We all have emotional baggage, sometimes we have baggage around stuff that we didn’t even realise we were carrying around with us still. Over the last 2 years I have been addressing all my baggage in many different ways. With my Life Coach, through Kinesiology, Theta Healing, Meditation, Positive Affirmations, the list goes on. And I cannot tell you how much better I feel because of it. More confident, happy, excited about life. Then one day I was introduced to Tapping. For me Tapping is like the icing on the cake (and I love icing :))
Tapping was introduced to me by my Business Coach. I was really struggling with a decision I had to make because I had a lot of emotional baggage attached to that decision. After one of our training sessions he told me that he wanted to try a technique ‘on’ me that he has found useful in the past when dealing with emotion baggage. At this stage I was up for anything, so I said ‘why not’. He took me through this technique called Tapping and it just blew my mind. By the end of the session I had let go of the emotional baggage and within 4 weeks I had made the decision I needed to make and had moved on.
What is Tapping, I hear you ask.
Well if you go to Amazon and read the review on Nick Ortner’s book The Tapping Solution, it describes Tapping as – Tapping, also known as EFT, is a powerful tool for improving your life on multiple levels: mental, emotional, and physical. It has been proven to effectively address a range of issues—from anxiety, chronic pain, addiction, and fear, to weight control, financial abundance, stress relief, and so much more. It’s also one of the easiest and fastest practices to learn. You can learn it in minutes, do it anywhere and on virtually any issue, and oftentimes experience immediate results.
How does it work? Based on the principles of both ancient acupressure and modern psychology, tapping concentrates on specific meridian endpoints while focusing on negative emotions or physical sensations. Combined with spoken word, tapping helps calm the nervous system to restore the balance of energy in the body and rewire the brain to respond in healthy ways.
What do I Tap on?
Every time I get angry over something, or feel sad, or something upsets me I have a process that I work through. I sit with that feeling, connect with it, try and sort out in my mind what is going on, what is being reflected to me, or why I reacted the way I did, then I tap on it. Tapping helps me release those feelings so they don’t keep coming up time and time again. Just recently I have tapped around my ex-husband not paying maintenance; I had to do a presentation in front of a group of business women and I was over the top nervous; I had to go and meet with a client whom makes me nervous as he is so nasty all the time, I had been putting it off for ages but it got to the point where I just had to do it. Those are just some examples of how Tapping has helped me.
Who can Tapping help?
I was talking to a friend the other day and she was telling me about a young girl she know who suffers from Anxiety and it was preventing her from getting a job as she was too scared to do the interviews. I can tell you right now that Tapping would help this girl. Tapping would help her connect to her fear and over come it.
Then I was talking to my sister about how a young girl she knows was told by her teacher that she couldn’t do a certain type of sport as she was too fat and too unfit. This is such a horrible thing to tell a young girl and the Teacher should not be teaching. But what is worse is that the young girl will carry this criticism around with her for a very long time if she doesn’t deal with how it made her feel right now. By Tapping on the feeling those words make her feel and the words themselves she would be able to overcome any negative effect the experience has had on her.
I am going to use Tapping to assist me on my weight loss journey, I will be sharing this with you all in future blogs.
But basically anyone who has emotional, physical and mental issues (so everyone), the use of Tapping, combine with Self Awareness would be of benefit to them.
Question: Have you heard of Tapping before? Do you use it? How has it helped you?
Have you ever noticed that most people are really negative? When you ask them how their day was or how things are going in their life, they will automatically reply with a ‘yeah good’ or ‘not bad’. But then within a short time they start to tell you about all the things that are going wrong in their life – they don’t have enough money – they are sick – this person is upsetting them – their car broke down – their kids are always naughty – their husband/wife is doing things wrong.
The list will go on and on and on and the more you let them talk about it the more they will live in their misery. Then you start comparing ‘hardship’ stories with them like its one big competition. All this is doing is putting negative vibrations out to the Universe so that the Universe will supply you with more negativity in your life.
The first step to turning this around is to be grateful. Finding 1 thing that you are grateful for is the first step to being positive and putting into the Universe positive vibrations, so that positivity is given back to you. I remember when I started doing this, it was so hard. What positive was there to be grateful for? Then it started to flow…
- I can afford to buy food to feed my family
- I have a job/business
- I can afford a car
- I can afford the petrol for my car
- I can afford my mortgage
- I have great friends
- I have great staff
- I have a wonderful family
- My children have grown to be awesome, loving, caring individuals
- I have a great Life Coach
The list could go on and on and on. At the start it was just little things like, I woke up today or I got a hug from my grandson. Once I started finding one thing a day I started finding 5 things a day to be grateful for. Once that was happening I started spending time with my list and actually being grateful for them, I would sit, think about my list, connect with each item and feel my gratitude for it. This is such an amazing feeling, to truly be grateful for 5 things a day. This doesn’t have to take up a lot of your time, 2 or 3 minutes a day is all it can take.
At the moment on Facebook there is quite a few of my friends doing this find 3 things to be grateful for, for 5 days. I challenge you to find 5 things to be grateful for, for the next 100 days. Who is up for the challenge?
How to start being grateful
- Get yourself a notebook or journal and a nice pen
- Make the commitment to yourself that for the next 100 days you will list 5 things you are grateful for that day
- Don’t put it off – Start NOW
- Choose the best time of day to do it. 1st thing in the morning? Last thing before you go to bed? In your lunch hour?
- Set a reminder on your phone/computer – until you get into the habit, it may pay to set a reminder on your phone/computer so that you remember to do your 5 things
- Get present and feel your list – when you have written down your list each day, sit with each item and feel the gratitude
- Share your list – Its great to share your list with either a partner, friend, child, friends on Social Media or even share them with me on this blog or on my list each night
- Don’t give up – once you’ve started and you get into the habit, don’t give up, your life will change so much by doing the list, why stop the change
- Be OK if you miss a day – most habits are hard to form and even once they have formed you sometimes need to miss doing it. If you miss one or two days don’t stress about it, it is all perfect just the way it is.
So lets do it, starting tomorrow (Friday 25th July 2014) for the next 100 days, lets list 5 things you are grateful for today.
Question: Do you keep a gratitude list? How has your life changed by starting your list?
Have you ever meditated? Most people have, for the ones that haven’t they picture someone sitting with their legs crossed, wrists resting on their knees, thumb and middle finger held together, eyes closed and ‘ummmm’ coming out of your mouth.. This is not how I do meditation 🙂
Wikipedia describes Meditation as a practice in which an individual trains the mind or induces a mode of consciousness, either to realize some benefit[1] or as an end in itself.[2] It goes on and explains Meditation in-depth, I would suggest all of you go over and have a read.
Last night I started a new 8 week Meditation Course with Jackie White at Being Divine. There were 6 new people and Jackie was talking to them about how she runs her meditation and how it works etc. This got me thinking about my first time I did meditation with Jackie. I remember it was a cold Thursday night and I was running late (as always), stressed out of my mind.
When we started Jackie got us to write down everything that was running through our mind at that time, our stresses, our to do list for when we had finished meditation that night, tomorrow’s to do list. We had to write down everything so that we could relax during meditation. I did this and I had so much running through my mind that I think I could have kept writing for quite some time.
Back before I started Meditation my body would ‘hum/buzz’ with everything that was going on, it was like I was running on adrenaline all the time. Life was so busy and so out of control and I just had to keep pace. I didn’t really feel stressed, but I felt that constant buzz of adrenaline all the time.
The first night we did mediation I remember thinking, I don’t think I’m doing this right, I just seem to be sitting here. But the more I have done Meditation, the ‘deeper’ I go and now doing meditation feels so awesome and so relaxing and it lifts your vibrational energy up so high.
After a few weeks you can see the change in your mood, feelings, energy levels. I was no longer humming/buzzing and running on adrenaline. I was calm and peaceful and I would often catch myself quickly shutting my eyes, taking a deep breath and connecting to my heart space when things felt out of control. Don’t get my wrong, my life was still crazy busy and I still had to keep the pace, I just didn’t feel stressed or have the adrenaline running through me.
If you have ever thought about doing meditation, or even if you haven’t. I would love for you to take the first step and start, just 15 minutes a day is all it takes. You can go on YouTube and find guided and unguided mediation clips, or iTunes and get the same. Or you can find someone like Jackie White and physically go to the mediation classes.
Question: Have you ever done meditation before? Do you enjoy it? What benefits have you got out of meditation?
While I sit here today I can describe myself as feeling flat. I have a runny nose, I am tired and I am just flat. 18 months ago that feeling would have consumed me for the whole day. I would have told everyone who wanted to (or didn’t want to) listen about how I was feeling shitty.
Tuesday mornings I usually have a business meeting with 4 colleagues, I leave home at 7 and pick one of them up and we meet the other two at a nice little cafe in town. Being Winter 1 or 2 of them struggle to get there as they desperately hate the cold. This morning with me feeling flat it crossed my mind to not go, but I decided I needed to go. Just as I was leaving I got a message from the one I was picking up that he wasn’t coming. When I got to the Cafe I got a message from one of the other ones that they aren’t coming either. And the third person hasn’t turned up.
In the past I would have been consumed with horror, sitting at the table feeling really uncomfortable about being alone and wondering what people would think of me. I mean seriously – that poor woman over there with no friends. But today I am loving it. I have done some work in the past with my life coach about being comfortable with yourself and we have even had to date ourselves.
What is not to love about sitting in a cute cafe eating yummy toast and jam, sipping awesome coffee and writing a blog about how I am feeling… There is music in the background that is relaxing. There are people coming and going buying coffees but none have actually stayed to drink it so effectively I have the cafe by myself. The heater is on so its nice and cosy. It is drizzling outside and people are hurrying past, but it is an awesome day.
Oh and look at that just by sitting here listing all the positives about my morning I am starting to feel better 🙂
So some lessons I have learnt over the last 18 months have helped me here this morning. When I first recognised that I was feeling flat the first thought that came to mind was – well somewhere in the past I was obviously feeling flat and acknowledging it. You see, I totally believe in the Law of Attraction and Vibrational Energy. I understand that what we ‘put out there’ vibrationally we receive back from the Universe. This is one of main reasons I didn’t want to ‘sit’ in my flatness or misery. I knew that the longer I sat and acknowledge my feelings of being flat the the longer the Universe would give it back to me next time.
I also understand that by sitting here acknowledging all that I am grateful for this morning – the cute cafe, the warmth, the food and coffee etc. that the better I would feel. We can all get lost in how bad things are – It’s raining outside, I got wet coming to the cafe, its cold every time the door opens, none of my colleagues have turned up etc etc. But how is that going to help me? How am I meant to start to feel better whenI am wallowing in self-pity? By acknowledging all the wonderful things that are going on with me and around me it makes me feel better.
And the best part so far is that I have just pumped out a blog to share with you all in under half and hours. I love this.
Question: What is awesome about your morning?
I have shared a little with you all about my journey, but for the moment I want to jump ahead a little bit to a program that I have just completed for the 2nd time. Yes thats right, I did two 6 months of this program because I wanted to get as much as I could out of it. The Program is a Mastermind Program by Julie Lake – if you want to check it out, go here –http://www.julielake.com.au/mastermind-program/
The course got us doing lots of things that we would never have done ourselves without some prompting. But it was fantastic. It has lead me to where I am today, living a life that is ridiculously happy and aiming to have everything I have ever dreamed of having.
Today I was talking to a client who has a lot of ‘stuff’ going on in her life at the moment. When we had finished talking about what was going on, she asked me how were things with me. My instant response was, it is great, and it truly is. I still have a lot of ‘stuff’ going on myself, but I’m not living that ‘stuff’ I’m breezing through it.
I’m not sure if that makes sense, but by doing this course I have learnt not to get swallowed up with what is going on. I’ve learnt to live in the NOW, to know that right now, at this very moment, I have everything I need. I have learnt to love myself and appreciate how awesome I am. I have learnt to feel my feelings – yes I know that sounds weird but it is true 🙂 I will tell you more about that in the future.
If you want to have a better life, if you want to learn to feel your feelings, if you want to learn how to live in the now, then check out Julie’s website and get in touch with her, I promise you, you won’t be sorry.
http://www.julielake.com.au/mastermind-program/
I am not an affiliate for Julie, I genuinely appreciate all her help in changing my life and I want to share her with the world so that everyone can change their life 🙂
Question: What have you done that has changed your life?
One of the lessons I have learnt in the last 2 years is about your arrows. This lesson really resonated with me and I have used it quite often in my life since learning about it. Now the photo’s below are not very clear, but you get the picture. When you are living a life with the arrows pointing in it means that you are letting life happen to you and its NOT your happiest life. When you are living with the arrows pointing out you are being responsible for your own happiness.
So when I am making decisions I picture the stick figures with the arrows and work out what decision would mean that the arrows are pointing out. An example of this is Grocery Shopping. I hate grocery shopping. In my house, it is usually done Sunday night around 10.30 as that is the only time I can fit it in. I have spent the last 5 or so years complaining about doing the grocery shopping and telling EVERYONE who would listen how much I hated it.
Then it came to me that my doing the grocery shopping the way I was doing it was letting the arrows point in. How could I make them point out in this situation? We all need to eat and so we all need to buy groceries. When the answer came to me it was so obvious it was silly. Order online and get them delivered. I mean seriously, how ridiculously easy is that. Totally arrows pointing out – You don’t have to go out late on a Sunday night – You don’t have to walk around the Supermarket with a million other people (you would be surprised at how many people shop at that time of night).
Now Sunday Nights are AWESOME!!!! Sit down at my computer, log in, order what I need and Monday nights it is all delivered. Now you are probably thinking that this is me just being lazy, but it’s not. I would rather spend that time doing something with the kids or finishing the housework or pumping out a few blogs or planning for the next week at work. There are a million other things that I would rather do than to shop for groceries, so why do it when you don’t have to?
When making a decision in the future, try to make it with your arrows pointing out. Actually picture the arrows as you make the decision.
Question: What direction do your arrows point in your life?
Wow, the last few days have just been amazing. Over the last two years I have learnt so much and I want to share it all with you. The problem is I want to share it all with you now and when I try to get it out I just freeze because I don’t know where to start. But three important things I have learnt are; 1. Be open to what the Universe is showing you or opening up for you; 2. Watch what is happening around you and with wonder and intrigue and learn from it. 3. Go with your instinct, do not question it.
So keeping these three things in my mind at all times, it amazes me what I come across. The other day while scrolling through FaceBook I came across a post from Louise Hay (see below). Something attracted me to the post, so I clicked on it and read it and shared it with people.
I then went to my Audible account – this is where I purchase and download all the books I listen to. I searched Florence Scovel Shnn, and guess what? A lot of her books were on special and I had 3 credits available 🙂 (thank you Universe). So I purchased 3 of her books.
This morning I had to go to Melbourne so decided to download the books I had purchased. I worked out what one I wanted to listen to first and planned my trip. Hopped in the car, connected my phone so I could listen, opened the program and pressed play. It turned out that what I had wanted to play and what I had started were different. Instead of getting upset or stopping the book, I let the Universe provide and listened to it anyway 🙂
The book I was listening to was The Secret Door to Success, which turned out pretty appropriate considering my posts of the last few days, once again the Universe providing for me. I have really resonated with this book, it only went for 2 hours but I got so much out of it. So much so that I want to share the book with you over the next few blogs.
In the first chapter, it talks about the secret door to success and how we are all searching for it (sound familiar?) How we always ask successful people what their secret is but never ask an unsuccessful person. It says that there is success for every person, but it seems that for most people that success is behind a door or a wall, a bit like the wall of Jericho in the bible.
Behind that door or wall is your city of great treasures, your divinely designed success, your heart’s desire. You can choose to leave the door or wall there and never achieve success or you can knock that door or wall down. But we need to establish what it is made of, often it is made of resentment – resenting someone, or a situation. If you resent someone else for being successful then you are blocking your success. For people who’s wall was built of resentment Florence would get them to say – What God has done for others, He now does for me and more.
For people who’s door or wall was build of lack she would get them to say – The walls of lack and delay now crumble away, and I enter my Promised Land, under grace.
Florence teaches that when you make an affirmation of Truth, your wall of Jericho totters. It is the word of realisation which brings about a change in your affairs for words and thoughts are a form of radioactivity (the Law of Attraction). She tells you to take an interest in your work, enjoy what you are doing so that the secret door to success opens. To make what you are doing interesting to other people and to be interested in it yourself so that others will find you interesting and to smile, all of these will open the secret door to success.
How many of you sit around and talk to your friends about EVERYTHING that has gone wrong, living in the past and complaining about your misfortunes? I think we all do. But according to Florence talking too much about your affairs, scattering your forces, brings you up against a high wall. You need to stop it now, stop talking about all the bad things, let them go.
Many people are up against the wall of discouragement. Courage and endurance are part of the secret to success. In Napoleon Hills Book – Think and Grow Rich: The Original 1937 Unedited Edition
, Napoleon talks about a Gold Miner who spent weeks of hard labour and all his fortune digging for gold. In the end, he gave up and went home, broken and poor. He sold his mining rights to an Engineer who kept looking for the gold in the same mine and struck his fortune just 3 feet from where the old miner was looking. Florence talks about how most people give up just before something big is coming to them. Successful people NEVER give up.
Florence states – the road to success is a straight and narrow path; it is a road of loving absorption, of undivided attention. You attract the things you give a great deal of thought to. So if you give a great deal of thought to lack, you attract lack, if you give a great deal of thought to injustice, you attract more injustice.
Her affirmation for this is – The walls of lack and delay now crumble away, and I enter my Promised Land, under grace.
I am amazed that this was written about in the early 1900’s and yet, 114 years later we are still teaching ourselves this. We need to work on ourselves and then spread the word. Teach your children, brothers and sisters, parents, grandchildren, friends, anyone who will listen, that they can ALL be successful if we only thought positive thoughts, loved what we were doing and smiled 🙂
Question: What about this resonates with you? Are you familiar with these teachings?
Still not feeling successful and still searching for the ‘meaning’ of success, I went back to my Life Coach. We played a game called The Wish, this is such an empowering game, really connects you with the Universe and makes you stop and think about what is really going on.
My Wish that day was – I wish to be successful at running my business. Keeping in mind that my business had been operating for 15 years, it had over 60 clients and employed 4 staff, to anyone else this was a success, but to me it was nowhere near a success. But it was also more that I didn’t FEEL successful. I spend many hours trying to workout what it meant to be successful, what it FELT like to be successful and I was struggling with this.
One thing I did discover is that I had never had any goals, I didn’t start my business and then list all the goals I wanted achieve over time. There was no – have 20 clients by 2000 – have 5 staff by 2005 – have a turnover of $500,000 by 2010. So how can you feel success if you don’t have anything to measure your ‘success’ with?
Coming away from that session I had to write down each night what I had done successfully that day, this could be the smallest thing – ran a successful meeting with someone – lodged 10 BAS’s – got 1 new client – got to work on time etc etc, whatever I could think of that I had achieved that day. For me this was still hard as I just saw this as living, I didn’t see this as being successful at anything, but I did see how this was a way to start seeing the successes in my life.
Now, when I sit here today, I can tell your all the things I did successfully today 🙂
- Had an awesome breakfast meeting
- Followed by a great business meeting
- Checked in on a potential client who invited me to do a talk in front of other business women – how exciting is this one, someone believes I am good enough to do a presentation in front of other business women 🙂
- Had another potential client ring me about joining one of my mentoring groups I run
- Breezed through an afternoon of work with a client
- Got a computer program I haven’t used before to work perfectly
- Talked on the phone for an hour with a dear friend
- Felt awesome and excited about life for the day
No none of what is on my list is what I would have called a success in the past, but from the space I am in right now, I have had a hugely successful day. I didn’t earn a million dollars or run a huge corporation, but who cares, my day has been successful 🙂
Question: How was your day? Was it successful? Share with me what you achieved today.
Also go over and have a look at The Wish’s website and maybe even download the iPad or iPhone app.
It’s OK. Those two words probably mean very little to you, but to me they were very empowering. I was the type of person who put everyone first, did everything for everyone else, family, friends, staff, clients. It was my philosophy that you put everyone first, you put yourself last, by putting yourself first you were selfish and not a very nice person.
By working with my Life Coach I could acknowledge that this was not really a good philosophy, it was probably one of the reasons I was so sad and so down. I knew I had to work on this, and one of the ways we came up with this was for me to say – I can do this and its OK to do it.
Every time I was faced with a difficult situation, or a situation that made me feel like I was letting someone down I had to tell myself that I can do this and its OK to do this. I remember driving home from a meeting where I was told by a client about how something that one of my staff members did had upset them greatly. Having to step up and be the Boss was hard for me when it involved having to reprimand someone. So all the way back to the office from that meeting I kept repeating to myself – I can do this, its OK to do this.
And in the end it was, I spoke to my staff member, she was extremely sorry that the incident had happened and wasn’t really aware how she had upset the client. The client received an apology and they were happy and the staff member became more aware of her actions.
If I hadn’t of kept repeating to myself those words – I can do this and its OK to do this – then things probably would have ended up a lot worse and I wouldn’t have become a stronger person.
There are many incidents where its OK to do or not do things, like not wanting to go to lunch with that person or to reprimand that staff member for them stuffing up so bad that you lost a client or to ask a client for payment. Whenever something difficult comes up tell yourself I can do this, its OK to do this. You will be quite pleasantly surprised at how your life changes, just a little bit, by these words 🙂
Question: Have you ever told yourself that ‘its OK’. Where do you use this? Or where can you use this?
My very first session with my life coach, well actually my first few sessions with my life coach was about success. I remember she asked me why I was there, what I was feeling (or not feeling). I told her that I felt like a failure and that I wanted to BE successful and FEEL successful.
She turned around and told me that I WAS successful and I just needed to acknowledge that. I had brought up 3 children on my own, supported a dear friend and her two children, helping her have a ‘normal’ life while coping with Bipolar. I had ran my business for 15 years successfully, got through my son having a brain tumour. The list went on and on. I just sat there looking at her blankly and thinking, but that is just living, it isn’t being successful at anything.
After the session I had two things I had to do – say out loud to myself – I am a successful business owner. This had to be said while looking into my eyes in the mirror and as many times a day I needed to, especially if i was doubting myself. I then had to write a list of 100 reasons why I am a successful business owner.
I came home after the session, and spent the next week researching success, the meaning of success and trying to work out what my definition of success was. I sat with a blank page in front of me trying to write my list of 100 reasons. I just opened my notebook to find that the list still only has one thing on it – I’ve been operating since 1998.
I have come a long way since then, and now I can tell you my definition of success:
- To be happy
- To stand in your own power
- To put yourself first
- To decide what you want and go for it
- To not let other people force their beliefs or their needs on you
- To do what you LOVE doing
- To be WHO you want to be
- To live WHERE you want to live
Oh the list can go on, probably till I had the 100 points on it, but I wont bore you with that 🙂
Question: What is your definition of Success? How have you been successful?
