Positive Intelligence
Practices designed to build up your mental fitness and increase your wellbeing.
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Introduction to
Positive Intelligence
We all have several dominant “Inner Saboteurs.”
They are our habitual mind patterns, each with its own voice, beliefs and assumptions.
They are connected to the part of the brain focused on survival. We developed these patterns in early childhood as a way to survive in response to perceived threats. As adults, we no longer need them, but they have become “the invisible inhabitants of our minds.”
We are convinced that the Saboteurs are working for us—making us better, kinder, more productive, safer, etc. However, our saboteurs hurt our mental well-being, relationships, and performance, causing all of our stress, anxiety, self-doubt, and unhappiness.
We also all have a deep, powerful “Inner Sage” that knows how to explore, navigate and activate in our own best interest without stress.
The 5 Powers of The Sage Brain Are:
To explore with great curiosity and an open mind
To empathize with yourself and others and bring compassion to any situation
To innovate and create new solutions
To navigate and choose a path that best aligns with your deeper underlying values and mission
To activate and take decisive action without the stress, interference and distraction of the saboteurs.
The Saboteurs and Sage are fueled by different regions of the brain.
The Saboteurs are associated mostly with the brainstem, limbic system, and parts of the left brain.
The Saboteurs motivate you through negative emotions like fear, stress, anger, guilt, shame, and insecurity.
The Saboteurs might generate success but they can’t generate happiness.
The Sage with its “five powers” resides primarily in the middle prefrontal cortex, empathy circuitry and parts of the right brain.
The Sage Brain motivates you through positive emotions like empathy, curiosity, creativity, passion, and purpose.
The Sage and its five powers will lead us to our highest success and generate sustained happiness regardless of the circumstances.
The purpose of Positive Intelligence is to quiet the Inner Saboteurs and awaken the Inner Sage.
The Three Goals of This Work:
Weaken saboteurs by naming/intercepting and discrediting them (“That is just a lie my judge tells me.”).
Engage your SAGE Muscle and it’s 5 superpowers.
Strengthen your Self Command muscle (the part of brain that helps shift from Saboteur to Sage), so that you can command your mind rather than letting your mind run you.
Increasing Self Command with PQ Reps
PQ Reps are a type of daily exercise developed to help build up the “self command muscle,” or the neural pathways that helps us shift from Saboteur to Sage. PQ Reps involve focusing on one physical sense for at least 10 seconds, multiple times throughout the day.
With each rep, new neural pathways build up in your “PQ brain region.” This is where your Sage and it's “Five Great Powers” live. These simple reps can change your life if you take them seriously and you are consistent with them. Research has shown increased gray matter build up on MRI imaging in just eight weeks.
In addition to doing these exercises, it is helpful to think of activities throughout your day that will remind you to do more PQ reps. For example, right before you get up to go to the bathroom, or each time before writing an email or making a call. Make a commitment to doing a PQ rep whenever you do one of these activities and visualize yourself doing your PQ reps then.
This will help you to remember.
General PQ Reps
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General PQ Reps | 5 minutes (11 reps)
The Judge:
Visualizations and Guidance
The Judge is the universal saboteur.
Everyone has a judge: a negative, critical inner voice that berates you over your mistakes and perceived shortcomings and is constantly warning you about taking risks. It is the voice that we often wake up to in the middle of the night that fixates on what you think is wrong with you or wrong with others, or wrong with the circumstances of your life. Your Judge causes much of your stress and unhappiness, it thwarts your performance, and often harms your relationships.
The three modes of the judge are:
Judging Self
Judging Others
Judging Circumstances
We can overcome the Judge by naming it when the voice shows up, and doing PQ Reps to build your Self Command muscle. Another way, is to anticipate future times when you might be triggered by your Judge and to imagine acting differently. Or, to reimagine past events when your Judge was activated and to visualize how things could have been different if you had had access to your Sage Brain. By reimagining past responses or visualizing future ones, you build up neural circuitry that makes it more likely that you will respond positively in the future.
The following visualizations are designed for this purpose.
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Judging Self | Anticipate:
Judging Self | Reimagine:
Judging Others
Judging Circumstances
Anticipate Saboteurs
