The Cameron Method - Newsletter Archive

22 September, 1997 - How Rational are your Decisions and Actions?

Quote of the Week: "Our emotions have a mind of their own, one which can hold views quite independently from our rational mind. Those unconscious opinions are emotional memories; their storehouse is the amygdala." (An almond-shaped organ in the lymbic brain.) From what its publishers accurately term "The groundbreaking book that redefines what it means to be smart", Emotional Intelligence, (1995) by Daniel Goleman, Ph.D.

Comment: Our first task with a new client is to map the energies stored in his or her inner mind, including the amygdala. We use a simple and revealing process called "ideomotor signaling" that was developed in its original form in clinical hypnotherapy by David B. Cheek, M.D., and Leslie LeCron, clinical psychologist, almost forty years ago. This process involves a device operated by the micromotor muscles in your fingertips. Operating below the level of conscious awareness, these tiny muscles report, in a simple coded response, our true feelings, even when they have been implanted in our unconscious mind for decades.

There are two purposes in mapping our unconscious emotion-driven "programming" (or learned responses): First, to determine the exact extent of the fear-based or limiting rapid-response instructions in our amygdala. (How much "stuff" needs changing?) The second purpose is get a "bench mark" to measure how much negative or limiting programming has been removed or reduced by our efforts to do so.

To have low positive and high negative feelings about anyone important in your life can have devastating consequences. This is true even if they are long gone from physical involvement with you. You carry the results and the automatic responses into other situations and with other people, in the amygdala that Dr. Goleman speaks of.

From the file of The Cameron Method:

We have found varied high-impact blocks unconsciously operating in the emotional minds of all of our clients--- even intelligent, successful, seemingly "together" persons. These may not show up in one or even several parts of their lives, but will appear in certain "appropriate" areas when triggered.

For example, a salesperson can have trouble giving presentations because of an old perception of rejection experienced many years before in the classroom. Such unconscious negative "tripwires" can be activated by a new opportunity or challenge to prove yourself. The more important you feel the contact or presentation to be, the more likely you are to trigger old negative responses.

Two interesting stories relating to this problem emerged during a job we did for a high-powered management consulting company. We were flown in to Chicago for a week-long meeting with their top regional reps from around the country. We didn't know it at the time, but two of them were about to be fired because of failure to perform. All of these men had been CEOs and had built successful companies. Their current employer catered only to Fortune 500 companies. They were the elite and they knew it. We worked with them first as a group, then individually.

One account exec Clark worked with was astonished to learn that his lack of performance traced back directly to his rejection by a special girl in high school. This had never before surfaced as a problem. He had been highly effective in his former profession as a manager and then CEO: he was also happily married and had children. Now,however, finding himself under this new need to perform in a sales capacity, the old fear-of-rejection program from high school kicked in and paralyzed him. When the unconscious basis for this block on selling was fished up, he was shocked but eager and able to remove it with the Releasing Strategy and get back on track.

Another exec, whom Sharon worked with, had an unusual problem. He was brilliant, and had been raised by a mother who had instilled the belief that he was always the best and should only associate with similarly high achieving people. He had been a dean of a business school, built companies, and had his own Ph.D. in psychology. He was also an all-round "know it all."

Assuming it was the best way to get him to prove himself, his employer had been assigning him to sell its services to second echelon management in their client companies. This provoked a conflict between his emotion-driven program of "only associating with the best" and his company's standard assignments for new account reps. Unfortunately, his disrespect for people at this lower level came across loud and clear. He did know much more than they did, but they were in a position to reject or misuse his help. He felt comfortable only with the heads of companies, not with their lower echelon personnel.

When Sharon uncovered the inner mechanisms causing this, she decided to turn his positive thoughts about dealing with powerful people to his advantage. First, she assisted him to release his inner-mind limiting judgments about the lower level staff. Then she suggested he go ahead and see if he could get to the people in charge. He did and immediately turned his work around and started producing. This was after being with the company a year and not selling anything. The problem had been within this unconscious paradigm about power relationships.

For just these sorts of reasons, many companies lose employees after investing a great deal of time and money in their training and maturing in their industry. And the reasons for the employees' poor performance often have nothing to do with their supervisors, or the company, or its products, or with any conscious-mind based training programs.

When employees come to work for a company, they bring their entire life history and experience with them. Most of this experience is held at the unconscious level, or in the amygdala, and can sabotage even the best of intentions and skills.

Until next time, the best to you,
Clark and Sharon Cameron

The Cameron Group
Helping People Create Attitudes That Work For Them

(Email) Cameron@CompuMind.com - (Web) http://www.compumind.com/
"Attitude makes all the difference!"

---

© Copyright 1997 The Cameron Group, All Rights Reserved.