Annie and I allowed ourselves to face the debilitating beliefs we had about ourselves, money, and business. Here’s what happened.
How green your garden grows, without all those weeds!
Not too long ago, my buddy Annie and I got together on zoom, and did some inside work on our relationships with money.
Hahaha — no, we weren’t going to get a divorce from money! Quite the opposite, in fact, since we had both already been at some distance to the green stuff for most of our lives. We wanted to attract and be stewards of more of it.
Neither of us is a spring chicken, so we decided it was about time we added a little prosperity gravy on an otherwise very thin serving in life.
I suggested that we pretend that we both had hundreds of thousands of followers on medium. Because I’m fascinated with those who have 10K, 100K, even 300K followers. What’s that like?
So we thought about it, and came up with these simple questions.
What would it be like to have thousands of followers?
What would it feel like?
Who would they be?
What on earth would we write that they’d be interested in reading?
What would they be purchasing from us?
What kind of personal and business relationships could we engender from these tons of followers?
What was an estimated dollar amount we’d like to see appear in our bank accounts?
What would we do with all that extra income?
If you are familiar with EFT/tapping, the Emotional Freedom Techniques, you’ll know what we did next.
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If you are not familiar with EFT/tapping, go here, and take yourself through this very short, free demo: EFTinEveryHome.com. Then come on back and keep reading, to see what we did. OK?
What is tapping?
It’s a simple, easy, fast system that allows the tapper to finally face and transform fears, beliefs, traumas and destructive thinking at a profound, fundamental level. It is not a distraction mechanism, as some claim. Nope — it helps you clear old crappy beliefs and habits so you can think straight again.
When you are done tapping on an issue, in most cases you are no longer feeling the pain or upset, and the memory of the event or belief is still there but has zero effect on you anymore. What you were once freaked out by is no longer a threat, and even can become a source of inner power.
Of course nothing is perfect, and there certainly are cases where tapping is incomplete or ineffective. I’m not saying it’s a panacea. But in my experience as a practitioner/trainer/coach, it works magnificently a good 90% of the time.
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So Annie and I set about tapping on our unwanted and unhelpful beliefs, thoughts and habits we had about money, our work, and our businesses.
We listed a bunch of fears and beliefs: stuff we were afraid of, angry about, or felt stuck in. Habits we had around money, and how hard it was being entrepreneurs. Then we tapped, and transformed them into useful ones.
Here’s an example of a few of the fears and thoughts we addressed:
I’m afraid I’ll fail
I’m afraid of success!
I feel unworthy, undeserving
I’m scared of being seen
I’m afraid no one will ever see me or the value I provide
What if people laugh at me?
No one wants my work
No one reads my articles
No one wants my art
My dad treated me like a slave
My dad made fun of me
I’m just a woman, I have no power or worth
My mother opted to be unconscious and safe and wanted me to do the same
I’ll never have hundreds, much less thousands of followers
Me? Make more than what is just enough? Snort!
… and more.
Do those ideas make you squirm?
They sure did me! Annie and I were wriggling in our chairs! She’s in NY, I’m in California, and yet it seemed like steam was filling up the zoom space as we faced the fears and beliefs together!
Can you see how debilitating having beliefs and thoughts like those sneaking around in the back of your mind can be? They were all subconscious thoughts and beliefs that sabotaged us at every turn without our knowing.
Man, it gets so tiring to work really hard at something and at the last minute have it collapse into itself in a pile of disappointment. Over and over and over.
So we did the work.
We tapped and cried and tapped and got angry and tapped and transformed our destructive ideas into:
What if I succeed? Hey — I can!
How much fun could I have?
What if what I already have created is what people want, and all I need is to connect them with it?
What if some of the thousands of people really did love me and really do want what I’ve got?
I am so worth it!
I am so deserving!
I am a force to be reckoned with!
I have real value to deliver
People respect and appreciate me
Money is flowing into my bank accounts even as I sleep
I’m good at handling money
I feel excited!
…and more.
That’s just a nutshell of what we tapped on. It didn’t take all that long — maybe an hour — but it sure was powerful. The energy released from the work we did was phenomenal.
Here’s what has happened since we did that work.
1. A couple days after we tapped, I got my first medium payment.
The payment was for $1.18.
I know — tiny, right?
Now, listen carefully, if you will, because this is a landmark for me. In the past, I’d have scoffed and thought, ‘Sheesh, why bother? This will never pay enough for me to spit at.’ I’d have seriously considered ditching writing on medium, or maybe even writing at all.
BUT. This time, the thought came to mind: ‘Welcome little money seed! You are the bare beginnings of the gushing fountain that is coming to me! I’m so pleased to see you!’
Yes, I know what you’re thinking — Pollyanna, right?
NO. Realism.
Have you ever planted corn? Did you go out in the garden the week after you seeded and expect to see eight-foot tall plants with long, healthy green leaves and fat cobs full of juicy kernels and beautiful blond tendrils of silk coming out the ends of the cobs? How softly they swish in the sunny breeze!
No, of course not. It takes time to grow anything worthwhile out there in the dirt patch. Especially if you haven’t weeded it in a long time!
So Annie and I did a bunch of weeding, and the dollar eighteen that came in is a lovely little seed.
To me it meant we had succeeded. So I just sat here and welcomed it, told it I so appreciated it.
2. The next thing that happened:
I’ve been lousy at promoting my artwork for over 55 years. I was never able to talk about my art the way many artists so easily can, or do what it took to market it or sell it.
Suddenly, shortly after we tapped, I got a wild hair and decided to hired a team of art promoters. Just today their first post went out. And instead of the skimpy one or two likes that I used to get when I uploaded images onto my instagram feed, there were suddenly 9, 13, 17 — more likes than I had ever seen there before!
Where did those people come from?
Where have they been all this time?
They were hidden behind my own destructive beliefs and limited thinking, my self-sabotage. I couldn’t see or connect with them because we were on different planes of existence.
3. In the past, I’d never have dared to write this post.
Because it was my belief that I’d probably jinx everything, that success teases me, comes in out of nowhere and waves to me — and then scarpers before I can even take a single breath. And who would appreciate this weird woowoo thing called tapping, anyway?
But this time, I feel really good. People are still pouring into my instagram account and liking the images. One of them, maybe many more, will eventually use the links provided and go get a print. Or a mug, or a pillow, or a tote. Or — gasp! — even an original!
Or maybe one of them will skew sideways and enlist me to help them write their book, or ghostwrite one, or be their emotions coach!
4. The best thing to come from all this has been an amazing increase of clarity of mind.
And today, a light-bulb moment about how I can put everything I do together in a coherent system. More on that in another post.
Suffice it to say I am stoked!
So here’s the thing.
If you’ve been feeling down, dirty, depressed, stuck, frustrated, angry, sad, incapable … tap on it. Use the tapping system. You will not even begin to believe all the good things that will come out of your being pro-active about transforming your emotions, thoughts and beliefs.
More!
So now that Annie and I have weeded some of our gardens out, we are both working on weeding more. I’ll tell you about it in the next post, Part II.
Will you start weeding your own inner garden so you can allow yourself to be prosperous? So you can FINALLY do what you love, add value to the world, and feel really, really, really good? Yes!!!
Keep on keeping on!
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HOW I DEAL WITH DESTRUCTIVE MONEY BELIEFS
Image: Green Beans in my garden
text & image: © Angela Treat Lyon 2023
Want to know more about tapping? I wrote the book on it. The very first one, in fact, in 2002: Change Your Mind with EFT, the Basics.
I invite you to check it out: https://eftbooks.com/books-classes/change-your-mind-with-eft-the-basics/
You can use the link on the page to get the ebook for a weeny five bucks, or whatever price increase tickles your fancy.
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Thanks for reading my story — I hope you enjoyed it, and I hope that you maybe got goosed a wee bit to taking action on those dreams of yours!
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