Tapping for limiting beliefs and resistance is a very straightforward process.
All you need to do is name the limiting belief, why the limiting belief thinks it is being helpful, and then share the truth about what is really happening.
When you combine this with tapping it rewrites your subconscious.
The problem is not clearing the limiting belief. Instead the problem is knowing what the limiting beliefs are because the subconscious mind doesn’t think about them as limiting beliefs. Instead, the subconscious simply sees the limiting belief as how the world works.
If clearing the limiting belief is the easy part, then finding the limiting beliefs is the hardest part.
This week in the podcast I am going to share with you the tool I use every day to find limiting beliefs. I use this every time I tap and I use this in every tapping session I do with clients.
This is the most useful framework I have ever created and I know you are going to love it!
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Finding Your Limiting Beliefs with the SAWD Framework
Clearing limiting beliefs with tapping is really easy. Basically, all you’re doing is naming the limiting belief, naming why it’s not true, and naming what is true instead while you’re tapping. I went into a lot of detail on that in episode 726. That’s not the problem. The problem is naming the limiting belief. So today, I’m going to share the exact process I use every single time I tap to find the limiting beliefs, so it becomes really easy for me to tap on them.
This is Gene Monterastelli, and welcome to the Tapping Q&A Podcast, recorded live to tape from Williamsburg in Brooklyn. This is episode 728, originally aired October 1st, 2026.
Hi, everyone. I hope this finds you well, wherever you are and whatever time of day you’re getting a chance to listen. Thanks for spending a little time with me today.
Why Limiting Beliefs Are So Hard to Spot
As I’m recording this, we are on the precipice of this year’s Integrated Tapping Summit, where I bring together some of my favorite tappers and we answer questions about a specific topic. We knit those answers together, so you’re not just hearing from one expert, you’re hearing from lots of them. If you’re not signed up, you can join us absolutely free at integratedtappingsummit.com.
I love the conversations I have because I get to put lots of people’s ideas side by side, and I’m always fascinated by the questions that require the most attention. Because the summit is edited, my guests get to sit and let a question wash over them before they answer, and they receive the questions ahead of time so they can think about them.
Last year, the question that caught people the most was about limiting beliefs: how do I know I am carrying a limiting belief? This question matters because the subconscious mind doesn’t think it’s a limiting belief. The subconscious mind just thinks it is true. When it’s operating from that belief, it’s not saying, “This is a limiting belief that’s holding me back.” It’s just saying, “This is how we stay safe.” And since the subconscious mind thinks it’s true, it becomes much harder for us to unpack.
Giving Away the Transformation
Last week I was at a small business marketing conference, and one of the presenters, Brian Mark, a personal trainer, was talking about his approach to social media. He said something fascinating. In the free content you create, in your videos, your social media, and your podcasts, give your audience enough information that they could reach complete transformation without ever hiring you.
That’s something I’ve always tried to do. We’ve been going at this for 17 years, and nothing has been held back. But today I’m going to do exactly that as we look at how to uncover limiting beliefs. I’m going to share a simple framework that I use every single day in my tapping, and it has transformed my results, both when I’m tapping on my own and when I’m working with my clients.
If you are new to tapping and have no idea what I’m talking about, tapping is a tool we can use to transform the limiting beliefs and stories we’re carrying in our subconscious mind that no longer serve us. If you know what the limiting belief is, tapping on it is easy as long as you know how to tap. I’ve put together a free guide that teaches you all the basics at learntotap.com. You can take the framework I’m teaching today, combine it with that basic information, and start to heal and transform your subconscious mind.
What a Limiting Belief Actually Is
Before we jump in, it’s important to talk more deeply about what a limiting belief is. It’s just a story we’re carrying. All of the stories in our subconscious mind are the rules about the way the world works. They guide us moment to moment so that we’re not having to think in every single moment, because thinking takes so much energy. It’s the reason you can walk out of a really difficult class feeling like you ran a marathon. Our subconscious was designed as an energy-saving mechanism.
For example, if I’m in my kitchen and my gas stove is on with a blue flame, I don’t have to think about whether I should touch it. I’m carrying a story in my subconscious that says blue flame, really hot, don’t touch. That is a limiting belief. It limits where I put my hand, but in that case it’s keeping me safe.
Here’s another example. There are people in my life who drive me crazy and get me all dysregulated. When I see them, my instinct might be to walk out of the room, or not open their email, or not answer the phone. That is also a limiting belief. It says this person is bad for me to talk to in the middle of my day, so I’m going to limit my action. Again, the belief is keeping me safe.
So the issue, when it comes to creating the authentic lives we love and taking the actions that are right for us, is not about eliminating limiting beliefs. It’s about making sure the limiting beliefs we’re carrying in our subconscious are proportionate and well informed. That’s why the question is so hard to answer. How do I know whether a limiting belief is actually a limiting belief or just true? When I operate from it, it just feels true.
The work we need to do is pull these beliefs out into the light of day, because the moment they’re out there, we can tap on them. Again, see episode 726 for a simple four-part formula to tap on any limiting belief you uncover. If you marry that formula with what we’re covering today, you’ll be able to tap on almost anything. So the question becomes how to identify what those limiting beliefs are.
How the Framework Came Together
I’ve been wrestling with this for a really long time, because it’s the work I do for myself and with my clients. About four years ago, I started brainstorming all of the limiting beliefs I had experienced in my own life and all the ones I could remember from clients. I jotted them down and started to categorize them. I wasn’t looking for a laundry list of eight million limiting beliefs to investigate. I was trying to find a framework to understand what was going on, because when I have a system, things become predictable and I’m not just guessing. The system isn’t perfect, but it narrows things down and makes it easier for us.
I’m always looking for frameworks, systems, and taxonomies. Every class I teach in the Tapping Mastery Academy starts with a bunch of definitions, because when we understand the terms and the framework, creating change becomes so much easier. We have lenses to look through to understand our lived experience.
As I worked through this, I realized there were four basic categories that almost every piece of resistance lives in. It’s not absolute, and sometimes a belief lives in multiple places. But even if the framework isn’t perfect, it is more than sufficient to create real, lasting, deep change.
Think for a moment about what it would be like to finally understand why you haven’t taken that action you’ve wanted to take for days, weeks, months, or years. Once you know why, you have this magical tool, tapping, to help you unknit that belief so it’s easier to take action. That’s what’s at stake here. This is a way to move from being stuck to taking action, if you’re willing to dive in.
The Four Categories of Resistance
The framework comes in four parts, and the acronym is SAWD: Safe, Allowed, Worthy, Deserving. I didn’t come up with the acronym and backfill it. It just came that way, because that is the order in which I work through these things when I’m tapping. Let’s take them one at a time.
Safe
Because our resistance is just trying to keep us safe, category number one is safe. It makes sense that I have resistance when something is not safe. The stove is hot, so I don’t touch it. The cage has a lion inside, so I don’t climb over it. It starts to rain and gets really dark, so I slow down. All of those are limits that keep me safe.
When I’m resisting an action, the first thing I want to discover is what part of me thinks taking this action is unsafe. Sometimes there is a sense of physical safety. I don’t want to fly in an airplane because it feels unsafe, since the plane could fall from the sky. But there are other kinds of unsafe. I could do something and people might laugh at me. That is unsafe. I could invest time and energy and fail. That is unsafe. This is the most primitive type of protection we have, because we have a genetic imperative to survive so our species can continue.
Allowed
Number two is allowed. Allowed is nothing more than safety in community. Because of the history of our species, we once lived in little tribal communities of between 100 and 125 people. This was pre-technology, and often we were nomadic, so that tribe, that band of humans, that family, was how we stayed alive. We needed each other to hunt, to gather food, to keep predators at bay, and to take care of each other. If we were pushed outside of that tribal unit, we would die, and I mean that in the non-millennial sense of the word. We would literally die.
So we have a genetic imperative to be part of the community, because our system thinks we will die if we are not. Anytime we want to do something that goes against the cultural norms or standards of our family, our religion, our nationality, our community, or our workspace, we immediately have resistance, because it is not allowed.
Here’s an example, and this is not true for me, I’m just using it to illustrate. I could have grown up in a really traditional, structured family, and there’s a part of me that wants to be an artist. I’ve heard people in my family disparage artists as people who aren’t serious, who aren’t contributing to the world, and who are using art as an excuse to do something silly and trivial. If I’ve been told those stories, then deciding to be an artist means I will be rejected by my family. So it becomes defined as: I am not allowed to be an artist, because of the negative consequences. I wouldn’t describe it that way consciously, but on a subconscious level, that’s exactly what’s going on.
I once worked with a client on weight release, and she said, “I’ve heard how my friends talk about skinny people. If I lose weight, they’re going to say that about me too.” If you feel like your closest friends will attack you for being successful at something, then it’s not allowed.
So we have safe, which is primary safety, and allowed, which is safety in community.
Worthy and Deserving
The W and D stand for worthy and deserving, and I want to talk about them together because I want to explain how I define these terms in this context. You don’t have to agree with my definitions, but I want you to understand where I’m coming from. The concepts behind these two words are distinct, and I don’t care what words you use to create that separation, but the separation is vital.
The difference is that worthy is birthright, while deserving is transactional, at least in my taxonomy. I’m worthy of love because I’m made for love. I deserve to be paid because I’ve done hard work.
It can show up in all different places. I can feel worthy of success because I’m a human and I’m made for success, but not feel I deserve success because I’ve squandered success in the past. On the flip side, I could feel I’m not worthy of success because the people in my family aren’t successful in business, but feel I deserve success because I’ve worked really hard. And it’s possible not to feel worthy and not to feel deserving at all.
Why Resistance Shows Up Even When You Know Better
Now we have a high-level framework, a way of thinking about all the different resistances: safe, allowed, worthy, deserving. If there is a story in my subconscious mind that says it’s not safe for me to take an action, or I’m not allowed to take it, or I’m not worthy of taking it or having the outcome, or I’m not deserving of taking it or having the outcome, then a story in any of those four places is going to show up as resistance. My subconscious is trying to keep me safe.
This is why we struggle so much. Consciously, I know this is the right thing for me and I know I should be doing it, and I’m just not doing it. So I decide I’m a failure, I’m stupid. But really, what’s going on is that I’m carrying a story in my subconscious that is disproportionate or misinformed and says this action is dangerous or unsafe. That’s why I don’t take action.
It’s also why limiting beliefs are so hard to find. Logically, it makes no sense that I’m holding myself back. So not only am I not taking action, I now get the added benefit of beating myself up for not taking the action I know I should be taking. If we’re carrying any of these stories, we’re not going to move forward.
Using SAWD to Let the Subconscious Speak
So how do we unpack them? I use those four words to let the subconscious mind speak. I think of an action I want to take, and I’ll keep this really simple. Let’s say I want to send an email to someone to ask for their support. It’s on my to-do list, and it stays on my to-do list. I keep finding other things to do and I’m distracted.
Here’s what I do. I imagine myself sending the email, and I say the phrase, “It’s not safe for me to send this email because…” Then I wait for things to bubble up. They’ll think I’m foolish. They’ll say no. They’ll ignore me. They’ll laugh at me. I write down every single thing that comes up.
Then I take a nice big deep breath, imagine taking the action again, and do the second word. “I’m not allowed to send this email because I should be self-sufficient and I look needy asking for help.” Great, I write that down. Then I do it for worthy: “I’m not worthy of sending this email,” or “I’m not worthy of them saying yes.” And for deserving: “I don’t deserve to send this email,” or “I don’t deserve to have them say yes.”
Now I have a crystal clear list of limiting beliefs, stories that, if they were true, would make it sensible for me not to take action because I’d be in danger.
Tapping on What You Find
I take them one at a time. I recognize that there’s a part of me that’s afraid they’re going to laugh at me if I send this email, and I give myself permission to know they might also be really excited and want to work with me. Again, it’s really simple. I know the limiting belief, and I tap on it.
I don’t have to tap through every limiting belief on that list. I just have to tap on enough of them that I’ll go take action. Sometimes I can tap on one limiting belief and that’s sufficient. Sometimes I can tap on 95% of them and it’s not enough. For me, it’s not about clearing all the limiting beliefs. It’s about reducing the resistance enough that I take the action in an authentic way, and that makes it so much easier to move forward.
I reach for the SAWD framework anytime I want to do something and I’m not doing it. If I know what to do, I know how to do it, I have all the resources, and I have a compelling reason to take action, then if it weren’t for resistance to change, the change would already have happened. If everything is in place and I’m still not acting, there must be resistance. So I go through this simple little process.
I’ve put together a handout and a little workbook that explain all of this in more detail, with some exercises. It’s absolutely free. Go to becomesawd.com, enter your email address, and I’ll send it right away.
When You Need Support
The second thing to consider is that knowing what the limiting beliefs are, and being able to unearth them, doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll be successful tapping on them on your own. Every time we sit down to tap, there are three parts. Number one, we have to tune into the issue at hand, because we need something to tap on. Number two, we need to provide the intervention, which is the tapping itself, like the four-part framework in episode 726. Number three, we need to hold the safe container, so that the healing and transformation happens in a way that is safe.
There are times, and I know this to be true for myself, where I know all of those things and I still can’t tune into the issue, provide the intervention, and hold a safe space at the same time. So I have a rule in my own life: if a task on my to-do list gets moved from one day to the next for three days, I have to sign up for an appointment with my practitioner. I recognize I’m not taking action, and I have an amazing tool to respond to it, but just because I have the tool doesn’t mean I’m using it.
If you hear this and it resonates, but you’re struggling to implement it, and you’re looking for some one-on-one support, drop me a note at support@tappingqanda.com. We can have a conversation to see if there’s a way I can support you on your transformational journey. Just because we know how to do this doesn’t mean it’s easy. As my buddy Andy Hunt likes to say, sometimes it’s really hard to read the label from inside the bottle, and having some external help is useful.
If you look at the screen, you’ll see the entire archive of the Tapping Q&A Podcast. There’s all sorts of teaching there that you can use right away to create healing and transformation. I don’t hold anything back. I look forward to talking with you and tapping with you again real soon. Bye-bye.
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