Authentic Success

Let me start off by saying that I am NOT the ultimate expert on EFT.  There are many “masters” of EFT that can quote the science, the research and the protocol perfectly.  I am a user, lover and practitioner of EFT that wants the whole freaking world to experience it. This is me, telling you in the best way I know how, how the miracle of EFT works and what that can mean for you.

Let’s start with what EFT stands for – Emotional Freedom Techniques.  Techniques is plural because there are many methods within EFT that are highly effective and specialized based on the client and emotional needs.  The basic biology is that there is a little almond shaped part of your brain called your Amygdala.  This little gem is what controls your fight, flight or freeze response.  So basically, it interprets a stress trigger and signals your body to react accordingly.  This means blood flow is directed away from your organs to your limbs, it means less brain function and more reactive ability, it means a rush of hormones that allows you to be faster than you would be without them.  Think running from a bear… that is what your Amygdala is in charge of.

The problem is that we are conditioned to be triggered into a stress response way too often in our lives.  Think road rage.  Think big presentation.  Think two toddlers in the grocery store that are hungry and bored.   Our bodies are reacting as if we are constantly running from large hungry bears.  We are not built to sustain this response.  Our body’s response to stress is to help save our lives, and is meant to be temporary with a recovery period.  Modern life doesn’t allow this.  So now we are all coolly sauntering through our lives on the outside, while our biology is screaming, “Run for your life!”

EFT is often called “tapping”, and it is because you quite simply tap on acupressure points on your head, face and torso.  These points effectively shush the “run for your life” voice by calmly whispering, “Its okay, you are safe.”  It takes the intensity of emotions away so that the stress response from our bodies isn’t needed.  And yes, it is as much of a relief as it sounds.  I often describe the stressed out Amygdala as being like a hot burner on the stove… it’s all lit up red and pulsing with intensity.  Tapping is like shutting off the element, it starts to cool off until it is safe to the touch.

Here’s what this is capable of doing for you.  It’s capable of changing your reactions to stressful stimuli.  It can change your reaction from screaming at that road rage driver, to wishing them a safe drive.  And no, not in the most sarcastic way possible J. You can actually feel so safe and neutral that their anger does not trigger you.  It can switch the racing heart and stress sweats before a big presentation, to excitement to share your knowledge.  It can move an overwhelmed Momma from the brink of an adult meltdown in the grocery store, to calm, peaceful, unconditional love and smiles with her kids.  Yep, a magical miracle is EFT.

Like all good things, it is a practice and requires some consistent effort.  The difference is that your biological protection system (remember your Amygdala?) likes this change.  It feels calm, which means it is comfortable that you are safe.  This is a key reason why tapping is so effective… your brain, body and energy system won’t fight you as long as you are tapping.  Don’t get me wrong, resistance will present itself, but the physical act of tapping always helps.  Trauma, depression, PTSD, anxiety, weight loss, shame and anger are all within the healing abilities of this tool. For the big stuff, work with a practitioner, but for a daily practice to increase your energy, clear away some stress and be able to feel more joy – tap away!!!

Here is a short video I recorded for you to give it a try.  I hope you enjoy it, and better yet – I hope you get hooked because I know this tool is one of the keys to authentic success!

A couple of weeks ago, the host of a live cable show contacted me about Imposter Syndrome.  She had seen an event for my 8-week on-line course and wondered if I would like to come on her show to talk about it.  Ummm, yes!  I was excited about this new opportunity and new audience to talk to about authentic success.  I wanted to tell you the story of that day, and what I learned at the end of it!

It started at about 5am when I woke up to do an hour or so of work before my kids wake up, then I jump in the shower and put on my outfit of choice.  This is a quick process since I don’t have to do my hair or make-up.  I make lunches, choose kid-clothes, and get my two wee ones dressed and ready for the day.  6000 kisses and 4000 hugs later, I back out of the driveway with an ice-covered car honking and waving (as is our family custom)… it’s 6:45am.  My neighbours love us ;-).

I brave the highways that have been ice and snow covered for two days, causing bus cancellations and most people to stay home.  Not me though, I have a schedule to follow.  I arrive at my make-up appointment at 7:57am – first celebration of the day. I park on the street and race inside, excited to get my “fancy” face on (this is what my kids call my face when I have my make-up done).  Kerry is amazing – funny, talented and a multi-tasking Mom like me.  Kerry works her magic and I am transformed from slightly pale and puffy, to put-together and sculpted.  It’s a happy surprise every time.

I run out of her house at 9:03am – oops, my hair appointment is for 9am.  I set my GPS to my next location and start searching for the number of the salon.  I call them at a red light to tell them I am running late, at the same time noticing a parking ticket on my windshield.  I finish my call at one red light and hop out of my car at the next to grab the ticket.  Phew… lucky, it’s only $20!

I hit the salon at 9:20am and Megan gets to work.  I’m bubbling and excited about my “fancy” face and my upcoming T.V. debut.  She also works her magic, transforming my fine wispy hair into a shiny, gravity-defying masterpiece.  I’m sitting there watching my transformation and I start to get really agitated.  Hmmm… “Megan, what time is it?”… “10:02am”, she replies.  Uh oh!  I tell her that I am due at the studio at 10am and she performs the last of her magic (i.e. cements my new do with copious amounts of hair spray) and I rush out.   Thank you intuition!

I avoid a bone jarring fall in the icy parking lot, ignore the drizzle threatening my hair, and jump back in the car to my next programmed location.  I am doing this!!!  I arrive at the station at 10:23am.  I penguin walk my way over the ice and hit the buzzer.  Come on, come on… yes!!!  A kind gentleman lets me in.  Big breath, I’m okay.  I’m here and I meet Melissa the host.  She is so kind as we shake hands and I think – I have made it, yay for me!  Then she says, “I have you scheduled in for tomorrow’s show…”   What?  “NOOOOOOOOO!” my inner voice cried in horror, “This is not happening!”  I stand there frozen trying to calm the rush of adrenaline, the urge to scream that is matched only by my urge to cry.  We stand there for a very silent and dramatic 30 seconds before she says, “Hang on though, I’ll make this work.  You may actually be saving my butt today.”  Holy mother of peace and calm… I take a big breath and a huge smile blooms on my face.

I wait for my spot, and I focus on how amazing this day has been. Everything has fallen in to place and I feel on top of the world!  I do my spot and I had a really great time.  I’m out of the studio by 11:20am and headed back home.  I am exhausted and exhilarated, and then reflective.  I am amazed at my perspective, and that not once during the day had I thought of anything that had happened in a negative way.  This is a HUGE shift in perspective for me.  It could easily have gone the other way, and been filled with overwhelm and panic, but I didn’t go there at all.  The old me would have griped about the parking ticket, panicked about being late for my hair appointment, fretted the entire drive to the studio, begrudged a 2 hour drive with 2 hours of prep time for a 7.5 minute spot on the show, and lashed out when the date confusion surfaced.  I would have ruined the entire day just from my perspective alone.  What a waste of a fabulous, fancy-faced, va-voomed hair, live T.V. debut that would have been!

That is what success is… not the story of what happened, but the feelings you had about the experience.  I felt happy, excited, powerful and full of joyful curiosity for what would happen next.  What a day, what a lesson, and what a success!

Click here to watch my live T.V. debut!

Whenever I talk to women about their talent, capabilities or success, they almost always downplay themselves. I’d say, about 90% of the time this happens. There are two main responses:  1) They genuinely don’t internalize their success (i.e. they have Imposter Syndrome), or 2) They actually understand that they just pulled off something great, but don’t want to sound like a “jerk”.  As much as Imposter Syndrome is my passion and specialty, I want to address the “feeling like a jerk” reaction.

I believe that feeling like a jerk comes from observing other women who celebrate themselves being treated like a jerk.  The empowering movement of having women be bold, take action and step forward consistently bumps up against the reality that they will be brought down with words, looks or actions if they do.  They are treated as arrogant, rude and, yes, like a jerk.  This is not just men reacting this way, I have watched women react chillingly to another’s success.  Contrast this sharply with a man celebrating a well-deserved success.  My observations have been that the people around him are happy to celebrate with him.  Like it is somehow more normal and acceptable for him to acknowledge his contribution to the world.  This standard of normal is very dis-empowering for women on their journey to authentic success.

Without getting in to a whole sociological debate on this, I simply want to encourage women to own their success and tell them that genuinely celebrating what you can, and have done, is never a jerk move.  It is powerful and necessary to build momentum, and move to your next level of success.  So please don’t allow your light to dim in the face of other’s potential reactions.  Celebrate the hell out of what you have done because you deserve it, and the rest of us need to see it!  Young professional women need to see you shining bright.  Our daughters need to see us stepping forward and owning our success with the same vigour as we own our responsibilities.  Our sons need to learn that this is the appropriate response to success for both men and women.

Let yourself be happy and proud for as long as you can hold that feeling.  It is preparing you to be able to hold that level of joy and excitement the next time.  This is a practice that will serve you on so many levels.  Power, joy, confidence, happiness, success – and all you have to do is celebrate!

A note for the men… this is not an attack on you.  It’s simple social conditioning that you can help change so that your wives, daughters, sisters and friends can own their very well deserved successes too.  If you find yourself not owning your success authentically, please know that I am speaking to you too.

I used to be a New Year’s Eve lover.  I loved the planning, the excitement, the energy… but I didn’t love the let-down.  Inevitably, I built the evening up with unrealistic expectations and then grieved the loss of a “magical” evening the next day.  Then I would start the motivational self-talk about keeping all of my resolutions THIS year.  I wasn’t going to fail. I was going to achieve them!  For 3 or 4 days I did, and then real life crept back in and I forgot all of that determination to create a new me.  Sound familiar?

Of course it does, because we are built this way.  We are built to behave in ways that keep us safe emotionally.  If I had magically been gifted the new me with perfect eating habits, a competitive athletes body, an always gentle and loving personality that constantly gave back… I would never have been able to handle it.  Have you ever realized that the changes you are wishing for require such an enormous difference in your emotional state, that they would immobilize you?  Remember that our energetic systems don’t differentiate between good and bad emotions… we only recognize the vibration.  Our system’s job is to keep us at vibrations that we know and feel safe with.  So consider your “wish” for the new you is energetically equivalent on the positive end, to say getting fired on the negative end. It isn’t “safe” for you to experience either drastic change on the spectrum of emotions.  We all need to recognize the scope of what we are asking for, and scale it appropriately to what we can handle.

If you really enjoy the process of setting resolutions for yourself, my suggestion is to be gentle with them.  Choose things that are achievable and are stepping stones to the big changes you want in your life.  So please don’t set a New Year’s resolution of going to the gym 5 days per week or deciding to ask for a huge promotion.  Start smaller so you don’t set yourself up for failure.  Work in increments so that your energy system feels safe and allows them to stick and become lifetime habits.

Think of this like climbing a mountain.  Your body will accept the altitude changes if you walk up.  You may experience some discomfort, but you will be able to do it.  If you were simply lifted to the top, your body would be in crisis.  It is the same with your emotions, so please plan to take the steps and walk at your own pace.  The destination is still there, but this way you will not only get there, but you will be able to enjoy it once you are.

To your continued success in 2017,

Deb

I’m reading “The Big Leap” by Gay Hendricks right now and I love what I’m reading.  It is a fantastic complement to our work on moving past Imposter Syndrome.  Here is my biggest take-away so far… we all have upper limits of happiness and success that when reached, quickly shove us back down to our comfort zone.  For most of us, our comfort zones unfortunately involve a lot of self-criticism, feelings of failure, and beliefs that we don’t measure up (hallmarks of Imposter Syndrome).  This ceiling shows up in both our personal and professional lives.

I’m going to re-name comfort zone, to zone of mediocrity, because that is what this zone really means for us.  The fact that we are comfortable here is not something to be particularly proud of… it’s just a fact.  We are sort of happy, sort of successful, sort of grateful, sort of…  Ugh.  I don’t know about you personally, but for me, much of my work has come from being pretty sick and tired of feeling and being “sort of”.

Here are some behaviours to pay attention to that keep us mediocre and “sort of”:

• Worrying – I had not considered that worrying is a way to retreat from the good that is happening.  I knew it wasn’t useful, I just didn’t know it was a direct mechanism I used for moving away from happiness.  If you are always “waiting for the other shoe to drop”, please just stop and try to hold on to the great thing that just happened.

• Blame and criticism – I thought this was just a bad habit… huh.  Energetically, it is a way to pull yourself back down to mediocre and quickly shift happy, joyful feelings, to negative feelings that we are used to.

• Getting sick or hurt – I always thought I got sick when I was run-down.  But now that I think about it, I would consistently get sick when an exam was done, or a big project finished.  My logic said I was just tired, but the reality is that something big, happy and great had just happened.

• Squabbling – Ever had an intense, happy connection with a person and then start finding their flaws or something to make them less great?  Or, naturally cause an argument over something insignificant?   It’s a way of bringing your energy back to just you where it feels safe.

• Hiding significant feelings – I think this is common training for most of us.  Don’t cry.  Get over it.  Distract yourself.  Forget about it.  Don’t be silly.  Calm down.  All of these sayings are meant to move you away from significant feelings.  The thing to remember here is that your system doesn’t differentiate between good and bad… it only recognizes what is outside of your zone of mediocrity.  So if you “hide” from the bad, you will also instinctively “hide” from the good.  Feel the feelings.

• Breaking agreements – An interesting one for sure.  For me, the agreement is almost always with myself and speaks to integrity.  A prime example… creating a new habit that feels amazing.  Then I stop.  Just like that, I stop.  Now I understand it is because the new habit is making me feel so good that I need to get back to my zone of mediocrity, and the quickest way back to that zone is to stop the new habit.  For all of you that think you don’t have will-power or follow-through, seriously consider this one.

• Not speaking your truth – This is hard, but energetically your truth is a very high vibration. By not speaking it, by not allowing your vulnerability to show through your truth, you are absolutely moving away from authentic happiness and success.

• Deflecting – The easiest way to decide if this one impacts you is how you react to a compliment.  Can you genuinely take it in and allow yourself to be proud of your capabilities?  Or, do you brush it off as lucky, or a team effort, or no big deal?  Deflection keeps you from feeling those really great compliments because they are outside the zone.

As a chunk of the world celebrates this holiday season… pay attention to how much joy you are allowing yourself.  Better yet – pay attention to all of the times you feel great feelings, and then watch for how you move away from them.  Watch your patterns and the scenarios you create to keep yourself comfortable.  This is an amazing time of year to learn, grow, and if you are really dedicated, to smash that success ceiling so that you can experience true and lasting peace, happiness, joy and success.

I wish you the bravery to pay attention, the dedication to create new habits, and the wild happiness and success that is on the other side!

Deb