By Steve Wells
One of my clients once disclosed to me that she was spending up to 4 ½ hours tapping each day. I told her it was time to go out and take some action, rather than waiting until everything was perfect before she moved. She started taking “baby steps” (whilst tapping) and now her life is a whole lot better.
As wonderful as tapping can be for reducing the emotional intensity of many issues, I have found that it can also be used as a distraction or to defer taking action in areas that are important to us. This is because we fear having to cope with the inevitable feelings that will arise in new situations, and we know that even with tapping those feelings may arise. It is the discomfort of those feelings that we really fear.
I used to counsel clients to tap until they were at a “zero” intensity on their emotional issues and then to go out into the situation. Now, I certainly encourage them to spend some dedicated time tapping on the issue and their fears, but then I encourage them to go forward and “tap as you go” without worrying that emotions will arise. A little bit of discomfort, a little bit of stress, can be good for us. We change and grow in response to challenge. The key is that the challenge needs to be non-overwhelming.
In the research on psychological methods that work, exposure therapy, where you basically face your fear and go ahead and do the feared thing anyway, is “top of the pops”. The challenge with this approach however is that sometimes the fear is overwhelming, and there can be a great deal of suffering involved in getting there. This is where tapping comes in, and especially the innovative finger tapping of SET which is very portable and can be done anywhere quite discreetly. By reducing the intensity of fear or stress to a manageable level, SET allows you to move forward now rather than waiting until everything is perfect before you ever take a step.
I’m afraid films like “The Secret” have also contributed to the tendency for some people to expect results without doing anything about it. The message here is that if you work on your “vibration” then everything you want will come to you.
Actually, I DO believe that “vibration” or “energy state” is important, however I also know that action is the basis of all results in the world. Action and energy go together. As Einstein said, nothing happens until something moves! And not much will happen for you unless YOU move!!!
A woman rang me once and exasperatedly stated that she’d been working on her manifestation and that it “wasn’t working”. I enquired as to what she meant, and she disclosed that she was wanting to find a life partner and had been working on tapping and “raising her vibration” every day. I asked her what she’d actually DONE about going out and getting in the area where men were likely to be so that she could give herself a chance of meeting one of them… And she admitted that she had done nothing.
After we’d spoken for a while this lady said, “I realise now talking with you that I’ve basically been waiting for someone to break down outside my house!” This was in fact one of the only ways that the love of her life could come into contact with her.
And then something unbelievable happened (sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction!)…
While we were talking she suddenly said in an excited voice, “Hang on, I think someone has broken down outside!” She left the phone and I mused over how strange the universe can be in terms of how things manifest.
When she came back to the phone, her voice was despondent. It was an elderly gentleman, and not a very attractive one at that. My caring response was along the following lines: “That’s what you get if you don’t go out and take action; you have to settle for what you get rather than getting what you really want.”
I haven’t heard back from this lady however when we finished the conversation she sounded real clear about the difference between basically wishing and hoping versus taking action to achieve your dreams.
I’ve mentioned Jim Rohn before and he says it so well: “Affirmation without discipline is the beginning of delusion.”
Have you been deluding yourself? Do you have something that you want but you haven’t been taking the necessary actions to make it happen? No amount of wishing will bring it to you, and nor will tapping alone change your life.
Do some tapping on your fear. Do some tapping on your fear of the fear. Then take action, tapping as you go. Small steps, even baby steps, with tapping as you go, will take you where you want to go more surely than any amount of tapping on its own.
What do you think?
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Learn how to use tapping to overcome your fears and other emotional blocks in a live workshop with Steve Wells. For information on upcoming workshops click here