
• I think if I make a commitment, I’ll have to stick to it.
• Then when I don’t, I feel terrible.
• I’ve let them down, and I’ve let myself down.
• I just have to buck up and work harder.
• Maybe if I get mad at myself more that will work.
• But that just feels awful. I don’t  know what to do.
• People love for me to help them, so I hate to turn them down.
• And I’m so good at what I do, I feel like I should help them.
• There’s no room left for anything. I’m totally over-committed.

OK Stop tapping now.  If you want to tap to clear more of the negative, you can repeat those rounds, or continue on your own. But now let’s focus on the positive.

Tapping In The Solution

- Even though I’ve been over-committing myself, I’m ready for a change, and I love myself for that willingness.
- Even though part of me is still holding onto old patterns of over-commitment, there’s a wise and powerful part of me that’s letting go, and I appreciate all parts of me.
- Even though balancing my schedule is a new adventure, I’m up for it, and I’m ready to feel good about myself.

• I’m ready to give myself room to breathe.
• I’m willing to see some gaps in my schedule.
• I want to leave myself time to recharge my batteries.
• I’m ready to be more realistic in my commitments.
• Oh, maybe that’s too drastic.
• It feels really selfish. How can I say no?
• I’d rather say no up front, than no I couldn’t do it after I said I would.
• That’s just old thinking that’s not serving me.
• I’m willing to let that go.
• I want to try a whole new approach.
• I appreciate myself for what I can do.
• When I make a commitment, I’m giving my word.
• That’s a gift I have to give.
• I’m considering it carefully now, and that feels right.
• Where and when I give my gift is a precious decision.
• I trust my ability to make a sound decision.
• I value my commitments and so do other people.
• I’m giving myself time and space to make wise choices.
• I love the certainty that I can easily follow through.
• I love knowing that I can depend on myself. That feels great!

We’d love to know how that works for you. Leave a comment below and share what happens.

Are you passionate about what you do? A spirit-centered entrepreneur who has given your soul to your business? Then it’s time to take it back! Seriously.

There’s a misconception that causes problems for many business owners – and artists and performers, too. It’s this: If I love what I’m doing, I need to give it my all. I need to sink my soul into it.

So What’s The Problem?

The problem is one of boundaries. You are separate from your business (or your project, work of art, etc.). You are not your business. If you give your whole soul to your business, then your soul is on the line with every business move you make. That is way too much to risk!

Here’s what happens:

1. You take business transactions personally. This interferes with your client and vendor relationships.
2. You’re devastated when something doesn’t work out right.
3. You’re afraid to take risks because some part of you knows there’s too much at stake.
4. You wait to get everything perfect before you try something new.

But I NEED to Be Passionate!

Being passionate about what you do is a wonderful thing. And that’s what you need to do instead. Be passionate ABOUT it. Bring your spirit TO it. Wrap your soul AROUND it.

And all the while, you’re keeping your spirit intact, your soul connected to YOU, your passion in your heart. You’re not cheating your business or your art. In fact, you’re giving it the freedom to really bloom.

Imagine The Benefits

Now you can me more objective. You can bounce back quickly from glitches. You won’t be nearly as stressed out because you’re not putting your very essence on the line with every decision you make. You may even sleep better!

Use Tapping To Help

Here are a few ways to help yourself with this:

• If you have trouble letting go of the myth that you need to give your heart and soul to what you do, put EFT to work. You can read how this works at Tapping To Clear Unwanted Beliefs.
• Old habits can hang around sometimes. Help yourself by tapping in some affirmations about your new perspective.

With EFT, it’s totally possible to stay sharp and stay cool simultaneously. Is this hard for you to believe? If so, you’re surely not alone. Many people are concerned that they’ll lose their edge if they tap away tension.

What’s Your Version?

This misconception shows up over and over again in several ways. Maybe one of these has a ring of familiarity:

• If I release this tension, I’ll lose my competitive drive.
• If I let go of this tension, my dancing/singing/acting performance will be flat.
• If I don’t have this tension, I’ll lose my motivation to work/sell/whatever.
• I need this tension to make my speaking presentation really lively.

The Real Truth

Tension is constrictive and driven by anxiety or fear at some level. It’s separate from performance energy. Many people believe that losing the tension means losing that good energy, so they hang onto both. This myth is reinforced by teachers in the performing arts, athletic coaches, speech coaches, sales trainers…the list goes on. They just have never experienced anything else.

If you’re in that group of believers, I hope you’ll consider another possibility. With tapping it’s completely possible to release the constricting impact of the fear while maintaining that energetic charge of positive performing or motivational energy.

How You Do It

You can easily split your tapping up into three parts:

1. Tap away your concern or limiting belief that you’ll lose your edge if you release your fears.
2. Tap away your fears regarding the performance or event or speech or sale.
3. Tap in affirmations to strengthen your positive energy – that performance electricity that other people connect with.

Powerful Combination

Calm + performance energy = powerful magnetism. Once you’ve tapped away tension resulting from fears and anxiety, you’re left with a foundational state of calm. There’s no energy drain for you from the adrenaline of fear charging around your body.

The excitement energy that propels you forward in any type of performance is pure and strong. People just gravitate towards it. And your energy is strengthened because it’s all coming from a positive center.

—————————————————————————————————–

Relationships come in all shapes and sizes. They range from partners and family members to friends, colleagues and business acquaintances. And maintaining them is tricky business sometimes, right?

EFT can be a great tool for helping you with those connections. There are lots of ways you can improve relationships by tapping. What we’re focusing on here is using EFT on anger.

I’m Not Angry

“Anger? But I don’t really have anger with anyone” (you might be saying). Well, I’m just using the word “anger” to describe a category of emotions. Does one of these words fit better for you? Review the list and see if you feel like this in any of your relationships:

• frustrated
• annoyed
• irritated
• bugged
• resentful
• mad
• outraged
• pissed off

OK – If any of those ring a bell, then you’ve got a doorway to improve your connection with the other person. Simply use EFT to tap away that anger (by whatever name you label it).

Resistance

Listen for your own resistance to releasing your anger and include that in your tapping. Maybe it’s a belief that they need to apologize first. Maybe it’s a belief that it’s not safe to let go of your anger. Or a belief that it’s impossible to let go of it.

Just notice any of these “yeah, but…s” that pop up. Then tap away that resistance first – BEFORE you tap on the anger and the cause of it.

Results (or Why Bother?)

Relationships are a dance of sorts, aren’t they? One person does one thing, then the other responds. Well, that dance can change radically when anger is removed.

The other person knows either consciously or unconsciously that you’re holding a level of anger. Think about it. You can sense that in someone else, can’t you? Sure you can ….

So their thoughts, words and actions likely protect them from that anger. That creates some tension. It might be some withdrawal. Or maybe some aggression. Or maybe some worry.

When you eliminate your anger, their need to defend against it is gone. They relax and the whole dynamic of your connection changes. Give it a try. You might be amazed!

Let us know how it goes for you. Try it and come back and leave a comment.

Getting stuff done in a timely way can be a challenge for a lot of reasons. Maybe you’ve got a really full schedule. Or a seemingly endless to-do list. You might have a lot of people depending on you for a lot of things. But there might be another reason.

Are You Procrastinating?

Sometimes the problem is just that you’re putting it off. You’re not alone. Everybody does it at one time or another. You know how it goes …. “Oh, I’d better do this first and THEN I’ll get to it.” Or maybe some version of “If I just wait, maybe it will get better/go away/get done by somebody else.”

What’s The Big Deal?

Maybe your delay doesn’t cause a big impact that you can see. But procrastinating uses up a lot of energy, when you stop to think about it. There’s energy spent each time you think about when you should do the thing. There’s energy spent on blaming yourself (or somebody else) for not doing it yet.

It takes energy to tell yourself all the reasons that you haven’t done it. So you see? Putting things off consumes a lot of mental energy.

And it’s really stressful to delay doing things. It can cause worry, aggravation, guilt and other unpleasant feelings. Then your body responds with tense shoulders, tight jaws, headaches, fatigue — you know how that goes. Stress can sure wear you out.

EFT As A Solution

Tapping can be a quick fix to get you moving. You don’t need to beat yourself up. You don’t need to analyze it. Just focus on your resistance to moving ahead. Then use EFT to clear that resistance. It doesn’t have to take much time, and can really get you rolling again.

To read more, click here.

“You need to control your anger.” How many times have you heard that? Or what about, “Get ahold of yourself. You need to calm down.” Have you ever been crying and felt like you need to get yourself under control? Emotions being out of control is seen to be a bad thing — socially unacceptable.

You Need To Get A Grip

This is how you’ve come to view emotions if you live in the western world. Feelings need to be managed. Right? We’ve got different standards for children vs. adults, and for men vs. women. And the rules change from culture to culture, region to region, family to family. But basically, we have to reel in even our level of happiness so people don’t think we’re being inappropriate — or nuts!

Tapping For Symptoms

So many people look to EFT as an emotional management tool — toning down the anxiety, soothing the sadness, or calming the anger. And tapping is an easy way to do all those things. That’s true. It’s really handy for that, and I’ve given you some tips on that in the past.

But using it to control your emotions is just scratching the surface of what EFT can do. The ultimate gift EFT has to offer is to neutralize the cause for the excess emotions. Take the emotions out of control mode completely. So out of control is really the goal!

Happily Out Of Control

No extremes left to manage. No NEED to manage because there’s no driving force left behind that previously huge anger, or the over-the-top worry. When you use EFT to work with the root causes of your feelings overload, the emotional control thing is no longer a concern.

It’s not that the old trauma or annoying person has suddenly disappeared. It’s that EFT can cause a large shift in your perspective. Once the core issue has been cleared, the emotional trigger doesn’t fire anymore.

It’s Not Called Emotional FREEDOM Techniques For Nothing!

So when you use tapping in this way, actually your emotions ARE out of control. They’re not stomped down or reined in.

They’re at natural healthy levels with no need for management. It’s a great feeling and a wonderful freedom. I hope you’ll give yourself the gift of experiencing it for yourself — either on your own or with a practitioner.

Let us know how it goes for you.

Tapping in its standard form is a remarkably fast way to release old issues — much faster than other types of therapy. And EFT works really quickly to eliminate fears and unhelpful beliefs, too. You can work with these issues and obstacles one at a time and get great, lasting results.

But did you know there are times when it works just as well to cluster issues together? You can tap on several things at the same time and get rid of all of them at once.

When To Cluster

It’s important to use this Clearing Clusters technique with care. It’s not always appropriate. That means you won’t get good results with EFT if you choose this shortcut at the wrong time. Here are some successful times to use this.

Repeated Events

If you experienced similar repeated episodes of the same unwanted or traumatic events, you can cluster them together and tap on the whole cluster.

Note that the events must be closely related — all the times you got yelled at by your high school coach. Or all the times your brother beat you up. It won’t work to try to cluster all the times ANYBODY hollered at you when you were little. Stick to repeated interactions with one person (or one group).

Lists of Fears

You can use Clearing Clusters on any list of related fears or anxieties. For instance, if you’re dreading your presentation tomorrow, write down all your fears or worries that come up when you think about it. Or if you find yourself putting off doing a particular thing, ask yourself what you might be concerned about that has you stalling. Then tap away that whole list.

Again, the concerns must be naturally connected in order for this to work. And their common thread must be specific. So it won’t work to try to list every fear you can think of that keeps you habitually procrastinating on everything.

But Clearing Clusters WILL work if you choose a single project you’re putting off, and identify your fears connected to that.

Unwanted Beliefs

Old beliefs that no longer serve you often come in clusters. So this is a speedy way to eliminate them. There are two different ways you can group beliefs to tap them away.

Group By Topic: An example of a topic would be getting hired for a job. Just write down the list of interfering beliefs that bog you down — whatever that unhelpful gremlin in your head says: They’ll never hire me. Everyone else is more qualified. I never get the job I want. – You get the idea.

Group By Origin: Here’s where you cluster beliefs that originated from one person or group. So if you hear someone’s voice in your head all the time telling you things that don’t help, write down that list. Maybe it’s a parent, an influential teacher or religious figure; maybe a list of cultural beliefs.

How You Clear Those Clusters – Getting Started

For instructions on exactly how to do this, click here to read more.

It doesn’t matter what your spiritual and/or religious beliefs are — EFT can work with them. In fact, it doesn’t matter WHAT you believe. Tapping works, even if you don’t believe it can.

Complete Compatibility

Tappers around the world use EFT, regardless of their faith or the principles they believe in. Although its effects can be felt in body, mind and spirit, tapping is a physiological process. In the body. That’s why it works for nearly everyone – whether people think it will or not.

Incorporating Your Beliefs

You might enjoy your EFT experience more, or even get more from it, by tapping into your beliefs (no pun intended) during your sessions. Whether you’re Wiccan, Muslim, Jewish, Pagan, Christian, Sufi — or have your own special brand of spirituality, this can work for you. Whether your philosophy and orientation involve metaphysical principles or esoteric beliefs — or not. Everyone’s included.

If you’re a practitioner, listen for clues from your clients about their belief systems.

How You Do It

You have several options to combine spirituality with EFT.

1. Before you tap, say a prayer or invoke your guides, ancestors, or highest self to join you as you tap. Or simply hold an intention to be aligned with your spiritual source.
2. During your session, request or acknowledge spiritual help in releasing your issue.
3. At the end of your session, give thanks for making it so easy.

Be creative! Come up with your own ways. Why not use all your resources to help in your healing?

What’s your experience with this? Let us all know by leaving a comment.

EFT is a great self healing tool. Your day-to-day life can be much more pleasant, tapping as you go. If you’re annoyed at traffic, improve your drive by tapping (use one hand only, please!) on “this annoying traffic” or “this road rage,” depending on how bad it really is.

Or if you wake up anxious, you can calm yourself and start off the day well by tapping on “this anxiety.” If you stub your toe, get rid of that distracting pain by tapping on “this toe pain.”

But if you want to get rid of those deeper issues that interfere with your success and happiness, working with a skilled practitioner can be much more effective. Read on to learn some reasons why this might be a good choice for you.

Painful Issues

Working on painful issues by yourself can be tricky business. You may unknowingly avoid some aspects to keep from feeling the old pain. You may have trouble staying focused. It’s remarkable what our subconscious defense system will do in trying to protect us. You might put it off — some part of you doesn’t want to face it alone. A practitioner can help with all these factors.

Chronic Issues

If you’ve carried a problem for a long time — physical or emotional — there’s probably a core issue beneath those symptoms that keep showing up. You may work for a long time on your own, trying to get to the bottom of it. A skilled EFT coach can quickly find the root of that problem and help you clear the chronic issue.

Patterns of Emotions

If you have a pattern of being anxious every day, or mad all the time in traffic, you can tap on those symptoms and get relief. But that’s a lot of repetitive work. Wouldn’t it be great to clear the cause of the pattern? Practitioners know how to ferret out what’s really at the core of those patterns and help you to release it. Then you can get freedom from the pattern — not just freedom for that episode.

HOW Practitioners Can Help

For more particulars about the ways practitioners can sometimes get better results than you can on your own, read more here.