The other book I have found useful for writers and other coaching clients is Bill O’Hanlon’s new book, Write Is A Verb.

I’ve been a reader of Bill’s work for a long time, have studied Positive Psychology with him, and always find his approach and personal energy stimulating.

He has come up with a neat way to describe the different energies that can fuel writing (and most other positive accomplishments and changes in people’s lives):

The 4 sources of energy come from feeling blissed, blessed, dissed, and pissed. (Don’t you love it?)

Simply put, feeling blissed means that you’re in touch with the inner passion you feel for your project or the change you desire. That leads to flow.

When you feel blessed, you are in touch with important external help and encouragement–a mentor or a cheerleader or perhaps a support group. The writing support groups I run create this kind of feeling.

These are the positive energies that can propel you into realizing your dreams.

But–and this is interesting–negative energies can be useful too. Bill must have read William Blake’s poetry!

For example, when you feel dissed, you have probably experienced rejection or disrespect or even a loss. If your response to this adversity is to say, “I’ll show you!” and you set out to prove yourself in the face of disbelief and things you don’t have control over, that energy actually has a positive effect by working for you.

And when you feel pissed, because you’re faced with situations that inspire indignation and you speak out or do something to protest, you’re channeling your anger toward righting a wrong. That releases what is ultimately positive energy in you too.

In all these cases, you take action to achieve a meaningful goal. And this turns out to be one of the key factors contributing to the most enduring human happiness. So, whether you are a writer–and Bill has a lot of great information for you, if you are–or want to make a meaningful change in your life, these ideas are starting points on that journey.

I coach writers a lot and am always looking for articles and books that explore, teach, inspire them to understand what might be slowing them down or stopping them from completing their work. Most of the information I come across is as applicable to my other coaching clients who are, say, making career changes or life transitions as to writers.

Recently, for example, I read two books that are filled with specific ideas that will help anyone who is having trouble trying to fulfill a meaningful goal. I’ll focus in this post on what Mary Pipher, in her book Writing to Change the World, calls the “inner demons” that afflict many people when they merely think about doing something new and risky.

Doing means you will be seen and thus be open to criticism–sometimes just for asserting yourself. And we’ve all certainly read book and movie and music reviews that take great glee in attacking what is being reviewed. Who wants to deal with that? Or with family and friends who express doubt about your desire to make a change or who openly disapprove of it?

According to Pipher, these demons are not so much blocks as internal pressures that interfere with moving forward. Her own personal demon, she says, is anxiety.

Here are some of the ways she has found to conquer her demon, which I have modified to fit anyone who wants to make difficult changes more easily:

1. keep a log of the minutes or hours you put into your project every day, and conscientiously put in time and effort, even if only you know you’re doing it

2. stop when you feel you’ve reached a particularly satisfying point–come up with a new idea, however sketchy, for example–so you can start the next day on a high note

3. start the day by writing in a journal or leafing through books on your subject, then doing a few business-related things before turning to your project itself–make a gentle transition into work

4. work on a variety of projects so that you can move from one to another according to your mental energy; that way you don’t feel stuck on any one thing, which tends to increase anxiety

5. face your internal critic, tell it to calm down, write out all its criticisms until they get absurd enough so that you have to laugh at them; paradoxically, Pipher says, letting the critic speak actually quiets it for her and gives her more space to work.

Her best advice? “Stewing in our own stress is not a good way to handle difficulty. Action ameliorates anxiety.”

Over and over again, that’s what we need to recognize, isn’t it?

Visualizations and guided imagery are time-honored ways to do forms of meditation that work for many people in many situations. But as I said before, we’re not all alike, and even for ourselves it pays to have a treasure box full of different techniques to call on when we’re stressed.

I thought about that this morning as I sat in the dentist chair and had my gums gouged and teeth scraped, all in the name of keeping as many in my head as possible for as long as possible.

I’ve been going to a dentist since I was seven years old. My earliest “teeth” memories are of climbing up steep, narrow steps in terror, dreading the pain that waited at the top behind that dark door. No wonder I can’t sit through horror movies!

Most of the younger generation, thankfully, don’t have this kind of experience built into their nervous system, because dentistry has progressed so far. But I know personally that there are still young people who react to the dental chair with unreasoning panic.

For them I’d like to recommend trying accupressure techniques I’ve been using since 1998, when I got extensive training in TFT (Thought Field Therapy). I now use a simpler method called EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques) that seems to work quite well with many forms of anxiety.

You can easily learn the sequence of tapping by following the modified directions in bold below, taken from Gary Craig’s free manual available on his website (click here).

During the first go-round, every time you tap on an area, think about your fears, keeping them clearly in mind. Sometimes, surprisingly, this in itself reduces the anxiety around them. OR, if it works better for you, start with the next instruction instead, omitting this first step. Find out what works.

Do a second round of tapping in sequence, and this time use reminder phrases at each point you tap on. Here are some examples: “I can choose to relax about this.” “I am safe.” “I can relax and release now.” “I can be comfortable right now.” You can repeat some of them or add others that come to you.

Repeat these phrases to yourself and keep tapping in new rounds for as long as you need to. Usually your body will respond and work with you to decrease your tension.

After you’ve practiced by actual tapping on your body and know where the points are, try this: as you are sitting in the dentist chair or doctors office visualize yourself tapping on these points and feel the imagined pressure as you do. Silently say, as you mentally tap each point, “I can relax.” “I am safe and comfortable.” “I can release,” etc.

In my case this has worked beautifully not only today at the dentist but also when I had a nuclear stress test where my nose was literally inches from the scanner for 20 minutes at a time. The first time I had a Cat scan, I had a full-blown panic attack. The second time, I used tapping from the get-go and sailed through.

A client of mine recently had a body cast made for special radiation, which took several hours. The staff couldn’t believe how calm she was in spite of not being able to move. They thought she had gone to sleep. “No,” she said, “I was tapping.”

Here are the instructions:

From Gary Craig’s manual:

Tapping tips: You can tap with either hand but it is usually more convenient to do so with your dominant hand (e.g. right hand if you are right handed).

Tap with the fingertips of your index finger and middle finger. This covers a little larger area than just tapping with one fingertip and allows you to cover the tapping points more easily.

Tap solidly but never so hard as to hurt or bruise yourself.

Tap about 7 times on each of the tapping points. I say about 7 times because you will be repeating a “reminder phrase” while tapping and it will be difficult to count at the same time.

If you are a little over or a little under 7 (5 to 9, for example) that will be sufficient.

Most of the tapping points exist on either side of the body. It doesn’t matter which side you use nor does it matter if you switch sides during The Sequence. For example, you can tap under your right eye and, later in The Sequence, tap under your left arm.

The points: Each energy meridian has two end points. For the purposes of The Basic Recipe, you need only tap on one end to balance out any disruptions that may exist in it. These end points are near the surface of the body and are thus more readily accessed than other points along the meridians that may be more deeply buried. What
follows are instructions on how to locate the end points of those meridians that are important to The Basic Recipe. Taken together….and done in the order presented….they form The Sequence.

**At the beginning of the eyebrow, just above and to one side of the nose.

**On the bone bordering the outside corner of the eye.

**On the bone under an eye about 1 inch below your pupil.

**On the small area between the bottom of your nose and the top of your upper lip.

**Midway between the point of your chin and the bottom of your lower lip. Even though it is not directly on the point of the chin, we call it the chin point because it is descriptive enough for people to understand easily.

**The junction where the sternum (breastbone), collarbone and the first rib meet. To locate it, first place your forefinger on the U-shaped notch at the top of the breastbone (about where a man would knot his tie). From the bottom of the U, move your forefinger down toward the navel 1 inch and then go to the left (or right) 1 inch.
It is at the beginning of the collarbone and we call it the collarbone point because that is a lot easier to say than “the junction where the sternum (breastbone), collarbone and the first rib meet.”

**On the side of the body, at a point even with the nipple (for men) or in the middle of the bra strap (for women). It is about 4 inches below the armpit.

**On the outside edge of your thumb at a point even
with the base of the thumbnail.

*On the side of your index finger (the side facing your thumb) at a point even with the base of the fingernail.

**On the side of your middle finger (the side closest to your thumb) at a point even with the base of the fingernail.

**On the inside of your baby finger (the side closest to your thumb) at a point even
with the base of the fingernail.

**The last point is the karate chop point. It is located in the middle of the fleshy part on the outside of the hand between the top of the wrist bone and the base of the baby finger.

Please notice that these tapping points proceed down the body. That is, each tapping point is below the one before it. That should make it a snap to memorize. A few trips through it and it should be yours forever.

I was talking to a friend the other day and was reminded of the importance of learning a number of different ways to harness normal anxiety.

She was recalling a major operation she underwent a few years ago. To prepare for it, she explored Eastern and Western methods for decreasing anxiety. She was surprised to find how much they helped her through that difficult time. She still uses techniques she learned then, when other stresses come up in her life now, ranging from work pressures to family conflicts.

You don’t have to be faced with an operation or serious illness to experience debilitating anxiety. Many stresses in our lives–good as well as bad stresses, I should point out–arouse the feeling.

While a limited amount of anxiety can actually bring you to the top of your game, sharpening your mind and reflexes, too much of it quickly overwhelms the nervous system.

Over the years I have taught many people to calm their nervous systems through testing out a variety of approaches. We treat each method as an experiment that may or may not work.

None of them are invasive or dangerous, but in stress reduction as in almost everything else, there are “different strokes for different folks.” So there’s a certain element of uncertainty that can add some interest and excitement to the process.

Some of these methods are simple to describe in writing. Others are a bit more complex and benefit from pictures to refer to. But let’s start with a very basic idea, similar to the one my friend has found so useful over time: anchoring to images that remind us of positive experiences.

This isn’t as easy as it sounds, for many people. Strange as it seems, we aren’t strongly wired to retain good memories. So don’t feel there is something wrong with you if a connection to a highly pleasant internal picture doesn’t immediately manifest itself.

Waiting until you are in the midst of a crisis before learning how to do this won’t work, so start practicing now.

You can try this activity sitting or standing or lying down, whatever position gives you the best ability to focus and find a scene that you associate with well-being and good times, a picture that draws you in and holds your interest.

Find something active in the scene and follow it with your eyes, guiding the action and keeping it going.

Here’s an example. There’s a beautiful pasture in the nature preserve where I often walk. It’s on a hill, open to the sky. Several horses graze there peacefully, but every so often they all start running back and forth from one end of the pasture to the other.

One begins and the others follow. They wheel and chase each other around the perimeters of the wooden fence. They form figure eights. They seem tireless in their play. Watching them run, seeing their muscles move effortlessly, sensing their exuberance makes me feel intensely alive.

So when I need to chill out, I bring up this memory and “watch” the horses until I feel calmer. If I need more time out, I change the direction and the patterns of their running and keep watching. I’m absorbed in the rhythms of their movements and my own body begins to mimic them.

There are many ways to use imagery and visualization to combat the human tendency to focus on pain, fear, and negative predictions. When you have a dream or project that is daunting, it’s all too common to find yourself paralyzed by anxiety. That’s the moment to interrupt the negative pattern of paralysis by letting the horses of your imagination run free and so free you to move forward again.