Everybody runs into a snag at some point with deciding — whether it’s a chronic problem or just a once-in-a-while thing. Sometimes it’s a real problem. EFT can be such a big help with the process, so you can get moving again.

Choosing to Not Decide

Let’s talk first about NOT making a decision. Can you see that this in itself is actually making a decision? You’re deciding to NOT decide. And that’s not always a bad thing. Maybe a wise part of you knows that you need more information to make an educated choice. OK. Nothing wrong with that.

Just be willing to see that you’re making a choice to not decide. When you accept that, next you can ask yourself WHY you’re not deciding. The answers will help you move forward. And those answers are all tappable. Cool! I know you’ve heard me say this before, but here it is again: Let go of any self-blame about it. Self-blame really keeps you stuck, and makes issues harder to release.

The Perfect Decision for All Time

Another block to making decisions is the belief that the decision will be chiseled in stone once you make it. If you think you have to make a decision that you can stick by no matter what, that’s a lot of pressure.

That’s why you stall out – you have an inner going on between the part that thinks your decision needs to stand for all time, and the part that knows it may need to change. The answer? Build in a margin of flexibility. That’s what relieves the pressure. It doesn’t mean you’re making a weak decision with no real backbone to it. It means you live in reality and want to bring all your best to what you do – including modifying decisions when called for.

How To Tap On This

Setup (karate chop point)

• Even though I have big concerns about making decisions, and they are getting in my way, I want to love and accept myself anyway.
• Even though I have these negative feelings and beliefs about making decisions, I appreciate who I am and I want to appreciate my feelings.
• Even though I have all this decision stuff that’s been bothering me for a long time, I want to love and accept myself anyway.

Tapping – The Challenge (tap around all the points)

• All this decision stuff holding me back.
• These fears about deciding.
• Afraid I can’t do anything about it.
• Feeling ashamed and embarrassed about it.
• This decision anxiety.
• What’s the matter with me?
• This frustration about deciding.
• This pain about making decisions.
• I’m afraid to make a decision.
• What if I make the wrong choice?
• Maybe if I wait long enough, somebody else will decide.
• I’ve made bad decisions in the past. What if I do that again?
• I need to make the perfect choice.
• Forget about it. I’ll just decide later.
• I feel like such a wimp.
• Why am I so indecisive?
• It’s just a part of who I am.
• What will other people think of my decision?
• It’s all too much pressure. I just can’t decide.

OK. Now you’ve moved out some of the negative thoughts and feelings, and of course if there’s more left, continue tapping on it until the emotional intensity is down to at least a 3 on a scale of 1-10.

When you’re ready, move on to tapping some more affirmative phrases. Here are some to get you started.

Tapping Towards the Positive (tap around all the points)

• This remaining decision stuff – I’m starting to let it go.
• I’m releasing the leftover anxiety.
• I’m letting go of the frustration.
• I’m choosing to trust myself.
• I like the feeling of taking charge.
• I choose to trust my resources.
• I allow myself to maximize all my resources.
• I’m carrying forward my wisdom from past decisions.
• Each decision is giving me more practice.
• I honor my own courage and strength.
• I appreciate my gift and talents for making good decisions

Let’s hear how this works for you! Leave a comment below and share your decisions.

Feeling blocked with your creative process can be so frustrating and disheartening. Here are some ways to help open up the flow again.

You Can Try EFT Basics

You can use the usual formula for tapping by saying, “Even though I have these creative blocks, I want to love and accept myself.” And say that 3 times.

Then tap on one round of “creative blocks.” Then give them a voice, just saying out loud all the thoughts you have about it. And tap your emotional intensity level down to zero. And if that works for you, great!

But maybe it’s not quite that simple for you. Maybe you need  new approach to the whole topic.

A New Perspective

Consider a new way of looking at your creative process. You can let creativity come the way it wants to instead of boxing it in and controlling it. Give it room to breathe – maybe show up in sort spurts if that’s how it wants to do it. Let it have the perfect way to come through.

Make room for it to change. Quit trying to go back to what worked last time or what works for somebody else. Let it have its own creative expression.

Treat it like a precious child – it really is your baby, isn’t it? – with sweet encouragement and grace and openness of heart and let it take whatever form it wants to take.

Know that your creative process is working quietly in the background. Acknowledge it and thank it for that. Don’t try to bring it out into the light before it’s ready. If it’s not baked yet, leave it in the oven. Thank it for continuing to cook in the oven of your mind and spirit.

How To Tap On This

Setup (karate chop point)

• Even though I have these creative blocks, I want to love and accept myself.
• Even though my creativity is blocked, I want to respect and appreciate myself anyway.
• Even though I have these creative blocks again, the same way I’ve had in the past, I want to accept myself and all my feelings.

Tapping – The Challenge (tap around all the points)

• All these creative blocks.
• These blocks I can’t do anything about.
• All the anxiety and frustration these blocks bring.
• Blaming myself about these blocks.
• These painful creative blocks.
• I can’t come up with anything fresh.
• I feel totally blocked.
• How can I call myself creative?
• I’m afraid this will last forever.
• I don’t know what’s wrong with me.
• Who was I kidding any way?
• I don’t think I’ll ever feel creative again.
• I just get so darned frustrated.
• It sucks all the joy out of what I love to do.
• These familiar creative blocks. I am so sick of them.

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

When you’re ready, move on to tapping some more affirmative phrases. Here are some to get you started.

Tapping Towards the Positive (tap around all the points)

• I’m open to new ways of experiencing creativity.
• I’m allowing myself to relax into it now.
• I’m confident that the creativity cake is baking now.
• I don’t have to hurry anything.
• I choose to let go of any worry about it.
• It feels so good to encourage my own unique process.
• I love that it’s changing all the time.
• That’s a part of how creative I am.
• The more I trust myself, the more creativity is available to me.
• I appreciate the way my creativity shows up.
• Sometimes in big waves, and sometimes in little trickles.
• The more I relax with it, the easier it all becomes.
• I’m excited to see my next inspiration.
• And I know I can trust that it’s on its way.

——————————————–

Tapping is usually goal-oriented, right? You’re getting blocks out of the way so you can do something.

But sometimes another approach is what’s called for. And that’s to use EFT to clear your blocks and then just wait. Set the goal aside.

I love hearing how a client experienced a total shift in her business after doing this. Here’s what happened:

How We Tapped

• We focused our tapping on anxiety, frustration and limiting beliefs about a part of her business that wasn’t working.
• We gave her permission during the tapping to set the problem aside for 10 days.
• We reassured her Inner Manager that we would give it all the attention it deserved at that later time.
• We set the problem inside a beautiful imaginary box, closed the lid, and set it on the imaginary shelf.
• We tapped on trusting that her inner and outer resources would bring her the best solutions when the time was right.

Her anxiety and frustration dissolved, and she shifted her focus to other parts of her business. There was no struggle in doing that — it just felt totally natural.

And then…. Surprise! 7 days later, the right people showed up, plans came together easily and a beautiful solution presented itself. There had been no striving, no dogged determination to find the answer. Just getting clear with EFT, planting positive seeds of change, and waiting for a defined period.

Set a Time Limit

Putting the 10-day limit on the set-aside time let the goal achiever in her relax, because she knew she’d be coming back to the issue. And that gave her the space to experience clarity — and the room for solutions to appear. When we checked in at the 10-day mark, she had some remarkable new plans in place. As she put it, “I never took the box down off the shelf. These things just all showed up and came together beautifully!”

Try this for yourself. Try tapping just for clarity and then give yourself a break – a defined waiting period before you come back to the issue. This video I did a few months ago will give you some more step-by-step instructions: EFT Secret.

Let us know your results by leaving a comment below. We’d love to hear about it!

Smoothing the Path for Creating Changes

These are some common issues that show up to create problems when you’re making changes. Listen and tap along to let go of the resistance that makes change so hard.

(Just click on the white arrow in the black circle of the player below.)

Let us know how this works for you by leaving a comment below.

Your connection to people you care about can interfere with your tapping. But only when you’re not aware of the possibility.

When someone who is important to you shares your issue or the experience it came from, your subconscious can send up a red alert. It says, “I don’t want to release this issue. I’m afraid it means releasing my connection with that person. And I don’t want to do that. So I’m not going to release this issue.”

And your whole tapping session gets bogged down while you try to figure out the problem with your emotional intensity level staying stuck. Sometimes this hidden loyalty factor can make you think that EFT isn’t working.

Not true! You just need to make some adjustments to your tapping. Here are some simple ways to work with loyalty and EFT so you can get better results:

1. Ask yourself if your issue has connections to anyone you’re close to.
2. If so, acknowledge it in your setup. Say something like, “Even though a part of me is concerned that letting go of this issue means letting go of [the person's name], I want to love and accept myself anyway.”
3. Reassure yourself during your tapping rounds. Say something like, “I’m willing to release this issue, and I know I’m still connected to [the person's name].”

What’s your experience? Have you run into this when tapping? Let us know by leaving a comment.

Relief from Physical Pain Changes Everything!

You know how pain can impact your life in so many unpleasant ways. Tapping can be such a great tool to get relief. Here are some tips to make your tapping most effective to get the results you want. Listen in and tap along.

(Just click on the white arrow in the black circle of the player below.)

Let us know how this works for you by leaving a comment below.

Here are some tips for tapping to help with dealing with those difficult people in your life. These are tried and true techniques that can make a real difference in how your next meeting with them goes. So take a listen and tap along with this podcast:

Listen to
internet radio with JANET HILTS on Blog Talk Radio

Let us know how this works for you. Do you have any tips of your own to share? Leave a comment to let us know.

This tapping tip can really speed up your EFT.

The secret: unhook your feelings about your topic from your need to DO something about it. They are two separate things.

By untangling them right at the start of your session, you’ll be surprised at how much easier it is to let go of things.

Watch the video to see what I mean:

What do you think? How does it work for you? Leave a comment below to let us all know.

In my last post I shared a great EFT shortcut – tapping in resistance phrases at the beginning of your session, even before you do your tapping setup.

Here’s a short video to show you this big time-saver tip:

Try it out and come back here to comment on how it went for you.

When you’re tapping, it’s easy to be slowed down by subconscious resistance (aka “reversals”). These are beliefs and thoughts related to your main issue that you don’t realize are working against you. They are off your radar, so they don’t occur to you when you tap. Remember – they are subconscious (below conscious recognition).

These resistance thoughts are big deals and can make tapping progress difficult. That’s why it’s important to do something about them. Let me give you a few examples of these resistance beliefs:

• I don’t deserve to let go of this issue.
• I should have let go of this a long time ago.
• I’m a __________ (wise person, coach, EFT practitioner, minister, etc.) and I shouldn’t have this issue.

You could do a whole tapping session on each one of those beliefs – because they have emotional intensity all on their own – aside from the issue they relate to.

Shortcut: Resistance Tapping Phrases

Here is a way to quickly eliminate these thoughts, without adding more tapping sessions. You can start your EFT session by giving voice to this resistance before you do your setup. Many thanks to EFT Master Lindsay Kenny for this concept. You can hear examples of this “resistance tapping” at the start of all the tap-alongs on my Moving Forward With EFT radio program.

How To Do It

Follow these steps:

1. Choose your issue to tap on. If it’s been with you for any length of time (longer than a few weeks), you have some subconscious resistance to letting it go. That’s a fact. Think about it: If you *didn’t* have any resistance, you would have already let it go. Right? So there’s no judgment here. It just happens.

   There’s some subconscious part of you that thinks it has a good reason to hold onto the issue. That’s why you’re getting ready to tap on it to let it go. OK. So let’s give that resistance part a chance to speak up and be heard once and for all. And then it can relax and not fight your EFT attempts to release the issue. That’s all we’re doing here.

2. Using your karate chop point, tap the resistance phrases before you do your setup. The phrasing goes like this: Even though I don’t want to let go of this because _______________(use resistance phrase here), I want to love and accept myself anyway. Do this for as many resistance phrases as you think may apply.
3. Move on to your setup, and then start your regular tapping.

What Phrases To Use

You may be asking, “If it’s subconscious and off my radar screen, how do I know what phrases to use?” The best way is to keep a list for yourself of possibilities. Look at this list when you’re tapping and either tap once on each of them, or notice if you feel a little tug when you read it. If so, tap on that phrase.

Here are some more common resistance phrases for you (in addition to those listed above):

• It may not be safe to get over this. Holding onto it might keep me from making a mistake.
• This is a way I’ve been connected to _______(person) and I don’t want to lose that connection. [This can apply to anyone you're close to who has this same issue, or someone you're having the issue with.]
• Maybe it’s not possible to get over this.
• It’s been with me for so long I won’t know who I am without this.
• I ought to be punished for what I did and hanging onto this is my punishment.
• I won’t have a reason for my life not working if I get over this.
• I’m afraid I’ll have to do something if I release this, and I’m not ready for that yet.

Try using these resistance phrases before you do your setup and be amazed at how quickly you release your issues.

Extra Tip

If you’re tapping and your intensity (SUDS) level gets low and then won’t budge, check this list. See if one of these resistant thoughts is holding things up. Take a minute to go back to your karate chop point and tap it in. Then go back to your regular tapping and watch your number drop down to a zero!

Try it out and come back to share your successes in the comments below.