The Personal Blocks Procedure? How the Personal Peace Procedure can help you achieve your goals.

Anyone who has been around EFT for a while has probably come across the "Personal Peace Procedure", developed by Gary Craig.
The goal of this procedure is to chip away at the sources of stress and negativity within yourself, in order to achieve a state of increased happiness and peace. In other words, the goal is to feel better and to stay that way. There's a link to Gary Craig's full article below, but put very briefly, the process involves steadily and methodically clearing out all the negative memories you can recall by:

• Listing all the upsetting memories you can think of (add to this list as time goes on or as you recall more memories). The typical person will have hundreds of such memories - although many of them may be relatively low intensities such as 3's or 4's - make sure you include these!
• Tip: If the thought of "All my memories" makes your mind go blank, start at age 1 and write down what you remember (if anything), then move to age 2, age 3 and so on until you reach your current age.
• Tapping on (say) 3 memories per day, every day for (say) 3 months - or until you have got to the bottom of the list. (Please read Safety Note below)

Now, although the goal of reducing stress and feeling at peace is clearly worth doing for it's own sake, I'm going to suggest that this is also a process well worth undertaking if your goal is to achieve your goals faster and more easily. Here's why:

The reasoning is based on what happens when someone has a "traumatic" experience. ("Traumatic" in this context can include quite mild events involving an intensity of perhaps between 3 and 7).

As well as being upsetting, traumas are a major source of belief formation. When someone experiences an unpleasant event, more happens than simply a disruption to the person's energy system (the thing that makes the person feel bad - stressed, anxious, embarrassed etc). At the same time, the mind decides what the event means. It draws one or more conclusions about what happened - and these conclusions can become beliefs. For instance:

• Someone is involved in a car crash involving a truck at night - the mind may conclude that "Driving is dangerous" (setting up a driving phobia) or "Trucks are dangerous" (setting up a truck phobia) or "Night-time is dangerous" (setting up a fear of the dark or of night-time).
• A teacher fails to notice when a child has done work they think deserves praise - the mind may conclude that "My work isn't good enough after all" or "I can't get the attention I want" or "I'm not good enough to be noticed".
• A teenager may experience other kids laughing at him/her for the way they dress - the mind may conclude "I don't fit in" or "I haven't got a clue about dress sense" or "I'll never be accepted".

Notice that several conclusions might be drawn out of a single incident - and that what conclusions are drawn (if any) will vary from person to person. Two people may have the same experience but draw completely different sets of conclusions based on it.

So now we've seen how events give rise to beliefs, let's look at how beliefs affect goal achievement. To do this, simply imagine that all the events listed above happened to the same person, and that this person's dream is to be a successful touring speaker. How hard is it likely to be for this person to achieve their goal while carrying round the beliefs that "Driving is dangerous", "I'm not good enough to be noticed" and "I'm not accepted" ? Or ask it another way: How useful would it be to that person to clear these beliefs?

A person's behaviour in the world is fundamentally driven - and limited - by what that person believes about themselves and about the world. Beliefs define what a person thinks they are capable of doing, what is desirable to have, what is possible for them or someone like them to achieve. Beliefs also define whether they think they will receive support or approval from others, or whether achievement of a particular goal will produce happiness or misery, and so on and on and on, affecting someone's entire thought process around their goal, from beginning to end. To sum it up, beliefs fundamentally underpin the two most important things that matter in a coaching context,:

• What you want (Your Goals)
• What you attempt to achieve (The Action You Take)

In other words, your list of upsetting memories probably contain within them the vast majority, if not all, your personal blocks to success.
By working through them using the Personal Peace Procedure, you will be undoing many of these blocks - without having to do any analysis or work out either what your blocks actually are, or where they came from.

If you have the will to do this procedure you can be virtually guaranteed of uprooting at least some of your major blocks to progress - absolutely free of charge and without having to hire a coach or EFT practitioner.

And if you're feeling at all doubtful about whether you will actually use this procedure, get yourself started with some EFT on these setup statements (pick whichever ones hold some truth for you - and if any of them trigger significant intensity of 5 or more, tap several rounds until the intensity is low):

• "Even though something is holding me back from doing this process, I deeply and completely accept myself."
• "Even though I think I won't keep it up even if I get started..."
• "Even though I don't think I have the time to do this every day..."
• "Even though I don't value myself enough to do something that will give me so much benefit but which costs nothing..."
• "Even though I can't believe it's that easy..."
• "Even though this seems like hard work...
• "Even though I don't believe it would really work..."
• "Even though I think I need to wait until <the kids go back to school, after Christmas, I've finished the decorating, this project at work is finished, etc.>,...
• "Even though I don't think I could come up with a complete list and I don't want to start something I can't do perfectly..."
• "Even though I don't fancy having to remember a lot of upsetting stuff..."
• And finally: "Even though I'm putting off getting started, I choose to start remembering events to go on the list easily and effortlessly"

Important Safety Note - if you have an event on your list which causes you intensity of over an 8 or which you find severely distressing to think about, do not attempt to deal with it by yourself unless you feel comfortable to do so. For extreme traumas such as this it is advisable to see a practitioner who can guide you safely through the process.

This was a draft extract from my forthcoming book "Coach yourself with EFT" - a book for beginners covering the use of EFT to achieve personal coaching goals.

Two new Practitioners and a whole lot of releasing going on.

This month I had the pleasure of training two brand new AMT Practitioners: Johanne Wright (Norfolk Holistic Health) and David Lambert. Assisting me was AMT Advanced Practitioner Linda McCroft (Alternative Approach).

During the practical exercises and between the 4 of us, we managed to clear or substantially reduce the following issues:

• A fear of crane flies
• An embarrassing memory involving a failed job interview
• A parental memory involving "not feeling looked after"
• A memory of being knocked down age 4
• A painful wrist
• A fear of stuttering
• A craving for sugar and chocolate
• A belief of "being no good" based on a childhood memory

And those are just the issues I can recall. A highly enjoyable and very rewarding weekend! Here's wishing the best of luck to our new practitioners.
 

Attractor Field Technique arrives in the UK

In May 2005 I became the UK's first accredited practitioner of Attractor Field Technique (AFT), co-developed by Dr's Kurt Ebert and Robert Schwarz. Like EFT, it involves stimulation of the meridian points while tuning into the issue involved, and so is a natural addition to my EFT practice.

As with EFT I will be focussing on AFT's uses for coaching related issues, especially the identification and clearing of core limiting beliefs.

As Gary Craig himself frequently notes, when an issue isn't clearing with EFT it's almost always because we have not yet found the core belief(s) behind the issue. I'm delighted to have found in AFT a new and reliable tool for tracking down these beliefs - based on Dr Hawkins' Map of Consciousness.

For more information about AFT in general, including the Map of Consciousness and a free downloadable manual visit www.the-tree-of-life.com.

If you have questions about the technique, please email me, or join the AFT Yahoo forum and ask a question - it is moderated by Dr Robert Schwarz, co-founder of AFT.
 

Gary's Corner

Gary Craig, the originator of EFT maintains an excellent website at www.emofree.com which is THE place to go for resources and up to date information about EFT.

It's packed with real case histories and many articles by Gary himself and experienced EFT practitioners from around the world. 

This month:

The original Personal Peace Procedure.