But It's Just a Piece of Paper!

Overwhelm.

It happens to us all at times.  But why does something bother us one time and not  the next?  Stress.

Some of that stress you know about.   You are 'under' a lot of stress, perhaps with deadlines at work or school. The news is disturbing, or the neighbors are keeping you up at night. Illness, be it short term like a cold or more serious like the flu. What do all these things have in common?  They use our personal resources.  Our energy.

You've heard or said this... "I just can't think about that now."  Or, "I just can't deal with that right now." What's going to make it more "do-able" later?  Resources.  This is a complex issue to understand and explain but here's the analogy I use.

You're walking down the hall at work with your coffee cup in hand.  Someone intersects you and asks, "Can you take this piece of paper down to Carla's desk? "Of course"  you say.  It's just down at the end of the hall.

Now imagine this scenario.  You are walking down the hall with your cup of coffee.  You are also carrying a big box, and it's a bit awkward. And balanced on the box is a delicate piece of sculpture, and you're walking very carefully to make sure everything is safe and you don't spill your coffee. Some wise cracker keeps making sudden jabs at you  to see if  they can startle you into dropping your load, and you realize that this is all much heavier than you thought it was and your arms are shaking a bit.   Now, that same person walks up to you and asks "Can you take this piece of paper down to Carla's desk?"  What do you think your response would be this time?

You say in some level of exasperation (and politeness), "Uh, NO!  Can't you see I'm loaded up here!  What's the matter with you. Take it to Carla yourself!" 

Right?

In the first scenario you have plenty of resources to carry the piece of paper.  In the second you do not.  

But what are those resources?  They are essentially your feelings. You feel you have time, you feel strong enough, you feel capable.  And stress happens when you are asked to use time you do not feel you have. When you are asked to use strength you do not feel you have. You are asked to do something of which you don't feel capable.

It boils down to our feelings.  And in the end, stress does not come from outside of ourselves, it arises within us in response to a life stimulus.


Next time:  the stress you are (consciously) unaware of

 

Who Do You Think You Are?

Did You Hear That Growing up?

For many of us that was the sign that someone thought we were "getting too big for our britches"  or in some way thinking too highly of ourselves.  What it really meant was we were acting out of the "norm" our family, friends or teachers had established for us. It was a way to make us behave or  think in a way that would make them comfortable.   

But it is a serious question to ponder.  Really, who do you think you are? Are you generous, kind, funny?  Are you thoughtful, brash, reckless, cautious?  Are you bold, timid, well meaning?  Are you worthy of that great job, the love of your life. Are you good enough to have what you desire?  Do things come to you easily or are they ever elusive?

I've said this before.  You believe you have "beliefs." What you really have is set of brain habits.  Over the course of your life you have created an identity comprised of many thoughts and beliefs.  Every  thought creates a corresponding sensation in your body.  These are created by a complex recipe of hormones that tell you what you are 'feeling' in response to any thought. 

EFT is an awesome tool to discover what you really feel.  By looking at what is stressing you out, whether it be your health, past or present, some thought that's stuck in your head, a feeling of overwhelm, fatigue or any number of other things, we can relieve the immediate stress with tapping.  And to get longer lasting, permanent results, we go find the root of the issue and clear it out too.

And then it's gone! It's like clearing a drain.  Once the stuck energy is gone, it doesn't crawl back up the pipe to bother you again.  That's kind of an kind of icky analogy, but pretty vivid I think.  

Let's clear that stuff out!

 The Cart Before the Horse

 Have you noticed in life that when you achieve the wisdom from an experience but wish you had had that wisdom way back when, when you could have really used it?

Facebook is like that,  sort of.   It's like having a backwards conversation.  So in case you missed it here is a run down of recent posts, relating to my comments above, but in an order that makes more sense!

Look at these pictures and tell me if you see yourself in one of them. How do you know? Probably you had a feeling in your body that means "familiar" or "safe" to you. We all have images of ourselves in our conscious and unconscious minds. And at the root of social peace lies the ability to see "ourselves" in others. When you can consciously expand your image of your self with tapping, by letting go of stress and trauma, you are stepping onto the path of making peace in your world and therefor world peace. Are you called?

 I invite you take a census of what you think are your qualities, good and bad. Tomorrow we'll do something with that list. Don't get extreme, but are there 5 things you're great at? Are there 5 things you might like to change? What do you KNOW to be true of yourself?

 OK, you have your list from yesterday? (post of 2/20) Now, here's the question. Is it really true? There are many things we believe about ourselves that amount to little more than programming. Much of which has it's source so far back that we don't even know why we feel that way, so we put it into the category of "that's just how I am". Where it sits unquestioned for decades, influencing our choices and our life direction. What if you could change the story of your life? What if you could change your brain, and pick another direction? Here's the not-so-secret secret. You can. And tapping is the fastest way I know of to do that.

 Great. Now you've decided to try tapping and you want to get started. Good deal.
 But you feel your problems are with other people not yourself. Common feelings.
 How do we address that? We start with YOU of course. You are the only one
you have control over anyway, ever. But when YOU change, the people
 around you have to change too. Remember the pictures from a
 couple of days ago? People are accustomed to relating to their
"picture" of you.When you change the way you show up, they have
 to respond differently too. If you start showing up stronger
and more calm, what might the reactions be in your environment?

 When you say to yourself, "that's just how I am" do you know, or wonder, why? You may well know! Examples might be "I'm fearful of height because I fell off a ladder when I was 6." Until I was 22 I was terrified of bees because I had been stung twice (at the same time!) when I was around 5. Maybe you can trace your fear of speaking to the fact that every time you spoke up at home someone was sure to tell you to shut up because you were stupid. All these experiences add up to "How we are". You are probably also kind, or generous; intelligent, caring, resourceful, charming or many other wonderful qualities. But it's those negative qualities that seem to preoccupy our minds. And they are the ones that may be holding you back in key areas of your life, like your health.

 When you contemplate what makes you YOU, do some of your qualities confuse you? Are you afraid of things and don't know why? Timid of certain situations for no apparent reason? From the moment you are born your nervous system begins coding your experiences into two categories. Roughly speaking, good and bad. This is happening long before you are able to form memories. But your amygdala is tasked from moment one with keeping you safe. Did the color red show up at the same time a pain stimulus was delivered? Amygdala might code in "color red=pain=might be dangerous". That sense of unease, especially if oft repeated, codes for discomfort around the color red. so you might not like red shirts, or cars, or be uncomfortable around a really nice person because they have red hair or wear a lot of red clothes. And you don't know why, "I just don't" ! This may be an innocent example. but in certain situations this "coding" that makes you "be you" can be a really big stumbling block. Tapping can change that!

You can join the thread at my Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/lovetapping/


 Or come play with us at my FB group: From Stressed Out to Happy and Healthy

 Be Well.





























 

The Lies We Tell Shape Our Lives

Have you ever said?

You know, the white lies.  The words said to protect other's feelings, or avoid a long explanation to someone who doesn't merit it.  The explanations for when we feel  "no"  is not enough of an answer. Ladies, you get this. 

No.  It's a complete sentence.  Here's why you might want to adapt a 'truth or nothing' approach.

Words have meaning.  Sure, you get that. But words are also instructions.  Your body is always listening to what you say and think. Your brain doesn't know  the difference between your imaginings and "reality". 

          By the body I mean what you think of as the body and the energetic imprint,
          the totality of the operating system focused around it and informing 
          all your decisions.

When you use seemingly innocent phrases, to whitewash the truth, even with something so simple as saying, "I can't go to the store right now,"  your mind is listening.  Your body is listening.   But if you use "I can't"  to replace, "I don't want to" because it's easier than saying, "I don't want to take YOU to the store right now," you're setting up a small dissonance in your system.  It may be a small lie, and you think it may be relieving you of stress to tell it, but none the less, it's a small stress.

And the occasional small lie may not be of much consequence. But is it part of a pattern?  If you can't stand on your own two feet and say "I don't want to do that right now," where else are you lying to just get along?  And what is the toll it is really taking on you?

The Power of Words

          "Words become things --- choose the good ones"    Mike Dooly
          "Be Impeccable With Your Word"   From The Four Agreements"

The things we say often, with each iteration, become truer and truer. With each repetition  a bigger and bigger neural pathway is developing in our brains devoted to that statement. And  an external reality to go along with it will be created . If I say, or think, often enough I can't do something like:
  
          make more money
          heal my body
          find a great love partner
          deliver that great presentation
          make that jump
         land that great job

then my brain is going to create the circumstances that will reflect that and make it truth. 

Remember; words are instructions.

Our systems are stressed out by lying.  This is why a lie detection machine works. To reduce the stress we must bring our external environment into congruence with our beliefs. 

Conversely, this is why making positive changes can feel so hard.  You are trying to wrest control of your system from an operating system that is not taking you where you want to go.  And it will fight you for control. And being a million times bigger than your 'willpower' it will win.  Unless you have a secret weapon!

Tapping comes to the rescue.

     With tapping we can relatively quickly and easily get to the root of the limiting beliefs that are holding us back in our health, relationships, careers, and other endeavors.

     We can re-write the operating system to take us where we want to go. When we use EFT tapping we are un-bundling the neural pathway that says we can't, and building one that says we can.  And for most of the time that is a lot of fun.  Letting go of stress feels great.  And the benefits are life long, and life encompassing.