Like many people, I was looking forward to a relaxing end to 2021 and a chance to recalibrate my intentions for 2022. Much of that came to a halt as the fires in Boulder County took everyone by surprise and reminded us how precious life is at the same time it can quickly change with no warning. These events brought on so many different emotions ranging from utter devastation and heartbreak to full and complete love and connection as we witnessed close friends losing their home and all their belongings, followed by the community pulling together with unconditional support. It’s overwhelming as I even think about it now. It has also driven home with me that we simply can’t control life’s circumstances around us, no matter how hard we try. What we can do is continue to work on our mental fitness, so when those hardships come, we can recover and continue to embrace the full life we have in front of us.
But what does increasing mental fitness really mean? Just like our physical muscles navigate our body through life, our brain does the same. Muscles move and flex in response to our physical environment, in order to send us in the direction we are going. But when we haven’t trained certain muscles, they don’t know how to respond to unfamiliar movements like falls or hyperextending joints, etc.. It’s the same with our brain, which I talked about in my last blog covering beliefs. Sometimes, our brain is so conditioned to think a certain way that it can work against us when we get pushed outside our comfort zone with unexpected events. Instead of helping us navigate the unknown with openness and curiosity, our brain slides into survival mode – judging the people and circumstances around us as good or bad, judging ourselves as good or bad, weighing us down with criticism. Mental fitness helps reduce this by proactively building our mental muscles so when life does challenge us, the automatic thoughts that guide us are taking us in the direction we want to go.
When you think about setting goals this year, I invite you to put some effort towards your mental fitness. What you might find is that by setting a mental fitness goal, your other goals benefit as you reduce or eliminate the struggle with self-criticism, getting stuck and comparing yourself to others, all things that so commonly hold us back. And if you’ve already conquered everything you want in life, society could surely benefit from more people putting love and connection out into the world.
You can make your mental fitness goal measurable with a commitment to increasing your Positive Intelligence Quotient or PQ score. Your PQ Score is the measure of how much your mind is serving you vs. sabotaging you. You can also find out the most common ways your brain sabotages you. Learn more and take both assessments at positiveintelligence.com/saboteurs. The link will take you to the Saboteur assessment first and then send you the link to test your PQ score. Both assessments are free.
When you get your results, it’s important to learn that everyone has all of the Saboteurs. In fact, they all highlight a strength within us that gets overused and hijacks our natural wisdom.
For your PQ score, a good number to reach for is 75%. This is the breaking point where we are propelled more by positive energy than held back by negative energy.
If you have any questions about Positive Intelligence or want to put more discipline into your practice, please reach out to me. I will continue to share ways of strengthening your mental muscles in future posts and I will also be sharing daily challenges to help build your mental strength on Instagram and Facebook.
Here’s to increasing our mental fitness in 2022!