Inspiring Women in Business podcast - Episode 24 - Using Emotional Freedom Techniques (Tapping) to Relieve Stress While Achieving Goals - Interview With Jacqui Acree

Is it really all in the mind? Are we being compassionate and kinder to ourselves if we numb our negative feelings and just keep on going to achieve success?

In this episode, I interview Jacqui Acree and she enlightens us about Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) or commonly called tapping. She also shares about the self-help industry, the good and the bad. 

It’s a great episode. Have a listen.

KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM THIS EPISODE

• Remember to be aware of what our body is telling us. It is not just about positive thinking, working harder, and pushing through.
  
  
• Failure is a necessary part of success. It's not a failure on one side and success on the other, and you only get one. Failure is part of the experience of success, it's a journey, and you hit failure along the way.
   
• Self-sabotage is a form of protection. When we look at it like that, we can begin to honor its intent and then let it go. 
   
• It's so important to be able to permit yourself to feel and feel the things that you feel.
   
• When we numb some feelings, we actually numb all of them. If you numb the "negative feelings" like anxiety, fear, disappointment, we are also numbing joy, maybe pleasure in some way.
  
  
• Visualizing a hard thing is going to catalyze a stress response in your body. When our body is stressed, it will go to fight or flight, we lose access to our rational perspective, logical brain. And we need those to show up and shine in life, whether business or life in general.
  
  
• Procrastination is always a stress response.
  
  
• Emotional Freedom Techniques, commonly called tapping, is a blend of acupressure and psychology. 
  
  
• Emotional Freedom Techniques or tapping can help us go through what our bodies really feel. It helps us better transition to what steps we should take next to achieve our goals.

Episode Timeline:

00:00 Episode Intro

00:40 Intro

02:01 About Jacqui Acree

03:37 How Jacqui ended up with her business today

07:10 Jacqui’s key messages for people about Gaslit

13:54 How numbing negative feelings also numb all feelings

16:31 The importance of honoring the journey instead of exclusively focusing on the big goal

19:33 How tapping helped Jacqui notice what she’s feeling and allowed it

26:31 Our body’s stress response when visualizing a hard thing we need to undergo to reach a goal

28:55 About Emotional Freedom Techniques or tapping

30:36 The first time Jacqui used tapping

36:15 Jacqui’s take on over-identifying our thoughts and feelings as ourselves

38:42 Transitioning from the feelings of self-doubt

43:04 How often people should use tapping

44:33 Jacqui’s last piece of advice to listeners

45:40 How to connect with Jacqui

47:42 Outro

About my guest:

Jacqui Acree is an EFT tapping Practitioner. Her mission is to empower entrepreneurial mamas to silence their inner critic, release perfectionism, and recover from goal trauma so that they can parent and lead with love and power. She uses a science-based practice (tapping) which stimulates the body’s energy points so you can experience physical relief, emotional wellness and feel at ease. 

Connect and know more about  Jacqui here:

https://experience.jacquiacree.com

https://www.instagram.com/jacquiacree

More about Ruth:

Hi, I’m Ruth, a business coach specializing in helping freelancers and business owners adjust their mindset and marketing so they can get fully booked with clients they LOVE to work with. I’ve helped hundreds of self-employed women achieve the time and money freedom they craved.

I’ve started this podcast because when I first went all in and left the corporate world to be a freelancer, I was grateful for any work that came my way. After over 20 years of freelancing and working for other people, I started to realize I’d created a glass ceiling for myself.

In 2017, I finally started listening to that voice that had been telling me for a long time that I wasn’t doing what I loved and fulfilling my true potential.  It took a critical illness to give me that wake-up call.  I don’t want the same to happen to you.

You can expect practical advice, inspiring stories, and a lot of aha moments as we uncover and kick to the curb all the obstacles you have been putting in your way.

I’m on a mission to inspire women to start and play bigger in business.

Connect and know more about Ruth here:

Coaching: https://www.ruthgilbey.com/coaching

Free stuff: https://www.ruthgilbey.com/next-client

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ruthgilbeymarketingandcoaching/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ruth_gilbey/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ruthgilbey/ 

Transcription 

Ruth Gilbey  00:00

Hi everyone. Welcome back to the inspiring women in business podcast. I'm delighted today to say I have Jacqui Acree on the show. She's going to be talking about EFT, which is tapping or Emotional Freedom Techniques. She's also going to be talking about the self-help industry and how messages like "you've just got to think positively" or "it's all in your mind," "master your mindset," or "just do this get moving," you know, "get going, work harder," aren't serving us and how to be more compassionate and kinder to ourselves. It's a great episode. Have a listen.

Ruth Gilbey  00:40

Hello, and welcome to the inspiring women in business podcast. My name is Ruth Gilbey, and I'm a business and marketing coach. I'm on a mission to inspire women to start and play bigger in business. Now I started this podcast because when I first went all in and left the corporate world to be a freelancer, I was just grateful for any work that came my way. After over 20 years of freelancing and working for other people, I started to realize I'd created a glass ceiling myself. It was in 2017 when I finally started listening to that voice that had been telling me for a long time that I wasn't doing what I loved, and I wasn't fulfilling my true potential. It took a critical illness to give me that wake-up call. And I don't want the same thing to happen to you. You can expect practical advice, interviews, inspiring stories, and a lot of aha moments as we uncover and kick to the curb—all the obstacles you've been putting in your way.

Ruth Gilbey  01:46

Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the inspiring women in business podcast. I'm absolutely delighted to have Jacqui Acree with me today. Thank you so much, Jacqui, for joining me. Do you want to let everybody know who you are and who you help?

Jacqui Acree  02:01

Ruth, I am so excited to be here with you today. Yes, so I come from faraway lands of British Columbia in Canada. So I help women who are highly sensitive and generally in midlife, so that I always say, is more of a stage than a precise age. I'm 44 years old. So I would consider myself in midlife, but it really is more of a stage. And these are women who have been following self-help. They've been reading the books, maybe hired a coach. They're following people on Instagram or social media who they really want to learn from so they can live their "best life." Now I'm using quotation marks, they're very careful, and these women have really come up against an invisible wall where they're starting to wonder what if there's something I'm doing wrong? What if this is actually something about me? Is there something wrong with me because they're not experiencing life in the way that it looks like these self-help authors or speakers or influencers are and so really returning that question back on ourselves as we're doing something wrong. And those are the people that are my dream niche. Those that were me not that long ago. And those are the people that I'm here to help.

Ruth Gilbey  03:14

And that's what we're going to talk about today. We're going to talk all about that in this episode. But before we do, if you could just tell everybody who's listening, how did you end up with the business that you've got today, the journey that got you to where you are today?

Jacqui Acree  03:27

Well, I really do think going over going back into history lessons?

Ruth Gilbey  03:34

Potted history, yeah.

Jacqui Acree  03:37

So I had a very successful business for a few years. I am a very growth-oriented high achieving woman, and on all external accounts, I looked quite successful and happy. I had, you know, the 2.2 children, the white picket fence, and the successful business, but my experience of it was fraught with a lot of angst. I felt tired all the time, like really exhausted, wouldn't say burned out quite yet. I think I caught it before burnout. But definitely, it was on the fatigue, heavy fatigue side of things. I felt like forced gratitude. Like I needed to be really grateful for what I had because I was almost scared if I wasn't grateful enough, somebody might take it away. Quite anxious, a lot of anxiety. You know, waking up in the morning, feeling like I already wasn't enough or didn't have enough for that day and then going to bed at night, sort of cataloging everywhere I felt, fell short. And so a really, really harsh inner critic and a lot of push through or breakthrough or you know, forcing type of like an approach to business and life not intending it to be that way. That was definitely some programming that was patterned in my subconscious behavior that I wasn't even aware of at the time. That's what I had been told to do. Right. Give up what you want now so you can have others won't have later, that kind of a message. And so I really tried really, really hard for a long, long time, but I wasn't fulfilled, and I wouldn't even say I was, you know, I wasn't a miserable human being, that's for sure. But I kept feeling like there must be more, there must be more because what I'm experiencing versus what I see others experience wasn't matching. And so, I got really curious about what was going on underneath the surface. And what it led me to is self-compassion, emotional agility, and stress resilience. I was chronically stressed, which caused all sorts of problems for us mentally, physically, emotionally for sure. I definitely didn't have the skills to regulate myself emotionally and tolerate all of the feelings that we have to be able to tolerate on not only this journey of entrepreneurship but also the journey of life. As I said, inner critic, I was really hard on myself, and so I needed to learn those three skills in order to really change my experience of the life that I had as well as move in the direction of my future. So I learned those three skills primarily through the practice of EFT tapping Emotional Freedom Techniques which, as you know, I'm an EFT tapping practitioner, so I now teach those three skills to, like I said, highly sensitive women primarily in midlife, whether age or stage it doesn't really matter but these are women who are really in a transition saying how I've been living my life up till now just isn't going to work for me anymore. And so, what do I do differently? What do I do next? And yeah, so we use tapping in order to create that safety in the nervous system which will probably make more sense as we continue our conversation by I'll stick a pin in it. For now, we can talk about tapping a bit more later me. 

Ruth Gilbey  06:39

So you've come into my membership before and done a wonderful masterclass called gaslit by self-help which had an enormous I think you've got a lot of messages from the members in the community about that, and it had a real profound effect on them, and I as well do you want to talk about. Can you summarize without going through the whole masterclass? I guess what do you think about the self-help industry? What are your key sort of messages for people about it?

Jacqui Acree  07:10

Yeah, I really love being in that masterclass. It was really fun to do that in your membership, and you have an incredible group of women. So if your listeners aren't in your membership method yet, I would definitely encourage them to check it out. So the gaslit by self-help masterclass does summarize some of the thoughts that I have and experiences I've had in the self-help industry. I always give the caveat that not all self-help is created equal, and I do believe that the individuals in the self-help industry, for the most part, have really good intentions, right? So I do not intend to call anyone out as an individual, saying that they have ill intent, but unfortunately, I think that there is a lot of harm that's created by the self-help industry as a whole, the conversation. So there are three things in the gaslit by self-help masterclass that they can cover very briefly here since that's like an hour masterclass, but I'll cover just the three pillars of that, the gaslit part. So number one is that self-help really loves to focus on mastering your mindset right. So this very heavy focus that it's all about your thoughts and if you can think the right thought which is always the positive thought that you will attract more of that to yourself and so white knuckle your thoughts and you will have everything that your heart desires and all your dreams will come true which is not entirely true. That is not 100% accurate. Yes, you and I have talked so much about this group, not just on the podcast we've talked about this, and many conversations that yes, our thoughts are important it is that part is true, but they are not the only thing about us that's important, so much too heavy on the thoughts. The second thing is the idea that we need to push through or break through here in Canada or even the states. I think we call it "pull up your bootstraps". What do you guys call it in the UK? We say pull up your bootstraps.

Ruth Gilbey  08:52

Well, that's a lot of like jfdi going on like just get on with it do it. Yeah, you know, you can do it get out your own way, that sort of thing. 

Jacqui Acree  09:01

That's right. Yes, that's right. The only thing stopping you is,  I think it's Yoda and Star Wars, "It's do or do not, there is no try. Of course, there's a try. You're so terrified of failure, so terrified of failure. But failure is a necessary part of success. They are not polar opposites. It's not a failure on one side and success on the other, and you only get one, or the other failure is part of the experience of success. There is a spectrum, and it's a journey, and you hit failure along the way. Absolutely. So the push-through breakthrough model of self-help is really harmful, particularly to us as women. It really teaches us to ignore our bodies, to dishonor ourselves as whole human beings, and that is one thing that leads to burnout very, very quickly. So that's why I think a lot of women when I say mid-life, I think one of the things that are prompting women to look for help from someone like me for just like you support empowerment, they really are getting burned out by By the time we hit midlife we know that it's not going to continue to work for us what we've been doing will continue for the next four or five decades, so we're looking for a change, but we honestly don't know what to do because we've been told for so long that this is the way forward this is how to pursue success or happiness fulfillment and it's just not true. There it comes with a very, very high cost, not only a physical cost which I mean we could list so many very physical consequences of a push through a breakthrough model, but also the emotional toll, the mental health toll. The research shows that when we try to push through a breakthrough, we actually create more anxiety or even depression, even panic attacks when we're approaching life and business in that way so extremely unhelpful model, but it's prevalent through so much of self help you know, yeah, so I'm going to I'm just going to go off on a tangent on that one, but I'm going to stick a pin in that one too for now because I'm going to move on to number three trauma-informed self-help that one thankfully, you're gonna start to see some of that creeping into the conversation. Particularly I see it coming up on Instagram a little bit more, which is great, but it has been sorely lacking, and self-help this complete neglect of, yes, capital T trauma is part of the conversation when we when I say capital T trauma, probably the listeners know exactly what I mean. But the truth of little t trauma that we all have in our lives because of how our brains grow and develop So one thing that I hear all the time from my clients literally all the time is well. My childhood wasn't really that bad. And the truth is that we're looking back on our childhoods with the perspective of the logic the rational thinking of the adult brain because now we have access to that part of our brain. But we didn't have that brain as children. We had a child brain that is heavily emotional, and so as a child, we're constantly interpreting really everything that's happening both to us and around us through the lens of what does this mean about me? Am I safe? Do I belong? Am I loved? Who can I trust? All those very, very key foundational building blocks of life really, and that sets this pattern up in our subconscious mind and our limbic system, which then continues to impact the rest of our lives if we ignore it, especially so we need to take that into consideration when we're looking at again building a business it's going to have an impact so if you're hitting a block you know again people come to me all the time for help with self-sabotage. Well, self-sabotage is a form of protection, and when we look at it like that, we can begin to honor its intent and then let it go, and it almost always has roots in a childhood experience so little t trauma, whether big T trauma or not is part of your path little t trauma needs to be part of the conversation and self-help is really, for the most part, ignoring that. 

Jacqui Acree  09:02

Yeah, I think for a lot of people that get these messages, they probably think, oh I'm just not cut out for that then so I can't do it so they even discount themselves trying, you know, thinking they can have the business because it's got to be done a certain way because self-help is saying well you know if you don't the self-help industry is kind of saying you know, come on just step out of your own way. Think positively. And some people just it's overwhelming those messages are very over I found them overwhelming when I was starting out. You know, taking the step from being a freelancer to a business owner. I was like, okay, I've got to be really positive all the time. I've got to be really resilient, but what if I don't feel like that when I feel really scared. Can I admit that? Am I allowed to admit that? Yeah, you know, yeah, it's so important to be able to give permission to feel and, you know, feel the things that we feel, and I think the lot of the messages suppressing feelings is just not good.

Jacqui Acree  13:54

No, and it really is. I mean, at the very least, it's very unhealthy, and we do all want to live healthy lives right, so at the very very least we can say that, but in addition to that, it really does keep us stuck, and I don't know what the stats are on this, but I've heard people say that you know why am I stuck or how to get unstuck is a really common some it's something that people search for a night late at night I can imagine these women on their phones in bed googling. Why am I so stuck? How do I get unstuck? And so, really honestly, what I'm here for is the conversation. It's not because you're not mastering your mindset properly. It's not because you haven't pushed through or broken through enough so try even harder and it certainly it's not because there's something wrong with you at all right so then what is it so this is I think, what are the reasons why people are uncomfortable with this conversation and maybe somebody listening is right now maybe they're like yeah, well this doesn't know this. This just isn't gonna work for me because it's we haven't been taught that our emotions that there's room for all of our emotions, that they're perfectly fine in themselves, that there's room for all of them, and as human beings, you're going to experience all of them we haven't been taught that we have been taught what to do with them so they can feel very scary you know that's how I used to feel when you know as a highly sensitive woman there were emotions that almost felt like they would take over my body which is a terrifying experience, so I just numbed them because to feel about it was I didn't know what to do with them. But the research shows when we numb some feelings, we actually numb all of them. So if you numb the "negative feelings" like, let's say, anxiety, fear, disappointment, that's when we avoid like a hot stove. When we avoid those feelings, we are also numbing joy, maybe pleasure in some way, so happiness, just like the nice banner of happiness. We all want happiness, whatever that means for each one of us. Well, we can't numb anxiety and not also know happiness. And so we do want to live that wholehearted life experiencing all that life has to bring us, which includes, you know, really being in the moment when your child touches your cheek at night as you're tucking them into bed or the true joy that comes with hitting that big goal that you set and you actually get to celebrate and hit it. So many women tell me as they get to a goal and instead of feeling what they thought they were gonna feel, they feel deflated they feel disillusion they feel like they can't pause and celebrate and you know really be present for that instead it's like what's next?

Ruth Gilbey  16:23

Is that why you think a lot of the women can't enjoy hitting that goal, then why do you think they're not enjoying it because they're not present or what is it that you...

Jacqui Acree  16:31

I think we haven't cultivated the enjoyment of the journey. We don't honor the journey, so we exclusively focus on manifesting the goal the big goal so I this is my goal I need to visualize that goal I'm going to use quote-unquote love the law of attraction to manifest the school for myself so now I'm going to white knuckle my positive thoughts I'm going to push through and force my way there no matter what the cost, this is how committed I am at all costs, I'm ready to give it all until it happens until great so we're so exclusively focused on that future goal and then we get there and really what we're longing for is the emotional experience of the goal. Yeah, we think that achieving something, whatever that thing is, is going to include all of these feelings with it, and then we get there, and it truly hasn't a whole new host of problems, right. You and I both know that with successful businesses, as you grow your business, you're going to encounter new problems, new challenges and so instead of really if we can learn to reflect on what emotions do I expect to feel when I get there, take a moment to jot those down right? So for me, one of the key emotions that I really seek to cultivate in my own business is fun, like I imagined achieving a big goal, and I really think about how fun that would be to achieve that goal like I get a big smile on my face my body feels light I kind of get those like little vibrations where you just feel like we're so excited right so happy so like it's so fun that feeling so fun is a word that really resonates with me and may not with someone else but that's for me that makes that I can feel what that feels like in my body. It does for me. It works for you too.

Ruth Gilbey  18:16

Yeah, it does, and it's something that I pass on a lot. If we're not in just a sec, there's so much you're saying, but I just wanted this a couple of things I wanted to say that one thing I heard through my journey is you know we there's all these kind of my six-figure coach six-figure months seven figures this you know aspiring and monetary. And it's like I thought that is supposed to be the goal. But really, it wasn't the right goal for me. The monetary goals didn't really light me up somehow. Of course, money is important, but there was a message that I don't know where I heard it from. Well, I probably heard it from a few different places, was like if you don't enjoy the months when you're getting you to whatever monetary goal is, if you don't enjoy that moment, it's not going to be more enjoyable when you add a zero on to it. Honestly, because, like in 2016, I had a year where I had a certain amount of money, and I have earned the same amount of money as I have any year in a month. I don't really feel that much different. It's not going to change the joy, if that makes any sense. Unless you work on are you doing the right thing. I don't know. There were other goals for me that weren't financial. I guess it's finding the ones, as you said, what is the thing that is the right goal for you, that lights you up? Making sense?

Jacqui Acree  19:33

Yes! And then right and then regardless, there's always going to be things actions, we have to take on the way to the goal that either isn't going to feel comfortable or you know, like get out of your comfort zone is something we've all heard a million times you have to get out of your comfort zone. I don't want to get out of my comfort zone. No, thank you, and frankly, probably neither do you. I mean, as human beings, we don't want to leave our comfort zone. It's not natural for us to want to do that. We always want to move away from pain and move towards pleasure. Those are just primal instincts and human beings. So in order then to, because again, self-sabotage is something that comes up all the time in conversations with either my clients or just you know, people in my circle, entrepreneurial circles, self-sabotage, procrastination, people-pleasing these things that we do. And procrastination is a huge one, actually. And perfectionism. So what do we do when, for me, technical things can become obstacles for me the story that I'm not good at building a website, or, you know, building an automation funnel, or figuring out how to zap all the things together in my cart with Mike, like, those technical things, for me can be a block, maybe for someone, I hear this one a lot of people, women, in particular, have a story that they're not good with money, or they're not good at numbers. So these things are just part of owning the business, we do have to find our way, particularly as a startup entrepreneur, you know, I don't have the resources to hire all of those things out, you know, we're told that's one thing that we're told is, well, you need to find support in the areas you're not good at. But the truth is, as an entrepreneur, I have to be able to manage somehow, right now, with the budget that I have. And so how do I do that, and again, push through breakthrough or manage my mindset is not going to help me at all, like how does focusing on a positive thought help me with a very practical reality of needing to sit my butt in a chair and do some work that I don't want to do. So that's what I mean, by cultivating the feelings I bring in with emotional agility. And particularly with tapping, I've really cultivated the ability to notice what I'm feeling, allow it. I don't need to resist it. I can sit with it. And I use tapping to move through the feeling so that I can choose to shift it if I want. So whatever I'm resisting, you can release it and then move on to, you know, I really don't feel like doing this right now. I don't want to, so for me, as I said, the feeling is fun. So I'm like, so how can I make this fun? In what ways could this be fun for me? Maybe there's no way that this can be fun for me. But there's something that could be fun afterward, whatever it is. So I use tapping to try not to try to. It actually is incredibly effective to move from resistance avoidance and into action, which we must take as business owners. We have to be able to do the actual things that build a business. You and I were having a very interesting conversation before we started recording the actual podcast here about manifesting, so what were we talking about? Were through my knee because it was about how we focus on needing to do the things, but we don't allow for how we feel about it. Do you remember us talking about that? When I say remind me.

Ruth Gilbey  22:53

You were talking about thinking through you're looking at the gold fire? Remember looking at the goal and the hard things that get you to the goal that way you were saying.

Jacqui Acree  23:03

Great! Okay, so yes, because I wanted to make sure we talked about this because it's actually an important part of the conversation. It's actually happening in real-time right now. So I recently just actually last night, I was listening to a short interview that Mel Robbins did with Lewis House. So two huge names in the self-help world and both whom I admire, right. So I love Mel Robbins. I think she's an incredible woman. And I would really love to be able to sit down with her someday and have a great conversation. So Barbie, for me to argue with Robbins, you know, maybe there's some context I was missing. It was about a six-minute interview. But they talked about the law of attraction and manifestation. And she was telling Louis that what we need to do is not focus on visualizing the end goal, but we need to focus on visualizing all of the hard things that we have to do on the way to the goal. So we visualize those things. So he's running a marathon. He's training for a marathon. So she used examples like you need to, like visualize your shoelace loosening and getting a massive blood blister on your heel and how painful that's going to be and pushing through that pain anyway or, you know, getting a leg cramp at mile 13 or whatever. So she is running in the rain, setting her alarm for 5:23 in the morning, and getting up and running. So visualizing those things because we do need to understand is that there's a process to go from $0 to, let's say, $100,000 as a milestone in your business and then from your first 100,000 to 500,000 and then to a million, there's a process involved there. And so, you need to visualize. She said, you know the bridge along the way going from point A to point B and all that's hard because we will avoid hard things. They feel terrible. That's the truth. And so if she's saying if we visualize them and we can tolerate them, and I was watching that last night, and I just don't think that's true.

Jacqui Acree  23:03

Right? Okay, as I said,

 I'm really a little nervous to say that out loud wants to question the incredible Mel Robbins. I say that with all sincerity. Like, I'll never...

Ruth Gilbey  25:04

get kicked out of this.

Jacqui Acree  25:07

I just have a different take on it. And I'm wondering like this was just last night. So out of curiosity, let's do a little experiment. So Ruth, if I was okay, so think about a goal, let's just do a little practice here. And so if you're listening right now, also think of your own goal, think of a goal that you've been working towards, and think about an activity that you know you have to do in order to get to that goal, but maybe you've been avoiding that activity. Or maybe it's approaching, and you're, you know, you are dreading it a little, which is perfectly okay, as you know. So when you think about that activity, what do you notice happening in your body? And you may need to even close your eyes for a moment. If you're driving and you're listening, please don't close your eyes, but for a moment, or if you're allowed to close your eyes and like, what do you notice happening in your body? When you think about that thing? Mel is inviting us to visualize that hard thing. To visualize it happening and how does it feel in your body?

Ruth Gilbey  26:03

So I tell you?

Jacqui Acree  26:04

Yeah.

Ruth Gilbey  26:07

My face is like that.

Jacqui Acree  26:08

Yes, yes, that's right. Like if we can see the video right now on the podcast, your face, like your body language, looks tense.

Ruth Gilbey  26:17

Yeah,

Jacqui Acree  26:17

very uncomfortable. We can use the banner word stressed here. So did your body feel stressed? Did you notice all

Ruth Gilbey  26:25

Do I have to, you know, maybe I could just push that into later in the year, you know?

Jacqui Acree  26:31

That's right. So visualizing a hard thing is going to catalyze a stress response in your body. And when our body is stressed, it will go to fight or flight, right. So agitation or disengagement. So you just said you're like, I kind of push this off. It's like flight, like, can I avoid this somehow, or sometimes we go to fight, which is like, how can I like force my way through this, rush through it, like whatever that is so but the very least you're gonna notice a stress response in your body. And when our body feels stressed, we lose access to our rational perspective, logical brain. And we need those brains in order to show up and really shine in life, whether business or life in general. As a parent, I absolutely need access to my adult rational perspective-giving brain, so my hypothesis, my theory, and I just invite you to really like sit with this and see if this resonates with you. If we are thinking or visualizing the hard thing, or if we're visualizing the big goal, and it truly feels impossible to us. It feels like it's too big, but we're told to just keep visualizing, just keep visualizing, just keep visualizing, practice your affirmations, right. And yet, we're experiencing a lot of stress in the body, which is going to show up as resistance unless we nurture ourselves in some way. Like if we don't take care of ourselves, we're going to continue to experience self-sabotage procrastination. Procrastination is always a stress response. I think I might have learned that actually, from Robbins originally years ago that procrastination is always a stress response. So when you're stressing yourself out about these hard things and then you're procrastinating, it actually makes a lot of sense. But that's why you'd be progressing. So what do we do instead? This is what I always hear. I'm like, okay, people tend to be open to this conversation. They're like, okay, that actually makes sense. And the reason I think they're open to it is because that is what I'm experiencing. That's what I'm living. This is what I'm thinking. So, okay, I am with you so far, Jacqui. But then what do I do instead? And then I do think that's an important part of the conversation. I don't ever intend to leave someone hanging. Oh, tapping, maybe this is a good time to talk about tapping because tapping is obviously the way that I help people do the next thing. Yeah. Is that good? 

Ruth Gilbey  28:51

Yeah. Tell people? Yeah, absolutely.

Jacqui Acree  28:55

Okay, so Emotional Freedom Techniques. It's commonly called tapping, or you may have heard of it called EFT for short. And it's a blend of acupressure and psychology. So we're putting the two together. So acupressure is simply stimulating those acupressure points along the body, which decade-long study at Harvard actually showed that it sends an instantaneous signal to the amygdala, a calming signal to the brain. So it immediately starts to regulate the nervous system. And it helps you feel better, faster, right? Like almost immediately. And then, while we're tapping on those acupressure points, we're talking about our thoughts and our feelings. And there's a really a general. I guess you could call formula or pathway and how we go through a tapping sequence. So we always start with the truth about how we're feeling. So we might say something like, even though when I think about this thing I don't want to do, and I feel really really anxious. That's okay. I accept how I feel about it right now. And I'm not going to leave myself there. And so we would say, you know, something like that. Three times and then we go through the truth. Like I said, we just have on the body talking about how we feel, so I feel really anxious. I really don't want to do it. I'm feeling super scared. I don't want to look or sound like an idiot, or that's really hard for me. I've never been good at numbers. Whatever it is what's happening on the body we're talking about listening you will notice in your body a common response to you'll start to notice like if you're really heavily triggered the very very very first time I use tapping in my own life the very first time I jokingly say, but it's the truth that I raged tapped in the bathroom stall.

Jacqui Acree  30:36

I raged tapped in the bathroom stall, so I had this very like an emotional flood. Have you ever had a response to something a reaction to something that's happened that seems so out of proportion to what just happened? Yeah, like as an adult, you're like this isn't making any sense. I hear this again all the time with entrepreneurs where they're they don't understand why they can't just make themselves do something like I don't get it. This is not that hard. Why can't I just do this for myself? I had this really emotional reaction to I won a door prize, which sounds like a really good thing, but the prize like I was at this entrepreneurial event, actually, there's a bunch of businesspeople in the room, and the organizers had provided all these amazing door prizes. Some of them were very high ticket values, and I won one of them which you think was so exciting, but when I went to the front to get it, it was actually an opened box of some supplements, so I know I again if people can see Ruth's face right now you give the good old like what that what I know I don't understand why somebody donated that I don't understand why the organizers decided to give it away I have no information about that I can tell you that I had not just like a puzzled reaction or a little bit of a laugh like That's odd. I actually felt really, really angry, like really upset, and you probably have felt this come over you at times, whether it's anger or another emotion to that flood that happens in the body. it's red hot, like a lot of hot blood almost in my body that trembly feeling. My heart was racing I started to sweat and I had been introduced to tapping you know even actually years before this but I've never tried it because I thought it sounded way too woowoo and so I always say I'm the go to gal for science support like the scientific support for tapping because there's so much science and if your listeners are curious about some of that then definitely hopping on my email list will support some of that information for them because I do love to talk about the science and so I just thought it sounded a little too but i'd recently you know that weekend I had had a conversation with a tapping practitioner and so she had you know, talk to me more about the science giving me some tips on how to use tapping and so as soon as I won that door prize I went to the event centers bathroom locked myself in the stall and I just fumbled through a very brief tapping sequence myself I didn't know what I was doing but I followed the points as best as I could and I just told the truth what how he's feeling I am so enraged right now this is a stupidest price I've ever seen. Why did I have to win this one? Why couldn't I win one of those really, like there was an amazing coaching package I would have loved, so I allowed myself to be honest, I tapped through that. And I noticed a shift in my body. My heart rate slowed down my breathing even though, you know, unfortunately, I was still sweaty, which is really uncomfortable when you have to spend the rest of the day with a bunch of other entrepreneurs. But I noticed that I calmed down physically as well as emotionally, and then I got access to what was really going on. I got some really incredible insight as to why I was feeling so triggered by this really, like actually kind of funny thing that happened. And it for me, it goes back to again, this is like a little t trauma in childhood where I often got the off-brand gifts. So they were like the lesser fall I'm trying to think might be what might be an example that you guys might remember. So I'm dating myself, but in my demographic, when I was in high school, silk shirts were all the rage here in Canada. So the girls all had silk shirts in high school, and my mom got me a silk shirt for Christmas. But it was like an old lady silk shirt, it had the shoulder pads, and it was like the wrong color. And it had the wrong cut. So I was really familiar with feeling deep disappointment over receiving anything, actually. And this gift that I won, which isn't a gift, a prize that I won. It triggered this deep disappointment in me that I just felt really, really upset, which wasn't really irrational. And so tapping really helps me to overcome that emotional trigger and get access to my adult brain, which I needed in order to feel better, frankly, and then also to let it go and to move on and receive the rest of what was there for me that afternoon with that group. So the reason I tell you that story is just to illustrate how empowering this very simple practice that is literally at your own fingertips, how empowering this is to be able to shift from a stress response into a calm, regulated state and to choose maybe different emotions or get insight into your thoughts that are really below the surface of that subconscious level and they're really not helping you, but they're there for a reason. So they're there to give you information, and when you hear the information, you can then move on. Does that make sense?

Ruth Gilbey  35:21

It totally does, and it's interesting because it kind of ties in like I mean, after your masterclass, I was like I had to sort of check-in with myself, you know in the messaging I'm using, etc. and I was like okay, okay I'm not saying to be I'm not a toxic positivity coach positively because I had a moment where I was like, What am I doing but one thing I do say to people and one and when I'm coaching people is I do say you know if there's a way of being able to step back from our thoughts and be curious about them and that works really well that's happening allows you to calm you know to de-stress and be able to do that so I think that's really powerful because in a way then you can get that. Do you think that's right or wrong, Jacqui, to detach from your thoughts? So is that the right thing for you? No, I'm saying that is it.

Jacqui Acree  36:15

Oh, we are not our thoughts. We over-identify with our thoughts. We over-identify with our emotions, so something in my being human together course is the skill of really creating some distance from our emotions, they are things we feel, but they are not who we are. So you've been looking at our language, it's actually really critically important to be mindful of when we say because anxiety is something that I have felt in my whole life like it's been quite a companion for me over the years, and I used to say I am anxious that's how I would express it, but that's actually not true as a human I am not anxious. I am someone who often feels anxious, or you could say I'm experiencing anxiety right now, but that's way more accurate. What we do is we over-identify, and then it becomes who we are, and that is a scary thing to feel that this anxiety is like who I am? So you can also use parts of self. We can use parts of self like. The part of me feels anxious right now and part of me just chatting with somebody today about self-doubt, and I really think this is probably a whole different podcast episode.

Ruth Gilbey  37:19

Yeah,

Jacqui Acree  37:19

Although maybe we'll get into it here normalizing self-doubt entrepreneurs, you know what kind of conversation I'm here for Ruth, and I know you are, as well. I'm here for the conversation with entrepreneurs where there's transparency. Transparency about the journey, transparency about the numbers, you know, so it's wonderful when someone has a six-figure business, but what did it take for them to get there, what is their overhead, what are their what's their ad spend?

Ruth Gilbey  37:41

Yeah,

Jacqui Acree  37:41

How are they feeling about it? Like when are they feeling burned outright like that's one thing again? I have to admire Mel Robbins because she just did a little live about that yesterday, and she really was honest about how she was feeling in the moment. She was feeling very burned out on this book tour she's on, and we need to be honest about all of those things, and self-doubt is a very normal part of entrepreneurship. We all feel it sometimes, but it doesn't have to drive the bus, so to speak, so that's where the thoughts are really important. We don't need to. Let's just use the self-doubt thought. For example, we don't need to nurture self-doubt thought, so what we don't want to do is, like I said, over-identify with it or when I say that it's okay to have the "negative thoughts". I'm not proposing that we want to nurture them right. Of course, we don't want to nurture them. We don't want to give them too much attention, or we do, you know,

Ruth Gilbey  38:39

Right to them, but I'm feeling bad for having them because that's just straight. 

Jacqui Acree  38:42

Oh no, that's right, so when we resist them, they have to continue to speak up. They are simply information. It's something that you know your subconscious is letting you know is there, and then you can say, okay, that's part of how I feel, and that's actually a normal part of this journey. I can expect it to come and go. You know, I feel self-doubt at different parts of my journey. It isn't a constant feeling for me in my business, but I do expect it'll come and go right. At times I might feel more self-doubt than others. That's what's actually expected. It's okay. It doesn't have to mean anything, and then I can transition to, you know, that bridge that Mel talks about. I look at it like okay part of me feels self-doubt, but my faith is stronger, so you know how I'm transitioning a little like using a bridge to go. Yes, I feel self-doubt. And maybe I can grow my phase. I wonder how I can grow this phase. Maybe this is possible for me. What if we start to use so when we use tapping? That's part of the tapping process. So first, like I said, in that rage tapping in the bathroom stall example. I started with being honest, like I am so angry right now I am so upset. I have no idea why but my body feels like it's been completely taken over. So I did that for just a while. I don't even know how long it took. It was a few minutes, like maybe three. It was short, not even that full. I mean, the whole experience was three minutes. So let's say that part might have been one minute. I just needed to let it out. So I let it out. The next stage is bridging the gap like we're starting to now in our calm state, calmer state. We're starting to access that rational brain the perspective that we can start to go without forcing a positive thought, but now we're open to it. Because both are true. They're both available to us. So okay, well, what if it's normal to feel self-doubt? What if Jacqui says she feels self-doubt and she's successful? Ruth says she feels self-doubt. She's successful. What if it's okay, if I feel self-doubt, to maybe I can feel self-doubt, it doesn't have to mean I'm not going to be successful. Maybe it doesn't have to mean anything. Maybe I can feel it and let it go and move on. So we start to create possibilities. And then, the last round of a tapping sequence or a tapping session would focus on those positive experiences, thoughts, feelings that we want to bring more in. So you are not forcing the toxic positivity, but you follow your own pace, and you naturally move there on your own. Because as adults, we do have access to that as a highly resourced, empowered, 44-year-old woman, I can say, you know what, maybe I'm not great at the technical stuff. But I am a very fast learner. And I have a great friend Cheryl, and she can teach me, and it might take me a while to learn, but I'm going to get there, and you know. So what do I need to do next? That's what I'm going to do first. That's what you can access once you calm that stress response. Regulate your emotions, create safety and resilience in your nervous system. And now move to the positive. There's one other thing I kind of bulldozing through, but I don't want to miss this, Ruth, because this is such an easy thing for us to forget to bring into the conversation. We're talking about tapping, and I do hear this all the time. So yes, we're talking about "negative thoughts" or feelings. And what do we do with those? So if we're allowed to have them, if we're allowed to feel them? What do we do so they don't hijack us? So we accept them? We take care of ourselves through them, and then we shift them with EFT tapping. What do you do if you actually want to focus on the positive though, is that a bad thing to do? Can you use tapping for that, and that is one thing that I love using tapping for, like, if I'm already in a wonderful state of mind, or emotional state, like what if I'm just feeling really great today? Can I still use tapping, and you absolutely can use tapping to tap into your affirmations if you have an affirmation practice if you have mantras, you know, things that you just really want to tap in deeper into your subconscious programming, not to again, like short circuit not to try to like take a shortcut into like, you're not trying to hack a system. But if there is truth there that you're like, you know, I'm feeling just really calm, centered. I'm feeling really motivated. I'm feeling full of possibility today, and you want to tap into that deeper, you can use tapping to bring more of that into your beat.

Ruth Gilbey  43:00

I'm going to start tapping more often.

Jacqui Acree  43:04

It doesn't have to belong. It does not have to be luck. It also doesn't have to be perfect. I always tell people something that I think is different in how I approach work with my clients. I think we need to let ourselves off the hook more. I think all the pressure we're putting on ourselves is really doing us more harm than good or any good at all. And so you know, there's a lot of us as entrepreneurs believe that we have to have a really strict morning practice. In order to be successful, we need to have the "Miracle Morning Routine". And tapping does not need to be something that you add to your must-do list and then feel bad when you're not doing it well enough, perfect enough, consistently enough. So bring it into your life in a way that is supportive for you. So yes, you can tap more. It doesn't have to be every morning for 10 minutes. You can use it spontaneously. You can add it into practice, whether it's morning or evening. And then remember that it's like drinking water. Like, let's just drink more water and not maybe be super militant on how many liters we're drinking a day.

Ruth Gilbey  44:07

I love that. Jacqui's view got us thinking. We've been talking for about an hour, I think.

Jacqui Acree  44:13

Oh my goodness.

Ruth Gilbey  44:16

It's just absolutely packed with so much it's going to be so useful for people, but I suppose what if you ever those what's the what would be the last piece of advice that you would give listeners for those of them, you know, listening to, you know, what's the last takeaway that you want to say to them today,

Jacqui Acree  44:33

I really believe that this is true that as a highly sensitive woman, whether you're highly sensitive or not. As a woman who has tried really hard for a really long, if being hard on yourself worked, it would have worked by now. It really would have worked by now. So instead of trying harder, maybe try softer. Try another way. Try self-kindness with self-compassion has three main pillars. It's self-kindness, mindfulness and common humanity. So remembering that we're all in together truly, you're not alone. There's nothing that's been experienced in this world that is unique to you. So that's actually really good news. And it's kindness is the way to support yourself in moving forward. It really is. So developing a self-compassion practice of some kind, I absolutely advocate for using tapping to do that. But there are lots of different ways. And so bringing in that to your life, in your business to your parenting, like for me, as a parent, that is such an important thing to do for myself. It will absolutely revolutionize your life. 

Ruth Gilbey  45:32

Yeah. I love that. And how can people find out more about you, Jacqui? I'm going to put lots of links in the show notes for everybody. So how can people find out more about you? 

Jacqui Acree  45:40

But I find people often want to try tapping. They're like, okay, either you've been a little experienced with it, maybe a lot or not at all. So there's always a rage in what people have experienced with tapping. And so I created a free 10 minute guided tapping session. It's a download. It's an audio or a video version. So you can tap along with me visually if you want to see me moving through the points. You can also just listen to it, just like this podcast, and it's only 10 minutes. So people want to download that experience. But Jacquiacree.com and they have access to that free session. And they can give it a try for themselves, experience it for themselves, and see how it works for them. It's a session that is designed to help you shift from any feelings of maybe overwhelm or anxiety into a more calm, grounded state. 

Ruth Gilbey  46:27

Brilliant. I'll put a link to that in the show notes. And you're also on Instagram, aren't you as well, because we chat. 

Jacqui Acree  46:31

I am on Instagram. Yes, @jacquiacree. Well, you've inspired me so much with those reels, and I have way too much fun creating them all the time.

Ruth Gilbey  46:44

They want you to get the deal.

Jacqui Acree  46:45

Yeah, they really do, for sure. 

Ruth Gilbey  46:47

When you find a little soundbite, and you're like, yep, that's the one I want to use. That's the one I want to lip-sync to today. 

Jacqui Acree  46:53

Yeah, absolutely. It's given me permission to scroll late at night in bed and save all the reels that someday I think I might make.

Ruth Gilbey  47:02

Oh, I've got a tip for you. I've shared this with you before. It's probably good for listeners as well as you can share. You can record the reel and save it in drafts. 

Jacqui Acree  47:11

Yes, that's how I do almost all of my good. 

Ruth Gilbey  47:13

You know that one? You know that one?

Jacqui Acree  47:15

Yes, we're all about batching over yet, because when you're in the flow, you just want to go for it. 

Ruth Gilbey  47:20

Yeah, I can create many more that way than trying to do one at a time a lot lately. It's been so wonderful to have you on today. Thank you so much for sharing what is just such an amazing episode for people listening. So thank you so much, Jacqui.

Jacqui Acree  47:37

It's been absolutely my pleasure. And it's been a lot of fun. Thank you, Ruth,

Ruth Gilbey  47:40

Thank you so much.

Ruth Gilbey  47:42

Thanks for listening to the inspiring women in business podcast. I hope you found this episode helpful. If you did, I would love it if you would leave me a review. Also, I would love to connect with you on Instagram. That's where I hang out most of the time. I'm @Ruth_Gilbey. I'll put a link in the show notes for you as well come and connect with me. Tell me about your business. And also tell me what you'd like to hear next on the podcast. And lastly, go and check out the business building hub on my website. There you can find more amazing free resources to help you take the next step in your business. And you can also find out other ways that you can work with me. I'll see you soon.