Mental Fitness 101
What is mental fitness? Mental fitness is your capacity to respond to your day to day challenges with a positive mindset rather than a negative mindset. You go the gym to build up your physical muscles but what if you could do the same thing to your mental muscles?
If you are human, you have voices in your head that are working against you on a daily basis. We call them “Saboteurs” and they generate stress and negative emotions in the way you handle work and life’s challenges. They sabotage your potential for both happiness and performance.
We all possess The Judge (the Master Saboteur) that judges us, it judges others, and it judges our circumstance. This is the voice that tells you that you can’t do hard things. It’s the voice that gets stressed by your teammate who is having a bad game. It’s the voice that tells you that you hate your work and just can’t spend one more day in the office.
The Judge is not alone. It deploys its 9 (NINE!) Accomplice Saboteurs to further keep you from reaching your goals or having meaningful relationships or maintaining a healthy outlook. These Accomplice Saboteurs include the Avoider, the Restless, the Pleaser, the Controller, the Stickler, the Hyper-Rational, the Hyper-Vigilant, the Hyper-Achiever, and the Victim.
These voices reside in our survival brain - parts of our left brain to include the limbic system and the brainstem. They served us well in early childhood but no longer serve our interests. They continue to damage our relationships, keep us from performing at peak levels, and degrade our overall well-being.
On the flip side, the Sage represents the part of your mind that thrives on positivity. It’s the source of creativity, empathy, and clear-headed thinking. The Sage is where you find wisdom, compassion, and the ability to see challenges as opportunities. The Sage resides in your middle prefrontal cortex and within your empathy circuitry.
Your Sage operates through five essential powers: Empathize, Explore, Innovate, Navigate, and Activate. Each of these powers helps you handle life’s challenges more effectively.
How can you shift from Saboteur to Sage to enhance mental fitness? You go to the gym!
The groundbreaking work from our friends at Positive Intelligence proposes a 3-step process to build your mental muscles:
Energize your Sage brain. Research has shown you can achieve this by building simple 10-second mental fitness exercises into your daily rhythms and routines.
Catch your Saboteurs. Intercept your Judge and its primary Accomplice Saboteurs to weaken their strength.
Use your Sage powers. Each Sage power is yours to activate in any given situation.
By shifting the balance of power in your mind from Saboteur to Sage, you cultivate mental fitness, leading to greater performance, resilience, and well-being.
If you’re ready to live a more stress-free and happier life, take the Saboteur Assessment and discover more about the PQ® Program.
