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Welcome to Episode 285 of The Non-Anxious Leader Podcast. I'm Jack ShItama. If you are new to this podcast, you can connect with me at thenonanxiousleader.com. You can find more resources there. You can subscribe to my two for Tuesday email newsletter, and you can email me at jack@christian-leaders.com. Last year, I experienced Practice Based Positive Intelligence, and I found it to be so helpful that I became a Positive Intelligence Coach. It is a practice-based approach that strengthens your ability to become a non-anxious presence. If you haven't listened to part one of this series, I encourage you to go back to episode 284 and do so. If you've already listened to it, here's a quick summary. Positive intelligence, or PQ, is a concept developed by Shirzad Shalmin and is explained in his book by the same name. I'll post a link in the show notes.

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PQ refers to the ability to choose your thoughts and emotions in the moment so that you can be your best. It's about responding to life's challenges with a positive rather than a negative mindset. Family systems theory helps you understand why it's important to be a non-anxious presence. Pq helps you to do it. Your level of positive intelligence, that is your PQ or mental fitness, is an indication of the control you have over your mind, as well as how often you are able to act in your own best interest. In other words, your PQ is a measure of how well you self-regulate and self-differentiate. Shirzad Chameen uses two terms to describe these two opposing forces in your brain. The positive force is called your sage. In family systems terms, this is your self-differentiated non-anxious presence. It knows who you are and how you want to act. Pq describes the sage as the deeper and wiser part of you that is able to keep focused on the big picture and not get sidetracked by the issues of the moment. The opposite of the sage are your saboteurs. They are reactivity personified. They are the automatic internal voices that were developed as survival and coping mechanisms while growing up.

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They live in the primitive part of the brain, which is why they are able to hijack your thinking brain. Last week, I explained the saboteurs, but here's a quick review. Your judge is not only the primary negative voice that you hear, it also activates other negative voices, your accomplice saboteurs. Your judge likes to exaggerate the negative and assume the worst. It finds fault with self, others, and circumstances. It blames you, others, and the situation at hand. In family systems terms, the judge is great at avoiding taking responsibility for self. It's not surprising that because your judge works against self-differentiation, It will increase disappointment, anger, regret, guilt, shame, and anxiety. The nine accomplice saboteurs are the avoider, controller, hyperachiever, hyperrational, Hypervigilant, pleaser, restless, stickler, and victim. If you've already taken the free assessment, then you know what your accomplished saboteurs are. If you haven't, I'll put a link to it in the show notes. With all that as review, let's get into the positive side of your brain, your sage perspective. If your saboteurs reside in the primitive, reactive part of your brain, your sage lives in your thinking brain. It knows your goals and values and knows how to pursue them in healthy ways.

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According to PQ, your sage perspective is able to accept things as they are rather than denying, rejecting, and/or resenting them. Further, your sage sees every outcome or circumstance as a gift and an opportunity. The sage is mindfulness and action. It accepts the present without judgment, then figures out how to respond in the best way. It is self-differentiation. Your sage enables you to be a non-anxious presence. Positive intelligence identifies five sage powers. The first is empathize. This helps you have compassion for others and yourself in any situation. The second is explore, which transforms negative thoughts into curiosity and openness to possibility, as well as facilitates a sense of wonder and fascination. The third stage power is innovate. This power emphasizes new perspectives and out-of-the-box thinking. The fourth stage power is navigate, which is deciding on a path that best aligns with your values and mission in life. This is doing the work of self-definition and intentionality. It's figuring out how you want to respond to the situation with integrity. The fifth and final sage power is activate. This is taking action without procrastinating. It is moving forward with your intention without procrastination or distraction. The important thing about the sage powers is they work best when you regularly take time to reflect on what really matters to you.

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This is the self-definition component of self differentiation. When you are able to define your goals and values in non-anxious moments, you are better able to use your sage powers to access them when things do get anxious. With that overview, the question remains, how do you increase your positive intelligence? Let's cover that next. Shameen developed three strategies to increase your so-called mental fitness or positive intelligence. These are, one, weaken your saboteurs, two, strengthen your sage, and three, strengthen your PEQ brain muscles. I'll break down each of these. To weaken your saboteurs, you need to confront them and expose their lies. This is similar to the well-known technique of labeling your emotions. When you identify your saboteurs and acknowledge their voices, you take the first step towards reducing their power. Of course, this requires self-regulation. Otherwise, your saboteurs will cause you to act quickly according to your well-established reactive and/or adaptive patterns. Focusing on identifying your saboteurs when you are feeling anxiety or emotional intensity enables you to train yourself to self-regulate. For example, when I find myself judging others or myself, I call out the judge. Of course, this is all going on in my head, but I'll actually say to myself, Hey, Judge, This makes labeling more playful and less serious and gives me a sense of perspective.

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The point of all this is to call out your saboteurs so you can discredit them in your mind. On a deeper level, it's helpful to remember that your saboteur initially served a purpose during your formative years. They resulted from your coping methods to protect you physically and emotionally. Asking how your saboteur has helped you while growing up increases your ability to accept them and weaken their power. When you do this work in conjunction with family of origin work, you can identify the relationships in which your saboteurs, that is your reactivity or adaptivity, were most present. This can help you rework those relationships without blaming others or yourself. The second strategy to increase your mental fitness is to strengthen your sage. PQ uses so-called power games to strengthen each of your sage powers. When you need more empathy, the power game is visualize the child. Envision yourself or the other person as a child. Focusing on the innocence of your child or their child enables you to feel empathy and compassion. When you want to explore, to get curious, the power game is fascinating anthropologist. This is observing what's going on without judgment or trying to control the circumstances.

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This is mindfulness in action. When you need to innovate, the power game is, yes, and. In this approach, you accept every new idea for what it is by saying, yes, then follow it with and to build on it. This is the same approach that improv performers use to keep things going. The Navigate Power game is flash forward. When you're trying to decide a course of action, imagine the end of your life to reflect on the current choice from a bigger and more meaningful as as well as saboteur-free perspective. Finally, the activate power game is pre-empt the saboteurs. When it's time to take action, imagine what your judge or one of your accomplished saboteurs is going to say so you can anticipate and intercept how they will try to sabotage moving forward. The third and final strategy for increasing your PQ is to strengthen your PQ muscles. These are essentially There are really mindfulness practices that you can do throughout the day. The big difference is that these are designed so you can actually do them in anxious or intense situations. Here's a brief example. If you can, please close your eyes. Now, rub two fingertips gently against each other with such attention that you can feel the fingertips bridges on both fingers.

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Now, rub all the fingertips of one hand gently against the fingertips and palm of the other hand. Now, focus on your breathing. Notice the difference in temperature when you inhale and exhale. Open your eyes when you feel ready. You can do PQ reps in a couple of minutes or as long as 12 minutes. I tend to do mine in either five minute or two-minute segments. Overall, spending about 15 minutes or longer in total during the day will increase your mental fitness. My own experience is that these PQ reps strengthen my self-regulation muscles as well as my ability to get from my primitive brain to my thinking brain. And as I mentioned, the great thing about these is you can do these during tense and anxious moments. I have a coaching client who uses the technique of rubbing fingers across the fingertips and palm of the other hand during tense meetings to self-regulate. It works. In summary, PQ is an approach, a practice that combines things that we know work to help you self-regulate and self-differentiate. It's a tool that I've found really works. That's it for episode 285. I've been thinking about running a positive intelligence cohort later this summer if there's enough interest.

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If you are interested, send me an email at jack@christian-leaders.com. You can also email me if you have questions or ideas for future episodes. Don't forget, you can subscribe to my Two for Tuesday newsletter at the link in the show notes or at thenonanxiousleader.com. Until next time. Thanks and goodbye.