Want to boost your positive intelligence?
Similar to cognitive and emotional intelligence, positive intelligence is a concept that gained popularity recently in the professional coaching world.
What is positive intelligence?
This new form of intelligence measures how often your mind acts in your best interest. Your mind should be your best friend, but unfortunately, it can also be your worst enemy (self-sabotage).
For example, if your mind is encouraging you to commit to a healthy diet, then it’s acting as a friend. However, it’s acting as your enemy if it’s telling you to go back to old habits and throw all the progress you’ve made away.
Additionally, positive intelligence quotient (PQ) is a measure of your mental fitness. It keeps track of the percentage of the time your mind is being positive, allowing you to achieve success and reach your full potential.
And don’t worry, positive intelligence is a skill you can develop.
Here are three tips to boost your positive intelligence:
Weaken your Saboteurs
The journey to boost your positive intelligence often begins with recognizing and addressing your internal enemies, referred to as Saboteurs. These Saboteurs operate within, serving as barriers to our growth, success, and happiness. But what exactly does ‘Saboteur’ mean in the context of positive intelligence?
At its core, positive intelligence saboteurs represent those aspects of our thought patterns and behaviors that counteract or undermine our efforts to succeed, be happy, or grow. In essence, they’re the negative voices or impulses that often stem from past experiences, fears, or societal pressures. They trick us into believing that they’re acting in our best interests when, in reality, they hinder us from achieving our goals and reaching our full potential.
Types of Saboteurs and How They Operate
As mentioned, there are a variety of Saboteurs, each with its distinct characteristics:
The Judge: This Saboteur criticizes you, others, and even the situations around you. It’s the voice that magnifies mistakes and overlooks the positives.
Controller: This type is driven by a need to take charge and control situations, often stemming from a fear of chaos or vulnerability.
Victim: The Victim Saboteur thrives on feeling sad or wronged, seeing itself as perpetually in the receiving end of injustices.
Stickler: With an obsession for perfection, the Stickler slows you down in your quest for flawless results, often causing procrastination.
Pleaser: This one wants to constantly please others, even at its own expense. It fears rejection and yearns for acceptance.
Avoider: The Avoider focuses on avoiding conflicts and difficult tasks, often leading to missed opportunities or unresolved issues.
While everyone possesses these Saboteurs to some extent, the types and their intensity can differ from person to person.
Understanding and managing your Saboteurs is crucial in your journey to boost your positive intelligence. Through dedicated effort and consistent positive intelligence exercises, you can lessen their impact and pave the way for a more fulfilling and successful life.
Strengthen your Sage
he true essence of boosting your positive intelligence lies in harnessing and fortifying the powers of your Sage. This intrinsic component of our cognitive and emotional framework represents positivity, wisdom, and clear-sightedness. Its primary strength rests in its transformative power to reshape how you interpret situations or challenges. Rather than seeing adversities as colossal barriers, the Sage empowers you to view them as enlightening lessons or avenues for personal growth. Indeed, through the eyes of the Sage, challenges morph into invaluable gifts and opportunities.
However, this challenge of amplifying your positive intelligence will introduce you to your internal saboteurs. These negative entities, always poised to sow seeds of doubt and pessimism, challenge the positive perspective the Sage offers. They aim to envelope you in feelings of anxiety, stress, and guilt. The dichotomy between the Sage and the Saboteur is profound: the former paints a world filled with hope and potential, while the latter casts shadows of limitations and regret. Engaging in positive intelligence exercises is the antidote. These practices, designed to heighten your awareness and reshape your cognitive responses, provide the tools needed to amplify the voice of your Sage while diminishing the influence of the Saboteurs. By making these exercises a regular ritual, you’ll gradually steer your mindset towards optimism and clarity, fully realizing your potential and enhancing your well-being.
Strengthen PQ Brain muscles
By strengthening your PQ brain muscles, you’ll not only navigate challenges with greater ease but also unlock potential you didn’t know existed. Instead of getting bogged down by negativity or the voices of the positive intelligence saboteurs, you’ll be primed to focus on thriving rather than just surviving. Boosting your positive intelligence empowers you to navigate challenges with greater dexterity, unlocking potential you might have overlooked. However, to rise above, it’s vital to fend off the influences of positive intelligence saboteurs, those internal voices like the Judge, the Victim, or the Controller that often pull us into a spiral of negativity.
Positive intelligence exercises provide a tangible route to reinforce these crucial muscles. One foundational exercise involves teaching your mind to filter out the noise and anxieties that often cloud judgment. By channeling energy into your physical sensations, you anchor yourself in the present. For instance, focusing intently on your breathing—a deep inhale, a brief hold, followed by a calm exhale—draws attention to the rhythm of your breath and the life-giving sensation of air in your lungs. Similarly, honing in on ambient sounds or the weight of your body on a chair or the floor can divert attention from those sabotaging thoughts. Incorporating these exercises daily not only combats the negative influences of saboteurs in positive intelligence but also sets the stage for enhanced mental well-being, resilience, and an enriched life experience.
Measuring PQ: 3 Assessments & Tests
Here are some PQ assessments and tests that coaches can use to help clients develop and nurture their PQ:
PQ gym
This PG assessment consists of a 10-second hyper-focus on one of your senses.
These 1-second exercises can improve your mental fitness and in doing so, helps you tackle challenges and roadblocks with a clear, insightful, and open mind.
PQ score
The PQ score is a measure of your overall happiness and performance potential.
This score is a widely used mental fitness indicator that basically evaluates the strength of your sage versus the saboteur.
Using this score, coaches can see how happy an individual is and whether or not the individual is thriving towards their full potential.
PQ training program
If you want to improve your mental fitness today, visit the Corporate Class website.
We offer a 1-hour Webinar on Mental Fitness for professionals and teams. The webinar is based on Shirzad Chamine’s positive intelligence book and will help you learn how to improve your performance and mental wellbeing.
Who should attend this webinar?
- Managers across industries (business, engineering, product, finance, etc.) who are looking to become better leaders.
- Human Resources and Learning & Development Professionals looking for innovative coaching-at-scale programs to improve wellbeing, engagement and performance in their organizations.
What will you learn?
If you’ve ever experienced mental stress, anxiety, or frustration while handling difficult tasks and relationship challenges, this webinar will help you tackle those feelings and find a way to move forward.
Sign up for our Mental Fitness webinar today to boost your positive intelligence!
