Aug 11, 2008

Change Your Mind, Change Your Game

On Saturday Night Live a few years ago, there was a character named Stuart Smalley, played by Al Franken, who closed his skit each time with the affirmations, "I'm good enough. I'm smart enough and gosh darn it, people like me!" The audience would ripple with laughter.

Although all the success books talk about using affirmations to increase positive thinking, most of us don't follow through with the standard protocol needed to make affirmations work. Why? I suspect that there are a couple of reasons; 1) because most people don't know how to create proper affirmations and 2) there is a natural resistance that makes practicing affirmations feel uncomfortable or downright ridiculous. No one wants to continue doing something that makes them uncomfortable. In other words we mentally resist changing how we think of ourselves and what's possible in our lives. Old habits die hard and they put up a fight first!

As a therapist, I've not been a fan of affirmations because my clients were heavily resistant to doing them. It was hard for me to "sell" them on the ideas because I was ambivalent about them myself until I learned EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique). For those of you who've read my column regularly, you know that EFT is a form of psychological acupressure, used to remove negative emotional states, such as fear, anxiety, anger, shame and guilt. I think of it as an "erasure" for negative feelings, stress and tension.

One of the things that EFT does is remove psychological resistance to new ideas, so I decided to try an experiment. I wanted to test to see if I could use EFT to "install" positive beliefs using affirmations. As with many techniques I recommend to clients, I try them out myself first. So I made a list of about 20 affirmations that I didn't currently believe. I also threw in a few that I never thought I'd believe, like, "Large sums of money come to me quickly and easily." I recorded all of these affirmations and burned a CD, so I could play them in the car. As I began repeating the affirmations, I used the EFT tapping to remove any psychological resistance to accepting the positive thoughts.

Now, here's where it gets wild. Within only a few weeks of occasional use of the CD and EFT combination, I noticed that I truly accepted about 85% of the new beliefs. That was amazing to me. And, it gets better! Things started to manifest.

Out of the blue, several thousand dollars came to me in the form of an unexpected inheritance and a couple of refund checks from insurance carriers. This past spring I signed a contract with a single client in my other business for twice the money that I usually make in an entire year from all my clients in that business. Although these results seem miraculous, this is what is predicted to happen when you change your thoughts and expectations about what is possible. My test was a huge success.

Here's the most recent experiment I tried using EFT to create positive expectations and positive results. I've never been on a golf course in my life and only held a golf club in my hand once before -- on a putt-putt golf course. Last weekend I was at a networking meeting that combined a luncheon and a golf lesson afterwards. Since I knew the power of EFT to assist athletes improve their performance in almost any sport, I decided to do alittle EFT tapping before my golf lesson. I focused on removing my nervousness and neutralized the fear that I wouldn't be able to chip well and would end up looking like a fool.

After the pro showed me how to hold the club, take my stance, address the ball and follow through to chip from the rough onto the green, I started chipping. No, lie....3 balls hit the flag. The majority of the rest were within 6 inches of the cup. Not having golfed before, I watched the shots and listened to the comments of those players who did. I heard a flurry of frustrations, comments about the club and the effects of the heat on their concentration. Their shots were all over the place.

In my mind, I was having a great time because after each shot, I thought, "that was good. The next will be better." I'd correct my stance and swing and off we'd go. Before I used the EFT I wanted just to avoid embarrassment. Afterwards I was thinking, "what a fun game!" and looking forward to my next lesson. That was another miracle to me. I am eager to work with other athletes using EFT to improve their mental game.

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Annette Vaillancourt, Ph.D. - Corporate Trainer and Motivational Speaker
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