Top Performers Dump Their Head Trash with Energy Psychology

Head Trash – Defined: My first exposure to the term “Head trash” was at a Sandler sales training event, where Jeff Schneider quoted David Sandler’s description of head trash as “The mental garbage that negatively impacts your performance during the sales process”.

In the larger context, “head trash” aptly describes the collection of limiting beliefs and automatic negative thoughts that pop-up for business professionals as the mental roadblocks that interfere with professional goals. Using a computer metaphor – head trash is like corrupted software code that slows down our “operating system” and interferes with running new “apps”.

How Head Trash Affects Our Performance at Work: Despite how much I enjoy the “head trash” metaphor, it’s important to acknowledge that behind every limiting belief is the buried treasure of opportunity for personal growth.

Even when we try to ignore it, head trash doesn’t tend to go away on its own. Its persistence is like the Pacific Northwest blackberry brambles that grow unimpeded until you pull them out by the root. For many business professionals, it takes a series of Groundhog Day experiences before they reach their threshold and explore the underlying patterns and what they have to teach.

Many of the business professionals I connect with commonly report head trash reflecting:

• Fear of business failure
• Anxiety about the impacts of career success
• Discomfort asking for payment
• Confidence issues based on not “knowing” enough
• Resistance and foot-dragging around sales prospecting
• Procrastination on project completion and getting stuck on details
• Stressing over employee management decisions
• Lack of readiness to take the next step in their career
• Time-management challenges and never having “enough” time

One way to fast-track an otherwise slow learning curve for dumping head trash is through the use of Energy Psychology.

Rewire Your Brain with Energy Psychology: For the unfamiliar, Energy Psychology is an emerging field (about 27 years young) that has been called “acupressure for the emotions.” By tapping acupressure points on the skin while focusing on the “head trash”, the neuropathways in the brain associated with these Groundhog Day patterns can be disrupted or unlearned.

Thanks to neuroscience researchers like Dr. Joe Dispenza, D.C. (featured in the movie “What the Bleep Do We Know!?“, we now understand how thoughts trigger the brain to release neurochemicals like oxytocin, serotonin and adrenaline through the body that create the feeling states we experience as “emotions”. The more positive OR negative thoughts we have, the more we experience the associated emotions which lay the synaptic foundations for our beliefs and patterns.

As Dr. Dispenza says “Nerve cells that fire together, wire together”. Thus, the longer a thinking pattern is sustained, the more it reinforces the associated neuropathways. This means that who we are and the decisions we make as business professionals are expressions of the thoughts, feelings, and beliefs we carry based on the neuropathways we’ve developed.

Energy Psychology methodologies help eliminate head trash by disrupting or “clearing” the old neuropathways associated with stuck patterns and beliefs. This ability to change our brain is what Dr. Dispenza calls “neuroplasticity”. When we change our thinking and belief systems, we create new neuropathways that support our professional goals.

Using the Energetic Business Coaching™ model, we use Applied Kinesiology or “muscle testing” to identify whatever head trash is in the way, then we clear it with different Energy Psychology techniques and install helpful new beliefs for achieving professional and organizational goals.

OSU Pitcher Taps His Way to MVP of the 2007 College World Series: Energy psychology has been so effective for clearing limiting beliefs and breaking out of the Groundhog Day patterns that it’s used by athletes to clear the mental roadblocks and achieve peak athletic performance.

One notable success story is the Oregon State University Beavers Baseball team and their use of EFT (the Emotional Freedom Technique developed by Gary Craig) which may have helped them win the College World Series in 2006 AND 2007. Jorge Reyes, a freshman pitcher in 2006, learned EFT along with his teammates from the team’s Assistant Coach Greg Warburton

By the time the Beavers returned to successfully defend their title at the College World Series in 2007, Reyes used EFT in the dugout, pitched a great game and was voted MVP of the series. Reyes describes his experience with EFT 3:35 minutes into this TV interview as “an acupunctural tapping, stress-reliever thing, to kind of calm us down”. EFT is one of the most well-known Energy Psychology techniques that is effectively used among golfers and other athletes where the game is won mentally before they even step out onto the field.

Apolo Ohno Yawns [and Taps??] His Way to Eight Olympic Metals: Along a similar vein, while watching short-track speedskater and Olympic Gold Medalist Apolo Ohno warming up for a race at the Vancouver, BC Winter Olympics, I noticed him yawning and tapping on his sternum before a race. According to Your Health News.Net, yawning is one of the best-kept secrets in neuroscience as a powerful neural-enhancing tool.

Not only is yawning often used in voice therapy for reducing performance anxiety, brain-scans also show that yawning “evokes unique neural activity in the areas of the brain that are involved in generating social awareness and creating feelings of empathy.” One of these areas in the brain activated by yawning is called the precuneus located inside the parietal lobe. The article goes on to say that researchers at the Institute of Neurology in London believe that the precuneus (which is typically stimulated during yogic breathing exercises) plays a central role in consciousness, self-reflection, and memory retrieval. No wonder meditation contributes to a greater sense of self-awareness.

As far as seeing Apolo tap on his sternum before the race, without interviewing him, it’s hard to know if he was deliberately tapping to calm his nerves or not. (Apolo if you’re reading this, I’d be interested to hear your take on it.) Whether Apolo’s tapping was intentional or instinctual, by tapping gently over the sternum, Apolo was effectively using what Dr. John Diamond, M.D calls the “Thymus Thump”, an Energy Psychology intervention used to relieve anxiety and rebalance one’s energy. Under stressful circumstances, people instinctively perform what scientists refer to as “self-soothing”, by rubbing their temples or holding their head as they think “Oh My God!” – all of which are effective means for stimulating different acupressure points that have a naturally calming effect on the body.

In his book, “Your Body Doesn’t Lie” Dr. Diamond explains how the Thymus gland monitors and regulates what Chinese Medicine Practitioners call “chi” flow or life energy that flows through the body’s twelve acupuncture meridians. If you were to ask a Licensed Clinical Acupuncturist, they would probably tell you how the twelve acupuncture meridians are associated with different organ systems in the body and that each organ system also relates to specific emotions. Thus, when we get stressed out and experience different emotions, the Thymus gland is one of the first organs to respond, working to increase chi flow to the associated meridian and the related organ system. To counter the affect of stress on the body, Dr. Diamond discovered that by thumping gently over the sternum, you can activate your Thymus which gives your acupuncture meridians a boost of chi and helps relieve stress.

Star Trek Lieutenant Clears Transporter Anxiety by “Plexing”: Recently, while watching a late night Star Trek Next Generation re-run entitled “Realm of Fear” on WGN, I saw another example of using a tapping intervention on an acupressure point to alleviate anxiety. Yes, I realize Star Trek exists in a fictional universe, but the episode makes a perfect segue for my point that Energy Psychology interventions have a place in the executive offices and training rooms of corporate America.

During this episode, Engineering Lieutenant Reginald Barclay (Dwight Schultz) describes his phobia of being transported to ship’s Counselor Deanna Troi (Marina Sirtis) as “mortal terror”. To help desensitize his anxiety, Counselor Troi suggests Barclay try a “Betazoid relaxation technique called Plexing” which you can watch here in this YouTube video clip.
To skip ahead to the reference, fast forward your YouTube video player to “4:06″ or enjoy the entire clip. After tapping behind his ear, Barclay was able to overcome his fear and successfully complete the mission.

It may surprise you to know that although the screenwriters for this Star Trek episode made up “plexing”, the science behind the technique isn’t as far out you might think, as it relates to the pressure-sensitive baroreceptors in the carotid artery.

These baroreceptors supply the brain with information to control systemic blood pressure. When pressure is applied to these baroreceptors it signals the brain that blood pressure is too high, triggering the brain to lower the blood pressure. Thus, when Lieutenant Barclay tapped on the area behind his ear as he thought about his transporter anxiety, he was essentially reconditioning his body’s response to his phobia by relaxing and slowing his blood pressure – very similar to an Energy Psychology intervention.

Professional Head Trash + Energy Psychology = Competitive Advantage: Not unlike space, some might call business the “Final Frontier” with endless opportunities for evolution and discovery. As the business culture continues to borrow from other disciplines, it will no doubt “explore strange new” approaches for working smarter not harder; “and seek out new” forward thinking leaders; “to boldly go where no [business professional] has gone before”.

Whether you manage high-performance teams, occupy the executive suite, pace the bullpen, skate in a pack, or are on assignment aboard the Starship Enterprise, chances are you or one of your colleagues has head trash that’s interfering with actualizing professional goals.

Quoting David Sandler’s Rules, “You can’t accomplish anything great by playing it safe”. Like sports, business success comes from the inside out. For those business professionals that are tired of Groundhog Day experiences, dumping head trash with Energy Psychology offers today’s leaders a significant competitive advantage towards achieving professional and organizational goals.

Tagged as: Apolo Ohno, Applied Kinesiology, Competitive Advantage, David Sandler, Dr. Joe Dispenza, Dr. John Diamond, EFT, Energetic Business Coaching, Energetic Business Coaching™, Energy Psychology, Greg Warburton, head trash, headtrash, Jorge Reyes, limiting beliefs, muscle testing, Oregon State University Beavers Baseball, performance, Plexing, Realm of Fear, Star Trek Next Generation, Thymus Thump