My mentor, coach and friend,
Paul Cutright, emailed me a Quote today which very succinctly explains the idea of
how we create our own "realities" with our thoughts."The power of memories and expectations is such that for most human beings, the past and the future are not as real, but rather more real than the present." --- Alan Watts
The good news is that
we can change our interpretations of our key formative memories, and we can change our expectations of our future far more easily than you might think. This is a very powerful bit of knowledge when it comes to making a life change, self development, and managing our emotions.
Some of us think that our interpretations are the real and absolute truth and would strongly oppose the idea that we can change those perceptions and thus change our results. Others of us do have a sense that
we can change our interpretations and perceptions and that this would change how we feel about things and how we respond to things and
thus change our results in life.If you're in the first category, you're probably not even reading this because you think it's stupid... or you're fervently gathering your evidence to oppose the idea... or perhaps you are open to exploring the possibility, and I invite you to read on.
If you're in the second category you may be wondering why it's so hard to change some of those interpretations and perceptions. The reason it's hard is that
back when we made these decisions, or agreements with ourselves that "this is what such and such means so I have to respond like such and such", often
these decisions were made while in a state of very intense emotion... very often the emotion of
fear.
When you have an experience with a powerful emotional response in yourself, this experience
and your interpretation and decisions about it gets very deeply ingrained into your
memory, your
energy system, your
subconscious mind, and your
body (including bodily responses). It gets lodged there.
Your decision becomes a deeply held belief for you. Maybe it really is true. Maybe it's only partly true. Maybe it is only true under certain circumstances but you're system is automatically applying it to all situations.
Here's the rub... the vast majority of these life altering,
life directing decisions that you live by today were created by the emotional understanding and intellect of a very small child, between the ages of zero and six years old. That child was you learning how the world works at a very early stage in your development.
When your decision becomes a deeply held belief often no amount of logical understanding to the contrary will remove the response. Sometimes a very deep new insight can partially or fully dislodge it.
Sometimes your belief leads you to a very painful crisis which finally gives you enough emotional charge to create a new decision, a new agreement with yourself of what such and such means and how you will respond to it.
Do we have to wait for a painful crisis to change our deepest held beliefs for the better? No. In fact, if you just let a new crisis change it randomly, you might end up replacing the old belief... or simply layering on top of it... with an equally distorting and unsupportive belief.
"So NOW what do I do?!"You
take conscious control of your personal evolution. You break your old unsupportive agreements with yourself and
make new, more supportive decisions about what things mean and how you will respond to them.
"It's so overwhelming... Where do I start?!"You start simple, with whatever is bothering you right now.
Whatever is bothering you today is the place where your beliefs
are in conflict with your present experience with the world. What's bothering you today is the most prominent thing creating friction, holding you back from really going for your dreams... or for some its a prominent belief that holds you back from even daring to dream.
This is where
Belief Change Work comes in. Paul Cutright and his wife and partner Layne Cutright, (both of them EFT masters) have created a comprehensive system, based on their respective 30 years of personal development and relationship coaching, for doing just this. It's called the Conscious Upset Resolution Exercise... appropriately acronymed "the CURE", which teaches you a very
clear and user friendly method for using your upsets as a growth opportunity, a way of discovering the core beliefs you hold that are causing you this friction, and stress, and pain.
Once you have discovered an unsupportive core belief you can change it, and far more easily and painlessly than you might think. The technique I use with my clients is called "Emotional Freedom Techniques", commonly referred to as EFT. In the hands of a talented trained practitioner EFT is extraordinarily powerful, and surprisingly painless. It's an Energy Psychology method. It is not "talk therapy". It's based on the energy meridian healing system of Chinese Medicine's Acupuncture. (I've written an article about EFT, called "Be Free with EFT", which is posted here in this blog if you scroll down... or simply
click here.) EFT involves tapping on certain acupressure points while tuning your attention in to the issue that you'd like to deal with.
I'm an EFT practitioner and I can help you with this over the phone. EFT is generally self administered with live guidance from an experienced coach and we can do it from anywhere in the world with a telephone. Call me at 519-766-4680, or visit my EFT site at
www.eft-in-guelph.com for details. You could start with getting my
free mini course which includes my
illustrated EFT Cheat Sheet, my teaching article
"Be Free with EFT", and a
series of tutorials that help you with the common setbacks I've come across with myself and my clients (to be emailed to you in bite sized chunks over a few weeks period). Just sign up for it in the form close to the top right hand column of the blog (
www.ArtOfSelfDevelopment.com).
You can even learn to do EFT yourself with a bit of study. You can purchase
Paul Cutright's excellent 5 hour EFT home study course (a very affordable $119.95 USD at the time of this writing) by
clicking here. This course was one of my earliest trainings in EFT and the things I was able to help myself and others with after taking this course were astounding. The course consists of a set of downloadable audios and printable PDF manuals, and a short series of videos to be viewed on-line. I've listened to the audios several times over and each time I do it makes me an even better practitioner.
And you can find
Paul and Layne's CURE training in their book "You're Never Upset for the Reason you Think" (
click here). At the moment I am studying on the coaching track of Paul and Layne's "Relationship Savvy" course which will train me more deeply in using the CURE with my clients. I've been using it with my own upsets and really discovering my core issues so that I can gently tap them away with EFT and Paul's guidance.
And if you want to really get into a lot of information and training for EFT you can check out the
official EFT website and it's resources by
clicking here.
There are several sets of training DVDs and a huge archive of articles that grows by leaps and bounds weekly, a newsletter chock full of case studies, and more.
These things really work. They've worked wonders with me, and with my clients. It's a very rare case that doesn't get some relief from this. In fact, I've never had a client who didn't receive some noticeable relief from their pain or distress. Most of the time we can create huge relief, huge shifts... and often total relief.
To your success in any endeavor,
Scott Mooney
Personal Breakthrough and
Emotional Freedom Coach
www.eft-in-guelph.comwww.ArtOfSelfDevelopment.com
It could be self sabotage. It could simply be the natural resistance to change in general. Or perhaps it's something else. In any case, here's a little thing I wrote for my computer's desktop image and screen saver to help me remember a valuable principle... that the discomfort of resistance is actually a good sign! It means you are growing and pushing your way towards the sunlight! Pushing your way past the limitations of your comfort zone. Here's what I wrote:
