(starts @ 42:54)
Karate Chop: Even thought I’m holding on for them…
…because I would feel guilty getting rid of it… …I deeply and profoundly accept myself anyway. Even though I’m trying not to hurt their feelings… …so I’m holding onto something I don’t like…
…and something I don’t need… …I choose to release the guilt. Even though I have all this guilt… …because I even want to get rid of it… …I accept who I am and how I feel.
Eyebrow: This complicated guilt.
Side of the eye: I don’t think I should throw anything away. Under the eye: They gave it to me.
Under the nose: I can’t give it away. Chin: I certainly can’t throw it away. Collarbone: And that’s okay.
Under the arm: I accept myself as I am…
… right now.
Top of the head: And I appreciate all these conflicts. Carol: Take a breath.
Rick: Ahhhhh… (deep breath) Sometimes it’s hard to appreciate those
conflicts. One of the things that I encourage people to do is to consider that you can keep the energy, the gift - the actual emotional gift of the item, the thought behind it - and not necessarily hold onto the thing itself.
Carol: Well, one of the reasons, for your birthday for the last two years,
I’ve written you a poem and an appreciation list is that I don’t really want to give you more stuff! I try to encourage people, you know…
Rick: (laughing) That’s why you make such a good friend!
Carol: (laughing) I’m encouraging people and myself to stop collecting
‘stuffola’! So if I give you a list of wonderful things I appreciate about you, I think you would hold onto that.
Rick: Your birthday list is something I look at every single month. It’s a
single sheet of paper that goes from August to September folder, and September to October folder. That’s my way of connecting. I encourage people to think about this. If you’re trying to create a balance between the richness of your emotional life and greater simplicity in your physical life, then think about presents which have rich emotional meaning to them, that aren’t physical things. Those can be experiences that you choose to have together. It can be like something that Carol did for me.
Carol: I have several friends and we have a pact that, for birthdays and
holidays, what we do is to go out and have a wonderful meal together at a favorite restaurant.
Rick: Yes.
Carol: And that wonderful experience…I don’t need another blouse. I don’t
need another piece of jewelry. I don’t need anything.
Rick: Frankly, as I get more energetically clear in myself, what is appealing
to me is very specific.
Carol: Yes.
Rick: People will say, “He’s so hard to buy for.” Okay? Yeah! No apologies
there! (laughing) You know, you may want to buy me a television, but I’m real careful about the energy of the items that I bring into my world. With that in mind, though, experiences - heart-to-heart experiences and
expressions of what we mean to each other - these are things which never clutter yourself. These are the rich memories that live on even after we’re gone.
Carol: I thought about the guilt around books. I have way too many
books. Slowly but surely I’m giving some away, but what really helps me is to have a place to give. So I found a fantastic place that will take books, and once or twice a year there’s a store near us that says, “Put your books for other people here.” It’s sort of a ‘pass-along’. But before I had places to put them, and to give them, the guilt was overwhelming. For one, I thought I should read them. How many books have I bought but never read?
Rick: Sure.
Carol: One client said to me, “I have a business card sticking out of each
book,” which means, “That’s how far I read, and the business card is my place marker.” There are a lot of books that you don’t need to finish - one chapter is perfect. I’ve gotten much better about that. But what helped me is feeling confident that I was giving it to someone who would enjoy it. I won’t throw books out. Isn’t that interesting? I will not throw them out.
Rick: I will throw out books that I feel the energy in them is not something
I personally would want to pass along to the world. When I went back through all my books, there were about ten that I just didn’t want to pass on. So those got recycled. Thank you, universe, for paper recycling. Right?
Carol: Right.
Rick: It will turn into toilet paper as it runs through the mill. I agree with
you completely. As you think about things that you want to flow in your life, you have to have an avenue for them to flow out in a way that feels good to you. When I give a book to somebody, and they say, “I’ll give it back to you,” I say, “No, if you like it, pass it on. If not, give it to the library. Drop it in the library box.” They’ll figure out something to do with it. I know the library will take it and put it in their book sale that raises money for them. So that’s what I do. I agree with you. Anything we have, there are usually people that, if it’s no longer right for us… Our intuition - once we let go of that feeling of “I need to hold onto Aunt Mary’s thingamawhopper” - as soon as you get over the guilt of even considering letting it go, you might have a person come to mind that it would be perfect for.
Carol: Right.
Rick: It’s like jewelry. There’s some people that can wear those big clip-on
earrings, and there’s some people that can’t.
Carol: Mmm-hmm.
Rick: That’s what we’re talking about here is letting go of the emotional
holding, clinging, and guilt so that you can get clarity about what is right for
this. You’re probably not going to be buried with all of your stuff, so at
some point it’s going to move on. As soon as you get used to the idea of a flow of things…ahhhhh. Then life becomes natural, and you don’t end up feeling like you need to cling to life itself, too, which makes you feel much freer as you go through the time that you do have.
Carol: Then there’s also that financial peace. If I’ve spent $22 on a book,
and I give it away, I feel like I’m wasting money. This happens with clothes and makeup and books. Since I’ve been changing all this… I had some nieces staying with me, six months to a year ago. I had no less than five extra blush compacts in my bathroom, and I gave them away to them. The colors fit them. They didn’t fit me. I don’t know why I had some
compulsion to buy rouge or blush. They were from these expensive places. I didn’t want to give them away - it was going on six to ten years of old stuff (that stuff doesn’t go bad). Women have a real issue with this. I have
talked to a lot of women about this. If they buy makeup, they can’t give it away. It’s not right for them, they can’t throw it away because they spent money on it, and they can’t return it. Who wants used makeup? We cleaned these rouge puffs up, and my nieces are thrilled.
Rick: As you say, who needs makeup? The domestic violence shelters, you
know? There are places where, to have a nice makeup kit, for somebody who has gone through a very difficult time, can be wonderful. A lot of these women leave with the clothes on their backs. But you can’t get clarity on that if you’re feeling like, “I bought that.” Again, it’s not logical. It isn’t logical. That’s why we’re doing this using EFT instead of saying, “We want you to go through your bathroom closet and say, ‘Look - do I really need this or not?’” You can’t do that if you’re…
Carol: If that worked, it would have worked ten years ago…
Rick: You don’t do that if you feel like, “Why did I buy that??” And there’s
a sense of guilt or even a sense of stupidity.
Carol: Right, as if holding onto the extra thing is going to make the money
come back…
Rick: There is evidence of primitive brain. There’s no logical reason for it.
Let’s just assume there’s something primitive going on here. “I might need it someday? No, not that. Would I feel guilty if I gave it away or threw it away? There it is: guilt.” Even though I feel guilty if I just throw it away, because…fill in the blank.
Carol: That idea of wasting money - I think it’s so important. That’s why
we think abundance and clutter are so connected. Let’s do one more
tapping on guilt, connecting it to wasting money. I must say also, the joy I felt of giving my niece a little rouge compact - that she couldn’t afford, by the way…
Rick: (laughing) No.
Carol: …and it looked beautiful, and she was so happy. It was one of those
feelings. But I didn’t used to get that. I was all about holding on, and oh, I might need it someday. Even though that coat is clearly from the early 1990s and it’s out of date, it’s like, “Oh, well.” Once I found places to transfer and give and offer, that was a serious part of my clutter problem - not having an avenue.
Rick: Yes. I would say that it’s probably 95% of the people… Even if you
clear some of the emotional stuff, you need to have some way of letting it go that feels acceptable to you. Even if it doesn’t feel great, it needs to feel at least acceptable. I’ve noticed that I buy books sometimes and they’re really meant for somebody else. I’ll read a couple of paragraphs or pages or a
chapter that jumps out, but then somebody’s picture will come to mind and “Oh - it was supposed to go to that person!” I did that just the other day with a book on servant leadership. I read about three chapters of it in a coffee shop, and then this person walks in, and I know her, and I said, “This is perfect!” She was so delighted to get the book. It was absolutely right for her.
Carol: Mmm-hmm.
Rick: That, to me, is abundance. That’s allowing us to be a flow. Carol: Absolutely. So, one more on guilt and money: