Energy Provocateur

by Steve Wells

“Eating ice cream is easy. Making something that matters is hard.” – Seth Godin

Over 70 years ago Albert E. N. Gray wrote an essay called The Common Denominator of Success. From his research on what led some people to become successful while others did not he concluded:

“The common denominator of success — the secret of success of every(one) who has ever been successful — lies in the fact that (they) formed the habit of doing things that failures don’t like to do.”

In analysing the biggest producers in his own field of life insurance, Gray asked:

“Perhaps you have wondered why it is that our biggest producers seem to like to do the things that you don’t like to do. They don’t!”

It is common in the tapping world to find people who encourage you to work on changing your “vibration” in order to be successful. We are all supposed to get ourselves to feel good then we can change. But as Gray discovered, many, in fact most, people who are successful don’t wait until they feel good before they take action, they manage to get themselves to take action despite their uncomfortable feelings. And that is why they succeed.

Gray found that successful people manage to get themselves to do the things that people who are not successful don’t do and won’t do, not because they like doing those things (the popular myth), but because they have found a meaningful purpose which makes taking  those actions worthwhile. They are able to consistently get themselves to do things which others don’t like to do and they don’t necessarily like doing either because their disliking is subordinated to the strength of their purpose.

What does that mean?

They have found some deeply meaningful reasons which are emotionally stronger to do than the emotional reasons not to do the things they need to do to become successful. And then they make taking those actions a habit.

Gray uses the term purpose but when you dig deeper he is really talking about values, which are your strongest emotional drivers. He says you need to identify a purpose which is a sentimental or emotional, one which is rooted in your strongest wants and desires.

So essentially, unless your goals relate to your highest values, your strongest underlying emotional reasons why you want to do this or have this or become this they will never drive your actions too far. If you haven’t found those reasons, that is the place to start.

Ask yourself these questions:

• What is most important to me?
• Will achieving this be really good for me, good for others and good for the planet?

You might as well know right now that you are not going to be truly successful unless you can get yourself to do some things that are currently uncomfortable for you to do.

Your success is on the other side of your current comfort zone.

Now here’s the thing: Tapping can help you. Tapping can help you to overcome the emotional blocks to doing the things you need to do to become successful. Tapping can help you to make the discomfort of taking disliked actions less uncomfortable…

However, without the strong energy and powerful inspiration provided by that link to your highest values and desires, no amount of tapping will get you there. So check in emotionally with your goal. If it doesn’t really inspire you, dig deeper until you find what does.

As Seth Godin writes in Lynchpin:

“When you set down the path to create art, whatever sort of art it is, understand that the path is neither short nor easy. That means you must determine if the route is worth the effort. If it’s not, dream bigger.”

(If you are unclear about your values, my Values Intensive Live Workshop DVD set can help you get clear on what is really important to you and help iron out the internal conflicts.)

Here’s something else: as long as you believe that taking action towards your goal, at least in the beginning, should be easy, that you should like taking those actions then you will continue to be held back.

There are some actions that you just do not like doing right now which you will need to do if you are to be successful and achieve your goals. And waiting for all conditions to be perfect will mean you may never do anything at all. Waiting until tapping makes you feel great about taking action may be also be a distraction from action which keeps you stuck.

So your best first use of tapping is this: Tapping to help you to bear with the uncomfortable feelings of going outside your comfort zone towards a valued goal even as you get into action to go there. Tapping as you go.

Every significant move forward is going to require you to move outside your current comfort zone, which means that some discomfort comes with the territory. That even applies when your desired goal is something you really want.

The discomfort of taking steps towards a valued goal is not a bad thing, it is a good form of stress, like stretching a tight muscle is good for the muscle and ultimately good for you. If you continue to see those sensations as bad then you doom yourself to remain in contraction.

Some effort is required for the chick to break free of the egg or the butterfly to come out of the cocoon.

Can’t I just tap away my bad feelings until I feel good and then take action?

Good luck. For when you try tap away those feelings you risk setting up a secondary condition: You may be seeking to avoid something you need to go through. And now you are left with the feeling that you can’t handle those negative feelings, even those that might be good for you! And you remain rooted in inaction, waiting for everything to be perfect and to “feel right” before you will move.

If you keep trying to remove your negative feelings and to “not” feel them then they actually tend to scream more loudly. What you resist tends to persist. On the other hand, once you fully accept and allow those feelings to move you then they will tend to move through you. What you accept and allow no longer has power to control you.

So tap to connect with your end goal, vision, dream, or purpose, and to allow yourself to feel how it will really feel when you have achieved it. Regularly accessing those feelings will really help you to sustain through the difficult times.

Then tap on being willing to experience the feelings you currently see as negative which you will experience when you take steps to move outside your comfort zone.

Tap to get yourself to take action and continue on taking action despite those feelings and any associated negative thoughts being there. Tap for being able to handle the feelings, not to try to tap them away.

Use tapping to allow you to move into what seems like discomfort but is in reality an energy-giving, life-expanding stretch for you.

That, I guarantee you, will be a lot more productive than staying at home and tapping until you get your “vibration” right.

What do you think? I would love to read your comments on this article…

By Steve Wells

When I was 17 years old I cared more about being with my friends than achieving anything. I avoided study like the plague. My friends and I joked about it – If any of us thought the others were studying we would actively work to stop them or sabotage them. Whilst majoring in “socialization” I let my school studies go. Then came the day when I sowed what I had reaped.

During the “mock” examinations that were to lead us into our major examinations – the ones that would determine whether we went to university and gave ourselves a chance of succeeding in life or went on the dole queue and ate gruel for eternity (or so we were led to believe), I failed miserably.  My low scores shocked even me. Somehow I had thought I could ignore my studies yet still get through. Boy was I wrong. With the final examinations only 8 weeks away I started to get worried. Very worried.

Shortly after my comprehensive failure at the “mock finals” I truanted school with some schoolmates to purchase tickets to a rock band named Kiss (that was a long time ago but the band is still around). It was during that day that I was to have the experience which ultimately caused me to face my failure and realize that I needed to turn my life around.

We had been waiting all day in line, however many people came in front of us throughout the day as their friends had been saving them a place. We ended up standing next to a high school teacher that afternoon who was waiting to buy tickets for his daughter, and my friend and I got talking to him.

Inevitably the conversation turned to examinations. He asked how we had gone. My friend looked at me with a shy grin on his face as I told the teacher my score. He looked a bit shocked, then looked me directly in the eye and gave me his prognosis. “That’s a real shame; you know you’ll never recover from that.”  I did a double take, and my first reaction was “Perhaps he’s trying reverse psychology trying to motivate me.” But as I looked back at him I realised he was being deadly serious. This motivated a stronger internal reaction: complete rejection of his statement “You are wrong” I thought to myself. My friend and I looked at each other and laughed at his statement, but I could see that it had affected my friend in a similar way to how it had affected me. Part of me believed the guy was right, but a bigger part of me knew he was totally wrong.

Even at 17 I knew that my life wasn’t over regardless of how poorly I did on a test. When I arrived home that day I was determined to change things – but I didn’t know how.  Over the next few days I meditated on this experience. I knew I needed to do something but I didn’t know what. Maybe he was right, maybe it was too late to turn things around…

A few days after this experience I was laying on the lounge in my parents house (something I did often in my teenage years, after spending late nights out socializing with my friends). On this day I was particularly subdued, even a little depressed as I meditated on my fate. In the middle of my self-pity and depression I spied a book in my father’s well-stacked bookshelf. I took it out and began to read. I finished the first chapter and kept on reading.  I don’t remember where in that book that a light went on in my head but I do remember the feeling of hope and possibility that swept over me as I read it. As I continued to read the book all the way to the end, I realized that I had found something different to anything I had read before. I realized that the author was right, that there was a way out of any dilemma – that there truly exists a pathway to success and if you follow it you really can achieve your dreams.

The name of that book was Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, and reading it changed my life. What Hill had distilled into Think and Grow Rich was not only the information and strategies on how to achieve your dreams; he had included an essential element missing from many other self-help and personal development books –the feeling of success that I needed in order to get myself to make the transition from failure to success. As I read the stories of others who had succeeded, I was filled with feelings of possibility and hope.

I read Hill’s book to the end and I followed his formula to the letter. And from the moment I started on that new path, my life started to change. I decided on the score I would achieve in my examinations, and went on to exceed it, getting into the university course of my choice with ease. More importantly than all, my new-found certainty and positive attitude towards life caused me to attract into my life the woman who has become my wife and soul-mate, the mother of my 3 wonderful children.

I believe that the 6-step formula marked out by Hill in his book has stood the test of time and has not yet been superseded despite the massive proliferation of popular psychology and self-help books since his time. However the psychology that supports that process of making it work, that has been updated and improved and I feel very fortunate to have been around to both witness and be involved in seeing these new approaches added to the solid foundation of Hill’s formula. I am referring here to the Energy Psychology techniques, including in particular Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) and Simple Energy Techniques (SET). These updated methods can accelerate our progress and assist us to more adequately adopt the methods for success…However, Napoleon Hill’s basic formula will still work for all who wish to apply it.

Here is that all-important 6-step formula which changed my life over 27 years ago. Note that although Hill was referring to financial riches, I applied the same formula to improve my academic performance, and others have used the same formula to make all sorts of changes. Thus, I have modified Hill’s original statements slightly to show that the formula can be used for all types of goals My modifications in square brackets and my comments in curly brackets :

First: fix in your mind [an exact description of what] you desire… Be definite…

Second: determine exactly what you intend to give in return… There is no such thing as something for nothing…

Third: establish a definite date when you intend to possess [what it is] you desire.

Fourth: create a definite plan for carrying out your desire, and begin at once, ready or not, to put this plan into action. {This is the missing element in the movie and book The Secret; the all-important action step. Tapping can help us get over our inner objections to taking the action we need to take to achieve our goals}

Fifth: write out a clear, concise statement of [exactly what] you intend to achieve, name the time limit for its achievement, state what you intend to give in return, and describe clearly the plan through which you intend to achieve it. {that plan doesn’t have to be perfect, it never can be, but without planning and action based on your plan, nothing will happen… Thinking alone is not enough, as Hill points out in the action step as well as the next step…}

Sixth: read your written statement twice daily… As you read – see and feel and believe [that you have already achieved your goal]. {Getting yourself to believe is a process and requires us to overcome internal objections, emotional blocks, and blocking beliefs… All of these tapping can help us with}

Hill also taught me that persistence is absolutely essential to all high achievement,, and that all who have gone on to achieve great things experienced set-backs and temporary defeats, but that ultimately success comes to those who persist with definiteness of purpose…

(Adapted from Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill)

By the way, you can probably access a free copy of Think and Grow Rich online as the original version is out of copyright. I warn ladies that the stories are almost exclusively about high-achieving men as it is a product of its time, however my experience has shown these principles work as adequately for women as they do for men. Also, the emphasis is on material riches, although the formula, as Thomas Edison, one of the people who inspired the original formula, stated that it could be used for any form of achievement.

This basic formula can work for you as it has for me and as it has for many people who have read Think and Grow Rich and applied its teachings to improve their lives. By the way, I’d change its title to Feel and Grow Rich as I now believe the feeling part to be more important in this basic formula. And with the addition of tapping to work with that feeling part, we can reduce the discomfort involved in going outside of our current comfort zone, and, more importantly, we can improve the strength of our emotional and energetic connection when we seek to connect with our goal.

What do you think? I would love to read your comments.

By Steve Wells

“Success is nothing more than a few simple disciplines, practiced every day; while failure is simply a few errors in judgment, repeated every day. It is the accumulative weight of our disciplines and our judgments that leads us to either fortune or failure” – Jim Rohn

At this time of year many people are thinking about what they wish to achieve in the coming year (and some have already broken the resolutions they made just a few days ago!). Fresh from having successfully completed my own year-long resolution of taking over 10000 steps every day, and having coached many clients to successfully follow through and achieve the goals they’ve set for themselves, I would like to devote this article to describing how you can achieve the goals you set for yourself THIS year.

My Experience

At this time last year I resolved to take at least 10 000 steps every day, so every day since that time I have worn a pedometer on my belt and recorded my daily steps. I have found opportunities to move where I could never “find the time” to do enough exercise prior to this. Sometimes I just made it over the mark, but most days I did many more than 10 000 steps. As a result, I feel better, I am fitter, I’m definitely healthier,  and my size and shape have improved as well.

Was it difficult? Sure sometimes when it was cold and wet it was difficult to go out, but the most difficult of all was to maintain the commitment whilst travelling. I spent a lot of time walking around airports knowing that once I boarded the plane it would be almost impossible to make up the steps.

The toughest of all was a day in Brussels where I’d been running a PET workshop with David Lake. A lot of that day was spent sitting down doing one-on-one demonstrations  or watching David work. After the workshop we went out for a lovely dinner with our friends and had a few drinks. In the taxi on the way home David remarked to me that I “probably wouldn’t fit my steps in” that day. Oh dear! I had totally forgotten. I looked at my pedometer and I still had nearly 6000 steps to do! I was tired, it was late, and it was cold and raining outside. The last thing I wanted to do right then was to go out and do my steps. But I did.

That experience and the many other times I went forward despite my internal objections (sometimes tapping as I walked on how much I didn’t want to be walking right then) are now resource experiences for me.  They help me to see that I can follow through and achieve a goal based on higher values even when lesser values seek to distract and sabotage me.  Although I’ve achieved many things in my life which may seem more significant, this is the first thing I’ve been able to do every single day for such a sustained period, despite the myriad seemingly-legitimate distractions and barriers. that arose. Daily movement is now so much a part of my life that I can’t imagine a life without it.

So what have I learned and how can this help you, whatever your goals, to follow through on your resolve, to stick to your commitment, to live life the way you define it, and live free from the prison of “whim” and the trap of “comfort”?

The Moment of Truth

If you are going to achieve anything significant, you need to start with significant motivation. And that motivation doesn’t have to be positive. In fact, the motivation that often works is the type that comes from a moment of truth which can be painful at the time.

Although I’d asked for a pedometer for Christmas, my resolve to take 10 000 steps every day was cemented in a conversation with my wife the day after Christmas 2010 when we were discussing our goals for the coming year.  I said that I wanted to lose about 5kg and Louise spluttered “Huh, you mean 10!”, then met my slightly hurt, incredulous look with the words “You know that don’t you?” Sadly, I did know that, I was just in denial.

Negative experiences can even be the impetus to very positive achievement (see my previous articles on negative thinking with positive results) Just look at Michael Jordan, widely considered the best basketball player of all time, whose rise to the professional ranks was in large part the result of him being cut from the team in high school. As he later wrote, “Whenever I was working out and got tired and figured I ought to stop, I’d close my eyes and see that list in the locker room without my name on it, and that usually got me going again.”. I did the same thing sometimes in the past year, when I thought about not doing my 10 000 steps that day, I would remember my wife’s words and the way she spoke to me in that moment of truth. Rather than being a negative, her words were a tonic, shaking me out of the lethargy of my previous victim state where I could never “find time” to exercise.

For many people, their moment of truth comes when they look at themselves in the mirror and really see what they have allowed to happen to their form. For others, like me, it comes from the tough love words of a loved one or close friend. Whatever it be, there really is power in the moment when we scream, once and for all, enough is enough. IN that moment, use that power to define a new goal for yourself, to make a new decision, to resolve how things WILL be in future, to decide how you will be and what you will do.

Deciding is not enough

The spark of a new decision or a defining moment may be enough to get us started but it is not usually going to be enough to help us to maintain. Not if we are striving to achieve a big goal, or seeking to fulfil a commitment which requires us to endure (what other type of commitment is truly fulfilling anyway?). So this is where you need a system for success.

This is also where you can start to use tapping to great effect. Immediately when you have an idea or you make a commitment there will typically be a lurking a critical part or a background thought which says “You won’t do that… You won’t follow through… You can’t do that…” or such like. Now is the time to start tapping on those objections. Allow the objections to rise up in your mind and follow where they lead as you tap and tap and tap.

Objections are your friend

Pay attention to the objections which come up when you consider making a change or seek to achieve a new goal, they are telling you something. Sometimes they represent an important value, part of you which is concerned that it will suffer if you embrace the new action or way of being. Unless that part of you is acknowledged and validated it will continue to scream for your attention, and resist the changes you want to make. Allow that part to speak and ask if it will be ok with the goal you want to achieve – or what would make it so – and if there are continued objections make sure to do tapping in order to settle them down. Sometimes your goal will need to be modified to ensure you stay in balance in other important areas of life

If the changes you want will help you fulfil your highest values then you won’t have to fight against your own energy to achieve them. You can also draw on the energy and motivation of living your values to help you through the tough times.

Most objections however come down to one thing: Fear. And fear is easily treated with tapping. The greatest fear for me, as for many people, was that I would fail to follow through again. So tap for your fear of failure, and tap on all the thoughts that tell you that you won’t follow through and the feelings which these are connected to.

Once the objections have settled down, come back to your intention and re-affirm it, tapping as you do. Start with affirming that you want that, then affirm that you will do it and have it and be it.

Break it down

Break your big goal down into small, achievable steps. Too often we expect too much of ourselves too soon, this is why many people fail to really follow through, they make their first steps too large. So they decide they are going to exercise for an hour every day then they get out and exercise for an hour on the first day and push so hard that they injure themselves, or activate an old injury, or they simply collapse in pain and have an excuse not to go out again. Or they try to write for an hour when they haven’t been writing anything at all for many months. And when they don’t manage to get anything written, or things get in the way so that they don’t manage to “find the time” to write for that length of time they collapse in a heap of self-blame and recrimination.

I tell my clients and workshop participants that the bigger your goal or intention the smaller your first steps should be. (David Lake told me that once one of his daughters wrote a recipe for elephant soup. The first step? First cut elephant into bite-sized pieces…). So instead of making a commitment to write for an hour every day, consider a commitment to write for 5 minutes, especially if you haven’t been writing anything for the past months. Yes, you can go over if you want, but some days when 5 minutes is all you can manage 5 minutes is enough.

Make it a daily commitment

“Some things you have to do every day. Eating seven apples on Saturday night instead of one a day just isn’t going to get the job done.” – Jim Rohn

The best kind of step to take is the step you can take every day. So consider what you can commit to doing every day which will ultimately allow you to achieve your valued goal / live your highest values. There is a trick here and it is that the daily commitment must be a stretch for you but it also must be something you know you can achieve. My 10 000+ steps per day commitment might seem large to some people whereas others may already easily exceed that number in a normal day. What’s important is that it was sometimes easy for me and sometimes it was a real stretch! So doing it many days wasn’t a challenge but doing it every day was a challenge. And this is key: the challenge was never overwhelming, I always knew that it was something I could do. And so I did.

By the way, when I started my step commitment I didn’t make a commitment to take 10000+ steps per day for an entire year, it was just to take that many steps every day. This might seem like hair-splitting but that distinction is a crucial one. Yes, as I went on I thought “Wouldn’t it be good” to reach targets like 100 days, 200 days and a full year. But ultimately this was something I wanted to do every day. And it was something I could to today.

One day at a time, that’s the secret to success…

Start now

Jim Rohn says you should never leave the site of a goal without doing something, no matter how small, towards its achievement. Whatever it is, if you are going to do it for life the time to start is right now. Be honest, you know that anything that you are going to do “tomorrow” is not really going to happen (unless you are a rebel and you want to prove me wrong!). If you can’t do at least something right now, then forget it, the challenge is too overwhelming, and your first step needs to be broken down to something smaller. Like tapping itself, many people don’t realise the power of small things.

So there you have it: Just one thing. Easy to do. Something you can do today. Decide what it is. Start tapping.  And do it.

P.S.: My son Josh has started a daily photo commitment. Wish I could claim the credit but he’s actually been motivated by other professional photographers. It’s called a 365 in the field. You can see Josh’s photos and watch his progress at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/josh-lenom/

PPS: My wife Louise, who is a textile artist, has started a Colour Project for 2012. She’s going to explore a colour each month in relation to meaning, feeling and specifically art and textiles. She will research, read, write, experiment with techniques and ideas as they develop and inspire her relating to that colour, with a commitment to do something on this every day J

What will you do?

We’d love to hear about your goals, commitments, plans and projects, as well as your comments on this article.

Achieve Your Goals in 2012

Do you want to make this the year that you finally make the changes you’ve been promising yourself for so long that you will make? Is so, I want to support you to follow through and make the changes.

I’ve designed a special 3-level support program to help you – You’ll find all the details here: http://corporatetapping.com/achieve-your-goals-in-2012/

By Steve Wells

You situation in life will not improve if you do nothing about it – Source Unknown

If you have found a meaningful destination, a strength-filled purpose, a “big” goal, tapping can help you to achieve it more easily. How? By reducing the disliking associated with taking the actions you will need to take in order to make it real. By helping you to move outside your comfort zone without as much suffering as when you use willpower alone to push or pull against your internal (energetic) resistance.

One common resistance pattern is to find that you are focusing on the pain of taking action, and this wrenches your attention away from the beauty and power of your ultimate destination. So use tapping to turn your attention back to your ultimate goal, and the ultimate results of taking this action, and harness the power of your intention to take you there.

One powerful approach is the one I call Connecting with Success. Here you focus on your ultimate goal and tap whilst holding the intention to connect with how it will FEEL when you have fully achieved that. Initially, there can be incredible resistance to this process, and many internal objections and opposing feelings may arise. If it seems too overwhelming, then stop long enough to write those objections and negative objections down for later tapping. Tap to ease the feelings. Then return to tapping whilst holding the intention to access the success feeling, the feeling of what it will be like to BE in your meaningful future, and bring the feeling of that into your experience NOW. If you are able to visualise, you can get an image of yourself being successful and then step into the picture.

Now, identify some FIRST STEPS which would take you towards your meaningful future. Be careful here not to make those steps too big. In my experience, most people fail to take action because they expect to take massive action. I recommend to my clients the larger your goal the smaller your first steps should be.

If you think right now about taking one of your FIRST STEPS towards your worthwhile future, you are bound to unearth some inner resistance. So start tapping right now as you think about that. As you tune into that internal resistance to taking action now, and you start tapping, you begin to transform your internal feeling resistance towards taking that action in order to move into a better life.

So identify a step which you can take right NOW, no matter how small. Start tapping as you feel the resistance which tells you that later will be a better time, that this is too hard, that you will only fail again. Break your first step down even further to an initial action which is the beginning of that first step (the first step of the first step!). Tap continually as you go ahead and take that first little action Then move into the next part of your first step, and keep on moving, tapping as you go. As you move into that first step, remind yourself of where you are heading, the ultimate goal which will make all of this worthwhile. Then do something to acknowledge what just happened. You are on your way.

What do you think?  We would love to read you comments on this article.

By Steve Wells

We can’t get to where we want to be using the same level of thinking that got us to where we are now. – Einstein

Nor can we get there as long as we remain attached to the feelings that we are attached to now! – Steve Wells

Your success is on the other stage of your current comfort zone. In order to be successful in the ways which you want to be, you will need to move beyond your current comfort zone. To do this means (obviously) being willing to do some things that currently make you feel uncomfortable. It also may involve detaching from the (false) pleasure connected to your current activities, the things that currently “seem” to make your life more comfortable but which ultimately hold you back. Fortunately, tapping can be a powerful ally to help you with this challenge.

Your past conditioning has led you here. Conditioning that tells you that it will be physically painful to get out of bed to do your exercise program. Or that it will be emotionally painful to make that call to sell your product or service. Now you must release your attachment to those conditioned patterns of thinking, feeling, and acting which keep you locked into your current position and prevent you from having the more expansive and successful life that you really desire. First, however, you must decide where you want to go…

In E.M Gray’s famous essay, The Common Denominator of Success, he writes:

“The successful person has the habit of doing the things failures don’t do. They don’t like doing them either necessarily. But their disliking is subordinated to the strength of their purpose.”

Now before you think that I am going to encourage you to “feel the fear and do it anyway” or use Nike’s famous “just do it” quote, I’m not. Although that can work, with tapping we can do better.

Let’s look again at Gray’s quote. He rightly points out that it is the difference in ACTION that makes the greatest difference between people who succeed and those who don’t. The absolute key, however, is in his second sentence where he states (emphasis mine): “their disliking is subordinated to the strength of their purpose. ” What he means is that those who are successful have found something BIGGER that makes taking these uncomfortable actions worthwhile. They have found something purposeful, something meaningful to focus towards. An ultimate pleasure which makes all the pain worthwhile.

And that is the starting point for all significant life change: What would give your life greater meaning? What would be worthwhile creating or achieving? What would be worth taking massive action for? It’s connecting in with that worthwhile future where we need to begin.

Do you have a purpose for your life? Have you identified a meaningful destination towards which you would like to strive? Do you even know what you really want?

Ask yourself the above questions and tap on the energy points while you seek to answer them. If you encounter negativity and resistance, that is great! Tapping on that negativity and resistance is the first step towards releasing your negative attachments and improving your life. You can even write your objections and negative beliefs down as they arise, as externalising them can be a great first step towards bringing them into the light and reducing their power over you. Tapping, however, is the main thing here, as tapping can help to release the feelings in the body that are linked to these thoughts, and it is these feelings which make them seem so powerful. By interrupting the thought-feeling connection we can start to weaken a negative belief structure which has been holding us down, and free ourselves up to see more clearly where we want to go and how we can get there.

In the next edition we will look at how tapping be used to help you take the crucial first steps outside your comfort zone and towards your meaningful life goals.

What do you think? We would love to read your comments.

By Steve Wells

I’ve worked with so many people who set out on a life path then realised at some point that it wasn’t giving them what they really wanted. (Like the old saying: You spend your whole life climbing the ladder of success only to find its leaning against the wrong wall!) They come to me at crisis point, with emotional symptoms that are really stressing them. But when you get underneath the challenge of what they are or are not doing or achieving, the most important underlying issue is about who they (think they) are. Their identity. They are not happy with who they are being on a daily basis. They have not been living in a manner that is congruent with their own personal beliefs, values and rules. What’s more they may even be starting to question their old values and beliefs. The values and beliefs that drove them to get where they are, they often find are not enough. This is frequently the case when the values and beliefs driving their behaviours come from seeking the approval of their parents, for example. Or from trying to rebel against their parents’ core beliefs and values. Either way they end up on a treadmill. And it hurts.

It hurts to live a life that is not 100% congruent with your true self. Finding out who you really are and what you are here to do is one of the most confronting and challenging tasks we can face, which is why most people will do almost anything to avoid it. Yet those that have resolved this dilemma for themselves are instantly attractive to us. The Chinese have an ancient saying: All bow before the congruent man.” My research proves they will do exactly the same if the person before them is a congruent woman. These days we know that congruency is not confined to just one gender. Those who know who they are and what they are about command our attention, whatever their gender.

Do you know who you are? Moreover, are you happy with who you are? Are you happy with who you are being in the world? Would you prefer to be (like) somebody else?

It’s interesting to me that ultimately we can manifest any particular way of being that we choose, simply by doing the things that correspond with that way of being, progressively over time we grow into the new identity. But is that in the end who we really are? Or is it just one choice among many to manifest certain parts from an infinite number of possible selves, to choose from the dress up box and simply put on some make-up to cover the outside when the inside is what it’s really all about?

If you are like me then you learned to rate yourself based on what you do. Therefore, you get to feel bad or good based on your achievements. The belief underlying this is, “I am my achievements”. We see ourselves as good or bad based on what we have done in the world. We are still locked into the childlike world of having to gain the acceptance and love of an imaginary – or internalized – parent. So now we are the parents dishing out false acceptance to ourselves on the basis of our achievements – and dishing out punishment based on non-achievement or failure or bad behaviour or procrastination or whatever else we have learned we “shouldn’t” be doing instead of what we “should”.

But what if it is all just BS? What if the real solution isn’t actually to achieve more, to stay endlessly on the treadmill of stimulus-response, of action and reward, of “I’ll feel better when…”. What if the real need is not to install (or condition or self-hypnotise or even affirm) something more into you to get yourself to do the things you “should” do, but actually to question whether you “should” be doing these things at all? What if what we really need is not to put something into ourselves to make us better, but to release our attachments to what has already been installed by a world which was preparing us for a lifetime of pain and suffering based on conforming to how it “used” to be?

What would happen if we were able to simply focus on only the world that is, right here right now, without the need to cling to an illusion from the past about how it “should” be, and how we “should” be within it.

When you strip away all illusions, the person you meet will be the person who has been staring out of your eyes from day 1. Without any judgment.

What do you think? We would love to read your comments on this article.

Want to change your life? Come to a live workshop. See our international workshop schedule at: http://www.eftdownunder.com/events.html

By Steve Wells

It’s possible to categorise all your activities into 4 types, based on the energy consequences in your life which they are associated with.

1. Energising

These are the activities which give you energy when you do them, and which give you a positive charge even when you just think about doing them. They are the things you are naturally drawn towards, the things you love doing. If you choose a career which involves a lot of these activities it will feel like you are not really working (this is the way I feel about running workshops). You are naturally drawn to do those things that will make you successful.

2. Energy Depleting

These are the activities which take energy away. They are things which have an energetic and emotional cost, and which affect you in a negative way if you encounter them. For example, working in a job you hate with people you don’t like doing tasks you see as meaningless. Spending too much time doing activities like this puts you into energy deficit. Lose too much energy and you ultimately lose your zest for life. Keep it up for too long without balancing it with energy-giving and energising activities and you may even lose your life.

3. Deceptively Energising (Ultimately Depleting)

These are activities which appear as if they will give you energy but ultimately they take energy away. Like cotton candy (Australian’s call this fairy floss) the energy boost is the result of short-lived pleasure rather than lasting happiness and success. We don’t get what we have been promised. This includes things like smoking, drinking, overeating, and “retail therapy”. Ultimately, these activities need to be eliminated from your life as they have a big cost to your self-esteem as well as your general happiness.

4. Deceptively Depleting (Ultimately Energising)

These are activities which appear on the surface as if they will take energy away but ultimately they give you energy. These sorts of activities  seem as though they will cost you energy but end up giving more than they cost. You feel better after you’ve done them. For most people this includes things like working out, going for a jog or going to the gym. Another example is attending a networking event even though you are nervous, or making a call even though you may be rejected. In order to be more successful in your life you will almost certainly need to do more of these types of activities.

Another way of putting this is that these activities require you to move out of your current comfort zone – And your ultimate success is on the other side of your current comfort zone!

Getting yourself over your aversion or discomfort in order to do more type 4 activities may be the greatest way of achieving better results in your life.

Without having Energy Techniques the way to be more successful and happy in life is to do more of the things that give you energy and less of the things that drain your energy. Or to look at balancing the activities that drain your energy with activities that give you energy.

However, the energy consequences outlined above are not really located in the activities themselves. If they were then different people would all have the same emotional and energetic reaction to the same activity. But as you know, some of the activities which you avoid doing others in the world are drawn towards. One person’s trash is another person’s treasure.

What if the energy consequences of any activity for you were simply based on your own emotional-energetic programming? What if you just learned an emotional-energetic reaction to various activities in your life – for example when you were punished for doing a certain behaviour you learned to associate this behaviour with the feeling in the moment of that punishment – and what if you could change that reaction so that you were no longer emotionally programmed to avoid doing things which could be ultimately good for you?

What if you were no longer drained by the activities that are currently draining your energy? What if you could overcome the energy blocks to doing the things you want to do? What if you didn’t need to seek feelings from things and activities at all? Wouldn’t that be the ultimate definition of emotional freedom?

What if your energy came from a spring rising up from inside you, rather than coming in from the outside? Then the only thing required would be to remove the blocks to that flow, rather than to find things from outside you to give you the good feelings you want.

So the number one activity for your success is actually restoring energy flow.

And this is where tapping comes in.

Tapping to remove blocks to energy flow and to restore energy flow may be the number one activity you can do to ensure your future success. By tapping, you can change the energy consequences of an activity, event or situation on your life. Then you can be free to do whatever you need to do to succeed.

Want to find out how to uncover and restore energy flow and reawaken zest for life in yourself and others?

Come along to a live workshop:

100% YES! Sydney

SET and PET Workshop Brisbane

SET and PET Workshop Italy

SET and PET Workshop Germany

Can’t make it to a live workshop?

The Values Intensive “Live” Workshop DVD’s will enable you to have the experience of being at the workshop from your own home.

Steve Wells presenting at the Enjoy Emotional Freedom Book Launch

Enjoy Emotional Freedom, an exciting new book by Steve Wells and Dr. David Lake, was officially launched on Saturday 23rd April at a packed house book launch held at the Bodhi Tree in Mt Hawthorn, Perth. At the launch, co-author Steve Wells presented a demonstration of Simple Energy Techniques (SET), the unique body-energy approach he developed together with co-author Dr. David Lake, and which is outlined in the authors’ new book. Steve was kept busy answering questions on  SET from the 60-strong audience, and  signing copies of the new book (see pictures below).

Steve Wells signs books at the launch of Enjoy Emotional Freedom

Enjoy Emotional Freedom is an exciting book about a big subject. It represents the fruit of a decade of experimentation and innovation in the field of energy psychology by two of the most enthusiastic and original contributors. In a nutshell the techniques taught in this book allow you to ‘tune’ and ‘tone’ your body’s energy system for the immediate benefit of relaxation and a reduction of the body’s stress responses.

Enjoy Emotional Freedom teaches the reader two very easy to learn body-energy techniques which can help you to gain control over your negative feelings. The two techniques outlined in the book are Emotional Freedom Techniques (SET), developed by Gary Craig, and Simple Energy Techniques (SET), developed by the authors. These techniques are based on manipulating the body’s meridian system (the basis of acupressure and acupuncture); they’re simple, easy to learn, and most importantly, they work!

Many rave reviews have already been received about Enjoy Emotional Freedom from leading figures in the Energy Psychology field, and these can be read on the author’s website at: http://www.eftdownunder.com/enjoyemotionalfreedom.html

An excellent review of this exciting new  book can also be seen at: http://www.tap4health.com/enjoy-emotional-freedom-by-steve-wells-and-david-lake-eft-book-review/

Steve answers questions at the signing

Enjoy Emotional Freedom is published by Exisle Publishing, and can be purchased from bookstores throughout Australia and New Zealand.  It is also available online from:  http://www.eftdownunder.com/enjoyemotionalfreedom.html

By Steve Wells

“The life of a high achiever is one of risk and reward, one of sowing and reaping, and/or one of straining and growing. Nothing great will happen unless you first take a risk, sow the right seed, and/or strain through resistance. Get started and make your dreams come true.” - Greg Werner (Strength & Conditioning Coach)

“Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.”
– Helen Keller

Some people are seeking a world without stress, a world of total comfort. But you need stress in your life and if you have enough of the right kind of it you can actually end up with a life which is more comfortable. By the same token, seeking to eliminate all stress from your life can mean you end up less comfortable and having less of a life. Let me explain…

There is distress, the bad stress, and then there is eustress, the stress that helps you grow. This is the kind of stress you need in your life. It is also the neglected part of the stress theory originally advanced by Hans Selye.

Eustress was defined by Selye as “healthy stress, the type of stress which gives one a feeling of fulfillment or other positive feelings. Eustress is a process of exploring potential gains.” (Wikipedia).

In Selye’s model, persistent stress that is not resolved through function qualifies as distress, and can lead to anxiety and withdrawal behaviour. Eustress, on the other hand, is the positive stress which enhances physical or mental functioning through, for example, strength training or challenging work.

Eustress in my definition is caused by energy that moves, or represents that which causes energy to move. An action that causes energy to move through you can be a good stress. Like going to the gym. Or having good therapy. These are examples where seeking out stress ultimately results in less stress of the negative type and generates more energy flow, arguably a state of greater comfort.

The ultimate cost of seeking a world without stress is that you end up atrophying. Ultimately, attempting to eliminate all stress from your life in order to be comfortable can have deadly consequences for your life energy. You may recall the biblical parable of the guy who accumulates all this “stuff”, gets ready for a life of ease, and then dies .

We are goal seeking organisms, we need the positive stress of moving forward and growth.

Exercise is an example of something which seems to take energy but which ultimately gives more energy than it takes. It seems (when you are setting out to do it) to have an energy cost but ultimately (after you’ve done it) there is an energy boost. The same could be said for cleaning your house, or desk, or car, or completing a task you’ve been putting off. Or taking action on a life value or high goal.

Getting off your bottom to go out there into the world, expand your comfort zone and achieve your goals often has a fear component or a feeling of working hard associated to it, but the rewards of moving through this are great. Jim Rohn says “for every disciplined effort there is a multiple reward”.

And here’s where the tapping can come in.

You can tap on your fear of moving forward. You can tap on your fear of feeling a little bit of stress. Tap to realise the value of positive eustress in your life; to help you realise not just intellectually but in your nervous system that this stress is a good thing to be experiencing. And tap to prevent that stress from becoming distress, the kind of stress that accumulates and overwhelms and doesn’t move. Tap to facilitate the movement of that stress through your system, to ultimately make the uncomfortable more comfortable and create the action habit in your nervous system …

There is, of course, a place for comfort in life, for rest in between surges forward. It may even be essential for your ultimate development and may improve your productivity and performance to take a rest. But you don’t want to stay there, otherwise you start to go backwards. And your energy contracts.

Paradoxically, expanding your comfort zone and creating more stress – which seems to be the most uncomfortable thing – can actually produce a level of comfort and peace and achievement far beyond what can be achieved by basing your life around comfort and security.

I say it this way to potential peak performers: Your success lies on the other side of your current comfort zone. Your success relies on getting more good stress into your life.

So here’s the important question for you: What, if you did it today, would lead to an influx of positive energy into your life? Make the decision to do it now, tapping for any fear and worry that this may cause. Tap to change your attitude to stress. After all, it may be that stress which will keep you alive.

What do you think? We would love to read your comments.

By Steve Wells

Note: Since I wrote this article, Michael Phelps was beaten by Germany’s Paul Biedermann in the 200m freestyle at the world swimming championships, although there is contention that the new high-tech swimming suit aided his result. Biedermann believes it did and states, “I hope there will be a time when I can beat Michael Phelps without these suits.” Phelps is eagerly awaiting a re-match on more equal terms. In the meantime, he remains a champion and world record holder in more events than anyone else, and this article is about one of the more surprising strategies he uses to succeed at this level…

==========================================

Did you know that Michael Phelps recently broke the world record for the 100m butterfly at the US Nationals, in a time of 50.22 seconds, beating Ian Crocker’s previous record of 50.40?

The 100m butterfly was one of the events that Phelps won in Beijing, where he won an incredible eight Olympic gold medals. Interestingly, the 100m fly was the only event in which Phelps didn’t set a world record in Beijing.

In his post-Olympic year, Phelps has had his sights on breaking the world record for the fly and came close in Montreal at the Canada Cup 5 weeks ago, when he set a personal best time of 50.48 seconds. Let’s look at the strategy which enabled Phelps to improve on that time and break the record just 4 weeks later. It may surprise some of you.

Phelps was interviewed after his win at the Canada Cup, and here is what he said:

It was pretty much exactly the same race as Beijing – I was out a tenth slower. I just need to get a little more rest leading up to the nationals and hopefully take it out a little quicker.”

What did he say?

Let me repeat it just so it sets in: “I just need to get a little more rest…”

A little more rest? How can that be?

Most people don’t think of rest as being an important ingredient for peak performance. They think of the super athlete or the corporate superstar constantly pushing beyond their previous mark in order to improve. They think of blood and tears and sweat, with no time taken for rest. But the reality is surprisingly different.

Yes it IS true that the peak performer strives to improve and push past their previous mark. Pushing beyond your previous comfort zone is a crucial component of all peak performance. But the reality is that the true peak performer balances these periods of challenge with periods of rest and recovery.

This is explained brilliantly in an excellent book by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz titled The Power of Full Engagement, where they state:

“To build capacity, we must systematically expose ourselves to more stress – followed by adequate recovery… We grow at all levels by expending energy beyond our normal limits, and then recovering.”

And then recovering.

Adequate recovery after periods of expansion allows for the integration of gains, which is necessary in order for improvements in performance to be sustained. According to Loehr and Schwartz, the balancing of periods of recovery with periods of expanding capacity is crucial because during the recovery period is when growth actually occurs.

Where nothing seems to be happening, a lot is really happening…

I see so many people who believe that working harder and longer is the path to peak performance. They think of rest time as down time, unproductive time, wasted time. But the reality is that not only is rest time necessary to avoid burnout, it is actually essential for fully developing your potential and increasing your performance!

And here’s the other side to this. When you are feeling down and burnt out the solution is not in rest alone, even though that might be the first thing that is needed. The solution is to stretch yourself beyond your previous limits and to rest – and ultimately to balance the two.

It is just as destructive to your peak performance to rest all the time as it is to push (or work) all the time. Too much rest leads to atrophy. And too much stress leads to burnout, exhaustion, and loss of power. The power is in the integration.

So if you are burnt out, you need to challenge yourself. Then you need to rest. Then you challenge. Then you rest. True peak performance is a cyclic thing.

Phelps was clearly able to see the importance of balancing periods of rest for peak performance, and this is one of the reasons why he was able to go on and break the world record in the 100m fly at the Nationals. You would do well to emulate his approach, adapting it to your own situation. Identify ways to stretch your capacity and decide how you will rest and recover.

Some questions to begin:

What would be a stretch for you? What, if you did it, would take you out of your comfort zone but up to a higher level of performance? What, if you did it, could significantly improve your results? What have you been avoiding doing, but know would be good for you to do?

How will you rest and recover? What can you do to just relax? What takes very little energy to do but gives you lots of energy in return? What would seem like a complete indulgence to you but if you did it would give you a sense of having done something really good for yourself?

Now, where does tapping come in?

Tapping can be fantastic when you want to build your capacity by helping you to deal with the discomfort involved in moving beyond your previous limits. Tap to do the thing you currently fear, to do the thing you currently link discomfort to, to go beyond your previous comfort zone… Tap on those old internal pain-pleasure attachments so that they don’t continue to hold you back.

And if, like many of my clients, the greatest discomfort for you is actually linked to rest and recovery, tap on that aversion until you begin to see by your improved results the crucial link between balancing periods of meaningful rest and your future expansion.

What do you think?
We would love to read your comments…