Part 1: The Starting Point
Part 2: Appreciating Yourself with Loving Kindness
Part 3: Tapping In Gratitude for Positive Intentions
Part 4: Handling Your Mistakes with Compassion
Part 5: Using the “Future Thanks” Method to Create What You Want
Part 6: Accessing Your Goals With the “Why” Question
Part 7: How to Handle Multiple Aspects of a Major Goal
By Patricia Carrington PhD, EFT Master
Part 1: The Starting Point
You may have heard of, or seen The Secret, the popular movie that is being sold as a DVD and its companion book of the same name. Based on a concept known as the Law of Attraction, the DVD is a runaway best seller that has already been featured twice on the Oprah Winfrey show and many other major television shows.
Many of those who learned about the Law of Attraction from the pioneering work of Abraham Hicks in this area, consider the impressive success of The Secret as a sign of a change in consciousness occurring in our world today, one which they hope will bring us to a more enlightened stage of evolution.
There are some grounds for concern about The Secret’s startling success, however. This is because the movie neglects to mention certain pieces of information that must be known for the method to be fully successful. If the Secret is not used correctly, it cannot fulfill the promises made in its name, and if this happens, the public could easily conclude that they “have tried that idea and it doesn’t work,” an attitude that could have very undesirable consequences for a concept that is, at the very least, worthy of serious consideration.
Actually, EFT may turn out to be a powerful aid to the Secret, because what is omitted from the movie is a viable method for changing a person’s vibrational frequency. Yet it is clear that a means of changing one’s energy frequency must be used with the Secret or it cannot work. An energy intervention is therefore necessary if one is to apply the concepts of The Secret successfully. To explain why, I will refer to the book The Secret.
This book is described by its author as giving details of the concepts expressed in the movie that were discarded on the cutting room floor when the movie was edited. By necessity, the director had to select only certain portions of the original footage so that the film would fit within a certain time frame, and the book claims to have reinstated much of this information. For this reason, I will consider the book to be the authoritative source of information about this concept.
Here, in essence, are the main principles of the Secret as described in the book:
The Law of Attraction is based on a premise that “like attracts like, “so that when you think a thought, you will also be attracting like thoughts to you.
Thoughts are said to be magnetic, to have a frequency of their own. As you think, your thoughts are sent out into the universe where they magnetically attract all like things that are on the same frequency. In short, everything sent out returns to the sender–oneself.
The authors liken each human being to a human transmission tower transmitting a frequency by means of their thoughts. Therefore, if you want to change anything in your life, you are advised to change the frequency of your energetic signals by changing your thoughts.
Inherent in this idea is the concept that your current thoughts are creating your future. What you think about the most and focus on the most will, according to the theory, appear in your life. As the book puts it, “your thoughts become things”; they become your reality.
It is clear that the author is not just talking here only about the words you use to speak to yourself, although these are considered very important, but also to the feelings that accompany your words. The latter are seen as strongly influencing your basic energy vibration.
This idea reminds me of the EFT Discovery Statement, which states that “the cause of all negative emotions is a disruption in the body’s energy system.” The additional suggestion in the Secret, however, is that your energy vibrations radiate outward, acting much as a tuning fork might, to bring about similar vibrations in the universe. When we strike a tuning fork, objects at a distance from that fork will start to resonate at the same sound frequency as the fork itself (provided they contain certain similar ingredients). These new objects will have been “entrained” by the vibratory rate of the original tuning fork.
The book describes your thoughts as magnetic forces that attract back to you the same frequencies that you are sending out.
I won’t take time here to discuss the value of the Law of Attraction, although this would make an interesting discussion, but consider the implications of viewing reality this way.
It is clear that, seen from this perspective, thoughts take on a tremendous importance that we have not previously granted them. The Law of Attraction implies that the vibrational frequency we radiate is of the greatest importance to our life. Not only do we feel deep distress when this frequency is discordant, but it is also said that we will attract into our lives an outer manifestation of this same type of distress, as the same negative frequencies that we radiated out to the Universe are now reflected back to us.
If this is so, obviously we would want to do everything within our power to change our negative frequencies to positive ones, and do so continuously. Only in this way could we avoid attracting negative consequences and bring about desirable ones.
Changing our negative frequencies to positive ones is certainly a good idea, even if we were not to accept the basic premises of the Secret, but there is a missing ingredient in the Secret that raises a question. This ingredient is the all-important “how to.” The question we need to ask is: How do we go about changing a negative frequency to a positive one?
Obviously, simply deciding that you are not going to emit a negative frequency or that you want to send out a positive one, won’t achieve the results you desire. I am reminded of the relevance of the concept of tail-enders, those nagging inner contradictions that we so often have in the back of our minds when we express a positive thought–the doubts and nay-saying that can easily negate our conscious positive intentions. Tail-enders can defeat any effort of ours to switch frequencies.
In neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) terms, we are all too often not “congruent.” That is, we don’t agree 100% with what we ourselves are thinking or feeling; we don’t fully believe it. The fact is that if we don’t reach for something with 100% of ourselves, we are not likely to get it.
Consider this…
If you were to send a positive signal into the Universe and at the same time unwittingly send out a negative signal at the same time, an interference pattern would be created with one signal tending to negate the other. At best, the positive signal would be ineffective and no particular identifiable effects would be seen. At worst, the negative signal might be stronger or more frequently emitted, in which case it would exert an overriding influence. In such a case, no matter how much you thought you were sending out a positive signal because that is what you had consciously tried to create through positive thinking, the negative signal would attract negative consequences.
In order to be an effective “attractor” therefore (bring to yourself what you believe you are asking for), you would need to be free of inner contradictions about the issue at hand. But of course this is easier said than done. There may be deep negative patterns influencing your life which involve core issues that must be handled before your vibrational frequency, the energy that you radiate outwards, can change. Only when these core issues have been cleared will you be able to send unambiguous positive signals to the Universe.
Fortunately, however, those who know EFT can use it to change their vibrational frequencies with respect to many spheres of their lives. Sometimes negative energy will be immediately replaced by a rush of positive energy, resulting in a “one-minute wonder.” At other times, patience and persistence will be required to bring about a major energy shift, but the payoff can be tremendous.
EFT is by definition a means of accomplishing a major shift in energy by eliminating our negative emotional reactions. However, it can also be used to create positive vibrations directly. This is an EFT application that interests me greatly, and I have recently been writing about it on this website.
It is interesting to note that the EFT self-acceptance phrase, “Even though I have (this problem), I deeply and completely accept myself,” actually targets the level at which we vibrate. What more powerful means could we use to change our essential energy level than to deeply and completely accept ourselves? This is a positive suggestion which, over time, could create fundamental changes in our self-image that might well alter the type of energy that we radiate outward. When at the same time we tap on the meridian endpoints, our energy systems can now vibrate at a different rate and emit a very different signal than before. If, on a practical level, we want to find a way to combine EFT with the principles expressed in The Secret, what then might that be?
Aside from its all-important use to eliminate troublesome issues mentioned above, there are several ways to use EFT directly to switch our energy toward the positive, and do this very quickly. I will be talking about these in my future articles in this series.
Part 2: Appreciating Yourself with Loving Kindness
The “secret” of using EFT to implement “The Secret” (the Law of Attraction) is to create a positive vibrational level within yourself that is radically different from the one that you are accustomed to. It is the frequency of the signal that you send out to the Universe that is said to attract to you events and people of like frequency. This signal is not superficial, not words alone, nor is it just conscious intentions.
Ask yourself — what is the primary type of signal I am sending to myself all day long? This is what you will be radiating outwards.
The answer to this question may surprise you because you will discover, if you observe carefully, that most signals you give to yourself are of a corrective in nature:
“Don’t lean too far to the left or you will fall down.”
Or,
“Don’t move too fast or you’ll spill the coffee.”
Our survival depends on this type of negative feedback. Objective reality-based correction like this doesn’t adversely affect our vibrational level because we usually correct our errant behavior almost instantaneously. We might compare the process to the way a jet plane manages to stay on course when in flight. The planes are actually off course approximately 95% of the time, but their radar system corrects them constantly through its calculated negative feedback. This feedback is essential for the correct operation of the flight system as well as all living systems.
However, there is another kind of negative feedback that is not natural but learned, and which is almost exclusively human as far as we know, although animals closely identified with human beings may learn to display somewhat similar behavior. This involves the use of negative judgments about our own behavior. All day long we are telling ourselves that we have not done this correctly, not done something we should have done, not properly planned for something that’s going to happen, aren’t executing a present task properly, and so on and on. Our past, present and future actions are under our constant scrutiny and the resulting negative judgments are so automatic that we don’t even notice them.
This continuous stream of negative self-observations is at work on us in a manner that puts a damper on all that we do. It often effectively holds back our natural exuberance at being alive, in the name of “improvement”, “efficiency”, “excellence”, or some other misapplied value.
This doesn’t mean we should do away with self evaluation. Not at all. It is important in our value oriented world, but what fails to occur here is a balancing of our own negative observations with our positive ones. We tend to have a lack of positive feedback in our daily lives, because we are actually not noticing most of the things that we do correctly.
You can, however, effectively alter this situation by using a simple EFT exercise that I call simply Giving Loving Appreciation To Yourself. It involves a kind of self-awareness that results in a new form of self acknowledgment. If you’d like to try it, here’s how to go about it:
Set aside 20 minutes, preferably each day, but at least occasionally, to notice everything that you do for yourself — EVERYTHING —— during this short time period, then thank yourself for it.. Every little effort that you make to meet your needs or the needs of others around you, is to be noticed and appreciated. You are to thank yourself by doing EFT for everything that you do to serve yourself or others physically, mentally, or emotionally during this time.
Here’s how a session of self appreciation of this sort would go if, for example, you were doing it first thing in the morning.
Suppose that, after arising in the morning, you engaged in a ritual of brushing your teeth —— not unlikely I would think. You will probably have performed this simple ritual tens of thousands of times before in your life and I’m sure that you don’t ordinarily identify it as an “accomplishment”, unless of course you have suffered from a handicap and have noticed how extremely complex this and most of the other simple acts that we take for granted, actually are.
The fact is that brushing your teeth takes both skill and effort. It takes directed intention, and requires making decisions on a small but constant scale. You need to decide, for example, how much toothpaste to feed onto the brush at one time, how often to replenish the supply of toothpaste, which spots on your teeth to target with your brush ——many acts make up the process of tooth-brushing and you actually expend considerable effort daily, both mental and physical, on this task.
When you finish your tooth-brushing operation then do one round of EFT in the following manner:
Tap first on the karate chop spot, or the sore spot (whichever you use as your psychological reversal point for EFT) while repeating out loud, three times, the phrase, “I thank myself for brushing my teeth… I thank myself for brushing my teeth… I thank myself for brushing my teeth…”.
Or, you can use your own name instead of thanking yourself formally. When I do this exercise (I love it) I will often say, “Thank you, Pat, for brushing your (or “my”) teeth…” instead of “I thank myself…”. It always feels comforting to hear my own name used in such a kindly, aware fashion. And by doing this I am thanking myself for something that is usually a totally thankless task.
You will repeat this thanks at each of the EFT tapping points, and do one full round of EFT, “I thank myself for brushing my teeth”, “Thank you, Pat, for brushing my teeth”, “I thank myself for brushing my teeth” etc.,at each point.
For the rest of the exercise you repeat this procedure after every single task that you perform for yourself or others during your allotted 20 minutes
“Thank you, Pat, for cooking this egg.”
“I thank myself for putting breakfast on the table.”
“Thank you, Pat, for making that phone call…” etc.
You will discover that every single thing you do in preparation for the day takes effort and thought, and this will probably be the first time ever that you have been thanked for doing it.
During this 20 minutes, the more that each act you perform is classified by you as insignificant, the more important it is to appreciate the fact that you’ve accomplished it. In other words, the smaller the act the better! Those very small things that you continually do for yourself are the unsung heroes of your life. They are finally being appreciated, and because you tap on them, these statements are “going in” on a very deep level.
The impression you take away from this exercise is that “someone” (yourself) is at last recognizing how faithful you are in fulfilling your needs. I can’t emphasize strongly enough how immensely comforting this can be and how “understood” you can feel when you do this exercise. It’s as though you had the most attentive, caring and aware parent at your side, watching with loving eyes each thing you do, and smiling with genuine appreciation at all that you do to simply manage to live.
Please realize, however, that I am not suggesting that you praise yourself only for your successes. You will not be saying, in effect, “Good Girl!” or “Good Boy!” to yourself â”’ just giving simple thanks. That’s all. Rewarding yourself with praise is a different exercise which can be valuable in f itself, but it is not the one that I’m talking about here. I am suggesting something far more fundamental —— that you recognize, at last, everything you actually do for yourself just in order to remain alive. This recognition is a major gift.
To sum up these instructions —— the total EFT exercise consists of doing (at least) one round of EFT for every act of service you perform for yourself or another during a stated 20 minute period. Even if you make a mistake while preparing your breakfast, for example —— suppose you dropped a glass so that it shattered on the kitchen floor —— then thank yourself for the simple act of picking up the broken pieces, placing them in the trash can, cleaning up the floor, and making certain that all splinters of glass have been eliminated from the area so that they endanger no one.
The same procedure applies to your acts of service to others. If for example you were caring for a small child during this 20 minute period, you would thank yourself for every act that you performed for that child, each tiny act that would ordinarily go entirely unrecognized and unappreciated. How many care-takers ever experience this kind of appreciation? This in itself could transform your day.
There is actually no limit to the type of acts that you can recognize and express this kind of gratitude for:
“Thank you,(your name) for checking the e-mail. (This phrase would be repeated at each tapping spot)
“Thank you, (your name) for deleting that email.”
“Thank you, (your name) for answering the phone and talking to that person.”
And so on, and on, and on…
If you tap repeatedly in recognition of the humblest services that you perform for yourself and others, you may well find that you feel an entirely new kind of love from yourself. It is totally without strings attached, deeply appreciative, and can change your entire vibrational frequency. You will be radiating this loving appreciation out into the Universe. Can you imagine what the repercussions of this powerful act could be, in addition to its immediate benefit?
In the next article in this series, I will be writing about how you can “tap in” the positive when you fail to perform certain acts that you would like to do, that is, when you experience unfulfilled intentions. The method works equally well for this purpose.
Part 3: Tapping In Gratitude for Positive Intentions
Today I will be talking about another way in which we can change our essential vibrational level, not just in words, but with deep conviction.
It is an EFT exercise I call “Tapping in Positive Intentions”.
Everyone realizes a number of times each day that something they definitely intended to do, they haven’t gotten around to doing. You may find that some new habit that you hoped to establish is not being put into place. Or that you have failed to respond to a phone call that you needed to answer, and so on and on.
No matter how much you appreciate the small acts of service that you perform for yourself each day (the subject of last week’s article in this series) there will always be things you fail to do which you would have liked to do. The fact is, however, that you will never be able to fulfill all your intentions on any given day.
It is simply not possible, given human imperfections and the fact that we do not (to put it mildly!) have unlimited time to get done what we feel we should have gotten done. It’s fine to have intentions, it helps to structure our lives, but it is unproductive to allow our energy level to be affected when we do not fulfill them.
Here is what I suggest you do when you are down on yourself because you have not done all those things which you intended to do today.
Every time that you fail to realize your good intentions, you will create an EFT statement such as the following, and then “tap it in”. Do this by repeating this statement three times while tapping on the karate chop spot (or rubbing the sore spot, whichever point you use in your variation of EFT), and then repeat the statement again at each tapping point, for one round of EFT.
Sometimes you may want to do more than one round, that’s fine too. There is no “even though” part to this statement for you will be using EFT just for the purpose of tapping in the positive.
The exercise will consist of thanking yourself for every unfilled intention of yours by tapping in your gratitude for that intention with using EFT. This may seem strange at first because ordinarily we don’t even notice our own positive intentions, just our actions, and we certainly don’t express appreciation for them.
In order to do this exercise, you will create an EFT statement that goes something like this: “I thank myself (or “thank you (insert your name) for having had the intention to start that exercise program today.”
Or,
“Thank you (your name) for having had the intention to work on that project today.”
Or,
“Thank you (your name) for having had the intention to get back to (person) with an e-mail explaining the situation.”
Or give thanks to yourself for having thought of whatever you genuinely wanted to do that you have not done.
These expressions of gratitude refer to things that you had sincerely intended to but did not do for one reason or another, and therefore the list can be very large. There are many intentions that each of us have every day which are not fulfilled, and for which we can thank ourselves using this method.
You may be surprised at how this lifts a burden from you. For once you will feel acknowledged for actually having had the idea of making that call, or the intention of performing that act, The fact that you didn’t actually do it is not relevant in this context, and it is immensely relieving to have someone (yourself in this case) notice that you did genuinely want to do such and such.
How often have you heard someone say to another person (in self-defense), “But I did intend to do that! I thought about it.” This person was trying to indicate that there is a positive value in intending to do something, even if you don’t do it. In fact, thoughts being the powerful things that they are there is real value in intentions, for correctly used they can pave the way for our most positive future acts.
However, you must not tell another person your good intentions and expect that, except in unusual cases, they will give you much credit for them, because we are not trained to do this in our society You can however learn to give yourself that credit, and when you do, you won’t have to ask for recognition of your good intentions from anyone else.
Once again you are changing your own relationship to yourself by giving yourself loving recognition.
One of the interesting effects of doing this is that when you genuinely recognize and thank yourself for your own good intentions, you are less likely to resist doing the act in question the later on or the following day. Focusing on your intention often fixes the idea of doing a certain act in your mind in an easy, supportive way.
You know that you are loved and appreciated by yourself for actually having taken the trouble to formulate the thought of doing it, the intention to do it. You have recognized that it is a genuine accomplishment to have considered that thing worthy of doing —— even if you didn’t put your idea into action yet. Like all other acts of appreciation, this is very apt to result in changed behavior.
But please make sure of one thing. You should not be doing this exercise in order to manipulate your own behavior, or trying to sneak in self-control. You are simply appreciating something that has hitherto gone unnoticed — the fact that you really do have good ideas which you would like to put into practice, and that ideas and intentions count.
The old saying that “The road to hell is paved with good intentions” is actually much misunderstood. What this saying obviously refers to are insincere intentions, the kind that are mouthed glibly but not felt. Instead, in this EFT exercise you will not be acknowledging yourself for empty promises to yourself that you might have made, perhaps in order to gain somebody else’s approval, but will be thanking yourself for things that you thought were worth doing and that you wanted to do, but just somehow didn’t.
It goes without saying that if you find yourself strongly resisting doing the thing that you think you intend to do, you will need to ask yourself some important questions, such as “Is this really my own intention or is it someone else’s for me?” or, “Do I really want to do this?”
Such questions as these can unearth what is refered to as “tail enders”, your inner objections and conflicts about the situation. If this happens, you will want to tap on these tail enders first.
Since unfulfilled intentions form a large part of our lives, they give you a wonderful opportunity to do EFT many times a day in loving appreciation of the fact that you actually thought of these good things and would genuinely like to do them.
In my experience, it is much more likely that I will do these neglected things within the next day or so after having acknowledged the validity of my own positive intentions. This is an important way to create a new and different vibrational level within yourself and thereby send out very different signals to the Universe.
In my next article in this series I will discuss how we can use EFT when we have made an actual mistake, or have done something we would much rather not have done. The tapping in” method is equally effective for this purpose.
Part 4: Handling Your Mistakes with Compassion
In this series I have been describing ways in which you can change your vibrational level to provide a new kind of self acceptance and self-love, one that radiates out into the universe as positive.
Today I will suggest a way that you can use EFT to deal with any mistakes you may have made during the day, or anything you have done which you regret, and do so with compassion and self understanding.
Most people, and I am no exception, are not comfortable with having done something during the day which they consider stupid or impulsive or unkind or undesirable in some other respect. This sort of behavior on our parts can lead to much self recrimination. I will tell you about a way you can use EFT to reverse how you handle your mistakes of the day, and be much more likely to prevent them in the future. It is more effective than any verbal self blame. It is a kind technique that involves what I call “Redoing The Incident”. Here is how it works.
First stop as soon as you realize that you have made a mistake, or as soon after that as is convenient, and observe exactly what you did. Then ask yourself, “How would I like to handle this if I had it to do over again? How do I want to handle this kind of situation in the future?”
Your answer to these questions must be detailed, generalizations won’t work here. What you will do is create a “movie” in your mind of exactly how you would like to behave if you find yourself in this situation in the future. This takes a little imagination but is well worth it.
Once you have your movie clearly in mind, then “tap it in” in the way I will illustrate in the following true story.
Recently I had occasion to use this EFT technique when I was driving on a deserted and icy road, and suddenly found that I had run out of gas, so that I had a hard time pulling the car to the side of the road.
This was clearly not a desirable situation, but I knew that there was a gas station no more than about a half mile away, and I also knew how difficult it can be in that area to persuade a service station attendant by telephone to come to a stranded car with gasoline.
So I decided that the best plan was to get out of the car, walk to the gas station, and attempt to persuade the attendants in person.
So this is what I did. It turned out to be an icy and unpleasant walk in very high wind but I did arrive at the service station, only to find that the attendants were engaged in other matters so I had to wait well over half an hour before I could finally persuade one of them to drive me back to my car and put enough gasoline in it to get me back to the garage. When we did arrive back, their fuel pump was not working and I eventually had to go to another service station to fill the tank.
As my gas tank was finally being filled, my first inclination, which I am pleased to say I managed to stifle quickly, was to tell myself how stupid it was of me to have allowed the tank to get that low. I immediately stopped myself from doing this however and decided to do EFT instead. To do so, I created a mental movie in my mind of how I would like to handle this kind of situation in the future.
It was interesting what happened at that point. As I constructed the movie, I realized that the reason that I had not gone into a service station earlier to refuel was because when I had realized that the tank was getting low, I didn’t have enough cash on hand for a full tank, and I refuse to use my credit card at service stations.
I imagine a service station attendant whom I don’t know disappearing with my card into the interior of the shop and only emerging many minutes later.
What would stop them, I tell myself, from copying my credit card numbers during that interval and making identity theft? I realize, of course, that I allow people waiting on me at restaurants to take my credit card out of the room, but somehow this seems safer to me than when on the road, irrational as this may be.
Given that I feel this way, however, I realized that I need not let this concern of mine prevent me from having at least a half a tank of gas in my car at all times.
What I decided to do, and consequently the way I constructed my movie of the future, was that, if for some reason I didn’t have enough cash in my purse to buy the needed gas, then I would get out of the car and accompany the station attendant into the garage where I would stand nearby and watch as they ran my credit card through the machine.
In my imagined movie, therefore, I first saw myself getting gas when my tank was low by paying cash for it, and then if I had no cash, I saw myself following the attendant and watching as they used my card. I then tapped on the following EFT phrase, using the positive statement only.
“Always half a tank of gas no matter what.”…“Always half a tank of gas no matter what.”…“Always half a tank of gas no matter what.” I repeated this phrase at each EFT spot. When I was finished, the impression of exactly what I would do in the future was so clear and deep in me that it felt like present reality.
It was interesting to see what happened in the week following this incident. I did travel some distance in the car that week and of course the gas gauge showed a sharp lowering of fuel level as a result. As the needle moved down toward the halfway point, I was unusually aware of this, and the words ““Always half a tank of gas no matter what.” came strongly into my mind.
Then I checked whether I had enough cash to get a decent amount of gasoline, knowing that if I didn’t have the cash on hand, I wouldn’t this time use this as an excuse not to stop and attend to the matter. As it happened, I did have enough cash in my purse and so I did get the gasoline at the next service station, following the steps of the first part of the movie —— the film strip of me getting the gasoline ahead of time.
Had I not done this for any reason, however, I would have followed the steps of the final part of the movie which showed me following the attendant into the service station and watching my credit card be processed.
Ever since the time I did that tapping my awareness of this problem and my way of handling it has been different. I have made good resolutions about future behavior before, but it was quite different this time when I had tapped on my positive movie of the future. My desired future was made remarkably real by this tapping.
To recap, here are the steps to follow if you want to use this technique:
1. Identify what it is you did that you would not like to do again. If possible, figure out what your reasoning was behind doing it.
2. Construct a mental “movie” in your mind showing exactly how you would like to behave in a similar situation in the future.
3. Run this movie in your mind as you “tap in” your positive statements that describe the behavior you want to have. Use short positive statements, they might be considered the “title” of your movie.
4. Observe what happens during the next few days and weeks with regard to the issue you tapped on. You are likely to see a permanent change in your behavior when you confront similar situations, and this change will be instituted without any self recrimination.
Once again, you are changing your energy system so that your vibrational level becomes positive and life enhancing.
Part 5: Using the “Future Thanks” Method to Create What You Want
“The Secret”, and other ways of using the Law of Attraction, emphasize the fact that you must clearly visualize (or at least conceptualize) your desired goals as though they were occurring in the present moment, in order to achieve them. The phrase “in the present moment” is the key factor here.
These goals must not be seen separate from you, as something you “want”, but be experienced as something that already “is”. However, creating the future as though it were the present is not something that comes easily or naturally to many people. Using EFT for this purpose can therefore be an excellent move.
One way of doing this, which I will describe in today’s article, was suggested to me by the experience of an EFT user who was a former client of mine. “Pete” was one of the most successful manifestors (if there is such a word) that I have ever come across.
I reported his experiences several years ago in this newsletter, but I’ll summarize his story here to emphasize a possible reason for his success that I just recently realized.
Pete was an experienced EFT’er who was accustomed to using the EFT Choices Method. However, he employed it in a very special way which I now think was an important factor in the success of his tapping to create what he wanted.
Instead of saying the phrase “I choose” to introduce the positive portion of his EFT statements, as is customarily done in the Choices Method, he would say, “I thank the Universe for…” and follow this with a detailed description of his desired outcome.
By using what I call his “Future Thanks” method, he was suggesting to both his conscious and unconscious minds that he was already in the future.
Because it is not possible to say ‘thank you’ for something that has not yet occurred without shaking up one’s perception of time, in a sense this moved him into a state which was quite outside ordinary experience. Moving outside of our present concept of time obviously places us in a different position relative to creating what we want in our lives. We are, in a sense, accessing a different Reality when we do that.
Obviously, the act of expressing gratitude is also powerful in its effects and we should include this in the equation. I have written the use of gratitude in previous articles, but I want to call your attention to the fact that when you indicate gratitude for something that has not yet occurred, you are asking yourself to bypass the ordinary laws of time.
You are therefore jarring yourself out of your usual ways of thinking. This is similar to the tactics used by a Zen monk who poses a Koan (paradoxical question) to a pupil, such as “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” Because the question cannot be answered by ordinary logic, it requires the pupil to shift gears mentally, and that is its value.
Here is what Pete did.
His automobile had seen better days and was about to break down and become unrepairable. He badly wanted a new car but did not see how he could possibly afford the model that he wanted. He had searched the Internet for several months, visiting such sites as autotrader.com every day, but had not found even a trace of the car that he desired.
Pete’s taste was very definite and you will notice the specific manner in which he referred to what he desired in the Choices portion of the EFT statement which he created for this problem. EFT Masters have repeatedly emphasized the importance of specificity in the negative portion of the EFT statement. I believe that specificity in the positive portion can be equally important. Pete’s EFT statement went as follows:
“Even though I don’t know how this will happen, I thank the Universe for giving me a light blue model 240 Volvo station wagon built between the years of ‘91 and ‘93.”
You can’t be much more specific than that! Pete diligently tapped on this EFT statement for over two weeks, at the end of which time an interesting thing happened. The car he wanted suddenly appeared in the online listings.
The ad he saw offered a light blue Model 240 Volvo station wagon manufactured in 1992. It had all the amenities Pete wanted, and the seller was only a two hour drive from Pete’s home. The car would be feasible to buy —— if he only had the money.
How to pay for the car was the question Pete faced because he knew that no financial institution would agree to finance such an old car. However, he had been managing a property for a bank manager who had been very pleased with his work, and when Pete asked him about a car loan this man arranged for his bank to finance the car at the lowest possible interest rate, for two years.
Pete took advantage of this welcome opportunity, purchased the car, and he was enjoying it greatly when he last contacted me several years ago.
Interestingly, this was not the only external manifestation that Pete brought about through using EFT and the “Future Thanks” method, however. When his old lawnmower broke down and he could not afford a new one, based on his success in finding the right car using EFT, he decided to use EFT to manifest a new lawnmower for himself and created the following statement for this purpose:
“Even though I don’t have a useable lawnmower, I thank the Universe for giving me one that just fits my purpose and works excellently.”
Within a week of starting to tap daily for this new lawnmower, he was driving past a neighbor’s house when he saw a lawnmower sitting with their trash by the curb. It looked in surprisingly good shape. He picked it up, brought it home, inserted a part that was apparently needed to generate sparks, and found that this did the trick. He now had a new lawnmower, at no cost.
He hoped that this lawnmower would continue to work in the future but in the back of his mind he thought it would not be a bad idea to have another lawnmower just as a backup.
So, he continued to use his EFT “Future Thanks” statement for a lawnmower, and a few weeks later, when his newest lawnmower showed some carburetor troubles, he was once again driving around in his neighborhood when he saw a man cleaning out his shop, apparently in preparation for moving, and not one but three lawnmowers had been discarded at the curb.
Pete managed to get all three back to his house and one of them started up right away, excellently (the others he discarded after removing some of the parts). He adopted the working one and was still using it when I last spoke with him.
Pete’s story did not end here however, and the other portion of it is equally important to note if you are planning to use EFT to help bring about those things which you desire.
About a year later, Pete became concerned about a pending career change which would have involved a life style change about which he had much hesitancy. He wanted to tap to create an excellent job offer in a particular field but had conflicting feelings about getting it since it would involve moving to another town which might cause problems for his present important relationship. This is what has been so aptly termed a “tail ender”, an inner conflict that creates an opposing voice in our minds which contradicts our avowed intentions.
Because of his internal conflict about his goal, this time Pete had difficulty formulating his EFT statement, and not surprisingly no positive results were forthcoming from it no matter how many times he used it with his Future Thanks method. His tail enders needed to be worked on first, something which he did not pursue as far as I know.
Pete’s experience suggests that EFT can help a person create exactly what they want provided they have a clear and unequivocal desire for that thing, with no conflicts about it or reservations. I would guess, however, that in the majority of cases when someone sets out to use EFT to bring a good thing into their lives, that they may have some reservations or conflicts around the receiving of that good, and they should address these first by using EFT.
Once having cleared the blocks to receiving, these same people may then be able to use EFT for successful manifestation. If you want to use EFT for this purpose, using the Future Thanks method should help you project your consciousness into the future in a highly effective way, thereby increasing the possibility that you will achieve your desired goal.
In the next article in this series I will tell you about another way of projecting yourself into a future consciousness when doing EFT which involves an even more radical departure from our usual ways of thinking —— it is a method of posing certain carefully constructed questions to yourself in EFT. You will discover how it works.
Part 6: Accessing Your Goals With the “Why” Question
The basis of The Secret, or any other application of the Law of Attraction for that matter, rests on the premise that you will be able to project yourself into the future state that you desire so completely that what you wish for seems to you to be a present reality.
This is easily said of course, but unfortunately it is not so easily done. That is why I am writing this article today. In a sense I am continuing with the article I wrote last week where I proposed a method called “Future Thanks” which we can use in an EFT statement to help trick our minds into stepping beyond the confines of our habitual time-bound consciousness.
To step beyond these bounds is of course essential for any manifestation of a desired outcome.
It is one of the cornerstones of The Secret, as of all other descriptions of the Law of Attraction. It has been repeatedly pointed out by serious thinkers on this subject that in order to bring about something you desire in the future, you must step into the future in an emotional sense, you must in a sense transcend time.
To pay lip service to the concept of imagining something to be present which is not present right now is of course easy, but anyone conversant with the concept of “like attracts like” as expressed by the Law of Attraction, knows that you must be resonating with the very essence of that which you want in order to attract it into your life —— and this is not something that comes naturally to most people.
Although the movie and book The Secret do not emphasize the fact that one must not just “believe in” the future that you desire but you must actually “be” in it (in a profound emotional sense), those who created The Secret clearly know this principle. I recently heard a recording of an interview with Rhonda Byrne, the author of The Secret, in which she described her own experiences when creating the movie and subsequent book.
She emphasized repeatedly throughout the interview that, as the movie was being made, there was not a shadow of a doubt in her mind about the outcome of it.
She actually experienced in advance the effect it would have on people’s lives worldwide, this was as “real” to her as anything tangible in her surroundings could possibly be. I don’t remember her exact words ( I didn’t record the interview) but they were to the effect that the outcome of the movie and book were realities to her, not “desired outcomes. They were for all intents and purposes “done deeds” as they say, and she emphasized how important it is to adopt this stance when applying the Law of Attraction.
Today I am going to suggest a way of propelling ourselves into the future in our minds so that we can bypass the time restrictions which our logical mind traps us in as it constantly points out that we are “here now”, and the future is “way off there”.
This method is based on a fascinating technique which I like to call the “Why Question”. The man who created this idea, Noah St. John, refers to it as “Afformations” (notice that the “i “ in this word is replaced with an “o”), but I personally call it the “Why Question” because the word “Why” is such an essential component of the concept. However, call it what you want, using the “Why Question” with EFT is a strikingly effective way to reach a sense of being in the future that is not easily attainable any other way.
Noah has based his technique on the premise that questioning is the most profoundly productive thing the human mind can conceive of, and that our alertness to questions exceeds our alertness to any other concept (my words not his).
I am not repeating here what you can read in his book, which I will tell you about in a moment, but am paraphrasing his concept and in so doing I am expressing my own thoughts on this subject. I apologize if I don’t completely represent his way of thinking, but it is not necessary to take his exact formulation because what he does for us is to spark off a type of thinking which can help us break the bondage of time-bound thinking.
Once we have done that, the way is open for some surprising things to happen.
My point of view is that we humans are inquisitive by nature otherwise we would not have survived as a species or been able to develop civilization as we have. In order to do this we had to ask incredibly profound questions and ask them continuously throughout the ages.
In other words, people are basically questioners. We need only watch a young child first learning to talk and first exploring this world, to verify this fact. “Why? Why? Why?” is the constant refrain of the child. Only rarely do they ask the question “How?” and then only when they want to be shown specifically how to do something (most of the time they’d prefer to find it out for themselves though!).
”How” questions are of course useful ways of conveying information from one person to another. “How do I operate this new software?” is a very good question if you want to learn a transmittable technique, something someone else knows a lot more about than you do.
By contrast a “Why” question is an open ended one, it is tremendously broad in its scope and can access large vistas. The minute you say the word “why” you tap a profound area of the human psyche. You contact that part of yourself that asks unanswerable questions as well as answerable ones.
The deepest philosophical, religious, or intuitive questions that have been asked down through the ages have all been “Why” questions rather than “How” questions —— the latter have been asked of course but they are much more practical in nature.
I am going to suggest here that we use the “Why Question” in combination with EFT, so let’s look at the type of Why Question that Noah St. John proposes and how I have been using it to great effect with EFT.
The method which he calls Afformations ( “o” in the middle) has the person make a statement about what they want to bring into their life in the form of a Why Question, and place that Why Question in the future so that, in effect, the questioner is asking why something has, and I emphasize the word “has”, happened. I realize that you probably don’t know what I’m talking about so here’s an example.
Suppose you found a relationship with someone important to you becoming extremely difficult because you reacted with annoyance to certain phrases that they used, or to certain mannerisms that they had (or whatever). As we all know, using EFT to change our level of irritation and change our attitude towards that other person, and hopefully improve our relationship with them because of this, can be enormously effective.
However, we can often run into roadblocks to anything that we want to change, including our attitudes and ourselves.
In this method, if you encounter such a roadblock you formulate a question that is stated as though you have already reached the state that you desire, and you are merely asking why this had happened. It’s as simple as that. Such a future-oriented question might go “ Why have I been able to achieve such a quiet, balanced and effective way of dealing with (this person)?”.
Notice that you will be asking the question as though you had already achieved your desired state, and it is already effective. If you try this, you will discover that it is difficult to ask this kind of question without being startled out of your present time frame.
It is much more effective than a traditional affirmation which would go, “I am able to achieve a quiet, balanced and effective way of dealing with (this person). The latter could easily trigger an enormous number of “tail enders” (inner contradictions) because it is so obviously contrary to fact.
However, if you pose this same desired outcome as a question for which you are seeking an answer, you are likely to become unaware of whether it is contrary to fact or not —— a question always opens our minds, expands our horizons. Therefore the Why Question is a great help in bypassing tail enders that might otherwise block us.
Let’s consider another type of desired goal and see how the Why Question would apply there. Suppose you wanted to have a wonderfully satisfying new career. In order to manifest that you would need to emotionally experience the happening of it, and here is where the Why Question comes in.
Instead of saying, “I have a wonderfully satisfying and exciting new career” (contrary to fact) you would ask yourself, “Why did I create this wonderfully satisfying career for myself?” You would stir your own curiosity the minute you did this. The desired outcome would now be far more real to you.
It will have come right into your being.
When you combine this questioning with the use of EFT you have what is called a “double whammy” ——its effect on you is multiplied impressively. Here is how to use it with EFT:
After formulating your Why Question, you then “tap it in” at every EFT tapping spot, beginning with the karate chop spot or sore spot (whichever reversal spot you use). Then, at each one of the EFT points, you ask the Why Question again.
That is all you do.
You may want to do more than one round of this, and of course if you have a great deal of distress about the issue, you will want to do a round or two of tapping on the negative before you tap on the Why Question, e.g. “Even though I feel despair about ever finding a career that’s right for me”, etc. —— doing several rounds of this helps clear away the negative. After that go back to tapping just the Why Question at every EFT point.
If you work with this method I think you will discover, as I have, that any possible wish of yours can be turned into a Why Question, and that repeating this question as you tap creates an underlying assumption that the goal has already been reached.
Underlying assumptions are powerful.
If we have a negative assumption it can work against us, but if we have a positive one it can work for us, and it can do so even more powerfully if we use EFT to tap it in.
If you want to try this technique, I suggest you first write out a list of desired outcomes in your own life, things you would love to see happen in each main area of your life, and then turn each of these desired goals into a Why Question.
When you tap in a Why Question you may be amazed at how this breaks the grip of the word “impossible”, often making what you want to achieve seem genuinely possible to you for the first time.
If you want to read the Afformations that Noah St. John describes, he has hundreds of Why Questions for all areas of life, in his book, “The Little Book of Afformations” (obtainable through major book stores). While some of these may not suit you personally, others may really “hit the nail on the head” as they say.
When you add the power of EFT to Why Questions, you will have a major tool for implementing The Secret.
Part 7: How to Handle Multiple Aspects of a Major Goal
I am going to write today about a way you can realize an unusually complex and major goal using EFT. I emphasize here the word “complex”. Many truly desirable goals contain a number of different aspects which makes them into conglomerates, collections of things that you want, all grouped under one heading. You cannot possibly crowd all these attributes into one EFT statement.
There is, however, a distinct advantage in being able to list all the desired aspects of any important goal. In one of the articles in this series (“Future Thanks”) I described how a former client of mine was able to find exactly the car he wanted through the use of incredible specificity in the way he described that car in his EFT statement.
It is of course not difficult to describe a car in a single EFT statement as he did, but it is certainly not an easy matter for example to describe the mate of your dreams in a single statement or the career of your choice in a short number of words. Nevertheless, specificity can pay off dramatically when you want to manifest your goals.
There is a way to handle this problem that is often extremely effective. To illustrate it let me tell you about a former client of mine whom I shall call “Kelly”, who used this tactic with remarkable success.
With the help of EFT, Kelly had just emerged from an extremely destructive, verbally abusive relationship of several years duration. When she first consulted me she could see no way out of the trap it posed and felt totally hopeless about it. After almost a year of therapy, however, she had finally been able to extricate herself gracefully from this relationship in a satisfactory manner.
Kelly was finally dating again, although she was experiencing little satisfaction or success doing this.
Eventually, however, she realized that she wanted to have a very different type of relationship than she had ever known, and that in fact that she now felt ready to be married (something she had been very afraid of before). None of the men that she had been dating even remotely approached what she felt she would need or want in a husband, however; they were not people with whom she wanted to spend the rest of her life.
She then asked me if it was possible for her to use EFT to help her find the man she really wanted.
I told her that it might help, but that she needed to be extremely clear first as to exactly what kind of man she was really looking for. In order to help her do this, I handed her a large pad of paper and asked her to write down, on separate lines one under the other, every attribute of her “ideal man” that she could possibly think of —— the man she would like to have for a husband.
Kelly did this with her usual diligence, and came up with about 23 characteristics of such a man. They came to her mind easily and quickly. She had listed everything from what he looked like, to what kind of foods and restaurants he preferred, to how he liked to spend his free time, to the way he handled disagreements, how he felt about independent time away from each other, etc..
When she had finished the list, I asked her to go home, take the list with her, add more attributes to it any time during the week if she felt like doing this, and bring the list back to her next appointment with me.
Kelly did as I had suggested, and when she came back, 42 attributes were now on her list of “Ideal Man”. New characteristics which she wanted had occurred to her during the week, and every time that one did she had jotted it down . She found that it was enjoyable for her to write down anything that she felt that she wanted, and this was a new experience for her.
Now that she had clearly delineated her goal, I asked Kelly to give this list a title, such as she would give to her Mental Movie when doing EFT. She chose the title “My Ideal Man” for the list. It could have been “The husband I will have”, or another similar title, the only requirement was that this would serve as a quick, accurate way to sum up the entire list in her own mind.
I then asked her to create an EFT Choices Statement using this title. She obviously could not list the whole 42 desirable characteristics shown there in her EFT statement so she was to hold the list in front of her or place it on her lap as she tapped, and just glance at it briefly before starting EFT, to refresh it in her mind, and use just its title in the statement..
She tapped on the following phrase:
“Even though he’s not apparent in my life as yet, and even though I’m dissatisfied with my dating at present, I choose to find ”My Ideal Man” (this was the title of her list) and have him feel the same way about me as I do about him.”
She did several rounds of EFT using this statement and commented that although this felt like a wonderful goal but she couldn’t imagine that it would really work. However she said that she would keep[ on tapping at home.
I knew that Kelly was the type of person who would follow through on a plan like this, and she was willing to make a commitment to doing this daily.
For the next several weeks she tapped systematically on this statement, holding the list in front of her as she did so. I had also instructed her to read the list over again several times a week to keep its contents fresh in her mind, and reminded her that if she wanted to add any more attributes to it that she could. In fact, Kelly did add three of four new ones to the list during that time.
What is fascinating about this story is that Kelly began feeling better and better about herself as she tapped on her goal. She soon tapered off her unsatisfactory dating which left her free to pursue some interesting hobbies, and allowed her to rest from the search.
In fact, she stopped coming to see me for a while because she was feeling so much better about her life and herself just by doing this daily tapping on her ultimate goal for a husband.
Several months later, I got a telephone call from Kelly asking for a “brush up” session. When she came in to see me she told me, with excitement in her voice, that she had started dating a man from another section of the organization where she worked. Although she had met him casually once or twice before, she had paid little attention to him at that time.
She said she found him quite “different” to go out with, and as she began to know him better, it had suddenly dawned on her that he possessed many of the characteristics that she had written down on her list of the Ideal Man.
This impressed her, and she had pulled out the list and systematically began to check off every characteristic on it which he possessed.
When she did this she was stunned to discover that out of the now 48 attributes on her list, he seemed to have at least 35 of these characteristics! There were still some of them which she was unsure of because she really didn’t know him well enough to be able to say whether he met these criteria.
These involved issues of compatibility in their interests which she had had no way to test so far, such as the types of vacation they might like to take together and a few of his characteristics were dissimilar to what she had put down — for example, his religion was different from that which her family of origin would have desired.
She had come back at this time to work out some obstacles she found herself encountering in the way of allowing herself to trust this new relationship. She accomplished this short term goal in several sessions and then I didn’t hear from he again for the next six months.
Finally she called me once again to ask for a single appointment. When she arrived at my office she told me that her relationship with Ed was so different from any that she had ever had before that she could “scarcely believe it”. Then she told me that there were only three characteristics, and these weren’t major ones either, that he didn’t have.
She worked a bit more on allowing herself to have such a good relationship and then left again, phoning me some months later to tell me that they were now engaged..
The upshot of this story is that within a year Kelly had married this man. That was six years ago, and today they are an unusually happily married couple, strikingly so in fact if one compares them to many other marriages.
Please realize, however, an important fact. Kelly was ready for this relationship when she began tapping on her Ideal Man. She had done much inner work on herself to bring her to this point, and she was no longer ambivalent about what she wanted. This was undoubtedly the reason that she was able to realize her goal.
When, about a year and half after she got married, she consulted me for help in another area of her life, that of her career, the outcome was not so favorable. This was an area where she had much uncertainty about whether she could handle the type of job that she thought she wanted, and although she wrote down a long list of attributes that she desired for her Ideal Job, and tapped on them daily as she had on the Ideal Man list, this time the effort was not successful.
This fact actually did not actually surprise Kelly. With many doubts about whether she could measure up to such a job, it was clear that she needed more work to help her deal with her conflicts about finding such a job, and her fear of failing at it if she did.
It was not until much time had passed that Kelly’s work life substantially improved and it still does not match her ideal, although it is approaching it in certain important respects (she is no longer in therapy except sporadically).
The lessons in this story are twofold. On the one hand, it tells us that very long lists of attributes of a desired outcome, as complex as is necessary in fact, can easily be handled by EFT and when they are can have powerful results. On the other hand, it is apparent that you must be entirely congruent (i.e. not in conflict) about the goal that you think you desire.
If your goal is crystal clear and you are unconflicted about it and emotionally ready to receive it, then you can feel confident making a long list of specific attributes that you want and holding this list in front of you when you tap. Your subconscious will this way remember all of the attributes as you tap. You have only to review this list occasionally to keep it fresh in your mind.
You may well want to try this for some of the major issues in your life.
