The Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) is a powerful healing instrument. So much so that it can even be used to effect a radical change in the way you approach life.
Certainly, it is not often easy to change the way we react to certain aspects of our lives, because it seems as if our attitudes are carved in stone, unalterable. However, we can change even fundamental views by using the concept of Personal Resource States in EFT. The powerful treasures of inner resources that we hold within our memory banks can help us facilatate a change in our lives.
The concept of Resource States is derived from NLP (Neuro-linguistic Programming), which utilizes past memories or memories of someone else’s successful handling of a difficult situation.
Many people don’t realize all of the personal resources they posses within themselves. One reason for this is that a particular Resource State may have been quite fleeting, perhaps only occured once during ones lifetime. However, just one memory of one moment of outstanding competence, or lovingness, or feeling of safety, or deep satisfaction, or whatever the desired state may be, can be extremely valuable in helping us make fundamental changes in ourselves. (Even if that emotional state occurred in a more or less trivial context.)
What is important is that Resource States can be used to create highly effective EFT statements. There are two kinds of personal Resource States that you can use in this way:
- Resource States derived from your own experience. You have experienced this desired state at least once in your life, firsthand.
- Resource states derived from observing others. You have watched another person (directly, or through the media) cope effectively with the very situation you are addressing, and this observation is alive in your memory.
In changing deeply held attitudes, the Type 1 kind of resource state can be particularly effective is Type 1.
You may need to do a little detective work, of course, to change an attitude that you have held for a long time, but it’s well worth the effort.
Here’s an example of using a Personal Resource State to change an attitude that may be deeply entrenched in you:
Let’s imagine you are someone who can’t conceive of coping with financial challenges without alarm when things are not going as planned. If you asked yourself a question designed to elicit a personal resource state to use for this perception, it might be “How do I cope with situations in my life that have nothing to do with finances? Can I think of some situations (of any kind) that I have handled pretty well?”
Most people can think of at least some areas of their lives that they handled pretty well and are able to recall some situation in which they were at least reasonably capable.
Another question you could ask yourself might be: “Can I think of anything that’s happened to me in the last three months that was troublesome — something having nothing to do with finances — that I coped with pretty well?” If you don’t think of one right away, you can help matters along by asking yourself, “Can I think of any little thing that I handled to my satisfaction this whole year? Maybe you easily fixed something that was broken, when you weren’t exactly sure how to fix it, completed a long-running project, or resolved a puzzling issue.
Few of us are unable to think of at least one small thing that we coped with well in the past year, and one example is all you need.
Now ask yourself how well you coped. Did the situation turn out okay? Is this ability to handle things satisfactorily something you would like to experience at other times in your life?
Here’s an example.
Suppose you are alarmed by some financial reverses you are now experiencing and yet you remember that you coped well with the flooding in your house when the main water pipe burst. In this case, you might formulate an EFT statement such as:
“Even though I fear facing financial disaster, I choose to be as resourceful as I was when the water pipe burst.”
When doing EFT tapping on that Resource State, you would use your positive experience of coping well with the broken water pipe as a model for the way in which, ideally, you would like to be able to cope with your financial problems. Doing this enables you to transfer those behaviors and attitudes that worked for you in one area of your life, to another area where they are not yet active. The Type 1 Resource States can be unusually helpful for changing attitudes because they are so real, compelling, familiar, and undeniable. I find using them to be remarkably effective for the people I work with, and for myself.
From another perspective, the Type 2 Resource States is a process of “borrowing” the characteristics of other people whom you admire, or even animals, in a similar manner. You can discover how to do this with my How to Borrow Power Resources Audio & Workbook.
I suggest you try this highly effective strategy whenever you feel that the way you are presently feeling, thinking, or acting is “impossible to change.” You may find, to your surprise, that profound change can be easy and natural if you approach it this way.
EFT Master, Dr. Patricia Carrington
Related Product
How to Borrow Power Resources to Change Your Life
Suppose you could… experience the confidence, strength and wisdom of those people you most admire in life? Or that you could… adopt an outstanding characteristic of the most powerful animal you know of? Or, suppose you could acquire some important ability possessed by a historical figure you admire? Or be like your most cherished early childhood relative or friend?
