Fear is one of the most human emotions — and one of the biggest barriers to showing up with courage and clarity. Even experienced leaders can find themselves freezing in key moments, not because they lack skill or confidence, but because their nervous system takes over.

In this episode of Think Beyond Talks, host Anne Barnea speaks with Dragan Milicevic — executive coach, trainer, and psychotherapist — about how leaders can move from fear to focus using Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), also known as tapping.

Dragan shares:

• Why our brains interpret emotional risks as physical threats.
• How unprocessed experiences shape our reactions long after they happen.
• How simple physical techniques can restore calm, clarity, and confidence.

Whether you’re giving feedback, making a tough decision, or facing uncertainty, this conversation offers a grounded way to turn emotional barriers into presence and courage.

Leadership, development, growth. Scroll through LinkedIn and you'll see these words all the time. But do you connect them to yourself? At Think Beyond, we define a leader as someone who influences others, which means leadership might be closer to your own life than you think. In Think Beyond Talks, I speak with inspiring coaches and trainers from our global network about what it truly takes to lead well, support others and grow sustainably.

I'm Anbania, join us and let's think beyond together.

Have you ever been in a situation where you knew exactly what to say and yet when the moment came you froze? Maybe you were about to give feedback to an employee or you were standing up to start an important speech or you want to speak up in a meeting but somehow you couldn't. And the strange thing is you were prepared, you knew how to do it but still you felt blocked. My guest today Dragan Milicevic has spent more than 20 years working at that very intersection.

when knowledge and skill aren't enough because emotions get in the way. With the emotional freedom technique or EFT tapping, he found an approach to help clients overcome such barriers. He's an executive coach, trainer and licensed psychotherapist who began using EFT tapping long before it entered mainstream coaching or research. At the time, many were skeptical, but Dragan kept going because he saw the results.

leaders moving past fear, finding their voice and stepping into clarity. Today, more than a hundred plus peer-reviewed studies confirm its effectiveness and major newspapers have caught up writing about its growing role not only in psychotherapy but also in leadership and career development. In this episode, we'll explore why leaders get stuck and how EFT can help them move from freezing up to showing up

with courage and confidence. Hello Dragan, I'm really happy to have you here.

Hi, thank you for the invitation. Pleasure, pleasure.

So Dragan, I think so many of our listeners will recognize themselves in those moments, prepared, capable and yet suddenly blocked. From your perspective as a coach and psychotherapist, why is it so difficult for people to act even when they already know what they should do?

Yes, and under the phenomenon you described, we all experience them on almost a daily basis. And what's happening with leaders in these situations where they struggle to give tough feedback, maybe, or speak up is what we're all basically experiencing is a stress response. And the limbic system, which is responsible for the stress response, looks at these situations as life threatening.

And what it does, and this is how nature intended it, it hijacks basically the rational part of the brain. It basically takes over and we cannot think straight anymore. So we feel blocked. So it's because of that hijacking. And as with all stress responses, blood pressure rises, our breath flattens, adrenaline kicks in.

And all we got left are the famous survival modes, a fight, flight and freeze response. So even though, you know, after the situation, our rational part of the brain says, you know, there is no reason to be worried, you know, I've done this a million times, yet the limbic system is much stronger and wins the fight in the end between limbic system and rational part of the brain. So the interesting question,

is why does the limbic system see a life threat in these situations? You're giving feedback, you wanna speak up in a meeting and it looks at it as a life threatening situation and that's why it initiates these stress responses and that's why we start feeling blocked. And the question is hardly answered by neuroscientists or psychologists. They don't really look at that, but we as therapists, we do look at that.

And so where does this blockage actually originate and come from? And I'm sure we'll get to that.

And yeah, you described it that all of us at one point experienced that. But what is fascinating that in some areas we have these blockages all of a sudden in a meeting or something. And then maybe two hours later, we're super confident in our private lives, for example. How come sometimes we're just overwhelmed by these emotions? Where does it come from?

Yeah, that's a great question, Anna. a lot of people don't look at that part, but we do when we work with AFT particularly. So what happens, why is the brain thinking your life is threatening when you give somebody critical feedback? It shouldn't, because your life is not in danger, right? So what the limbic system does, as I said, it's a number of organs. And there's also an organ that

basically save the emotional experiences of our life. So what happens in these situations is that your limbic system thinks this is a situation from the past that you've already experienced. It compares and thinks it's the same situation from the past that did not turn out good for you. So it has nothing to do with the current situation. Unfortunately,

what the limbic system does is it does not have a sense of time. So it thinks it's actually happening again. And that's why it's causing the stress response and making you feel blocked. And the reason, you know, why does the brain think of the past in that situation? And it has to do with the fact that whatever you experienced in a certain situation in the past,

could be you were in school and the teacher yelled at you in front of the class. That's a small traumatic experience if not processed properly. So any experience we have which is unpleasant during the day, even today, is a potential for a traumatic traumatic experience. What happens though is after an experience, the brain processes these experiences and that happens to you normally during sleep. So the sleep

is where we process all our experience throughout the day that we've had, and particularly the dream phase. And Matthew Walker, who wrote the book, Why We Sleep, explains it really nicely, that the dream phase is responsible for processing these experiences. And if, let's say in school and that night, your brain was not able to process it properly, it remains basically stuck in your limbic system.

So your limbic system doesn't forget about it. And when a similar situation pops up, it could be a smell, it could be a person looking like that person from the past. What the limbic system does is watch out, you know, it gives you an alarm, watch out, this feedback conversation is not gonna turn out well for you. And that's why you start feeling nervous, anxious, even though your life is not at threat. But back then, you thought it was gonna be a threat.

airplane hijacking or a terrible breakup in a relationship, right? That could be traumatizing. And also it doesn't have to be childhood. But the key thing is if your brain does not process it in the sleep phase thereafter.

And before I ask you in detail, all about EFT, I have two more questions to understand these blockages. So if I'm in this situation, we mentioned giving feedback. Do the blockages usually come from the very same situation? I already gave someone feedback a year ago and it didn't turn out well, or can it be just very unconnected situations and you get triggered in this situation?

Yes, it's typically very unconnected. A feedback session that you did last year and didn't turn out well is not traumatizing. So it really has to have a strong emotional experience and a very negative strong emotional experience for it to be so big that the brain at night couldn't process it. the regular negative experience we have during the day, if you go to the bakery store, I want to buy a loaf of bread and the sales lady is really rude to you.

and it's unpleasant, but it's probably not gonna be traumatic, right? So yes, it is often unrelated to the situation, but the person looks similar, the situation looks similar, and it also works with smell. If we smell something that was connected, the same smell to a situation in the past that didn't work out, fire for instance, if you smell that again and you've had a traumatic experience,

you know, with fire, your house burning down, or you were on vacation, you know, now, you know, in summer, there's a lot of fire, wildfires in Europe. That could be a traumatic experience when you have to flee your apartment or your house. And if you smell that again, the limbic system is reminding itself of that situation and is telling you to watch out. So it works with smell as well,

And how come sometimes when we sleep our brains are able to process and then some nights they aren't?

That's a great question. Sometimes the emotional experience is so strong, which is connected, that stronger it is, the higher the level of cortisol in your brain will be and in your body. cortisol is actually the hormone that is playing a big role in causing that blockage.

And sometimes the amount of that stress hormone stays so high in our body that at night the brain cannot process it. It was just, even for the brain, it was just too much to process. If you're lucky and after a traumatic experience, you have somebody right next to you that can comfort you, that can hug you, that already is a form of processing the...

the event, that already helps for the limbic system to process it. But most people don't. Most people don't in traumatic experience. It's actually the opposite. You feel alone and helpless. So it's actually the opposite. So by the time you get to bed and the first night you won't sleep well either, because you've still got that traumatic experience. So it's hard for the brain to get into a stage where, into the deep cycles of the sleep in order to process it. So probably the next couple of nights you won't be sleeping well.

So that explains also why it's very difficult for the brain to process this negative traumatic experience.

Well, we mentioned now EFT tapping or emotional freedom technique several times and I'm sure our listeners are now curious to hear. For someone who has never heard about it before, how would you explain what it actually is and what happens in the body when we do it?

Right. So EFT tapping is a first and foremost, a stress reduction technique using physical intervention. And that's the biggest difference to a lot of other coaching approaches or therapy approaches that it's a physical intervention using tapping of certain acupuncture points in your face and fingers, breathing techniques and eye movement. And it combines the whole conversational part that

every coaching approach does. You have a conversation with your client. So it combines basically the physical intervention with the conversational that you're already doing. And it's an evidence-based approach. And studies show that EFT tapping, doing the tapping, doing the eye movement, calms the amygdala. And this is the part of the limbic system that is responsible for the stress response that we've just talked about.

and is able to calm down the amygdala and basically reprocess the blockage or get rid of the blockage that caused you to be afraid in a certain situation. once you've done an EFT session, your let's say fear of giving critical feedback in a particular situation will not come back.

Because what we've done is with the tapping, we've done the reprocessing that back then the sleep phase couldn't do.

Okay, so it's more like some sort of preparation technique or when you're not in a spiral of anxiety or something, but rather like before or after. Okay.

Yes, before and after the situation.

Okay. This is an audio podcast, so it's very hard to demonstrate what tapping actually means. Can you somehow describe to our listeners somehow how it looks like?

Absolutely, it does look weird, right? Because we're tapping certain acupuncture points in the face and on our fingers, right? While we're repeating certain words. So it does look really weird at the beginning, but once you've done it and it works for you, you kind of forget about the weird part about it.

So the process is actually quite straightforward and simple. We ask the client to think in the coaching session, to think about the stressful situation that they came in for. So it's maybe that critical feedback that is coming up next week or tomorrow that is giving them a hard time. Typically these stressful situations or situations that are stressful for them typically manifest way before.

So they don't sleep well, they may be eating less, they're not focused, the concentration goes down and just thinking about it, they start sweating. But those are typically strong reactions already before the event. so what we do is we ask them to think about the upcoming stressful event and they share with us what is it that they're stressed about. And let's say they have an important presentation coming up.

and they feel scared that they would look really stupid when they make a mistake or lose the train of thought in that situation. And then they're in front of the people and their thought is, my God, I'm scared to look stupid in front of them. And then we asked them, okay, if that is your biggest worry and your stressor, we asked him to assess it on a scale from one to 10. How strong of a stress is it for them?

And 10 being sort of that's the biggest nightmare. my God, just thinking about that presentation next week, I already, I'm not sleeping well already. I just slept four hours last night. So that's a 10. And we asked them to position themselves. And then we start the tapping sequence. And we asked them intentionally to think about this terrible situation that is coming up, which is actually counterintuitive. You wanna get rid of it, right?

You don't want to amplify it, but it is counterintuitive. With EFT, we're encouraging them to think about the negative emotion or the negative thought that they associate with that stressful situation. And we ask them why we're tapping the certain acupuncture points in the face and on the fingers. We ask them to repeat the trigger word, the trigger word that is causing the stress for them. And that could be in this case,

For instance, I'm scared to look stupid in front of everyone. So scared is the emotion and look stupid is the thought, is the negative thought. And we all seem to continue repeating that while we're tapping. So the mechanism of EAT tapping is turning on the stress and disrupting it through the tapping. And the tapping as I explained earlier helps

reprocess the blockage that back then was not not processed and if you typically get to a two or three you don't have to get to a zero if you get to two three, that's a acceptable level of stress that anybody can can basically deal with and then then you're pretty refined then they're calm

Yeah. It sounds almost magical that we can tap ourselves free. What's a simple way someone could imagine what is actually happening in the body during tapping?

Yeah. After the first round of tapping, most kuchis say, I feel lighter, I feel calm, and I feel present. In some cases, the stressful situation has also a physical impact. So when I asked them about to describe the stress, they often say, my God, my stomach already hurts when I think about it, or I've got neck pain, thinking about the situation that is coming up.

even these symptoms go away after the tapping session. And so it's also the physical parts that are impacted. And then they say, you know, my neck pain is way less, or sometimes it's even gone. Cognitively, they describe, when I ask them, you know, think about your situation, is, you know, the presentation that is coming up and the stress you had with it, think about it again.

Pognitively they describe it as, it's so far away now. I have even trouble seeing the situation. So it literally, they describe it as fog, but in a positive way and say, I can't even see it anymore. And I asked them, know, try to, you know, grab it, grab the negative system. They say, I can't, can't, I can't get it. It's so far, far off now that I can't even if I, if I try.

And in rare cases, they can't even remember what the problem was and they came in for, but that's very rare in certain situations.

As a trained psychotherapist, you know that a lot of therapies can take years. And then in contrast, we have coaching where sometimes, I don't know, four to five sessions can already change a lot. But this EFT tapping technique can already change so much within 45 minutes. Why do you think it works so quickly compared to other approaches?

It works so quickly because it addresses the parts of the brain where the actual problem is. So in a traditional coaching session, if somebody says, I'm scared of the presentation that is coming up, what we often would do is we would have them practice the presentation, and then give them some feedback, think about how they can calm themselves down, cognitively reframe the situation.

But reframing is a cognitive process. It does not impact much the amygdala, your limbic system. There is no connection to it. So a little connection. And practicing does help, yes, to calm yourself down, but you never get rid of the blockage that is in that part of the brain. And EFT tapping has the capacity to tap into that

part of the brain where the actual blockage is. And that's the big difference.

To make it more tangible for our listeners, can you give us an example how you supported a leader with EFT tapping? mean, critical feedback came up. There's also the situation of saying no, setting boundaries. That's a big one that comes up frequently in coachings or speaking up when everyone disagrees with you, this fear of being isolated. Yeah, it would be great to hear how you were able to support someone practically.

in the leadership role.

Yeah, sure. I've been doing this for 20 years now. And there is three types of situation. If I look at like, what's the most common situation people experience stressing and need help. The number one is the classic is fear of failure. Believe it or not, CEOs, general managers, board members, you would not think that of them top, you know,

a consultant's partner of consultancy firms, you would not think that of them because they're so high up, so experienced that they don't have a fear of failure. But this is the one of the most blockages that they have is the fear of failure. So in anything they do, also when they get promoted, despite the track record that they have and the amazing feedback, I asked them in the session, you know, what's your performance review? And they say it's excellent.

And yet they have the fear of failure of not delivering. so we look at their trajectory is amazing. mean, the trajectory of a CEO, like what else should I comment? Right? I mean, there's nothing to comment about it. And yet also these individuals, the biggest, the classic is the fear of failure. And they don't feel the success that they have. They don't feel it. cannot internalize it. It remains a cognitive thing for them.

And they just check it off the next promotion, they check it off. So what's the next thing I can go after. And it has something to do with acknowledgement and feeling acknowledged and valued, which they believe is possible through promotions and money and status. building confidence is not about that. don't become, success helps to become confident. Yes. But if you.

If you bet all your money on success to create confidence, it's not going to work. So the way we create confidence is actually through relationships and being accepted and valued as the person you are and not what you have achieved. So this is one of the classic. The other is overwhelmed and it's the feeling that they're no longer in control.

It's just so much. I was just yesterday with an executive. He says, my calendar is full. I'm completely overwhelmed. I don't even know where to start. And he's up for promotion to become a member of the board. So this helplessness is the blockage in that situation. Right. And the idea that they have to control everything, that's the pressure and that's blocking as well. The notion that I have to control everything. And if I don't control it, something bad is going to happen.

So these are the catastrophizing thoughts that then are also causing the stress. And this is where EFT nicely comes in where we can, with the tapping, dissolve these negative thoughts and the catastrophizing thoughts that they have. One side note, Anna, that I haven't mentioned earlier, EFT only works for unrealistic fears and unrealistic thoughts. So we can...

reprocess the blockage from the past only if it's an unrealistic one. We cannot get rid of fear of a grizzly that comes around the corner. We cannot get rid of a fear crossing the street and you just stand there and you're not going to move. You're so courageous, right? know, nature is in a way amazing, right? It's despite all the problems we have, there is a lot of rationale behind the stuff that is happening to us.

So yes, overwhelmed is the second. the third one is you've mentioned it so lightly, Anna, saying no and giving critical feedback. And even the VP that I worked with yesterday is struggling with giving critical feedback to his direct reports, believing he's going to be too harsh on them. And if I'm too harsh of them, they will not like me. And that's the blocking negative thought that I will not be liked.

Okay. It sounds so trivial, but two things I want to say, it's not trivial for the people that are affected by it. Difficulty saying no. And these things are not just happening to individuals that have a shorter career, less experience, not a lot of responsibility. It's happening to the top people as well. Trust me on that one.

Yeah. And what is interesting in your work, you are not only doing one-on-one sessions, you're also actually leading groups. And I imagine it's a very personal issue if I suffer from some sort of limiting belief. How do you work with groups that they open up, that they're willing to show their deepest blockages? Like, can you lead us through that?

Right, right. So we do it two folds. My colleague Anita and I, we run twice a year, a open training course for leaders in Zurich and Switzerland. It's a weekend where we work with a small group of executives and they sign up. They don't know each other, they sign up and want a weekend of EFT tapping where we do basically two things with them.

Each of them gets an individual session and it's in the group where we help them with one of their biggest performance barriers that they have at the moment, their biggest blockage that they're experiencing at the moment. And the second part of the training is actually to teach them the EFT sequence so they can use that on their own in the future when they experience future stressful situations, different

different to the ones that we worked in the training because we assumed that it worked out fine and the stress is reduced. So they can use that for other situations where they experience stress. these are the two things we do. Believe it or not, people build very strong and intimate relationships over two and a half days. We do two and a half days and it's really fascinating to see.

how people connect with one another. Because at the end they realize, we're all humans, we're all struggling with something, and none of us is perfect. And that experience alone in the group, to experience that is already, is healing for quite a lot of participants. And we do the same training for corporate clients. And it's typically part of a longer...

learning journey of a program where one of the modules, for instance, we did with a energy client in Germany, in Dusseldorf, in Berlin, where it was a high potential program and one module was in resilience. So we taught them EFT tapping to build resilience. It's a great way to build resilience because once you get rid of the blockage in the future, you're resilient in these situations.

So you're basically, you're no longer stressed, so you're building up your resilience. So every time you work with EFT tapping on a potential stressful situation and you resolve it for yourself, you're building resilience. And it was amazing to work with this group of individuals because they knew each other already from the program and that helps obviously quite a lot. And we do the same, we do the one-on-one.

sessions with them and then we teach them and they practice on their own and on themselves the sequences until they feel more secure and more comfortable with it. And we give them the step-by-step guide so they know exactly how to do it once they also leave the training program.

Yeah, it sounds really empowering that you really give them the tools to use after the sessions and not just when they're with you in the training.

Absolutely. Our goal is that people actually don't come see us. That's success for us. That's success for us. with EFT tapping, we really have a technique, that works very fast and is sustainable. So most of my coaching processes that are relationships that I have with executives are two to three sessions and then they're done.

So it's, and in particular with these people that have little time, it's a great way to work on themselves. And as I said, it's sustainable. So whenever they get back in the same situation, they're not going to experience the stressful response that they've received earlier. So there is no need for the same situation once it's processed to keep doing it. There is no need.

As I mentioned in your introduction, you were working with this technique already many years when it wasn't really established and by now research caught up with it. I mean, there are incredible findings like 76 % remission rate of anxiety in clinical group trials, also 43 % drop in stress hormones in just one session. So it sounds very effective and very quick.

But you also mentioned in a conversation we had earlier that HR departments or also other coaches were at the beginning very hesitant. Maybe they wondered how can something work so fast and also can be serious. And let's be honest, in the field of coaching, you also find some maybe make-believe approaches or some not evidence-based approaches.

I also understand the skepticism hearing something that almost sounds too good to be true. So maybe tell us a little bit more about this development of acknowledging EFT tapping for what it is, establishing it as an evidence-based method and what was your experience on this journey?

Right, right. Well, for myself, to be truly honest or to share that is I by accident got in touch with EFT tapping in my own trainer qualification. And I had no clue, you know, the module we gained to the module to one of the modules. So had no clue what was happening during that module. And we got invited to try this out. And so I felt it myself and I've seen it work. I was shocked how this is possible.

And as you said, rightly, there's a lot of make-believe stuff in this industry of coaching and they sell you quick fixes and quick results and people should be skeptical. Absolutely. I even encourage that to be skeptical. I think that's a healthy reaction. if something that works this fast and in this odd way, one should be skeptical at first. Absolutely. I think that's a healthy response.

And yes, a lot of colleagues that worked traditionally in coaching with the traditional coaching methods looked really weird, in a weird fashion at me. It's like, what the hell is he doing? And also I have to share this story. I was in my training as a therapist, five and a half years training program. And so I went to supervision. You do your own therapy, you do group therapy, and then you have supervision.

because you're working with clients and learning, right? So they were guinea pigs basically. And so I go to my supervision and you talk about your clients, know, the stuff that is not working, what is it I can do? We're not, you know, progressing. And then I said, you know, I did this EFT tapping that I've learned, you know, I've done a course on it and I've learned it.

and you should have seen the face of my supervisor. He looked at me like he, you know, his eyes wide open and you could see literally his face was written, what the hell are you doing, Dragon, right? But you know, as a therapist, he framed it quite nicely and his response was, Dragon, I feel so uncomfortable you sharing about the tapping.

And then I knew, Jesus Christ, you know, even in this profession, there's big walls between the different schools and one school does not want to talk to the other. One school thinks they're better than the other. I was like, okay, I won't talk about it anymore. so interesting, yes, people from our profession and of course HR representative when I share the coaching method are skeptical about it. But interestingly,

clients are the least skeptical about it. Least skeptical. And to tell you the truth, they don't care what your method is. They're not interested in the name. They don't care what your method is. They have a problem and they want to see, you help them solve it? And that's it. And if it works for them, they're happy. And once they've done it, even though it looks so odd, and I share that with them, know, we're going to do something really crazy if you want to.

Once they see that works, they keep coming back and they're not interested in any names or anything. They just want help and get rid of the problem.

And would you say by now the method is established and your exposure is so great that you reached a point where you care less about this?

Yes, in the beginning, you're, mean, that's a great point. In the beginning, of course, I I was worried and I was listening to my colleagues, oh my, what is it they think of me? And it started, EFT started as an experienced based method. All we had was the experience that it works, but we had no science. And today we've got a hundred peer reviewed studies that show that it works. And among them, what they do is they actually

And only after three sessions of EFT, in the gold standard approach of therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy group, only 51 % of the participants were in remission and it took them 15 sessions. So there is also a big difference in the cost benefit. And obviously, you know,

therapy or coaching, you know, that's a business. That's the first thing my in our training as a therapist, our trainers told us, you know, therapy is a business folks. And we were shocked because we all thought, my god, we're helping people we're doing it not for money. You know, you have these altruistic ideas until, you know, they showed us reality is that no, therapy is a business. So, you know, just the difference in and of course, it's threatening, you know,

you spend less time, you'll be making less money and it's something sustainable. People don't need to come back constantly.

Dragan, listening to you, sounds like EFT is a very useful tool to actually reach more clarity. And one thing that leaders need to do on a regular basis is actually make decisions. Like we already went through many situations, like the feedback situation, the speaking up and public situation, the I'm being overwhelmed by my calendar. I have to be perfect. Can EFT also help?

improve decision making.

Yes, absolutely. Because when you're struggling with taking a decision, you're typically overthinking the situation. And this is often also connected with strong emotions that you're undecided, should I do A or B? And then you kind of feel shaken between one position and the other position. And that's a feeling of, it's an ambivalent situation that you're in.

which prevents you actually from being clear on what kind of decision you want to take. And so you have, and then you start overthinking, you know, should I do A or B? You go to bed and you're still thinking about it, should do A or B? Right? So it kicks the overthinking process kicks in, kicks in right away. And, and then you feel stuck, right? And then you feel stuck because you're a bivalent.

And with EFT, what we do is we don't really, and that's the interesting part because ambivalence is so particular in working with it, we don't resolve the ambivalence in the EFT tapping. The blockage is caused by the pressure of having to decide between A and B. But we don't know if there's a C or D option.

Cause we can't see clearly in this moment.

Exactly, because you can't see clearly in that action. So you're putting pressure on yourself to decide, I'll need to decide between A and B and the more pressure you put, the more ambivalent you get. Right? So what we do in EFT is actually we do the self-acceptance sequence where you accept yourself that you're ambivalent.

and that you're struggling with taking that decision and that it's totally okay that you're struggling, which is counterintuitive again, right? So you see there's a lot of counterintuitive stuff we do in EFT tapping. So it's counterintuitive because you want to take a decision. But what it psychologically does, it actually takes away the pressure. And once the pressure is reduced, okay, and the pressure is emotional, so the emotions are reduced again, right? You are able

your brain is able to think in even more options. And you know that maybe from, it's kind of like the same situation from vacation. You go on vacation and after week one, you're lying by the pool or by the beach and all of a sudden you're coming up with all these solutions for problems at work. And that has to do because you're no longer in stress. When we're in stress,

Yeah.

or in this case, we feel the pressure of having to take a decision, that's stress response. The options for our brain are very limited, very limited. So helping reduce the pressure of having to take a decision frees up the brain, gives it more clarity, and people can think in a number of different options all of a sudden. And then maybe come up with a third or fourth option.

instead of the A and B that they initially thought that they had to decide on.

Yeah, lifting the fog, so to say.

Yes. Yes. And you gain lifting the fog and you gain clarity. And clarity is typically we associate with a cognitive process being clear of what you think and what you want. But I would also say it's connected to the emotion. So being congruent, the emotion that I feel go is in line with what I think and what I want. And it supports me in that endeavor. And then we're clear.

So my thoughts are clear, my emotions are clear, and I'm well connected to both of them. And that's the ultimate clarity that helps you take the next step in a productive fashion.

Yeah. And it also shows us that sometimes only focusing on our thoughts, our mind, our rational. Well, it's what we hope for, but it's not always possible when we're emotionally blocked. And now our listeners got so many examples of when to use or when EFT tapping could come in handy. And I hope they could relate to many of the examples we gave. Could you give

our listeners an idea of some small thing they can try out in the next three days at work to get more clarity.

Yeah, sure. Just a simple, really basic tapping thing you can do. And I picked this one because we can't see each other. Else I would have picked another one. But this one is quite easy. You've got in the middle of your chest, there is a bone. You might want to check, check on it. There's the bone in the middle. It's kind of harder. Yeah. It's the thymus. Okay. So you can tap on that with your fingers lightly.

tapping by the way doesn't have to be strong or anything or just lightly it's totally fine it works perfectly and so when in the future any of our listeners or you if you like are experiencing stressful situation you could be in the car on your way to a meeting and you're already stressed okay because you're running late okay then keep tapping that point while you drive

while you're waiting at the traffic light. And when you're in the car alone, can express it verbally so you can hear it. If you're in the, I don't know, in the subway or on a train, you say to yourself because you might don't want to bother people next to you repeating words and tapping. They might look in a weird fashion over to you. So pick while you're tapping, repeat.

The thing that is stressing and giving you anxiety the most. Okay, and it could be something like I feel worried that I will lose this pitch that is coming up if I'm late and then I'm in a lot of trouble. So you can repeat that whole whole phrase. Worried to lose the pitch, worried to lose the pitch. So it's the worried is the the emotion. That's the strongest one. Or if you're just

simply overwhelmed is a general expression of experiencing stress. You can see, you can repeat, I'm overwhelmed with this situation and it's stressing me a lot at the moment and I'm very worried about it. So you're repeating the emotions or worried or I've got anxiety, I feel stressed, I don't know what to do. And you can repeat all these phrases while you're tapping the thymus.

and do that a couple of times with a couple of phrases and then you'll see that and see how you feel afterwards. So that'll be the easiest thing people can do and try it out.

Okay, well, it's such a practical idea. Thank you so much for that. I'm definitely going to try it next time. I'm running late. And yeah, it was really fascinating hearing more about this very simple and powerful technique. And everyone who wants to find out more, know you're also showcasing the studies and articles on your website. Also, obviously something to check out to hear more about what you have to offer.

And thank you so much for this talk. And this was Think Beyond Talks. Thank you for tuning in and until next time.

Thank you so much and it was a pleasure.

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