Making a difference – Business Coaching with EFT

As I constantly meet people engaged in ‘business’ in one form or another I look for new ideas and methods to help retain their motivation and forward thinking.

I have recently completed some further training in EFT, Emotional Freedom Techniques, a method of controlling and neutralising anxieties and emotional issues. This therapy is mostly used by practitioners in alternative therapies, hypnotherapy and psychology so how would I use this in the business context?

It strikes me that a considerable amount of work pressures end up with stress related illnesses of one kind or another; business and personal relationships can suffer, family life breaks down, there is bullying in the work place, Sunday evening and Monday morning can become the worst time of the week.

EFT can makes these stresses bearable and even remove them, it’s simple, non invasive even though you may look a little strange doing it!

John’s business was not doing very well, even though they were very busy there was never enough money left at the end of each month to pay him and his business partner very much and this made home life difficult to say the least.

John and Paul called me in to help sort them out and as the mentoring got underway I could see that the lack of earnings was only the start of a pretty large problem. Most of the business problems could be addressed by planning and changing the working methods and procedures but the underlying causes went much deeper.

Paul’s relationship at home was not on the best footing and like so many people he felt unable to address this by talking things over, so just hoped that it would all get better eventually. John’s wife on the other hand, was extremely successful in her own career and was bringing in the money for the mortgage and bills. Their relationship seemed very good on the surface but Jean was just a little resentful and would have loved to have been able to start a family.

So both of them were under home pressures; they needed to perform well in the business and be responsible for money and family matters as well. These home pressures were constantly coming in second to the demands of running a new business, getting the customers, completing jobs on time, keeping the overheads down and making money.

As part of the mentoring and coaching programme I worked with each of them individually and discussed the emotional blocks that were taking so much energy and stopping them from moving on.

In Paul’s case his lack of communication with his partner was the first issue to clear. EFT is a little like acupuncture, instead of using needles to touch various part of the body to assist healing, in EFT we tap on certain points and in a particular pattern. We also use our voices to reinforce and ‘tell’ the mind what we want.

So with Paul our statement when something like “Even though I find talking about my feelings very hard, I still think I am OK” then a series of tapings with the reminder phrase of “can’t talk about my feelings” until Paul volunteered with “I feel so inadequate”. So our next round of tapping started “Even though I feel so inadequate” and so on until we both felt that the main issues had been dealt with. This took over an hour and eventually we found the deeper or core issues related to his childhood and a teacher who had told him many times that “He would come to no good and was a waste of space”. When this was brought up he realised these deep seated emotional issues had been holding him back for so long and this, after the session, no longer affected him. The release was wonderful to watch, no one would ever make him feel small and inadequate again.

Over a very short time his relationship got onto a much firmer footing and I do believe that wedding plans on the cards.

With John, his issues were not so easy to define. He had a loving and easy relationship with his wife and so long as he was ‘working’ he felt he was doing sufficient. It seemed that he was oblivious to the undercurrent of resentment from his wife and she was far too polite to keep bringing it up. Very civilised maybe but not a recipe for a long and happy marriage.

Communication was not the core issue here, despite what one may think initially. John and Valerie has come from very different social backgrounds and they had both aspired to ‘middle class’ living so had to earn the money to get there. John’s background was already middle class and he had been well educated in the formal manner of that socio economic group. Valerie on the other hand came from a working class background and was more determined to get up a level. As her career went from strength to strength so did her appetite for more lovely and expensive things, she wanted a family so they bought a large and expensive home, the mortgage and running costs being just a little more that she could handle on her own.

John was savvy enough to see that coaching just for him would not solve these dilemmas so I coached both of them independently and in total confidence. Using EFT uncovered some of the underlying causes of friction and increased John’s ability for consideration. Once he understood how fragile his relationship was he took measures to increase his time at home without losing the momentum he was gaining to run the business.

In effect John took charge of the business as he was able to and he learned to manage Paul and the work load with me doing some of the middle bits until they were making more money and feeling a little more secure.

If I had not been able to use EFT in this case the business would have eventually got better I am sure but by using this technique it both speeded up the results and saved untold stress and related issues.

Diane Holliday

Making a difference – Business Coaching with EFT - To learn more about this author, visit Di Holliday's Website.

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