Emotional First Aid: What's Yours?

“The more distractions we have from which to choose, the more effectively we will be able to derail the ruminative train of thoughts that plague us.” 
― Guy Winch, Emotional First Aid: Practical Strategies for Treating Failure, Rejection, Guilt, and Other EverydayPsychological Injuries

I have a slight Ted Talk addiction. Ted Talks never cease to fascinate me! They send me off wanting to learn more about a new topic or go deeper into something I thought I knew about. I watched this phenomenal and funny talk by Guy Winch this weekend. Here it is:

What do you do to help you when you aren't feeling your best? Do you have a technique that transforms how you feel about situations, memories you replay that bother you, and the meanings you give to them? Or do you have a series of ways you avoid your feelings and distract yourself? Or do you just get stuck, replaying what you don't want, feeling worse and worse with no idea how to fix it?

I have embraced all of the above at one time or another. Avoiding is a temporary false haven, because, as I learned long ago, wherever you go, there you are. My attitude goes with me. When I choose to avoid how I feel, it gets worse. When I entertain the bad thoughts, I get even better at having them, finding more and more proof to feel bad. That doesn't work too well either.

Now, I tap until my attitude, meanings and memories shift to an empowered and positive frame. I practice affirmations in a way that works. Attached is a video I made today to show you how I do just that.

Tapping helps you create changes in your emotional state by interrupting the feedback loop between your mind and your body. What you think you feel. The feelings make the thoughts and memories seem as if they are happening in the present moment. As you interrupt those negative states until they no longer have an impact you free yourself from repeating the pattern. The past is over, you are not stuck, and you no longer have to feel that way anymore. You are free to see events from a different and more empowered perspective.

Do you have a technique that helps you transform your emotional lows into highs? Share in the comments!

Words Are Just Words

“Words, he decided, were inadequate at best, impossible at worst. They meant too many things. Or they meant nothing at all.” 

― Patricia A. McKillip, In the Forests of Serre

We supply the meaning.

Why is this important?

I look back at times I entered into relationships, believing we both wanted the same thing, and discovered that was not quite so. We both said we wanted a relationship yet what that meant was different to each of us. Our meaning of the exact same word was completely different.

How can that be? Isn't it the same exact word? Doesn't it have one definition in the dictionary?

This past May I attended an NLP Practitioner Certification Training. If you are not familiar with NLP (short for Neuro-Linguistic Programming) it is a fancy to call a process of modeling success. In NLP we model the successful behavior in one person and recreate it in order to create success in another. You find the "how-to" of successful people and apply their formula to create your own success.

NLP is also known as the study of excellence in communication. Language is key here. The language we use to speak to ourselves and to others.

I participated in an interesting exercise to demonstrate that words are just words and we supply the meaning behind them. Until I did this exercise I had a fairly tenuous grasp on that really meant.

The exercise is simple. Select a word, say relationship and write down five words that express what relationship means to you.

Relationship:
Commitment
Closeness
Intimacy
Respect
Appreciation

Next we compared answers. No one had the same five words. Frequently people would share one single word in their unique meaning combination, less frequent was two shared words, fewer yet were three shared words. I do not recall a single instance where anyone had four or five words that matched.

That's because words are just words and we supply the meaning.

Think about it next time you argue with someone about what they meant. You just might be applying your own meaning and that does not necessarily have anything to do with theirs.

Understanding this now I find myself asking people "what does that mean to you?" more often. I have learned to dig a bit deeper. To not make assumptions.

So the next time someone uses a word you don't agree with, remember you are supplying the meaning.

Journaling and Gratitude

“You simply will not be the same person two months from now after consciously giving thanks each day for the abundance that exists in your life. And you will have set in motion an ancient spiritual law: the more you have and are grateful for, the more will be given you.” 

— Sarah Ban Breathnach

Keeping a gratitude journal is a powerful practice to bring attention to what our blessings are in the present moment. Taking the time to sit down, focus on what you do have, and intentionally feel those feelings of gratitude is the beginning of a habit that becomes self-fulfilling.

I have kept a gratitude journal in many different forms for the past 8 years. In the beginning it was a sporadic practice in a notebook, on for a week, off for a month or more, then back to it again. Today it is effortless, a practice as ingrained in my day as is oil pulling, flossing and brushing my teeth. Instead of a notebook I use a digital app, the result of this change being consistency. I have tried quite a few apps and continued searching for one that is just right for me.

It seems I have found it. It is free, which is even better. This app is called Stigma.

This app is not gratitude specific, it is more of a journal. You can use it to journal about any number of things. Successes. Changes. Growth. Counting your blessings.

What I like in particular about Stigma:

• Tagging journal entries with emotions #grateful #happy #calm
• Anonymously sharing entries and seeing shared entries
• Searching entries by specific emotions #excited
• Liking entries
• Choosing to journal anonymously or privately
• Adding photos to remember a particularly good moment
• Weekly recapping of your entries via email
• Word cloud showing your most frequently tagged emotions

When I made that firm commitment to keep a gratitude journal for thirty days straight I noticed it become easier and easier to be grateful. Even on the worst day I can be grateful for breathing, for seeing, for hearing, for getting out of bed.

Some of the surprising changes I noticed in myself as practicing gratitude became a way of life is an effortless appreciation for the little things in life. I notice when parking spots magically open up, the green lights I catch.

One day I heard myself say out loud, "Thank you Universe for the green light, I'll take some more ..." In that moment I realized how far I had come and how much had really changed. Thi is how practicing gratitude became self-fulfilling for me. Back there in my mind my reticular activating system is on the lookout for anything there is to be grateful for. It skillfully points it all out to me.

The more you do it, the more there is to be grateful for. The more you see the things that are already all around you to be grateful for. Try it for thirty days. You never know, you just might be grateful you did.

Thoughts Become Things

I know that thoughts become things. I know it and I believe it.

That does not necessarily mean I am adept at using the skill consistently in my favor ... yet.

I am practicing becoming more present to the workings of my mind. To come from awareness of mind to create more of what I want in my life.

Early August I attended an amazing "From Stressed to Success" Workshop with two skilled and talented colleagues that I respect and appreciate. I left with a greater and deeper understanding of how I can gain greater control of my mind, and how I can help others do the same.

It is known that ...

Our thoughts affect our feelings.
Our feelings affect our behaviors.
Our behaviors affect our actions.
Our actions affect our results.

I pay close attention to my own thoughts, behaviors, actions, and results.

The day after the workshop I went to the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle. I love to go to the zoo. This was my first visit to this particular zoo.

When I meditate in the morning I sit and I breath in. When I exhale I simply think or visualize the word love, or a symbol for love, or a mantra "I am love." This is how I start my day. Then I have coffee which is probably one of my favorite morning activities. I digress ...

While walking around at the zoo I did a lot of walking meditation, standing meditation, doing that exact same thing. At each exhibit I would look at the incredible creatures in there and breath, sending love. I felt very present and very happy. It changed the experience to something different and deeper, and it felt like I was making genuine contact with the world around me.

When I came to the tiger exhibit I wanted to try something different.

I saw one tiger, sitting in a channel of running water, like a man made creek. This little man made creek turned into a little 4 or 5 foot waterfall that ended in a big pool of water. There were two places to look at the tiger, one large window was in front of where the tiger was resting in the water. It was crowded with people. Then there was a long stretch in front of the pool of water and not a single person was there.

I stood in the middle of that empty section, looked at the tiger and sent it love. I visualized it coming over and getting in the water in front of me. It was an experiment in visualization. Standing alone, and sending that feeling of love and visualizing it getting in the water in front of me. Why not? I was going to stand there and watch anyway, it would be an interesting experiement a la Pam Grout.

That tiger looked at me and got up and moved about 4 feet and plopped back down in the water. I thought harder (is that really possible?) and breathed love. And then it happened. Wouldn't you know that tiger got up and walked to the end of the creek and jumped in the pool right in front of me and started playing with a big piece of a tree trunk in the water.

I was definitely in a state of awe and disbelief at this point. And feeling the most profound gratitude imaginable. People began crowding around me. Then to my surprise another tiger jumped in, and another. Before I knew it there were three tigers playing in the pool right in front of me.

I could shrug it off and say it was just a coincidence, that I really don't have the power to think things into action. I'm not going to do that though. I saw it, it happened (times three!) and it was magical.

Now with this new found awareness it seems even more important to notice and release thoughts that don't serve me. To intentionally choose those thoughts, feelings, beliefs and attitudes that will create more of what I want in the world. It's a full time job and one that I am ready for.

Talking Less and Changing More

I've spent most of my life looking for something. A tool, a technique, a book, a class, something to teach me how to be happy and to help other people do the same.

When I was in college I saw a three different therapists. They were sympahetic, very kind, and great listeners. I told them all my woes and my stories. Nothing changed. Week after week it was more of the same. Lots of talking and if there was progress it wasn't measurable to me.

Little did I know then what I know now: I was rehearsing and refining my ability to have the same problem. I was making myself better at it, not changing it. Oops!

At some point I realized talking wasn't helping me. Neither were the antidepresssants. I felt worse. I had massive anxiety and couldn't sleep. With the antidepressents I still couldn't sleep. I still had massive anxiety. Now I struggled to stay awake during the day at work and felt so foggy it was difficult to think.

After six months of playing with dosages that kept increasing, I threw them all away. It was time to try something else and with my limited amount of experience all I could turn to was exercise. It helped. In fact it has even been demonstrated that exercise is as effective as antidepressants in treating depression. It worked for me and I was sleeping at night again, thanks to the work outs.

Exercise is and was a very tangible tool with immediate results for me. My anxiety and depression largely improved with it. I have to admit though when in the throes of a panic attack putting on my gym shoes and hitting the elliptical wasn't my first thought.

What I really needed to learn was how to transform my thoughts and beliefs into what served me, rather than those that created anxiety and depression in the first place.

I needed to learn that inside me, I have pictures, voices, sensations, emotions, smells, and tastes. That as I experience these internally my body reacts physically. This is what makes me literally feel that my thoughts are real. They aren't, they are just thoughts.

Like most people in the world, I read The Secret and convinced myself all I had to do was think happy thoughts and my life would change. I didn't really understand the message on a deeper level. It isn't just about repeating a mantra or affirmation a few times a day and voila the world is new! Meanwhile you go about your life, cursing at the person who cuts you off on the road, meeting your friends to compare stories of what went wrong all week. Who pissed you off at work, what your signficant other did that bothered you, or how your family just doesn't understand you at all. Insert your own vents there. Do you see the contradiction?

The real point of The Secret is that what you hold inside, those things that make up your thoughts create your world. Unless you tap into this, mantras and affirmations don't have soil to grow in.

I took up Yoga and Meditation to feel more peaceful, accepting of life. Years later I understood what it means to practice them "off of the mat" as well. Sitting, breathing and repeating a mantra in class, going outside and then returning back to patterns of complaining, noticing what's wrong and not right makes the peace temporary.

I began a gratitude journal. Many times. Unfortunately it took me many years to stick with it.

Then I found a course by Larry Levine, The Release Technique. I went through that in record time. I didn't seem to release to much though. I kept on searching.

That same year I found something that really worked. My anxiety had returned with a vengeance, in spite of diligent exercise. I made a series of choices that were probably better left unchosen. I was looking for a way to cope with the repercussions of my choices.

That something is called EFT, or Energy Freedom Technique. It did help me shift emotions, but it was a slow process. It felt slow at times and that could be frustrating. Because it worked I stuck with it. I shared it with friends and coworkers too.

Then Rhonda Byrne's second book, The Power came out. One thing that really resonated with me and still does to this day, is to look for things that you appreciate anywhere and everywhere you go. This has become effortless. At first it was a challenge. When I walked my dog I would practice, the whole walk. What can I appreciate here?

Then one day, a friend I shared EFT with learned of FasterEFT, Faster Emotionally Focused Transformations. It took me about 6 months to try it, feeling loyal to the technique I was using. Then I tried it and I agreed, it was faster for me too.

In fact I loved the process so much I decided to become a practitioner, to share it with others. The personal transformations I have experienced have been incredible. The peace I feel and the changes I see are what I wanted so many years ago when I first saw a therapist.

With FasterEFT, I have learned how to aim at my own pictures, voices, feelings, emotions, smells and tastes stored inside to create changes. The changes create shifts in what I see outside of me. All of these things are simply stored information created long ago. They are in the background driving the tour bus of our life, showing us more of what we already believe to be true based on this information.

We don't see what is there, we see what we believe to be true about what is there. All information is filtered through our beliefs and perceptions. If you're wearing smudged, dirty glasses you see a smudged, dirty world. It really is that simple.

Simple isn't necessarily easy though. It takes effort. Daily practice. Repetition. Dedication. Awareness.

I learned to go inside and change this information using my FasterEFT skills, either by myself or with another practioner (because two heads really are better than one). Next everything I saw around me began to change. Yet it was not circumstances that changed, it was my filters. I dusted them off and all of a sudden I could see what I had been missing all these years.

I am by no means done. Life is a process and I will be working on my internal references for the rest of it.

My main take aways are:

• Do not believe what you think, your thoughts are predictable patterns of thinking established long ago. They play along a theme. Have you ever been driving somewhere and went somewhere else out of habit? Yes, your thoughts work that way too.
• Talking about my problems makes me better at having them. Have you ever told a story and added more details? Felt it all as if it were happening again? We create reality with our stories. The question is: are you creating the reality you want?
• There really is only now. All our memories are in the past, we cannot go back. When we visit them in our mind we are recreating them from faulty perceptions. It is all made up now, choose a better feeling story.
• Words are just words. Each one of us defines the same word differently. If I were to choose five words that describe love for me, and everyone did the same exercise, we would not have the same words. Our references are all unique. This keeps my mind open.
• Ask better questions. What's wrong with me? will give you lots of proof that something is wrong. Your mind is an eager servent, it wants to please. Give it a better task and ask "How did I get so lucky?" or another question that resonates with what you truly want to see more of.

FasterEFT has given me the skills to create change. My memories are my references that determine what I see and believe about myself and the world around me. As I change my own self-identity by removing negative emotions from these memories I create a positive alternative, meaning or experience. How I see the world evolves along with it. The process is so fascinating. The best part is helping others as they do the same. Seeing those changes is a gift that keeps on giving.

Stop Rehearsing What You Don't Want

What is fear? It is a rehearsal of what you don't want, largely done unconsciously, and expressed physically.

Did you know that a fear of heights isn't really a fear of heights at all? It is a fear of falling. There is a thought the moment before the body reacts in fear. That thought is a picture, an internal dialogue, or a knowing of falling. You are most likely not even aware of the thought. You become aware of the fear because your body reacts to the thought and you feel it.

Did you know that you don't have procrastination? You can't put it in a a box. You can't hand it off to someone. It has no existence. It is a process that you do inside. The process is rehearsing ... doing it tomorrow. Doing it later. Not doing it now.

Fear isn't stuck and permanent. Neither is procrastination. There is a way to create change. FasterEFT is the most successful and easy way I have ever learned to create changes. For myself and others. The way in which it works is simple. The effect is powerful, especially for those like myself who have experienced panic attacks that feel so real yet seem to have no reason.

Since birth you have stored all the events, experiences, stories and information of your life inside your unconscious mind in the form of:

Pictures (snapshots, movies)
Voices (sounds, songs, your voice or someone else's)
Feelings (sensations in the body, things we call emotions)
How To Programs (instructions on how to perform or react in different circumstances)

Two common examples of "how to programs" are driving and writing. At first learning these skills was work, requiring presence and concentration. Possibly even frustration. I remember clearly feeling nearly overwhelmed that I would never be able to keep the car between the lines on the road. Of course I was rehearsing in my head what would go wrong as I drove outside the lines.

The same with handwriting. It was an unfamiliar challenge to hold a pencil and create the letters. My hand got tired. I persisted and now I can write without even looking at the paper. It's not particularly pretty or neat, but I can do it.

I can drive and arrive at my destination with no conscious thought of the trip there. How many times have you done that yourself? These skills have reached a level known as unconscious competence.

Those are useful how to programs. Fear is a how to program as well and it is one that is meant to keep us safe. That is the goal but the reality is fear keeps us stuck and controlled. It also keeps us so focused on what we don't want that we find more reasons to fear it, and miss opportunities to create or see the things we do want. It always comes down to focus.

The brilliant way in which FasterEFT works to create changes is to interrupt the process you do inside to create fear. The meridian tapping in FasterEFT stimulates the unconscious to rewrite these pictures, sounds, and feelings to create a new how to program by causing the body to relax and let go of its physical reaction. When this is done we become empowered to act in a new way, no longer controlled by the fear.

Letting go of fear does not make you stupid. For example, say you have a fear of water (a fear of drowning), releasing that fear does not mean you will jump in the water if you know you cannot swim. It means you are no longer controlled by a fear of water, and now perhaps you are free to learn how to swim.

The goal is to be in control as opposed to be controlled. Which state is more empowering to you?

FasterEFT has allowed me to let go of my fears of moving foward in having my own business. It has also enabled me to join Toastmasters and to let go of my fear of public speaking (which really was a fear of being judged). Now I still have to work on the skill of public speaking, the difference is I am not afraid to do so. I can think clearly, improve, and learn.

I still have some fears left to tackle though, FasterEFT is not an overnight event, or even a 2 hour event. It is a life coping skill. It is something I use every day. I have found it to be the best skill for emotional intelligence.

What are your fears? How are they holding you back? What would you rather be rehearsing?

Remember, we get what we focus on. If we are focused on what we fear, guess what shows up? Personally, I want to put my energy in focusing on what I want.

Thanks to FasterEFT I was able to speak in public, on camera, at my Level II Practitioner training in Oklahoma City:

This is my favorite FasterEFT video on procrastination (I have tapped along to this one a few times or more):

Peace,
Nicola

How Did I Get So Lucky?

By asking "How did I get so lucky?" every day and night. 

Now why would I do that? 

We receive roughly 2 million bits of information per second from the world around us through our senses. Our subconscious mind filters this information down to about 126 bits per second, which is far more manageable. That means that roughly 1,999,874 bits of information from our environment is either deleted, distorted or generalized in some way.

Ever heard the phrase "Seeing is believing?" What is more accurate is "believing is seeing". Your subconscious is filtering information out of your experience that is not congruent with what you believe. There is a part of our brain called the reticular activing system that does this.

We have all experienced this in action. The classic example is your friend gets a new car and all of a sudden you see that color and model everywhere you go. Did everyone get the same car at the same time as your friend? Not likely. However, due to a change in your experience your RAS has now freed new information to pass through to your consciousness. That's pretty handy.

How can you use this to your advantage to create some change in your life? Through asking better questions. Our subconscious mind is an eager servant. When you ask yourself questions, your RAS will begin to filter through all that data to find answers. If you don't like what you are seeing, it is time to change the station!

I attended an Integrative NLP Practitioner Certification® Training April 29th through May 5th. It was a great experience and I certainly learned a lot. During one of the lectures by Dr. Matt James he mentioned a study by Richard Wiseman. Richard Wiseman conducted a 10 year scientific study on our beliefs about luck and the manifestion of it in our lives. I found that particularly interesting because I do believe that what we see is determined by what we believe. It is a self-fullfilling prophecy.

According to Richard Wiseman, from his article published in the Skeptical Inquirer May/June 2003:

"My research revealed that lucky people generate their own good fortune via four basic principles. They are skilled at creating and noticing chance opportunities, make lucky decisions by listening to their intuition, create self-fulfilling prophesies via positive expectations, and adopt a resilient attitude that transforms bad luck into good."

I immediately put this to the test! I began combining the question "How did I get so lucky?" with my nighttime FasterEFT affirmation tapping routine and asking myself the question any and every time I thought of it during the day.

Not even a week later I noticed changes. The first one that I became conscious of was walking out of Petsmart and hearing myself say, out loud "Wow, how did I get so lucky?" Everything I needed that day was either 20% off, buy one get one free, or marked down. When I heard my own voice I stopped short and realized what I said and what had just come to pass. It was working.

What would you like to see different? How can you ask better questions to adjust what your RAS filters in? What we want is out there, the evidence we see merely supports what we believe to be true. Basically we see what we look for.

This classic video demonstrates it in a very clear way:

How did you do? I missed it the first time too. This is a great example of missing the obvious based on what we are looking for. What we look for is based on our focus and our beliefs.

Here's a short and clear video about how your reticular activating system works:

You can read Richard Wiseman's article in full here: http://www.richardwiseman.com/resources/The_Luck_Factor.pdf

Thank you for reading!

-Nicola

Inner Chatter Outer Confirmation

I was talking to a friend who is also a FasterEFT practitioner this morning. We trade sessions with each other. She helps me and I help her, ultimately we help each other grow together. In this conversation were talking about perceptions, specifically how challenging it is to see our own pros and how we focus on our own cons. In the past I would tend to see the best in others, and feel so much less than others when I compared myself to them. Doing that is not exactly the highway HOV lane towards confidence, as you can imagine. It actually tends to lead to a mental flat tire and being stuck on the side of the road feeling hopeless. Thankfully I have FasterEFT now. With FasterEFT I have a way to change a flat and get back on the highway.

Back to my story … Last week my friend and I were working on some of her negative perceptions, as we cleared the things that made her feel "stupid" there was this incredible flip to accessing memories of her Mom telling her how smart she is. Those memories were completely inaccessible due to this incessant focus on the negative memories. Her inner chatter was relentless, that voice telling her she is stupid, she can't learn things on her own, she needs help. Those words had far more emotional charge to them. Their strength kept on attracting more and more evidence to support them. 

We all have that. This mind chatter that is the background "music" of our day. Your inner voice, directed by your subconscious mind, is directing your reticular activating system to filter out anything and everything that is not in alignment with that voice. The more you say "I'm stupid" the more you are going to find evidence supporting that very feeling. It is what you are looking for after all, subconsciously.

I had a thought that our goal when we work on ourselves is to find all the reasons why the sun does not and cannot rise inside of us and allow ourselves to see and feel all the reasons why it indeed does and can rise and live within us. We do this by changing the memories that support the inner chatter. You can't believe everything you think, and you can change the memories that defeat you and cause you pain. It isn't easy but it is simple and can be done relatively fast.