I Could Care Less! Really?

Posted on by Rob Nelson

In my experience, healthier relationships and inner-peace are often gained by caring less about other people. It’s actually a key issue in so many sessions I do, and honestly, I never dreamed I’d have a job helping people be less caring!

Maybe that sounds too crazy to believe, but what ‘caring less’ really means is stop taking things personally. Specifically, what other people might think or feel about us, or about what we’re doing.

Let me give you an absurd example.

Walking down a city street you see a deranged lunatic yelling at a phone pole. Suddenly he notices you, wheels around and begins screaming that you killed JFK! You’re the one who did it!

 I imagine that getting safely away from this angry, unpleasant person would be a top priority, but would you be inclined to take his words personally? Hopefully not! That should be nearly impossible, right? Especially if you were a young child in 1963 or perhaps hadn’t even been born yet!

You wouldn’t be second guessing yourself: “Oh my gosh, did I kill JFK? I don’t seem to remember that, but he seemed so sure of it!”
No, it would be perfectly clear that that guy was raving mad and projecting some sort of weird fantasy onto you.

If there was a Volume Knob somewhere, for how much you cared about his words, ideally it would be turned to zero. Right?

The problem is, for many of us, our Volume Knob is stuck on 10, no matter what. Especially when it comes to how other people regard us. And not just the people we’re close to. We may be giving total strangers this “What will people think?!” kind of authority to judge us.

There are serious problems with this! Our self-esteem becomes conditional on external feedback and we may feel obliged to people please. We might lose sight of our own authentic inner-direction while attempting to second guess what will garner other peoples’ approval. This makes us vulnerable to advertisers and also narcissists, who see us as easy prey.

Having our Volume Knob stuck on 10 puts us at serious risk of losing ourselves. Healthy boundaries are next to impossible.

Many people have no idea they have this Volume Knob, much less that it’s adjustable. Instead, they imagine it’s more like an on/off switch. Either they care (too much) or not at all. And who wants to be some sort of uncaring, heartless sociopath? No thank you!

Happily, this is not the case at all. Even if our Volume Knob is rusted stuck on 10, EFT tapping, especially with a skilled practitioner, can break things loose in short order. And the change can be profound.

If someone in your life is having a bad day and being short tempered, realizing this has nothing much to do with you, really, can be hugely liberating. There’s no need for defensiveness! Your relief may open you up to new ways of responding, maybe even setting boundaries.

Not taking their bad mood personally might lead to a healthier, more fulfilling relationship.

Ideally, instead of one generic stuck-on-ten setting, we’d have adjustable Volume Knobs for each person in our life. And for strangers and the general public, how about a nice, low default setting? Like maybe a 1 or a 2?

Perhaps the Knobs could be adjusted situationally as well. We might want to crank it up a bit for that job interview or first date. But maybe not so high that we’re nervous and lose our center.

Even without outrageous accusations from raving lunatics, sometimes the people we’re closest to might project stuff onto us. Maybe subconsciously we’re standing in for someone from childhood, or an old boss or evil ex.

 I suppose we all do this at times, but it’s not much fun to be on the receiving end of a projection. Having the emotional freedom to not take it personally can be life changing. In my experience, this is a great thing to tap on!

Copyright Rob Nelson 2023


Interested in working with Rob?  Click here for details

Getting Unstuck from Self-Inflicted Limitations

Posted on by Rob Nelson

One of the stranger issues I encounter, working with clients, comes from making a kind of vow, usually in childhood.  Unlike so many other blocks to freedom, this one is self-imposed.  They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and that’s certainly what’s behind this sort of vow.

It all starts with encountering an unpleasant person. It might be a parent, sibling, teacher or relative, just about anyone we were forced to endure, long enough for them to make a strong, negative impression on us.

For us, this person embodies some sort of offensive, off-putting characteristic.  We just can’t stand them – they’re awful! And so, we make a vow to never ever be like them. 

That’s not such a bad idea, right?  The problem is, the younger we are, the more we tend to see things in black and white, absolute terms.  In other words, we’re likely to take an all-or-nothing approach which, combined with the emotional intensity behind the vow, can set us up for some serious limitations.

Years ago, I coined this psychological equation: 180 degrees from dysfunction is equal and opposite dysfunction. And that’s what we’re signing up for – a polarization with some negative quality, characteristic or behavior.

If we’re reacting to someone who is aggressive, we’re apt to become a human door mat. If the person we can’t stand is selfish, greedy or stingy, we might become over-giving, generous to a fault, compulsively spending and ending up in debt. 

A rejection of arrogance might lead to intense self-deprecation.  We can’t take a compliment, give others credit for our own work and end up getting passed over for promotions.

Having to endure someone pathetically needy, our childhood vow might lead to extreme independence, refusing to ask for or receive help from anyone, ever.

Another problem is that our strong negative emotional charge gives the polarity a kind of magnetic charge. Whatever the issue is, we end up drawing unwanted people and situations into our life, experiencing both ends of the polarization over and over. It can be maddening!

This is where EFT tapping can really shine. Remember, the ‘F’ in EFT stands for Freedom, and in this case that translates to the whole thing becoming a non-issue. Once the emotional charge is tapped away, it just stops showing up in our life. What a relief.
Here are a few ideas for making that happen.

First of all, not all problems share this dynamic. If you’ve been dealing with some long-standing issue, is there a polarization? For example, if you’ve struggled to make enough money (or keep it) do you have a strong aversion to greed? If so, is there a person who exemplified that quality when you were little? 

That’s usually an easy question to answer: “Oh yeah, my uncle Pete was a total snob.  I hated how he treated dad, just because he had a nicer house and car.”  That sort of thing.

If you’re a bit more shy and reserved than you’d like, are you seriously repelled by loud, brash self-important people? Was there an avatar of arrogance you had to put up with when you were little?

Sometimes there might have been an Avatar for both ends of the pole, and as children we thought we had to choose between them: I can either be a happy-go-lucky spendthrift like dad, or a penny-pinching worrier like mom.  If there was no healthy alternative being demonstrated, it can seem like a binary choice.

It's fascinating to me that even the most brilliant adults can be trapped in this sort of childish perspective.  It’s black and white, on or off, with no middle ground.  As a child, the choice was obvious, but now we’re stuck with it.  That is, until we become consciously aware of what’s going on.

Awareness though, isn’t always enough to release our vow. We may still be stuck with the original negative emotional charge we felt toward the person who go the ball rolling for us. And, of course, that’s where tapping comes in.  We can validate our Younger Self’s feelings of disgust, anger, fear or shame, while tapping away the intensity as close to zero as we can.

Once we’ve de-polarized whatever issue was plaguing us, we’re now free to explore the healthy middle ground. The faux choice between aggressiveness and being a wimp, for example, resolves into assertiveness and good boundaries! In that middle ground we can enjoy both generosity and the security of having savings.

Sometimes, to loosen up the polarization, I suggest that my client take a few little steps in the direction of the person they rejected so hard. I reassure them: “Don’t worry, you’ll never get there!  In fact, you could run full-tilt for weeks on end and never even get halfway. It’s safe for you to be a tiny bit more selfish or arrogant or aggressive or thoughtless or needy or whatever it is.  You just need a tiny, homeopathic dose.”

Tapping away the self-inflicted limitation of a childhood vow gives us a wonderful new dose of freedom.  In a sense, we’re swapping out being ‘good’ for being more whole and authentic. Amazingly, with EFT, it’s not that hard to do!

Copyright Rob Nelson 2023


Interested in working with Rob?  Click here for details

Embracing Sovereignty

Posted on by Rob Nelson

As children we have a powerful need to believe in the goodness of our parents.

If you think about how helpless we are as infants and small children, this just makes sense. As children, our mom and dad are pretty much our whole world.  Not only that, they become our templates for all men and women. Our family becomes our template for the world; for how life works.

If we start to realize that mom and/or dad really aren’t very good, or that they’re actually bad people, our world becomes overwhelmingly terrifying and chaotic. 

Our need to deny such a realization is equally overwhelming, and requires misplaced responsibility. Whatever bad thing may be happening, it has to be our fault. The thinking goes: If only I was a better kid, dad wouldn’t be so angry. Mom wouldn’t be so cold and distant.

The Need for Control

This isn’t just childish self-centeredness, it’s a desperate attempt to feel some semblance of control. If it’s my fault, there’s at least some hope. Maybe I can change.  Maybe I can figure out what I did wrong. Or change what’s wrong with me.  Maybe then dad won’t be so mean.  Maybe then mom will stop drinking and we’ll have a happy family.

Except, of course, that none of this is true. Mom and dad were messed up long before their kids showed up. It’s pretty safe to say, it’s never the child’s fault, really, even if they begin acting out.

Ironically though, the worst parents will actively blame and shame their children, essentially for being born, heavily reinforcing these mistaken beliefs. What a nightmare.

As we get older, we may begin making excuses for our parent’s bad behavior. It’s just another way to shield ourselves from the frightening reality that maybe they actually suck. Understanding, empathy and compassion are generally wonderful things, but not in service to a delusion. Not at the expense of our own self-esteem.

Even if our parents were pretty much awesome, no parent is perfect. At some point they messed up. It’s inevitable. And yet we’re still hardwired for deciding it was our fault. Mom and dad have to be okay. At least when we’re little.

Here’s the thing: There are hidden costs to keeping our parents up on a pedestal.

What’s the Harm?

Aside from the inadvertent harm to our self-worth, the ‘pedestalization’ of our parents may actually get in the way of our own transition into adulthood, hampering the realization of our own sovereignty.

As children we literally ‘look up’ to our parents, and perhaps we get into the habit. As we go through life, many of us look up to anyone who seems ‘bigger’ than us. People who have more status, money, power or fame; who are better looking, more clever, accomplished, funny or athletic than us – we tend to look up to them, right?

That’s a problem if we’ve never graduated from our childish perspective and looking up automatically feels like we’re inferior. Instead of admiring a specific skill or attribute, we may believe that ‘bigger’ person is just better than us. 

But no one is better than you at being you.

As a self-aware human being, you have your own individual spark of Divinity within you. You are one with God and your life has incredible significance.  You are here on Earth to be you and no one else can do that job. No one is above you.

If we still have mom and/or dad up on a pedestal though, it’s nearly impossible to see ourselves this way, as sovereign equals. If they’re up there, then we’re down here. We’ve assigned ourselves a lower status, and that makes it all too easy to transfer a higher status onto other would-be authorities. Not good!

False Idols

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there’s no shortage of people who LOVE being looked up to: Gurus, experts, authorities, celebrities, influencers, business and political leaders, narcissists. They adore it, much like a junkie adores his heroin.

Can you see how keeping our parents up on a pedestal might make us more susceptible to being ruled over and exploited? Many people seem stuck in a childlike state – they actually want someone to tell them what to do. They need to believe that authorities have their best interests at heart, and this creates an almost militant gullibility.

An absolute refusal to “question authority,” to recognize hypocrisy (or even betrayal) on the part of those we’ve looked up and trusted is literally infantile, going right back to those helpless feelings of being very small. Not a healthy space to hang out in.

Fear of losing one’s idols is like cognitive dissonance on steroids, sometimes provoking outrage toward anyone trying to provide a reality check, not unlike the “don’t you dare say anything bad about my mommy” rage a young child might exhibit. Only instead of mommy, it might be a politician, celebrity or television personality.

Reality Check with a Side of Tapping

As part of my strange and wonderful career, I’m often in the position of offering just such a parental reality check for my clients. I’ve even coined a term for it: “Throwing mom/dad under the bus.” I do point out that it’s only temporary – just long enough for my client to stop blaming themselves for their parent’s bad behavior.

Happily, EFT tapping makes the whole process much easier and less scary.

The real point of all this is to undo the mistaken decisions of our Younger Selves: that things were bad because we’re unworthy, unlovable, bad, too demanding, selfish, stupid, ugly, dirty or whatever. 

I believe many of us go through life unconsciously trying to prove our parents were okay, that we deserved what we go. We do this by endlessly demonstrating how messed up we are and ruining our own lives. It’s absolutely tragic.

It seems that we can’t really forgive someone unless we admit there’s something to forgive. Hence, throwing mom/dad under the bus.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not anti-parent!  It’s a tough and often thankless job. And even those of us who make a solid effort to do right by our kids still face the subconscious pressure to reenact whatever abuse we experienced from our own parents. Despite our best efforts, no one seems to come through childhood unscathed, and certainly none of us belong up on a pedestal.

At this point in history, I believe the world needs us to graduate into true adulthood, to show our would-be rulers the door, to step into authority for our own lives, and reclaim our individual sovereignty.

Part of that is seeing our parents as real people who were playing a role for us, removing their status as template for all people. Allowing ourselves to take an honest look at how they messed us up allows us to heal, ideally finding an honest place of forgiveness and even gratitude for it all.

Copyright Rob Nelson 2023


Interested in working with Rob?  Click here for details

Releasing Grief – Four Reasons We Can’t Let Go

Posted on by Rob Nelson

When someone we love dies, it’s natural to feel grief, sadness and loss. Sometimes these emotions are so overwhelming that our normal life has to pause. For those of us inclined to repress our feelings, grief can be a real struggle, but it’s something we really need to go through, ideally integrating our loss and achieving a deeper and more peaceful awareness of life.

But that’s the result of going through our grief and coming out the other side. Sometimes we just get stuck in all the suffering.

Working with clients on this issue, I’ve noticed four main reasons people get trapped with their grief – two are emotional and two stem from limiting beliefs. Luckily all four can be tapped away, allowing one’s grief to run its course.

In no particular order, here are the four problems:

Resentment or Anger
Once someone has died, it's a bit late to tell them off. We’re basically stuck with these feelings, especially since we’re not supposed to “speak ill of the dead.”  

Unfortunately, grief doesn’t really cancel out anger, resentment or bitterness. Instead, those unresolved feelings contaminate our grief, keeping us stuck in it. 

Sometimes the person who’s died treated us harshly and never apologized. I’ve worked with clients who were hoping for a deathbed apology, and never got it. Or our dearly departed left their affairs in disarray and the whole mess got dropped in our lap to sort out. One young woman spent years caring for her ailing father. He knew he was on his way out, but neglected to give her the passwords to his various accounts until it was too late.

Her anger was totally understandable, but unbearable for her.

Another, more primal anger can come from feeling abandoned: “How could you do this to me?”  “How could you leave me here all alone?” Feelings of betrayal, that may seem childish and unacceptable, can really get in the way! Lucky for us, just a few rounds of tapping while speaking the ‘unspeakable’ tends to work wonders in letting irritation, resentment, anger and even bitterness go.

Guilt
Guilt can be another grief showstopper. We might feel bad about something we did that genuinely hurt our loved one. Or perhaps we’d let the relationship slide a bit, or just weren’t there for them at the end. Whatever it is, it’s too late now to apologize and try to make things right.

Much like resentment, guilt seems to contaminate our grief, preventing it from moving through us. 

From my point of view, even if there really is some legitimate reason to feel guilty, feeling bad about ourselves doesn’t help our dearly departed. In fact, it benefits no one.

I believe the best we can do, for ourselves and everyone else in our lives, is to forgive ourselves, so that our grief can finally run its course. Then perhaps we can live a better life going forward.  EFT tapping can really help here, whether it’s forgiving ourselves or forgiving the person who died.

Fear of Losing Connection 
Some people hold a very unhelpful belief that letting go of their grief means forgetting about their loved one. The pain and suffering of grief seems necessary to stay connected with their loved one. They imagine that letting go of grief means letting go of their memories. They’ll just drift away into forgetfulness, and there’s NO WAY they’re going to let that happen!

I suppose that’s kind of heroic, in a way. Or would be, if the belief was actually true.
It’s totally not.

More than likely, we have some really good memories of our dearly departed. Maybe an entire bank of them. These are rightfully ours.  They belong to us and are important for keeping the person alive in our hearts.

Fixating on their death actually makes it more difficult to access the good and happy memories. all of our good memories. Our pain prevents us from thinking of them with pleasure, and so our connection with our loved one is actually diminished.  Not good!

In tapping with a client, I’ll often use the reframe: “When I think about ____, I’d love to remember her with pleasure, instead of all this pain.” 

“Even though I have this fear, that letting go of my painful grief means I’ll lose my connection with _____, I give myself permission to remember all of the good times we’ve had”

Fear of Dishonoring Our Loved One
The idea here is that our painful grief proves how important our loved one was to us. It’s a sort of testimony to how much we care.

On the surface, this belief may seem legitimate, especially in the early stages of our grief. So, letting go of our grief must mean we really don’t care.  It’s no big deal to us. And that’s such an appalling thought that we can get stuck.

I’m not sure how anyone decides how long is ‘too long,’ but at some point, hasn’t it gone on long enough?  Endlessly suffering to prove how much we care eventually leads to neglecting ourselves and the people around us.

And honestly, who are we trying to impress anyway? Who is it we need to prove our love to this way?
I think the answer is, or should be, no one.

For my clients who do get stuck this way, we’ll tap on the fact that their loved one would never want them to go on suffering. To the contrary, that’s the last thing they’d ever want.

Grief as a Barrier
According to Michael Newton’s Journey of Souls, our loved ones often try to communicate with us after their death. They want to let us know they’re okay, but find our grief to be an impenetrable barrier. It’s as though we’re using our free will to suffer, and no one is allowed to interfere. 

In my own experience, it’s hard to go on missing someone when we’re truly aware of their presence. Especially if that comes with some level of communication or communion. Sure, we may miss their physical presence in our life. Absolutely.
But knowing they’re still around can be tremendously comforting.

For me, restoring connection with our loved one is probably the greatest reason to tap away blocks to releasing our grief.

Copyright Rob Nelson 2023


Interested in working with Rob?  Click here for details

EFT for the Cold and Flu Season

Posted on by Rob Nelson

Catching a cold really sucks and getting the flu is a total nightmare. Can EFT be effective against these maladies? Preventing them or even chasing them off once we’re “coming down with a bug”? Definitely worth a shot!

Ounce of Prevention
Forgive me for telling you stuff you probably already know, but just in case you don’t…

Cold and flu germs really have only three portals into your body – mouth, nose & ears.  Our own hands are the most likely delivery system, so hand washing (somewhat short of OCD levels) is obviously a good habit.  Germs really hate warm soapy water.

But what if you’re around sick people, sneezing and coughing, and sending the germs airborne? Are you doomed?  Not really – it takes three days or so for the nasties to get a foothold and build enough momentum to make you sick. And three days is plenty of time to wipe ‘em out.

Warm salt water – a neti-pot for the sinuses and gargling and mouth wash for the throat can do the trick. And I lay down and put a few drops of hydrogen peroxide in each ear if I’m feeling funky.

Of course, drinking hot tea (especially sans milk and sugar) helps flush any unwelcome guests down to the germ destroying inferno that is your stomach. Making this a regular habit just might keep you healthy through the season.  Or not.

Let’s look at four other contributing Sick factors where EFT can really make a difference. 

Sugar
From Halloween treats to pumpkin pie and Christmas candy, sugar seems to be an integral part of our cold weather celebrations. Aside from the obvious problems around gaining weight, sugar has a sneaky way of temporarily suppressing your immune system, making you way more susceptible to whatever germs are going around.

This is an area where EFT really shines. As irresistible as sweets may be, simple tapping can dramatically curb our cravings - often to the point where we simply don’t want them anymore. No will power required. Even very basic tapping can be surprisingly effective:

“Even though I have this craving for that candy cane/coffee cake/chocolate Santa/lemon meringue pie, I deeply love and completely accept myself”.  If you haven’t learned tapping yet, here’s a link to my free EFT crash course.

Sadness
Here’s a quote I like: ‘The way to prevent illness is to inhabit your body’. Not sure who said that, but it seems spot on to me.

All of us have our ups and downs, right? But sometimes we can really hit bottom and get a bit stuck there.  If our feeling is “get me the hell out of here” we might be checking out of our body on an energetic level. Nature abhors a vacuum, so we seem to be making room for other life forms to move in – nasty opportunistic ones like viruses.


Every time I’ve ever had a devastating flu, it followed this sort of ‘beam me up Scotty’ kind of emotional dip.  It may be inevitable, going through bouts of sadness, but thanks to EFT we can beam ourselves up – hey, you can be our own Scotty!

If you’re feeling really down, it’s very helpful to have a tapping buddy, or work with a practitioner. But even just tapping alone on feeling glum can really shift things.

“Even though I have this sadness, even though I’m feeling lonely and discouraged, I deeply love and completely accept myself….”
My favorite trick here is to use a timer. Just set it for 5 or 10 minutes and keep tapping until it dings!

Stress
Do you get stressed out by the holidays? You’re in good company if you do.

Feelings of obligation and pressure, not to mention actual fatigue, can drain all the joy out of shopping, preparing a feast, doing the Christmas tree, you name it. For some of us financial anxiety gets thrown into the mix – we’re going to start off the New Year with a whopping credit card bill. Yikes.

Family gatherings can feel like a mine field of dangerous unresolved tensions. Or on the flip side, a lack of family and friends can bring on intense loneliness and feelings of missing out.

Stress is definitely NOT good for our health. The closer we edge toward Fight or Flight; the more energy gets re-allocated from our immune system to our arms & legs. This really does make it easier to get sick.

My EFT remedy for stress is to make a bullet list of all your big stressors, then tap on them one at a time.  No need to worry about finding solutions – just focus on the negative feelings and get the intensity level as close to zero as possible.

“Even though there’s way too much to do and I feel so run down but everyone is counting on me to make Christmas dinner and it’s just going to be a mob scene at the store and it’s so dark out and I’m going to have to listen to Uncle Bob’s political jokes and keep my mouth shut and I feel guilty for wanting to tell them all to go to hell…I deeply love and completely accept myself!”

Symptoms
Prevention is best, but what if you’ve already come down with a cold or flu?  All is not lost – it’s time to tap on your symptoms.  Or if you’re really under the weather, perhaps get someone to tap on you!

It’s best to tap on each symptom one by one, headache, fever, chills, sore throat, stuffy sinuses, stomach pain, achy muscles, diarrhea. Start with your worst symptom.

Rate the intensity on our zero to ten scale and try to tap it down to zero, or as close as you can get.  If you’re not sure what to say, try complaining!  You feel awful, so go to town with it.

And while you’re at it, check for fear – one of the sneakiest symptoms. Fear of getting worse, of never getting better, fear of missing out, or letting someone down, of losing income or getting fired for too much sick time, that people will resent you, or fear of actually dying! Whatever fears you might have, tap them away!

When it comes to tapping on fear it’s a good idea to exaggerate to the point of absurdity. Really go for the jugular!

“Even though I ache all over and I’m so scared that I’m coming down with the flu and I’ll be in bed for a week, and I’ll miss too much work and I’ll probably lose my job and end up living on the street and it’s so cold out I’ll die of exposure and by the time I’m well enough to go shopping all the stores will be cleaned out and I won’t have good presents for anyone, I forgive myself for anything I might have done to bring this about – all that chocolate cake I ate Saturday night, letting myself get chilled on that walk in the park, I still choose to deeply love and completely accept myself…”

In Conclusion
Getting sick is NOT inevitable. I hope that you sail through the so-called “Cold and Flu Season” in vibrant health. Dust off that neti-pot, develop a mild hand washing compulsion and enjoy some good, creative tapping here and there – you’ve got it covered.

Copyright Rob Nelson 2019

On the Road to Girona

Posted on by Rob Nelson

Back in March 2018 my wife and I were lucky enough to visit Spain. After 4 incredible days in Barcelona, we’d planned to rent a car and head north, visiting some glorious medieval villages. Our first stop was about an hour up the road, the Old Jewish Quarter in Girona.

We paid a bit extra for a car with GPS, voiced by a polite but rather firm English woman who guided us out of the narrow twisting lanes of the Gracia neighborhood in Barcelona and out onto the big, modern Spanish freeway heading north. We decided to call her Gwendolyn and were very grateful for her help.

About 20 kilometers south of Girona though, our trust in Gwendolyn was put to the test. She was quite insistent that we take the next exit, despite very clear road signs instructing us to keep going on the freeway. That was weird.

But I had faith in Gwendolyn and took her recommended exit. We were suddenly on a very busy and rather narrow four lane highway, crammed with big trucks. We began heading east, away from the coast and up into the hills. The heavy traffic and curving road spiked our stress level and after a few close calls we took a sketchy looking exit to try and get our bearings.

After driving on this blasted road for nearly half an hour, Gwendolyn told us Girona was a mere hour and 40 minutes away! The screen showed us on a great looping detour up into the mountains. Yikes! Clearly there was some crazy mistake. Ignoring Gwen’s protests, we headed back the way we’d come to get back on the actual freeway.

​Sure enough, once we got back on the freeway it was about 20 more minutes to Girona. We’d just wasted an entire hour! To make matters worse, we couldn’t figure out how to get Gwendolyn to shut the hell up without turning off the GPS entirely. This was a big deal because she kept insisting we take each and every exit on the way to Girona, even though they clearly led off into the empty countryside.

I’m sorry to say that Gwendolyn’s increasingly unwelcome and seemingly psychotic travel advice provoked some rather coarse language on my part. At first this may have shocked my poor stressed out wife, but soon enough she joined right in cursing poor Gwen.

Girona was amazing. The Old Jewish Quarter is absolutely worth a visit. But I think we were both a bit haunted by the mystery of faithless Gwendolyn. Was she possessed or what? Should we try and find some Holy Water? Before continuing our journey north, we decided to investigate.

Delving deep into the menus of the GPS – layer upon layer of settings, we found the simple but idiotic answer. An option to AVOID TOLL ROADS had been chosen by someone for some reason at some point. And that big beautiful “freeway” was in fact a toll road – we’d paid a €7 toll just a few kilometers south of Girona. Lovely Gwendolyn was just trying to be helpful after all.

If we hadn’t turned around, that one hidden setting meant we would have burned an extra €20 or more in petrol and cost us a few precious hours of sightseeing. Not cool!

Can you guess where I’m going with this?

How many of us have crazy default settings we’re completely unaware of? We’re trying so hard to reach our destination, but our own inner-Gwendolyn sends us off on a wild goose chase.  When our life goes off the rails it’s tempting to blame everyone and everything in sight. But honestly, it’s probably some messed up default setting in our programming.

You might say that all of us are born and raised in the backseat of our own car. Our folks are driving. They set the course, put it on cruise control and even pre-set the stations on the radio buttons. By the time we climb into the driver’s seat and take the wheel, our lives are pretty much on autopilot.

It’s important to realize this! We can change our own settings – if we know they’re there. If we know to go looking for them. It isn’t even all that hard, really. A lot of what I do with clients is really helping them take their life off autopilot.

​So what’s your own Girona? What sort of life are you steering for? And what settings, programs, vows or beliefs might be sending you off in the wrong direction?

copyright 2018 Rob Nelson

Interested in working with Rob? Click here for details

​

Bitcoin, Tesla and EFT?

Posted on by Rob Nelson
EFT as Disruptive Technology

I love my electric car, and it's not even a Tesla.  We just plug it in at night. No gas stations for us!  There's almost zero maintenance since it's so much simpler than a gas car.  And it's WAY more fun to drive.  Even on “eco-mode” the acceleration beats any ICE car off the line. Our Nissan Leaf is a freaking race car disguised as a 4 door hatchback.

Best of all though, electric cars are a “disruptive technology.”  Along with the solar, wind and new advancements in battery storage, they’re undermining the dirty fossil fuel industry that has had a literal death grip on global politics and industry.

Prices have dropped so low and so quickly, we may be able to leave enough oil, coal and gas in the ground that we might actually make it!  Bad news if you’re Exxon Mobile.  Great news for the rest of the planet.

Many inventions might be called a “breakthrough technology” without disrupting any existing entrenched power structures.  Flush toilets for example, had an incredible impact on society but weren’t up against the powerful chamber pot industry.  

EFT is definitely a breakthrough technology, no question about that.  It’s easily learned and can reliably produce healing miracles. EFT liberates human potential by empowering radical improvements in one’s personal experience of life.

But is EFT a “disruptive technology”?  And if so, who or what is being disrupted?  Just off the top of my head, I can think of at least four powerful socio-economic power structures potentially threatened by EFT:

Big Pharma The management of emotional problems through medication has become a multi-billion dollar industry. Oddly enough, there seem to be at least as many depressed and/or stressed out people as ever. Worse still, properly prescribed medications have become one of the leading causes of death in developed nations.EFT has the potential to drastically change how society deals with stress, anxiety and depression by actually resolving it rather than just treating symptoms. And of course a host of diseases and conditions have been healed or at least improved by tapping.

Advertising Most advertising works by provoking, expanding and exploiting our insecurities, low self-esteem, and fear of missing out. In a nutshell, we must compensate for our inadequacies by purchasing the product on offer. Problem solved. EFT repairs damage to our self-concept, making us less susceptible to this sort of scam. We don’t need to buy stuff anymore to try and be okay if we already feel pretty good.

The Weight Loss Industry Estimated at $60+ billion dollars, you might say that the weight-loss industry itself is obese. Its steady growth over the decades has somehow paralleled the increasing percentage of overweight people. Clearly whatever’s being peddled doesn’t work very well. EFT does work. It has the potential to drastically reduce emotional overeating along with the shame-based obsession with dieting that plagues so many people.

Traditional Psychotherapy Many therapists have embraced and adopted EFT, but the vast majority have not. Consider how galling EFT might seem – a relatively brief and inexpensive training can empower EFT practitioners with no formal counseling or psychology background to be astonishingly effective, outperforming even experienced talk therapists who likely invested thousands of hours and tens of thousands of dollars in their degrees and licensure.  It’s no fun being disrupted! But considering the epidemic levels of stress and trauma in our society, it can’t happen quickly enough for me.

Rapid adoption is what makes a new technology truly ‘disruptive’.  So many people jump on the bandwagon so quickly that it just steamrollers the existing industry.  It took only ten years for cell phones to reach 100% adoption rates in the US and Europe.  Ten more years to take over the world.

For the most part “disruptive technologies” are liberating.  They unleash creativity and expression, economic opportunity and human potential.  In part because the corporate and political power structures being disrupted have consolidated control by stifling competition and innovation.

Of course the most obvious modern example is the Internet which simply eliminated the ‘gate keepers’ controlling information and finance.  Media networks, publishing houses, magazine and newspaper editors, universities and ‘think tanks’ have all lost their monopoly.  We can do our own research with a few clicks and there are hundreds of thousands of independent teachers, journalists and ‘thought leaders’ sharing their work on open channels.

Entrepreneurs are empowered to start businesses or plug into online retail systems like Ebay or Amazon.  Almost anyone can sell almost anything to just about anyone.  Your little website can compete with Walmart.

In a parallel development “cryptocurrencies” like Bitcoin and Ethereum are beginning to undermine the dangerous power of central banks. They may provide an alternative to the boom and bust cycles of fiat currency, hyperinflation and seemingly inevitable global economic meltdowns.

Of course not all disruptive technologies are beneficial. Gunpowder for example! And some, like GMOs may actually disrupt the delicate balance of nature. Not to mention the traditional economics of indigenous farming. Not good!

EFT & Bitcoin

To be honest, some emerging disruptive technologies really freak me out. I can’t seem to get my head around ‘autonomous vehicles’ for example. And 3D printing and robotics seem likely to put everyone out of a job. Throw Artificial Intelligence into the mix and things could get really scary really fast. Seriously! Do we have the wisdom, as a species, to handle this stuff?

That’s where EFT comes into the picture. All of the other ‘disruptive technologies’ are aimed at changing our external circumstances. EFT changes our internal environment, releasing the hold of the past, discharging stuck emotions, and replacing negative limiting beliefs.By removing our triggers, EFT empowers us to live more in the moment, to have agency, to be responsive instead of reactive. In my own practice I see a universal increase in compassion for others. And isn’t this precisely what humanity needs? ASAP?

The rate of adoption for EFT is still too low to pose any real economic threat to the four power structures mentioned above.  We’re still flying under the radar, so to speak.  And perhaps that’s for the best for now.  Aside from the organized scrubbing of positive Wikipedia edits, something that EFT shares with most other ‘alternative’ healing modalities, there’s been very little active suppression or sabotage so far.

My hope is that we’re rapidly approaching a kind of critical mass in awareness and adoption of EFT will accelerate across the globe, too fast for any real resistance – the way were seeing it go with solar energy and electric cars.  I’m fairly sure this is already underway with EFT and will only continue.  And that's because it works!

Perhaps we’ll actually survive as a species!  We’ll develop the necessary emotional health just in time to handle these other powerful emerging technologies.  To quote H.G. Wells “History is a race between education and catastrophe.”  Feeling anxious about that race?  Maybe we’d better tap on that!

copyright 2017 Rob Nelson

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