In this inspiring episode of Epic Begins With 1 Step Forward, Zander sits down with psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, and EFT tapping expert Carol Look to explore why we sabotage our own success and how to break free. Carol explains how fear, anxiety, and our natural desire for safety can keep us stuck in familiar patterns. She shares how EFT tapping may help manage stress, overcome procrastination, and support lasting change. Together, they discuss perfectionism, gratitude, the courage to take small steps, and why personal growth often requires discomfort. Carol also opens up about losing her sister and the importance of acknowledging grief. Drawing from her books The Yes Code and Yes, Thank You, she reminds us that meaningful transformation begins with one intentional choice.
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Why You Keep Sabotaging Your Own Success (And How To Stop) With Carol Look
I am so excited. I have Carol Look with me. Carol, tell us who you are and what you do.
First of all, I am totally honored to be with you and be with your Epic group. I am a psychotherapist and a traditional hypnotherapist, and then I do EFT tapping to help people reach their goals one yes at a time, make the steps that they need to do, and hold on to those changes so they can really become the people that they want to become. I am also an aunt and a great aunt and a sister and many other things.
That is awesome. I totally want to get into some of this stuff. Obviously, I am also a mental health provider. We have that in common. I will not bore the audience with us going back and forth about mental health too much. We will probably talk about it a little. I am interested in understanding more about EFT and how that’s happening. I know what it is, but I am going to say I am not completely familiar with why it works.
Calming The Nervous System To Break Fear
Tapping, EFT, or EFT tapping, calms down the fight-or-flight response in the brain. If someone wants to make a change, they often have this spike in their nervous system that says, “Do not go there. It is not safe.” They procrastinate, and they pull back, and the tapping pairs the upset, the worry, or the stress with this calming signal. We tap on acupuncture points, and it calms down your nervous system. Your brain comes back online. You are able to make changes. You are able to stick with the changes, and it is a complete game changer for me, changing my life first before I started doing it with all my clients. It is really impressive, and now the research in the last ten years has exploded. That is exciting for us in the field, who all knew it worked, but now the research is backing us.
That is always good. Now, of course, you know I am going to have to ask how did it help you? How did you discover it? What was going on that the tapping helped?
I was a traditional psychotherapist. I got my doctoral degree in hypnosis, and somebody in my hypnosis class said, “You think that is fun? You have to try this new weird tapping thing.” I did not know what they were talking about. I started using it, and I was very skeptical about Xander. I would say to clients, I have this new stress relief technique. I will do it with you for five minutes when you are a hypnotist.
Of course, they come to you for cravings, weight loss, and anxiety. I would say to them, “Let us do it for five minutes. If you do not like it, I will give you the five minutes at the end.” One after the other, they said, “What did you just do? What just happened? What happened to how I feel?” That started my process in it. I changed my insomnia, which was dramatic. You want to change your life, change your insomnia.
No doubt.
I had to lose the 20, 25 pounds that I kept bouncing around. I did major work around financial success. I had grown up with severe anxiety and tension around money and never enough. I had to change that profession and personally in my life. Those are the three main things, plus grief. When you live in this world, there are a lot of things you need to work on to calm yourself down.
What I know of EFT, the people who do it say, “It changes my life. It is awesome. You should try it.” Is it just, you said it is tapping on those tracks? Cool. How long do you have to do it for you to find it, like something that you are there for a half hour tapping on your meridians?
Very quickly, people feel the calming down in their nervous system. We pair it with the right word. We have to be focused. It is like bringing up a file. I say, “If I want to send you a document, Sandra, I would have to bring it up, edit it, save the changes, and send it to you.” We are bringing up something we are upset about using the tapping, which accesses the brain, the amygdala, and the nervous system that calms you down.
Some people notice it in the first minute. They are like, “What just happened?” In order for it to stick and the changes to really stay with you, you have got to be focused. You’ve got to keep checking. “Did this work? Am I using the right language? Am I tapping using the entire system?” It can be very quick, and it can also be an ongoing process, with deeper issues and trauma. It is not a one-minute wonder.
I know. You and I know, being in the mental health field and doing counseling, that it is not a one-and-done. It is an ongoing process. There are steps forward and sometimes steps backwards, and consistency is what happens. Tell my clients to just keep showing up. We will figure it out. I know I said I was not going to talk about mental health, but I have to because I find this all the time. We found the thing you want to talk about, but we ran out of time. I know my clients will come in.
Sometimes they know what they want to talk about. Other times we are bouncing around, talking about work and life and stress and all of that. Sometimes, let us say in a 50-minute conversation, like about minute 25 or so, you find the thing, you really start to get into it, then you are like, “I am sorry, but that is time.” I know as a therapist, sometimes I am frustrated. Like, “We are just right here.” “We will pick that up next week.” The problem is you are not in that same space. Have you experienced that?
Why Procrastination Is Secretly About Safety
Absolutely. What I know is that it is usually fear that delays getting to that space. We are absolutely wired for safety, not for change and success. It might take someone the first 35 minutes to circle the airport, talk around it, and then boom, when they feel safe enough, they can go to it. Yes, it is always an awkward moment. I love saying, “Hold that spot, hold that thought. We will pick it up next week. What do you need support from me in between, though? I need to give you a tapping script. What would help you between now and then?” Yes, it can always be an awkward shift over as the clock starts ticking.
There are times when I am like, “We really are.” I share with my clients. I feel your frustration. We are here. We are where we are. We are in the soup. Now we will make it in. Again, I totally get. You are not in the same space. I was just talking with my daughter, who is doing an asynchronous online course that she needs to take to be able to apply for graduate school, just a course that she did not take. I was asking her how it was. She goes, “It is okay, but it is really hard.” When I have a question, I can ask a question, and I get the answer. Sometimes I do not remember, and I am like, “I spent seventeen years doing instructor-led training.”
I totally get it. Look, online learning is great. There is some of it that is, if it is very straightforward. Here is how to do a mail merge in Microsoft Word or something. When it is dynamic, and she is doing abnormal psychology, I am like, you have a question. You can get it answered. I know from doing online courses that you are not in the same learning moment. Although you have the answer, it does not stick because you are not there. You are like, “I have the answer. It is not contiguous.” Here is a question. Do you work with tapping with people like test anxiety and stuff like that? I hear that a lot.
People taking the bar, people taking all sorts of exams, are wonderful for test anxiety, because what does the anxiety do? It makes us lose our memory. Suddenly we do not remember things. It is very good to calm you down ahead of time and during the test so that you get back in the rhythm, back in the cadence, the confidence comes back, and you are not monkey minding up in your brain. That is what is wonderful about that.
Now, how did you get into doing psychotherapy? Was it something as a kid you just sort of were like, “I am really interested, and I seem to always be trying to figure out why these people are not getting along or why that person is reacting?”
That, and for my own challenges and having a very positive experience with psychotherapy and 12-step programs. I grew up with alcoholism all over the place, and I just loved how it made me feel and how I changed. I thought I wanted to help people because I was powerless and helpless for a long time, and I did not know what could change and what could affect me. Talk about epic. Let us talk about epic steps.
When you want to make a change, your brain screams for safety. Calming your nervous system lets you finally step forward.
Look, I am a firm believer that all of us, first of all, have and will do epic things. When I talk to people, and I am talking about epic, I am like, “What have you done that is epic?” “Nothing.” You poke a little, as those of us in the mental health field will do. “That is interesting. Let me poke a little more into that.” People have done stuff, and I am like, why are you ignoring it? It is like f one of those, like, “Why are people discounting these things?” “No, I have not done anything epic.” I find out that they did an ultra marathon or they have written a book or they traveled at 18 through 15 countries. I am like, “How is that not epic?”
They stayed in university or college instead of dropping out. They managed the grief over a parent dying. They managed to move across the country. There are so many things that people have done, and they say, “That is just me,” or “I had no choice.” It is like, “No, you had a choice.”
When I talk about epic journeys, I am like, look, some of them are shorter than others. Others, you are on a multi-year epic journey. I know when I went to graduate school and then had to do an internship for licensing and stuff, that was like a seven-year journey. Now, I probably could have done it a little faster, but that is not the point. The point is I knew I was, this was a marathon, not a sprint. Sometimes if we are trying to heal from something, it takes time. It really does.
Navigating The Messy Middle Of Personal Healing
There is the beginning and the end and the messy middle, and sometimes people quit in that messy middle. Just owning that you have got a trauma or something that you need to deal with and you need to move through, that is an incredible beginning, and that is step one, step two, step three. Sometimes in the middle, it is not so pretty.
I certainly know from my own life and helping clients that I will say, “Sometimes you are chest-deep wading through the swamp of whatever you are dealing with.” It is not comfortable and stuff. Honestly, I do not want to say guarantee because we cannot guarantee anything, but really, more times than not, when you come out on the other side of that swamp, you are thankful that you did that work. You are like, “I no longer have to carry this. I was brave. I walked through that swamp of whatever.”
Would not it be nice if it was all done in chapters like a book, easy and distinct, and it is never distinct. Emotional health. Mental health is not distinct like that.
No, absolutely not. I always marvel when a client comes in and I, you obviously, in the intake and stuff, you ask, “What brings you in?” When we conclude, where we started and where we ended, and what they came in for and what we actually worked on, are oftentimes different. They came in, “I have terrible test anxiety,” but it turns out that they lost their brother or sister, and the family never acknowledged it. They are like, “I have been carrying around. I want to talk about my brother.” The family ignored it as if they never existed. It is so much fun to be able to do it and help people.
I love the by-the-way comments. They come in for test anxiety, but by the way, and then they mention an enormous trauma, and you think, how have you been holding that and shouldering that your whole life? Yes, I am with you. I love being able to help people. I love the results. I love providing a safe space. We all need it.
Sometimes we get to the thing that is really there because we get the doorknob bomb. They are walking out. I do mine as telehealth, but this has happened a few times with clients where we are wrapping up, and then they are like, “By the way,” and then the session is over and you are like, “I now have to sit with this for a week until I get to talk to them again.” They go, “We need to explore that a little.”
What you brought up in the last 30 seconds of the last session.
You mentioned before we came on that you too are a sibling survivor. You lost your sister to breast cancer. Obviously, that is a big part of the work I do. I am always interested when I get a sibling survivor on. It is funny, well, funny, not funny. Many of my guests have experienced sibling loss, but we just do not talk. It is just not talked about. For you, how has your experience been in terms of the loss of your sister? Have people acknowledged it? Do people ask how you are doing?
The Overlooked Reality Of Sibling Grief
What happened, I would say, was so fascinating in hindsight. It changed every cell in my body. I was number 3 out of 4. She was the fourth out of four girls, and it changed everything. It changed all our relationships, changed my entire body, how I see the world, how I interact with people. Interesting, you should ask, people, did people ask at about the six-month mark? People did not ask anymore.
You have to be your own advocate and say, “Wait a minute, I need to deal with this grief. Wait a minute, I need to deal with another aspect of grief.” It is not. Grief is not singular. A single challenge is that, as you know from your own loss, there are so many pieces to it. You have to be vigilant and really on it because sometimes people say, “It has been three months,” “It has been six months,” and it is just not front of mind.
Growth is never neat. When you’re wading through the messy middle of change, remember that consistency beats perfection.
I hate it when people say this, and I am trying to get people to change it. “You are not over the loss of your sister?” “No, I will never be over. I am working my way through it some days better than others. It will be 30 years in December. I am not stuck there, but I certainly am not over losing my sister Lucy.” How could I mean, are you over losing your sister? Of course not.
Ever, milestones keep happening and transitions. Her daughter got married and had a baby. There are a lot of things that happen that come up and “She would have been this age, and this would have happened, and she could have been with us at Christmas.” It does. It changes, but how do you get over a loss like that?
You do not. The longest relationship we have in our life is with our siblings. We reasonably expect that relationship is going to go on until, and I am going to put this in air quotes, “We are old.” I find that as my years go on, what old is is kind of like a carrot on a stick. What I thought old was when I was twenty is not what I think old is now because I may be going, “Yeah, you are old when you are 55.” I am past 55. I am like, “Absolutely not.”
It certainly made me more compassionate to other people who had lost a pet as a child, lost a parent, lost a grandparent, lost a house. Maybe they had to move to another part of the country, and they feel the loss of their childhood friends. There are so many losses and grief, and grief broke me open hate to admit it, but it did not.
It does. Look, there were things I thought I would do with my life, but to be honest, murder was not one of them, and I often say sibling survivorship is a lonely experience where everywhere and we are nowhere. I was 28. I am originally from Boston. I was living there at the time. Lots of people who knew my parents would see me on the street. “How are your parents doing?” Completely logical question. Not one person asked how I was. Part of my work is trying to change that because I think it is how the family is. How are the siblings doing? Because I think unacknowledged grief has a profound effect on people’s recovery, on their own journey through grief, and just on their life.
It is so hard to say this incredibly important thing happened to me, and yet no one seems to acknowledge it or seem to care that I lost my sister, that you lost your sister. Not that I am doing studies. I could never do a study and go, “Carol lost her sister.” I will just throw something in, “She started drinking more heavily.” There is a history of alcoholism, so we cannot point to causality. I could not ever statistically prove it, but my own experience is that I think it has a profound effect. When you get acknowledged, all of a sudden you are like, “Yes, I am okay.”
The acknowledgement is so important. The other thing that was so strange. My sister died on December 11th, 2001, three months after 9/11. Everybody in my world, in New York, was obsessed with 9/11. “How are you doing with the three-month anniversary of 9/11?” “Not so good. My sister died last night.” People have this tunnel focus, and then it was the six-month anniversary of 9/11, which was the three-month anniversary of her death. It was very strange that it was paired with that, and then alongside what you are saying, that people forget they moved. They do not think it is you. “How are your parents doing?” “Not well. I am not doing well either.”
Gratitude lists only work when you feel them deeply. Pair genuine focus with daily micro-habits to create real momentum.
Exactly. “Thanks for asking how I am doing. I will be happy to tell you.” Let us not spend all of our time talking about sibling loss and stuff like that. I know that you have written two books, The Yes Code and Yes, Thank You. I am, if you have not guessed, all about positivity, and let us find out a little about these books.
The Yes Code was my book about transforming sabotage into success. I talk about the top seven sabotage methods, why we do it, how we are wired for safety, not success, and how we get out of the pattern. I use EFT in the book with examples and sequences, and how to change that fear because, basically, sabotage is trying to protect you. We do not think that we just get mad at ourselves for it. Which gets us nowhere, as you know. That was that book, and then the next book is all about combining gratitude with the tapping, and if the research on gratitude is so phenomenal, why are we not doing it?
Pairing Authentic Gratitude With Intentional Action
Everybody talks about it. I did my gratitude list, but there are a lot of people who are not doing it with passion and depth. They are just checking it off a list, and it does not have the same effect. I combined the research on EFT with the research on gratitude. What gets in our way? Why are we not doing it? What is that kind of sabotage behavior? Again, exercise and how to improve that, how to change that, and really make it a part of your daily life as a commitment.
In my book, Epic Begins with One Step Forward, I came up with something called the 97/3 rule, which is that I am a firm believer that most days, 97% of your day is good and up to 3% is not so good. Now, obviously, we all have days where the not-so-good could be 100%. For you, December 11th, 2001, definitely, your 97% bad here. I totally get that. On average, there is more good happening.
Again, I get curious about why we all do this. You ask someone how their day was, and they focus on the 3%. They tell you stuff like, “The subway was late and I, you know, the internet went down,” completely ignoring all of the good things that happen. Look, Carol, you and I both woke up this morning. I did not doubt that I would wake up, but you want to know that is a great start. I am here.
It is a good start. It is all about focus and choice. You knew that from all your work and all your books. We get to choose what we focus on. That is it. Nobody is choosing for us, and if we want to choose on everything that went wrong and that is 3%, or on some days it is 20% and 30%, it is up to us.
I asked my guests this because I always like to break it down and go, “Let me make it relatable” because we could talk about these esoteric things and people go, “Yes.” I am like, “Here, I love asking this.” In high school, Carol, what was your least favorite subject?
Math.
You don’t need all the answers to start. You just have to be willing to experience a little discomfort and take one step forward.
I am right there with you. If you got a 97 on a math test, how would you feel?
I would feel like it was not. I did not take that test.
You would be ecstatic. You would tell your friends and your parents. Would you be complaining about the three points you did not get? No, absolutely not. Yet, I used this when I was doing my internship. I was doing school-based work, like middle school and high school, and a lot of my clients had academic issues. I am trying to, like, get them out of just focusing on the negative stuff and going, “Look, there is so much more good.”
When I brought that up, “I would be so happy.” I am like, “Absolutely. So would I.” For all of us, no matter what your epic journey is, yes, there are going to be detours. You are going to fail at some of the things that you are trying to do on your epic journey. That is okay. When that happens, look at all the stuff that you did accomplish. You and I have both written books. That whole process is hard. The writing part, the editing part. The okay, it is good enough part. That is a huge one.
You go through the book, you go through the book, you go through the book, and at some point you just have to go, “It is good enough.” I have talked to some officers, “I have been going through it for two years.” I am like, “Why have you not released it?” “It is not perfect yet.” I am like, “It is never going to be perfect. I guarantee you are going to release a book, and there will inevitably be something inevitably a period, a comma, a fault, or something that you and all the other people who proofread your book missed. It is okay.”
Dropping Perfectionism To Finally Release Your Work
That is why I always ask what is the upside of staying stuck, because there is enough side. We do not want to release it. Perfectionism is one of the main sabotage behaviors. It is like, “It is not right yet. It is not perfect yet. I cannot release it yet.” Whatever the release is, whether it is a book or anything.
Absolutely. When people talk about those epic things that they dream of doing, writing a book, running a marathon, traveling somewhere, changing their job, whatever their epic journey is, and when I say, “Why are you not doing it?” “I do not know all the steps I need to take.” Here I will ask you a question, Carol. Do you have all the answers to all the questions that you are going to get today?
No, and I am glad I do not.
Exactly.
My head cannot hold all that information.
It does not stop you from getting up and going through your day. Look, you go on a vacation, you can plan it, but you do not know everything that is going to happen if you do miss a connection. The hotel is not what you thought it would be. The tour that you were so looking forward to gets canceled. Do you just curl up in a ball? No. You are like, “I got to figure it out.”
I am glad I did not know that when I was at Heathrow Airport two weeks ago, that air traffic control was going to shut down and shut down the entire airport. I am glad I did not know that. I might not have gone.
The amazing thing about that, that whole shutdown I read about this last week was literally a millisecond software issue. Literally one millisecond. You just cannot even imagine, and it shut the whole entire thing down.
I was there, the odds of my being there. If I had known that, I would not have wanted to go. I would not have wanted to be there. I would not have wanted to miss my flight.
Choosing Discomfort To Build Momentum
You are talking about the things that block us and stuff like that. Yes, the unknown, yes, is uncomfortable. We like structure. Structure makes us feel comfortable. You were talking about how, as a self-protection, I get that. Change happens because we are like, “I am willing to experience some discomfort to grow.” That is how change is happening for any of us. Some of the biggest things are the scariest things. This is all about that one step forward. You only have to take one step forward today. Oftentimes that first step is not nearly as difficult as you thought it was. You go, “That was not too bad.”
The fact of the matter is I talk about it probably more than my audience wants to know. I have run marathons and half marathons in my life. When running a marathon, I could think about mile 17 at mile 2, but I actually have to deal with the road that is in front of me. I got to run what is in front of me. I do not have any other choice. Everyone, just like Carol says, just like I am saying, take the steps. Pay attention to where, like, “I keep procrastinating. Why am I procrastinating?” Get curious. Curiosity is a fabulous thing. We may not like the answer, but you go, “Now I understand.” We cannot fix what we do not understand needs fixing.
We are back to safety. The upside of procrastinating is that it may keep you small, and you may want to stay small because you have experiences that taught you. It is not a good idea to stand out or be seen. When you ask the right questions, you get the information again, rather than focusing on beating yourself up for a behavior that you wish you did not do. Not useful, never been useful. We want to move from that and say, “What is the upside of getting in my own way? What am I doing? How am I protecting myself? What is it doing for me?” Go back to, “What is one step I could do? One small step I could do.”
Do you get tired of hearing yourself say that you are planning to do something but you know full well you are not? Honestly, I knew that my first book, I wrote it and it sat on it for five years, told people I was coming out with a book and I was not because I was not doing anything, because I did not believe in my writing and because I had all kinds of feedback through school that I was not a particularly good writer. What right do I have to, who is going to read my book? Finally, I did not want to be that guy twenty years later, I am coming out with the book, and I did not. I just got brave. I put on my big boy pants. I released the book, and a funny thing happened. People found value in it. Funny that.
Funny that when you are candid and honest and have authenticity, people find value in it even if there are some typos.
Exactly. We all make mistakes.
I have learned a lot from my mistakes. I tell people that when I teach groups on me, “I am here because I have learned so much from my mistakes”
Absolutely. Carol, it has been so great talking to you. How can people find your book? How can they find you? How can they work with you?
The best way is probably to go to YouTube. My YouTube channel is @CarolLookSuccess. I do success tapping there, or go to CarolLook.com, and you can do free portals for the books with videos and all sorts of things there that are good for people to get started, and then they can contact me that way.
Thank you so much for coming on.
Thank you, Zander. What a pleasure being with you.
I want to remind everyone that if you are ready to begin your epic journey, go to EpicBegins.com, and I want to tell you that I have a live event coming up on January 23rd in Berkeley, California. If you want an epic start to 2027, go to Epic-Reset.com, and you will get all the details, and you can get an early bird special right now. As always, I want to remind you that epic choices lead to the epic life that you want.
Important Links
- Carol Look
- Carol Look on YouTube
- The Yes Code
- Yes, Thank You
- Epic Begins with One Step Forward
- Epic Begins
- Epic Reset
About Carol Look
Carol Look is a psychotherapist, Founding EFT Master and world-renowned workshop leader. She is known for her laser-like focus, clarity, and asking the right questions to uncover the real problems challenging her clients. As a speaker and bestselling author, Carol brings insight, humor and depth to her presentations, helping people all over the globe enjoy more success and fulfilment in their lives.