Good morning,
For as long as I can remember I never quite liked the name Emotional Freedom Techniques or its branding. (For those of you who are newer to tapping, that is what Gary Craig called his original tapping procedure, which is the basis of most of the tapping you do today.)
On one level I understand the name. The first time you are feeling a negative emotion and you do some tapping it really does feel like freedom.
On the other hand I had a few issues:
- Emotional Freedom Techniques didn't sound sufficiently serious to me. It sounded lightweight and insubstantial.
- (I am no graphic design expert but) The original logo of a dove with an olive branch flying in front of a globe didn't look professional.
- Talking about emotional freedom is what is called “post transformational language”. It is not about how you feel when you hear about it, but how you feel after you do it, which creates a barrier to people trying it.
- (Most importantly!!) The goal should never be to be free of emotions. Emotions are not the enemy. Instead we are working towards a well informed emotional response.
For the most part I have kept my gripes to myself as the tool itself is amazing and the easy way around it is to just call it tapping.
Recently I had my mind changed.
Last week I was interviewing Rick Wilkes for a new project (currently under wraps but I am going to be telling you about it in January) and he said something along the lines of "Tapping allows me to have the freedom to choose my emotional state and not just respond in an unthinking, automatic way."
That is such a lovely thought. It is not about the feeling of emotion, but instead being freed from our subconscious emotional habits.
It is also an amazing intention to have when we sit down to tap.
I have found that setting an intention or desired outcome when I tap leads to much better results. If I don't have an intention it is all too easy for me to move from one issue to the next, never completely clearing the issue, but instead tapping on bits and pieces of this and that.
In this week's podcast I share five types of intentions you can set at the beginning of a tapping session to focus your time. No one intention is better than the others, but instead they are great frames to help set you up for success.
If you are wanting to make sure you are getting the most out of your tapping time, I encourage you to listen.
Learn the five intentions here: http://tappingqanda.com/492
I am guessing my list of five is incomplete. After you listen, let me know what you think I should add to my list,
Gene
