Universally, the spiral symbol represents life’s evolving journey, growth, and continuity…
Many people use Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) when things go wrong in their lives, but they often fail to recognize that it can be used equally successfully to enhance what is already good in life.
One such use of EFT is to increase the deeply affirming experience of feeling genuinely GRATEFUL.
Certainly, the concept of gratitude is highly prevalent among most all religions, and research has revealed a number of important health benefits associated with gratitude. However, contrary to popular belief, gratitude is not easily come by–genuine gratitude, that is – despite the fact that there is much lip-service paid to “gratitude” in our society.
In fact, even for people who are able to feel grateful from their hearts, there are many areas within their lives for which gratitude could be experienced, but is probably not.
During an interview with Carol Look, an EFT Founding Master and Psychotherapist, she shared four common “blocks” people often have to experiencing and expressing gratitude. Play the sound bite below to see if any of them resonate with you.
Carol Look on Common Blocks to Feeling Grateful
In her workshops, she regularly advises participants to create a daily gratitude list of things they are grateful for on any given day, no matter how small, and her Project Gratitude Program (See more below) delves even deeper to share a much more comprehensive and fulfilling path to gratefulness. (Hear the entire interview)
Expanding upon Carol’s general advice to her workshop attendees, below you will find some additional insights and examples of how you can use this same concept to make the exercises even more powerful.
Finding Gratitude with EFT
As a species, we are hard-wired to be more alert to difficulties and dangers than to anything else. Our well known “orienting response” must have saved our primitive ancestors many a time when saber tooth tigers lurked outside their cave-homes. Under such life-threatening conditions it was certainly the better part of wisdom to be hyper vigilant. They needed to be alert to even the sound of a crackling twig on the forest floor, which might signal the approach of an enemy.
Given that the orienting response seems to be an important component of our inherited neurological makeup, how then can we allow ourselves to give equal attention to the positive things in our lives –– those things that bring us “good” each day? This is clearly not as easy as we might think.
Unfortunately, feeling gratitude can be scarce or expressed in a manner that results in only lip service. If, for example, you ask a group of people to write down five things they are grateful you may well discover that the lists generated will, more often than not, consist of what each person feels they should be grateful for.
Often, people will indicate gratefulness for their children, their homes, their partners and friends, their health, etc., but they usually refer only to large concepts. They may very well feel grateful in their minds that they have these things, when they stop to think about them, but this isn’t necessarily what makes up an expansive experience of gratitude.
It is the little things in every day life that can bring us such expansion, and, therefore, it is far more useful to recognize, segment, and include those things that are good in your life into your EFT tapping. Take time each day to reflect on them, and “tap in” the genuine gratitude that you feel for those things. Here are some ways to do this:
Build a Reservoir of Grateful Energy
When you feel particularly good about something that has happened during your day, take a few moments to “tap in” the gratitude you feel so that feeling becomes a permanent part of your life. This is an excellent way to increase the energy of gratitude in your life.
Acknowledge the Negative, Identify the Good
No doubt, you are less likely to use the tactic of tapping-in gratitude when you are feeling uncomfortable. Perhaps something or someone has disappointed or angered or offended you and therefore you can see only the negative that situation. This is the exact time when it is most useful to use EFT “to tap” in the positive aspects of that person or situation and thereby change your “vibrational frequency.”
First, acknowledge to yourself your disappointment, anger, discouragement, self recrimination or whatever other negative emotion you may be feeling, in specific terms, by incorporating that emotion into the first part of your EFT Statement, which you will repeat as you tap a round. Then follow it with an EFT phrase that identifies some positive aspect of the experience or person in question, no matter how small or fleeting it may be, for which you appreciate.
For example, you might make use of EFT statements such as:
“Even though I’m annoyed at (name of person) for their criticizing manner, I choose to be grateful for the true gems of information (name of person) has shared with me in the past.”
You can use a more moderate and objective phrase such as “I choose to appreciate” rather than, “I choose to be grateful,” but both will bring you to the same experience ─ that of genuine gratitude.
In a generally troubling situation, try this format:
“Even though I’m feeling (your emotion) about (situation), I choose to focus on and feel grateful for (one minuscule positive aspect of the situation, or from the course of your day).”
Tapping on positive moments that have occurred during a negative experience (almost any negative experience has those moments) can bring them to your attention in a very special fashion.
You may find that if you tap for one or two rounds of EFT using a positive statement of appreciation (repeated at each EFT point) that you will spontaneously begin to remember other moments when something went right. It is instructive to watch how our minds, once turned in a positive direction, will tend to remember more and more positive aspects of an originally negative situation; moments that caused a sense of relief, gratitude, and possibly even pleasure.
As you recall something new that is positive, return to doing EFT with another round of all-positive tapping, without any negative “Even though” statements, to consolidate your gains and solidify these positive memories.
The trick is to remember to identify and reflect on any fleeting positive memories in the situation and tap on them.
Such small specific events that are brought to your mind’s forefront through the tapping can unfold an entirely different energy within you as you “tap in” a new and genuine appreciation. No longer paying lip service to the concept, you are building concrete evidence in your memory that there WAS something good about that troublesome situation.
May using EFT in this manner help you experience gratefulness for an endless array of what is good in your life that is spontaneous and unforced…
EFT Master, Dr. Patricia Carrington
Recommended Product
Carol Look’s wonderfully healing Project Gratitude package has been helping people around the world face tragic events, as well as minor problems, with a vibration of love, strength and joy, despite outer circumstances – an amazing help in a world that often doesn’t work the way we hope it will.
Project Gratitude empowers you through a simple process of finding gratitude without having to deny your pain and distress. Through the audio modules, she helps you with your stress, pain, physical health and energy, and much more. (Disclosure: The link below is an affiliate link. If you click through & make a purchase I will earn a commission. I link to it because of its quality and helpfulness; not merely for possible commissions.)
Click to learn more about Project Gratitude
Credit: The nacre seashell representing this post is a derivative work of an original Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons image created by the user Chris 73 and is freely available at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:NautilusCutawayLogarithmicSpiral.jpg under the creative commons cc-by-sa 3.0 license.
