We all have internal Saboteurs - aspects of ourselves that try to protect and motivate us through negative emotions such as fear, stress, anger, shame, guilt, insecurity, and so on.

While these emotions may generate success, they do so in a way that keeps us from being happy and operating to our full potential. We typically create success despite these saboteurs - not because of them.

We have been conditioned, however, to believe that this is the only way to be successful. "No pain, no gain"...

But imagine being able to maintain a calm, peaceful mind in stressful situations, or moving to curiosity instead of frustration or worry when faced with life’s challenges. Imagine having more patience, more resilience, more compassion and understanding for others - even when you don’t agree with them. And because of all this, fundamentally you are also happier.

Sound like a nice idea? According to science, it’s not just wishful thinking. You can train your mind to self-command, redirecting from the negative, survival-based world of your Saboteurs to the positive, thrive-focused part of your mind. This is what lies at the heart of Positive Intelligence®, created by Shirzad Chamine.

The core principles of Positive Intelligence® are based on a combination of neuroscience, cognitive behavioral psychology, performance science, and positive psychology. Through extensive research and practical application by over 500,000 participants from 50 countries, this work has proven its effectiveness in a wide array of benefits including stress management, relationship improvement, performance, selling and persuasion, creativity, leadership, resilience, and happiness. Included in the research are results from hundreds of CEOs and their executive teams, Stanford students, and world-class athletes.

Growing up, we had two primary objectives in school: physical fitness and academic fitness. Most people have never heard of mental fitness, much less focused on it. Chamine is on a mission to help as many humans as possible fulfill their true potential personally and professionally by showing them how to easily create sustainable change by building their mental fitness.

How? By creating a scalable system led by a force of coaches and other service-focused leaders who can share the effective, easy-to-remember concepts that comprise the PQ® model of mental fitness with their clients, teams, students, and families.

What is PQ®?

Self-command is the ability to shift your thoughts and behaviors from a place of negativity to one of positivity. When you can do this, the negative emotions you experience don’t stay around for very long. The moment you feel them, you can begin the shift.

But this isn’t something that can be intellectualized. You must train the mind to do this. No matter how smart we are, we can’t “think” our way into positivity.

Whether or not you can self-command is based on a simple quotient. It all depends on whether your negative feelings about yourself, someone else, or a circumstance are stronger or if the neural pathways that allow you to see the gift in anything and shift to positive feelings are stronger. In Positive Intelligence® coaching, this is called the Positive Intelligence Quotient, or PQ® for short.

Once you know how to self-command, you can raise your PQ® and increase your chances of having a more positive experience.

But it doesn’t just affect your happiness. Having a higher PQ® has resulted in higher performance at work, more sustainable achievement of personal and professional goals, and better relationships both at home and in the workplace. Each time the neural pathways connected to positivity are strengthened it not only affects the desired area of improvement; it creates a ripple effect, positively influencing all areas of life.

This is the future of what it means to be successful: to thrive holistically - not by causing ourselves to suffer our way to success through our Saboteurs, only to hope we will be happy at the end, but to find our way there while also being happy.

I am proud to be a Positive Intelligence® coach and to offer the PQ® Method as part of my Self-Command Collective. I believe this is work for every single person on the planet, and I have personally benefited greatly from it.