Tapping into Creativity with Brad Yates
My guest today is Brad Yates. He is an actor, author, cartoonist, and an amazing healer. Brad teaches a technique known as Tapping, which can be used to clear blocks, help you feel better, and become more creative. His popular and addictive tapping videos on YouTube have been viewed over 32 million times, and counting.
If you’re listening to this episode and want to see the videos of the different tapping segments you can check out these links on my Vimeo channel (they will appear in the transcript below as videos too!):
How to Tap | It’s Safe to Be Creative | Release Your Fear of Being Creative | Stop Limiting Flow
Listen to the episode here:
Welcome Brad Yates, to The Psychic Artist Podcast. I'm so happy to have you, and I just love your work. You've helped me so much. And please give us a little intro about you.
Oh, thank you, Sarah. I'm very happy to be here. Definitely appreciate that. What can I tell you? I am a guy who taps on his face for a living. Started out as an actor and did that for a long time. And I was a cartoonist as well, so I have definitely been an artist all my life and got into the healing arts at a certain point and found that that was a great way for me to use my creative ability in a way that helped other folks.
So taking that background of being an artist and being an actor and having gone to clown college, all the strange things that have happened along the way, and then bringing that into this somewhat strange looking process of tapping on our face to help folks break free from what stops them from being, doing, and having what they really want.
Yeah. And how has that been working? I assume that you get amazing results for the people you work with.
It works pretty darn good. Because we're working with body and mind, and so many folks just work with mind when they're looking at something that blocks them. Even though there's an emotional component to it and we feel our emotions in our body, we try to think our way through those things. So by taking this process of incorporating our body into it and dealing with what's going on in there, really sets us free in ways that we may not have allowed ourselves before.
Brad Yates
Known internationally for his creative and often humorous use of Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) or tapping, Brad has over 1000 videos on YouTube that have been viewed more than 32 million times. Brad is also the author of the best-selling children's book "The Wizard's Wish," co-author of the best-seller "Freedom at Your Fingertips," and a featured expert in the film “The Tapping Solution.” He has also been a presenter at a number of events, including Jack Canfield's Breakthrough to Success, has done teleseminars with “The Secret” stars Bob Doyle and Dr. Joe Vitale, and has been heard internationally on a number of internet radio talk shows. More info is available at tapwithbrad.com
So you're also a hypnotherapist, correct?
That is how it started in personal development when I was an actor and I trained to become a hypnotherapist. I'd been doing that for several years before I learned EFT, and I found that EFT was... It was just something about the way that it worked felt more in line with who I was and how I wanted to help folks, but I still love hypnotherapy and I still do guided imagery at the end of most of my sessions.
And it seems like the process of clearing your mind or questioning one's thoughts, the subconscious mind is kind of the groundwork that you're you're laying. So maybe we could talk about the mind and how you view that.
Because that's where it's all... In all of this stuff that we do that stops us from living the life that we say we want, the unfortunate behaviors, whether it's in unhealthy behaviors like in our eating or something like that, or the things that we stop ourselves from doing like, "Oh, I want to write a book. Someday. Someday I'll write a book," but not following through on that.
All the ways that we stop ourselves from doing certain things is all going on in our unconscious mind. And I like to say that self-sabotage is simply misguided self-love.
So when we're engaging in unhealthy behavior or stopping ourselves from engaging in more successful behavior, it sabotages what we perceive to be the success that we want, but part of this inside is saying, "No, no, no, no. It's getting us exactly where we're supposed to be, because we have all these unconscious beliefs about why I shouldn't be successful. Why that wouldn't be safe. Why it wouldn't be safe to be healthier, why it wouldn't be safe to be more creative, why it wouldn't be safe to have this, that, or the other thing in my life."
So we may allow ourselves to create a vision board and we'll say, "Wow, that looks really awesome," and that's the 5 to 10% of our conscious mind saying, "Oh, that would be so awesome. I really, really want that." And the other 90, 95%, the unconscious mind based on old programming and old misunderstandings is going, "That's fine. Fantasize about it all you want. We're going to make sure it never happens."
Because we are protecting you from some scary thing that might happen if you do that.
Right. Based on some misunderstanding. Based on someone else's fear or something that happened, and we thought, "Oh, this meant something," which it didn't. We create a painting and someone doesn't like it and we decide, "Oh, I'm not an artist." You can think of whoever your favorite artist is and think of your favorite piece of art that they created, and you will find lots of people that hate it. So obviously one person not liking a piece of art doesn't make you not an artist.
Yeah, but the mind goes there.
The mind goes there because we feel some pain. It's like, "Ooh, that person said they didn't like it. That feels painful to me." So rather than saying, "Well, it's just one person's opinion," based on our program, we might then say, "Ouch, that really hurt. How do I make sure that I never feel that pain again? I know, I'll say I'm not an artist and never create anything and then no one can ever put me down again, and I'll never feel pain again. Or at least not that pain. Sure, I'm going to feel other pain."
So we're brilliantly trying to protect ourselves from something that we have learned is uncomfortable.
Either it hurt us or we've seen other people be hurt by it and go, "Ooh. I saw what happened to them? I see their picture on the tabloid magazine saying awful things about them. I need to make sure that I'm never that successful."
Yeah. I feel like it's time to tap, Brad. I just can't go this long talking to you without hearing some tapping. I listen to your videos all the time and I'm thinking... What do you think, tapping on giving myself permission to be an artist?
Yeah, I think that would be a...
Or creative person in the world? Give myself permission to be creative and be successful.
Absolutely.
That's what's coming up for me, anyways.
So let me first start by showing folks... For anyone who's new to EFT and is not familiar with this process, it's based on acupuncture, so for thousands of years in Chinese medicine, they've said there's this flow of energy through the body, and when the energy is flowing naturally, we experienced our natural state of health and well being physically and emotionally. When this energy gets stuck, we don't feel so good. And when we don't feel good, we don't think as clearly, we don't make the best choices. So we want to get that energy flowing naturally.
So in traditional Chinese medicine, the doctor would stick needles in these key points to stimulate that healthy flow of energy. We're just going to tap with our fingertips.
Brad shares the basics of how to tap using EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique).
Full video on YouTube: Tapping into Creativity with Brad Yates | The Psychic Artist Podcast
And I know it looks a little strange, but we have a growing body of scientific evidence validating this process, so there is science behind it, so just be willing to do it.
As an artist, when I first learned this, being creative, we tend to be more open to certain things. And I had gone to clown college by that time, so this was not the strangest thing I ever been asked to do. But for anyone out there, you're probably at home and no one can see you, so give into it.
And if they're listening to my podcast, they're probably a little out there.
Exactly. It's a more open audience. Will folks see this in video, or it will be just audio?
Yeah, I'm going to post it on YouTube. You'll be my first YouTube video. Thank you for inspiring me.
That'll make it easier to describe the process. So the first thing we're going to do is... When we're doing the EFT, we'll figure out what's bothering us. So it may be, "Oh, I'm really stressed out." So I would say on a scale of 0 to 10, how stressed am I? It's an 8. I am an 8 out of 10. And where do I feel it? Oh, I've got tension in my shoulders. So I identify what we're going to tap on, and then we tap with our index and middle finger, with the fingertips on the opposite hand.
And we'd say, even though I feel this stress, I choose to love and accept myself. Then we'll tap right here, right at the beginning of your eyebrow. And we'd say all this stress, right here, the corner of your eye, all this stress, right under the middle of your eye, all this stress. Right under your nose, all this stress. Right below your lower lip, just above your chin, all this stress. Right here, where your collarbones just about come together, there's that little U shape at the base of your throat.
And you can use all of your fingertips or even a fist cover that whole area. All this stress. About four inches below your armpit. It's right about bra strap level, and I'm sure even the guys can figure out where that is, all this stress. And finally the top of your head. Just tap in circles around the crown of your head, all this stress. And then you take a deep breath. And then you check in again and go, "Okay, on a scale of 0 to 10, it was an 8 before. Well maybe it's down to a 0." For some people it goes that fast. For others, it'll be a 7.75.
And when we're tapping, it's often like peeling layers of an onion, so we might be tapping all this stress. "Oh, I know exactly what I'm stressed about. It's this project I have due next week." And we might tap through and go, "This project that's due, this project that... Oh, it's not even this project. It's this project that I got a bad grade on in the third grade, and I never let that go, and that's been holding us back for years."
So here it is, tapping on this stress and we're clearing up stuff from years ago. So all kinds of great benefits to tapping.
But now we're going to do it in terms of this artistic thing.
So I'd like everyone to close your eyes, take a deep breath in and hold it. And let it go. Just follow your breath through your body and think about what you would like to create and say, "It's safe for me to be creative," and let that rattle around inside and notice on a scale of 0 to 10 how true that feels.
How much creative security do you feel? How free do you allow yourself to be creatively?
Brad asks, “How free do you allow yourself to be creatively?” Full video on YouTube: Tapping into Creativity with Brad Yates | The Psychic Artist Podcast
And don't judge yourself harshly if the number is lower than 10, just allow yourself to be aware of where in your body you might feel some resistance, some part of you that says, "No, it's not safe to be creative. It's not okay to be creative." And this could be artistically or just in life in general, in terms of creating the life of your dream. Notice where in your body you might feel some tension. Notice what thoughts, beliefs, or memories might come up as to why it might not be safe to be more creative. Take a deep breath. Let it go. So Sarah, any thoughts you want to share first before we go into the tapping round about some of the ideas that might've come to mind?
Sure. I immediately saw some large paintings I want to make, and I was so surprised when you said what level of creativity do you see yourself able to do? And it was really low, like a five or a three. The level at which I let myself perform in life is much lower than I thought. I'm trying to give it my all here, but I realized I'm capable of so much more and I'm holding myself back. And then the other thing that came up was a childhood memory, a very early fear of abandonment about someone who was an artist that left my life. So if you're an artist, you're going to be abandoned. Some weird confluence of ideas that a young child's mind just couldn't make sense of. So I was like, "Wow, thank you, Brad."
Thank you for bringing up that painful memory. Certainly as artists, there's so many beliefs. You have to suffer, you have to struggle. And then they become self fulfilling prophecies. And then we decide that must be the way it is, and then we tell other artists, "Oh yes, you have to suffer for your art," and it goes on and... And there are artists out there who are not suffering as much. As human beings, there are struggles or challenges we face. All of us do. And as artists we're able to transmute that into art. But this idea that because I'm an artist, I must therefore be abandoned and always be broke and always have poor health or whatever it might be, yeah, no.
Not so effective.
It doesn't have to be that way. Really, really doesn't.
That's a really big societal long-term belief. That's a big one.
So we brilliantly try to buy into that, and then other people pass that on because no one is going to... No artist who's suffering is going to say, "Well, I have really suffered as an artist, but you don't have to do that. I was just stupid, and I chose the rough path."
Go ahead. Be super successful right out the gate.
Exactly. Make me look wrong. I would love for you to make me look like I've chosen the wrong thing when I didn't have to. And in terms of where we allow ourselves on the scale, I've done this with so many folks where it may be about money and they'll say, "I've read all the books and I've done all this and I just can't make this amount of money." I'll say, "Oh yeah, really? Close your eyes, take a deep breath. Imagine you have that much money and say, 'It's safe for me to have this much money." And they'll go, "Oh my goodness. It's like a two or a three."
Because we're never taught to consider this, and this is one of the analogies I'll use is. Okay. So it's a two or three. Imagine you have a young child and that child was invited to a birthday party and you consider the house where the birthday party is. And you say, "You know what? I'm not sure about these people. On a scale of zero to 10, how safe does it feel to let my child go to that birthday party?" Two or three? Would you let your child go to that birthday party? No.
So when we allow ourselves to see how safe it feels, it's like, "Oh, I'm not stupid for not having more money. I'm not stupid for not having created these big pieces of art yet. I'm brilliantly protecting myself from something that doesn't feel safe." Now we want to disabuse ourselves of that misinformation.
So, tapping on the side of your hand.
Thank you.
Even though it doesn't feel safe to be more creative. I choose to love and accept myself. Even though it doesn't feel safe to be more creative, I choose to love and honor myself. Even though it doesn't feel safe to be more creative, there's people will criticize me. People will abandon me or whatever else I might believe will happen. And even though it doesn't feel safe to be creative, I choose to deeply and completely love, honor and accept myself. And maybe anyone else who's contributed to this, because I choose to be that free. All this fear of being more creative, all this resistance to being more creative. And maybe part of me has said in the past, I'm doing all I can. I am pushing the envelope on my creativity. And if I really allow myself to look at it, I have barely scratched the surface because I can go into an art museum and see all these amazing pieces of art.
Brad taps on releasing your fear of being creative. Full video on YouTube: Tapping into Creativity with Brad Yates | The Psychic Artist Podcast
And I can channel that creative energy, just the same. That energy flows through me as well. And I limit it, not because I'm bad or stupid. Not because I'm weak or lazy. Not because I don't have what it takes. Not because I don't have the talent or the skill, but because I have some old programming telling me why I couldn't, or shouldn't, be more creative. All these painful memories that I associate with creativity, like this artist who left. And part of me said, 'Art and pain go together. Now part of me has known, I am an artist. I need to create, but because of this whole misunderstanding, linking art to pain, I have very understandably limited how creative I am.
If I allowed myself to be more successful as an artist, who would I abandon? Maybe I'm afraid that's what artists do. All these fears of being more successful. All these fears of being more creative, all these fears of being abandoned, all these fears of being rejected, it's used to process these fears and clear them out, removing that stuff from my canvas and setting myself free to be in much more open channel for creativity, because there is beauty for this world to experience that is only going to come through me. And I'm tired of holding that stuff back.
I'm healing the past pain, clearing up any old misunderstandings, any old confusion about why it must be painful to be creative. I choose to feel it as a joyful thing, joyfully allowing source energy to flow through me, whether that comes through paint on the canvas or music through an instrument, or just in terms of how I create my life in general. I'm allowing myself to joyfully create, setting myself free to do so. And I choose to really love myself in the process in body, mind and spirit.
Take a deep breath... With your eyes closed and just follow your breath through your body. Particularly those places where you've may have felt resistance before and say, "It is safe to be creative." Just notice on a scale of zero to 10, how true that feels now. Hopefully that number has come up? And you may also just be aware of some other memories or beliefs or things that might say, "Well, what about this?" And just allow yourself to go, "All right. I can tap on those things too."
Yeah, that was great. Thank you.
What number did you get the second time?
Seven.
Cool, cool.
And also money comes up as always, and fear of success. I heard that early in the beginning of what you were saying like, "If I let myself go, I'm going to be really successful." Well, that's scary. So then you tap on that.
Absolutely. And in fact, I'll invite everyone to go and just be tapping, maybe the collarbone, you can tap through different points.
Sometimes when I'm just chatting, I'll just tap the collarbone point, to always be clearing out stress, it's energy hygiene. We should be doing this on a daily basis. So just like bathing, it's clearing out stress because we always have ambient layers of stress.
And it really is fear of success that stops us. It's like the quote from Marianne Williamson about, "Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we're powerful beyond measure and we're afraid of what would really happen."
So the question is, what am I afraid would happen if I were really successful? Am I afraid that my friends will be jealous? Am I afraid that I'm no good with money and I'll squander it? Will I misspend it? Will I have too big of an ego? And then, maybe you think of some artist that has a big ego and it's like, "Well, I don't want to become that person." With a certain level of success, you become a real jerk. And the only way to stay humble is to stay poor and all of these different ideas that we have about why money and success would be wrong or bad.
I actually think it would ruin my creativity. That's my deepest fear. If I'm really good. I think a lot of artists have this. Like if I have an amazing show, what do I do next? Or I write an amazing book. What's the sequel? Uh-oh, you must... A lot of actors must have this too.
Yeah.
How can I possibly do any better? If I do something great, I better hold off and do that at the end of my career. How am I going to match?
Absolutely. And use it all up. There's only so much creative energy that'll flow through me. And if I do something really amazing right now, what will I create later? I'll be dried up, I'll be a one hit wonder. And do you have a particular artist? If you think of who you're... Like a favorite artist or role model, somebody that... And it could be any field of art, a musician or an actor.
Okay. Well, in music, I'm thinking Prince. How did that work out for them? All the awesome musicians seem to die of some sort of drug issue.
And yet, they don't all.
I know, it's a popular narrative.
Yeah. And you can look at... and Prince, his first album was not his only good album, and we can look at all kinds of musicians who did amazing work early on, and then still continue to make amazing music.
Yeah. And grow as individuals.
Absolutely.
And change and develop and totally surprise people and disappoint people and still make amazing work.
And amazing… John Lennon, one of his best albums, nobody knows about and really likes, but it's my favorite. It just hit me, speaks to each person.
And also there's so many stories of great artists who did believe that their creativity came from drug use and then they get clean and sober and create even more amazing stuff. So it's like, "Oh, go figure. That wasn't the thing."
Yeah. Misunderstanding.
What it may have done was helped them clear the inhibitions and those fears.
Here's a healthier way...(tapping)
If only we had a healthier way of dealing with those inhibitions and fears.
It only takes five minutes, a few times a day.
We can tap into that creativity without having to numb the fear, and get to that place of, "I'm so high. I don't care what people think of me."
I also made art from a place of pain for the first half of my life. And that was really unpleasant. And when I started to be able to make art from a different place, that was confusing, but it feels so much better when you let yourself.
Yeah. Yeah. And we were saying earlier, that as artists, we can transmute pain into beauty through our art, but it's not like, "Okay, well, I'm going to have to keep experiencing more pain in order to create." It's like, "No, no, no, you've had enough." Whatever you've had, we can say, "Oh I could have gone without that." Okay. But it's in the past, you can't change the past, but you don't need to keep doing that. It's like, "Oh, well I have to keep feeling more pain in order to create more art." No. You can use whatever you had in the past. You can use whatever is out there. And there are so many pieces of art that are created. They're not about pain and it's just an appreciation of something beautiful and wanting to celebrate that. And it's okay to do that too. And that's valid art as well.
You don't have to say “The only real art is the art that comes from pain and suffering." Those are just beliefs. And the creativity will continue to flow. As long as you're here, it will continue to flow.
And so you can look at wonderful artists who live into... So my ultimate artist, because I always talk about the Michelangelo process.
Yeah.
Michelangelo said the statues are already there. Perfect. Inside the marble. And all he had to do was chip away what didn't belong to reveal a masterpiece that was inside. To me that, so the David has always been my favorite piece of art, long before I got into this work. But when I got into this work, it's like, "Oh, this is what we're doing with EFT," where the masterpiece is inside. And we're just chipping away what doesn't belong. The guilt, the shame, the pain, the-
What doesn't belong. The guilt, the shame, the pain, the fear, the unworthiness, tapping that away to reveal the masterpiece that's inside.
That's a beautiful metaphor.
Michelangelo lived to 90, 92, something like that. At a time when people didn't live half that long for the most part, and was still creating. We don't run out of that. There is that belief sometimes of, what if I create this masterpiece and I never create something else? There are so many stories of people who create some masterwork and then create something later that it's like, wow. I thought that was good before, but what you're creating now is so amazing.
Yeah. I've even been contacted by artists who have passed on that still have work to make. Once you're a creative being, it can come out endlessly, it doesn't matter if you die.
So many people are concerned with death as this, "Oh my God, I have only so much time in life to make my work and then it's over." But I think it's more magical and mystical than that.
As souls, I feel like I've been an artist before and we may come back in another form to make something else. We have so many gifts and talents, and I feel like everyone can be an artist.
Everyone is an artist. Picasso said, everybody's an artist.
Yeah.
Every child is an artist. It's just that it's just remembering, maintaining that. Because society has ways of telling us that we're not artists, and so we buy into that and think, well, I'm not an artist. Everybody's a creative being. We're all part of creation, and allowing ourselves to acknowledge that.
There's a quote from a guy, Steve Bo I think was his name, who said, "God's gift to us is more talent and ability that we could possibly use in one lifetime. Our gift back to God is to use as much of it as we can during this lifetime."
Another of my favorite artists is David Bowie, and he did not die young from drugs, even though he certainly could have. Got himself clean and sober and went on to create all kinds of amazing music after that. And even as he was dying, was still creating an album. It's like, I'm still going to get as much out there. I'm going to still use as much of my gift as I can, even as I'm on my way out.
Yeah. I feel like we've moved into a godly realm here. Some people don't like the word God, or have trouble with the word prayer, but I really like the way you present it. And you share, hey, I'm not here to tell you what to think about all this, but this is an effective thing. If you spend any time asking for help from a higher power, let's tap into that.
I just downloaded your app and I stumbled across your intro to prayer tapping. I too grew up sort of anti-religion, so I had a little bit of anxiety about it, but what you said in your intro was so beautiful. I thought maybe you want to talk a little bit about that? Like a powerful way of being in alignment with positive energy.
It's almost like meditation could be substituted there.
Absolutely. Even as I was saying that quote about God's gift to us and because I know that for a lot of people, that's a trigger word because of some unfortunate religious background.
And again, go ahead and be tapping now. In my videos, there are videos where I talk about God and there are videos where I generally say universe or source.
I always say to folks, I'm not here to tell you who or what God is, that's free between you and your higher power as you understand that. Whether that's a God or a unifying mathematical principle, whatever it is that keeps the planets in orbit. But that source energy that we're all connected to. Because everything is energy, so whatever you call that, it's this life force that flows through us and wants to be expressed through us.
People get very caught up in that. It's allowing ourselves to say, okay, it doesn't matter what I call it. And I'll have people say, if I, in some videos where I've mentioned God, I'll have people write, comment and say, "Well, you had me until you had mentioned the G word, and then you lost me." And then I'll have other videos where I say universe, and people say, "You need to say, God."
We all are doing the best we can with this, based on our programming.
Sure.
For better, for worse, where we are with whatever that higher power is for us, and what we think it has to be and what we think other people should see it as, we're doing the best we can, based on our programming. These, and again, a lot of our misunderstandings, ours, or someone else's.
It's allowing ourselves to let go of that so that we can allow this energy to flow through us and allow ourselves to use it for the highest good of all concerned, ourselves as well as others. Because we get so uptight about that, that we block ourselves, we limit our experience, we limit the good that can be in our lives, and we limit the amount of good that we can share with others. Please knock that off.
Yeah. And as an artist, I think I blocked myself from that experience forever, even consciously. It was like, nope, you've got to sit down and think of an idea and then go execute it. If the idea feels sort of woo woo or spiritual or emotional, no, no, no, no. Let's go back to theory. Let's go read. There was this encouragement to discount one's emotions, or maybe even feminine knowing, or creative impulses, or intuition, inspiration, flow. These words were super, not so popular in the past, in art school for example.
Yeah.
In the nineties. And I feel like now people are coming around to like, I did some yoga, that felt good. Or I sat for meditation. There's a variety of meditations, you can find ones that are not going to talk about God.
Flow is huge now.
But when you open yourself, if you open yourself up to feeling that inspirational flow coming through you, to me, that's the most powerful way to be a creative person.
Absolutely.
Maybe we could do a quick tap on that, Brad. What do you say?
Absolutely. No, absolutely. Flow, especially as Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has been putting out the idea of flow, but it's now becoming more popular. And corporations are turning to people like Steven Kotler, coming in and teaching flow. Because in flow we're more productive. We do better work. We create much better things, and it's getting in touch with that, that flow state, and whatever it is for each person. Some people might describe it as God. Some people might describe it as just peak energy or whatever it might be.
As we let it through, we become the best expression of ourselves. It's in everyone. Some people, they put it on a canvas. Some people, they build a building. Some people, it's in how they raise their children. Whatever you do, for each of you, you are a unique expression of this divine energy. No one's an accident. No one's a mistake. No matter what some confused person might've said, everyone is here for purpose, with gifts and talents to share.
It's allowing ourselves to get out of our way. I never, with this work, I never, I rarely know what I'm going to say when I start a tapping round. I never script them. It's just, I just try to get into flow. And it's like, all right, I'm here. You say whatever you need to say.
I was wondering, I was going to ask you that. Thanks for sharing. That helps. Because it's really awesome, the stuff that comes out of you.
Sometimes I say things and I go, wow, that's brilliant. I wish I'd thought of it.
I often say things when I'm in flow and I listen to the recording later. I'm like, I do not remember saying that.
Yeah. I'll have people that say at the end of a round, "What was it that you said about this one thing?" I'm like, I don't know. But you can listen to the recording.
What needed to be said.
This creative energy flows through all of us. So... (tapping)
Even though I limit that flow, I choose to love and accept myself.
And just to be clear for anyone else, because I didn't describe this, it's very helpful to say it out loud, Sarah. I'm assuming, you're not saying out loud because it's easier for the video.
Yeah. I was thinking I should say that too. For all the audience members, when I tap to Brad on YouTube, I always say it out loud. He pauses. I say it. But I'm just not saying it now because I thought, it's going to cause the video to show me.
Exactly. I knew that you were doing that.
I want to give this as a gift to my audience, but I'm doing it in my head.
Exactly. And I knew that you were doing it that way. I just thought I better say something so that other folks know that they can say it.
Because this is weird, right?
That they can say it out loud, and that it's-
And it's actually kind of cool that you said that because it reminds me of chanting. I've done a lot of yogic practice and in ashrams, you chant in call and response with your teacher. It's a beautiful practice. It's a very interesting back and forth exchange, when you hear somebody say something or like a Krishna Dass concert, there's this beauty between we're sharing the same words and it's releasing us as we go together.
Yeah.
So, as you were, thank you.
Yeah.
Even though I limit flow, I choose to love and accept myself. Even though I limit the flow, I choose to love and honor myself. Even though I limit the flow, I limit the creative energy that can flow through me, not because I'm bad or stupid, not because I'm weak or lazy, but because I have old programming about why it might not be safe to go with the flow.
Tap on “Stop limiting your flow.” Full video on YouTube: Tapping into Creativity with Brad Yates | The Psychic Artist Podcast
Even though I limit the flow, I choose to deeply and completely love, honor and accept myself. Maybe anyone else who taught me to limit the flow, they just didn't know any better. All these ways that I limit the flow, all these reasons for limiting the flow, and there might be a part of me that says, you don't know me. I don't limit the flow. I totally go with the flow. I am an open channel for creative energy, and I choose to be open to the possibility that as much as I might go with the flow, there's a lot more where that came from.
Am I creating as much as Michelangelo, or whoever else I might admire? And it's not to beat myself up. It's not to feel ashamed of not doing more, because I've been doing the best I could, based on my old programming. Like all that old programming that tells me that it would be wrong to be successful. All this fear of success, all these old messages about why success would be bad, about why it would be dangerous, and so I brilliantly limit flow as a way of keeping myself safely in my comfort zone. And then I tell myself that's all the creativity I have, because I don't want to admit that I'm limiting it, but I am.
Because creative force is infinite. And it's not that I should do more. I don't need to 'should' on myself, and I don't need to let anyone else 'should' on me. I just choose to give myself permission to find out what's possible for me. And I'm a magnificent child of the universe, worthy and deserving of the best this world has to offer. Nothing is too good for me. No amount of success is too much for me, and I will not dry up. As long as I allow myself to remain open, creative energy can flow through me. No matter how much money I make, brilliance can still be channeled through me.
And there are plenty of artists out there who have created masterpieces, even though they were doing just fine financially. Creative source doesn't care how much money I have. It wants to be expressed through me, and I'm allowing that. I can handle being a more open channel. I can handle going with the flow. I've handled everything that has ever happened in my life. Maybe not always as gracefully as I would've liked, but I've handled all of it. I can handle greater flow. And I'm opening myself up to that in body, mind and spirit.
Take a deep breath. Close your eyes, take a deep breath and say, "I choose to go with the flow." Just knows what that feels like. Allow yourself to enjoy that. And if there's anything coming up that says, "But, what about…?" Do more tapping on that.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
I love it when you say that. This is great, Brad. Thank you so much. I feel your generosity is just endless, like flow. It's great.
It's an opportunity for me to allow creativity to flow through me, so I appreciate the opportunity. And if I can help more people be more open channels and allow the beauty that can come through them, win-win situation.
Yeah. And it's really awesome. I feel like there was a few more things I wanted to ask you. Maybe you want to pick one for our last few minutes. One that came up during this was money. Even though I wanted to talk about gratitude and energetic protection, I feel like talking about money as energy would be so helpful for artists. Maybe you could share your perspective. Because we just did a lot of tapping around fear of success.
Yeah. And I have quite a few videos on money.
I love to do those.
Yeah. Be tapping as you think about it because we have a lot of false beliefs about money. Like, money is the root of all evil. That's not what the phrase says. The actual quote is "the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil". Not all evil, but all kinds of evil; a bunch of different kinds of evil. And it's the love of money, greed, that looking for money in fearful, greedy ways. So money is just energy, and it's a flow. And give and take is what happens. So when we are giving our art, to receive money is a good thing, otherwise...
We have this idea that it is better to give than receive. And that then gets translated into: giving is good, receiving is bad. And so we give and we refuse to receive, but then what does that say about our audience? It's like, "Well, I'm the person giving you my art, and you're not giving me money back" because I'm not allowing you to. So I'm the giver and you're the taker, and I'm the good person, you're the bad person.
Don't do that to people. Please. Please don't do that to people. Allow them to be the giver as well. When we are the receiver, we're allowing someone else to be the giver. Both are equally good.
So even though you offer videos for free, you have a lot of paid courses and working with you that you offer, which you charge quite nicely for. So understanding that you don't offer everything for free because it doesn't give that energetic respect to the receiver.
Yep. We can allow ourselves to receive much better when we give something. It doesn't always have to be money. Money is one of the easiest ways because it's something that can be transferable in different ways. We used to barter for everything, but in our society that just doesn't work really well. And so, money is just a symbol of an exchange of energy.
It's just a convenient way of being able to... rather than you having to take your paintings to everyone going to the grocery store. "Okay, I'm going to give you a painting in exchange for a gallon of milk," because that person may not... It's like, "Okay, Sarah, but my walls are already filled with your paintings. Is there anything else you can give me?" Yeah. So, "Well, okay. If you need something else, I'll go give a painting to someone else and they'll give me what you need," and it's like... Ah, it's just too confusing. Let's just use money. And taking off all of the baggage that people have put around that, and allow it to be just an exchange of energy.
And I feel like that brings us into manifesting, too, if we accept that flow. You said something in your video about prayer and gratitude. "Thank you for the blessings that I have, and thank you for the blessings I am receiving." So visualizing it already is really powerful.
Being in that state of gratitude for...
Everything you could want is here, either already physically manifested or in the energy field and as potential to be brought into physical form.
And you want it because that's your birthright. You're tapped into it. I heard someone say that about jealousy. If you're jealous of somebody who has something, that's a great message to yourself; like, "Oh, that's calling to me. I'm in alignment with that."
Yeah. Yeah, go out to the beach. So you're there by the ocean. Go out there stand by the ocean and look away. Look at them while they're looking at the ocean and allow yourself to get really jealous that they see the ocean. And how much sense does that make? We're standing here getting jealous of people experiencing things that are there for us, too, but we're not allowing ourselves to do it. And so, and then we get into this thought of, "If my friend really cared about me, they would turn away from the ocean and deprive themselves of that view so that I don't feel bad about not having the view." And it's crazy. Not to blame anyone for being crazy. I'm not saying you're crazy, that the belief is crazy.
But we do that, because we're sometimes the person looking at the ocean and someone is looking at us and going, "Oh, well, it must be very nice for you to have that view," and telling us that we're wrong. And how often do we turn away from that and go "All right, I'll deprive myself of that view as well"? Now you're both lacking instead of saying to your friend, "Well, just turn your butt around and look at the ocean, then. It's there for you, too." And what's stopping you from doing it? "Well, I feel like I shouldn't have." Well, go watch these videos where you tap on your face and let go of that nonsense, because you cannot be poor enough to make anyone else richer. You cannot be sick enough to make anyone else healthier.
As you allow yourself the blessings that are around, you have more freedom to share the gifts that you have with others and make the world a more beautiful place for other people. Depriving the world of your gifts is not noble. And I'm not shaming anybody for doing that. You're doing the best you can. You've been doing the best you could up til now with your beliefs. Allow yourself to go, "All right. If it's stopping me from sharing my gifts, that's a bad belief. It's a misunderstanding." I mean, you don't need to judge it as bad or wrong or evil or anything like that. It's just going, "Is that useful? And is that really bringing me what I want?" Because I feel good when I'm creating, when I'm doing what I'm meant to do.
There's a great line in the movie Chariots of Fire where the one runner, who's also a minister. And his sister is telling him, "You need to give up this running nonsense and just put all your attention on preaching." And he said, "Yes, God made me a good minister. But he also made me fast, and I feel God's pleasure when I run." I just love that expression. I feel God's pleasure when I run.
That's beautiful.
I feel God's pleasure when I tap. And when we allow ourselves to be open to our creativity, we can feel God's pleasure... God, universe, source, whatever you want to use... being used for a purpose greater than ourselves, and for the benefit of other people. And when we let go of our baggage... For me as a cartoonist, there are times... there's a drawing that I've been resisting doing that I need to do. And when I illustrated my children's book I had so much resistance, and it's like, "Oh, it's so painful." And then when I clear that... And I love it and it's just, time goes away and I'm totally lost in the creativity and having fun with that. It's when I put pressure on it, it's like, "Well, it has to be this, and it should be this." It's like, well, just be an open channel, and it just feels good.
That's wonderful-
And we can do that in so many areas of our lives.
You can tap every time the resistance comes up. It's great. I've started to tap on my own.
But sometimes I forget.
Yeah. Yeah, we forget.
Yeah. Yeah. Because part of me says, "I don't want to be free."
Right. Right. It's a process. One of my favorite things that you say at the end is, "Go out and make this world a better place because it benefits all of us." And it's true.
Yeah. Yeah, it is. And allowing ourselves to be our happiest selves, our most successful selves, is a win-win situation. We cannot... Turning away from the ocean so that someone else doesn't feel jealous doesn't serve them. Looking at the ocean and saying, "Hey, look. There's an ocean there, go look at it." Or the stars at night or whatever else it might be. And to the universe, it's the same energy that's in money. It's all the same. Depriving ourselves of money makes no more sense than depriving ourselves of the view of the ocean or the stars at night. That's cleared up that confusion.
It's very true. Thank you, Brad.
My pleasure. Thank you for this opportunity to share this.
You're so generous. And one of my favorite things about you is your sense of humor.
It's a spoonful of sugar that helps the medicine go down.
Keep on clowning around. Many blessings. Thank you.
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Important Links
To find out more about Tapping (EFT) and connect with Brad, go to: TapWithBrad.com
To view his videos on YouTube check out: my playlist of Brad Yates favorites
Sarah Rossiter is an artist, writer, psychic, and teacher. Her artwork is available for purchase online. Sarah offers private sessions and channels messages and artwork from artists, angels, and other great beings.
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