In this week’s episode of The Best Guest podcast, we welcome Carol Look, psychotherapist, Founding EFT Master, and author of Yes, Thank You - Tapping Into the Superpower of Gratitude. Carol explains how consistent gratitude practices can transform your brain chemistry, reduce stress, and improve sleep and emotional wellbeing. She dives into the science-backed benefits of gratitude, why we subconsciously avoid happiness, and how EFT tapping can remove deep-rooted emotional blocks that hold us back.

About Carol Look

Carol Look is a psychotherapist, Founding EFT Master, best-selling author, international speaker, and creator of The Yes Code, her signature coaching method. She combines her traditional training as a psychotherapist with clinical hypnosis and advanced applications of EFT for unprecedented results with her clients.

Known for her laser-like focus and state-of-the-art approach, Carol has used EFT Tapping for over 25 years to help clients release their limiting beliefs and emotional conflicts so they can enjoy lives of exceptional success and fulfillment.

Carol is a world-renowned EFT workshop presenter who has taught at The Omega Institute, Kripalu, The Eden Energy Fest, and the energy field’s primary teaching conference, ACEP.

Carol has taught workshops in England, The Netherlands, Belgium, France, Ireland, Canada, Australia, and all over the United States. She is a regularly featured energy medicine expert on leading global telesummits and in the field’s leading documentaries.

Carol authored the energy field’s original book on abundance, Attracting Abundance with EFT. Her book, The Yes Code, became a #1 Amazon bestseller in several categories, solidifying her reputation as a leading voice in personal transformation. She has just released her newest book, Yes Thank You: Tapping Into the Superpower of Gratitude.

When she’s not working, Carol enjoys spending time with her family, listening to music, and walking in nature.

Key Takeaways

• Practicing gratitude consistently can lower stress levels by 28%, improve sleep, and reduce blood pressure.
• Gratitude rewires the brain by reducing cortisol and calming the fight-or-flight response.
• We self-sabotage because it feels safer to stay small. Tapping reveals and clears these subconscious blocks.
• EFT tapping is an evidence-based technique that calms the amygdala and reduces emotional reactivity.
• Consistency and specificity are key to making both gratitude and tapping effective.

Quote

“The question is never, is it good for you or not? That’s not the question. The question is, how much joy and happiness can you handle?” Carol Look

Mentioned in This Episode

Unlock the Yes, Thank You book portal filled with free resources to support your journey. Inside, you’ll find, nine instructional videos showing you exactly how to do tapping along with a detailed PDF guide of all the tapping points and a 30-day gratitude challenge. www.theyescode.com/thankyou

Connect with Carol Look

Website: www.carollook.com

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Transcript

Victoria Bennion: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome. I'm your host, Victoria

Bennion, and the founder of the best podcast guest booking agency. And you're

listening to the best guest, the podcast for business owners, creatives, and

entrepreneurs who want to harness the power of podcasts to grow their platforms

and increase their visibility.

Victoria Bennion:

We're here to support you on your journey, bringing you actionable tips with

each episode. Now let's begin.

Victoria Bennion:

Today we're diving into a truly transformative conversation with our client

psychotherapist and world renowned EFT Master Carol. Look, I feel incredibly

lucky to have someone with Carol's level of expertise joining us today, not

only to explain the why behind our emotional blocks, but also to walk us

through how we can move past them.

Victoria Bennion:

Carol shares the science backed benefits of gratitude and why its so many of us

unconsciously resist happiness even when we know what's good for [00:01:00] us. But what makes this episode especially

powerful is that Carol doesn't just talk about the healing potential of EFT

tapping.

Victoria Bennion: She

gives a live demonstration with me right here on the show. And honestly, I can

say I felt a real shift. So whether you've struggled with self-sabotage,

stress, or just want to feel more grounded and joyful, this episode is one

you'll want to bookmark and revisit.

Victoria Bennion:

Hello and welcome to the podcast, Carol.

Carol Look: Thank

you, Victoria. It's great to be with you and see you this way.

Victoria Bennion:

It's really great to have you on the show, and I'm really looking forward to

talking to you about your new book.

Carol Look: Thank

you. I'm excited about it. Thank you for getting me on so many podcasts

already.

Victoria Bennion: Oh,

you are welcome. Could you begin by talking to us a little bit about the

science behind Gratitude?

Carol Look: It's

funny, so I wrote this book about gratitude. So Yes, Thank You. Tapping into

the Superpower of Gratitude, and I knew gratitude was amazing and fun, and

people feel good, but I didn't have all the [00:02:00]

statistics, so I did research. About the statistics physically and mentally and

emotionally. What it does for you when you keep a consistent gratitude

practice.

Carol Look: And it

was amazing. It was incredible. So I knew I was gonna write this book, but to

back it up with the science was really fun. For instance, it lowers your stress

levels by 28%. It lowers your risk of. Serious diseases. It lowers your

hypertension, it improves your ability to sleep, both the duration and the

depth of your sleep. I, all these things that we, I think we take for granted

and people, I think, take a gratitude list for granted, and that's part of why

I was writing the book, because people aren't consistent with it. So the

science just kept, tumbling and tumbling and showing incredible results.

Carol Look: From

people sticking to a consistent gratitude practice in blood pressure, in sleep,

in cortisol levels, it is just really quite [00:03:00]

amazing and quite exciting,

Victoria Bennion: I

never would've guessed that. Can you talk a little bit about how gratitude

rewires our brains?

Carol Look: It

rewires it in the chemicals. So the statistics are showing that what happens is

it calms down your fight or flight response and calms down your cortisol. So

cortisol is the big bad, the big bad hormone that gets triggered under stress

and duress. And when you practice a gratitude list or a gratitude practice

consistently, it starts to rewire your brain because you're sending different

chemicals.

Carol Look: So

instead of being hyper alert and instead of having your sympathetic nervous

system on all the time. We're tapping into other chemicals, other emotional

states, calming ourselves down, which of course improves sleep, lowers the

stress level, calms down the blood pressure issues and the, the hypertension [00:04:00] issues.

Carol Look: So it

rewires by literally changing the pharmacy. Changing the pharmacy in our brain.

Victoria Bennion: So

with all those benefits, why do you think it is that so many of us avoid a

gratitude practice?

Carol Look: It's so

interesting. That was part of the premise for the book is that even though I

know I didn't know the statistics, but I certainly know what's good for you. I

dabble I was doing it sometimes, not all the time, and I go through my history

personally, and then I go through as a psychotherapist for decades what I have

found that keeps people from being consistent and in my life it was.

Carol Look: My

container was too full of worry, anxiety, focusing on other people's problems,

focusing on my family. A lot was going on. That's the first reason we don't.

The second reason is when you've got a tumultuous upbringing in any way, or a

current marriage, or the kids are acting out or whatever you can develop a low

self-esteem that makes you not wanna do things for yourself.[00:05:00]

Carol Look: So the

question is never, is it good for you or not? That's not the question that has

been answered. The question is, how much joy and happiness can you handle? How

much are you willing to handle? 'cause then the third reason we don't do

something that's good for us consistently is that we sabotage ourselves because

sabotage keeps us safe. So we end up putting a lid on ourselves and our

happiness, because we don't wanna be a target. Or we don't wanna be visible or

we don't, some want someone to be envious or jealous. So we end up, crouching

down and playing small. Because when people really read the research statistics

about gratitude, like you'd be doing it every day, at least once a day.

Carol Look: So you

have to look at underneath that, the why that you're asking. Why wouldn't we?

And that's 'cause we limit ourselves. 'cause we're scared. We are wired for

safety. We're not wired for success and happiness. We're wired as human [00:06:00] beings to keep ourselves safe. So if we

stay small and play small and under the radar, a lot of people, millions and

millions of people feel safer that way.

Carol Look: And if

keeping a gratitude list consistently and really. Getting into gratitude

practices will make you healthier, happier, more joyful. At work, they did a

study about employees and what happens when gratitude, when they're, gratitude

is expressed to them by the boss. And gratitude in relationships.

Carol Look: When you

really feel better and do better and are better in your life and you show up

differently, people notice, people are gonna notice. And sometimes when people

notice your happiness level or your success level, they don't like it.

Victoria Bennion:

That's so interesting. So if you are aware that you are self-sabotaging, what

can you do?

Carol Look: So I

asked the question, my favorite questions that came from the first book that

you know about the Yes code. Ask yourself what could be the upside of [00:07:00] not being happier. So we're looking for

the upside of the problem that you, let's say they come to me as a

psychotherapist. They say, oh, I've got this problem, or, oh, I really, I'm

getting in my own way.

Carol Look: I'm

stuck, I'm procrastinating. So the question is what could be an upside of

staying stuck? People say, oh, there's no upside. There is an upside, or else

we wouldn't do it. And this is where you have to stop criticizing yourself and

just saying, oh, I'm doing this for a reason. I'm protecting myself. And then

the second question, so this is just to get the material to find out what the

real reason is. The second question is, what's the downside of incredible

success and happiness? What's the doubt? What, how does it serve you not to be

that, how does it, how, what would be a negative consequence of you being

really standing tall, feeling better, having a deeper relationship, having a

better relationship at work with your colleagues and your boss your health

improving, losing the [00:08:00] weight, all

those questions.

Carol Look: What

could be a downside to that? Because again, human beings are just about

protecting themselves and staying safe. Then what I do is, the technique that I

use is EFT tapping to reduce all these fears. It's really, it's about your

fears and your beliefs and your behaviors. So the self-sabotage behavior is

very obvious to people.

Carol Look: You do

it. I do. Everybody does it and we see it. The fears are more hidden and the

limiting beliefs are even more hidden. We don't believe we deserve more. We

don't believe that we have what it takes. We don't believe that it'll ever

happen for us, whatever they are. So asking the questions gets to the feelings,

fears, and the beliefs.

Carol Look: Then we

can work with them with a technique to calm you down and help you feel better

about this conflict you have about being happier.

Victoria Bennion:

That's brilliant. How did you come to get into the work of EFT Tapping?

Carol Look: It's so

interesting. So as I said, I'm a traditional [00:09:00]

psychotherapist and then I went into the field of hypnosis, which I love

clinical hypnosis, and someone in my hypnosis class said, you think that's fun?

You've gotta try this weird new tapping technique. This was 1999. I think it

had been around for a while, even back then and 'cause I've been doing it for

25 years.

Carol Look: I took my

first class and I was hooked. It was like watching people change their anxiety,

their fears, their anxiety, their worry, and then what happened with me, I kept

introducing it to people. So the clients who would come to me for hypnosis,

when someone comes to you for hypnosis, they come for quit smoking, weight loss

and anxiety a hundred percent of the time.

Carol Look: So I

would say to them, I, yes, you're coming here for a trance for hypnosis, and

that's a rate. I have this new self-help self, stress relief technique called

tapping called EFT Tapping. And I'd love to show it to you for five minutes,

and if you don't like it, we will never do it again. They'd say, okay.

Carol Look: [00:10:00] And I do it with them at the end. And

they'd say, what did you just, what just happened? What did you just do?

Tapping does the same thing that gratitude does, which is it calms down the

fight or flight response in your brain. So the tapping, the research has come

out now in the last decade. And decade, 15 years, 10, 15 years, and it calms

down the fight or flight response in the amygdala in your brain that goes off

under any duress, any stress, any demand, traffic, the dog barking, dropping

something, anything small or huge.

Carol Look: The fight

or flight response gets triggered and it calms it down in the brain by tapping

on these acupuncture points. So I just kept practicing with it with clients,

and then I accidentally completely changed my insomnia, completely stopped in

an insomnia. I had been in insomnia for so long that I didn't call it a

problem.

Carol Look: It's like

I didn't say, Hey, my name's Carol and I'm an insomniac. It was just part of

me, and suddenly I start not suddenly. After doing [00:11:00]

tapping for a little while, I started sleeping deeply and going, falling

asleep, stopping the monkey mind and the worrying and the anxiety that I had at

night. And I was like oh, this is, oh, this is serious.

Carol Look: This

isn't just a technique. It is a tool, right? This isn't just a technique or a

tool. This is serious anyway, and I kept up. Kept up with a head person, Gary

Craig, who created it and and just kept using it and using it in my practice

and on myself, and just so many things changed that I knew I had to stick with

it.

Victoria Bennion: So

when you start with tapping, do you have to say something as well as tapping?

How does it work?

Carol Look: So you

start with, so the most important thing with tapping is you wanna start by

choosing a very clear target. So someone comes in and says, oh, I have all

these issues, and I ask the questions, what's the upside or what's the

downside? So that we find out what the real conflict is. So then you decide,

you basically make a decision.

Carol Look: What are

we working on? Are we working on the stress that's showing up in your back? Are

we working on your resentment towards your boss? [00:12:00]

Are we working on your frustration that the kids aren't listening to you? What

are we actually working on? Cravings, I do a lot of weight loss and quit

smoking and alcoholism, and so you choose a target, then you start physically

with the tapping and it's the, it's so simple.

Carol Look: The first

part of it you say. Something about your problem. So you and the standard

phrase is, even though I have this, and you, we could say, even though I have

the stress that's showing up in my body, very simple. I deeply and completely

accept myself. People say, why would I say that? Because you're resisting the

problem.

Carol Look: You're

criticizing yourself for the problem, and at some point we have to just

holistically say, I have this problem and I'm okay. Now I work with a lot of

wall Streeters. They do not wanna say I deeply and completely love and accept

myself. It just sounds corny, but there, if the effect is to, ah, take a

breath, calm yourself down.

Carol Look: So we

start there. And then when you're tapping on the specific points that have been

chosen,