Intuitive Imagery

Susan E. Mehrtons, John B. Pehrson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780750698054
• eBook ISBN: 9781136013379
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Intuitive Imagery puts the discoveries of modern science to work through a simple, proven technology to meet the challenges of our fast-paced changing world. This book shows you how to harness the wisdom of your inner images to achieve peak performance in both business and personal life. Results include greater creativity, better decision making, enhanced productivity, the unlocking of blocked potential, accelerated learning, increased success, and a sense of greater well-being. Learning to use intuitive imaging is like finding a new set of lenses through which to view the world. It helps us change our beliefs about how we know what we know so we can begin to restructure how we do what we do. John B. Pehrson is president of Creative Change Technologies, a training and consulting firm to individuals and organizations focusing in the areas of creativity, deep team building, and executive coaching. John is a former executive with DuPont and has over 20 years of broad international business experience that includes business and technology management, strategic planning, product development, manufacturing, sales and marketing. He lives in Signal Mountain, TN. Susan E. Mehrtons is president of The Potlatch Group, a research organization specializing in analysis of business trends related to global evolution and social change. Her clients range from Fortune 500 companies like AT&T, DuPont, General Motors, and Sears to smaller businesses, schools, and private foundations such as The Institute of Noetic Sciences and the World Business Academy. Sue is the co-author of Earthkeeping, an ecology text, and The Fourth Wave, a vision of business in the 21st century. She lives in Mineola, NY.

I

Background

1

Introduction

Sit down before fact like a little child, and be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly and to whatever abyss Nature leads, or you shall learn nothing.

T.H. Huxley

Imagine if you were able to

• Predict the performance of the market up to a year in advance
• Speed new product development by focusing human resources and money on only the winning candidates
• Identify unspoken customer needs
• Identify which of your competitors would soon leave the business
• Know the best time to approach your boss for a raise
• Tell in advance at which company to get a job, or when it is time to move on to greener pastures, and where to look for your new job
• Determine your unique mission in life

The truth is: You can!

You can do all this, and more, by using the simple, easy techniques of intuitive imagery.

Intuitive imagery is what this book is about. It is a whole-brain process that harnesses intuition in a reliable, disciplined way. In six succinct chapters (chapters 5–10), we give you all you need to know to be able to access the parts of your brain that know the future and can provide the guidance you need to live your life and run your business for maximum fun and profit.

Before we describe the intuitive imagery process and how to do it, we give you some of the cultural and scientific background (in chapters 2–4), so you can see how intuitive imagery is grounded in science and how this powerful technology makes possible whole-brain thinking and problem solving.

In the final chapters (11 and 12), we offer more than a dozen examples of how people from all walks of life have used intuitive imagery in practical ways, from solving health problems to identifying unspoken customer needs critical to strengthening the sales relationship.

Before getting into specifics, you might want a sample of what intuitive imagery looks like and how it works. So here’s an example of how imagery was used in a high-volume Fortune 50 business to provide insights into competitors and their actions in the future. The following excerpt from an imaging research project shows the potential of intuitive imagery for assessing competitors’ strengths and weaknesses.

Date: June 21, 1989

Intuitive Key: The Fortune 50 Business for Whom the Imaging Is Being Done

Guide: See a person and describe. Comment on his/her strengths and weaknesses. Imagine a brief, year-end 1989 headline.

Image: A tiger. Extremely powerful. It hunts when it feels the need to hunt and rests the remainder of the time. Weaknesses: The only life it has is hunting and resting. It uses a great deal of energy stalking its prey, then it has to rest again. So the tiger leads a very “basic” life. Headline: “Siberian tigers coming closer to extinction: Fewer than five are found in the wild”

Interpretation: This business is seen as the most powerful in the market (true). But a lot of energy is being expended in competitive battles (stalking its prey) to get new business. There are five major competitors, which is picked up by the imaging.

Intuitive Key 1: Competitor 1

Guide 1: See a person. Comment on his/her strengths and weaknesses. Imagine a year-end 1989 headline.

Image: A thin woman with red hair. Although she has the ability to overcome most difficulties, her weakness is that she is too sensitive. She is easily hurt and vulnerable. Headline: “Woman dies of heart attack”

Interpretation: The weakest of the competitors. There is a potential that they will exit the market by year-end 1989.

Result: This competitor did exit the market by the end of 1989, selling its converter-based business to the business for whom the imaging was done.

Intuitive Key 2: Japanese Competitors

Guide 2: See a person. Comment on his/her strengths and weaknesses. Imagine a year-end 1989 headline.

Image: A twenty-fourth century pilot. In the twenty-fourth century, humankind has moved into the solar system and lives on other planets. This pilot travels between them. He is helmeted but has very “intense eyes.” Strength: His strength has something to do with the ability to pilot a huge spacecraft but is unclear. Weakness: He spends a lot of time traveling between planets, so he doesn’t get to experience any of them very much. Headline: “Space pilot tests first hypercruiser: Flight ends in success/Cruiser to be certified within next three years”

Interpretation: The Japanese have new technology that may be a threat. The huge spacecraft may be the Japanese system of interrelated banks and businesses. Their weakness is long distribution lines. But they will act to shorten these distribution lines within the next three years (certification of the hypercruiser) through a joint venture or by building a manufacturing plant in the United States.

Results: On July 5, 1991, two years after the imaging was done, the Journal of Commerce announced a joint venture between Hoechst-Celanese (U.S.), Hoechst AG, their German parent company, and Mitsubishi Kasei Corporation, Mitsubishi Plastics Industries, and their Diafoil Company unit. A key part of the joint venture was establishing a U.S. company, Hoechst Diafoil Co., by January 1, 1992, to compete more effectively in the polyester film market. In addition, the Japanese company, Toyobo, is now [1995] building a polyester film plant in Rhode Island.

This example of intuitive imagery shows all the components, how the imagery is recorded, and the sorts of results imagery can provide.

We have taught intuitive imagery to thousands of people in the last seven years and have never found anyone unable to learn to do it, but some people are more familiar and comfortable than others with the components of intuitive imagery. If you want to assess your own comfort level with the process, we have provided a questionnaire for this purpose in Appendix 1.

More and more people every year are turning to intuitive imagery to deal with the challenges of modern life. This is understandable when you consider what is going on in the world. The social, economic, and cultural drivers behind the growing use of intuition are discussed in chapter 2.

2

The Emerging World

… the whole structure of our society does not correspond with the worldview of emerging thought.

Frijof Capra

HMOs, NIEs, LBOs, MTV. Hoffices, the triple-squeeze, LANs and CAD, cyberspace, and the digerati. PNI and biopolitics,¹ flex-firms, designer currencies, advertorials, blended families. Downsizing, rightsizing, dumbsizing, and reengineering.

Welcome to the new borderless world of business, where billion-dollar deals are done in the space of nanoseconds, and computer databases give us daily doses of infoglut. Too many facts. Too little time. How is a business person to cope?

As we approach the new millennium, life is characterized by accelerating rates of social, political, and business change. We live with rapidly increasing complexity, uncertainty, environmental stress, and global conflict. Most of our ecosystems are in decline. Our cherished institutions are under attack. These are signs of the times. Anyone who has reflected for more than a moment on the state of the planet knows we have some tough problems to solve if we are to create a sustainable future, and it falls to business, as the world’s most powerful and adaptable institution, to come up with many of the solutions.

Yet business itself is not immune to the larger forces at work in the world. If it is to be our hope for the future, business must successfully deal with its own sustainability issues. Many companies are emerging from the turmoil of rightsizing, restructuring, and reengineering to find temporarily improved profitability. But now, with a smaller and often less experienced workforce, companies must continue to reinvent themselves while grappling with the ongoing issues of employee commitment and productivity, lagging creativity, workforce diversity, tightening quality standards, environmental stewardship, global competition, and a host of other challenges. It is a time when the need for flexibility and rapid response have pushed our forecasting, planning, development, and decision-making systems to their absolute limits.

To paraphrase Einstein, neither the problems of the world nor the issues facing businesses today will be solved at the same level of thought at which they were created. Responding to today’s challenges requires a willingness to be open to new, creative ways of thinking. Indeed, we must begin to shift our beliefs about how we know what we know. For this will also restructure how we do what we do.

There is hope on the horizon. Indeed, an overview of the emerging trends shows that new patterns of thinking are beginning to replace old mindsets. It is important to be aware of these trends as supports for a new way of being—both in business and in our personal lives. For example:

• More workers are taking back responsibility for their lives, careers, and retirement planning as the old paternalistic social contract unravels.²
• More people are reclaiming and internalizing authority— “authorizing their own lives”³—as respect for external authority figures and old-style bosses lessens.⁴
• More men and women are choosing to manifest their personal power by empowering others, as the old concept of power over others (power-as-domination) gives way to power with others (power-as-dominion),⁵ and competitive advantage slowly gives way to collaborative advantage.
• More businesses, governments and individuals are recognizing the ecologic reality of interconnectedness and interdependence—that everything really is connected to everything else.⁶
• Corporate culture is being transformed as the workplace is being “feminized” and feminine values, like egalitarianism,...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Part One: Background
• Part Two: What is Intuitive Imagery?
• Part Three: How to Use Intuitive Imagery
• Part Four: Examples of the Use of Intuitive Imagery
• Appendix 1: Where Are You?
• Appendix 2: Relaxation Exercises and Affirmations
• Appendix 3: Resources for Interpreting Images
• Appendix 4: Intuitive Imaging Steps
• Appendix 5: Tips for Doing Intuitive Imagery
• Appendix 6: Guidelines for Interpreting Images
• Appendix 7: Resources for Further Study and Information
• Bibliography
• Authors’ Request
• Index