“It takes energy, mental toughness and spiritual reinforcement to successfully deal with life’s opportunities and to reach your objectives.” – Zig Ziglar

Welcome back to another opportunity to learn how to develop and improve our Positive Intelligence. PI is designed to help us build our mental muscles.

Stronger mental muscles help our minds work more for us and less against us. A higher PI allows us to accomplish more of the potential God has placed inside each of us.

The three strategies to develop our PI are:

Weaken Your Saboteurs: We do this by recognizing their voices/lies.

Strengthen Your Sage: By exercising the five sage powers of Explore/Curiosity, Empathize, Innovate, Navigate (according to your deepest values) and Activate (taking decisive action), and

Build Your PQ Brain Muscles: With PQ Reps. We’ll cover this today.

What is a PQ rep?

A PQ rep is performed by shifting your focus to your body and any of your five senses (sight, sound, smell, feel, taste) for 10 seconds while taking two to three deep breaths.

This is the Positive Intelligence equivalent of lifting a dumbbell. I also count shifting my mind to gratitude as a PQ rep.

How do PQ reps work?

Shifting to the present via a focus on any of your five senses or gratitude increases blood flow to the middle prefrontal cortex of our brain. This area of our brain (with parts of our right brain) is responsible for producing positive emotions while handling life’s challenges.

Compare that to the brainstem, limbic system and parts of the left brain. These parts of our brain are responsible for survival and produce much of our stress, anxiety, self-doubt, anger, shame, guilt, frustration and mind chatter.

Modern brain science shows us that the more we exercise specific parts of our brain, the easier it is for us to access those regions when we need them.

Think of it like a river digging out a river bed over time. The river naturally flows in that groove. Our brains create neural pathways similar to river beds. The more we use these neural pathways, the easier it becomes to access them.

It is like building up any habit or a pro basketball player practicing sinking free throws. What we do, gets easier to repeat.

This is real brain science and beyond the scope of this article. Start Googling and check it out yourself. I was floored when I first learned that my thoughts can literally build structures/connections in my brain.

How to get in PQ reps

The great thing about the PI framework is that you can start working on it right now. The goal is to get in 100 PQ reps per day. Here is how you can get those reps in throughout your day.

Exercise: Focus on the physical feelings you are experiencing or gratitude that you can exercise.

Daily Routines: Going to the bathroom, brushing your teeth, walking to your car, driving to and from work, eating or taking out the trash. Almost any physical activity you do is an opportunity to focus intently on the task (what you feel, see, taste, smell and hear).

Listening to Music: Listen to the notes, the voices and the words. Zone into it.

Playing Sports: The best in sports are 100% mentally focused on the present moment. If they are listening to mental chatter, their reaction time will decrease and so will their performance.

Meditation/Prayer: Working to focus your mind on the present, whether that be your physical senses, prayer or a deep focus on a passage of scripture, is a great way to get in reps.

Battling Negative Thoughts: Whenever a negative thought (saboteur) shows up. Take this negative interruption as an opportunity to go to the PQ gym. Do this by following these steps:

– Recognize the lie/distortion and label it. Instead of thinking “I am afraid I will mess this up,” you can say my saboteur says “I will mess this up.” It just feels different when you label the thought as an imposter.

– Shift your attention to your physical senses for 10 seconds (about two to three deep breaths) or gratitude.

– When the thought comes back, repeat the process with patience. If you get upset about the thought returning, you will only fuel the negative emotion. Remind yourself that you are only getting mentally stronger with every rep you do.

When I get this right, the task I am doing will begin to feel like the beginning of a movie that starts with a dramatic scene. No background music, just the detailed sounds of the activities going on.

If you are used to your mind chattering away in the background while you do physical activities, you will feel a difference when practicing PQ reps.

That’s it. Three simple steps. If you make these a habit in your life, you will increase your Positive Intelligence and achieve more of your potential.

Check out the positive intelligence website at www.positiveintelligence.com to learn more, dive deeper or sign up for coaching.

Wishing you more peace, joy and presence as you work the PI process.

We love helping leaders build great businesses. If you’d like to learn more, check out our free resources at www.valuesdrivenresults.com/resource-library/ or give us a call at (229) 244-1559. We’d love to help you in any way we can.