This month’s EFT Café will be about the Stepping Stones process, a six step procedure that takes you from a current problem to a future outcome using EFT and NLP techniques.

It can be used with small, medium and large problems to give a route out of the problem and into a more useful outcome.

This process will be a useful addition to your tapping repetoire if:

• You don’t know where to start when working with problems.
• You know how to soften a problem but are not sure where to go next
• You want a reliable step by step problem solving protocol to follow.

The stepping stone process is based on an NLP based strategy I developed back in 2007 called Stress Relief In Six Paragraphs. Adding EFT to this process allows us to clear out the emotional charge from the problem and reduce the blocks to achieving the desired outcome.

The Stepping Stones process is designed to put the problem firmly in the past and clear the way to achieving the desired outcome.

This EFT Café will be suitable for anyone with some experience of EFT who wants to use EFT for coaching others or self-coaching. If you are a Level 2 Practitioner of EFT then the EFT Cafe qualifies as 2 hours of CPD.

Tea or coffee (you choose) will be provided.

This EFT Café will be on Wednesday February 8th from 7-9pm at St Oswald’s Hospice, Gosforth Newcastle upon Tyne. It costs just £10

The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, the education, the money, than circumstances, than failure, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company…a church…a home.

The remarkable thing is we have a choice everyday regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past…we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude.

I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it. And so it is with you. We are in charge of our attitudes.

Charles R Swindol

I saw this quote on a website and took a liking to it. I think it’s a good quote, but the important sentence is almost at the end.

I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it

That’s the best bit, but even that needs a tweak in my opinion.

Here’s my version:

I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I respond to it

What! It’s just one word. What’s the difference?

In my opinion it’s a world of difference: a reaction is something that you do automatically, a response is something you have a choice in.

If I put my hand on a hot stove I will unconsciously pull my hand away, I don’t think about it, I don’t have to think about it.

If my partner, neighbour or colleague complains to me about something I can react without thinking. These reactions may not help the situation.

Or, I can respond to what they are saying, choosing how to be in the world. This may or may not help the situation but at least I won’t be a repeat of my last reaction (or the one before that).

If you want to change a knee jerk reaction (notice it’s not called a knee jerk response) then, at the very least, you need to notice that it’s happening and take responsibility for it. How you change the response depends on the situation you are dealing with and the tools you have at your disposal.

The part that everyone can do, and needs to do, it to own the reaction and look for a more useful response.

For more on this you might like to read Stop Trying To Change The World

Image courtesy of TheFutureIsUnwritten

When you use the discount code: LULUBOOKUK305 to buy one or more the Getting Out Of Your Own Way paperback book they will give you a 25% discount.

Click HERE to order the book and save 25%.

This discount expires on January 31st 2012.

Early Bird Discount

If you book before January 6th 13th, the workshops will cost just £60 for the whole day or £35 for a morning or afternoon workshop. Thereafter the full fee will apply, so don’t miss out on the discount

Full Fee

The cost of the workshops are £75 for the whole day or £45 for a morning or afternoon session.

Each workshop has a maximum of 16 places so you need to book early to avoid disappointment.

Don’t miss out on the discounts. Register now to secure your place.

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

In theory it’s a great idea, but in practice more than three quarters of New Year Resolutions are never achieved.

This is why I think New Year Resolutions don’t work:

1. They start on a short burst of willpower that doesn’t last. A gym full of people sweating away at their exercise programs in January will dwindle to a few people in February. The remaining people with the exercise habit have a very different motivation that keeps them going.
2. They challenge the status quo. Most people underestimate the power of the status quo. Day after day living in one particular way generates a huge array of beliefs, habits and responses that make your tomorrow as familiar as your today and your yesterday. That’s a lot of inertia to overcome all at once by willpower alone.
3. New Year Resolvers confuse long term changes with short term events. You diet like crazy until you are slim … then what? You jog everyday until you can finish a half marathon race … then what? Life continues after you fit in that dress or finish the race. To stay slim, fit, etc, requires continuous effort over time, often a lifetime, for that you need an All Year Habit not a New Years Resolution.
4. We expect to fail. New Year Resolution has become synonymous with failure. We joke about our resolutions being unlikely to be achieved, calling it a New Year Resolution is a declaration that we are going to make an heroic effort but that we expect to fail. We’ll be praised for our efforts and forgiven for our failure because that’s what everyone else is doing.
5. They happen at the wrong time of year. In the Western world, spartan New Year Resolutions about low weight and high fitness are embarked on just after two or more weeks of ridiculous excess. If our New Year Resolution was to eat and drink like crazy and slump in an armchair watching TV then we would be well prepared, but most resolutions are just the opposite – eat and drink as little as possible and exercise. No wonder we run out of steam (or breath).

If New Year Resolutions isn’t going to work you could develop some “Habits Of Change“.

Please accept my apologies if this inconvenienced you. The site is on it’s new server. I think everything has been copied over correctly, however if you find inconsistencies and gremlins please let me know something may have slipped my notice.

And now back to your regular service

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!

ChangeCamp is a twice yearly self & professional development workshop running in Newcastle upon Tyne, it is designed to give taster sessions in a variety of subjects. Each session lasts for one and a half hours, it is a finger buffet of different approaches to psychological change work. While hugely enjoying the presentations, many of the participants comment that they would have liked more time to go into the subjects in more depth, that’s what ChangeCamp+Plus is for.

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 workshops are a mix of topics for personal or professional development with CPD certificates provided.

The workshops will include:

• 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

What you need to attend these workshops:

• A desire to learn.
• To enjoy being with like-minded people.
• To enjoy working with some excellent trainers.
• You need to want to become more professionally skilled or more satisfied on a personal level.
• To have fun.

Note: You may need previous experience of the presentation subject before attending – see the information about each workshop.

What you don’t need to attend these workshops:

• You don’t need to have attended ChangeCamp to attend these sessions.
• A huge bank account, these workshops are designed to be as affordable as possible.

Where, when and how much?

The first ChangeCamp+Plus will be on Saturday February 4th, 2012 from 10am to 5pm at Jesmond Dene Conference Centre, Jesmond Dene, Newcastle upon Tyne.

Early Bird Discount

If you book before January 6th, the workshops will cost just £60 for the whole day, or £35 for a morning or afternoon workshop. Thereafter the full fee will apply, so don’t miss out on the discount

Full Fee

The cost of the workshops are £75 for the whole day or £45 for a morning or afternoon session.

Each workshop has a maximum of 16 places so you need to book early to avoid disappointment.

Visit www.changecampplus.co.uk to find out more and book your place