Imagine that you are in 1st grade at school and it is ‘show and tell’ time. You have brought your favourite pet rock to show and you are so proud and so excited. You stand up to talk full of confidence, and everyone laughs at you. They think your pet rock is silly and weird, and they ask stupid questions. You slink back to your seat humiliated and shaking. Your subconscious brain, always wanting to keep you safe, says, “never, ever stand in front of a group and share with them something that you love”.
Fast forward 25 years, and you are now starting a business and you go to a networking meeting and they ask you to introduce yourself and say what you do. You are terrified, you are shaking, your palms are sweaty, and your voice is croaky. You can’t understand why. It is 5 minutes telling people about what you love. Why is it so difficult?
Your subconscious brain wants to keep you safe. It remembers that bad experience and the decision that you made at 5 and it is still running your life.
Now, this is a wonderful mechanism to help you stay away from snakes, look for traffic on the road, and be wary of barking dogs, but there are many times that it does not serve us, and starting a business seems to bring them all to the surface!!!
What can we do?
There is a famous statement that says “feel the fear and do it anyway.” This is awful. Spending our lives in fear and trying to push through. Just the thought makes me feel sick.
The theory is that the more we practice the better we will become, and the act of overcoming the fear is powerful.
Well, this might be true when it comes to bungy jumping, but I do not believe it is true in most areas of our life.
If we push through our fears, we know that we are not presenting our best self. The experience itself can retraumatize and after a few attempts we just give up, feeling worse than ever. Now we can’t speak in public, and we feel like a failure.
Enter the world of EFT tapping
EFT stands for Emotional Freedom Technique, and nicknamed tapping because that is what we do. We are tapping gently with two fingers on acupressure points on the face and upper body, as we talk about our fears. This sends a message to the amygdala, – the stress centre of our brain, to relax. We let our subconscious know that we are safe now.
And while we tap we say how we are feeling. It is like letting the feelings out of our system. We are saying them out loud and letting them go. All those fears, the embarrassment, the worry about what others will think, the fear of judgments and ridicule. All tapped away.
We would start the process tapping on how we are feeling right now. All the fears that have come to the surface when we think about talking to a group of people now, and in a very short space of time you will feel a relaxation, a peace and a belief that maybe you could do it.
Then as you remember incidents from the past we can tap those and also clear away the stress surrounding them, and then suddenly you will remember this experience in grade 1. It will be like an instant seeing and feeling something that has been hidden for many years. You probably have never thought about it again. But that was when the decision was made. So now we can go back and change that decision. We can heal that young child, and let them know that they are loved and supported and their talk was just right.
Once that is done, the desire and opportunities for talks will appear.
It actually feels like magic. Poof, all the negative feelings have gone.
EFT tapping can work for so many areas of business. The fear of being seen, of being judged, people not liking you, or not wanting to work with you. The fear of money, asking for it, having it, not having it, what it means, what does that mean about you. So many ways that little piece of paper brings forth such strong reactions.
Some of the other thoughts you can have that are stopping you from achieving the business of your dreams:
I don’t deserve to earn money for doing what I love
I can’t charge for this, it is so easy
I’m not good enough yet, I will need further study or practice
Who am I to tell others what to do
Why would someone listen to me?
I can’t put my prices up, all my clients will disappear
I have to work hard for money
I have to be perfect before I can put this out to the public
I’m just a woman
I’m male, who is going to listen to me
I’m too skinny/fat/old/young/wrong colour/ have an accent/
And any other area where you feel “not good enough”
Using the tool of EFT you can transform your life, and enable you to achieve all your dreams, to live to your full potential.
Are you wondering what blocks are sitting in your subconscious stopping you from achieving all your dream?
Click here for a free worksheet that takes you through some of the myths around money, and see which ones apply to you.