How do you use EFT and SET to achieve peak performance in any area? In this and future articles, I would like to explore some of the issues involved. Although I will take the perspective of giving advice to the aspiring peak performer, I am hoping the information will also be useful to those who aim to work with peak performers.
Begin by identifying a field of endeavour in which you would like to achieve greatness. (If that word greatness upsets you, well you'd better start tapping right there...). Realise that truly great achievement is never an accident. It is usually the result of dedicated and consistent effort addressed towards a high goal. That goal - and the decision to achieve it - is often established many years before the goal is realised. In my practice I have heard time and again the sorts of statements I've heard made by the Olympic champions: "It's a dream I've had since I was a little child". (Since you're no longer a child, you'd better tap on that too!).
Wherever you are, you can decide to be a high achiever. All high achievement by the greatest of high achievers in the world began where you are now - at a moment of decision. And that's where you need to begin. Many people have trouble with this, however, and all sorts of fears and negative associations come up. I'll have more to say about how to deal with these in future articles.
Once you have identified your achievement area (eg. Golf), you can start applying EFT / SET to identified problem situations within that area. All of us can identify areas of our "game" that could do with improvement (whether in golf, or in the office, or at home...). EFT / SET typically makes short work of these.
Let's take the example of golf. I have been working with one of our top amateur golfers whose aim is to make it big in golfing. We started by identifying the weakest part of his game - the one that hooked him emotionally, and the one that came up consistently. For him, it was chipping onto the green. In his words, he feared "flubbing it" or hitting over the top of the ball. As is typical, his fears often became realised as trying not to think about it causes you to focus on it inadvertently. I once worked with a golfer who put two to three balls into the same water trap every time he shot on a particular course. Having him focus on the object of his fear, in this case the water, then focus on where he wanted to hit it, solved his problem. With this simple distinction he took 15 strokes off his best score!.
Once you have identified an area like this, make sure you identify all the emotions that are associated with it and apply EFT / SET to them in turn. For example, in the amateur golfer's case, there was anger (at himself), frustration (at not being able to fix things), fear of embarrassment (particularly in front of better players), and fear of failure and having a poor score overall, among other things. Working on these issues has taken those areas off his major concerns list and he is now working with me on improving other areas of his game.
For therapists, there is a great deal of leverage in taking the worst part of someone's game and helping them to clear it up quickly using EFT / SET. I'd love to have the chance to work with Shaquille O'Neal in this regard...For anyone unfamiliar with basketball, this gentleman consistently fails to achieve the same results at the free throw line in games as he has demonstrated he is capable of in practice.
This is a much more common problem than you might realise, leading to endless frustration in sufferers. The challenge is typically one of psychological reversal, which is often addressed by simply describing the negative situation in the set-up (eg. "Even though I can't hit free throws in the game"; "Even though I miss shots in the game that I can get in practice"), and then tapping on it, and following this up by tapping on any associated emotions (like anger, frustration, embarrassment, etc).
Within anyone's game there are always one or two areas of greatest leverage. Meaning, if they are able to improve their game in these key areas, they will experience a significant improvement in performance. That means YOU can improve your game significantly if you will identify your 2-3 key areas and get to work tapping on them. Target these areas first for whatever it is you want to improve, rather than working more generally on your overall "problem" with your sport or performance area.
Once you have worked on those parts of your "game" that affect you the most (and therefore offer the most leverage when you change them), you need to reconsider your ultimate goals.