Tapping Q & A with Gene Monterastelli - Get the most out of tapping and EFT

Pod #111: EFT for Smoking w/ Sue Beer

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On some level most people who smoke really want to quit. Even though the will to change is strong in the larger context of their lives, it is really hard to motivate change in the moment because “one cigarette won't kill me.”

Usually smoking isn't the core problem, but symptomatic of a larger issue.

In this interview Sue Beer and I talk about how we can use EFT to stop smoking.


Sue Beer

Guest: Sue Beer

Contact: web @ TheEFTCentre.com; twitter @TheEFTCentre; facebook @ The EFT Centre UK

About Sue: Sue originally trained in psychodynamic psychotherapy and is an experienced Hypnotherapist and Master NLP Practitioner. Sue uses her eclectic training as well as past experience gained from a very successful business career in her work. She is also a student of A Course in Miracles. Sue has extensive experience working with addictions, recovery and personal transformation – the themes of the workshops Healing the Addicted Heart and Opening to Love. She is the author of “Healing the Addicted Heart – 5 Stages of Transformation with EFT”.

You Don’t Have To Tap Away Your Fear With EFT In Order To Take Action

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photo by Svante Adermark

My life is a little crazy right now. From the outside it looks like I am being really brave in the midst of all the craziness.

I am in the process of moving from Baltimore to Brooklyn, NY. I am uprooting my life to move to the fourth largest metropolitan area in the world, where housing rentals are snapped up in a matter of hours, not days. At the moment I know I am certainly moving but I have no clue where I am moving to.

At the same time I am working on some new things that I will be offering on the website which are the most personal things I have ever shared. As those of you who are part of MyEFTYear.com know, one of my goals for this year was to work on my issues around dating and romantic relationships.

About six weeks ago I came up with a list of 32 fears that I have around relationships. Not only have I been tapping for these issues, I have been videoing myself tapping for each issue. Sometime later this summer I plan to make those videos available for you to tap along to too.

Oh boy are those videos raw and messy. Because of their honesty they are more than a bit embarrassing! And there is the little issue of how emotional I have become in a few of them.

“You really are in the brave space right now!!”
That is what one of my friends wrote while we were chatting online: “You really are in the brave space right now!!”

And the truth is, I'm not really in a brave space right now.

Instead I am having moments of bravery and I am taking full advantage of those moments and acting.

For example, one of the reasons the move to NY is happening right now is because I had to let the property managers of my building know this week if I was going to renew my lease. Had I taken no action, then my lease would have renewed automatically.

To let them know I was leaving I had to notify them in an official letter via certified mail.

I wrote the letter, put the letter in an envelope, and stuck the postage on the outside.

AND then I had a hard time breathing. My head was filled with: “What if I can't find a place to live? What if I can't really afford the move? Am I going to wreck the relationships I have with my friends here in Baltimore by leaving? Oh crap…moving is hard!”

So I started to tap. I calmed myself down. I walked to the postal box and dropped the letter in.

Fifteen minutes later I was gripped with panic again.

BUT that was OK because the process of moving had started.

The Fear Doesn't Have To Be Completely Gone To Act
About eight times a day I feel some (or a lot) of anxiety about the move. But just because the worry is still there doesn't mean that I have to stop making progress. With each passing day I’m progressing and crossing more items off my moving todo list.

I haven't had to be brave every moment. I haven't had to eliminate the fears of everything going wrong.

I have only had to keep the fear at bay long enough to take an action that moves me closer to my goal. Once an action is taken it sets off a chain reaction of events to which I respond.

I now have to move out of my place in Baltimore, which is pushing me forward to take more action.

You Don't Have To Tap It All The Way To A Zero
A lot of tappers make the mistake of thinking that they have to tap an issue completely away. They think that if they haven't erased the issue with tapping then it isn't done and they can't act until it is.

We only need to tap our way to being able to take the next step towards our goal. We might have to start tapping the moment we have completed that step, but what is more important is the fact that we have acted and are closer to our goal.

When tapping our goal isn't to be anxiety free (though that would be great). Our goal is to make it possible for us to take the action we need to take to progress.

Sometimes those actions might be made in a state of fear, but they are being taken.

You don't need to tap your way to total relief.

You just need to tap to action.

(And if you need it you can start tapping again.)

Is My Self-Sabotaging Critical Voice Always Going To Be With Me?

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photo by Steve Corey

This week I was working with my client “Molly”. Over the last few weeks we had been tapping for a number of public speaking sales situations. She said:

“Last week was really great. I felt so much more comfortable in my own skin. I was so much more present to my audience and so much less inside of my own head. But I have a question, will that little voice in my head always be there? It feels like it is less powerful now, but it just won't go away.”

This is a great question. In the article “Transforming Your Critical Voice Into Something Helpful In 8 Steps” I showed you how to begin to get a handle on your critical voice. But you will notice I don't talk about making it go away.

There are two things to keep in mind with the critical voice.

It Is There To Be Helpful
I know it can be hard to believe that the critical voice inside your head that is always beating you up is being helpful, but it really is trying to keep you safe. It’s operating from the assumption that if it points out all the things you are doing wrong, you will then correct your actions and make better choices.

You know as well as I do that it doesn't work like that. That nagging voice doesn't usually produce any positive change, it simply brings us down and saps our motivation.

When we do something like this 8 step process we can start to transform our critical voice into something useful.

At first blush it would seem that we just want to silence that tireless, nagging voice, but it can be very useful in pointing out possible obstacles and opportunities.

We Will Keep Trying Harder Things
Even when we have tamed our critical voice and have it under control, it will still be useful to us as we move ahead and aim higher. When we stretch ourselves and attempt new and different things that may be a little scary, our critical voice will show up to try to keep us safe.

The moment my internal voice goes mute is the moment that I have stopped growing and progressing.

Making Sure It Is Helpful
So, to answer Molly's question directly: No, your critical voice will not go away AND that isn’t a bad thing.

Our aim is to move away from an internal battle and to welcome our internal voice as a watchful ally. In doing this we will feel better about ourselves because we aren't being beaten up for the inside out AND we will be able to move forward in a helpful way.

I would encourage you to re-visit “Transforming Your Critical Voice Into Something Helpful In 8 Steps” and start the transformation right now.

Pod #110: FasterEFT w/ Robert G. Smith

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I recently did a survey of some of my favorite professional tappers. One of the questions I asked was, “Who in the field is doing the most controversial and experimental work?” The name that came back the most was Robert Smith.

I have done a number of reader surveys over the years asking who you’d like to hear on the podcast. Of practitioners who have not already been interviewed, who is nominated most often? Robert Smith.

So after a number of false starts I finally have an interview with Robert about Faster EFT.

I find Robert's approach very thoughtful and that I agree with his world view about healing.

I would love to hear your thoughts on the interview and Faster EFT.


RobertSmith

Name: Robert G. Smith

Contact: web @ FasterEFT.com; youtube @ HealingMagic; facebook @ Faster EFT; twitter @fastereft

About Robert: Robert G. Smith is the creator of FasterEFT. He is a Life Coach, a respected leader in the field of personal growth, a popular radio guest and sought after speaker. He is one of America’s leading experts on stress, spirituality and healing.
Robert has reached thousands of people with his positive message about personal power, love and healing with the largest free online healing library available on YouTube with over 250,000 views per month and translated in 14 different languages. He’s travelled all over the world giving public seminars since 2002. Robert has produced over 96 DVDs and continues to ship them worldwide since 2004.

How and Why I am Thinking About You When I Write My Newsletter

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I'm not sure if this is clear, but everytime I send something out my goal is to be helpful and to serve you in some way.

This is true of something as short as a 140 character tweet or as long as an 3000 word article.

It is even true when I send out a sales letter about a new program. When I send out a sales letter (like the one I sent last week) I have two goals:

1) To share something with you that I believe to be of the highest quality and will enrich your life if you choose to invest in it.

2) I would like you to learn something. Even if you don't choose to buy, my hope is that as I talk about why I created the program and its structure, it will teach you something helpful about the healing process.

With my new 8-month program I received a number of thank you notes from people for whom it is not the right fit.

I think this is great!

It is great that people were able to learn from me selling a program AND it is great when people know that something isn't the right fit for them.

There are still 2 spots available and I thought it would be helpful to answer some of the questions I have received about the program.

Even if the program isn't right for you I encourage you to read these questions and answers as it will help you to understand how I see the healing process which may enhance your personal work.

If you can't remember what I am talking about, here are the details on the program: full detials

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Q: I see in the program that each week we can get an emergency tapping session with you. Is that really true? I don't want to be a pest and take up all your time.

A: Yes, as part of the program as often as once a week for the whole 8 months you are entitled to an emergency tapping session. You would send me a text or an email when you need a session, and we would find a time when we can tap together.

I am a very good gatekeeper of my time. Part of the reason this is being offered to so few people is because I am making myself available in a way that gives them a lot of attention and also respects my time.

Q: I would like to do this. Let's do a deal? We do this together and I promise I will do all you ask me, but I only pay you after I get results, OK?

A: This is an interesting idea. You might think that if I am so confident in my work I would happily do something like this, but in my experience when clients have not made a financial investment in the work they simply don't do it.

65% of the people who have been given a free session by me don't make the calls. Most of them never follow up, ask for another time, or explain why they didn’t show up. The only time paying clients miss calls is because of extenuating circumstances. They always follow up.

When something is free people show up to use it with the best of intentions, but since there is nothing at stake they simply stay rooted in their self-sabotage.

I know this to be true in my own life. There are many free resources I have downloaded that would do me lots of good but I have not found the time to use them. Yet in the most expensive program I purchased last year I have listened to every audio twice. I set aside 45 minutes every single day for 8 weeks to work with it. It was a major investment and I made sure that I got everything I could out of it.

When you make an financial investment in something you are also making an emotional investment. This will help you to stay focused and achieve success.

Q: I have a concern that came up for me because I can feel some deep resistance to jumping in. It's a big commitment of time, money, faith and emotion, so I know that's natural. I'm worried that I'm trying to buy myself out of my misery like I have in the past (e.g. the gym membership or other magic “fix”) and that I'll cave and fail and end up feeling worse. What are your thoughts on this?

A: Of all the questions I received in this process, this is my favorite. It is honest and accurate. It is a common concern when we are on the edge of doing something difficult.

One of the strengths of the program and its structure is that it is designed to deal with the ups and downs of change work. There are times where we (and I say “we” because this is true for me as well) are just kicking ass and knocking our issues out. And then there are times when it gets hard. We bump into parts of ourselves that we dislike and would prefer to ignore. We are ashamed of past choices. We feel hopeless about the parts of ourselves that seem too wounded and painful to fix.

One of the main reasons I am moving to this type of model is because it gives me permission to work much more closely with my clients. There is a structure built in to deal with the hard times. If clients are just working in occasional hourly sessions then when the going gets tough they often disappear, at the precise moment they most need support and to do work.

Some of the most fruitful work of the last 9 months has been achieved exactly when my clients felt overwhelmed, on edge, and even very frustrated. Those are not fun times to go through and I don't go looking to create those moments. But when they show up, we work through them and get to the amazing stuff on the other side of the pain.

In this process you are allowed to feel overwhelmed, sad, worried, and even mad at me. It is part of the healing process. I love EFT and this work because it walks a perfect balance. It allows us to find ways to deal with the tough issues without having to seek them out or throw ourselves into the middle of them for the sake of the pain.

Because there is an established structure and regular contact it will help to keep you on track, and ensures that you are tapping with me when you need it the most.

The gym doesn't call you when you don't show up. I will be present when you are knocking out blocks AND I will be there when the work feels painful. I know what it feels like when this work is hard. I know what is like to be in the middle of pain and unable to see or feel beyond it. I am there to stand outside of that for you, to remind you what healing feels like, and be the beacon guiding you to move past it.

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If you are interested in joining me in this type of work let me know so that we can chat to see if this program is the right fit for you.

Again, full program details are here: full detials

Only 2 spots left!

If you have any other questions please let me know.

As always, let me know what I can do to be helpful.

Gene