As you get ready to launch your product or service out into the world, perhaps you’re feeling some hesitation or fear about ‘exposing’ yourself in this way.

Going public with your gifts and launching yourself into the public arena can be an intimidating or frightening time! Join Lori Clarke and I as we explore these feelings and what you can do to free yourself of these limitations (9-minute video):

Now it’s your turn, so turn to a blank page in your notebook..

Now that you’ve watched the video, identify the places this ‘fear of putting yourself out there’ is showing up in your life right now. Remember that awareness is the first step in the process of change or shift:

Now visualize all these places, or instances inside a backpack that you’re carrying around. How does it feel? What’s the effect on your energy? How does this backpack of fears or limiting thoughts affect your thinking process?

And now visualize yourself cutting the straps off the damn bag!

EFT Tapping For Money Fears

If you’re not sure what your money fears are, or if they’re something you’ve been avoiding, try this illuminating writing exercise to put words to some of your ingrained patterns – and then come back here!

But if you’re here now and game, then tap along on some acupuncture points with me as I introduce you to EFT Tapping therapy and how it works to shift those subconscious fears and beliefs . Keep in mind though, that when I tap on abundance, I am not just referring to financial abundance. Great food, love relationships, creative endeavours, travel, adventure, etc. are all forms of abundance that we can open to further and increase their flow in our lives.

EFT Tapping is a powerful healing tool because it interfaces between the mind/body and thus can shift things at the energetic, or subconscious level. It also involves your bodily sensations and fears or memories that may be stored in your tissues or organs – so you may feel butterflies in your stomach, or heaviness in your chest. Don’t worry! These are all good signs that your body is speaking to you and signposting the way to your healing.

Note that you cannot just listen to this video! You must tap along with me on the acupuncture points for this therapy to work its magic.

In the beginning, we are going to start by venting, and voicing out loud all the negative crap that may be carried in your subconscious, or that other people have spoken over you, or beliefs absorbed from your parents without conscious awareness (often before the age of 6).

So even though it may feel like we are focusing on the negative and you probably don’t want to dwell on that, it is an important part of the process for unlocking these limiting concepts and moving them into flow; so they can be transformed into life affirming, positive beliefs and feelings that make your world bigger. So if you’re feeling uncomfortable, just stay with me, keep tapping, and know that we have to go down into the depths to bring these things up into the light, where we can then shift and transform them. Stick with the video and know that the positive affirmations and life-enhancing re-frames are coming!

Follow along with me; tap on the acupuncture points I’m tapping on and say (out loud or in your head) the words I’m saying:

Here are the tapping points we are using in this video:

And if you want to learn more, you can download the Basic EFT Manual. This is such a powerful tool for shift and change that I became a Certified EFT Practitioner myself – because between myself, my kids, my animals and the rest of my family and friends, I use it all the time. And it is phenomenally effective. Try it and see what you think!

BY THE WAY… take note of the fact that I made this video a public-access video and I also gave out the website for Listen To Your Freedom along with a free offer. This is all part of building relationship with your potential customer (always give awesome stuff for free), and using social media to tell people about your stuff. Each of these concepts will be covered in greater detail as you work your way through LTYF. For now, I just want to call your awareness/attention to these elements of building a successful online/automated business.

How are you feeling as you get closer to your dreams becoming a reality? Are you excited? Are you scared? Funny how those two emotions – fear and excitement – often go hand in hand. The really interesting thing is that when you look at the biochemical expression of these two emotions in the body… there is only one molecule of difference between fear and excitement.

You may have noticed, fear (also known as resistance) does not go away. It cycles, it spirals, it varies in length or intensity, it may even change shape, color, or identity – in this audio exploring the subject, Lisa Marie Cabrelli shared how she created a comic book creature to represent her resistance?

You may have heard the saying: Feel the fear and do it anyway.

But what is the first directive there? FEEL the fear.

You cannot pretend the fear is not there, or minimize it, brush it off, or ignore it. And it doesn’t say: Think about the fear. It says FEEL the fear.

Free Flowing Fear

Let that fear run freely through your body. Take a moment now and close your eyes, invite whatever fear or resistance is coming up for you to flow through your whole body. Truly feel it. And as it runs and cycles around your body, see if you can sense your way around it, see if you can feel how right on the edge of excitement that fear is.

Free-flowing fear is liberating. It’s what animals do instinctively and why a horse can run for it’s life one minute and relax and eat grass the next. It’s only when you try to contain fear – by ignoring it, trapping it in your mind, or denying it – that fear turns toxic and can ruin your dreams, or your health, or your relationships.

Fear is the signal from your ego that you are going into uncharted territory, because your ego’s primary mandate is to keep you safe. But the ego only knows what it has already encountered. So when you venture into new territory, the ego feels unbalanced, it feels you tipping into the unknown and so it pulls you back saying, “Whoa! Be careful!”

Take a moment now and thank your ego for doing such a great job of working to keep you safe. Thank your ego for using fear to effectively deliver the message to you. And take a breath.

I like to use an analogy to illustrate the ego’s motivation when it creates fear or resistance against new or expansive things. In the physical body, there is a function called the Homeostatic Mechanism. This means that the various systems of the body are hardwired to maintain equilibrium (or balance), no matter what challenges or extremes occur.

In the blood, for example, if calcium levels drop below the normal (balanced) level, your body will pull calcium from your bones to maintain equilibrium, or homeostasis, in your blood.

The Ego’s Job – Balance

I feel the ego works together with the subconscious to maintain psychic, emotional and energetic homeostasis in the same way. So when you’re faced with an unknown, or challenging, or expansive possibility, the ego feels you tipping forward and says, “Yikes, out of balance! Here we go, let’s yank you back here into balance. Let’s maintain homeostasis, because that’s our evolutionary imperative. That’s what we’re hardwired to do.”

So it’s really important not to beat yourself up, or get frustrated when fear and resistance rise up again and again. Our conscious mind understands that these new steps will make our world better. But our ego, working together with our subconscious, cannot understand future possibilities. They are anchored in the present and the past and all they know is that you are no longer in balance and their primary job is to maintain homeostasis!

This process below is designed to reassure your ego that although you are tipping a bit – because you’re taking a step up – balance will soon be restored and all will be well again.

Feel Your Fear & Dialogue With Your Ego

Take a breath. Spend some time now dialoguing with your ego about whatever fear or resistance you’re feeling and while you’re talking (out loud or in your head) also tap with 3 or 4 fingers on the fleshy part of the side of your hand. This is an acupuncture meridian point that will help integrate your emotions and your visceral body during this dialogue.

STEP ONE: Because you are allowing your fear to run freely through your body, you will also be able to access all the thoughts, beliefs and feelings connected to your fear. Perhaps you just want to call them out, one by one, as you tap on the side of your hand. Perhaps you want to talk about each feeling, or belief, or fear and where it came from and how it makes you feel and the effect it has on your life, or your relationships.

For example – tap on the side of your hand as your speak:

I hear that I’m really scared about being seen.

I understand that I am scared that people won’t GET me and will judge me; but then they won’t even be judging me, they’ll be judging their assumptions about me and that REALLY pisses me off.

I recognize that I don’t feel safe trying new things… I’m flashing to a memory of when I was 7 years old and I came to my Mom, so proud of the machine I just built and she screamed at me, so angry, and then she cried because I’d wrecked her clock and her toaster. I was devastated. I never wanted to hurt my Mom. I decided that I mustn’t ever act exuberantly on my ideas again. I made a vow never to risk my creativity and offer my pearls to the world again.

and so on. Go into your own life, your own experiences, go as far back as you need to go. Allow all your fears to flow through your body freely and speak them out, one by one. All while tapping on the side of your hand.

And when you’re finished speaking out everything that arises for you (keep tapping the side of your hand the whole time) and all your hopes and dreams for how things could be different, take a breath – keep tapping – and then say, “And I love and accept myself anyway.” If you cannot say those words, then change them to, “And I would like to someday love and accept myself anyway.” Take another breath and relax your jaw, roll your shoulders, and stretch your neck.

Just sit quietly for a while now and feel into your body, feel the sensations. Feel whether your heart feels open, or closed. Feel your back. Feel your feet and your knees, feel your neck and your head. Take a few breaths.

STEP TWO: Now speak to your ego and your subconscious like you would speak to a scared child. Tap on the side of your hand again as you speak. Explain what is happening in your life and at this point in your journey to freedom and explain why and how this is all for the good.

For example (take a relaxing breath) and tap on the side of your hand:

My dearest ego, I thank you so much for taking care of me and for doing such a good job of keeping me in balance. I totally understand that you are just doing your job right now. And you are trying to hold us back where you know it’s safe, because this new direction, this opening, this expansion feels scary and risky. It is the unknown and it is messy. It is not calm and safe… yet. And I want you to understand that we are in transition. I am asking you to trust me. To release your hold, to release your control and allow me to take us to this next level of openness and expansion and expression.

I promise that when we arrive in our new place of being, I will welcome you wholeheartedly to help us be balanced and centered in this new space.

STEP THREE: Now move from tapping on the side of your hand, to tapping or lightly thumping on your chest, like this:

As you tap with four fingers, or gently thump on your chest with your knuckles (thymus meridian point), explain why and how this temporary imbalance is actually moving you to greater safety and even more secure balance. Feel free to repeat things you’ve already said.

For example – tap on your chest as you speak:

I hear your fears Ego, and I understand you are just doing your job – and I need you, I don’t want you to stop doing your job. I just need you to trust me for this short, transition period, to step aside and let me take care of us during this shift.

Because I am moving us to greater alignment with our life’s work and purpose. I am taking a step along the pathway to bringing us into greater expression of our true self and I want us to work together.

I am open to this new way of us working together to keep us safe. I am open to trusting you and having you trust me. Thank you.

And if you feel new fears arising at this point, just keep feeling it, letting the fear run through your body and speaking it out.

Keep going until you have nothing left to say and you have felt everything there is to feel. And wrap it up by saying (while tapping on your chest or the side of your hand): And I love and accept myself just the way I am, right now. Again, if you can’t say that truthfully, then say: And I would like to someday love and accept myself just the way I am.

Fear As Teacher

Use this same process whenever you feel fear arising. Even just allowing your fear to run through your body – instead of tamping it down, boxing it up, or willing it away – will have a profound effect on how you experience your life. Allow yourself to feel around the edges of that fear and maybe you’ll be able to feel how excitement is hovering there too.

Maybe you’ll even get to the point where you feel that fear coming and you welcome it, as a teacher, as a signpost, as a messenger, and you even enjoy the rush of it! If you’ve ever galloped a horse, or jumped off a high diving board, or driven really fast, you’ve already experienced how fear and excitement can be a rushing, exhilarating place to be – some may even find it enjoyable.

And once you’ve used this process to take care of your ego’s needs, you will likely feel a whole lot more excitement than fear!

Here’s another EFT Tapping video where I help you release some of the fears that may be stopping you from moving forward.

In this video, I help you clear some common fears around taking risks; financial scarcity and resilience, changing (as you grow into your brilliance) and perhaps losing friends. So that you can feel freed up to live a great life of creativity, adventure, ease, sharing your gifts, and helping others. All you have to do is repeat what I say, and tap along!

EFT Tapping is a powerful healing tool because it interfaces between the mind/body and thus can shift things at the energetic, or subconscious level. It also involves your bodily sensations and fears or memories that may be stored in your tissues or organs – so you may feel butterflies in your stomach, or heaviness in your chest. Don’t worry! These are all good signs that your body is speaking to you and signposting the way to your healing.

Note that you cannot just listen to this video! You must tap along with me on the acupuncture points for this therapy to work its magic.

In the beginning, we are going to start by venting, and voicing out loud all the negative crap that may be carried in your subconscious, or that other people have spoken over you, or beliefs absorbed from your parents without conscious awareness (often before the age of 6).

So even though it may feel like we are focusing on the negative and you probably don’t want to dwell on that, it is an important part of the process for unlocking these limiting concepts and moving them into flow; so they can be transformed into life affirming, positive beliefs and feelings that make your world bigger. So if you’re feeling uncomfortable, just stay with me, keep tapping, and know that we have to go down into the depths to bring these things up into the light, where we can then shift and transform them. Stick with the video and know that the positive affirmations and life-enhancing re-frames are coming!

Follow along with me; tap on the acupuncture points I’m tapping on and say (out loud or in your head) the words I’m saying:

Here are the tapping points I use in this video:

EFT Tapping is a mind/body healing tool that dialogues with the subconscious (where your bedrock beliefs and foundational experiences are held) and integrates the clearing/healing with your physical body via the acupuncture points meridian system. So don’t be surprised if you also experience some positive shifts in your physical body after following this video – although initially you may feel quite tired, as processing big shifts like this can use a fair amount of energy!

Okay, now that you’ve got yourself clear, or at least created some breathing room – let’s get back into action! What’ll it be next…?

When I tell you how to tell your story (and why it’s crucial to the success of your business that you do so, and do well), I explain why the final decision to purchase is an emotional decision. It is your own personal stories that engage your site visitor’s emotions. Telling stories about your personal journey, or stories about your product or service lets your site visitor get to know you, and then they feel connected to you; they are emotionally engaged.

If someone feels you’re speaking directly to them, if your story touches their heart, or makes them feel recognition and a resounding “yes!” inside them, then you have them.

That’s another reason why scarcity-mentality doesn’t hold up under the light of scrutiny. Scarcity-mentality is a way of thinking that says: You and I need to compete, because there are only a limited number of buyers who will have to be split between you and me.

Let me tell you why that mentality is not only damaging to your business, but simply incorrect.

You and I might be selling exactly the same snow shoveling service (for example) – but my story is ballsy, humorous, with lots of boisterous male energy. Your story vibrates with care, concern and neatness. Are we going to attract the same customer? No.

And unless we live in Florida, there are enough customers for both of us. You don’t need to concern yourself with the competition if you are truly and utterly yourself – because there’s no one else just like you. There’s no one else who has exactly the same story as you.

When you tell your stories, don’t think about what you “should” say, or what people want to hear, or how to manipulate your listener. If you do that, your insincerity will come through louder than any other message. Or people will feel there’s just something a little bit “off” – they likely won’t be able to put their finger on it, but emotionally it will prevent them from buying.

This is why we need to take the time to really focus on your unique strengths and top talents. You’re not working for someone else now, you haven’t been hired to behave a certain way, or project a certain image, or uphold ‘company values’. This is your company – it’s all about you; your journey, your talents, your pain, your triumph, your lessons, your wisdom, your discoveries, your passion and your humour. So tell it like it is! Because your uniqueness will be one of your biggest selling points.

Do It Now!

Ready? Even though your business likely isn’t set up yet, we’re going to pretend it is. Don’t worry, you will need these stories soon.

Read each question one-by-one and immediately write (or voice record) your answer. Or, have a friend ask you the questions and you answer them truthfully and fully:

Your Story

1. “What made you start this business?”
2. “How did you come up with the idea for this business?”
3. “Where did your motivation come from to o er this to people?”
4. “What’s the story behind your product/service, how did you decide to turn this into a business?”
5. “Where did you come from, what did you do before this and how did that lead you to here?”

Your Product Story

If you have a product-based business, or you offer a specific service (like tax returns, or healing sessions, or house appraisals), then also tell stories about each of your products or services. Answer all of these questions for each different product or service you offer – and if you don’t know the answer yet, imagine what it could be and write that. Again, pretend your company is already successful and a reporter has called you and is asking you:

1. “Why did you choose to do this product, instead of product X (another product you could have done)?”
2. “There are already lots of X on the market, what made you think there was a place for yours?”
3. “Why is your product be er than all the others?”
4. “What do you do differently from other companies?”
5. “Why has your company succeeded when so many others struggle or have failed?”

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Don’t worry whether you will use these stories on your site, or not. And don’t start seizing up with excuses and resistance because I just asked you to write your story:

• I can’t do that, I’m a crap writer!
• I don’t need to do that, I already know my story cold
• My story is just not that interesting
• I feel embarrassed; oh, let me tell you about ME blah blah
• I’m bored of my story
• My story’s not relevant to my site
• I’m a private person, I don’t want to share my personal story*
• And on and on…

Remember how we talked briefly about not letting fear and saboteurs stop you? And getting your ego out of the way, because this is not about you, it’s about you being the best expression of divine creativity on this planet?

You don’t have to agree with me, you just need to step into allowing. If you want freedom and abundance in your life, you have to go here.

You can call it screwy, you can label it unnecessary, just tell yourself you’re doing it for me and get ‘er done! Trust me, with many of the tasks I ask you to do in this program, the benefits or point of it all only becomes apparent after you’ve completed the task.

And I’m going to make it super easy for you. In fact, this technique is so easy, even a child aged six can do it.

But let’s just talk briefly again about this objection:

 I’m a private person, I don’t want to share my personal story

I mentioned earlier on that you only have to share what you feel comfortable with. However, asking someone for money is an exchange of energy. So energetically it’s not going to work if you ask for someone’s energy without offering some of your own energy in return. And the more true and vital that energy is, the stronger and more compelling it will feel to your website visitor.

Money Is Energy

Think about it. Money is a piece of paper, or an electronic code on your computer and your bank’s computer – there is nothing of actual value there. But it holds symbolic value. We have collectively decided that this 2 cent piece of paper is actually worth $100 and we have all agreed to abide by that symbolism.

And what is $100? Again it is a symbolic representation of the energy required to produce X. For example, if you grow lettuce, it requires energy from you, the soil, the sun, the worms, etc. You then sell your lettuce for $100 to the grocery wholesaler. That $100 is symbolic of all the energy required to grow and harvest that lettuce. So when you give that $100 to the clothing vendor for a new jacket, you are exchanging energy – because guess what produced that jacket? That’s right, the energy of the cotton grower, the soil, the worms, the sun, the sewer, the cutter, etc. etc.

People who imbue their work and their products with their own strong, vital, life-force energy are tremendously compelling – because their products and services carry that same energy. This is not woo-woo stuff, this is physics!

Your own personal stories are the strongest energy you can give. But if you really don’t feel comfortable with that, then find another way to talk about yourself, your motivation, your heart’s desire, that is also strong and resonant with your core.

If you are asking for people to give you their energy (trust, relationship, money) you must be willing to offer yours. Otherwise, it’s unlikely your business will be as successful as it could be.

My entire health empire was launched on the back of my personal story: I healed myself from an incurable disease. I was (and am not) a doctor, health professional, herbalist, nutritionist, etc. Why would anyone listen to me? I wasn’t trying to get people to listen to me or follow me, I was simply throwing my story and my tools/techniques out there and then saying, take it or leave it – listen to your own gut! Do whatever you feel is right for yourself. I wasn’t even trying to make money when I put my first book, Listen To Your Gut, on the Internet. I viewed it as my service to humanity and hoped to just break even.

At that time, I had recently sold my telecommunications company to a software developer in New York (who read about my company in a magazine) for a nice chunk of change and had just given birth to my first child, so I was in cruise mode. I was not even looking or ready to start a new business yet.

However, that book and my willingness to tell the whole truth of my story, my willingness for my story to be of service to others, pretty much magnetized that book and website. I did nothing to promote Listen To Your Gut and it sold rapidly through word of mouth alone – 30 copies a month for the first six months and then increasing to 150 copies per month thereafter ($3742/month revenue).

Most of the strong businesses and brands you’ve heard of – think Apple, Donald Trump, Zappos, Facebook, etc. – embody the passion and energy of the company founder. So when you tell your story (stories) fully and truthfully it is an important way of infusing your energy into your business.

If you have difficulty writing, then just record your answers to the questions on page 21 of your LTYF Workbook using Voice Memo (on your cell phone or iPod), or Quick Time Player on your computer, or some other digital recording device. Remember to put your device into Airplane mode while you’re recording, so you don’t needlessly irradiate yourself.

You can then transcribe your answers, or parts of your answers, to use in your site copy or brochures. Or get someone else to transcribe it for you. So let’s just talk about transcription here as it may be a tool that can set many of you free from limitation (or resistance) very quickly.

Writing vs. Transcription

For whatever reason, I have many friends and family members who are brilliant people, but their brains don’t work the way our industrial education system says they should work. So they get labeled as having a ‘disability’ or they needed ‘learning assistance’ in school.

My eldest son is very kinesthetic (feels, translates, processes and thinks through his body) so he has great difficulty if he sits down to write. The very act of becoming stationary and stopping all movement shuts down his thoughts and he literally cannot think of a sentence.

But if I say to him, “Okay, you walk around, throw a ball and talk and I’ll just type what you say.” Kaboom, a two-page essay flows out of him in about 15 minutes flat; well organized, good progression of thoughts and building upon previous premises, beautiful transitions between paragraphs, etc.

So is he really ‘disabled’ because his body/mind works differently from the people running the schools? The richest person in our family (and I’m talking hundreds of millions of dollars) is ‘dyslexic’. Albert Einstein was kicked out of school. There are hundreds of examples of brilliant inventors and business people who were labeled ‘disabled’ or ‘developmentally delayed’ and whatever other label you can come up with. But are they really?

I invite you to throw out all those useless labels and give yourself your own label. Different doesn’t mean lesser, it can also mean better – it’s your choice. I personally feel that ‘learning disabled’ people have an advantage in the marketplace and they are more likely to be successful – if they can embrace the differentness of their brain and see it as a gift, as an advantage, and then work that baby all the way to the bank!

So stop trying to fit a round peg into a square hole. Is square better than round? No, they are just different. So if all the ‘normal’ holes around you are square, then stop searching for a round hole and make your own! Come up with your own ways of learning and doing and creating and inventing. You have been given a gift! So stop sitting on it, squashing it, trying to bury it, and bring it out in all it’s glory and celebrate it!

So along those lines, if writing is a big chore for you, then don’t try to write. Get a really easy recording device (iPhone, iPod, MP3 recorder, etc.) that can travel with you everywhere. And then get a good, cheap transcriptionist who can take your audio files and transcribe them into text for you.

Fiverr.com is a great, super easy place to hire a cheap transcriptionist. Or pay your kids or your Mom to do it for you – use your family to help out if you don’t have any money yet. Relatives can be paid in barter – cakes, babysitting, lawn mowing, etc. are all hard currency for exchanging tasks you hate to do, or that drain your life force energy.

If you do have some money to be able to hire someone, then head on over to Fiverr.com and get your feet wet! This is exactly the same process I walked my 15-year-old son, Oscar, through as he learned how to outsource for the first time:

• Use Dropbox to upload your audio file. If your audio file is too big, check out this tutorial on how to compress audio files, or make them smaller. In Oscar’s case, he had handwritten notes from school. So I taught him how to scan them and save as a PDF file, then upload the PDF’s. Or you could take a picture of each sheet of paper with your phone and then upload the .jpg files. It’s all good!
• Go to Fiverr.com and search the providers under Transcription. In Oscar’s case, he needed to hand in the assignment the next day and it was already 8 pm. So I told him to find someone in India, because night time in North America is day time in India. He paid $5 extra for 24-hour delivery – but he requested it be finished by 6 am PST so he could hand it in at school!
• Choose a transcriptionist with at least a 90% positive feedback rating from other jobs.
• After you’ve ordered the gig, you can send a message to your new transcriptionist with the download link or Dropbox details.
• They will message you back with a download link to the files as soon as they complete your job. In Oscar’s case, the transcriptionist sent the finished files by 4 am, so he had enough time to proofread and format before school started. If you like the job your transcriptionist did, you can save them in your Favorites folder and use them for ongoing work. Here’s my favorite transcriptionist that I use for all my teleseminars.

Congratulations! You just added the first person to your team! Without having to hire any employees and deal with all the paperwork, taxes, and personal drama that goes along with having staff. This is the kind of freedom I’m talking about!

Okay, getting back to telling your stories. You’ve got your method worked out: recording, typing, or writing. And you’ve figured out the environment you work best in: office, beach, café, forest, etc. And you’re all ready to go.

Doing these exercises I give you in the “Plan Your Dream Business” section will help you write your compelling story. And by crafting a story that answers these questions, you will begin building your relationship with your site visitors:

• Who are you?
• How did you get to where you are?
• What journey did you walk?
• How did you rise like the phoenix from the ashes?
• How did you turn your frustration, or sadness, or pain into something that makes the world better (and now you are offering that to others)?
• And why now?

The most common place on your site to use these kinds of stories is on your ABOUT page and you will likely use part of it on your Homepage. But you will also use your stories repeatedly in your marketing materials, teleseminars, interviews, discussions with customers, etc. Ready to go even deeper into your stories? Let’s talk about how you’re going to identify – and connect with – your customers.