The Tapping Solution for Weight Loss & Body Confidence (32 page)

The key to success in this journey is realizing that we
are
good enough exactly the way we are right now. We don’t need to live up to anything or meet anyone’s expectations to be worthy. We don’t need to live a life other than our own or try to make our life seem more like our friends’ Facebook lives. We need to make peace with ourselves and believe that we really are good enough as we are. That’s why we use tapping and continue this process, even after we lose the weight.

Reconnecting Heart, Mind, and Body

The solution to this epidemic of perfection is to get out of our heads and into our bodies. When we connect with ourselves at a core level, we begin to value what we think more than what other people think.

What I love about tapping is how quickly and powerfully it can connect us to our bodies. When we feel that connection, we don’t need to think about how to be perfect. Instead we
feel
what it really means to be ourselves. We take care of our bodies, not to please someone else or to live up to an ideal but because we believe in our own worth.
That
is when we can create sustainable change.

Gail shared her thoughts on perfection after realizing that for years she had been trying to be perfect to gain other people’s approval. “I get it now—the praise, acknowledgment, love, and appreciation will just never be enough to make me happy as long as it comes only from an external source. I have been trying to be perfect to please others and to feel good about myself, yet I can never get what I need from others … So, I try harder to be even more perfect so that maybe then I’ll get the response I crave and
then
I’ll feel good about myself. But that’s just not going to happen while I am looking outside of myself for the emotions I crave to feel inside.”

It’s as true for Gail as it is for all of us: without self-acceptance and self-love, the approval and love we get from others will never be enough.

When we fully embrace this journey, we stop seeking perfection. Instead, we seek progress. We don’t seek an answer; we seek relief. That’s how we take steps forward and enjoy the journey. Until we can move forward in this way, we get stuck trying to figure out the answer instead of discovering it as we go, one step at a time.

The Perfect Body

While at a family reunion one day, I commented to my aunt Penny that even though some of my cousins are blonde, what all the Ortners have in common are our signature full lips. “Oh yeah, it’s unfortunate,” she replied. I looked at her, confused. “Penny, women are injecting their lips to have fuller lips!” Shaking her head, she said, “Oh no, when I was growing up, it was the style to have really thin, delicate lips.”

When it comes to the latest reasons to hate our bodies, it can be hard to keep up! We dislike body parts because they don’t meet trends that are constantly changing. As we face record high rates of obesity, the standard for female beauty is thin, muscular women with boyish figures. The parts that distinguish us as women—hips, thighs, and rounder bellies—are what we often call “problem areas.” But then, let’s not forget, thanks to celebrities like Jennifer Lopez and Beyoncé, having a rounder butt is now seen as fashionable. Again, it’s hard to keep up!

Can we take a moment to contemplate how ridiculous this is? We shame the body we have for not being perfect but then don’t hesitate to change our definition of “perfect” as soon as trends change. My friend Dr. Erin Shannon, who uses tapping with her professional athlete clients, shared that many top athletes suffer deeply from this “perfect” body ideal. She has found that athletes have some of the lowest body confidence she’s seen because they feel that their worth is dependent on how their bodies look. As a result, they’re constantly pointing out their bodies’ so-called flaws.

The “perfect” body is a myth. Some of the women we are striving so hard to look like are just as tortured about having a “perfect” body as we are when we feel desperate to lose the weight. Without body confidence, none of us—including women we idolize for their “perfect” bodies—can feel good in our own skin.

Losing weight doesn’t mean that negative self-talk and body shaming end or body confidence appears. While weight loss can improve health and well-being, even change how we feel in the body we currently have, it is never about becoming “perfect.” Loving the body we’re in can only happen from the inside out.

Chasing “The Land of After”

Although I’ve already touched on how dangerous it is for us to chase the magical “land of after,” it’s such a common block for women that I want to take a moment to explore it in greater detail.

Many women I’ve worked with are tricked into believing in a magical land of “after weight loss,” where everything will fall into place and be perfect. They secretly envision their careers becoming perfectly fulfilling, their relationships improving, and themselves being perfectly loved and adored by all.

Losing weight because we think that doing so will make everything in life perfect is only a lie we’ve been chasing. It’s also a lie that robs us of the experience of living life in the present moment. It’s the reason we don’t allow ourselves to be happy and the reason we don’t go for what we want and need.

Losing the weight will not improve our relationships. It will not improve our careers. We really need to wrap our heads around the fact that this is a lie we’ve been telling ourselves.

What’s going to make these changes in our lives is the way we begin to feel about ourselves. Does that mean that you shouldn’t lose some weight and enjoy the health and vibrancy weight loss provides? Absolutely not. You deserve to experience how strong and energetic your physical body can feel, but when you have this idea that weight loss will deliver that utopian moment, you create stress that can interfere with your journey. If you’re always waiting for the perfect moment, you can never enjoy the progress you’ve made because that progress never feels good enough.

When we embrace what is true and real in the present moment, we can feel grounded. Finally we can enjoy our lives! One of my students wrote about the freedom she had begun to experience by releasing the need for perfection: “I used to postpone things until I was in the perfect shape, or could do something in a perfect way, or have perfect acknowledgment from others,” she shared. “After tapping and working with this weight loss process, I now do things first. The result is that every day I feel better and better.”

Another student wrote, “I have discovered that it was precisely my wish to be the ‘perfect mom’ and ‘perfect wife’ that kept me from trying or even starting to just
be me
. Tapping helped me get over the idea that I needed to be perfect.”

When we release the need for perfection, we can also develop and grow in a conscious, gentle, and natural way.

Self-Improvement: Proceed with Caution

Throughout this book we’ve discussed the power of awareness. As conscious and caring women, many of us are actively seeking ways to develop ourselves both internally and externally. While this intention is a positive one, we also need to be aware that it can work against us.

As we saw at the end of the last chapter, self-development is not self-care. Too often our emphasis on self-improvement goes one step further and turns into self-punishment. When we have the mentality that we are broken, we will always find something to fix. Because tapping is so powerful, it can be easy to fall into this way of thinking. We clear an issue only to find another and then think,
I’ve got a lot more work to do on myself
. In this way, we rob ourselves of the experience of feeling relief and relaxation for having cleared one issue because we’re already focused on the next.

When we have amazing results with tapping, we can also fall into the trap of thinking that since tapping is so effective, we should never feel a negative emotion again. That’s not how life (or tapping!) works. Life would be boring if it were always the same—always calm and placid and upbeat. A beautiful song, like life, is made up of high and low notes. The contrast between the ups and downs is what makes us appreciate each one and truly feel alive. Tapping doesn’t control the future or numb us from ever feeling a tough emotion; it helps us move through the melody and appreciate life’s many different notes.

As you move forward in this journey using tapping to address your challenges, I hope you will always remember this:
You are not a problem that needs to be solved. Your focus should be on finding new and better ways to continue loving and accepting yourself.

Yes, this journey can get serious, but no matter how bumpy the ride may feel at times, remember always that there is nothing wrong with you. You are growing, evolving, and learning new ways to love yourself, your body, and your life. This process never needs to be “perfect” for it to transform how you feel and then how you look.

If we are going to embark on this voyage of self-discovery, we also need to remember that we won’t survive without a sense of humor. The more pain we feel, the more we need to remember to laugh. Laughter is a great antidote to perfection because it gets us out of our heads and into our bodies. That’s why I’d rather make light of cellulite than demonize it.

So … What Are We Reaching For?

As we’ve seen, the point of this journey isn’t to look like a digitally edited photo of a model or to give up on ourselves and surrender to all the health challenges that come with being overweight. The point is to figure out how to take care of
us
. We are all at our most powerful when we are our healthiest. To be our healthiest, we need to allow ourselves to experience true emotional freedom.

The Freedom to Feel

If there is one thing I hope you get from this book, it’s the ability to release your fear of feeling. As women, we are so often told that we are “too emotional.” We hide our feelings because we don’t want to be called “crazy” or “too sensitive.” Yet our ability to feel deeply is our greatest gift. It makes us compassionate and intuitive. It enables us to nurture ourselves and those we love. It makes us the amazing women we are.

Our goal isn’t to be happy all the time and then shame ourselves whenever we don’t look and feel like a ray of sunshine. The goal is to realize that we don’t have to be victims of circumstance and then do what we need to do to feel better more often.

Through tapping, we can embrace our many different emotions and have the freedom to feel enthusiastic, even when we meet disappointment. That’s what happens when we’re no longer afraid to experience a full range of emotions. Because we know we can handle disappointment, we simply learn from it and try a different approach next time. For the same reason, we can feel happy and safe even while knowing that the future is uncertain, as it always will be.

The more we accept ourselves and our emotions, the less drama we tend to create during challenging moments. Instead of punishing ourselves or our loved ones, we can feel what we feel, tap, take action (if needed), and then move on.

Confidence doesn’t come from thinking we’ll never again be thrown overboard by rough waters, but from knowing that we
will
get thrown over—and that we will continue to grow and thrive, using tapping to support us in navigating the storms. The more we can find peace with that fact, the more we can trust the process and enjoy ourselves through the calm and stormy seasons of our lives. We can even appreciate that storms help us see how powerful and capable we really are.

Hello, Me, It’s Nice to Meet You

When we’ve spent many years denying our own worth and stuffing down emotions, taking time to focus on ourselves can feel unnatural. As one student wrote, “Sometimes I feel that I’ve released so much that I have to meet my present self all over again because with the layers of the onion being stripped away goes most of my story. I’ve realized that I am not my anxiety or depression, and with them being released I’m not at all sure who I am. It’s like living with a stranger.”

As we move forward on this journey, we need to continue spending time learning what we love and what lights us up. We need to spend time figuring out what we believe in. As we use tapping to pull out the weeds, we must spend time planting new seeds. Throughout this book I have shared positive tapping phrases. They’re powerful in their own right. These are the vitamins that keep you strong. Take them daily.