“There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so”
- Hamlet, W. Shakespeare

Recently I took part in a conversation on a LinkedIn forum for EFT Practitioners. The thread discussion was started by the question -” I am just curious, what everyone does for themselves to protect their energy or clear themselves before and after a session?”.

There were lots of different answers to this question. All sorts of suggestions were put forward involving “energy protection”, herbal remedies, cleansing rituals, invocations and “divine” protections of one sort or another.

I was intrigued by the question because, although I use EFT, I don’t think of client sessions in terms of good or bad energy.

In my opinion the idea that clients have positive or negative energy that you have to protect yourself from has a lot of drawbacks.

From the original question and some of the answers, I think you can distill out the following underlying presuppositions for this way of thinking:

• There is negative and positive energy.
• Therapists work with these energies that the client brings.
• Negative energy is bad (for them and for you).
• Positive energy is good (for them and for you).
• Clients can leak negative energy which gets on to you and must be protected against.

From some of the answers you might think that the client was slopping negative energy around like poison from a bucket, which is what the therapists need to be protected from.

Let’s imagine that you are a client of a therapist who is operating from this point of view.

After a few minutes of working with this therapist you begin to get the sense that you are making them uneasy in some way. It’s as if they act like you are contaminated with something that they really don’t want to have anything to do with.

This could all be going on at an unconscious level for both of you. You might just have the feeling that there is something wrong without knowing why.

How would that make you feel?

If it was me, I would start to worry that there was something else that was wrong with me. Since people often come to therapy because they think there is something intrinsically wrong with them, having that confirmed at an (un)conscious level is probably not going to be very helpful to the progress of the therapy.

It gets worse.

Many clients often work hard to protect their therapists from their “bad” stuff. So as a client I might have to start monitoring what I was sharing so as not to alarm or upset the therapist.

From this therapist’s point of view they might feel they need protection from this client, or their negative energy is going to go all over them and be harmful to them.

Now you have two people in a mutually defensive posture that they may not even be aware of.

Does this sound like a recipe for success?

What’s an alternative?

This is my working hypothesis about therapy:

The client has experiences, feelings, thoughts and behaviours that are unhelpful to him or her. They are not “negative” or “positive” in any metaphysical sense, just unhelpful to them and those around them.

This constellation of experience, feelings, behaviours and thoughts belongs to them. They are unique to that individual. While their effects can be felt by those around them, that constellation belongs to the client.

Likewise, as a therapist I have experiences, thoughts, ideas, feelings, behaviours that belong to me.

In an ideal world I can be present to the client with all their stuff, however difficult it may be.

In an ideal world I’m not afraid of anything that they bring and I recognise that it is all theirs.

“I realise there’s something I do before I start a session. I let myself know that I am enough. Not perfect. Perfect wouldn’t be enough. But that I am human, and that is enough. There is nothing that this man can say or do or feel that I can’t feel in myself. I can be with him. I am enough”
- Carl Rogers

It’s not an ideal world.

In the real world, parts of their stuff may trigger parts of my stuff.

However, I recognise that my reaction to their stuff belongs to me not them. Afterwards I do work to dismantle those unhelpful reactions in me (this is why ongoing self-development and clinical supervision is so important for therapists).

From my client’s point of view I hope they sense:

1. That I accept them and their distress fully. I may not like it, but I’m not afraid of it or them.
2. That they can go wherever they need to go to get the results they want. They don’t have to look after me because I am not scared of what they bring. (This is not to dismiss realistic precautions for you and your clients physical safety – some clients can do scary, dangerous things)

From this perspective I don’t feel under threat and I don’t have to be scared of my clients inner world.

So is your client poisoning you? No I don’t think so.

The EFT Level 1+ is a two-day training showing you how to use of Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) to give you a simple and versatile way of making a difference in your emotional life.

Do you often feel anxious or stressed?
Sometimes anxiety or other negative emotions can really interfere with your life stopping you from doing the kinds of things you’d really like to. After this course you’ll have a simple method for substantially reducing the negative emotions in your life and giving you much more freedom

Are you a hostage to the past?
Are you haunted by the past, bothered by old unpleasant memories. When you finish this course you’ll be able to neutralise old unhelpful memories and break free of the past.

Do you suffer from physical symptoms or pain?
Sometimes physical symptoms, especially pain, can make life quite unpleasant. At the end of this course you will have a way of relieving symptoms and feeling comfortably relaxed.

Having trouble giving up things that are bad for you?
Chocolate, cigarettes, nail-biting and other compulsive habits can be very frustrating, sometimes willpower alone is just not enough. After this course you will have a way to reduce or even eliminate those compulsions so that you may not need any willpower to make those changes.

Where, When and How Much?

10am to 5pm on March 3rd & 4th, 2012 at St Oswald’s Hospice Teaching Centre, Gosforth, Newcastle upon Tyne.

The first four people to apply will receive a special price of just £95 for the two days.

Thereafter the Early Bird fee will be £125 until February 3rd, then the full fee of £145 will apply

Anyone with an existing AAMET EFT Level 1 certificate can attend this course as a refresher for just £30, if you have previously trained with Practical Wellbeing you can attend for just £20. (Contact me directly if that applies to you)

There are many ways to neutralise limiting beliefs quickly and easily with EFT or other techniques.

Unfortunately our limiting beliefs are often unconscious and unquestioned, a part of the fabric of our perceptions, which makes them hard to find.

Other people’s limiting beliefs can be easy to spot because we are on the outside looking in, but our own remain hidden. That’s why there will always be work for good therapists and coaches.

But what are we going to do if there isn’t a therapist or coach available?

Are we doomed to wander ignorant of our own limiting beliefs because we can’t see them?

Fortunately, there is a simple way to bring lots of limiting beliefs into consciousness using just one word.

It’s a simple word, readily available and deeply familiar …

Because

Because is a special word because when it appears in a sentence it is usually followed by a reason.

• I can’t go out tonight because I am washing my hair
• I can’t start a new business now because the economy is on its knees.
• I can’t change jobs because I am too old.

Each time you hear “because” you are going to hear a reason for the statement that comes just before it.

We can use the power of because to bring our “reasons” out into the open.

Before describing how to use because for this, it is worth acknowledging that there are two kinds of reasons that could be uncovered:

Facts are descriptions of reality

I am cold because it is snowing

It is snowing is a description of the environment, people are often cold if it snowing. That’s not a limiting belief that’s a result of our external reality.

Beliefs are descriptions of our ideas about external reality (often confused with facts)

I am alone because nobody wants me

“Nobody wants me” is not a description of reality (even though it may be confused with one). It is a belief, an idea about reality.

The word nobody is a give away. There are more than 6,000,000,000 people on the planet (that’s a lot). It is impossible to know whether one of those six billion people would be interested in them. In a whole lifetime it would not be possible to meet even a tiny fraction of those people to find out. Nevertheless, for this person it may be a convincing idea about reality.

Is a reason a fact or a belief?

Sometimes, it can be difficult to decide if a reason is a fact or a belief. Fortunately there is a simple test: treat it as a belief and work with it. If it is a fact it probably won’t change, if it is a belief it probably will.

So how can we use because to expose our limiting beliefs?

1. Choose a problem

If you are going to uncover limiting beliefs you need a predicament to work with. If limiting beliefs cause difficulties for us which difficulty are we going to investigate.

• I can’t start a new business
• I am alone
• I can’t make enough money
• Our relationship is struggling
• …

So what is going on in your world that you suspect may be a result of limiting beliefs?

2. Harvest all the possible reasons

Write down a sentence that briefly describes the problem followed by the word because

• I can’t start a new business because …
• I am alone because …
• I can’t make enough money because …
• My relationship is struggling because …
• [problem ] because …

Now say your “because” sentence out loud, then write down whatever comes into your head that completes the sentence. Write as fast as you can and without judgement.

Say the “because” sentence again and write down whatever comes into your head this time as fast as you can and without judgements.

Repeat this process as many times as you can, until you run out of sentences, either because you have the feeling that the well has run dry, or you find you are repeating yourself.

Important: It is essential that you put your judging mind to one side for this process. The aim here is to get as many reasons as possible, so don’t evaluate your reasons at this point. Go as quickly as you can – this allows the information to float up from your unconscious without being blocked by the analytical mind.

3. Pick the wheat from the chaff

Now we have a list of reasons we can sort through at our leisure and identify which of the reasons are limiting beliefs and which are just the random chatter of the mind.

Work through your list of because sentences, saying each out loud.

Give the reason a truth score from 0-10 where 0 is false and 10 is true (this is how true it feels, not how true it is logically).

Repeat this process for each of the reasons until you have a list of reasons that have some emotional charge.

Now you have a list of reasons (limiting beliefs) that can be worked on with EFT or whatever belief change method you would like to choose.

How many beliefs can I expect to find?
You could find just one or two beliefs, or you could find 10 or more.

If you do find a lot of limiting beliefs don’t despair, things might not be as bad as they seem.

• At least you know what to work on: This is big a step forward from having a problem and not knowing what to do with it.
• The beliefs you uncover are probably related: This is good news, if you make a dent in a big limiting belief there is a strong chance that the other beliefs will be softened automatically. You might only have to work through a few of them systematically to get big reductions in the others.

However many beliefs you find, all you need to do now is change them!

P.S. Two quick and easy EFT based belief change mechanisms are The Belief Flip and Exception Tapping

This is the time of year in the UK when many self-employed people start to experience that heady mixture of anxiety and procrastination that develops when the January 31st deadline for our tax return looms.

In the past I have procrastinated, sweated and rushed to get everything together and submitted by the deadline date. One year I managed to submit the tax return on the evening of the last day. Ouch!

Happily, I’ve been getting better at it over the years. This year I decided to use the Getting Out Of Your Own Way process to take care of my limiting beliefs and responses to this necessary task. It says a lot about my level of resistance that I resisted taking care of this resistance for so long.

Finally, over the Christmas holiday (I know how to have a good time) I ran through the process and nailed quite a few limiting beliefs and responses about getting my accounts done in good time. I even felt like I wanted to get started right away.

When I got home after the holiday, the feeling of getting started right away seemed to have disappeared. I looked at the bulging file of receipts and bank statements still to be processed sitting in their folder and thought that I really should get down to the business of working my way through them, but did nothing.

Eventually, I became curious about what was happening with my resistance to doing this chore. I decided to do a little experiment.

I put the folder brimming with papers on the table and printed out a copy of the tapping worksheet. The tapping worksheet is a method I use for breaking down a problem into its component triggers to make tapping easier.

Briefly, you name the problematic situation giving it a 0-10 score, then complete sections on what you think about the situation, what you see, hear and feel, what you tell yourself about it and what the situation reminds you of. This breaks down the situation into tap-able aspects. You can read about the tapping worksheet in A Patterdale Terrier’s Guide To Stress Relief and download a copy from the resources section of my website.

I worked through each section of the tapping worksheet and found a couple of negative responses that I had to this task.

The main one was: “I hate this!” (scoring 8 out of 10).

I tapped out the “I hate this” with just a few rounds of EFT. Then I went back to check on all the other parts of the worksheet, every other unhelpful response had disappeared!

I immediately started working on the file and spent the next two hours sorting and checking receipts and bank statements without difficulty.

Did the task that I hated suddenly become fun and enjoyable? Sadly not, it’s still a chore (I’d never be a good accountant) but it’s stopped being a problem or something to avoid.

Is this the magical end of procrastination? I doubt it. I think procrastination and self-sabotage are usually quite a complicated mix of beliefs and responses, but I do think I have uncovered an important part of my task aversion towards this particular chore.

Now I’m going to investigate how many other tasks I’m slow to complete because “I hate them”.

You might like to see if the “I hate X” is stopping you from doing what you need to do.

P.S. I’m still working my way through the various remaining accounting tasks without problem or resistance.

The presentation gives a step by step explanation of the process with examples to help you understand the pattern.

Note: I apologise for the hoarse quality of my voice, it wasn’t a technical problem, I had a cold at the time I recorded it.

You can download a pdf version of The Belief Flip by clicking the link.

You can download Getting Out Of Your Own Way - Preview - Chapters 1-6 mentioned at the end of the presentation can be found by clicking the link.

ChangeCamp+Plus gives you an opportunity to have a deeper experience of the kind of work ChangeCamp presenters do at an affordable price.

There are six presentations, three in the morning and three in the afternoon running concurrently on a variety of topics by ChangeCamp presenters.

Each ChangeCamp+Plus workshop is three hours long. That’s a lot of time to learn and explore a particular process or technique in depth.

The workshopsare a mix appropriate for personal development or professional development with CPD certificates provided.

• How To Develop Compassionate Self Acceptance with Andy Hunt
• Mindfulness with Iain MacKenzie
• Brief Grief Therapy with Harry Knox
• Gestalt Theory And Practice: Experiential Workshop with Iain MacKenzie
• From Problem To Solution Using EFT with Andy Hunt
• Personal And Therapeutic Toolbox with Rob McGinley

We have to make decisions all the time.

From the moment we awaken to the moment we fall asleep we have to decide what to do next.

Some decisions are easy: Which biscuit should I have with my cup of tea?

Some are much harder: Should I buy this house or that one? Should I take this job? Should I marry this man?

Sometimes there is a still clear voice that lets us know what to do. At other times that voice is drowned out by cacophony of contradictory thoughts, feelings and ideas.

In this month’s EFT Cafe on January 11th Andy Hunt will guide you through a process developed by Gene Monterastelli to help you clear the static around making decisions and allow that still quiet voice to have it’s say.

The session will be divided into three parts

1. Clearing resistance to change
2. Resolving the excess emotional anxiety around the choice
3. Resolving the emotional conflicts around getting the outcome you desire

This process wont be able to make the decision for you, but it will help you get clear about what you want to do.

Tea or coffee (you choose) will be provided.

This first EFT Cafe of 2012 will be on Wednesday January 11th from 7-9pm at St Oswald’s Hospice, Gosforth Newcastle upon Tyne. It costs just £10

“First we make our habits, then our habits make us.”
- Charles C. Noble

It’s that time of year when New Year Resolution articles abound on websites, telling you how to choose and achieve your resolutions.

I spent some time racking my brains to find a way of talking about them that is different and useful, without success.

So I gave up and started to think about what I do to make changes in my life.

Rather than making and keeping New Years Resolutions I have what I think of as “Habits Of Change”, a collection of attitudes and actions that I apply to my daily life.

1. Use problems to grow: I assume that a problem is a disguised growth opportunity. I realise that some problems have lots more “growth opportunity” than others and can be real challenges, but I have found this a useful starting position.

For many people a problem is something that blocks them and holds them fast, I try to get myself to think of a challenging situation as an invitation to grow.

2. Try to be clear about what is going on: If you are going to respond to a situation you need to know what is happening now. I try to investigate the current situation and my part in it. Here are five questions I find helpful:

1. What is going on in my outer world?
2. What is going on in my inner world?
3. What can I change in my outside world?
4. What can I change in my inner world?
5. How do I want to be in this situation?

Notice that while what I can change in my outer world might be quite limited I have room to manoeuvre in my responses and how I want to be in that situation.

3. Change my responses: Most of my problems are in my responses to what happens, not to what is happening. While the world may be difficult to change I can change the way I respond to the world (see Stop Trying To Change The World). Daily life gives me a ready supply of experiences and challenges that I can respond to.

If I choose to respond in the same way that I have always done then I can expect similar results. If I change my response then I change what happens, for this event and for all future events. Each small change propagates out into the future in ways I cannot foretell, but they do add up. (See The Compound Interest Of Suffering And Freedom).

4. Use what I know: I’m lucky enough to know lots of NLP, EFT and other techniques that can change my experience. But knowing them is not enough, I have to use them to get the benefit.

I suspect many people learn techniques like these and are full of good intentions to use them, but don’t. If you are one of those people who think it is better to suffer than use what you know to change for the better, I have a question: What on earth are you waiting for?

5. Making a change however small: Some problems are big and difficult and like a rabbit caught in the headlights we can be paralysed, unable to do anything. Even in situations like that I try to change something, even a tiny change can make some difference, give a bit more leeway to work on the next part. By going step by step I can usually make progress.

6. Work out where my limitations are and dissolve them if I can: I am a human being, I have inherited tendencies, an upbringing and lots of experiences. All these combine to create a unique collection of beliefs, values and responses that determine the way I am in the world.

Lots of these beliefs and responses that I live from may now be out of date and worth updating. The challenge is finding out what those beliefs and limitations are, then resolving them. The second part, thanks to NLP and EFT is quite straightforward. The first part – finding them is much more difficult because they are rarely visible to us.

I developed the Getting Out Of Your Own Way process as a way of being able to reliably find my own limits so I could dissolve them.

7. Let go of understanding: I think it is much more important to change something for the better than understand why things are broken. I am amazed by the number of people who will spend hours working out what is wrong with them, whose fault it is, what theory explains their difficulties and so on, rather than spend a few minutes starting to resolve the problem. In my opinion it is much more useful to do something about a problem than to just think about it.

These are some of the “Habits Of Change” I have adopted over the years. I really don’t know how I developed them, I don’t think any of them were conscious choices, I’ve just picked them up along the way.

If you could adopt a “Habit Of Change” which would you choose?

If you have a “Habit of Change” of your own which I have not mentioned let me know in the comments.

Getting Out Of Your Own Way, is a straightforward and thorough guide to uncovering and dissolving many of your hidden limiting beliefs and blocks – the ‘Resistance’ – the unconscious saboteurs that stand in the way of your progress.

Who is this book for?

How do you know if you suffer from ‘Resistance’? Here are some common symptoms:

• Difficulty in making a start on a piece of work: Do you find yourself constantly putting back your starting time and never actually getting going? Are you often waiting for the “right moment” to start or for inspiration to strike you?
• Craving diversion: Does the need to tidy your room, do the shopping, surf the internet and so on become irresistible whenever you contemplate getting down to work? Are you easily distracted from your work by friends and social opportunities?
• Ineffective working: Do you spend a lot of time at work but end up with little to show for it?
• Last minute rushing: Is all your work finally done at a breakneck speed the night before the final deadline? Do you often think you have not left yourself time to do things properly?
• Missed deadlines: Do you feel you are always asking for more time and making excuses? Are you losing opportunities and respect because you are always late?
• Nagging guilt:  Is your time off relaxing spoilt by the continual feeling that you ought to be working? Do you often feel you have achieved less than you should have?
• Disappointment and self-reproach:  Do you feel you are letting yourself down by putting things off? Do you think of yourself as lazy? Do you compare yourself unfavourably with others because of your procrastinating?

In this book you can learn simple processes to bring limiting beliefs and blocks into awareness, then use Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) based processes to neutralise those blocks so that you get on with what you want to do without procrastinating, dragging your feet, avoiding the work, all the ways in which we get in our own way

The techniques in this book combine EFT and NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) approaches that I have developed in my own personal exploration of what gets in my way when I set out to achieve something.

The techniques are simple and practical. You don’t need any advanced EFT or NLP training to make use of them, but you do need to know how to do EFT (if you have no experience of EFT you will find a brief introduction at the end of this book which will give you an understanding of the basics).

This book is for people who want to discover and change their limiting beliefs. It is suitable as a guidebook for therapists and coaches to help their clients explore what is stopping them, it is also useful for people who want a self-help guide to spotting and eliminating the blocks in their own progress.

Why Did I Write This Book?

I am a recovering procrastinator. I used to be a top class foot dragger. If there were ways for me to avoid doing things I would find them. I was a master at starting projects and then finding a way to have them fizzle out or limp along in a half-hearted manner. When I started my own business this “skill” because a disadvantage. I’ve been experimenting with ways to get out of own way ever since.

This has been a long, slow process. I’ve read many books, listened to a lot of recordings, attended seminars, workshops, NLP and EFT trainings. Out of this stew of influences I started to develop ways of identifying and working with my blocks.

After each success I got a little more room to manuever and things got easier. As a result of several years of experimentation and progress I came up with the Getting Out Of Your Own Way method.

I use this approach for myself on every new project, because I am much more likely to finish what I start, doing the work without excessive stress or any of my old foot-dragging.

Click here: Getting Out Of Your Own Way - Preview - Chapters 1-6 to read the first six chapters free of charge.

To find out more about the book and the various packages available visit  Getting Out Of Your Own Way

I hope you find it useful.

Now that I have completed it I think I will have a long lie down in a darkened room!

EFT Level 1+

A two-day training showing you how to use of Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) to give you a simple and versatile way of making a difference in your emotional life.

Do you often feel anxious or stressed?
Sometimes anxiety or other negative emotions can really interfere with your life stopping you from doing the kinds of things you’d really like to. After this course you’ll have a simple method for substantially reducing the negative emotions in your life and giving you much more freedom

Are you a hostage to the past?
Are you haunted by the past, bothered by old unpleasant memories. When you finish this course you’ll be able to neutralise old unhelpful memories and break free of the past.

Do you suffer from physical symptoms or pain?
Sometimes physical symptoms, especially pain, can make life quite unpleasant. At the end of this course you will have a way of relieving symptoms and feeling comfortably relaxed.

Having trouble giving up things that are bad for you?
Chocolate, cigarettes, nail-biting and other compulsive habits can be very frustrating, sometimes willpower alone is just not enough. After this course you will have a way to reduce or even eliminate those compulsions so that you may not need any willpower to make those changes.

Don’t miss out, drop me a line and I will tell you how to get a £20 discount from the full price of £145