Today I want to quickly share with you my inspiring story of how Positive Intelligence and mental fitness changed my relationships.
Hide in Van
In 2020, I was at my nephew’s wedding and my husband Rob did something that upset me. I don’t even remember what it was. And I went out to the van and felt sorry for myself and was really frustrated myself because I am a life coach.
I know how to clear emotions around things. I know how to do things differently. I have a lot of knowledge that I’ve learned and I just couldn’t always apply it in the moment. And while I was sitting there in the van, I was distracting myself. And what happened is that I came across an email that
Shirzad Chamine sent, he’s the author of Positive Intelligence, and I must have been searching something. And it was like way back in my archives from when I took the saboteur assessment. I was reading this email and I was like, yeah, these saboteurs are coming up a avoider. Right. I run out into the van and I’m hiding during my nephew’s reception because I don’t want to address the issues that are going on. And I’m like, wow, this is really powerful stuff.
But how do I apply it? Again, it’s just more information, more knowledge that is helpful, but I still have all those old neuro pathways running and I didn’t know how to change it.
I Take Mental Fitness Bootcamp
Fast forward a year later, it’s 2021. I still am coaching others in their relationships and helping them, and yet still struggling with my own. And I sign up for this six week class that someone was giving. And the reason why I signed up for it is because she was talking about Positive Intelligence and this app that they had for mental fitness.
I’m like, I wanna see what this is. Within a few days of starting that class and starting to use this app where I practiced what was being taught three to five times a day, and was prompted by the app to do so that I realized, oh, this is the answer. I am building my muscles.
It’s like lifting weights for my brain, for my emotions.
that’s when I was like, wait a second. This is really powerful. And I asked, could my husband take the class also? And she said, yes. So I got my husband signed up and my son who was home. He had been on his own and was home because he had recently had some depression and anxiety and was really struggling.
So we did this six to seven week boot camp together. We watched the videos together, but they practiced on their own with the app.
And it was really great. I noticed some really positive changes in me and was able to now have a really easy tool, really easy tool that I had practiced and developed new neural pathways so that when things came up, I wasn’t triggered automatically into my old responses.
Panic Attack
Fast forward. about a month or two after that boot camp ended, and my son woke us up early one morning. He was having a panic attack. I was helping him through that and I noticed he was doing PQ reps. When the, panic would come up, he’d start on his own doing PQ reps and it would help calm him down.
And I was like, wait a second. In this moment of panic, he is automatically going back to these tools that he learned through mental fitness, boot camp training. And he’s applying it. That’s when I knew. Okay. Yeah, this isn’t just helpful for me. It can be helpful for everyone and it has continued to prove to be so.
Fight in car – I don’t need or want to escape anymore, I just calmly address it.
Here I am a year later and last week. My husband and I were driving to a family event. And I was frustrated because we were late. I said something to him and his saboteur got triggered and he’s upset that I was angry with him and in the past, this would’ve like spun and would’ve probably ruined that day, that event.
And instead we live at the top of the mountain. We. Not even a quarter of way down the mountain. And I saw what was happening that my saboteurs were going and his saboteurs were going.
I didn’t say, Hey, you need to do PQ reps. I did some PQ reps. I got my Sage brain involved and calmed down and apologized and just said very calmly.
“I just wanted you to know I was upset. I’m sorry. If you felt like I was attacking you.”
I was fine. And then he was fine and it was a completely different experience than what would’ve happened a year ago. It is experiences like this that help me to see that mental fitness is something that can help us continually.
Through not only our relationships with others, but our relationship with ourself.