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Articles & Ideas

Using EFT

Ideas for those using EFT to further their own personal development

Important Note: This article was written prior to 2010 and is now outdated. Please use my newest advancement, Optimal EFT. It is more efficient, more powerful and clearly explained in my free e-book, The Unseen Therapist™.  Best wishes, Gary

Hi Everyone,

Many tend to think of EFT as a means to effectively "unload the emotional debris" we collect over a lifetime. While that is certainly a major benefit, EFT can also be used for Personal Development. Carol Tuttle shares her ideas on how this might be done.

Hugs, Gary


By Carol Tuttle


First, I'd say to use EFT to support yourself. It's a useful tool to start implementing several days a week in the beginning, eventually increasing to daily use. I teach my clients to think of using EFT in the same way that they think of brushing their teeth, as a habit that becomes second nature. In our culture, most people have been raised to have a certain level of hygiene, and it has become a habit for them to brush their teeth. They want good oral hygiene and good dental health. In order to have those conditions, tooth brushing is essential.

To have good self esteem and continually develop yourself, use EFT on a daily basis. It is one of the most magnificent tools you can add to your lifestyle. Negative thoughts, fears, emotional patterns, and defeatist feelings are disruptive to our progress, and can become roadblocks to pursuing goals and dreams with grace and ease.

Using EFT consistently gives you hands-on practice in becoming the manager of your thoughts and feelings. You learn to intervene with EFT, positively influencing the way you think and feel, with almost immediate results. The more you do EFT, the more beneficial your results. By tapping acupressure points on the meridians along which energy flows, your energy patterns come to respond more readily.

Start to see EFT as a support tool, something that will help you achieve a better life and realize more of your full potential, rather than as a treatment tool to subjugate an issue, condition or problem in your life. EFT becomes a resource to support growth and increase strength. If you were preparing for a marathon, you'd start running, training to become more physically prepared, gaining strength and endurance, ready to run the race. In the same way, EFT can be considered a personal development training tool.

Perhaps the best way to explain it is to ask you to think of a goal, something you've wanted to achieve, and show you a way to explore what's keeping you from achieving it. Start working with something familiar. Maybe you've set the goal already. Maybe you've tried and were unable to achieve it. Maybe you've never done more than think about it. First of all, determine what your goal is.

Next, give yourself a week to notice -- just as my daughter did -- the thoughts, feelings and behavior patterns you start to recognize that are blocking or interfering with your ability to pursue your goal. Every day, write down what you notice, and you'll start seeing some recurring themes and identifying common denominators. Once you have that information in hand, you have the data you need.

You've got what's keeping you from achieving success, and now you are going to use it to create a script. Using EFT with a script is so helpful because you have your own words right in front of you. I've done this myself, with my children, and with clients. Let me give you an example of what I mean by "writing a script."

For instance, let's assume that you want to learn to play the guitar. You've thought about it for years, but you never have taken the first steps. From your notes, you start to notice what's keeping you from really starting the process of playing the guitar. Maybe your script would include:

"I don't have time."

"I don't have enough money to take the lessons."

"I'm not capable of learning this. It's too hard."

"I'm too old."

"What's the point? I should have learned it earlier in my life. Then, it would have been meaningful. Why bother now?"

Your script will look like a list of phrases. Also, you will have written down related thoughts and feelings. Some of the feelings might be sadness that you didn't pursue it earlier, feeling frustrated, angry at yourself, hopeless, discouraged, bothered. These words will now become part of your script, and you will use the tapping sequences while repeating these statements, developing your own phrasing. As you do, you'll notice yourself starting to collapse your fears, blocks and limiting beliefs, because that's what EFT does. It releases the energy that's holding all that negativity in place.

Once you've released that, I always like to throw in a forgiveness step. That's a big part of my EFT protocol. To be able to generate more healing and more resolve by going through the forgiveness step, you might include such phrases as:

"I forgive myself for creating these blocks and this resistance to something I really want to do."

"I'm doing the best I know how."

"I forgive myself for putting this off for so long. I'm ready now." "I'm going to do this now."

"I love and accept myself even though I've not done so earlier in my life."

"I forgive my mom and dad that they didn't provide guitar lessons when I was young."

"It's never too late. I'm ready now."

Then, take these statements and rewrite them as positives. Every one of those negative statements can be turned into positive statements. Be sure to write them out. It's helpful to have a written tapping script to guide you. Positive rewrites of your statements might look like:

'I'm experiencing that it's never too late to start something new."

"I'm ready now. I'm ready to learn to start playing the guitar."

"I'm free to change my mind and to learn something else if I find I feel differently about it later."

As you're tapping, your positive "I am" statements will activate those positive feelings and thoughts within your own being. You can eventually get to a point where you can focus primarily on the positive and what you want, on the goal that you're striving to achieve, phrasing it in "I am" statements in the present, as if you've already achieved it, and just tap on that continually. Taking a goal you've not yet achieved and labeling it a present experience, acting as if you've already achieved it, is a great and powerful way to use EFT to help move you toward that outcome, creating a momentum that will support you.

In the scenario of the goal of learning to play guitar, you might consider statements such as:

"I'm grateful for how much fun I have playing the guitar."

"I'm grateful that I always find time in my life to practice, to learn new songs, and enjoy this experience."

"I'm grateful for the people I have to share it with in my life."

"I love playing the guitar."

"I'm having fun playing the guitar."

"I'm grateful that I've been able to pursue and achieve this goal and continue to grow in it."

This is an awesome way to use EFT in pursuit of developing new skills, talents and visions in your life.

Carol Tuttle

FOR MORE EFT HELP ...

Explore our newest advancement, Optimal EFT™, by reading my free e-book, The Unseen Therapist™. More efficient. More powerful.