Positive Intelligence

1. Positive Intelligence (PQ) Determines Your Potential Achievement

Achievement = Potential × PQ

PQ is the key multiplier. Your Positive Intelligence Quotient (PQ) represents the percentage of time your mind serves you rather than sabotages you. While potential is determined by factors like IQ, EQ, skills, and experience, PQ determines how much of that potential you actually achieve.

Research demonstrates PQ's impact:

• Salespeople with higher PQ sell 37% more
• Doctors with higher PQ make accurate diagnoses 19% faster
• Project teams with higher PQ managers perform 31% better
• Higher PQ results in enhanced immune function, lower stress, and increased longevity

The critical PQ tipping point is 75. Above this score, you experience a net-positive "vortex" that uplifts you. Below it, you're constantly dragged down by a net-negative vortex. Only 20% of individuals and teams score above this crucial threshold, explaining why 80% fall short of their true potential.

2. Strengthen Your Sage and Weaken Your Saboteurs

All your distress is self-generated.

Understand the internal battle. Your mind harbors two opposing forces: the Sage and the Saboteurs. The Sage represents your wisdom and insight, while Saboteurs are destructive thought patterns that hinder your success and happiness.

Key strategies to increase PQ:

1. Weaken Saboteurs: Identify and label negative thought patterns
2. Strengthen Sage: Cultivate wisdom and positive perspectives
3. Build PQ Brain muscles: Practice mindfulness and presence

Saboteurs formed as survival mechanisms in childhood but often become counterproductive in adulthood. Common Saboteurs include the Judge (constant fault-finding), Controller (anxiety-driven need for control), and Avoider (evading difficult situations). By recognizing and labeling these patterns, you diminish their power over you.

3. The Judge: Your Primary Internal Enemy

The Judge's most damaging lie is that we are not worthy of love or respect by just being who we are.

Expose the Judge's destructive influence. The Judge is the master Saboteur, present in everyone. It constantly finds faults with yourself, others, and your circumstances, generating much of your anxiety, stress, and guilt.

The Judge operates through three main channels:

1. Judging self: Perpetual self-criticism and feelings of inadequacy
2. Judging others: Source of conflicts and damaged relationships
3. Judging circumstances: Creating the illusion that happiness lies in the future ("You will be happy when...")

To weaken the Judge, practice observing and labeling its thoughts without engaging them. This simple act of awareness begins to melt away its power, like a snowman exposed to sunlight.

4. Embrace the Sage Perspective: Every Challenge is a Gift

All your distress is self-generated. To be more precise, all your distress in the forms of anxiety, disappointment, stress, anger, shame, guilt—all the unpleasant stuff that makes up your suffering—is generated by your own Saboteurs.

Shift your perspective. The Sage views every outcome and circumstance as a gift and opportunity, even in the face of apparent setbacks or failures. This perspective is not about passive acceptance but about actively creating positive outcomes.

The Three-Gifts technique:
When faced with a challenging situation, force yourself to come up with at least three ways it could turn into a gift or opportunity. This exercise helps activate your Sage perspective and weakens the Judge's negative bias.

Remember, both the Sage and Saboteur perspectives are self-fulfilling prophecies. By choosing to view challenges as opportunities, you're more likely to find creative solutions and grow from the experience.

5. Harness the Five Powers of Your Sage

The Sage always offers a better way.

Activate your inner wisdom. Your Sage has access to five great powers that can meet any challenge:

1. Empathize: With yourself and others
2. Explore: With curiosity and openness
3. Innovate: Create new perspectives and solutions
4. Navigate: Choose paths aligned with your values
5. Activate: Take decisive action

Power games to boost Sage powers:

• Empathize: Visualize the Child (picture yourself or others as innocent children)
• Explore: Fascinated Anthropologist (approach situations with genuine curiosity)
• Innovate: "Yes... and..." (build on ideas without judgment)
• Navigate: Flash Forward (imagine looking back from the future)
• Activate: Preempt the Saboteurs (anticipate and counter negative thoughts)

By consciously engaging these powers, you tap into your deepest wisdom and creativity, leading to better outcomes and greater fulfillment.

6. Build Your PQ Brain Muscles Through Daily Practice

A hundred PQ reps a day keeps the Saboteurs away.

Daily practice is crucial. Just as physical exercise builds muscle, mental exercises strengthen your PQ Brain. The goal is to do 100 "PQ reps" daily, where each rep involves shifting your attention to your body or senses for at least 10 seconds.

Ways to incorporate PQ reps:

• During daily routines (e.g., brushing teeth, showering)
• While exercising
• When eating (mindful eating)
• Listening to music
• Playing sports
• Interacting with loved ones

Two easy structures to remember:

1. Do PQ reps every time you go to the bathroom
2. Do PQ reps every time you notice a Saboteur thought

Consistency is key. Commit to 100 reps daily for 21 consecutive days to form a habit and see significant improvements in your PQ.

7. Elevate Team Performance by Increasing Collective PQ

A team's PQ is not necessarily the average PQ of the individuals on the team. A great leader can build a high-PQ team made up of average PQ members.

Focus on collective PQ. High-performing teams operate in a net-positive PQ vortex, where members bring out the best in each other. To build such a team:

1. Help team members increase individual PQs
2. Train the team to pay attention to the PQ Channel during interactions

Strategies for team PQ improvement:

• Conduct PQ assessments and Saboteur identification exercises
• Incorporate PQ reports in regular team meetings
• Start meetings with PQ Brain activation exercises
• Encourage open discussion of conflicts as opportunities for growth

By creating a high-PQ team environment, you enable members to perform at levels higher than they would individually, leading to increased creativity, collaboration, and overall performance.

8. Transform Conflict into Opportunity Using PQ

You can get to 10 only through harnessing the gift of conflict.

Embrace conflict as a catalyst. The Sage approach to conflict involves seeing it as an opportunity to strengthen relationships and find innovative solutions. This applies to both personal and professional settings.

Key steps in the PQ approach to conflict:

1. Explore: Use the Fascinated Anthropologist technique to truly listen and understand
2. Empathize: Put yourself in the other person's shoes
3. Innovate: Generate creative solutions without judgment
4. Navigate: Align solutions with deeper values and aspirations
5. Activate: Take decisive action on agreed-upon solutions

Remember the "80-20 Rule of Conflict": Assume you're at least 20% responsible for any conflict. This shifts focus from blame to constructive problem-solving. By approaching conflicts with your Sage, you can turn them into opportunities for deeper understanding and stronger relationships.

9. Master the Art of Persuasion with PQ Principles

In order to get the sale, you need to let go of needing to make the sale.

Understand the PQ principles of selling:

1. The PQ Channel is more important than the Data Channel
2. The buyer is more likely to say yes if their PQ Brain is activated
3. You need to shift to your PQ Brain before you can activate the buyer's

Effective persuasion involves tapping into emotions and intuition, not just presenting data. By activating your own PQ Brain, you naturally engage the buyer's PQ Brain, making them more receptive to new ideas and opportunities.

Key strategies:

• Focus on empathy and truly understanding the buyer's needs
• Help the buyer's vision "catch fire" by connecting to deeper values and aspirations
• Use the Sage's powers of Exploration and Innovation to find creative solutions
• Let go of attachment to making the sale to paradoxically increase your chances of success

10. Connect Your Work to Deeper Meaning for Lasting Motivation

If you haven't connected what you do to what brings meaning to your life, you are not tapping into your greatest reservoir of power and inspiration.

Find purpose in your work. Regardless of your job, you can actively imbue it with meaning by connecting it to your deeper values and sense of purpose. This shift from seeing work as "just a job" to a "calling" dramatically increases motivation, performance, and satisfaction.

Strategies to find meaning:

• Use the Flash Forward technique: At the end of your life, how do you wish you had approached your work?
• Identify aspects of your job that align with your personal values
• Look for ways your work positively impacts others, even indirectly
• Commit to personal growth and learning through your work challenges

By viewing your work through the Sage perspective, you tap into a powerful source of intrinsic motivation that fuels both success and happiness. This approach not only benefits you but also inspires those around you, creating a positive ripple effect in your professional and personal life.

Last updated: August 28, 2024