The role of peace and hope in happiness

There are so many factors that contribute to happiness, many of which depend upon how you think and act NOW in the present. But this post is about the past and the future.
Can you be happy now if you are haunted by events from the past? If you are traumatised by stressful events from your childhood - or even last month? Or if you have unresolved issues or relationships that impact on your current actions and relationships.
Can you imagine being happy now if you are worried about what will happen in the future? This includes events that you know will happen and you are worried about how you will cope with them, for example, or events that you fear may happen.

Happiness now depends upon being at peace with past - including forgiving yourself and others.
Happiness now depends upon having hope for the future.

Don't shut the skeletons of anger, sadness, fear, guilt, regret and hurt in your emotional closet. The effort of keeping them under lock and key is draining and stressful. Re-frame the negative emotions and events, or work out a way of seeing them from a more positive perspective. The negativity isn't helpful to you now. The negative stuff from the past weighs you down and the negative way you are viewing the future is holding you back. Doing this is not always straightforward so I will address reframing and belief change in future posts.

Negative emotions can always be overrided by positive ones, and here is one way of accessing authentic happiness from your memories. A more involved version of this process is used to permanently remove negative emotions from events. For now, though, let's focus on savouring a happy memory.

Think of a specific happy memory in the past. Close your eyes and imagine yourself floating up above yourself, up above your present self. Imagine all your memories are arranged along a line - like a railway - going into the past in one direction and your future stretched out in the other. Your line could be straight, V-shaped, curved and at any angle. Now, still high above your time line, float back to the memory you have identitfied. Float there as long as like, view the scene through your own eyes, soak up all you could see, hear and feel, enjoy the positive emotions and float back to now along your time line.

The Existential Cycle - the Wheel of Change

This cycle is used in many fields including life changing career decisions, exercise regimes and addictions.
Doing: This is the daily, everyday routine activities - you are in equilibrium.
Contemplating: Questioning the ‘Doing’, becoming dissatisfied with the present - becoming curious about what could be different.
Preparing: Researching the possibilities, moving beyond daydreams and wishes to fact finding and goal setting.
Experimenting: End current ‘Doing’ activities and start a new set of activities. After a period of time this becomes the new ‘Doing’.
We are constantly being pulled back to the original ‘Doing’. The further round the wheel we get the stronger the pull. This stops mere flights of fancy, of the over exuberant, being acted upon: changes are usually made only after consideration and planning – but can prevent potentially good opportunities being taken by the overly cautious.
The time we make an irrevocable decision (eg selling the house in England to buy the hotel in Spain) is when the magnetic attraction of the original ‘doing is at its strongest. This point is known as crossing the Rubicon. This is when we move from ‘preparing’ to ‘experimenting’ and lasts until we move from ‘experimenting’ to the new ‘Doing’.
Attitudes that go along with returning to the old ‘Doing’ include: ‘dreamers are losers’, ‘get real’ and catastrophic fantasies. Emotions that go with these are fear and guilt and these emotions are often swiftly followed by regret.
If you return to the original doing your reasons for moving towards the new doing are not as compelling or well formed as the reasons you are moving away from the original doing. Every time you step off the existential cycle you learn something from that experience and the next time you step back on to the cycle you will be closer to reaching a new way of doing.
Addictions:
Doing: You are in love with your addiction. You see nothing wrong with it, make excuses for it: ‘ I can drink six pints and be safe to drive’, ‘my grandmother lived to 86 and smoked 60 a day’, ‘fat is beautiful’.
Contemplation: You have to perform your addictive activity more and more to achieve less effect and withdrawal seems harder and harder. Doubts begin to set in. You waver between wanting to stop and not wanting to stop. You stop for a while but it returns; it’s hard, or you don’t want to, make the break.
Preparing: Something tips the balance. You make an action plan
Experimenting: You attempt to cross the Rubicon, to change your ways, to avoid your old behaviour. You may seek help.
Now you may go to new ‘doing’ by staying stopped, or you may go back to any other point including the old doing (pre-contemplation). The doubts soon creep back in though and you have added to your skill-set about what works and what doesn’t around your unwanted activity.
Past attempts are stepping stones to future success.

Doctors Use Acupressure Technique Instead of Drugs to Combat Emotional Eating

Press Release from EFT World Centre in San Francisco, CA (PRWEB)

--Why do people eat when they are not hungry?
According to the foundational theory of Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT), people overeat to tranquilize unresolved negative emotions and traumas. Recent research has established that obese people overeat because their food cravings are controlled by the same part of the brain that control drug cravings in addicts. This brain circuitry located in the hippocampus is also the part of the brain that is involved with emotion.Researchers are hopeful that these findings will point to new treatments for obesity and they acknowledge that dealing with emotions may be necessary. Meanwhile, people are already conquering food cravings and addictions by addressing their unresolved emotional issues with EFT– and they have been doing so for more than a decade. EFT involves fingertip tapping on select acupressure points while focusing on the craving in question. EFT claims an 80% success rate in calming the emotions that trigger food cravings.
Gary Craig, the Stanford-trained engineer who developed EFT, has noticed a marked increase in the number of research studies that link negative emotions to physical issues. “But it is not enough to just make that link,” says Craig. “People also need reliable, inexpensive and safe treatment options that will help them address negative emotions once and for all, thereby breaking the link to physical illness. For the last decade EFT has given people an effective, drug-free healing option with an 80 percent success rate.”Physician, Dr. Eric Robins says, "Some day the medical profession will wake up and realize that unresolved emotional issues are the main cause of 85% of all illnesses. When they do, EFT will be one of their primary healing tools ... as it is for me."In other medical news, pharmaceutical giant, Merck abandoned their anti-obesity drug MK-0577 when it failed to produce significant weight loss results in human clinical trials. Meanwhile, a French pharmaceutical company is awaiting US FDA approval for their “magic bullet for obesity” drug, rimonabant.In one year, this drug, plus a low calorie diet resulted in an average weight loss of less than 11 pounds in obese drug trial participants. Only those on a high dose of the drug had noteworthy weight loss and the accompanying side effects included nausea, diarrhea, headache, dizziness, joint pain as well as psychiatric and nervous system disorders.In contrast, when people use EFT for their food addictions, there are no drugs involved and even willpower is unnecessary if users connect with and resolve their emotional reasons for turning to unhealthy foods. In 80% of the cases immediate food cravings subside in moments. Craig acknowledges, “While this is not yet mainstream thinking, hundreds of doctors, psychiatrists and psychotherapists are using EFT to help their patients change their relationships with food.”Craig reports, “I see repeatedly that emotional issues like fear, anger, boredom, shame, and resentment are the very centerpiece of someone’s weight gain. But their emotional issues have remained unresolved despite willpower and conventional therapies. This is because the emotional issues have disrupted their energy meridian system (or Chi in Chinese Medicine). Until the energy system is balanced, the emotional eating will continue.”Over 400,000 people have downloaded Craig’s free training manual and another 10,000 download it each month, making it one of the fastest-growing healing modalities in the world. Known as The EFT Manual, it has been translated by volunteer practitioners into nine languages. The EFT website is the fourth most actively visited natural health site in the world.

Dental Fear and Anxiety - Tip 2: Swish

The Swish technique
As well as Dental fear and phobia this is used for a great many purposes by successful people all over the world. It is particularly suitable to help you deal with 'one-off' situations where you need a confidence boost, although there are many other times when it may be useful.
To use it successfully, you need to be wide awake and in a place where you will not be disturbed.
1. Create the CUE picture. Close your eyes. Steady your breathing and relax your body as much as you can for a minute or two. Now create, in your mind's eye, a projector screen, and on it get an image of you what you see when you become frightened of a dental visit. It must be as vivid and sharp as you can make it, filling your whole vision, the colours bright and alive, with you looking just as uncomfortable as you can possibly imagine. Make it seem like an enormous colour slide being projected in your mind, and include anything that will make it more lifelike; other people around you, their expressions, the scenery, listen out for sounds, notice the smells, experience what you are ‘touching’, feel the emotions. When you have that picture vivid enough that it actually makes you squirm, then you've got it right. For now, clear your screen.
2. Create the DESIRED picture. Imagine what you would look like when you have overcome your fear of the dentist, how will you be? Really see a picture of you of how you want to be. Check your facial expression, notice the rhythm of your breathing. You should be looking absolutely as if you truly have just been incredibly successful at your appointment – feeling the feelings really intensely, seeing what you can see, hearing the sounds and noticing any smells or textures. When you get it right, when it makes you feel good, allow yourself to enjoy it for a moment, then imagine it shrinking, becoming smaller and smaller, with the colours becoming less and less pronounced, until you are left with a small black-and-white picture the size of a postage stamp.
3. Pick up the CUE picture, and make sure it fills your entire vision, just as sharp, just as lifelike, just as 'squirm-making' as it was before, but with an important addition. The small, black-and-white SUCCESS picture is tucked into the bottom left-hand corner.
4. When you have that image clearly in your mind, just say to yourself:
'S-W-I-S-H', at the same time changing the pictures over in your mind so that the 'moment of achievement' becomes the large colour picture and the 'moment of anxiety' shrinks to the size of a postage stamp tucked into the bottom left-hand corner, becoming black-and-white as it does so. Speed is important! Change the pictures as quickly as you say ‘S-W-I-S-H’.
5. Enjoy the success picture for a few moments.
6. Think of a pink elephant – actually it doesn’t have to be a pink elephant but you do need to get an unrelated picture in your mind and this usually does the trick.
7. Now get the CUE picture back on your screen and repeat steps 3-6. After three or four attempts the cue picture will begin to fade or break up or have ragged edges. Repeat the sequence until the you simply cannot produce the moment of anxiety picture at all.

When that happens, you have programmed yourself for success, rather than failure. You will find that when you actually get to the event you have been working on, you will feel confident and easy, and able to give of your best as a result. It might all sound rather complicated at first, but you soon get used to it and it is worth persevering with. It is one of the most powerful 'quick-fix' methods in existence.
It is possible to work on this on your own but sometimes it is more effective when working with a trained practitioner.
This can used in other situations too. For an example, driving test fear. The moment of anxiety would be, perhaps, sitting in the car; looking very anxious, perhaps having trouble with the seat belt, the examiner looking stern. The feeling of 'nerves' could be included, too. The moment of achievement could be tearing up the 'L' plates, big smile on the face, congratulations from the examiner, a feeling of excitement and jubilation. Maybe even a congratulatory pat on the back from a friend. In these images, anything goes, as long as they give you absolutely the right feeling, both the anxiety and the jubilation.
The 'swish' technique can help you to excel in exams and other test situations; public speaking; sports performance; other games performance like snooker, darts, bowls, etc.. It can, in fact, help you deal with anything where you can create those two pictures.

Top Tips dental anxiety

Long lasting changes can be made easily and quickly with the NLP fast phobia technique and the SWISH, for which you may need a therapist or coach to guide you through.
Regular calming can be achieved with the breathing techniques which can be enhanced with EFT (emotional acupressure with affirmations). See below for more information on EFT.
Some problems (like a gagging reflex) may need a bit more work than others but change is possible for everyone!

Be persistent, keep focused and amzing things can happen.
If you'd like some help - give me a call!

Dental Fear and Anxiety

I was the speaker at study group for dentists recently.
The aim of the evening was to give the dentists tangible tools they could use with their patients and to explain what further change I could achieve by working with patients with more intense anxiety.
1 in 3 adults in the UK have a moderate to severe dental anxiety, this fear is rooted in as many causes as patients within some broad categories discussed in the session.
The fallout affects patients, dentists and their staff as well as family and friends as people can retreat socially through the shame of having 'bad teeth' or are not able to function normally due to persistent pain.
The emotional state of a patient has an impact on their visit - stress can cause a chain reaction!
Treatment is more likely to go well if the dentist and dental nurse as well as the patient are calm, and there are many ways that a visit to the dentist can be easier for everyone, with no contra-indications and without the need for sedation.

Rapport with the patients is vitally important:

• the tone and nature of written correspondence
• the manner and communication style of the receptionist on the phone and in person
• the physical environment of the reception, waiting area and surgery (attention should be paid to all senses not just the visual, but also auditory, kinaesthetic and olfactory)
• the communication style of the dentist with the patient and the dental nurse (a nervous patient doesn't want to hear a dentist being unclear over a which materials or instruments to use in a procedure!)

Specific use of language enables understanding while communication style as a whole is important in this environment as words themselves will contribute to only 7% of meaning: attention must be paid to tonality and physiology.

Therapists can help a dental practice in this process:

• by working with the team at a dental practice in skills of rapport- showing how a patient can be led to a more relaxed state
• by teaching the team about communication styles
• training staff in techniques of guided imagery
• training staff in simple but powerful and effective techniques of NLP and EFT to work with their patients
• working with a practice to develop strategies for specific patients
• working with patients immediatly prior to, and during, treatment

Therapists can help dental patients by

• working with dental patients with more severe anxiety or phobia away from the dental practice and build towards coming to the practice
• working with patients who have persistent and chronic pain for which no physiological cause can be found
• relieve negative emotions associated with the state of their teeth or signifcant emotional events that preceeded the dental condition.

Phobias are an overwhelming and unwarranted fear of an event or situation. They are so easily and quickly resolved using NLP and EFT techniques that no-one should suffer from phobias of any kind any more!

Dental phobia is no different, visiting a dentist should be seen as an ordinary appointment: a routine, commonplace event. What has happened in our society is that visits to dentists tend to have a huge amount of emtion attached to them which is neither warranted or helpful.

EFT

EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques) was originally designed to reduce the psychotherapy process from months and years down to minutes and hours. From there it was discovered that astonishing physical healings also occurred. Symptoms faded for everything from Migraine Headaches to Cancer. Complete details are given on the EFT website (see my links). It often works where nothing else will.
I have had success with cravings, phobias, pain, muscle twitching, nervousness and anxiety, insomnia and fear.
The technique is simple (it is that 'weird tapping thing' you may have seen on TV), but must be applied with careful thought to the root cause, being specific and continuing to persist until all the trees in the metaphorical forest have been felled!