Alex Ortner:

Hey guys, Alex here with the Tapping Solution Podcast and the Tapping Solution App. I am so excited to be here with you today because for the very first time I’m not only recording this via audio, I’m actually recording the video as well, which I’m personally excited about. I’m an expressive person, I like to be able to show my emotions, I am an emotional person. And so, I’m excited to actually record it via video so we can share this on YouTube and Facebook and all the other social media platforms. So, if you’re watching me here via video, thank you, you can see my mic. And, if you’re listening to your audio like normally, thank you so much for listening in and tuning in to our tapping solution podcast. Hopefully all of you, whether you’re listening via audio or video, that you’ve gone and downloaded our tapping solution app because our tapping solution app is absolutely life-changing. We’ve had over two million listens to the tapping meditations. You can go download it for free in the App Store or Google Play. Make sure you go do that. I might actually share a little special surprise about the app at the end of this podcast so stay tuned for that. I’m excited for that.

So, today’s conversation is gonna be all about hope. It’s about, how do we cultivate hope to drive our lives forward. And, hope is a really important emotion, it’s a really important practice for us to have on an ongoing basis. I actually just finished recording a master class for our tapping insiders, that’s why I decided to record this particular podcast today, because I wanted to share some of the messages that I shared with our tapping insiders club. And so, you know, I want to start off just by defining what exactly hope is and we will do tapping today, don’t worry, we always do tapping on these podcasts as well. We’ll talk about how we use tapping to actually cultivate that hope in to drive our emotions to change any underlying challenges that we have. And, I’ll talk about specifically what those things are that keep us from allowing ourselves to feel hopeful.

And, I know that right now we’re in the middle of a, literally a global pandemic with Covid 19. And, I know that there’s a lot of stress around race and how our society, how our police treat different people of color whether it be black or hispanic. And so, I’m, you know, let me first off say that I’m a huge supporter of the Black Lives Matter movement. I believe that it’s an important movement. I’m so glad, I’m hopeful, right. I’m hopeful that it is going to cultivate real change in our society and it’s definitely been an eye-opener for me in terms of some of the things that I took for granted in my life.

I did grow up with some very small amount of, you know, issues when it came to race because I was born in Argentina, I was hispanic, I, you know, that was, I was reminded of that numerous times growing up in middle school and high school that I was Spanish. But, I was still predominantly, you know, in a very white community here in Brookfield, Connecticut. I live in Newtown, Connecticut now but, just that small amount of experience where my race was brought up always hurt and I cannot even imagine what people of color experience on an ongoing, regular basis.

So, I wanted to say that I really support this movement in a big way. And so, with all this stuff going on with Covid 19, with racial anxiety in our country, it’s more important than ever to actually be hopeful and to actually cultivate hope in our lives. Because, I know that a lot of people have thought like, where in the world is the world turning right now, right. What’s going on with our economy, with our health, with our world, with everything. And so, for me, I am extremely hopeful that all of this is for the good. And so, hopefully you are cultivating hope. But, If not, we’re going to talk about exactly how we go about doing that today on the podcast.

And so, you know, let me just start off by defining what hope actually is. So, hope is a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen, right. Let me say that again, hope is a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen. Hope is really about dreaming, right. Hope is about allowing yourself to dream, to see a future that is more empowering than the future or then your current life right now when you see a future where there is positive change, where your life is better, where those people around you’s lives are better. Where you believe that’s actually a possibility.

Now, hope is not always easy and sometimes we cannot cultivate hope, we cannot feel hopeful, and I’ll talk about exactly what the reasons are for that today. And, we’ll talk about how we can release those things, you know, rewire our brain and our beliefs around some of those things and actually lower some of the emotional intensity we have around our inability to oftentimes feel hopeful. And, a lot of that has to do with safety, right. So, hope is about feeling safe, to expect good things in the future.

And, if you’re not able to feel safe, to actually feel hopeful. A lot of times that can be because of past traumas, past experiences. I know I was doing my master class a little bit ago and somebody said, oh, I feel like I’m always waiting for the other shoe to drop, right. It’s an expression I’ve heard a lot when coaching people on this issue is that, I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop. Meaning, that I don’t like to be hopeful because I’m worried or I’m just expecting that something bad is going to happen. Again, that has to do with our experiences, our past experiences. And so, I don’t want to feel hopeful because we don’t want to be hurt when things don’t go our way, when there’s disappointment, when there is failure, when all those things happen. So, it doesn’t feels safe to be hopeful.

So, we’ll talk about how we can actually move past that challenge of safety to be able to visualize a better future because we want to be able to visualize and see a better future for ourselves. Because, otherwise, how are we gonna create that future, right. If you can’t see it in your mind’s eye first, how are you going to create it in the world. I always love the example of Walt Disney when it comes to visualization. How Walt Disney saw Disney World in his mind before anybody else did. He was rejected hundreds of times, I don’t know what the actual number is, but a lot of times by different banks who did not believe in his vision. But, he stayed true to that. So, we’ll talk a little bit about that.

So, hope is about feeling that you have the power to influence and direct your future, right. I want to say it again. It’s about having the ability or the feeling that you have the power to influence and direct your future in the direction you want. And, just as importantly, it’s important to note that it is the opposite of feeling powerlessness where you do not have the power and influence to direct your future. If you feel powerless, you will not fell hopeful, you will not be able to cultivate hope because you’ll go, well, I don’t have the power to direct myself or direct my life or direct our society or culture in the direction that you want. So, when powerlessness takes over it becomes really difficult to cultivate hope. And, again, we’ll talk about why do we want to cultivate hope, because it is really important to be able to do that.

Actually, why don’t we just jump to that first to say that. So, an interesting thing that I hear a lot about online, hope is not a strategy, right. Hope is not a strategy. And, they kind of, for me, they kind of poo poo on hope a little bit. And, I get it. Hope is definitely not a strategy. But, here’s the thing, hope is not a strategy, but it is a requirement for creating a better future. You’re not going to just hope a better future into existence.

But, in order for you to be able to develop the strategy that you have, and more importantly to stick to the strategy that you have, you have to have hope. You have to come from a place of hope where you have faith in that future. We have belief in that future, where you believe you can get there. So, hope is not a strategy, but it is a requirement for creating a better future. So, you know, that’s why we want to make sure that we are cultivating hope and that we are feeling hopeful as much as possible.

Could I say hope any more times in, you know, in a small period of time. I think I’ve said it about a hundred times already. Hope is also about being flexible and resilient as you move forward. You have to be resilient and flexible as you move forward. And, you have to recognize that you will have to adjust on this path. It takes persistence and hard work to achieve any desired future. And, think about it like this, if you were to want to walk on a path, you know, if you’re walking through the woods and you want to get to a particular destination, if you look at that path as a straight line, you would start to walk and you’d hit a tree or you’d hit a rock or you’d hit a stump or you’d hit a low branch, you’d hit something right. And, you wouldn’t be able to move forward through the woods. We have to be able to go around a tree, under a branch, over a stump, around a rock. Sometimes you might have to go through crazy shrubbery, that’s really difficult. But you have to keep finding your way forward. You have to be resilient. You have to be flexible in finding your
way forward.

Sometimes people stop themselves from moving forward because they hit obstacles in their life and they go, well, look, I failed, I picked the wrong path, I shouldn’t have done this, I’m so disappointed, I’m just gonna stand here and wallow in my disappointment and be stuck where I am. Rather than going, great, now I’ve got to pivot, I’ve got to adjust, right. In 2020, if this is not a lesson in pivoting and adjusting, I don’t know what is. Because, it is absolutely a huge impediment that we all have faced as a society, individually, with business owners, individually with people, with their finances, with their health, pivoting their health and saying, hey, you know what, I want to take care of my health, I got to do a better job because I want to be healthy in case I have to face a virus like this. So, it’s, when we face these obstacles we have to be able to be flexible and resilient to move forward.

And, that goes for when you create that empowering future for yourself. When you want to be hopeful about your future you have to understand that you will face failure and disappointment, right. So, hope is about being able to tolerate failure and disappointment and being able to keep your eye on the future that you want. If you’re walking through that path in the woods or as I should say, path because you’re not walking on a path, you’re just saying, hey, I’m gonna go to that in that direction to that place where I want to go. You’re gonna have to tolerate that there’s gonna be obstacles in your way. You’re gonna have to tolerate that you might go in one direction and then face some huge bush of prickers and you got to go around and go in a different direction, right. You’d never think, oh, I’m gonna quit here, I’ve reached the tree or poison ivy, or whatever it might be. You’d go around, you’d go a different way. So, in order to be hopeful, in order to be able to move towards a future that we want, we have to be flexible and we have to tolerate failure and disappointment.

And, also recognize that that failure and disappointment does not define us, right. Really important to understand, failure and disappointment does not define us as who we are. Failure and disappointment are necessities to move forward in the direction that we want to create the life that we want. And so, when you can actually have those failures and have those disappointments and understand that they are not a reflection of you or your character, but a natural part of life, of moving towards a journey, when you can tolerate those things and redirect and move your energy forward in the direction you want as quickly as possible, that is when you will actually reach your goal, right. Again, walking through the woods, the longer you take standing in front of that tree being disappointed that you ran into a tree the longer it’s gonna take you to pivot and go around that tree and keep going in the direction that you want.

Same goes in life with any of the challenges that we face, we have to be able to pivot and move quickly and not get stuck in those failures and disappointments and recognize that if you walk into the woods and hit a tree it’s not because you’re a bad walker, it’s not that you’re not capable. Same goes for when you are trying to reach a destination in life. If you fail, if you are disappointed, it is not a reflection of your character, but a natural and normal part of moving forward in a journey at any point. So, the more you can tolerate that failure and disappointment, the stronger that you will be able to create the life that you want.

And so, hope is, it’s a learned behavior. It’s interesting, when I was researching before I went to do my master class for tapping insiders club that, you know, hope is not a feeling, it’s a learned behavior. And, it’s a thought process, it’s a way to think through your life, it’s a way you think about different obstacles that come in your way where you feel hopeful in moving forwards towards those things. And, again, you can, depending on your life and what has happened, you might have different reactions to different things that happen in your life. And so, for example, for me when I look at all of the racial tension and challenges that we’ve had with, you know, I mean heartbreaking watching the George Floyd video, I don’t know anybody who’s not heartbroken watching that video. And just, watching some of the other videos that have been online.

But, I look at those things and for me, the meaning I give for them is one of hope. To go, now we have hope for creating real systemic change in our society. I look at the same thing with Covid 19 right now. Maybe this will motivate people to take better care of their health. Maybe this will motivate people to look at our food system and what we’re doing to our food. Maybe this will motivate people to think about how we can act differently in society. So, for me, I look at all these things and I give them meaning of hope, right, not despair, not of things going badly, but hope. And, we always have the choice of how we want to look at something, at what meaning we want to give it. And so, super important that we cultivate this learned though process of actually cultivating hope and recognize that if you are not able to cultivate hope as easily as you’d like. Not because you’re necessarily doing anything wrong, but it is a learned experience.

And, you might have learned from childhood that it was not safe to be hopeful because maybe you were hopeful about something and you were crushed by a father or a mother or somebody else or a teacher. Well you had a great idea and somebody just squashed your dream, right. Or maybe it happened as an adult. Maybe you were hurt in a relationship. I don’t want to be hopeful about finding the man or woman of my dreams because I don’t want to be hurt again, right. So, we need to address safety first and foremost when we want to look at cultivating hope. So, we can create and empower in the future that we want, that actually allows us to drive our life forward, right. If you want to create that life that you want, you need to be able to keep your eye on what your dream is and not allow failures and disciplines to stop you. You need to have hope, in being able to move forward.

And so, also, really important to recognize that hope is about the emotion under the words as well as the words. It’s not just the words because I could say, you know, I hope I get this job. But, I actually don’t believe I’m good enough under the surface, right. You might say I hope I get this job but the emotion underneath is one of disbelief or anxiety or sadness. So, the words aren’t enough. So, when hope has an underlying belief of disbelief or underlying emotion of disbelief, anxiety or sadness, it’s not really hope. Real hope carries with it confidence and desire and faith and anticipation and aspiration, important emotions that allow us to drive ourselves forward.

Confidence plays a big role in hope. If we do not believe that we are capable of creating the future that we want, we’re not goin to be hopeful about it, we’re not going to allow ourselves to dream. We’re not gonna allow ourselves to go there mentally and emotionally because we’ll be afraid of the failure and the disappointment and what that means about us. We’ll go, hey, I knew it, I hit a failure, I knew it, I knew I wasn’t good enough. Why did I even bother, right. And, remember failure and disappointment is not a reflection of your character, it is simply a normal part of life as we move forward. It’s about being able to build that resiliency and have the flexibility to adjust and pivot, to move in different directions.

So, I want to ask you here, we’re gonna jump into doing some tapping in just a minute. I want to ask you, can you visualize an empowering future for yourself? Can you feel hopeful about your future? Do you feel hopeful about your future? What area of your life do you feel hopeful about? Maybe there’s areas of your life that you don’t feel hopeful about. Maybe you’re good at the practice in certain ways where you believe. Maybe you’re hopeful about your financial future, but you’re not hopeful about your relationships. You don’t believe you can find the person, man or woman, of your dreams, but you believe you can be financially successful. So, just recognize in what area of your life do you feel hopeful and what areas of your life do you not feel hopeful, where you feel disappointment, where you have a lot of hurt around it. And so, you don’t feel safe to move forward and to be hopeful because you simply don’t want to be disappointed.

Recognize that our brains are always trying to protect us. That amygdala in our brain, that untouched part of our brain is trying to protect us. It’s there to keep us safe so that we don’t get hurt again, but all too often that part of our brain keeps us back from being able to create the life that we want. So, we have to consciously take mental and emotional control with our conscious brain in terms of what we are going to allow to feel safe or not safe, is why the tapping is so powerful, obviously. Because, when we tap on these specific points of our body while saying these certain phrases while we’re focusing on the emotion, the belief, whatever’s going on in our life, we are actually sending that calming signal to the amygdala of the brain letting it know that we are safe and allows us to not only calm the emotion in that moment, but also rewire our beliefs around something. And our beliefs around something are super important when if comes to feeling hopeful.

So, we're going to tap in just a second around safety, right. So, that belief, that safety of not wanting to get your hopes up around the hurt that you might have, that feeling unsafe to get your hopes up and be hopeful. We’re also gonna tap on beliefs in our self. Because, we need to believe in ourselves, we need to feel confidence and desire in order to feel hopeful in creating the future that we want. Remember in order to be hopeful we have to feel powerful, we have to feel like w are empowered and that we have control over our future. Hope, again, is not a strategy but it is a requirement in being able to move forward in whatever strategy you create and to stay on that path in creating the life that you want to create. So, we’re gonna do some tapping on that. And, we also need to tap on past events and traumas that we have going on. A lot of the beliefs that we have about ourselves, about our future, about what we are capable of, have to do with our past events.

It’s the traumas, it’s those little events. If you grew up, little or big events, if you grew up in a home environment where you were constantly being put down or you’re constantly being made to feel like you’re not enough, then you are not going to feel safe to move forward because you don’t want to be hurt again. Which, again, totally natural, understandable. But, what we want to do with the tapping is you want to not only lower the intensity on those events that have happened, but we also want to cultivate and bring to life either events that have happened in the past that actually support a belief that we can be hopeful because sometimes you’re there but the negative ones are so much bigger because they have so much more intensity and began because our brain has a negativity bias and is always looking to see what’s wrong and trying to keep us safe. We want to find this etchings, bring those up more and we also want to create new experiences, right.

If you want to cultivate hope in your life, you want to cultivate a new belief that you are courageous, that you are strong, that you are resilient, you need to find the small experiences that can move you forward in that direction to form those little beliefs. When we think bout a belief, you know, just picture a table and that table is your belief. And the legs of that table are the events that support that belief. So, if you have a belief of, I’m not smart enough or I’m dumb, you can probably go back to specific events like, well this is what my parents told me or this is what my teacher told me. And, all of those little events support that belief. But, when you can knock down those beliefs, knock out the intensity of the beliefs and at the same times support the beliefs of stronger, support the legs or build legs or build experiences or stronger beliefs you can overpower those negative beliefs and have stronger, positive beliefs that allow you to move forward in the direction that you want.

So, hopefully that was good. You know, I spent about 20 minutes there kind of giving you some, a bit of framework around how hope plays a role in our life and our ability to see that empowering future and to move towards that empowering future and what are the components that allow us to feel hopeful or not hopeful. And, hopefully this will help you today not only with that pre- framing or that framing that we did around hope and what it means but also with the actual tapping that we’ll do as well. Of course the magic for us here at the tapping solution, what we know is so powerful is not just our ability to logically understand what things we need to change or recognize in ourselves, but what things, how we can use the tapping to actually change those things, right.

To lower the intensity of the emotions that we have that are limiting us and to lower the intensity of believes and traumas we have, traumas from our past. And to build new empowering emotions and to build new empowering believe systems about ourselves and new experiences to allow us to live our life to the fullest. We want to not only create a future that we hope for and strive for and are excited about, but we always want to feel good in the moment, you know. I’m not somebody who wants to believe in just living in the future, we really want to enjoy our present moment. I’m currently loving, you know, as challenging as things have been over the last few months, I’ve been loving these few months at home with my family, with my kids. It’s been just amazing to spend time with them. So, we need to recognize all these different events. We’re gonna use the tapping right now. We’re gonna jump into it now, get into tapping to actually change and cultivate hope in our life.

So, let’s go ahead and start off by taking a deep breath in and breathe out. And, first off, I’ll say that if you are new to tapping and you’ve never done it before, you can either go to thetappingsolution.com and learn all about it or you can download our app, thetappingsolutionapp.com or look up the tapping solution in Google Play or the Apple App Store and download it and you’ll get some tutorials there. If you’re watching via video you’ll see me tap. If you’re just listening with the audio, just listen along. Tap where I tap and repeat what I say as we do the tapping.

So, again, let’s take another deep breath in and breathe out and just connect with what hope is for you. And, I want you to think about something specifically that you don’t feel hopeful about. What is it? What is it that you don’t feel hopeful about? We don’t need to focus on, you know, maybe you don’t feel hopeful overall, maybe you don’t feel hopeful about getting a job or your financial future or you don’t feel hopeful about your relationship with the spouse or you don’t feel hopeful about your health. Just let’s focus on something that you don’t feel hopeful bout so we can lower some of the intensity around that and actually cultivate some hope and some new emotions that we want there, some new resilience and flexibility in the ways that we want to cultivate that.

So, let’s go ahead and again, take another deep breath in and breathe out. And, we always want to measure on a level of zero to ten, how strong that intensity is. And, you know, how hopeless you feel. If you feel hopeless at a level ten, that means you’re extremely hopeless. If you feel really hopeful, you’d really be at a level zero because you’re not hopeless, you’re actually hopeful. We’re gonna measure how hopeless we feel with whatever we’re focusing on. Again, it could be general future, our future, relationship, our finances our weight or just overall hopelessness in terms of life, society, whatever it might be for you, just find what that is and measure from zero to ten. And then also notice what do you feel in your body? Do you feel tension in your chest and your stomach and your throat? Where do you feel tension? Where are you holding tension? You need to release today in this moment.

And, let’s go ahead and start tapping on the karate chop point and repeat after me.

Side of Hand:
Even though I feel so hopeless about this thing that I’m focusing on I acknowledge and accept what I’m feeling right now.
Even though I feel so hopeless because I just don’t see things going the way I want I choose to breathe in this moment anyway
Even though I feel so hopeless and I’m just not able to see a future I can believe in
And, I feel so powerless to change things I choose to relax and breathe in my body right now

Alex: We’re gonna move to the eyebrow point.

Eyebrow: I feel so hopeless

Side of Eye: I feel so hopeless

Under Eye: I just can’t see an empowering future

Under Nose: I feel so hopeless right now

Chin Point: I just don’t see things changing

Collarbone: At least not for the better

Under Arm: I feel so powerless

Top of Head: I feel so overwhelmed by these emotions

EB: But I want to find a way forward

SE: I want to find a way to cultivate hope

UE: I recognize I need hope to move forward

UN: Hope may not be a strategy

CP: But it is a requirement to move forward

CB: What if I could feel safe being hopeful

UA: It hasn’t felt safe to be hopeful before

TH: I’ve been let down so many times

EB: I don’t want to get hurt again

SE: It doesn’t feel safe to feel hopeful

UE: But, what if it could feel safe

UN: What would that be like?

CP: I’m open to the possibility of feeling hopeful

CB: I’m open to feeling empowered about my future

UA: I choose to feel safe in my body right now

TH: And, take a deep breathe in this moment

EB: All will be well

SE: All is well

UE: I’m finding my way forward

UN: We’re all finding our way forward

CP: What if I could allow a glimmer of hope in

CB: What if I could feel safe in this moment

UA: I choose to allow safety into my body

TH: My brain is trying to protect me

EB: My body is trying to protect me

SE: But, I choose to be in charge

UE: Knowing that I can be hopeful

UN: Knowing I can be resilient

CP: I can move forward in the direction I want

CB: I am in charge of my future

UA: My past failures do not define me

TH: My future failures will not define me

EB: I get to be whatever I want to be

SE: And, I am enough in this moment

UE: I am enough

UN: I choose who I am

CP: It’s safe to be hopeful about my future

CB: I can see my future in a new way

UA: I don’t have to be worried about disappointment

TH: Because failure will not stop me

EB: All is well

SE: I am safe

UE: I am loved

Alex: We’ll stop there and just take a deep breath in and breathe out. And, just feel into your body for a moment.

Notice what you’re feeling. Feel, you know, just move your body a little bit. Do you feel different? Do you feel different as you move your body? Do you feel you have any deep ability to breathe deeper or to move differently? Just notice what you feel in your body and just recognize what you might be feeling. What changed for you while we were doing that tapping? Let’s go ahead and measure on that level of zero to ten. We always measure in the beginning, we’re gonna measure again here at the end.

How hopeful do you feel right now? Or, how unhopeful do you feel right now. So, ten being that you completely lack hope, that you’re feeling completely unhopeful and not safe to feel hopeful as a ten. And zero is that nope, you feel great, you feel hopeful about your future, you feel excited about it and you feel like you have power and control to influence it in the way that you want, as well. Just go ahead and measure from zero to ten and just notice, has that shifted? Has that dropped? Did the intensity drop a well as did some of the thought patterns and beliefs that you were saying to yourself also change as well? Do you believe that you are capable of being resilient and flexible now? Do you believe that maybe it is safe to actually feel hopeful and to allow yourself to go to that place?

Sometimes we do not allow ourselves to go there because we are trying to protect ourselves. So, are you able to allow yourself to go to a better place where you can feel hopeful knowing that even if you have failures’ even if there are disappointments, they will not define you and you will continue to move forward towards the goals that you want to achieve? Rome was not built in a day, we move forward with our dreams on a daily basis, on a consistent daily basis. Our dreams are achieved not only by taking massive action at times, but more so by the little actions that we take every day by the consistency in our actions, in our decisions that we take every day.

So, the more resilient and flexible you can be the more resilient you can be to move around that tree, to jump over that stump, to duck under that tree limp, to continue to push forward in the direction that you want. The more resilient you can be to criticism, to failure, to disappointment, the quicker you will redirect and pivot and allow yourself to move in the direction that you want. Remember, hope is what will allow you to stay focused and energized and moving towards what you want to get to in the direction you want to get to. We use the tapping to lower the intensity of those beliefs so when we don’t feel safe to move forward, when we don’t feel safe to dream big, we use the tapping to release that.

We also use the tapping to install new empowering beliefs to fire new neural pathways in our brain so we can allow ourselves to actually feel empowered and hopeful about our future. Remember, even in the darkest of times you can still feel hopeful. There are people who have spend half a lifetime in jail and still felt hopeful about their future. You can feel hopeful about your future. You have the ability to be resilient, to be courageous, to be flexible, to act and react in a way that drives you forward and creating the life that you want.

So, I hope this tapping was beneficial to you. If you want to do more tapping on this, go download the Tapping Solution app if you haven’t already. I know there are some great tapping meditations in the app all right around that. I’m trying to think of what the topics are but I know there’s one specifically on cultivating hope which is about 20 minutes long. Super powerful.

So, go download the app and check that out and hopefully you’ll give it a try with the free trail. We got a free trial there in the app now for two weeks. So, you can actually try it out for two weeks and see the results for yourself and feel that empowered, hopeful, future that you can have. Remember, it’s about consistency with all these things that we do. It’s about our consistent actions on a daily basis. It’s about consistent thought that we have, our consistent beliefs that we have about ourselves. So, stay persistent, stay hopeful, keep doing the tapping.

I hope you enjoyed this podcast. I’m excited be with you here today not only via voice but also via video for all of you that are watching. And, until next time, keep tapping.