Image from positiveintelligence.com
Have you ever noticed that your inner voice is sometimes not your best friend? Through Positive Intelligence, we can learn to key into our Sage voice — which provides clarity, creativity, and calm effectiveness — instead of the Saboteur voice that works against our best interests.
Positive Intelligence is based on the biology of our autonomic nervous system, which controls the body’s automatic, unconscious functions without conscious effort. The autonomic nervous system has two very different aspects:
- The Sympathetic Nervous System (SNS), which creates responses based on the Fight/Flight/Freeze reactions to fear and danger
- The Parasympathetic Nervous System (PNS), which creates responses based on our ‘rest and digest’ functions when we are feeling safe and secure.
Positive Intelligence, developed by Shirzad Chamine, is a framework that explains human behavior as a mental ‘tug-of-war’ between the SNS and the PNS. This framework posits that from the SNS, we receive negative inner voices called Saboteurs that try to keep us safe by avoiding risk and conflict. From the PNS, we hear a wiser, positive inner voice called the Sage. According to Chamine, to optimize our happiness and success, we need to weaken the Saboteurs while strengthening and developing the Sage.
Positive Intelligence proposes that our performance and wellbeing depend on which side of this inner war is dominant at any given moment. When Saboteurs dominate, we experience stress and negative emotion; when the Sage dominates, we experience clarity, creativity, and calm effectiveness.
Chamine teaches that Saboteurs are habitual mental patterns and inner voices that generate negative emotions, even when they masquerade as being helpful or ‘realistic’. There are ten core Saboteurs identified in the model, including the Universal Judge, the Avoider, the Controller, the Pleaser, and the Hyper-Achiever. Saboteurs push and manipulate us through fear, shame, guilt, anxiety, frustration, and similar states.
The framework also identifies the Sage as representing the deeper, wiser, and more compassionate part of the mind that can stay centered, see clearly, and turn challenges into opportunities. It is associated with empathy, big-picture awareness, creativity, and calm focus. According to the Positive Intelligence framework, the Sage’s core perspective is that every challenge either is, or can be turned into, a gift or opportunity. The Sage ‘pulls’ you into action through curiosity, compassion, creativity, and meaning, enabling high performance without sacrificing peace of mind.
The Positive Intelligence framework teaches you to activate the Sage, and navigate through five key constructive ways to respond to any situation:
- Empathize – Relating to yourself and others with kindness and understanding
- Explore – Being curious about what is really going on
- Innovate – Generating new perspectives
- Navigate – Choosing actions aligned with your values and purpose
- Activate – Moving decisively into clean, undistracted action
Positive Intelligence emphasizes that shifting from Saboteur to Sage is a trainable skill. For example, by regularly noticing and labeling Saboteur patterns mindfully, we can consciously choose a Sage response. Over time, we will build new, positive neural pathways related to the Sage, while weakening old pathways associated with the Saboteurs.
Discovery Seminars is hosting a workshop on Positive Intelligence to help you learn more about expanding your ability to act in a positive, confident, and loving manner, while at the same time reducing the extent to which you live in a state of fear, anxiety, and stress. The presenter, author Joe Montgomery, PhD, will guide you through a powerful, experiential workshop aimed at developing self-love and the ability to be more loving to others.
The workshop is being held Saturday, February 14, 10am – Noon at The Divine Fellowship, 513 Barth Ave, Richland, Washington.
$30/person or $50/couple (bring a friend!)
https://thedivinefellowship.com/discovery-seminars/
Explore more Discovery Seminars at The Divine Fellowship: https://thedivinefellowship.com/discovery-seminars
