A conflict of interests

Dr Pearson, how about some background on 'a conflict of interests'? Alright, John, here is the scenario — suppose there are a thousand network marketers in an auditorium and they're just starting their career. They've gone through the initial training, so they understand the products and the company and now they're ready to go out into the world and grow their business.

Except that the thousand people in the auditorium all have one thing in common:

They have high anxiety about the two biggest fears of growing their business. Those fears are the fear of rejection and the fear of failing.

Now, there's a typical trainer on the stage and he starts giving them the usual suspects about how to go out there and be successful. Some of the things he would tell this audience are the common phrases like: "Some will, some won't, so what? Next". He might tell them it's a numbers game. He could tell them not to be concerned about the people that don't catch the vision, that don't see the big picture. He would jack them up with rah- rah affirmations and motivations like, "I feel great!" and he'd give them tips and tools and techniques in order to 'get' people to an appointment, to 'get' people to a presentation.

So, this trainer, who has you write down your goals, suggests you visualize your success by putting pictures up on your refrigerator, and then urges you to evaluate the beliefs you have, substitute new beliefs, avoid negative people and he might even advise you to 'feel the fear and do it anyway' or 'quit making excuses' and 'quit judging yourself'.

Now, John, consider this group of a thousand newbies that have just been trained and inspired with these ways of approaching their fears. A month later what percent of those have actually put those teachings into play and are well on there way to being successful?

Well, one third would have taken no action at all. The next two-thirds will have taken action and bumbled it, bungled it, been shot down, and been rejected to the point of discouragement. Maybe five percent of them would be still around, to some extent, trying to build a business. We do know from industry statistics that only about five percent of new distributors are going to be here next year. Exactly! And that statistic both intrigues and somewhat appalls me. Why do such a high percentage of people who get this training repeatedly, move away from the industry?

What I think is part of the problem, John, is that the people in the audience who get this kind of training, will go away and try it and when it doesn't work they will think it's them. They think something is wrong with themselves that they are not able to employ the training they just received. That sets up a whole new round of negative judgments about themselves, which of course, they were instructed not to do.

The problem is not the person who has trouble utilizing these trainings; the problem is that the trainings, while accurate, are only partially accurate.

You see, that information is good information and does work, yet on it's own it only works for a small percent of the people. And that percent is only those who are not struggling with deeper layers of fear and anxiety around rejection — or what I call the conflict of interests.

Please say more about that! What is it that they are struggling with? Well, it's how the brain is designed; the way the brain is designed is that we will always be at conflict with ourselves. There is one part of our brain, call it the thinking, logical, reasoning, rational part of our brain, this is the part that can design telephone systems or create wonderful information libraries for network marketers, things like that, and then we have a different part of our brain.

That part of our brain is a combination of an emotional, protective part of our brain.

When you say, 'part of our brain', are saying physically, biologically these are different parts? When I say 'thinking part of our brain' I'm talking about the part that is right behind our foreheads and at the top of your skull, that's the location. There is literally another part of your brain, deeper inside, called the limbic system, that is designed to deal with emotions and fear.

It is elegantly designed to store and record all kinds of dangerous, threatening and painful experiences. We need that part of our brain for survival.

So, what that part of our brain does is store every time you have felt a hurt. For instance, you get stung by a bee once and the next time you hear the buzz of a bee, your body goes on alert. You have been rejected, scorned or humiliated, that is also stored in that part of the brain.

When anything that looks like a potential threat, or a potential rejection, or the encounter of a fearful situation arises, that protective part of our brain will start sending out uncomfortable feelings as a signal. That's how the brain alerts us to a potential threat. It's why people get the queasy, funny feeling when they start to pick up the phone to make a difficult phone call, or to return a difficult phone call, or to approach a prospect.

Or the call isn't a difficult one, but there is an anticipation based on an experience is the past that turned out poorly? Bingo! That's the generalization. That part of our brain is always on the alert for some similar kind of potential negative response. And that part of our brain is hugely reactive. It's designed to keep you from being clumsy in the future; it's designed to keep you paying attention in the future.

So, I'm cautious when I pick up a hammer, 'cause of smacking my thumb in the past, is the same thing that happens when as a network marketer I'm picking up the phone to call that 'most successful business person I've ever met' and I'm fearing ridicule from them? Absolutely, because in some part of our brain we are reminded that we should defer to 'authority' figures, to people who know more than we do, it generalizes.

It's a little bit like when you go to your parents as a child and you have a painting or picture that you've just drawn, one that you're really proud of, and you present it to them and in their preoccupation they respond in a way that's a bit indifferent, "Oh, that's nice dear." You're crushed. That happens enough times and pretty soon you stop going to your parents with pride about what you have done… and as an adult you may stop approaching people who are more successful over something that you are excited about. The brain just generalizes that way, John.

So what do we do, Peter? The thing is, the two brains, the thinking brain and the protective brain, have a problem. The protective brain doesn't respond very well to instruction from the thinking brain. It's almost like they are two different operating systems, like a PC and a Mac. They don't communicate very well; you have to have some really good bridges between the two systems, so that they can communicate.

If they could communicate well, then all we would have to do is talk ourselves through things. We could say, "Now wait a minute. When I make this call, it's not personal, it's a numbers game. There are plenty of people who will be interested in my product or service so, no big deal, I'll just make the calls." That would be instructing the protective brain to back off, shut down and give you a lot of wiggle room to do what you want to do.

But it doesn't work that way. If it did, people who are afraid of flying could simply sit back and remind themselves that flying is 37 times safer than driving, and they'd relax.

But it doesn't work that way. People who are afraid of public speaking could say, "Oh, well the audience really wants me to be successful, I know the topic well, so there's no big deal, I'm just going to share information." and they would no longer be afraid of public speaking. But it doesn't work that way.

When you just tell somebody to feel the fear and do it anyway, what you're instructing them to do is to ignore all the traumatic problems they've experienced around this issue and go out and do it. Then when people can't do it, they feel that they have failed and that just compounds the problem.

So you need a bridge between the two brains. There's actually a bridging between the two brains that can be demonstrated.

If all people do is respond to one part of their brain, the thinking, logical part of the brain, they are rowing with only one oar in the water.

They don't have the other oar to collaborate with, which in this case would be the other brain.

How do you create this bridge, Peter? First of all, it's a little bit counter-intuitive. Instead of avoiding, running away or trying to mute or discount those fears, and instead of calling those fears 'old baggage' or 'monkey chatter' or some other pejorative name-calling, access those fears. Bring the fears forward instead of trying to push them away.

Peter, here's a place where I've personally experienced a challenge. Maybe it's because I've spent so many years diminishing, downgrading, down playing, pushing those fears away, I find it difficult to access them and let them really blossom. I'm glad you shared that because that is so common. Actually, doesn't it make sense that we should push those fears away or push our way through them?

Well, as you point out, it's certainly how I've been trained and the discomfort of experiencing the fear, the physical manifestations as well as the imaginary, certainly doesn't encourage me to access it. All you have to do is imagine making that phone call, or imagine approaching that prospect, or picture yourself doing whatever activity it is that seems to generate high anxiety. Then we're going to create a conditioned response.

So for right now, when you're imagining doing it, let yourself feel and think those unpleasant emotions and judgments.

Now, take a moment to locate the feeling in your body. Where in your body are you predominantly holding the tension? Is it in your stomach? Across your shoulders? Perhaps your jaw or the back of your neck? Simply let yourself feel what you feel and identify its location.

Now, as you're doing that we are going to create a conditioned response — so while you're feeling these unpleasant emotional responses, merely take your left hand and gently tap on your left knee.

After you've done that, stretch. Because I've just asked you to go into a place in your memory, that's really, really uncomfortable, I now ask you to shake off the kind of tension that resulted. So, move your feet around, stretch, stand up and take a relaxing breath. That's part one!

Part two is about creating a better response to that same situation. So, with your right hand tap gently on your right knee and ponder this,

"When I am at my best in this kind of situation, what do I think, what do I feel and what do I do?"

Here you can either frame the question with 'when I am at my best…' or 'in a perfect world…' but the key is, to think about what you would think, feel and do, not how the prospect will respond, because you can't control the prospect.

So, as you think and feel your ideal, perfect and/or best response, tap on your right knee with your right hand. We're simply creating a conditioned response, right there, and getting a really clear picture of that. Then, take another relaxing breath.

Now, tap alternately on both knees, your fingers are simply going up and down alternately on each knee, and when you do that think about the benefits of staying in your perfect world response.

What would the benefits be to you personally? To your business? To the people around you? To how you might go through life?

So, the benefits you're speaking about are to envision positive outcomes that would surround me as a result of being able to do my business this way? Yes, that's exactly right. What we are doing is that we now have the protective brain taking a relaxing breath, because the protective brain is now being integrated with the goals, the objectives, the visualizations, etc. By tapping on both knees, what we are doing is activating both the protective brain and the thinking brain together. It becomes a way of quieting, or muting, that protective response.

It's a way of integrating the brains together, instead of setting them up to fight each other by downplaying our fears, ignoring our fears or ridiculing our fears. So as you do this, you actually can even let your eyes look up toward the ceiling, and you will access still another part of the brain.

Peter, can you explain some of what is happening, scientifically, in the brain that has this all work? There's a whole neural network inside the brain. By doing this process you are basically taking yourself out of one part of your brain that has been really grooved, speaking in terms of a neuro-network; there are a lot of deep grooves in there due to experiencing and re-experiencing your fears. It's like a river, it just gets deeper and deeper and pretty soon you have a lot of deep channels that are harder to get out of than shallow ones.

By tapping on both knees, thinking about the benefits, thinking about your preferred response, while also, simultaneously, bringing up the fears, you are literally creating a larger neuro-network in the brain; a larger network of connections around a preferred target, which is, being successful.

You are in fact re-wiring your brain when you do this so that you're not just stuck in this spinning groove inside that limbic system.

And we can use this for anything? You can use this when you feel anxiety about anything. Now, what happens is that there are often a lot of layers, so when you do this you might even get other associations that start to emerge.

As you mute one association another may emerge. It's like a having a really bad toothache, going to the dentist and getting relief and then becoming aware of that really sore toe you have. So, you address the toe and get relief only to realize the discomfort you're experiencing sitting on the bulge created by your wallet. We create a lot of associations around our anxieties, so by doing this exercise, with the different associations you have, you basically start creating relief, layer after layer, of the negative associations.

Here are a couple of interesting things to be aware of, John.

Good intentions unwittingly can create distress in people.

If you start as a network marketer and you approach a prospect and talk about their dreams, their goals and their big visions in life, you can actually inspire the part of most people who want to improve their life.

Doesn't it make sense that you want to stimulate this vision about a better life and bigger rewards?

But what happens is, people get inspired when they are in a room listening to a good motivational speaker, because it taps into the part in just about all of us who really do want to improve our lives, but as soon as you return to your life and start taking action on this inspiration, you start accessing all the fears that are just there waiting for you. That's how they get triggered, by starting to take those steps toward success, and suddenly you're questioning yourself.

It might serve to realize that the resistance you encounter is just you running up against that protective brain that's on alert to protect you.

This explains why motivational speaking can, in a sense, set the stage for tomorrows feeling of discouragement.

If you inspire people, when you go out and talk to prospects about their vision, and that person has experienced a lot of previous failure around big goals, guess how that prospect is going to respond? They are going to say, "Yes, but… yes, but… yes, but… ". If you think they just need a bigger dream, you're just going to encounter more 'yes, buts'.

So, how do we go about dealing with that, Peter? In a sense, you can't, because you don't know who has those associations and who doesn't, but if you start off by leading with the opportunity and the rewards then you're going to run into that risk.

The other thing about talking to others about changing beliefs is that you unwittingly run up against the protective brain working indirectly. For example:

If we feel a fear and we can't quite place why we feel it or under- stand the origin of it, we will make up a belief in order to make sense of it.

So, people will believe all kinds of negative things as a way of explaining why they won't do something. They will claim something like, "I'm not any good" or "I'm not good in that area" or "I don't believe I can do that" and those beliefs, in fact, are a way of trying to protect themselves from going into the feared domain.

We are tempted to tell people to get rid of these beliefs, but understand, on some level, the beliefs are there for an indirect protection, so we don't encounter our fears. So, you're kind of telling a person to create a civil war within them. By understanding this I think it helps trainers and coaches to ease up on the focus around negative beliefs and have some appreciation for why they are there.

Is it enough to recognize it and have that appreciation? Sometimes it is, if the fears aren't too deep it will quiet them. It depends on how significant and deep the fears are. If they are deeper, doing something like the Painless Change Process [See ATTACHMENT] helps them overcome it, because now they're integrating the brains. But having an appreciation for those beliefs can very well help take some of the pressure off.

There's one more red flag about getting people fired up about having a big dream.

If people really get inspired and go out and start doing it, they are going to be out of balance for a while.

If they are married they are going to need a lot of support, collaboration and cooperation from their partner to do this. If they don't get that kind of support from their partner or spouse, they will probably be getting resistance. Now, the marriage is under stress, because the couple has not created their own joint dream. I think it's really important for the married network marketer to go through a dream-building process with their spouse.

What are some of the things you advise people or teach people to do to get on the same page? Well, there is actually a whole pyramid of steps to create that kind of collaboration. It requires really good communication, it requires vulnerability and openness, it requires the network marketer to go to their spouse and say, "Here's what I want to achieve in this business and here is why that's so important to me. I really want and need your kind of support. The kind of support I need is _________." Then you need to listen very carefully to your partner, who will probably be voicing some objections. That's okay! Don't try to solve those problems right away. Listen to the objections of your partner, because now they are in the emotional, protective part of their brain.

You really have to listen to their objections with patience and an authentic willingness to hear them out.

It takes a lot of good communication back and forth just to get the desires and objections out on the table, completely out there. As with a prospect, listening is one of the fundamental blocks in the foundation of good communication. By listening and communicating back that you understand what the fears and anxieties are, doesn't mean you agree with them.

With enough time and quality communication you start creating kind of a mutual dream. You begin to clarify the roles and responsibilities, the changing roles and responsibilities, because generally network marketers will start off one way, but they will be adding on to what they are doing. That means that there is going to be a shift in roles and responsibilities around the house.

This intrigues me, given all we've just discussed, what kinds of things can we do with a prospect in terms of the vision, the dream, triggering protective responses? Here's kind of a gentle way of doing it, after someone signs up. Invite them to talk about and review their goals and objectives and exactly why they want to do this business.

Point out the different elements of the business and the things you have to do to be successful and then let them know that nobody is equally good in all of these areas.

Tell them that everybody who starts out in this business is going to feel some doubt and insecurity in some part of growing their business and ask them to talk about what theirs would be.

Be willing to share some of your struggles in the beginning so that they are more willing to take an honest look at what might come up for them. By laying things out on the table this way it makes your dialogues more focused and collaborative.

When they get out there like that, you can then ask them about which particular thoughts or beliefs they hold might be likely to get in their way.

This way it gets these things out more rapidly, more clearly and in a more focused way.

I also think that when people are newly involved in network marketing, they are going to feel awkward and clumsy and that will trigger all the feelings they've had in the past around feeling awkward and clumsy. This will inhibit them from taking chances.

People who study how rapidly we learn generally have kind of a formula, that when we are learning something new that engenders any kind of discomfort, if we have a ratio of about nine to one successes over failures, it will help bridge the gap and make learning easier.

So, I think in the first 30-60 days the sponsor needs to be especially protective of the person, to help them and give them as much support and reinforcement as possible to build a foundation of success.

It's more time and energy concentrated by really working with that person intensively, instead of just sending them to the Internet for training. But if you don't stay shoulder to shoulder with newbies, they drop out in a hurry when they hit their protective brain in some area. So, I really encourage a lot of support, feedback and encouragement in the beginning.

In a sense, it's like trying to teach a kid to ride a bicycle. When they fall off you keep giving them lots of stokes, assuring them you are right there. I think that kind of support is crucial when somebody comes on board.

Have you any last words, Dr. Pearson?

The stuff that you are taught, that we were discussing earlier, these things are all valid. Don't feel like you are failing, because you've tried them in the past and you still feel anxious, do not believe the fault is yours.

The problem really is trying to get the protective brain in alignment and collaborating with the part of you that wants to improve your life.

Those two brains are there and can collaborate and they are there to serve you. When you feel like you are experiencing a huge conflict of interests it's only because the part of you that wants to improve your life has run up against and collided with the part of you that wants to protect you. That's just an inevitable outcome of the way our brains are designed, so be good, kind and generous to yourself and understand that this collision is normal. Try not to denigrate it or your fears or anxiety, instead really listen, because they are there as a way of trying to protect you.

Peter Pearson, Ph.D. has been specializing in helping people transform their relationships for more than 20 years. His fascination with human behavior and his own experience as a Fuller Brush salesman inspired him to create amazing, innovative techniques that are revolutionizing sales training. He transforms timid beginners into confident sales performers and shows seasoned pros how to exceed their wildest dreams.

Dr. Pearson is an engaging, dynamic expert in leading psychology workshops. His powerful presentations include practical skills, advanced techniques in regulating difficult emotions and entertaining vignettes from his own experience to demonstrate how some impasses are managed. Audiences often clamor for follow-up advanced workshops. He is the author of two books, numerous articles, and a co-author of the "Mental Edge MLM" CD set with Randy Gage. Peter was also a Consulting Associate Professor at Stanford University for 15 years.

Dr. Peterson says you can "Leave your procrastination and disorganization behind! Get organized, get active, and get sponsoring new people! This revolutionary approach to personal growth and change is the most exciting recent development in the field of psychology. Its applications to Network Marketing will have you building your group faster than you ever have before." To learn more about Dr. Peter Peason and his Popwer MLM product and The Painless Change process, visit his website with our affiliate link here: PainlessChange.com.

AUDIO COACHING | PSYCHOLOGY | PERSONAL GROWTH | TRAINING | SKILLS Learning to change without pain Disc 2 from Dr. Pearson's Power MLM Build Your Confidence... and Build a Bigger Business, focus on the painless change process in action. Peter takes a networking client through the process step-by- step, so you can learn exactly how it's done. by Dr. Peter Pearson approximately 51 minutes downloadable MP3 "I had the privilege of working with Dr. Pearson for just a few minutes. I believe we all have fear based anxiety about making sales calls to people we do not know. Dr. Pearson, using his new technique, took my stress level from a 12 on a scale of 1-10 (10 being highly stressed) to a 2. I feel confident that using this technique I will be able to gain control of any stressful event that I have been avoiding in the future; and I will be able to help my associates do the same. Many thanks to Dr. Pearson." — Kevin Curtin, Laguna Vista, Texas ATTACHMENT COACHING | PSYCHOLOGY | PERSONAL GROWTH | TRAINING | SKILLS The Painless Change Process Step-by-step instructions for the best change strategies available to help you become as successful as you wish by shifting from protective fear to positive, productive action. by Dr. Peter Pearson 1662 words | 7 pages