Maybe you experience envy often, or maybe just every once in awhile. For some people it’s almost an automatic response. Whatever the case, it’s an uncomfortable feeling, and EFT is a great way to shift that.

Digging Deeper

Let’s start by digging a little bit deeper into this whole envy thing. It’s actually a form of fear of not having enough. You feel envy when somebody else has something you want and you think that there’s some problem with you getting it — either you’re not going to get it or it’s going to take too long. And then your head can start playing with thoughts like: “They don’t deserve it and I do. Why don’t I have it? Why do they have it?”

It’s a reaction that can run from a mild twinge of envy to being obsessed with it and angry and contemptuous towards the other person, maybe making unpleasant remarks about the person who has what you have – all the way to trying to get other people to join with you on hating the person who has more money or the perfect body or the dream home or whatever it is that you want.

All of this is just a feeling response to an observation. The cool thing about that is that you can choose different feelings – a different response. That’s where EFT can come in handy – to eliminate the unwanted feelings so you’re just left with your observation that somebody has something you want.

It’s Not All Bad

That doesn’t have to be a negative feeling. Envy can be turned on its head where you notice that you’re feeling a little bit of it and just back up. Now you’re just noticing that this is something that you want.

That’s not bad to notice that. Your noticing could turn into a goal or an objective of yours. Or you might ask yourself if you really do want it and why you want it. That’s what we’re going to do with tapping, to put you back in a position of choice about how you emotionally respond to noticing something that you want that somebody else has.

How To Tap On This

Setup (karate chop point)

• Even though I have this envy and all this stuff connected to it, I want to love and accept myself anyway.
• Even though I have this envy and I’m a little embarrassed and anxious and frustrated about it, I still want to accept myself and accept my feelings.
• Even though I have this envy that’s been with me for a long time, I want to love and accept myself anyway.

Tapping – The Challenge (tap around all the points)

• All this envy and everything connected to it.
• This feeling that I can’t help it.
• Feeling embarrassed about it.
• The ways I blame other people and circumstances.
• This painful envy.
• I just want what other people have. Is that so bad?
• I think I should be able to have it too.
• It’s not fair that they have it and I don’t.
• I’m afraid I’ll never get it.
• I deserve things. Why don’t I have them?
• Some people have all the luck.
• What did they do to deserve it?
• Aren’t I as good as they are?
• I should have it instead of them.
• All this envy – it makes me feel like a kid.

Tapping Towards the Positive (tap around all the points)

• I’m choosing to shift my perspective.
• It’s OK to notice what I want.
• That’s helping me to focus my energy.
• I’m choosing to let go of this negativity about what I want.
• I’m in charge, and that’s my decision.
• It’s nice to notice what I want. It’s natural to compare myself to other people.
• That helps me know what I want for myself.
• I’m choosing freedom from the fear of never getting it.
• I say let’s both have it. That feels really good!
• I’m looking forward to the possibility of a whole new perspective on this.
• I can use envy in a positive way.
• That’s what I’m choosing for myself.
• I don’t need to beat myself up for feeling a little envy.
• And I don’t need to get carried away with it.
• I choose to use it as a signal to say, Oh. That’s something that I want.
• Then I can focus on how to make it happen. That’s my choice!

——————————————–

Why do you procrastinate anyway? For very good reasons. That’s right. And that’s the first thing to realize. It serves you in some way. It’s simply a response to something. So you have to look underneath that response – that behavior of procrastinating.

Often it actually makes you feel safe. There’s a fear underneath – It may go something like this: “If I get this thing done, they might expect more of me, and I’m not sure I can do it.” Or “If I get this done and put myself out there, someone might ridicule me,” or “Somebody else might be jealous.”

And those fears come from somewhere – not just out of the blue. They usually stem from something that’s happened before. And part of you remembers that and doesn’t want to go there again. So you procrastinate.

Other Reasons

There might be other reasons, too. Procrastination is an easy way to rebel. The scenario might go like this: “I’m not going to do this in your timeframe. I’m gonna do it on my own schedule.” – So the reason (feeling underneath) is anger or resentment. Or maybe you don’t like your job or that you got assigned this project. Maybe you’re mad because it’s not in the budget to pay somebody else so you’re stuck with it. Or you’re annoyed because you know your effort won’t be noticed or won’t be appreciated. So you procrastinate.

Sometimes it’s a way to stay emotionally connected to somebody – remember this is subconscious – but if your mom always procrastinated and you’re close to her, it’s another way that you’re alike. Another point of connection. Right?

Start With Questions

So what can you do about it? The first step is to do some investigation. Identify what the problem is – either on your own or with the help of a good GENTLE friend or coach. Especially be listening to yourself for illogical or childish answers.

Remember the tappable answers come from emotions – not from logic. And they often go back to things you learned very early – childhood things. So that’s why the answers might seem childish. Perfect! That’s what you’re looking for.

Here are some questions to ask yourself:

1. If I stopped procrastinating, what would I be afraid of? I would stand out and they wouldn’t like me. I might make a mistake and then I’d be punished. I might be criticized or ridiculed. I’d be more successful than my friend/husband/sister/mother – and I might lose them – I won’t belong anymore. This is a really large emotional driver. We ALL want to belong.

EFT for this would consist of making a list of your fears and limiting beliefs and tapping to clear those.

2. What’s the benefit/payoff to procrastinating? Maybe it’s low-key revenge. “I can’t get what I want, so they can’t either.” Or “She’s not nice to anyone, so I’ll pay her back by making her wait for this.” Or here’s a big one: “I don’t want to do this anyway but I can’t say no. If I take my time, they’ll get the message.”

To use EFT here, you can clear the anger at the person, or another belief that you recognize is holding you back.

3. When did it start? For chronic procrastinators, this is a great question. Maybe the answer is “about 3 years ago.” Then ask yourself what big event happened then. Often it was a situation that made you feel out of control. Procrastinating – remember it’s a response – can give you a sense of having control.

To use EFT here, you can tap on that big event and clear the emotional charges around it. It’s amazing to watch your resistance just fall away. Resistance is really what procrastination is all about.

Let us know how this works for you by leaving a comment below. And if you want my help with your procrastination challenges, contact me and let’s get you moving!

Many people using EFT find themselves avoiding working on childhood events and issues. These are some “why”s I hear from clients:

• That was so long ago. I’ve already dealt with that in therapy.
• I don’t see what it has to do with me now.
• I don’t remember much about my childhood. Let’s work on current issues.
• I’ve gone back to my early 20s. Isn’t that far enough back?
• I should be over all that by now. I just want to tap on what’s bothering me now.

Darn Good Reasons

Sometimes the reluctance is really fear masquerading as logic. Your protective inner self (who’s doing a great job, by the way!) is scared it’s too painful to go back there. So it creates this avoidance with some darn good reasons.

Or sometimes the resistance is from just not knowing – not realizing how much more helpful it can be to go as far back as you can with meridian tapping.

So Why Bother?

Here’s the deal: Clearing childhood issues can have a larger positive impact on your life than probably anything else you can work on with EFT. It can hugely reduce the time spent tapping on your problems as they show up now. The positive impact of working on early issues shows up in ways you’d never imagine.

Why The Resistance?

Your brain is still physically developing until your 20s. So the younger you are, the more simply you process events. Feelings are huge and extreme when you’re a kid. Things feel like life and death, all or nothing.

As a child, you believe what you hear — especially from people you’re attached to. Events that wouldn’t phase you today feel really traumatic when you’re young. So your body, brain, and energy system register them as trauma. And that’s how they’re stored.

Even medical brain research shows that traumas are stored very differently in our brains. So childhood events have an enormous impact on your feelings, minds and energy systems. That’s why clearing them with tapping can create remarkable changes in your life today.

No Wonder You Avoid Going Back

When you think about a childhood issue, some of those early life-and-death feelings are triggered. That creates a fight-or-flight response in your system.

The most basic part of your being says it’s not safe to rock that boat. And your intellect responds with adult reasons (mentioned above) to leave it all alone. But staying safe is often staying stuck. Remarkable progress with tapping involves taking the risk of leaving that comfort zone.

A Metaphor To Consider

Imagine that as a little kid you have an artist’s palette to paint your life with, but you’ve only got 3 colors. Primary colors of red, yellow and blue. As you grow up, you expand your possibilities by mixing those colors in various ways. By middle age, you’ve got countless hues to choose from.

OK – now when a negative event happens when you’re a child, let’s say it alters that pot of red paint. It’s a little muddy now — not so clear and strong. Now think of all the adult hues that have some red in them. Each one of those will be affected by that — so the scarlet will be a little bit off. So will the purple. The oranges aren’t so bright. Pinks are muted.

Along comes tapping. When you go back and clean up that childhood event and un-muddy that red paint, amazing things happen. All those other adult colors are now clear and strong. You can’t predict all the ways that you’re affected by an early event. Likewise, you can’t imagine all the wonderful ways clearing it can affect your life today.

A Gift To Yourself

Do yourself a huge favor, and clear those early challenges first. The benefits are enormous. If you feel yourself resisting, ask yourself why. Maybe that little kid doesn’t want to have those big feelings all alone. You don’t have to do it alone — tap with a friend. Get another person’s energy working on the issue with you.

If you’re not feeling confident with tapping on your own, or feel overwhelmed by the thought of it, call a practitioner. Treat yourself to some skillful, experienced healing. You deserve it!

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.

Keeping commitments to yourself is a huge deal because it’s the basis for trusting yourself. And sometimes you might be at the end of your list for keeping commitments. The things you’ve promised other people always come first. But this works like the oxygen mask on the airplane does: You have to take care of keeping your word to yourself first to be really effective for other people. I want to share some ideas for making it easier to keep your promises to yourself — and some tapping phrases to help.

Why It’s A Challenge

If you have a problem with this, one big reason could be because there’s no reward for it in your world. If you don’t acknowledge yourself for the promises you DO keep, where’s the incentive to make it a habit? You don’t get paid for keeping them. And unless you make a public declaration, nobody else knows about your self-promises. So they’re not going to give you recognition when you keep the promises. So it’s just between you and you. You’re in charge of paying attention and giving yourself kudos for keeping your commitments. It’s a big deal. And you need to treat it like one.

Why It Matters

Here’s why. Because you treat it like a big deal when it DOESN’T happen. Not keeping promises to yourself trashes your trust in yourself. It eats away at your confidence and makes you afraid to take new steps and commit to new things. You don’t want to be disappointed again and feel those crummy shoulda-could-wouldas again. The only way I know of to bring this into balance so you can build your trust in yourself is to make a big deal of it when you DO keep commitments to yourself. Do you see what I mean?

We’re all grown up and have these sophisticated ways of talking to ourselves about it, but really we’re just like our kids and pets – positive reinforcement gets much better results than constant scolding. With making commitments to ourselves, it’s exactly the same thing. So here’s how EFT can help with that.

How To Tap For It

Start with the focus on the challenge.
Set up:

• Even though all I can think of is what’s left to do, I want to love and accept myself anyway.
• Even though I know how to be a cheerleader for others, but not for myself, I want to respect myself and who I am.
• Even though I’m hard on myself for not keeping my commitments to myself, and that’s not working very well, I want to love and accept myself for doing the best I know how.

Tapping:

• all this judgment
• this criticizing myself
• this judgment
• only seeing what’s missing
• this judgment
• these bad feelings about myself
• all this judgment
• this criticism
• finding what’s wrong with me
• all this judgment
• I don’t keep my promises to myself.
• I ought to be able to do that.
• Maybe I should be tougher on myself.
• That could whip me into shape.
• Maybe if I’m really mean to myself, I would act right.
• I want to do what I say I’m gonna do.
• I never follow through.
• That’s what it seems like.
• When it does happen, it seems insignificant.
• I always fall short of what I expect.

Now you’ve moved out some of the negative junk, and of course if there’s more left, continue tapping on it.

When you’re ready, move on to focus on the solution:
Set up:

• Even though I mostly look at what’s missing, I’m willing to try something new, and I appreciate myself for that.
• Even though it feels funny cheering for myself and I don’t have much practice, I want to treat myself better, and I want to love and accept myself.
• Even though I still have some critical thoughts about keeping promises to myself, I’m starting to let them go, and I want to love both parts of me – the hanging on part and the letting go part.

Tapping:

• It feels funny to acknowledge myself.
• But the real truth is that I DO keep some of my promises to myself.
• Maybe that IS a big deal.
• I want to shift my perspective.
• No it just feels too weird. It feels like I’m bragging.
• Like I’m making a big deal out of nothing.
• But it’s NOT nothing. It took a lot of work to keep that promise to myself.
• I’m proud of keeping my word to myself.
• I feel strong when I think of it.
• I feel like I could do it again!
• I allow myself to be my best cheerleader.
• I acknowledge myself for my perseverance.
• I give myself permission to focus on the positive.
• I’m ready to encourage myself.
• All the ways that I keep commitments to myself are coming into my mind.
• The big things and the little things.
• I DO know how to do this. I just wasn’t realizing it.
• I want to use my wins to remind me of the possibilities.
• I love being my own best supporter.
• I can feel the overflow radiating out to other people. That feels great.

OK. Those are some ways you can tap to help with keeping commitments to yourself. And there’s a practice that helps so much with this that’s a short exercise to do at the end of the day. You can check it out at www.janethilts.com/appreciate. You can even download a printable guide for it there.

Let us know how this works for you — or what you do instead. Leave a comment so we can all share in your success!

This challenge showed up with a client yesterday, so I dusted off a topic from last year to remind us all about how tricky it can be to do EFT about the people we’re closest to.

Resentment and hurt and love are often tangled up together. So when you tap on an issue with these ingredients, you might struggle. Sometimes it’s a challenge to release old pain and anger. Examining the love connection can bring the solution.

The Irony Of It All

When you love someone, their actions and words have a bigger impact on you. So it’s easier to feel hurt or angry with a loved one than with someone you don’t care about. Right? It’s much simpler to just blow off a difficult interaction with a person who doesn’t mean much to you.

But when your heart is connected to someone, hurt and anger can result more often. And they can hang around longer, too. That’s why you’re tapping on them – because you’re still carrying them around. So it’s a little ironic that the people you care about the most can contribute heavily to your list of tapping issues.

Hard To Release

Over and over again, folks show resistance to letting go of old issues with loved ones. It could be a spouse, a kid, a parent, a sibling, a good friend – anybody you’re really close to.

Let me be clear – the resistance is not a conscious thing. You can be eager to let go of an old grudge. You can be excited at the prospect of healing some old wound. And STILL have a hard time releasing it.

It’s The Love

Love is the reason for the hidden resistance. A fear of losing that love, or losing your connection to someone can slow EFT down. Some part of you can be afraid that to let the problem go is to let your whole connection go. And you’re not about to do that!

Even if it’s always been a rocky relationship. Even if your brother was always mean to you. Even if a parent was abusive to you. Your heart doesn’t want to lose the core love you have for them, underneath all the negative junk. So your mind-body-energy system can say, “Forget about releasing anything. I don’t want to take a chance. I’m not gonna rock this boat.”

What To Do

It’s so easy to address this when you’re tapping. Just acknowledge it in your setup phrase. For example:

• Even though I’m afraid to let go of this anger because I don’t want to lose my love for Bob, I love and accept myself anyway.
• Even though I’m concerned that if I release this pain, I’ll lose my connection with my mom, and it’s a shaky connection to begin with…..
• Even though it feels risky to let go of this old grudge, I want to trust myself to hold onto the good parts of our relationship.

Secret Tapping Weapon

Just assume there’s some resistance like this lurking in any old issue with a loved one. Make it a habit. Build in a setup phrase like one of the above examples– right from the beginning of your session. It can save you a lot of tapping time and frustration.

Try this yourself and report back to us on how it goes. Just leave a comment below.

In my last post, I wrote about a huge urge to quit – to completely stop a big project I was working on. Now I want to share how I used EFT to get back in the groove with it.

First I realized the urge was just my subconscious trying to protect me from possible harm from big change. That was an important piece. Thanks, Intuition/Universe/Spirit for the clue! If I hadn’t realized that, I probably wouldn’t have tapped on the urge.

But you know what? That scenario happens a lot – not just to me but to many clients. It can even happen right inside an EFT session. The tapping is going great and then suddenly you just want to stop the whole thing.

And here’s what’s really crazy-making: The bigger your emotional investment in something, the harder your subconscious can fight it. So the more you want the thing, the bigger those internal roadblocks can get.

It makes sense, doesn’t it? It’s like you’re getting ready to make a big leap. And the steeper the cliff, the higher the fence at the edge of it. That’s how our minds work to protect us from big change – good or bad. You’ve seen it – I know you have. That’s what cold feet are about just before a wedding.

Well, it happened to me with a work project. So I want to show you what I did so you can try it when that urge hits you. First, you set aside any self blame or scolding about your feelings. If you can’t set it aside, then tap it away before tapping on the rest.

How To Tap On It

Start with your setup:

• Even though I feel like stopping this ________ (project), I want to love and accept myself anyway.
• Even though all I can think of are reasons to quit, I’m trying to accept myself and all my feelings.
• Even though everything in me is screaming to just give up, I really do want to love and accept myself anyway.

And now some tapping sequences on the challenge:

• All this resistance.
• This powerful urge to quit.
• What was I thinking?
• I must have been nuts.
• There’s no way this will work.
• I wasted all that time.
• Etc. (Add your own phrases.)

Just get it said. Give a voice to your resistance.
Then keep tapping until that resistance gets down to a zero.

Then tap in some positive rounds like:

• I thank my system for the warning, and realize that’s all it was.
• I realize it’s natural to feel cautious about moving ahead.
• I’m choosing to feel excited instead of anxious.
• I give myself permission to take a deep breath and jump!
• I can trust all my resources to carry me through.
• I can just take the next step and do that with confidence.
• I feel my excitement returning.
• I think I’ll astonish myself!

And continue tapping in the good stuff.

The moral of the story is summed up in my favorite bumper sticker: Don’t believe everything you think!

What’s your experience with this? Do us a favor and let us in on it — leave your comments.

It happened to me last week. I was blind-sided by the urge to quit. Not just a quiet nudge but an overpowering, all-consuming command to quit.

Everything in me was telling me to just give up on the big project I had been working on – something I had put a lot of time, thought and effort into. All the crummy feelings fired up. Confusion, a little desperation, echoes of hopelessness and helplessness, and a whole lot of fed up!

Compelling Evidence

Then my mind chimed in with all the logical reasons to back up my urge to quit. The evidence list was long and made total sense.

Next came the questioning of myself: What had I been thinking? Why had I ever decided to go for that project in the first place? What a ridiculous idea! Look at all the time I had wasted…. And on and on and on.

My body was in on it, too, feeling tired and slow. Shoulders slumping, head dropped a little bit, frowning, jaw tight, a little low back pain flare-up – the whole nine yards.

I confess that I actually decided to stop what I had started and cut my losses. I was trying to think of what new direction I wanted to take instead.

At A Crossroads

And then I remembered what I told a client this week: When you’re working on an important goal and about to make a big change, your subconscious fights a big battle to keep you right where you are — in known territory where it’s safe. That’s exactly what was going on with me! I was at a crossroads in my project, ready to take another big step.

The boat was about to be rocked. The next phases in this project will result in some big changes in my life. So my subconscious was rallying all forces to keep me safe by trying to help me stay in familiar territory.

Natural Reaction

That’s why those old negative thoughts and feelings also felt familiar. My subconscious was pulling past files of mine from my emotional memory bank. This sure isn’t the first time this has happened. It was like watching reruns of an old show I’d seen before when I wanted to make big changes.

Well, thanks for the warning, Subconscious. You’re a great watchdog. I appreciate all your efforts on my behalf, but I’m going ahead anyway. It was a simple case of natural responses giving me obsolete advice. Like all advice that’s offered me, I can take it or leave it. In the end, I chose to leave it. And used EFT to help me do that. (But that’s another post….Stay tuned.)

Have you had this experience? What did you do?

In the last post, I promised you some tips about how to use EFT to help you use self kindness as a strategy — and a habit. Here are my tapping suggestions:

These are the steps to take to start using self kindness on a regular basis for yourself:

1. First, investigate your resistance to making self kindness a deliberate strategy. Get quiet and listen to the little voice inside your head that tells you why it’s not a good idea to do that, and stirs up fears about it. If you’re not using self kindness, it’s because a part of you has some good reasons for that. So listen for those reasons, those fears and beliefs. And then write them down.

What beliefs come up for you? They could be things like:

• I’ll lose my motivation if I’m too nice to myself. I won’t feel like doing anything.
• I don’t know how to do it. The people I know don’t do this.
• It’s going to be too hard. Maybe it’s impossible.
• I don’t know what I’m doing. This sounds crazy to me.
• I don’t know if this can help me. What’s the point?
• Etc. (whatever comes to mind)

Write those down.

2. Then take the whole list and cluster them together as a package. Now measure the emotional impact of that package on a scale of 1 to 10. How strong is that resistance of all those fears and beliefs together? And write the number down.

3. Then start tapping. Do one round of “This resistance to self kindness.”

Then do a few rounds of tapping, giving voice to the resistance. You can just read off your list as you tap.

Continue tapping until you get your resistance down to a zero.

4. The next thing that you can do is to create some positive statements and tap those in as affirmations. For example:

• I easily go to self kindness first thing.
• I love how it makes me feel.
• My self kindness is contagious to the people around me.
• Etc. (whatever comes to YOUR mind)

Have fun creating the list. Then just tap those affirmations in as a practice, first thing in the morning.

What do you have to say about it? Give it a try and let us know.

Being gentle with yourself feels good. And it sounds like a good idea to strive for some day. But do you know that it’s also a very practical tool?

I’ll tell you why I know this is true in this short video.

I have been talking about motivation and also about self blame. Now here’s where these two topics come together: using self kindness as a strategy.

I’m not suggesting it just because it feels good to be kind to yourself (although it does). Nor because it’s a great spiritual practice to use self kindness (although it is).

I’m suggesting self kindness as a strategy for moving ahead – either for personal devleopment or as a business strategy. It works for whatever your focus is and here’s why:

Self kindness saves time and energy, leaving you more of both for what you really want to do.

If you’re NOT gentle with yourself, you lose momentum every time something goes wrong or doesn’t go the way you want it to.

• Criticizing yourself takes head time: all your thoughts about what you did wrong, what you should have done instead, etc.
• Criticizing yourself takes heart time: all the crummy feelings about yourself.
• And your focus turns totally inward.

To pull out of this state takes even more time and energy — recovery time to get your head turned around, to open your heart back up and feel better emotionally, and to turn outward again.

Self kindness, on the other hand, leaves you buoyant – with plenty of energy to focus outward and keep moving. It subtracts nothing from you to be kind to yourself. It doesn’t use up energy; it increases it. And the vibe it creates is contagious.

My point is that it’s highly practical as a strategy. So I hope you’ll consider using self-kindess — deliberately.

Stay tuned for some tips on using EFT to help you with. In the meantime, what do you think? Let’s hear it in the comments.