If you had to determine the one or two factors that play into the success or failure of a person in their personal, professional or financial life, it would have to be a combination of self-esteem, self-image and self perception. Each of these factors plays a significant role in how and what we are able to achieve in life. People who feel they have low self-esteem or low self perception are often able to find help and assistance with a counselor or a life coach. However, there is also another option which may be slightly more cost-effective and which will develop habits and processes that will help you throughout life. That option is emotional freedom technique or EFT.
Since Gary Craig perfected emotional freedom techniques in the 1990s, practitioners have been using it to improve an individual\’s self-esteem and to help trace through the myriad of beliefs that end up corrupting our self-esteem. Using emotional freedom techniques people try to neutralize the negative thought processes and belief systems that hold us back from our full potential. (1)
One of the factors that plays a significant role in how we think about ourselves are the multiple phrases that run through our heads every single day. These may be things that you heard from your parents, teachers or other significant individuals in your life as you grew up. Most of them can be categorized around specific instances or topics, such as money. For instance, most of us grew up hearing phrases such as \”Money doesn\’t grow on trees\”, \”If I had a penny for every time he said that\”, \”I can\’t afford that\”, or \”the rich grow richer and the poor grow poorer\”. Each of these metaphors flow through our lives and actually has a significant impact in the way that we feel about ourselves, our financial situation and our ability to maintain an adequate relationship.
The metaphors in the previous paragraph were all about money but there are an equal number to cover every other facet of life that affects us. Using emotional freedom techniques to impact our self perception and self-esteem, we must first differentiate between the metaphors which are significant in our lives and those which have not made an impact.
Our self-esteem has also been influenced by the reactions of others to our ideas and attempts at producing products, projects or starting new relationships. Internalizing these reactions make some parts of our own self talk. When this self talk is positive we become successful but many of our memories from childhood are about negative messages and our self-talk becomes destructive.
While this self-esteem was originally created largely from the metaphors we learned in the reactions of others, we grow up believing that the majority of it is based on our own objective self appraisal. Because self-esteem is the combination of what we believe about ourselves and what we hear from others, you can see how it is incredibly important to either counteract negative information or completely reinstall new positive reactions.
One of the ways of starting this process is to use emotional freedom techniques and tapping on positive affirmations that applaud your own actions and allow you to take credit for the service you done for yourself and others. We perform a staggeringly high number of things each day that goes unnoticed by either ourselves or anyone else. We do not take the time to thank ourselves for the things we do to serve, either at work, at home or in our professional lives. (2)
By starting to acknowledge the good things that we do each and every day we can begin to elevate our own self-esteem. But this doesn\’t happen by just acknowledging it verbally. Instead, it requires tapping on the emotional freedom technique points which helped to break the negative emotional energy and reinstall positive belief system about yourself.
Another option to use emotional freedom techniques in order to improve your self-esteem are to use them in order to peel back the layers and layers of negativity and negative self talk that you perform each day. By acknowledging your negative self talk and reinstalling positive images you are again elevating your self-esteem.
Gary Craig describes a Personal Peace Procedure in his EFT manual in order to improve self-esteem. He compares this with removing trees in a negative forest and replacing them with positive ones. The first thing is to make a list of every event you can remember which bothers you. Make a list of at least a hundred and make them as specific as possible. Use specific events and not generalities. (3)
Give each event a title. For instance, \”dad hit me in the kitchen\”, or \”my mother told me I was stupid\”. Now pick out the biggest ones in applying emotional freedom techniques to them. When other things come up consider them as separate and work through each event until the intensity level is down to a minimum. After removing the biggest ones go onto the next biggest ones. Try addressing one to three different events each day for three months. Gary Craig believes that as you do this the forest becomes less dense and your self esteem improves.
Most people begin to feel better after only one or two days and are tempted to stop the process because they already are experiencing relief. However, it is only by continuing to interrupt the negative energy that has built up over the years and completing the process that you will be able to walk away with enough self-confidence and improved self perception to become successful at just about anything you desire.
(2) EFT Universe: The Effects of EFT on Long-term Psychological Symptoms