Killing your demons. Finally!

Image: D&D Beyond

When was the last time you...
...lost your temper and later wondered how that even happened?
...said yes when you knew you should have said no? 
...went on FaceBook for ‘a minute’ and stayed for a few hours?
...said you’d start a diet and then ate a piece of cake?

... were hijacked by your saboteurs?

Our saboteur thoughts come from our early years, when life was confusing and sometimes scary. How ever good or bad our childhoods were, each of us came up with simple guidelines to try and stay safe. Rules like "don't make adults angry" or "don't make mistakes" or "lie low and you'll stay out of trouble" and somehow, we cruised into adulthood without ever checking that those edicts still hold water. And, because they have been with us all our lives, we trust them implicitly. Middle-aged me can be intimidated by people with a certain kind of confident demeanour because my inner child instantly sees them as as being more powerful than I am. Effectively, we're all following a map that has parts that were laid out by our five year old selves and we wonder why we sometimes get stuck in the mud.

I have yet to meet someone who is saboteur-free so its great news that there is a tool that can help us all defeat them. Rooted firmly in neuroscience, cognitive and positive psychology, and performance science, Positive Intelligence is a easy-to-adopt protocol, neatly slotted into an app, that can reduce the unhelpful thought patterns and behaviours all of us have picked up in some way during our childhoods and replace them with positive, constructive thought strategies, 

It consists of three steps that work together to rewire your brain to make new default behaviours:

• Identify and weaken your saboteurs: triggered by the smallest threat, just recognising them and exposing the lies they tell us reduces their power significantly.
• Build your self-command muscle: using simple micro-mindfulness techniques to centre and become present and calm - whenever you need to!
• Strengthen your sage powers: drawing on our more sophisticated thoughts, employing the skills of empathy, curiosity, creativity, and fearless, clear-headed action (instead of defaulting to old habits).

There are 10 saboteurs and each of us have all of them to some degree, with some being more influential than others for each of us. Here is a brief summary of each of them:

Saboteur	It's characteristics	The lies it tells us
Judge	Harshly critical of ourselves, other and circumstances	"Without me you would achieve nothing​"
​Controller	Wants to take charge	"Nothing will get done without me​"
​Stickler	Insists that everything is perfect	"You will be harshly judged if everything isn't perfect"
Avoider ​	Wants an easy life	"Nothing good comes out of conflict​"
​Restless	Drinks deeply from the fountain of life	"Life has to be lived fully, whatever the cost​"
Pleaser	Always helping, pleasing or rescuing	"I am here to help and I expect nothing in return​"
​Victim	A very sensitive soul	"Sensitivity is a noble and admirable quality​"
Hyper-Rational	All about the facts and data. Not much time for feelings	"Emotions are a distraction. We need to be led by logic​"
Hyper-Vigilant	Danger is all around us and bad things will happen	"No one else sees the dangers that I can see​"
​Hyper-Achiever	Measurable achievement is all that matters	"The ends justify the means when it comes to succeeding"

If you are interested in finding out more about it you can:

1. Take the saboteur assessment and see which saboteurs are influencing you most today
2. Get in touch so I can talk you through the program options in more detail 

Isn't it time to silence your saboteurs? I'd love to help you discover what life would be like if there was nothing stopping you!

Disclosure: I was invited to be one of the first cohort of coaches, called PQ pioneers, who trained with Shirzad Chamine, the creator of the program, and are still working with him to develop a way to spread the word and bring this amazing tool to the world.