Sneak Peek: The Tapping Solution for Weight Loss & Body Confidence Chapter 6

In her book You Can Heal Your Life (which has sold more than 50 million copies!), Louise Hay shares one of her key philosophies: “The only thing we are ever dealing with is a thought, and a thought can be changed.” As we begin looking at how beliefs impact the weight loss journey, we must start by understanding that a belief is a thought we have over and over again.

In this chapter we’ll see how much beliefs impact experience and can limit us (or support us) in the journey toward body confidence and weight loss. When a client tells me she hates herself and her body, for instance, she is actually saying that she hates her belief about herself, which might be “I’m not good enough.” This thought, this belief about herself, produces an emotion. That emotion then creates a stress response in her body that makes her belief seem valid.

With tapping, you can change your beliefs by targeting the emotions and the stress response your beliefs create by focusing on the belief itself. Once that stress response is lowered or gone altogether, the old negative belief—“I’m not good enough”—no longer feels true. You can then create a positive belief that does feel true, helps you love yourself, and creates positive momentum for you on your weight loss and body confidence journey.

How Beliefs Affect Your Experience

Before we discuss beliefs in greater detail, let’s look at the relationship between beliefs and experiences. Louise Hay again sums it up perfectly in You Can Heal Your Life: “No matter what the problem is, our experiences are just outer effects of inner thoughts.” In other words, experiences are reflections of beliefs. To put it another way, your beliefs are your blueprint for the world.

If you have a negative belief like “I’m not good enough,” you can’t feel happy or experience real pleasure. Believing that you’re not good enough (or that you’re not beautiful/smart/strong enough) is like giving yourself a life sentence; it leaves no room for any other possibility. With that belief in mind, you unconsciously look for evidence to support that belief and take action (or refrain from action) that supports it. You interpret events in ways that support the belief even when it causes you pain. You also unconsciously seek out or are attracted to people who give you the kind of negative feedback that “proves” your belief.

The idea that beliefs create experience hit home for me one day several years ago when I shared with my friend Brenna what some guy had randomly said to me: “You’d be cute if you lost some weight.” It was yet another cruel and unsolicited comment about my weight, and again I was devastated. Knowing my history of being a target for comments like this, she looked right at me and said, “This is not normal, Jess. People don’t say mean things like that to most people.” As I thought about what she had said, I realized that I had been holding on to a belief in my body that I wasn’t good enough. For years I’d been unconsciously attracting and seeking out people who confirmed that belief. I also found myself rejecting and playing down compliments and only focusing on the times people told me I wasn’t good enough.

If you believe you aren’t worthy in your current body, you will gravitate toward people who reflect that belief back to you. When you don’t believe those things about yourself, you no longer tolerate people who treat you in a disrespectful way. Instead, because you believe you deserve love and support, you’re able to love and support yourself first and then cultivate a supportive community of people who can also love and support you.

When I began tapping on my belief that I wasn’t good enough in my current body, I was able to clear the emotions and stress response this belief had created in me. It didn’t happen overnight. I had to break down all the different events I was using as proof that the belief was true. (You can see in this example what we saw earlier in the Tapping Tree—that symptoms, emotions, events, and beliefs are often interconnected.)

What began happening in the weeks and months that followed was amazing. I started to gravitate away from people who were judgmental and negative and toward relationships that supported the new positive beliefs I had created about myself. My entire life soon began to transform, and the weight began falling off faster than it ever had. And it all happened without focusing on weight loss or feeling deprived. Because I had created a new belief that allowed me to love myself, I was naturally making better decisions and no longer needed dieting and extreme exercise to lose weight and punish my body. Instead, I could trust myself and my body and still lose weight—and that is exactly what happened.

I see this same pattern repeat itself again and again in my clients. They’re amazed by how easy weight loss feels once they’ve used tapping to change their beliefs about themselves, their bodies, and their weight loss journeys.

The Key to Identifying Your Beliefs — Question Everything!

Holding on to negative beliefs is like wearing dark-tinted glasses all day, every day. When we’re wearing them, everything in our world seems scary and threatening. But when we take them off and put on clear glasses—which, in this case, means creating positive beliefs—the world around us seems brighter. Suddenly we feel hopeful, able to naturally seek out experiences that make us feel good.

As much pain as negative beliefs can cause, we aren’t always taught to evaluate them. Whether we adopted them from our immediate environment or they were passed down to us from our parents, they often appear disguised as facts. We may question authority and examine beliefs during our teenage years, but as we get older we tend to settle into beliefs and think what we believe is just how the world is—and, more dangerously, This is just who I am.

Targeting a belief begins with first questioning the way we have been viewing the world and ourselves. When we tap while focusing on the belief, its emotional stronghold weakens and we have the ability to take a step back and ask ourselves, Is this really true? Then we have the freedom to choose a more empowering belief that supports us in creating the life (and weight loss journey) we want to have.

At first, we may resist and distrust the idea that by changing our beliefs we can change our lives. After all, we think, we have so much evidence to prove that what we believe is true. For starters, we’ve never been able to lose weight without depriving ourselves, counting calories, dieting, and subjecting ourselves to extreme exercise that feels like punishment. That is the truth; that is what happened, so why pretend otherwise?

While this seems logical and may initially feel true, that resistance we feel is most often rooted in the stress response that a negative belief has created in us. Until we do tapping to clear that stress response, we can’t create a new experience for ourselves. If we shut out the possibility that weight loss can be pleasurable, for example, we are closing ourselves off to having a positive weight loss experience.

Often when clients come to understand that their beliefs are just thoughts that they can change, they realize that their disempowering beliefs don’t even seem logically true. They’ll often say, “I know that belief isn’t true. I don’t even want to believe it but it just feels so true.” We saw that in the last chapter with Abby, whose cancer diagnosis created a disempowering belief that losing weight and being healthy had led to her illness. She knew that wasn’t the case but couldn’t seem to get rid of the feeling that it was. When she used tapping to clear the emotions and stress response that had been validating her belief, she could let go of it. That same principle applies to everyone: until we clear the emotion and stress response behind negative beliefs, we can’t fully let go of them.

The first step in releasing negative beliefs is to identify them, and we do that by learning to question everything, including what we’ve always known as “facts.” That’s what we’ll do next.

So take a moment to ask yourself the following questions. You may want to write them down, along with your answers.

• What negative feedback have I been replaying from others to support my limiting beliefs?

• When did I learn that I’m not (good/pretty/smart) enough?

• What events have I used as proof to support my negative beliefs?

Getting Clear on Your Story

As we begin to identify limiting beliefs, we often find that we have many of them and that they are spread across different areas of our lives. Over time these beliefs become the larger story we’re telling ourselves about who we are and what’s possible for us. Once we use tapping to address the limiting beliefs that have shaped our story, we can create a new story and make incredible progress in ways that feel natural and enjoyable.

That’s what happened when Lori discovered her own story and used tapping to clear her negative beliefs. “I went from obsessing about weight loss to obsessing about self-love. I realized that self-love was the key. I kept finding ways to take care of myself. Suddenly exercise and eating well became fulfilling and exciting. When I changed my beliefs about what it took to lose weight—and more important, what I believed about myself—losing weight and taking care of myself became easy and fun.”

Just as you used the Tell the Story technique in the last chapter to clear events, you can use that same technique to clear limiting beliefs. Let’s look at the story you may be telling yourself and then do some tapping to clear the way for new beliefs that support you and your weight loss journey.

DISCOVER YOUR STORY

The first part of this exercise involves writing, and then we begin tapping.

Start by finishing the two sentences below, which will help you see your own limiting beliefs. Write each sentence down and complete it in your own words.

• I can’t lose weight/be thin because . . .

• I want to lose weight but . . . .

Write down the beliefs you discovered by finishing these sentences. These are your tapping targets.

When you pinpoint a belief, say it out loud and ask yourself, on a scale of 0 to 10, How true does this feel? If it feels like a simple fact, it would be a 10. Then begin tapping while telling your story. A helpful setup statement may be “Even though I believe (state your belief here), I accept myself and how I feel, and I am open to a new way of thinking.”

We’ll explore the limiting beliefs within your story throughout the rest of this chapter and then learn how to tap on them.

Clients often tell me that when they tap on the story they’ve been telling themselves, they start to see their lives in a whole new way. They realize that they’ve used various events to support their limiting beliefs. Once they use tapping to clear their old beliefs, they can see events in their past in a new light and even discover a valuable lesson or hidden blessing in them.

To explore your story in more depth, you also need to look at your beliefs about yourself, your genetics, your body, and your weight loss journey.

Beliefs about Your Genetics

Growing up on an island off Scotland with a population of fewer than 100 people, Marjorie was an anomaly within her family. Since childhood she had been the only one among her seven siblings who was overweight. The consensus within the community was that she had inherited “bad genes” from her aunt, who had also always been overweight. “I felt like I had grabbed the shortest straw in the gene pool,” she explained. Those “bad genes” became part of who Marjorie was, a fact that she didn’t have the power to change.

Many of us who come from families where weight issues are common also point to genetics as the cause of our struggles with weight. “See,” we say, “this is just who I am.” At other times we may blame genetics because we’re tired of blaming ourselves and we feel exhausted by our unsuccessful attempts at dieting. The idea that we are victims of our genetics is not only scientifically inaccurate; it also strips us of the power to change.

Blaming the body is like blaming a car that won’t run when in fact we never bothered to give it the proper fuel and loving maintenance. The truth is that we don’t need to blame anyone or anything for our weight issues; the key is to replace blame with curiosity. Several weeks into my class, Marjorie began to do that and had an exciting breakthrough. By tapping on her beliefs about her body, she realized that she had grown up in a culture and family where food was an expression of love. Her aunt loved to bake, and piling people’s plates high with food expressed how much she cared for them. All these years later, Marjorie realized, she had been “eating” love in the form of baked cookies, scones, muffins, and cakes.

When we point to a family that is overweight, we don’t need to look at genetics but instead at the food habits within that family. We can then ask ourselves what beliefs we may have unconsciously adopted around eating, food, and weight. When we stop blaming the body, we can change our emotions, stress levels, and behavior as well as how the body functions.

Genetics obviously play a role in the body, but if we believe that we have no control over gene expression, it’s easy to give up and surrender to unhealthy habits that match the disappointment we feel. You have more power over gene expression than you think. Let’s take a look at the science behind that claim.

THE SCIENCE OF GENETICS

“We’re going to miss our flight,” I whispered to Nick Polizzi, director of The Tapping Solution movie and the longtime friend of my brother Nick.

“I know,” he replied, “but this is so worth it.” I nodded, excited to keep going with the interview.

We’d arrived at Bruce Lipton’s house a couple of hours earlier, ready to conduct an hour-long interview with this highly acclaimed scientist who is also a top-selling author. We assumed he’d be stiff and formal—scientist-like—but from the start he was one great surprise after another. He greeted us with a big smile at the front door of his house in the San Jose hills in a T-shirt and shorts. As we started setting up our camera equipment, he turned to me and said, “Let me know when you’re ready to start and I’ll put on a nicer shirt.” I was shocked by how casual and friendly he was—so different from the reserved scientist in a lab coat I had imagined.

I’d done extensive research in advance of the interview and knew how much Bruce’s work has revolutionized our understanding of how beliefs impact the body. In 1967, decades before the rest of us knew what it was, Bruce was already doing stem-cell research. He had started in that field while earning his Ph.D. in developmental cell biology under the mentorship of Dr. Irwin R. Konigsberg, one of the first scientists ever to successfully clone stem cells.

The pioneering work Bruce has done in the decades since has shown us that genes don’t predict health, success, happiness, or weight. In fact, gene expression is based on environment. That environment extends beyond particles and molecules to include emotions and beliefs. In other words, we can change how our cells develop and function by changing our beliefs, stress levels, and nutrition.

By the time we left his house, two and a half hours had passed. Every moment we had spent with Bruce Lipton had been amazing. It was, and still is, my favorite interview from the movie. Talking to him was fascinating, and by the end Nick Polizzi and I felt like giant sponges soaked to maximum capacity with incredible new knowledge.

Since we’d already missed our flight home, Nick and I had no choice but to drive six hours to Los Angeles and catch a different one. During that drive, we talked at length about Bruce’s work. It’s really a pretty amazing idea—that our beliefs, emotions, stress, and nutrition can change how cells behave and function. His work shows us that we’re not victims of genetics but instead products of our thoughts. According to this way of thinking, there are only very rare and occasional instances when genetics play a significant role in our ability to overcome weight struggles. While this puts a lot of power in our hands to change our own lives and, for example, create an easier and more enjoyable weight loss journey, it also robs many of us of the excuse that our weight struggles come from “bad genes.”

Take a moment now to think about the internal environment you’re creating for yourself and your cells. Is your body living in one that is loving and nurturing, or an environment of self-hatred and punishment? Feel free to write down your thoughts.

Remember: the point of this process is not to blame anyone or anything—including yourself—for your past weight struggles. The point now is to get curious about your beliefs and how your internal environment may be impacting your weight loss journey.

Keep those questions and your responses in mind as we begin exploring beliefs around weight loss next.

To watch a segment of my interview with Bruce Lipton, go to www.TheTappingSolution.com/chapter6.

Beliefs Around Weight Loss

“I really want to lose weight, but it doesn’t seem worth it,” Polly confessed in our first coaching session. Losing weight and being thin, for Polly, had always been about deprivation and struggle. After weeks and months of dieting and hard work, the weight would come off, but even when she felt thin she couldn’t enjoy herself. Always obsessing about calories and exercise, she worried about when the weight would return, which it inevitably did. As much as she still wanted to lose weight, she couldn’t stand the thought of going through the process all over again. Absolutely nothing about the experience of losing weight had ever been enjoyable.

Polly’s experience is incredibly common, and like most beliefs, the belief that weight loss is about struggle and deprivation quickly turns into reality. If you believe you must suffer to lose weight, you will either fail to lose it or you will drop a few pounds but regain them soon afterward. I’ll say it again: our bodies can’t be healthy and thrive when they’re constantly being scrutinized and subjected to a stressful internal environment.

One of the most common responses I hear from women who follow my online weight loss program is “I’m losing weight and I don’t feel deprived!” They’re amazed, but why is deprivation-free weight loss such a shock? Since diets typically don’t look at the underlying beliefs and emotions that lead us toward self-sabotaging behaviors, in many ways they set us up to fail. Relying on diet and exercise alone, we’re forced to use willpower as our sole source of motivation, and that makes weight loss feel difficult.

If you have a belief that it’s hard to lose weight, you will continue to make it hard. If you have a belief that losing weight can be pleasurable, you can more easily adopt new behaviors such as eating more nourishing meals and exercising regularly. Take a moment now to explore your beliefs about weight loss and do some tapping on it.

YOUR BELIEFS ABOUT WEIGHT LOSS

To begin exploring your own beliefs around weight loss, ask yourself the following question: “What if having a healthy and strong body could be a fun and pleasurable experience?”

Does this idea make you scoff or roll your eyes? Does it make you feel anxious or angry or frustrated? Write down any emotional reactions you have, whether it’s resistance, self-blame, curiosity, excitement, or some other emotion. You can use these emotions that come up as tapping targets, but you can also look to tap directly on your beliefs.

To discover what these beliefs are, ask yourself the following questions and write down your answers.

1. What beliefs do you have about your genes and body?

a) It’s my genetics.

b) I have a slow metabolism.

c) My body is working against me.

d) Other(s): ________________________

2. What are your beliefs around what it takes to be healthy and strong?

a) If it’s not hard, I’m not doing it right.

b) I have to deprive myself.

c) I have to eat perfectly.

d) I have to suffer to see results.

e) I have to obsess over calories.

f) I need to criticize myself to “get my act together” and be healthier.

g) Other(s): ________________________

I’ll teach you later how to tap on these beliefs. For now, I just want you to identify them.

Beliefs about Others

To this day Lisa remembers how much it hurt when the skinny girls in high school turned their attention toward her. They always seemed to have so much fun taunting and teasing Lisa about her weight. It seemed like their favorite pastime.

As we tapped on her memories, Lisa was able to release the emotional pain she had been holding inside for all these years. During that process, she also realized that she had formed a belief in high school that all thin women are mean. Not wanting to become “one of them,” she was shocked to realize all the ways she’d been unconsciously sabotaging her own weight loss for many years.

The judgments we make about others, especially other women, often seem like our dirty little secrets. Whether we voice them to a precious few friends or keep them to ourselves, our judgments feel bitter and shameful—but also completely true. It’s not that we want to feel this way, we tell ourselves, it’s that we can’t help but form logical conclusions based on years of experience.

When we dig deeper, we see that our judgments are reflections of our own beliefs that contribute to self-sabotaging behaviors. I remember rolling my eyes years ago whenever I saw a physically fit woman running. I didn’t understand why you would run unless you were being chased. I judged physically fit women as vain. The truth was that I was annoyed that I wasn’t born with the “love to work out” gene. And if I couldn’t be like them, at least I could judge them. Judging them somehow felt more empowering to me. I finally realized my judgments were a painful reflection of the limiting beliefs I had about myself and created a block to my own success.

Are there thin women who are vain and cruel and have a bad attitude and an unhealthy relationship with exercise? Of course there are. But there are also overweight women who are vain and cruel and have a bad attitude and an unhealthy relationship with exercise. There are 8 billion people on the planet. Weight and body mass index do not determine a person’s attitude!

When you pass judgment on someone else, you are teaching your subconscious mind that it’s not safe for you to have what they have because you may be judged in the same way you’re judging them. So when you look at someone’s Facebook picture and pass judgment on how easy life must be for them, you’re telling yourself that it’s not safe for your life to be easy or else you may be judged. Then you’ll unconsciously continue to find ways to prove your value through struggling.

Instead of being judgmental when you see someone who has more money or a healthier body, get curious. Befriend them. Ask them what motivates them to stay healthy. More important, cheer them on. The more you can celebrate someone else’s success, the more congruent you will be with creating similar success for yourself.

Take a moment now to think about how you judge others, including those little snap judgments you make while in line at the store, in meetings, with your neighbors, or when you see other parents at your child’s school. Do you criticize other people more often than you praise and appreciate them? Do you tend to make big assumptions about who they are based on how they look or on little things they say or do?

Once you’ve made an initial list of your judgments about others, you may find yourself discovering new and different judgments you make as you go about your day. There’s no need to feel discouraged by this or to shame or blame yourself for being judgmental. The more aware you are of how you’re seeing others, the more quickly you can uncover your own beliefs, do some tapping on them, and make positive changes in yourself and your life.

Now that we’ve explored how you may judge others, let’s look atwhat you believe about yourself.

Beliefs about Yourself

Every time Isabelle gained weight, she would get frustrated and say to herself, “God, I’m so stupid!” She’d continue by saying, “I know what I should be doing. I don’t understand why I’m not doing it.” I asked her one day why she was so quick to judge herself as stupid. As we did tapping on that, she remembered working in her father’s office as a child, starting when she was only eight years old. He was a doctor, and every time she made a mistake, he would say, “What, are you stupid?” His words stayed with her into adulthood, and every time Isabelle made a mistake she called herself stupid. Over time, her failure to lose weight had become her biggest “mistake,” a constant reminder of how stupid she must be.

As we did some tapping together to clear the emotions and stress behind her memory and the “You’re stupid” belief it had created, Isabelle’s mood lightened. Once we’d tapped through the emotional intensity of her belief, we continued tapping while asking each other, “What, are you stupid?” As soon as I asked her that, she replied, “No, but thanks for asking.” Her old belief that she was stupid for not being able to lose weight had suddenly lost its power, and after several rounds of “What, are you stupid?” we both broke into laughter.

When we begin looking at how we judge ourselves, we’re often shocked at the beliefs we’ve been carrying around. They’re often things like You’re so stupid. You’re a fat slob. You have no self-control. You never do anything right. You can never stick to anything. You’ll never be good enough. As one client said to me, “My biggest Aha! moment was when I realized that if someone spoke to my five-year-old daughter the way I speak to myself, I would knock them out, so why am I speaking to myself like this?”

Our beliefs about ourselves sometimes leak out at random moments when we fall into old language patterns. One day I was filming a video with a friend. As she was struggling to set up a light, she muttered, “I’m so stupid.” Without thinking, I yelled, “Hey! Don’t talk about my friend like that!” We both looked at each other and burst out laughing as she pointed to me and said, “Good catch.” We need to do our best to catch ourselves in these moments.

If you look at every time you eat a cookie or skip exercise as a mistake, you’re reinforcing beliefs like I never follow through with things, I can never lose weight, and Losing weight is impossible. Such beliefs keep you locked inside your old self-destructive story. If you find yourself falling into an old self-sabotaging behavior but have the belief that you are smart, healthy, and worthy, you will quickly align yourself with your positive story about yourself and make a better and more empowering decision.

So what do you say to yourself when you make a mistake? If you respond with negative self-talk, you are more likely to make more bad decisions. Beating ourselves up for emotional eating doesn’t stop the destructive pattern. If we believe these negative beliefs about ourselves, we will use that one binge to prove our point and continue to repeat the same habit because it seems congruent with who we think we are. If we have empowering beliefs about ourselves, we don’t need to judge that experience of overeating. Instead, we can quickly move on to make a better decision.

The words I am are the two most powerful words in the human language. How we end that sentence determines our fate.

Beliefs about Your Body

During our long struggle with our weight, many of us have come to see our own body as the enemy, something that needs to earn our love. Because it doesn’t meet our strict and narrow cultural standard of beauty, it has become a source of constant misery, like a defect we can’t seem to hide or fix. Its appearance is so awful to us that being happy inside our current body seems impossible. We have to lose the weight first, we tell ourselves, and then, once we’re thin, we’ll be able to feel good and enjoy ourselves.

The truth is that we have the process backward. As we’ve begun to see, to experience lasting weight loss—and just as important, to feel body confidence—we need to learn to love ourselves and our bodies first. Let’s begin that process by discussing the negative beliefs you may have about your body.

While there are many different negative beliefs you may have about your body, I’m going to focus on the two most common ones I’ve seen in my clients and students:

• There’s nothing to appreciate about my body.

• I can’t be happy and really live my life until I lose weight.

Carly had lived with both of these body beliefs for as long as she could remember. Her weight loss attempts had been so frustrating that years ago she had undergone a very expensive gastric bypass surgery. While she initially did lose weight, one year later she was right back to her presurgery weight. Feeling like she was out of options, she eventually joined my class.

As Carly began sharing her story, it was clear that her negative body beliefs had been controlling her. For years she had been sitting on the sidelines, unwilling to participate in her own life, refusing to swim with her own kids even though she had always loved to swim. Since it involved wearing a bathing suit, she’d decided years ago that swimming was out of the question until she lost the weight.

One day, by tapping on her negative belief that there was nothing she could appreciate about her body, Carly experienced a huge and sudden shift. Before even losing a pound, she shared that for the first time in her adult life, she felt real love and gratitude for her body. “It’s done so much for me,” she explained. Soon afterward, Carly bought a bathing suit and went swimming with her children. Before tapping this hadn’t felt like a possibility; even the thought of it terrified her. A few days after she and I had tapped together on these beliefs, she sent me an e-mail. She wrote, “I feel amazing and brave! I cried because of all the joy I feel. Thank you.”

Since changing her belief, she has spent several days at the pool swimming with her children and is excited about living a much more active life. Last I knew, she had signed up for a 5k race with her sister and had cut her hair short, after years of dreaming about it but never daring to do it.

How often do we put our lives on hold because of our own judgments and insecurities? That pool was always there; that joy was always there. It simply came down to Carly believing that she deserved it right now, not just after losing weight. Her decision to experience life now made it easier for her to take other steps forward in her life.

Take a moment now to think about how your body beliefs may be affecting your life. Are they holding you back, not just in your body confidence and weight loss journey but in preventing you from truly living and enjoying your life?

Now that you’ve begun to discover some of the limiting beliefs that have shaped your story, it’s time to begin tapping! The first step is to tap on a belief, and then once you can say that old belief without feeling triggered, you can incorporate powerful affirmations.

How to Tap on a Belief

Begin by saying the belief out loud or in your head. For example, “Losing weight is an uphill battle,” or “There’s nothing to appreciate about my body.”

Ask yourself, on a scale of 0 to 10—with 10 being that your belief feels totally true and 0 being that you barely feel it—How true does that belief feel? Give it a number, and then begin tapping as you’re stating the belief. For example:

Karate Chop: Even though there is nothing to appreciate about my body, I love and accept myself. (Repeat three times.)

Eyebrow: There is nothing to love about my body . . .

Side of Eye: Not when it looks like this.

Under Eye: I notice everything that is wrong.

Under Nose: I feel like my body is working against me.

Chin: If only I had been born into a different body . . .

Collarbone: This feels so unfair.

Under Arm: There is nothing to love about my body . . .

Top of Head: This story I’ve been telling myself . . .

When the intensity of your initial tapping target(s) is 5 or lower, you can move on to the positive.

Eyebrow: My body has been doing so well . . .

Side of Eye: Under this harsh internal environment.

Under Eye: It does so much for me every day without my thanking it.

Under Nose: My body does everything to survive.

Chin: Now I give my body the love and support to thrive.

Collarbone: I create a nurturing internal environment.

Under Arm: My body is beautiful.

Top of Head: I’m grateful for my body.

Take a deep breath and check in with how you feel. Measure the intensity again and continue tapping until you experience relief.

The Real Proof that Negative Beliefs Are False

If our negative beliefs and feelings were congruent with who we really are, we would feel satisfied. Instead, the negative beliefs we have about ourselves, our bodies, and our world feel incredibly painful. That’s because they don’t feel right. They are jarring to our soul because they go against our truth.

When I first heard this idea presented by Carol Tuttle, author of Remembering Wholeness, whom I’ve also interviewed for our annual Tapping World Summit, I was struck by how true it felt.

Think about it. If you really were not good enough, if your weight really was your genes’ fault, and weight loss was biologically impossible, you would be satisfied with those beliefs. You would find peace within those beliefs because they would be congruent with who you are. The fact that you are dissatisfied with your beliefs—and the reason that some of your beliefs cause you pain—is that they are not a reflection of who you really are. So don’t judge or fear those painful feelings; they are simply a signal that you have veered away from your truth.

If and when you take this journey and do the tapping to clear your negative beliefs and emotions, a new story will appear, a story that feels true to who you really are. Within that new story, you will clearly see and feel what you never could before—that you are good enough, and you are worthy. You will see that you have an incredible amount of power to create the life you have always wanted, and that you don’t have to suffer or deprive yourself to get there. While your weight loss journey will become far easier, what will amaze you even more is how different your entire life looks and feels.

That shift into a new story often happens while tapping, but we frequently don’t realize its significance until much later, at the most unexpected moments. One client of mine noticed the shift one day while shopping with her husband. Having always hated her own reflection, she was surprised to notice herself in a mirror in a new light. “Wow, I look really beautiful,” she said out loud. Her husband smiled, gave her a kiss, and said, “I know, honey. I’ve been telling you that for years.” In all their years together, it was the first time she had really heard him—and the first time she’d actually felt beautiful. Her story about herself and what was possible in her life had been rewritten.

That’s what happens when we allow ourselves to create new beliefs that feel authentic to who we really are, and it’s what will happen for you when you do the same.

Karate Chop: Even though I’ve held on to beliefs that have held me back, I love and accept myself. (Repeat three times.)

Eyebrow: All these limiting beliefs . . .

Side of Eye: I thought they were facts.

Under Eye: Many of them have been passed down from my parents . . .

Under Nose: Or from my culture . . .

Chin: “If it’s not hard, it’s not worth it” . . .

Collarbone: “I’m just unlucky” . . .

Under Arm: “I have bad genes” . . .

Top of Head: “I don’t follow through” . . .

Eyebrow: These old beliefs . . .

Side of Eye: I’ve been repeating them to myself.

Under Eye: These beliefs don’t have power.

Under Nose: I’ve been giving them power with my attention.

Chin: I allow myself to question everything.

Collarbone: Is this really true?

Under Arm: Is this really what I believe?

Top of Head: I stay open and curious.

Eyebrow: I logically know they aren’t true . . .

Side of Eye: But they feel true.

Under Eye: Acknowledging this feeling . . .

Under Nose: I’ve lived with them for so long.

Chin: I thought it was just who I was . . .

Collarbone: But it’s a feeling . . .

Under Arm: And feelings can change.

Top of Head: I accept myself even with all these feelings.

Eyebrow: When I take time to notice these beliefs . . .

Side of Eye: I tap on them individually.

Under Eye: I have the power to choose what I believe.

Under Nose: If that old belief creeps up . . .

Chin: I tap on the emotion this old belief elicits.

Collarbone: I feel calm and confident . . .

Under Arm: I remember it’s just a thought.

Top of Head: And then I choose a different thought.

Eyebrow: I consciously choose what I believe.

Side of Eye: I believe being healthy is empowering.

Under Eye: Life is meant to be enjoyed.

Under Nose: Health is an expression of that joy.

Chin: I can achieve my goals.

Collarbone: My body is supporting me.

Under Arm: I have so much to be grateful for.

Top of Head: I possess every quality needed to live an extraordinary life.

Fill in the last round yourself! What do you now choose to believe about yourself?

I am . . .
Adventurous
Confident
Determined
Enough
Intelligent
Passionate
Smart
Strong
Unstoppable
Worthy

Eyebrow: I am ___________________
Side of Eye: I am ________________
Under Eye: I am _________________
Under Nose: I am ________________
Chin: I am _______________________
Collarbone: I am ________________
Under Arm: I am ________________
Top of Head: I am _______________