By Steve Wells

After my initial breakthroughs on self-acceptance I was interested to explore whether there were additional insights and freedoms to be attained.

Around this time I read an email post by Patricia Carrington entitled Self Acceptance Without Judgment which detailed her findings in adjusting the self-accepting statement to include the phrase "without judgment".

I tried this and found it quite useful, and felt that it definitely added another dimension to the personal work I was doing. I would recommend anyone who is exploring self-acceptance issues also read Pat’s previous post and experiment with adding that phrase to the self-accepting statement.

Each day I also receive several positive quotes in my email inbox from various sources, and one day the following Chinese Proverb arrived:

"Deal with the faults of others as gently as your own."

When I read this I thought "Wow, I don’t deal with my faults gently at all!" So I tapped on ...

• "Even though I am tough on myself ... ";
  
• "Even though I won’t allow myself to have faults or make mistakes ... "

I followed my thinking through several associations such as: "Making mistakes is important if I am to learn the right way -- Because I have been so upset about making mistakes, and down on myself for them, I have been less prepared to take the risks necessary to achieve big things."

I realized this was another way of getting down on myself, so I tapped on ...

• "I accept myself even though I haven’t been prepared to take risks due to fear of making a mistake ... ";
  
• "I accept myself even though I have not achieved enough yet due to my fear of making mistakes ... "

All of a sudden I was transported back in my mind to my Year 6 classroom where the motto was "If you’re going to do something, do it properly", a guideline which the teacher repeatedly implored us to follow.

GARY CRAIG COMMENT: We all have loads of "writings on our mental walls" like the above "truth" by Steve's teacher. They tend to guide (and sometimes limit) us through life until we eventually question them. EFT, as you can see, often elevates the quality of our thoughts so that the absurd side of these "truths" becomes obvious.

STEVE CONTINUES: I immediately did a round of tapping on this class motto, "Even though if you’re going to do something you should do it properly, I fully and completely accept myself".

This brought back memories of the teacher’s exasperation with us when we failed to measure up, it also allowed me to see the parts of the statement that do serve me and how I also took on some meanings that didn’t serve me.

I then recalled a critical incident in that classroom where I had received 49.5 out of 50 for the weekly test - the highest mark anyone had achieved all year -- and yet I copped a lot of criticism from both the teacher and my parents for falling short by making a "silly mistake".

I reviewed this incident in my mind and tapped on the parts that held negative emotional intensity. I also applied tapping to the following thoughts:

• "Even though I made a silly mistake ... ";
  
• "Even though their criticism hurt ... ";
  
• "Even though I must do things properly ... or else ... ".

After this I was able to go back to my work and became quite productive. As my fear of making mistakes had been relieved, I found myself no longer self-editing or self-critical to the same degree. And over the next few weeks I realized that I was able to achieve more in my work because I was no longer as fearful of making mistakes.

Exercise Number 3 for Self-Acceptance:

To take your own journey to self-acceptance further, locate all the childhood experiences where you learned that you were/are not acceptable and apply EFT to them. Use Gary’s Run the Movie Technique, where you turn the event into a 1-minute movie and play it through frame-by-frame, stopping to tap on any part of it that makes you feel intense, until you can review the whole movie without experiencing the same emotional intensity.

As you play the memories through, try to identify the beliefs you learned or the generalizations you took from the experience that are now limiting you and tap on those too. Put each negative belief statement into the set-up statement and repeat the entire belief statement at each tapping point. Keep tapping on this until the belief statement feels less true. Follow the links to other incidents and the thoughts that come up with them, applying tapping to each in turn. Always finish by doing a round or two of tapping where you repeat the entire self-acceptance phrase ("I accept myself deeply and completely") at every tapping point.

Steve Wells
EFT Contributing Editor
Co-Author, "Pocket Guide to Emotional Freedom"

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Dr. Mercola's Comments:

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