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What Crossed Arms Don’t Tell You

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Terry Earthwind Nichols is the Chairman of the Evolutionary Healer. He is a thought leader and author of the book Profiling For Profit What Crossed Arms Don’t Tell You, he’s also the grand master of Repetitive Behavior Cellular Regression® – In this episode you can learn from Terry:

  • How a chance helping conversation developed into Repetitive Behavior Cellular Regression®
  • How imposter syndrome and PTSD share similar traits and coping strategies
  • How he turned people watching into profiling
  • How to hook into the non verbal clues when meeting with others
  • Plus lots more leadership hacks!

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Transcript: Thanks to Jermaine Pinto at JRP Transcribing for being our Partner. Contact Jermaine via LinkedIn or via his site JRP Transcribing Services

 

Steve Rush: Our special guest, on today show is Terry Earthwind Nichols. Terry is the Chairman of the Evolutionary Healer. He is a thought leader and author of the book Profiling For Profit What Crossed Arms Don’t Tell You. Terry, welcome to The Leadership Hacker Podcast.

Terry Earthwind Nichols: Thank you, Steve. I am glad to be here.

Steve Rush: So before we get into some of the really interesting work that you are undertaking with your teams at the moment, just tell us a bit about the backstories to, you know, maybe your early career and how you arrived at leading the business that you do now?

Terry Earthwind Nichols: It has been an interesting run, I will tell you. I graduated from high school. I was born and raised in the upper western area of the United States in the mountains over Rocky Mountains. You might say I am a mountain boy, so to speak, and when I graduated from high school, I did not quite make the financial grade to go straight into college. Vietnam War was still going back in 1971, and so my best bet was to join the Navy and see the world. That is exactly what I did for 20 years. I loved it. It was a great experience. Would not trade it for anything, and we can talk about that a little bit later but I had been a lifelong helper. My nickname in high school was Doc Nick. People come and talk to me and tell me their problems, so, you know my future life had started very early. I just never knew it, some 40 years later after high school going on 50, here next year.

 

I started helping some people again through an international ministry called The Stephen Ministries. It is a one on one crisis intervention ministry and I was helping a person from my apartment in Minneapolis, Minnesota in the upper Midwest of the United States. And she was out in Australia and one night, I was helping her, but we weren’t getting very far as far as, you know really moving forward to what her issues were. And I got this hit to have her close her eyes and that’s shutting off all the visual around her and just ask her what her smell, because I knew from my leadership classes in the Navy and stuff like that. First aid classes that smells is the number one trigger for a memory recall.

 

And so I asked her what she smelled? And she said, oh my God, gas and I go, okay, what kind? Diesel, gasoline, what do you got? She said no, natural gas. This is an all-electric building, so there must be a fire and I go, well, somehow the second before, you did not smell anything. The second before I asked you, how about just taking a few deep breaths, close your eyes again and see if you can smell that gas again and she was able to, and I say, go back and find a memory where you smell that gas and she did. And so what we now have trademarked as repetitive behaviour, cellular regression had begun. After about three to five hours a week over the course of about three months, the first CR Session, that is what we call it. CR Process Session was completed and we’ve now got that down to a couple of three hours, so it’s a lot quicker and easier for us to work with our clients. As a matter of fact, we work in clients in 13 countries in five languages now.

Steve Rush: Wow.

Terry Earthwind Nichols: So that was 10 years.

Steve Rush: So what started out with some helpful, somebody that you were talking too, has now turned into your life’s work. Because the Evolutionary Healer you now run is basically set up to help people through that regression and making sure that people are in a good place for the future. Tell us a little bit. About what you do now?

 

Terry Earthwind Nichols: Well Evolutionary Healers started out as a mom and pop operation. My wife and I started it out with health and wellness people and taking them through the CR Process as the first part of coaching with them. Our coaches said, why aren’t you teaching this? This isn’t woo-woo or anything like that. Yeah but a solid question and answer sequence, and so we started teaching it and so the Earth Wind Academy was born and we still have the Earth Wind Academy going and then you know, it expanded out. My wife is an author, matter of fact she just finished her memoir, which is her 20th book, just this last month. And she started working with people to write a book and self-publish it in 30 days over Amazon and that’s turned into quite a business.

 

So now, we have three divisions there and I started working with Imposter Syndrome. Imposter Syndrome is wild, crazy.

Steve Rush: Sure is.

Terry Earthwind Nichols: Out there in the executive world. They estimate 70% based on my conversations and my work with CEOs and Senior Executives. That is probably 85% if not higher out there, and so the consortium was born the fourth of our four divisions of Evolutionary Healer. Now in just eight years, we have gotten pretty wide with practitioners in eight countries, 45 of them and so the consortium division is working with the Executives in Global Fortune 1000 Companies. And we work with them with a vision strategy and a lot of other things, but The Imposter Syndrome was a big piece of that puzzle. Evolutionary Healer has really evolved. Evolutionary is eve of illumination or coming out or see in something new, and healer is a little more than what people ever think. Healer is to heal oneself, and to move forward and to evolve, so Evolutionary Healer was born based on that premise.

Steve Rush: Great backstory and Imposter Syndrome is high, kind of 80% in organizations is really stark. In your experience Terry, what is it that causes that?

Terry Earthwind Nichols: Well, the same thing that causes a PTSD, suicide ideation, lifelong self-sabotage. All those things, what we found was the answer to what Dr. Sigmund Freud was looking for back in the late 1890s. He was a German psychiatrist that was working with people to try and find a memory of high emotional value in early childhood. Well we found a way to help a person using their five senses to inventory, a single memory one at a time. We helped them find an amnesia memory in early childhood, usually pre-language that has a high emotional value to that child at that moment, and because they are, pre-language, they can’t go to mom and dad and say, you know. I just saw this happen or this just happened and I don’t understand it, so what happens is there’s a natural protection device in our brains called amnesia and amnesia takes over to protect us from remembering that memory. And as we grow it starts watching and protecting us in various ways, so that later on in life, when more significant emotional events occur in whether we see them or are they actually occur to us, the protection system keeps us thinking about those things. And then the repetitive behaviour sets in, and it’s like being on a merry-go-round without being able to shut it off.

 

Steve Rush: Got It.

Terry Earthwind Nichols: That is how that works.

Steve Rush: And therefore, what manifests itself in our more mature years in our adult life. In your experience has been created much, much, much earlier.

Terry Earthwind Nichols: Correct, and it’s driven by that, so when they find it, when we help them go back using an alternate neuropathway because that the protection device, the active block, this amnesia has cut off the neural pathway back to that memory and it’s protecting it. So we literally, by using the five sense, we go back to the back and bottom of the brain, near the stem, where the five senses are and move forward. So we literally come in the back door with a client, into a memory that they have not been to since it happened and the memory itself is crystal clear as if it happened two minutes ago. It is unbelievable how a memory back so far in early childhood can be remembered with such clarity, it is quite amazing. Now here is the key to this, Steve, when that is found, and we neutralize the emotion of that memory, all of the other stuff they can’t stop thinking about, they stop thinking about. PTSD has shut off. Suicide ideation is shut off. The Imposter Syndrome thoughts are all shut off and they don’t come back because we teach our clients how to recognize new problems coming in and neutralize it before they take hold. Does that make sense?

Steve Rush: Right, yeah.

Terry Earthwind Nichols: Okay, so yeah, that is how it works.

Steve Rush: Given the vast amount of experiences that you have had. Maybe could share with our listeners, one of the, perhaps the most vivid experiences that you have shared with one of your clients?

Terry Earthwind Nichols: Yeah, we go through The CR Process Session using Zoom or Skype or some audio visual, and we have used and used video on Facebook before. We watch them because; this is where the book came from because I have been a lifelong people watcher. And when we first started out in the business, our clients were alive in the room with us when we took them through the process and we would observe different things that would happen physically, as we were getting close to this memory and the person responsible for the memory. And one that was just utterly amazing. If you have ever tried to take a pinkie toe, and fold it over like you’re crossing your fingers. Folded over your fourth toe, it is impossible, but I have had three different clients in different times be able to take that pinkie toe and cross it over the fourth toe when they were talking about or describing a person of high emotional value that we found out later was a perpetrator of various of different means.

 

That was an amazing thing to observe. Another time I was in the room person to person with a lady who did not move for an hour and a half, not a muscle. She did not move her face. Did not twinkle her eyes, not anything. She was like a hunk of stone. All of a sudden, we were talking about her grandfather and she was explaining her senses in a memory. She had dangling earrings and for anybody that knows dangling earrings, if the left one moves the right one moves too, they both go at the same time. All right, this one, this time, the left earring started to moving without moving the right earring. It was amazing, so there was just, you know, the different things that we observed going through these processes. Just mind blowing, you know, and they are indicators of where we are going to be when we get to the end of that third memory is pretty amazing.

Steve Rush: And your fascination with people watching is what caused you to have the inspiration behind the book, which is all about. How you have learned through observation to how you profile people’s behaviours. Right? Tell us a little bit about how the book came about?

Terry Earthwind Nichols: The book came about because my practitioners and my business partner, my wife. Bugged me for almost two years to write the book, because I know so much, you know, I’ve been a people watcher all my life and when I was overseas in Europe and I would get off my Navy Ship and I would go and find me a sidewalk cafe whenever possible. And I’d sit there and have my cappuccinos. I love cappuccinos, and I would just watch people not from a scientific or behavioural standpoint, I just watch them and how they, you know, react to certain stresses. You know, that were obvious when I would be observing them, and then, you know, these oddities in muscle movements associated with our CR Process. I personally taken 147 people through this process in the last 10 years and so you learn that, there are certain things that the body does at a time that is completely subconscious movement, and so the book came from all of those observations.

Steve Rush: Right? In old language, you might have heard the term body language or nonverbal communication, which you substitute for the word profiling. Right? So tell us a little bit about the whole kind of principle. What Crossed Arms Don’t Tell You, because ultimately the old thinking behind body language was if you had your arms crossed, you are either hiding something or you are negative, but you debunk that theory, don’t you?

Terry Earthwind Nichols: Yes, I did. And there’s nothing wrong with body language. There is over a thousand books, imprint in English Language alone on body language and how to read it. For almost all of it that I have observed. It is pretty accurate. The thing that they don’t go into in any of the books that I’ve read and I’ve read, I don’t know, over 50. They don’t talk about variables to the way a person moves, crosses their legs or their arms or whatever. With the situation that they are in. Case in point, a woman was talking to me at a networking event. One time she crossed her arms, and you know, continued to conversation, which is basically a no buy for salespeople. Cross your arms, you are done but she was cold. Okay, so it was not that she was not buying or receiving the message that I giving her, it was just cold in the room.

There are circumstances, environmental, and otherwise that we subconsciously do. For instance crossing your arms can be a security thing. You know, it is not that I am no longer in a no buy situation. It is just you are, touching on stuff that I am uncomfortable with. So crossing my arms as I was taught, when I was a kid, when mom and dad got mad at me, they crossed her arms. So when this person’s talking to me and I’m hitting a couple of buttons, emotional buttons, they’ll cross their arms for protection, not per se, no buy. So, you know, the way people tilt their head left or right. Means different things as well, and the way people talk on the phone and in the book, I talk about online how to look at different things in emails and phone conversations and that type of things.

Steve Rush: So all of these, just providing you with little clues and hints to give you some insight as to how somebody is reacting, right?

Terry Earthwind Nichols: Absolutely.

Steve Rush: Got it.

Terry Earthwind Nichols: You know, how they talk to me with their arms crossed the whole thing. I have a cute story in there. I was selling custom clothes shortly after getting out of the Navy and there was a man in front of me in my custom clothing store that I have worked at. You know, and we had already talked and looked at some fabrics and things like that, and so we were both standing facing each other and he had his arms crossed. And so, you know, I’m in the process of telling and how we’re going to make the suit, and how it’s done and all that. His arms are crossed, he dropped his head down to the left and I stopped talking for about a half a second, and I said, so how do you want to pay for this?

And said, visa is good. I said, okay, let’s sit down and let’s get a deposit and start designing your suit. Okay, so a couple of minutes later, all of a sudden he sits back in his chair and he says, wait a minute, I go, you have a question? And he says, yeah. I am a professional salesman, I make $2 million dollar deals all over the United States every month. Okay, I am standing in front of you, given you a no buy sign, cross my arms, and you closed me. How did you know I was ready to buy this suit? And I go, well, both of your feet were parallel and you were facing me full on, that means neutral. Your arms are crossed, don’t mean anything to me, because as soon as you dropped your head down and to the left, that told me you were trusting me, and you were confident in what I was saying, and it was time to close the deal. And he looks at me for another second or two, and he kind of shakes his head left and right, and he says, well, I’ll be darned. Okay, so what do we do next? And he bought my first $2,000 dollar suits sale.

 

Steve Rush: Great, excellent. And if I’m a leader listening to this, Terry, there must be a bunch of things that present themselves regularly with my team and maybe with my customers and clients, what would be the kind of top things that you notice that present themselves as clues that we can be looking out for?

Terry Earthwind Nichols: Well the biggest thing is if you were to dissect a person vertically. Right down the middle of their body, anything that is movement wise on the left side or the heart side of the body is confidence, love, trust, all of those things. Now, if you have ever picked up a baby who is crying or whatever, where do you put it? On the left side of your body, over your heart, so that you’re heart to heart, that’s the love nurture side, okay. Now, if they start to move and movements are tilt their head to the right that is defence or distrust or confusion. Okay, so in body language, for instance, if a person is lying to you, they have a tendency to look down into the right, right side, okay. Where did we get left and right? Well, left side is the nurturer inside. Another thing to think about is back in the Roman times. They taught everybody to carry a sword or a weapon in the right hand and a defence device, a shield or something in the left hand, so that all of the soldiers were exactly, the same. That way they did not cut each other when they were standing beside each other.

And so the natural deflection of since, you know, the last 20 or more, thousand years out there. Has to been fight, flight or freeze is to the right, to run away and those kinds of things, if possible. So knowing the left side of the body and the right side of the body is a very important to remember when you are doing that. How fast are they talking to you on the phone? How fast, or slow? Cadence of, how they speak is very important. Somebody is talking very fast, could be an ethnic thing or they could be just nervous, or they are trying to figure out how to get out of this conversation. There is a lot of cultures where their cadence is quicker, so you just tune yourself, your ears to those cadence. In an email, for instance, are they long casual sentences? Or are they short and to the point? And is it a short email? Somebody trying to get this email off their inbox, or are they really trying to communicate with you? So all of that’s in the book as well.

Steve Rush: Excellent, so there is lots of hints and tips. That folks can get into, if they get a copy of the book. Right?

Terry Earthwind Nichols: Oh yeah. COVID, kind of messed us up a little bit. I have had some fun on webinars. I did a webinar for a sales and marketing executive international. We had about 1,121 people on that one. That was a lot of fun, but you know, when I am live, I have little things that we do it with the audience that is kind of fun, you know, makes it interesting. That is for sure.

 

Steve Rush: So this part of the show, Terry, we are going to turn the leadership lens back on you. So you have led teams for many, many years in different guises in different shapes, so we want to hack into that leadership thinking that sits with you and therefore, Terry, could you just share with us. What would be your top three-leadership hack?

Terry Earthwind Nichols: Listen attentively. Okay, the person in front of you is communicating with you, and I teach this in my coaching. That message is everything, okay. If the person is not receiving you, a good way to understand that they are or not receiving you. Is to ask a simple question. Those of you, who are listening, write this down. The question is. Does that make sense? Does that make sense; solicit 97% of the time the person’s going to respond audibly with the word yes. The other 3% they have questions or they are going to say no, and if they say no, normally more than three quarters of the time, they’re going to say no, but I have a question, okay. Does that make sense? Is huge. Now here is what, does that make sense do for you as a person who is maybe selling something to somebody. You give them permission to hear themselves say yes, out loud, two or three times, by asking that question during the course of the conversation, then when it’s time to propose a buying situation, they’re more inclined to say, yes, it’s powerful question.

 

The last of the three is put yourself in their position, okay. If somebody comes to you with an issue. What would you do if you were the person standing there explaining it to your boss what, it is? And did something happen to you or with you, around you? And your experience that could be of high value to that person at, this point in time. That may or may not be according to the general rules of the company, so those would be the three things. That I think are the greatest. Does that make sense?

Steve Rush: It makes sense to me, Terry that is great advice and interestingly that in your last hack there, you know, we don’t often spend time stepping into the shoes of other people. Are seeing it from other perspectives. Perspective, it is really, really important, isn’t it? To understand how others think, feel and behave too.

Terry Earthwind Nichols: Yes, you know, there is an old saying. I am Chickamauga Cherokee, Native American by blood. There is a great saying that they use, it has called a teaching and it is simply. You cannot give what you do not have. If you are not getting respect, that means you are not giving it. You got to give it first and then I’ll come back to you, okay.

Steve Rush: Yeah.

 

Terry Earthwind Nichols: And there is a story in the book there about my best custom clothing client came to me from a kid who washed my car in the parking garage of the building of then Pillsbury Corporate Headquarters. I go upstairs. I do my work with the top floor Executives, come down. I would always talk to the young kid. Pete was his name, and one time he said, he asked me. You always dress so well. I know you go up to the top floor and stuff like that.

That is why I wash your car, but you know, you always dress so well, not like a regular corporate person. What do you do? Now there is two things, I could have done. I could have just said, nah, you know. I just sell stuff to them upstairs, you know, no big deal, but I respected the kid. He gave me a genuine question. He deserves a genuine answer. I gave him a full spill of what I do as a custom clothing salesman and he said, that’s really cool. I bet my uncle could benefit from you make in suits, and I go, well, here. Here is my card. Sometime when you see your uncle, tell him about what I do, so about a week later, this is cool Steve. I get a call in the middle of the morning and there is this guy on the other side.

 

He says so you sell suits. I got your name from my nephew Pete. He was over having dinner last night, and he was telling me how good you look in your suits and stuff. How do you do that? And I said, well I come to offices and blah, blah, blah. And I gave him the same spill that I give to Pete before and he said. Well, I want to come and see. I have a tough time getting suits off the rack, almost impossible and I hate traveling to New York. We were in Minneapolis at the time. I hate traveling to New York all the time and spend a week or two there, to get my each season closed. I said, okay, so I will come out and this guy turned out to be my best customer. Highest pay sales customer of all of them and he came from Pete, the guy who washed my cars, so ladies and gentlemen, respect is everything.

Steve Rush: Yeah. It is good to show, Isn’t it? Everybody you speak to has a backstory and has also connections that can help you in your life and work, right?

Terry Earthwind Nichols: Yeah, the guy was Executive Vice President at the time of one of the top banks in the world.

Steve Rush: Awesome.

Terry Earthwind Nichols: Right, so this guy was no little guy.

Steve Rush: Exactly, yeah. So Terry, this part of the show also we call Hack to Attack, so this is where we maybe had something not work out as well in our past. Maybe something has gone a little awry or maybe even screwed up, but as a result of that experience, we’ve now used that in our life and our work as a positive outcome, what would be your Hack to Attack?

 

Terry Earthwind Nichols: I have messed up so many times. It is unbelievable, and I continue to, and I think that’s part of the journey. Because you know, a journey is not a guided tour and neither is life. I mean, you either succeed in life or you learn, and when I am teaching vision strategy to my clients. I teach them that when they achieve something, they not only celebrate the achievement, but they take a minute and reflect on. What did they learn? Because just about any project you can come up with, things go wrong. That is just the way it works and what did you learn from it? And what can you take with you as you move forward?

Steve Rush: What would have been your biggest learn in your career so far?

Terry Earthwind Nichols: I learned it the hard way and that is, shut up and listen. When I was a young buck probably as late as my middle forties. I felt that I always had to have something to say rather than just be quiet and listen and respond, if there was something to actually say rather than respond, to respond. And that was a hard lesson, I got fired a few times because I would do that stuff, and now I make sure that my clients don’t do that.

Steve Rush: Yeah, It is important. Isn’t it? That whatever happens, whatever goes wrong, that we absolutely use that as a lesson and we use it as a learning experience rather than we see it as a failure, right?

Terry Earthwind Nichols: Yeah, and you know, there is very few failures or things that have gone wrong and lessons that I did not get a chance to use in a positive way later on in life.

Steve Rush: Sure.

Terry Earthwind Nichols: You know, you take it with you and you keep it handy.

Steve Rush: The last thing we want to do is do a bit of time travel with you, so we effectually ask our guests at this time. To think about bumping into Terry when he was 21 and if you had a chance to Terry. To bump into 21-year-old self, what would be the advice you would give him?

Terry Earthwind Nichols: Well, oh Lord, I am 67 years old and that 21, I love it. When I was 21, I had just re-enlisted for the first time in the Navy, and I got a little bit of re-enlistment money and I went out and I bought a brand new Volkswagen, super beetle. Now super beetle was a little bigger than a regular beetle of its time and it had air conditioning. I lived in Yuma Arizona was where I was at the time. It got very hot there, so some air conditioning in the car was kind of nice and I would tell myself, don’t put the stickers on the car. Now there is the hack right there because I put some stickers on the paint of my car and it gets hot there, so the adhesive on the stickers kind of melted into the paint. So later when we heated him up with a blow dryer and pulled them off, it took the paint with it. Oh my God.

Steve Rush: Oh dear.

 

Terry Earthwind Nichols: It costs me a paint job to sell my car, and so don’t put the stickers on the car.

Steve Rush: And it sounds to me that, that is still a really painful experience, when you look back on it.

Terry Earthwind Nichols: I can see the paint pulled away on the bumpers of my car. The stickers were funny and you know. When you are young, you do things without really stopping to think it through and that was one of them. And that was one of them, so yeah, don’t put those stickers on the car.

Steve Rush: There is always a consequence, right?

Terry Earthwind Nichols: Yeah.

Steve Rush: There is always consequence behind every action?

Terry Earthwind Nichols: Yes, there is.

Steve Rush: Excellent stuff, so Terry, for those people that are listening today, who’d like to learn more about how profiling for profit can help them or more about the work that you do with the Evolutionary Healer. Where is the best place that they can find out more about your work?

Terry Earthwind Nichols: I would say Google, here is why? I have a brand that is unique in the world, Terry Earthwind Nichols. Earthwind is my tribal name. I am Cherokee remember, and there is probably 20,000 Terry Nichols in North America alone, so to keep from having to remember all websites and all those kinds of things, Google me on ask Terry Earthwind Nicholas, and you get my YouTube channels, my various companies, all my social media sites, all of it right there for you. And even how to get a hold of me?

Steve Rush: Excellent stuff, we will make sure also, that through your social media sites and a link to the book will be in our show notes, so folks can click in and find you through our site too.

Terry Earthwind Nichols: Great.

Steve Rush: So Terry, just from my perspective, it has been really fascinating listening to you and clearly being a lifetime watcher, hasn’t stopped for you and I know that with a passion, this is something that you continually evolve and continue to teach. And it’s been great listening to some of those stories with us today, so Terry, thanks for being on The Leadership Hacker Podcast.

Terry Earthwind Nichols: It was great to be on here Steve. Thank you very much for inviting me.

Steve Rush: Thank you, Terry.

 

 

Closing

 

Steve Rush: I genuinely want to say heartfelt thanks for taking time out of your day to listen in too. We do this in the service of helping others, and spreading the word of leadership. Without you listening in, there would be no show. So please subscribe now if you have not done so already. Share this podcast with your communities, network, and help us develop a community and a tribe of leadership hackers.

 

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