photo by Marlon Malabanan

The words we use to describe our world are very important because they impact the way we understand what we are experiencing. The words we use give our experience meaning.

For example, if I say, “Everyone at work hates me!” that will impact the way I walk into the office because I will have my guard up with every interaction.

If a client says this to me, my follow up question is, “Really, everyone?” Most of the time their response is something like, “No, but Jim, Sally, and Devon really have it out for me.”

You can see that when the work environment is described by having trouble with three people v everyone, we would walk in with a different mindset.

All of this came to mind in a recent client session. “Jeff” was lamenting the fact that he was not tapping as much as he would like. As we continued the conversation it was revealed that the reason he was not tapping was because he was worried that there was some big nasty issue under the surface that he really didn’t want to tackle.

That is a perfectly reasonable and common reason that people don’t tap.

Later in our session, as we were talking about his plans to tap over the next few weeks, he said, “I am going to set 30 minutes aside each morning to tap on the big stuff.”

I stopped him and said, “I think you are setting yourself up for failure. You said that you were having trouble tapping on difficult issues and now you are saying you want to go after the big. How about you go after the important stuff? That might be big, it might be small, but it will have high value. That will make it easier to do the work.”

I will admit that it seems like a subtle change, but I think words are that important. The way we talk about the world is the way we will then interact with the world.

Take a moment to think about the parts of your life you are not happy with or the issue you normally tap on. How do you describe those problems? Do you describe them as impossible, inevitable, or overwhelming?

Make a list of all the adjectives you would use to describe your issues, write them down, and note your emotional response to those words.

This is very telling. If there is little or no hope of success, or if you describe the process of healing as painful or overwhelming, then you will live up to those words.

When you see the process as too hard or too painful you will sabotage yourself and you will avoid the work you need to do.

If you change the way you talk about your problems then you will also change the way you respond to them.

I would love hear the words you came up with when describing your issues in the comments below.

Here is a tapping script that will help you when feel like your problems are too big or hard:

I know there are a lot of things I need to tap for…Some of these things feel really big…And because they feel so big I don’t want to approach them…I am worried they are going to be too much…They will take too much time…And too much effort…It feels like hard work going after them…I am not going to do the hard stuff…I am going to do the important stuff…I am going to work on the issues that are facing me right now…They may be old issues…They may be new issues…But they will be the issues that are impacting me now…And by going after the issues that are affecting me now…I will only need to do as much as is needed to move forward…I don’t have to deal with it all right away…Just the things that are holding me back now.