Thriving Despite Obstacles w/ Rick Wilkes

Hi, my name is Gene Montrustelli and the video you are about to watch is a recording from the 24 hours of tapping, which is an event that is held annually to support the Peaceful Heart Network. If you appreciate or learn anything from this video, the easiest way for you to say thank you is to support the work of the Peaceful Heart Network who has worked with over 300,000 migrants, immigrants, prisoners, folks in disaster areas by bringing tapping to them. As you watch the video across the bottom, you will see a link where you can support their amazing work and I hope you enjoy this conversation. Rick Wilkes is an emotional freedom coach and a trauma and pain relief specialist with more than 28 years of experience. He uses intuitive and deep understanding of human nature to bring relief, clarity and insight for those who are looking for a thriving life now. Connecting body, mind and spirit helps his clients in private sessions and in his group coaching program to move out of suffering to a place where they can begin to feel surprising calm and confident. From there, he teaches them how to shift to a vibrational straight of thriving in every respect of their life. Please welcome to the virtual stage my friend, Rick Wilkes. One of the things that I'm always just like, fascinated about, and I also think it's useful in conversations. We've been doing it through these entire 24 hours, and almost every time I have a conversation I like doing this is I like to know what people mean by particular words so that even if you and I don't define the word the exact same way, we at least know where you're coming from. We can have a conversation about it. So I would just love to hear what you mean and what you think about when you use the word thrive.

Yeah, I think if we walked into nature and you could just feel that nature was off, that there had been intrusions, or it just. The whole vibe of it is off. You could say that something's off here. It's not thriving. And yet there's so much of nature that you can walk into and be like, oh, this. Oh, this is nice. Oh, this is nice. And it can be rocky, it can be desert, it can be lush jungle. It can be. And there's a vibe of, yeah, this is much more than surviving. You know, you can feel that there's a richness to it. And it doesn't mean that there's not competitions happening. Even trees dying, bugs eating each other. There's a lot that can be going on. So for me, thriving says, um, it's beyond survival, that I'm not actually in that Survival vibe of like, ah, I'm trying to hold it together. And it has more vitality than I'm okay. Like, to me, there's a place, a very. A beautiful neutrality of like, okay, I'm okay. And it's real. Like, okay, I'm okay. The thriving is as we move our energy more toward vitality and freedom and connection, that the. The vibration is one that has more aliveness, that also can hold the part of us that wants to survive. It's essential that we survive. On some level it can hold that, but it's not dominating the picture. And that there's a sense of the. Of us being a part of an ecosystem, a human ecosystem and an emotional world and energy, nature, our work that matters and that we're holding that too.

Yeah. And so as you say that, like, two things strike me immediately. The first is in the definition that you're giving of thriving. You're giving a definition that is about interdependence and how the description of thriving that you're giving is. It's not an experience, but it's an experience in relationship or in community or in environment, in the world. And so often when, like, when I am reflecting on, am I thriving? Am I not? Am I good, am I bad? Whatever. Like, my assessment, like, if you ask me how I'm doing, rarely am I giving you an environmental answer. Like, my answer is stopping right, like, right here. And like, just, like, just you like, talking about thriving in that way, like, immediately challenges me and how I answer the question, how are you doing? You know, And I don't just mean, like. And I don't mean like the barista in my coffee shop who have lovely baristas who are interested in me, in my life. And like, there is relationship there. It's not purely transactional. Like, one morning I walked in there and I was like, you're here every single morning. What do you do? Like, like there's engagement inside of that, you know, but like, but thinking, like, thinking of this interdependent, like, beyond just here as thriving is interesting. The other thing, and I want to tease both of these out, but I want to say both them before I don't lose it. The other thing that I found really interesting in your answer is what you're describing is a SUE scale, not a suds scale. And what I mean by that is, so often when many of us are taught tapping, we're taught a sudscale, which is subjective units of distress. And it's like 0 to 10, how big is the pain where a sue scale is the subjective units of experience, and a sue scale goes from a negative 10 to a positive 10. And if I'm just thinking about a suds scale, I'm thinking about how do I make the discomfort go down or go away, where a sue scale, the discomfort is a negative 4. But when I get to a zero, I recognize there is something that is more abundant and more thriving on the other side of that. It's not that I'm not. It's not that I've eliminated the fear. I'm also comfortable inside of my own skin. And that is another step along that particular path. And so I think it's. It's in that definition of thriving. It's also. It's lovely. It's mentioning, oh, I'm trying to overcome, but it's not just overcoming, but inserting something else instead. And so, like, those are the two things that bounce out for me. I, like, I would love to hear your reflections on both of those things and choose your own adventure. Like, which of those do you want to, like, step into first?

I. Since, you know, my thriving is something that came to me as a concept early on in tapping. I named my company after it. Yep. And it's become my practice. So I've looked at this a lot for myself, and perhaps it is that a lot of the people that I work with are energetically sensitive and energetically connected. And so their answer about, how are you doing? It can be helpful to get them to kind of come back within themselves and get that inner me space. Okay, so in the me space, I've got some distresses. And, you know, I've actually got some curiosities bubbling and burbling here. And so for thriving and tapping, often bringing ourselves back to, okay, how am I doing as a me? That can help empathetic people to, like, bring their sensors a little closer to home. And that's really useful. And that is an aspect of thriving today with my community. And a lot of the people I'm connected to, even when they do that, they're holding so many things inside themselves. Connections to people that are in distress, that have had the rules change and a lot of other things. And so the line between me and we, I think me as a practice, like, oh, okay, if I. If I set aside for a moment this thing that's happening with a family member, I can get a different view of myself and my own thriving. Am I. I'm on the surviving. Am I in the negative zone? Right. Like, okay, I'm really in distress. These are subjective units of distress. My. My liver hurts. My. My heart is shaky. My nervous system feels like it's on edge. Those are me experiences and tapping to get us to that neutral place. I think that that is such a. An exquisitely valuable, essential nature of tapping is that in the me space, I can quiet my nervous system. I can tune to what my. My heart needs. Even though my heart feels this intense yearning for peace, I accept all of my. All of my feelings can get you from it. Being a distress to like a presence that zero to me is. Is lovely. And there's also in the call to thriving, it says. And with that yearning in this place of presence, where do I want to take it? And that's a lot of where I tap is, you know, oh, what matters to me is peace. What matters to me is to support people in their hardest tree. What matters to me. And you see, like, I'm even just imagining myself tapping. And now I'm physically tapping. And like, I want people to be in their peace sufficiently to be able to know what inspired action they want to take that is right for them, that matters to them. When we get there, peaceful hearts are engaged and they're that energy of aliveness. Even if it is doing something hard. I tap with a lot of people like, you know, but it's not supposed to be hard. Well, it is hard. And that doesn't make it bad. And if so, that's. That's. I see those two aspects as. As blended and interwoven in the personal tapping journey is to help get us to the place where internally we're congruent and aware. And then in our connections with others, we can be thriving anyway. Even if they're a mixture of thorns and joys, we can be thriving anyway.

And so I'm curious inside of that. How do you. For yourself, for the clients or your students, how do you, I guess, for lack of a better word, craft a definition of what does thriving look like to me? Because I think. I think one of the things, like, one of the things that we're very good at is in chapter and verse, I can tell you everything that is wrong. I can tell you everything that is long physical pain. I can tell you everything that's wrong with my technology, with the world, like, I could. Like, that's. That's a really easy thing for me to recognize. That's great. It's a great place for us to solve problems. I think we struggle on the other side of that too. Like, I guess for a target to shoot for. I don't know, I'm thinking, like, it's a measuring stick of, like, how good am I doing it? Thriving. Like, I'm not. Like, I'm not trying to get to that sort of like, super, super measurement. But we need to have a direction. And so when we're in a circumstance where the things. I know. I know. Discomfort. I'm not. I know I'm not thriving in the way that I want to. I know that I want different, and that is all I know. So if I am in that circumstance, how do. Because it's hard for me to see something as believable if I don't even know what I'm trying to believe in. You know, thriving can this, like, can be so ethereal beyond that. So, like, how is an individual who's wrestling with this, how do we. Like. And maybe we don't have an answer for that until we're clearing some of the distress along the way. But I'd be interested in just, like, process. How do we come to clarity about that? Or how do we move towards something that we don't know what it is yet?

Or we have no clarity. You pointed to the obstacle course that our conditioning and our primitive brain sets us up for. We have to notice the threats to our survival. We have to notice things that if it. If it can be fixed, that is a good thing. Like, there's a part of us that puts a lot of our life force toward that. Your question about where's our. Where's our pointer? Yeah. Thriving as an ecosystem. Well, what's part of the ecosystem to me? I ask, client. Well, what matters to you? So somebody's working with a relationship challenge, and it really is. It's got them all flummoxed. You know, their energy is all over the place. You know, even though my body's all just crazy upset, what matters to me is safe connection. Now, you. You may not come up with that on your own when you're all discombobulated. I do believe that as part of the practices that we do, if we do our tapping on what's coming up for us and we ask the question, well, what matters to me here? And you can put it in emotional terms, you know, you can put it in the terms of values and the like. And I. I've been doing that more and more, and I'm noticing the shift because if. If what matters to me is depth and safety and connection at depth, what happens to my body, mind, energy, when that's not there? That's where those discomforts and other Things. But if I look at it first as, oh, I've got to fix the relationship sometimes, but I've not found that as fruitful as going, like, even though this relationship lacks safe depth right now, and my body is telling me that, I remind myself how much safety and depth in my love relationships matters to me and bring it home, like, yeah, this matters to me. Then you'll notice things like a yearning or some grief other. The raw emotions like resentment can come up, but you're standing in a place of this matters to me. And so the feelings that arise are less likely to be pushed away. No, look, depth matters to me. Intimacy matters to me. Connection and safety matter to me. And that's good and right for me. It doesn't have to matter to everybody else, but it matters to me. And if you can stand in that place, to me, you are thriving in your clarity. You may not be thriving in your connection with that person. That may be full of blah, but it does mean to me that you're at least thriving in your clarity, which is one of the aspects here.

I love that. I love this idea of, you know, because, like, you know, like, practically, like I'm, I'm thinking about and I'm tapping with consistently with myself and my clients around this idea of, you know, success is not an all or nothing proposition. Happiness is not all or nothing. And like, and because our subconscious mind.

Our primitive brain really trying.

Yeah, it's, it's all black.

All black.

Yeah.

And.

And so, and so like, and so like, almost like, like that first idea of like, you know, I, like, I, I was working with someone a couple of days ago and I, and, and she was talking about like this emotion that came up and how she was, she was going to acquiesce. Like, she got undermined by a friend. Like, a friend said, oh, you need to go work with her and she's going to give you a discount. Like, literally, like, put her in a bad situation. And what we were tapping on was her emotional thing of coming up, of going, I have to give them the slower rate. Like, intellectually she was annoyed, but emotionally there was a. Still, I have to do this. And one of the things that we celebrated before we tapped was she never said any of those things out loud. And she didn't, she didn't lower herself because someone else had put her in that position. And so I'm like, yes, it stinks. You have this emotion where there's a part of you that wants to undercut your own value, to feel safe in this Moment.

Yeah.

And you didn't. It's great. We need to deal with this particular emotion. But the fact that you had the emotion but didn't act out of it, that is a step forward. And so this idea of thriving at these different steps along the way, like that becomes a really valuable thing. Like, it's almost like I have a medical test that is out. And since I don't know what the result is, my subconscious mind, my primitive brain, is worrying about every single possible outcome, even though they are contradictory. And there is almost relief the moment I get a diagnosis, even if it's severe, because I'm not worrying, I'm worrying. And that becomes. And so there. There is that. When I have this sense of clarity, all of a sudden, energetically, I'm in a different place. And so, like, I love. I love you're using the word thrive with clarity of my problem or thriving with clarity of my value. Even if I don't know what the outcome is yet, and if I don't know, like, what the outcome looks like, I can't make steps toward it. That clarity is so valuable. I love you use the word thrive in that particular setting.

Yeah. And even if. Even if what we're doing is we're holding this vast uncertainty, which to me, the way that my brain works and the way that I was resonating with what you were talking about is if there's a variety of possible outcomes, okay, There's a part of my brain that says, I need to keep working on this. I need to keep working on this. I need to keep working. And that's where I would tap. Even though a part of me feels like I have to keep working on this, resilience matters to me. And then I can look at those and say, can I be resilient? Even if that happens, can I be resilient? And if you know that resilience matters to you, then one of those might come up. As you know, if that's the result, I'm going to need some help. Okay. I had a loved one in for some surgery. First time, you know, she'd ever had surgery. And there was one outcome in that mix, which is as I tapped on and resiliency matters to me. Being able to hold my presence matters to me. And there was one outcome that could have happened because life and death. And I had one person that I pre prepared say, look, I don't think this is going to happen, but if it does, I will. Are you willing to be there to support me? And they said, yeah, I'LL drop everything and I'll be on a flight if that happened. And then I was like, yeah, I feel the resilience I now have in place. It matters to me. And the nightmare stopped. That was great. And the flashes of the things that really would have stretched my resilience to the breaking point, like we know ourselves. I mean, an obstacle can be quite simply, if. If I have to do this on my own, I don't have the life force or the physical vitality to be able to do it. That's real. And if you're clear about what matters to you, then things that don't serve you well. Like, it matters to me not to be a burden on my loved ones. You know, when you're tapping, you say something like that. Okay, yeah, I don't want to. Like, I'm not going to fashion my life so that I can be more of a burden on my loved one. Right. But you can also land on, like, I know that I am a part of caring for other people and that they. There will be things that happen in their life that are something I help them carry and that I've been carried through things and that can free up the limited belief. So that even if there is a possibility that you will be more interdependent with perhaps a little more emphasis on the dependent for a period of time. Yeah. That you're okay, you can still be thriving anyway. Right. And so that's. That's one of the ways that I'm working with this is to strengthen up our. Our framework for thriving so that, okay, what matters to me, you start having a list of things, and as you look at those things that matter to you, you start getting a sense of yourself as someone who is thriving, can be thriving, has good and sufficient support for thriving at some level. And it's. And it starts a lot of the noise about success and achievement and as you know, the. I love yearnings and I love aspirations, but much of life falls into the category of good insufficient for thriving. But we have these things like that stand in our way, these obstacles. And that's where the tapping that I. I invite people is to try on. You know, even though this terrible thing is a part of my awareness or this terrible thing is right here and I can't fix it, I wonder if it's possible to be thriving anyway. Tap, tap, tap. Do you think it might be possible? No. Part of me says no way, impossible. No one could be thriving if this was happening. Is that really true? I wonder. I'm kind of creative And I'm weird. You notice I'm just tapping. You know, I'm creatively weird. I wonder if I could be absurdly calm and confident. I'm wondering if I could be capable.

And as you're doing that and.

The beauty of tapping as an energy tool to get us from distress to okay, it continues to apply, going from. I accept that this is a reality. And now what I wonder. I wonder is. Are such great words for the energy of curiosity has been shown to open up parts of our hardest tree. And our awareness, our gut goes, oh, they're wondering. They're not fleeing, they're not fighting, they're not frozen. They're wondering. All these other cells, all these other parts of me. Oh, wonder. And. And the cool thing about wonder is that, you know, we think of that as a peak experience. Oh, it's wonderful. And just about a micro. A micro dose of wonder in the midst of that can be enough to change our energy flow into places that are more. Have more agency, have more resource.

So inside of that answer, you know, there you bumped into my two favorite dispositions in tapping, curiosity and possibility. You know, like if we did a word cloud of the phrases that I use, I'm open to the possibility is going to be one of the biggest words of mine. And then that sense of wonderful, like, you're talking about what it feels like. For me, the physical posture of wonder is my head tilts and eyebrow goes up and I go, huh? And we know that when we smile because of the classical conditioning of the emotion that goes along with these muscles, that if I smile, it raises my emotion in that moment for me, all I have to do is just go, huh? And my entire. No matter what problem I'm in, I don't even have to say I wonder. Just taking the posture of huh is enough for me to start having that shift to see what is there inside of that. And the other thing that I love about this idea of wonder and that question, like, this is wonderful, but I wonder is. It implies I don't have the answer. And it immediately gives me permission not to have the answer. It's like, oh, oh, this is the path forward. There's a very particular energy to that which might have confidence or it might have a lack of confidence. I'm saying words that I don't believe. But it's really hard for me not to be emotionally connected to my words when I'm talking about I wonder. Like, because I wonder is. Is not about definitiveness, it's about openness. It's about that space inside of that. And it's like it's. I sit down to tap for a reason. Like I like, like even and even. And even if it is just content free, wordless tapping for 60 seconds. So I just downregulate my emotions just a little bit. But I'm, I'm never not tapping without purpose. But because that is the case, there is an, there is a desire, there is an outcome. Which means I now immediately have a yardstick. Am I doing a sufficient job? Is this tool working as well as I want? Am I moving forward in the way that I want? And the moment I ask, I say, I wonder if I just, I immediately start emotionally letting go of. Not intellectually dismissing, but I'm emotionally letting go of my attachment to a particular outcome. And for me it is easier to thrive when I'm not emotionally attached to a particular outcome. Doesn't mean that there's not a lack of desire. Does it mean that I like I'm not appreciative and moving towards something. But there's a difference for me between an emotional attachment of this is the outcome I must have which is like the antithesis to this interconnected ecosystem that you were talking about at the beginning of what thriving feels like. And so it's like I wonder if, boy, is that an amazing key to reduce the friction, reduce the internal tightness of me being open to and stepping towards and recognizing what is possible as I move towards thrive.

Yeah, and we all have a nature. I mean we're wired differently both from our essential personality, how we're wired neurologically. I love that tapping applies to the whole diversity spectrum. And for each of us to find doorways like wonder and curiosity are what open up a doorway for me too because I've got a really good analytical brain. It can plot and scheme and, and try to be successful at an outcome. I tap often without purpose. You'll notice even during our time we're talking, I start tapping and I mean I could assign a purpose.

Yeah.

To me there's a quality of play. Like I'm playing with my energy, you know, like huh, this point right here, I'm just playing with I wonder. And we're entering into a phase where what we wonder and question about learning to open up our awareness, it's going to allow us to use tools for co creating like AI. You can use tools to get a particular outcome, but tools like tapping, if you're like, hey, this matters to me. Oh, wonder. I can't even say the words. Why is that? Oh yeah, Even though I was taught to always know the answer before I open my mouth. And it had to be right. I wonder how it would feel to be an aspiring imperfectionist. Ooh, that gives me a tingle. Right. You can, you can play with. I wonder. And when you land on something that really, you know, I am open to the possibility of bringing more improvisation and imperfection into my craft, into my expression of who I am, I've done tapping on that. And that's. What is that doing? It's saying, yeah, there's an obstacle. Aren't I supposed to have it figured out? Doesn't the measure of work that matters? Isn't it measured by money and followers and, you know, things like that? I wonder, I wonder what I'd feel about this work I'm doing if there wasn't such a thing as money. And you let that play around in your energy field. It doesn't mean you're not going to ask for money. For a lot of people, there's a quality of, you know, attention. Even though I have this tension and it's acting as an obstacle for me being in the, in my what? Creativity, in my openness. I wonder, I, I wonder how I might see this. I wonder how I might frame it differently. Even though your question about what is thriving, if people look at what is. What is actually good, and I wonder what is actually good and sufficient for my thriving? I've been exploring that with people, and it's fascinating. You'll often say, well, I need, you know, you'll hear someone say, I need X. Thousands, millions of dollars. Oh, so you can't be thriving at all unless that's there. Well, what would be sufficient? Like today, this week. How much resource would you need this week in order to be thriving in the areas that matter to you? Oh, I've got that. You know. See, it kind of falls into that. They've taken something that really is an aspiration and made it a distress. And that is where the work of our yearnings, our aspirations, the things that matter to us, we can start to shift over into distress. I'm not there. I don't know how. There's too much uncertainty. The world is changing. This isn't the way I want it. Obstacle, obstacle, obstacle, obstacle. Yeah, we're so human and, and, and moving it toward. More toward, like. Yeah, I, I want to be a man, a human with aspirations. You know, I, I'm way too alive to not have aspirations. But they don't all have to be here right now. Tap, tap, tap. And you know, and some might not even happen in my lifetime. But I like being a person that imagines people being peaceful and free and abundant. I just, I like that I'm that person. Is everyone peaceful, free and abundant? Well, I really need pretty strong drugs to believe that that's happening. It's not happening so. But I can hold that. And the aspiration without it taking me out of the sweet zone of yeah.

And it's interesting you say that like, like at the turn of the beginning of the year when we and my team in earnest start thinking about this particular event, the guiding mantra for me has been how do we create a world in which we don't need the peaceful heart network, you know, like, and is that going to happen in you mind's lifetime? I'm open to that as a possibility. And you know, you know, but it's, you know, it is where it is like just taking that like going aspirationally like, like as I, as we are doing this in small microwaves to make a difference around the world with this amazing work that the organization does. But just like going okay, what is, what is that? What would it mean for us to be a world in that way? And ties to the last thing I wanted to ask you about because it's word that we used a lot at the beginning that I think is really, really useful is you keep using the word this is what I value. This is what I value. This is what I value.

This is what matters to me.

Yeah, this is what matters to me. And so often like what I have been and I'm helping folks Rexell with a different life that they might want. For me, there is a understanding that there is a difference between a desire and an outcome. And oftentimes the outcome is a demonstration of it. You know, so for example, my desire is to have self love. The outcome is I feel confident enough to share an idea at work without fearing the slings and arrows of everybody thinking I am dumb. And so there is, there is the value of appreciating and loving who I am and knowing that I am good enough even in my imperfection, which is connected to. But it's a different thing than what that looks like in an individual moment. And I think part of the struggle people have around this idea again to go back to your like, what do you need to thrive financially? What you need to thrive financially right now, that is, that is a question of what matters, not the outcome. Because when I reframe the question to what do you need right now? Well, the things that matter to Me are taken care of, you know, and like, like it shifts in that particular way. And so I would love just kind of like as you think about what matters to me versus how it shows up, I just love to hear you kind of reflect on like my framing of that vocabulary of your experience. Like I would, I would love to hear what you think about that or how you process that or understand that or use those things as guiding principles and North Stars and not as we're trying to create change as we recognize what's possible.

Yeah, it's interesting because I realized that when I really, if I were to say what matters to me, these are not outcome based. They're like, I want to be part of co creative communities where people feel safe enough to express their ideas, even if the ideas end up being contrast for the organization or for an individual that those are held in, there's sufficient safety and respect for that to be held. And I live in a world where I also, I value. What matters to me is resilience, both personally and with other people that I'm connected to and I'm a part of their resilience. They. I know that if they went to work and they shared something and it was shot down and they're hurting, I can, I'm capable of holding a space so that they can recalibrate back into what matters to them, which is like, you know, it matters to me in my work in the world to express ideas, to see where they go to, to to have that inner agency and courage. Like courage is, is. Is something that matters to me. If we look at things, if we each look at things that matter to us and your things as you put your life force toward it. Right. I'm using my life force, my prayers, my intentions, my work in the world, my. The stories I share, the podcasts I record. This one, for example. Thriving matters to me and I want to help people recalibrate so that they can experience it even with thorns and obstacles in their lives, that there's still the possibility that they can feel as part of their day. Oh, I got to be of service. That matters to me today. I'm a student teacher. You've given me and this organization, this moment in time has given me an opportunity to share things that matter to me that are alive as I allow myself to feel it. I'm nourished the world that I want to live in. The peaceful heart network. We have peaceful hearts that are networked together and we're aware of each other and we're aware of where we're attracted to engage and where our gifts, the things that matter to us, we just make life better. When our energy is a part of it in some micro cosmic way or cosmic way, that part doesn't matter to me. For some people, being big matters to them. Bless them for me. If 11 beings are touched in some microcosmic way, Yay. And I'm satisfied. I can at the end of the day say that I was in the work that matters to me and I was in the thriving that matters to me.

Awesome. Well, as always Rick, I very much like for the time here, I want to thank you for just your insight as always. But on a personal note, I just want to thank you. Like you were my very first guest on my podcast 17 years ago and you've always been someone who is always so willing and giving and sharing and whenever an ask comes your way, the response is about logistics and how we.

Can make it happen.

Because you always say yes. I just On a personal level, I want you to know how much I appreciate the good work you're doing in the world and the consistent support you've given to those of us in the tapping field. Like, it's noticed and it's really appreciated. So thanks for your time today, but thanks for being in the world and being a part of this amazing community.

Thank you, Gene. Love to you.

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