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We all have an “Emotional Source Code” that is set when we were children. It’s what drives us and is why we do everything we do.
What if that code isn’t working to your advantage? You can change it! In this episode I discuss how to do that with my guest, Dov Baron.
For over 30 years, Dov Baron has been empowering inquisitive leaders and influential figures worldwide to explore their own “Emotional Source Code” and their organizations “Emotional Source Code” to discover how to generate Fierce Loyalty.
He is the creator and host of The Dov Baron Show podcasts (previously known as Leadership and Loyalty), named the #1 podcast for Fortune 500 Executives by Apple podcasts. The Dov Baron Show has featured hundreds of hours of interviews with top leaders, entrepreneurs, theologians, military intelligence officers, and artists.
What is Your “Emotional Source Code”?
Your Emotional Source Code is a thesis that has come out of a blend of quantum physics, neuroscience and psychology, organizational psychology and subjective personal psychology. It’s profoundly insightful into what it is that drives us. Very often you’ll meet somebody, and they’ll say, “I really have this bad behavior, and I want to change it.” You might say, “I can help you with that.” Great. And then you help them, they change their behavior, and it doesn’t stick.
They wonder “Why didn’t it stick?” Maybe the problem is that they have a belief system or a value system that’s holding that behavior in place. That’s when they realize they have to do some real work on their behaviors and to my beliefs.
Then they do some belief restructuring. They get happy because the belief’s better now, and as a result, the behavior’s gone away. And then a year later, they’re back in the same boat. Why? Why does it not change? Because you have an emotional source code. That’s what Dov calls your Emotional DNA.
Your DNA is not dominant. It’s just the most… obvious place to start. What Dov means by that is you may have a predetermination for certain situations from something in your DNA. It doesn’t mean they’re going to happen. It just means it’s there in your Emotional DNA. It’s waiting to kick in. That’s the same with your emotional DNA being in your Emotional Source Code.
Going Back to the Beginning
Your Emotional Source Code starts at the base level at the foundation of it, which is the origin of your Emotional Source Code itself. That’s the environment and the circumstance you grew up in. Now, you might be thinking “Oh, my God, we’re going to spend 20 years on a couch talking to a therapist.” No, it doesn’t have to be like that.
Consider your parents, especially if you have siblings. Not only have your parents changed and matured over the years, but as parents, they as parents respond differently to their firstborn than they do to their thirdborn. On top of that, there’s also an economic situation. There’s a pretty good chance your parents were in better financial shape by the time they had their third kid than they were when they had their first child. They’d matured in age, hopefully emotionally. Their relationship had also matured, again, hopefully to make it better. And there was an economic change also.
That means you and your siblings didn’t have the same parents. In fact, none of you did. You all had different parents. And so, as a result, you built your Emotional Source Code based on the environment you were in at a moment in time.
Dov was born into abject poverty with violence, crime, abuse, addiction all around him. That told him how to survive. He remembers thinking, “If I’m going to make it through this, I’ve got to work out certain things about how to be.” He would look at the world and think that’s dangerous, that’s safe. We all do it. It’s not because of his background. You did it even if you had a wonderful childhood. You still did it because your primary objective is to survive.
Finding Meaning in Your Life
That early Emotional Source Code determined the next level of your Emotional Source Code, which is your meaning. You determined the meaning of everything. So, for instance, you’re standing in the edge of the crib and you’re watching your mom and dad have a fight about paying bills. There’s not enough money. You don’t stand there and go at two years old, “You know, I think my mom and dad need some therapy. They’ve got some serious issues around money.” You don’t do that.
You look at this scene and your programming becomes money equals stress. So, as an adult you believe if you have money, you’re going to have a lot of stress. If you don’t have money, you’re going to have a lot of stress. It becomes a catch 22. What you’ll find is somebody in that situation will either collect a ton of money, really gather in, and be fixated on making more and more money, or they never break through. They never financially break through because the mind operates in polarity.
That’s how it operates. We assign meaning to circumstances and situations. Now money was just one example, but it could be a million different ones. And you have assigned them in your childhood.
Then from that base foundational emotional DNA to your meaning, then you go, well, “Who can I be in this environment?” That determines a lot of things you can’t be. For instance, in the environment Dov was growing up in, there was no room for me to be highly intelligent. There was no room for Dov to be more spiritual. There was no room for Dov to be highly creative or intuitive.
All those things had to get pushed into the shadows. They became quote-unquote disenfranchised. They become part of who Dov is. He didn’t have access to those things because he built his identity to survive based on the meaning he assigned to certain situations in his life.
We continue to dive into topics such as:
- How childhood beliefs and identities are formed and what that means to you as an adult.
- The five foundations of your emotional source code.
- How to start to change your emotional source code as an adult.
- The importance of looking for the meaning that you assign to situations in your life.
- Examples of how you can incorrectly assign meanings to everyday situations that has a profound affect on your life.
- How your emotional source code is playing out in how you are doing business and how you are building friendships and associations.
- How to recognize character traits of people in your life as opposed to simple, situational bumps in the road.
- Why you’re building your entire business on your emotional source code.
- Why you’re not selling a product or service, you’re selling what you emotionally need most in your life.
- Why you don’t need more “a-HA!” moments in your life; you need “F&#@ it” moments.
- Why we are emotional beings who make rational decisions after an emotional decision is made.
- How to embrace and lean into new meanings in your life.
- How to shift your offering(s) out of commoditization into something that is emotionally visceral.
- The one thing, above all else, that you need to do to embrace and change your emotional source code.
…and more golden nuggets of advice!
You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea”
About My Guest
Dov Baron is a Speaker, Facilitator, Podcast Host, and Bestselling Author. Dov is the preeminent expert on Creating Cultures of Belonging because “Fitting in is not the same as belonging.” For over 30 years, Dov Baron has been empowering inquisitive leaders and influential figures worldwide to explore their own Emotional Source Code™ and their organizations to discover how to generate Fierce Loyalty.
The Emotional Source Code process drives deep loyalty and purpose through the power of emotions. Dov assists leaders in creating life-and-work meaning. His models and strategies of the Emotional Source Code and the Anatomy of Meaning are used by leaders in business and government worldwide. He is the founder and CEO of Dov Baron International.
Dov has been named a Top 30 Global Leadership Guru five times and an Inc. Magazine Top Leadership Speaker twice.
He is the creator and host of The Dov Baron Show podcasts (previously known as Leadership and Loyalty), named the #1 podcast for Fortune 500 Executives by Apple podcasts. The Dov Baron Show has featured hundreds of hours of interviews with top leaders, entrepreneurs, theologians, military intelligence officers, and artists.
He has written for or been interviewed by many media outlets, including CEO World, CNN, Elle Italia, Entrepreneur, and FOX.
He is the author of several books, including “One Red Thread: How to Find the Purpose Already Woven Into Your Life,” and “Fiercely Loyal: How High-Performing Companies Develop and Retain Top Talent.” Both were bestsellers on Amazon.
As a speaker, Dov has presented to the United Nations, the Department of State, the World Management Forum, the Servant Leadership Institute, The World Management Forum in Iran, and the United States Air Force. Dov is also the co-founder of The Authentic Speaker Academy for Leadership — where he teaches leaders how to use ethical persuasion skills to impact and influence change-makers.
