The Motivation Mind Game: Tapping Out the Issues of Motivation

Do you ever FEEL like it is an uphill battle just to get your butt out of bed and out the door in the morning? Does the word “workout” bring on a feeling of dread and emotional trauma? Do you ever feel like you have no energy—and it’s only noon? Do you feel POWERLESS in your life on how to affect a change? If so, how many times have you heard this same description used for various classes or workshops you have taken and books you have bought on how to get energy and motivation back into your life? And despite these resources, how many times have you slipped back into those former, non-productive patterns of thinking?

So, how do you TAKE BACK THAT POWER and face your life with enthusiasm and zeal? There are many classes and books out there today advertising a plethora of ways to do just that. For example, the “7 Secrets to Maintaining your Motivation” talks about focus, belief, habits, emotional reactions, energy, your surroundings, and time management. These are great tools at helping you identify the problems. In fact, there are many excellent books and workshops out there that do a great job of giving you the tools you need to identify the problems. However, once you identify these problems and do all that is necessary to learn what tools are available to help you overcome these problems, the problem is the problems are still there! You still need to learn how to overcome your problems.

It is now an undisputed fact that our “emotional” state creates a significant impact on our mind and body. The stress we create in our day-to-day lives is massive and very comparable to how our ancestors would handle stress. If a bear came at them, their amygdala would take control, pumping blood to the arms and legs, raising their blood pressure and heart rate, preparing them to run away or to fight. It’s called the “fight or flight” response. However, the stress that we create in our lives today is not just a one-time bear attack; it is an ongoing realistic part of almost every day. We are at a heightened emotional stress level on a daily basis, which is very bad for the body, and creates all sorts of very real physical and emotional problems.

In a heightened, emotionally stressed state, energy and motivation go out the window, along with the ability to process food normally, effectively burn calories, lose weight, and build muscle. Your cholesterol and triglycerides go up, blood pressure increases, and your stomach flora decreases, which then creates allergies, gastroesophageal reflux, heartburn, high blood pressure, etc. Along with all of this, your cortisol and insulin levels increase, leaving you prone to even more things, such as diabetes, metabolic syndrome, heart problems, and central obesity. Stress is BAD every way you look at it. But stress is especially BAD with regards to your energy level, ability to function in a motivated state, or even have the physical ability to do so. No wonder motivation is such a hard state to maintain.

Stress is definitely one key component, but there are also other problems that keep you stuck on the couch. How about that memory from your youth where you were told you were a good-for- nothing-person, or the memory of being told how lazy you were and that you would never amount to anything? Memories such as these are key components as well, and lead to thought processes that you subconsciously fight all the time, such as, “I’m not good enough to do this”, or “Nothing I do is going to be good enough.” This most often ends up being a battle of the will and the subconscious usually wins. All of these components, combined with the physical problems/disease associated with the emotional state we are in, leads to a serious lack of motivation to do just about anything, except just exist day-to-day, never realizing those dreams we had or progressing forward in our lives.

So my thought is “why not just release the problems as we identify them?” I know, it is kind of a revolutionary approach. Clear away the brush so that the path STAYS clear! But that is, simply put, the power of psychological acupressure.

The first thing to do is to use the psychological acupressure to bring your subconscious energy in line with what you truly want to do. This is called a “reversal.” To do this, you take the part of your body known as the karate chop point (the part of the side of your hand that hits the board when doing a karate chop) and make a statement like, “Even though I don’t want to calm the stress center of my brain, I’m okay,” and “Even though I don’t want to get over these issues and memories dealing with motivation, I’m okay.” This will reverse your energy in your subconscious and allow it to be in sync with your mind on what you want to do.

The next step is to tap out the stress response in your amygdala and calm it down. Your amygdala is the part of the brain that is responsible for the “fight or flight” response. To do this, you need to tap this statement three times at the karate chop point: “Even though my amygdala is hyperactive causing a low-level stress response in my body, I choose to be calm and centered.” Then tap the area known as the 9-gamut point on the back of your hand, about a half inch behind the middle point between your ring finger and little finger knuckle. This point ties in right to your brain, as the optic nerve is directly linked to parts of the brain, so you do specific eye motions as you tap this area in order to direct your energy to that specific area of the brain. At this point, i.e., the 9-gamut point, tap as you make the statement: “My amygdala is hyperactive and causing a stress response in my body.” Then do your eye motions as you keep tapping that point. These are: Look up, look down, close your eyes, open your eyes, look down hard to the right, look down hard to the left, roll your eyes one way, then back the other, and then sing a few bars to any song (right brain), then count from 1-5 (left brain). Tap on top of your head and make the statement, “I choose to be calm and centered.”

After calming down the amygdala, it should calm down the low-level stress response and put you back into a non-stress level state. However, stress has a way of coming at you again and again all day long. Clearing past trauma associated with the amygdala is important, but until you can do it with a certified professional, just keep clearing your amygdala three or four times a day for awhile to keep you in a good calm and centered state.

After calming down the brain center, you now need to keep on working at ridding yourself of those past memories and thought processes you say to yourself, ones that keep you on that couch and not doing what you want to do in your life. Ways to tap out these events/emotions would be to just take a moment when you feel particularly unmotivated and try to evaluate why. If a memory or thought process comes up, try tapping the emotion/thought out exactly as you think it. This would start at the karate chop point again and the sentence to do this would be something like, “Even though I feel so incompetent and don’t believe in my own abilities to do this, I deeply and completely accept myself.” Then tap at these points: inner eye, outer eye, under the eye, under the nose, on the chin, on the collarbone, and under your arm, making negative statements like, “I am so incompetent,” or “I am not able to do this on my own,” etc. Do the same thing with traumas that you can remember, where you feel those same emotions.

When you clear out these emotions and thought processes, and your body is out of its stress response, you feel emotionally clear and free, fully capable to do what you need to do. Try this technique in relation to any of the problems you have identified in past workshops and clear out the beliefs that keep you stuck from doing them. Instead of working against your subconscious, bring your energy in sync with it and clear the path to an extraordinary life.

So, you are now EMPOWERED. You can choose to tap, or not to tap, but I have now given you the key. The next step is yours.