How to Overcome Self-Sabotage

[00:00:00] We pushed ourselves, oh, I as young women, to make good grades, to do all of these things, to do what was expected of us. Oh, and you know, don’t, don’t, don’t let people know you’re smart. Men don’t like that. Boys don’t like that. Yeah. Things look crazy. Things like that. And all of these, these. Thoughts that have been burned into us.

It’s almost like we get to this age and you’re like, could I please quit thinking that way? And that’s what you’ve been teaching me, especially through the Positive Intelligence Program.

Today’s onward podcast episode, my guest Jenny Clark and I talk about how to overcome self-sabotage. You know, our minds are constantly, Sabotaging our potential for both performance and happiness and all of our negative emotions, including stress, are the result of self-sabotage. Jenny participated in my positive [00:01:00] Intelligence Coaching program and we both in this episode give specific examples of how the program transformed our lives for the better.

The Positive Intelligence Coaching Program grows your three core mental muscles within six weeks. You still have to keep exercising them throughout your life, but you really grow them in six weeks. And there’s a breakthrough phone app that delivers personalized daily practices that result in powerful new habits for a positive mind.

Listen to this episode and learn more about how your mind is your best friend, but it can also be your worst enemy. And this program was developed by Shazad Shain, and he’s a Stanford researcher and author of the book, positive Intelligence, why Only 20% of Individuals and Teams Achieve their True Potential and How You Can Achieve Yours.

I know that you’ll enjoy this episode. Hi everybody. Welcome [00:02:00] to the Onward Podcast. This is like the live version of it and maybe I should call it a LinkedIn live stream. That’s something that I’m gonna be working on as I plan out 2021 and think through, you know, how have I been doing things and how do I wanna change things for the future?

And it’s so important to make that time to plan through that, to think through that and not just think. Cuz I’ve spent a lot of my life in my thinking brain, not just think. But actually feel, and with my guest today, Jenny Clark, we’re gonna be talking, I’ll, I’ll be sharing some things and so will she. I’m sure about how she’s changed some of the ways she thinks, how I’ve changed the way I think, how I’ve gotten more in touch with my feelings, which help me so much.

I guess I’ve learned that. I do feel it’s just that I’ve learned to get in touch with them more. So let me bring Jenny Clark, my friend. You ready, Jenny? I hear that noise one. Hi, Jenny. Hey there, Emily. How are you this morning? Fine. I lost my [00:03:00] coffee though. Let me see. It’s right here. Oh, I know. You gotta have everything straight for this to work, don’t you?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I’ve got my Navy poster in the back that you liked. Well, I said that you needed to put that back there because. You know, you’re one of the most understated people I know. When I, I remember the first time I wa I met you and it was in Orlando, and you walked into the room, this beautiful tall woman, and at that point you were the small business program director or Department of Navy and gave up a speech to all of the Florida contractors there, and it was so clear.

What your goals were and how you wanted to let other people participate in that. And now that you’re retired from that position and you created the onward movement, I still see that leadership, that stature that you have always had. And I remember you telling about your parents making you go play basketball in the basement to get ready, but it’s like, what we don’t realize is.

[00:04:00] We are who we were as little children as five years old. And we’ve created all these barriers that people put around us. Yeah. And we’ve gotta basically get rid of them, get rid of those saboteurs to be able to move forward in our lives. So you taught me so much about that, Emily. I’m so grateful. Thanks, Jenny.

I really appreciate that. Yeah. This poster says, gee, I wish I wore a man. I joined the Navy. I know. So I think I’ve told you that my dad wanted me to join the Navy. My dad was career, Navy. My, uh, two of my brothers, three of ’em were in the, in the military. But I, I can remember, um, being in high school and at my age, they weren’t admitting women to the academies.

Yeah. And so, so I, I applied under my initials. You did, and I, I did, and I sent in the information and everything and, and was going down that path, but I chickened out and I wouldn’t, I don’t think I could have cut it anyway. I’m not, you know, I’m not an athlete [00:05:00] in any manner at all. And, but they sent me a, a, a letter that said, please show up with your jock strap and Jim Shortz at Hurbert Field for your physical.

And at that point, I decided to drop it. I love that story. I love that story. Well, it’s funny. That’s why I admire you so much because I know that. What commitment it took, what courage it took to go through that. And I love hearing kind of your life stories about what you’ve done as a result. And you’re right, we pushed ourselves, oh, I as young women, To make good grades, to do all of these things, to do what was expected of us.

Oh, and you know, don’t, don’t, don’t let people know you’re smart. Men don’t like that. Boys don’t like that. Yeah. Things look crazy. Things like that. And all of these, these. Thoughts that have been burned into us. It’s almost like we get to this age and we’re like, could I please quit thinking that way? And that’s what you’ve been teaching me, [00:06:00] especially through the Positive Intelligence Program.

Yes. Before we get into that program, I want to just let the listeners know, the viewers know. Hi Donette, thanks for joining in. Let uh, the people know and, uh, people are gonna be watching this Before you know afterwards as well, who you are, a little bit about yourself. Well, I’m Jenny Clark. I call myself Oprah because I’m the Oprah of federal contracting.

I’ve been in the federal contracting industry since my entire career. And I just have this knack of being able to remember people from all over and remember their talents, their skills, their companies, and what they want. And I like to think of myself as a connector, and that’s what OBT does is kind of builds a community, welcomes everybody in, and then helps them find their way.

So, um, I’m an expert in federal contract. I call it financial logistics, which is pricing strategy, indirect rates and accounting software. And this last week I worked with somebody that was on a proposal and [00:07:00] he needed to understand it. And once I started working with him, I realized his math was completely wrong.

He was gonna weigh, underbid the contract by by 30%. And it’s one of those things where, Sometimes being a math nerd is a good thing for me because I knew that mathematically I was right and that what he was trying to go down the bath, the path of was gonna be very dangerous. But at once, once I explained it to him, I realized, well, that’s one of my superpowers.

It definitely is. It definitely is Jenny and it is not one of mine, and that’s important. You know, we can’t have a be a superpower in everything, so it’s so important to know where our superpowers lie. And accounting and keeping track of numbers is not one of my superpowers. And no wonder I was really stressed when I was a contracting officer because I couldn’t do it.

But I don’t like to do it. I like the other aspects of that job, which is why, you know, I mean, last year when it came around tax [00:08:00] time, like around this year, you know, I had to compile everything for the year. So I determined that this year’s gonna be different. And by July I hadn’t done anything. So, and I, and I knew I didn’t want to, I just didn’t wanna do it.

So I invested in a bookkeeper, which has. Taking so much pressure off me. Well, and the other thing is your bookkeeper loves doing that kind of work. Yeah. And it’s like we, we can’t be good at everything, so we have to choose which things make us happy and which makes things make us stress. Because the other thing that I’ve realized after working with you on this positive intelligence are, you know, the sage and the saboteurs and I was listening to one this morning and he was talking about how we tend to think no pain, no gain.

And really when you’re pushing against something, it’s not, it’s not worth it. Just back off and figure out where you can get back into flow. Right. And I wasn’t aware of it enough at that time. It was just like, well this is what work is and you’ve just [00:09:00] gotta keep pushing through. And I was a single parent and you know, I pushed through when I had my.

Knee surgery when I was a freshman at the Naval Academy. You just push through. That’s what you do. That’s that’s how you make it. And I didn’t realize things could be easy and they can be so much more in ease and flow when you’re in your sage, which we’ll talk about. And when you’re doing something that you love.

Oh, absolutely. And that’s, it’s, it’s being an entrepreneur, being anybody that’s a high achiever in, in business or whatever it is, you’ve gotta find that thing that makes you able to overcome different challenges. Mm-hmm. And when you can sit back and say, okay, it’s almost to me like saboteurs and sages are like the angel on one shoulder and the devil on the right one.

Yeah. And I call ’em left hand Jenny and right hand Jenny sometimes where. If you don’t look at it the right way, you can’t find solutions. Yes. Because your negative is way more powerful than your positive. Yes. So [00:10:00] let’s just start out by saying that, you know, this positive intelligence or mental fitness is another way of looking at something that people may already know.

Like I used to tell my kids, you’ve got your angel and your devil, you know, and which one are you gonna listen to? But this takes it a step further in that. Saying, you know, Shazad who came up with this program and wrote the book, positive Intelligence talks about. We all have a mind, right? And our minds can work for us or against us.

And we have that reptilian mind that is preparing us for danger. And you know, that’s like the saboteur part of our, of our mind that tells us this is that judges, we have a judge. Good morning Maria Hive. We have a judge that judges circumstance. Judges ourselves. Everyone’s aware of that, right? Our inner critic.

And then we have a judge, our judge also part of our mind judges situations as good, [00:11:00] bad, or This is terrible. Oh my gosh. And, and, and then other people, oh, you know, look what so-and-so’s wearing today. Um, or whatever that person has, tattoos or whatever, you know, just judges other people. And we all have that.

And the important thing is to recognize that that saboteur is not really us. And that’s why I say I, I’m not a judge. I don’t say I’m a judge or I’m a hyper achiever or I’m a restless person. I say, I have a judge saboteur. I have a restless saboteur. But in the end, we’re all sage. That’s how we were born.

Well, when you talk about that, it’s almost kinda like when you talk, talk about disciplining children. You don’t say the child is bad. You say that was not a good choice. Right. The behavior, you know, or the choice or, or whatever. And you still, and you still love them, but we tend to beat ourselves up and then not love ourselves.

[00:12:00] And so the sage is, you know, the, the side of our mind, which is a higher energy, which is a different part of our brain. And that’s the part of this program is you start to understand the brain. Different part of our brain that comes from curiosity, empathy. You know, and then when you get, when you’re in this saboteur mode and you’re like all stressed out, what kind of answers are you gonna come up with to your solu, to your quote unquote problem or challenge?

That’s a really good way to explain it because you, when you think about it, is if you’re down and upset about something. You don’t give yourself options. You just go, oh my gosh, this is the worst thing that could ever happen. And you stay in that mud. Yeah. And you can’t see clearly at all, whereas, um, yourself out.

Yeah, exactly. And so, but when you can say, okay, well this is a situation, I need to take a different look at it. Or you hear somebody else that’s going through that same [00:13:00] thing and it’s like, you’re not seeing all the options. Right. Right. You’re not seeing all the options. Hi Joana. So cuz I’m, I’m in another coaching program and it’s all about energy certification, you know, and so I can see now all these things kind of coming together.

It’s about core energy coaching and when you’re in this. Level one, two, or three energy, which, you know, maybe a Maslow’s hierarchy is, you know, you, you’re just, you know, you don’t have the basics like food, you know, water, you know, things like that. You’re at a different kind of energy than when you’re, you know, ha ha have more in your life or whatever, and your life’s going well for you.

And you can be at energy level one, which is kind of like, you know, or different energy levels, which is one is like, or energy two is like conflict. You know, you’re always fighting, you’re in conflict, you’re pushing against, Stuff you’re pushing against life. Hi Osama. You’re pushing against life. That’s a lower level of energy.

[00:14:00] That’s kind of ego driven, and how do you get to a higher level of energy? And what Shazad talks about in this, and we learn in this program is that whenever you’re stressed, anxious, feeling, you know, just like, Ugh, you’re in saboteur mode and you, and we need to catch that quickly. And it’s like, Leaving your hand on a hot stove if you, how long are you gonna leave your hand on a hot stove?

I know I’ve left my hand on a hot stove all weekend thinking about how an interview went. Exactly, and it’s like you need to understand this so you can change your language and change your approach and quit beating yourself up. And of course, these are all things that we’ve learned in the past, we’ve heard, but we don’t know how to implement it.

What’s different about your approach is that you’re giving me practices to implement it and a way to repeat those practices, so I build those skills. Right. And get better at it. And it’s, it’s so, [00:15:00] it’s like an awareness. First of all, what I loved about it was when we, you, you told me about this. We were down in Florida.

We were around a table with Russ Barn, Eric Droy, Joshua, Frank, Michael Laun, you and me. And we were down there to plan my GovCon Summit weekend, right at that week, at that point. And what was fascinating is you said you had to, you guys had to take this little quiz and we all took it and came in and said, I am so bad.

Right. I’m such a loser, I can’t do anything. And we all listed it and realized that doesn’t matter who you are or how successful or unsuccessful you are, everybody’s got the same ones. It’s just a question of how you deal with it. Right. And what I loved about it is, That it helps me explain things to other people too, because I realize when my hyper achiever gets in the way, and what I mean by that is that.

I’m always driven to [00:16:00] prove stuff that people, if I just said it, that would be enough, but instead, I’ll spend three hours on a spreadsheet to prove that I’m right. Yeah. And nobody cares. Right, right, right. And so the assessment that you’re talking about is available on my website and basically it’s free you, it takes like a few minutes.

So you take, you answer these questions and you get this assessment back. My top saboteurs. Are and, and, and notice like some people are really concerned about like the language we use and the words we use. Saboteur maybe have a negative connotation, but I’m not saying I am a saboteur. I’m saying I have these in my mind and I.

My top ones are hyper achiever, which my hyper achiever tells me now, look at all my awards here, Emily. You keep achieving. You’re gonna be happy. You’re gonna the, oh, you got that. Get this, get this, get this. When happiness is really inside of me, and I, it took me a while to figure that out, to [00:17:00] find that happiness.

So that’s my hyper achiever. You have a push and keep working harder, work harder. And then my other one is restless, which tell you, tells me, uh, Go from this task to this task, to this task. And I’m still strug, you know, still, um, working on my, my Restless because I can see my condos a little messy now because it’s like, I started this project and then I had a meeting, so I went to this project and I didn’t get together and clean it up and then pleaser.

Those are my top three. So learning what they tell us what, and, and actually we’re not even aw as aware. This program helps you be even more aware of what they’re telling us. Right Learning and learning that you might say, I don’t have a judge. I don’t judge people. I don’t, I don’t judge situations.

Everybody has a judge, and your judge can be very subtle and quiet like mine is, but. She’s there. Well, I’m glad you brought up the pleaser. I think that as women, a lot of times we were brought up to be doing that and we’d help our moms. We’d follow that [00:18:00] pattern and feel like we’re responsible for everybody else.

And there are people that I’ll go outta my way to please or make happy. They never ask me to do that. They want me to get out of their lives, you know, leave me alone. But I think I’m helping them. I’m so pushed to do that. So the difference with it now, Is we realize where that gets in our way. And what I like about Shaza is his solution is so simple for you to say, stop.

Right, stop. And then you go, oh, well what other options would I have? And you can start to see them because so much of what we do, Is patterns we learned in as young children that we’ve gone through our entire life and we say, oh, we’re supposed to be that way. And that’s, and that’s the path we go down.

But it’s almost like such freedom when you recognize it and say, nobody asked me for that help. Right, so I can stop doing that. And when you [00:19:00] stop doing that, well, I was able to clear my whiteboard of all the to-do list of all the extra appointments and just realize that I can only effectively work with two or three things at a time.

And if I’m trying to do more than that, I just have to stop because otherwise I’ll forget to go ride my bike. I’ll forget to go to the grocery store because I think that all these other things are more important. Then the basics, like, I need to go get my haircut now for three or four weeks and would takes 15 minutes.

What’s the deal? Right. And, and so the first step is noticing and then stopping and then doing a PQ rep, right? Because, and you can read about this, he has, there’s a book called Positive Intelligence written by SRA Shain, and he’s training tons of coaches in this. So you can read about it and you can read a book about lifting weights too at the gym.

But you’re not gonna get stronger unless you do the exercises. And what I like about this, it’s [00:20:00] different than meditation, and we can do an exercise here so the viewers can kind of participate with us. We do it for like a minute, but it’s different than meditation. You know, I can meditate in the morning or pray, or you know, have that nice quiet time.

You know, maybe light a candle, have my journal just feel so relaxed. And then the day gets going. And you know, I’m just throwing it out there. You go to a meeting and someone’s been hijacked by their stickler saboteur, and they’re picking at you for, you know, your slides, or you know, this happens or that happens, life happens, and you’re not able to go back to that calm meditation place.

So how in the moment do you switch from being hijacked by somebody else’s saboteur or your own and reacting? To coming from a place of curiosity, like, oh, why is, why is Jenny stressed out today? How can I approach her, you know, instead of [00:21:00] like, oh man, she’s being nasty today. I’m not gonna, you know, I’m gonna be nasty to her.

So the name of the book is Positive Intelligence. I’ll go get a, I’ll go get my picture of it. But Jenny, why don’t you explain a little bit about the, you know, what the program’s like, which you got out of it. Well, what I loved about the program is it’s so simple. They, I signed up for the program through Emily, and you can go to your, to the website, to Emily’s website and find out about it.

And here’s the deal. They send you an app, you log into the app, and then once it starts, it goes for like six weeks. And like on Saturdays and Sundays, there’s not much to do. It’s almost like a review, but every day something comes out of what you’re supposed to do. He’s given you guidance. So it’s almost like a daily shot, three or four times a day of what to focus on for the day.

And it’s, it’s like, okay, I think I’ll, I think I can pick that up. The one I listened to this morning was about our preexisting belief systems where we [00:22:00] were used to going, no pain, no gain. And whoever came up with that doesn’t mean we have to keep doing it that way. What we’ve gotta do is break our patterns.

The other thing that I really liked about it is you put us in the pods, like small groups. Yeah. So I was in a community with other people and what’s funny about it is you put me in with some power players. Oh yeah, you were in, uh, what’s going on with my hair? You talked about your haircut. I know. And so what, what it was is I was able to have conversations with other peers.

Yeah. That would, would remind me that they’re facing the exact same challenges. You’re not alone. And we’d ha we’d laugh at ourselves. And that really, I mean, there aren’t a lot of these programs that you can go through that you can kind of, you gotta use your trickster energy is what they call it. The ener.

You know, you gotta understand that when you’re about to be hijacked, that you could say, oh my gosh, I better go down that path. Or you could say, ha caught you [00:23:00] again. Stop, stop, stop, stop. Right? And then you got control and power over it so that you’re not jumping into your usual pattern. Because if our usual patterns were helping us, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

And if we knew how to stop our usual patterns, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. No one wants to think this way or be hijacked by their saboteurs. We just think this is the way life is and, and it doesn’t have to be. So yeah, you get these, you get a phone app and you get these an hour’s worth of videos every Saturday.

Like the first Saturday is all about. How to notice your judge because, and then you start to realize, oh my gosh, I am. Judging so much more than I thought I was. And I, you know, and then you start to feel a certain way, and then you learn that that’s not, you know, it’s okay. And then you go into your pod meeting and you realize everyone else is thinking and feeling the same thing.

And you’re connected with people that start on the same day. You do like a group of five to eight, and then [00:24:00] you’re also connected through the app with people that started from all over the world on the same day you did. So you’re getting, they’re commenting on what they hear about their judge, and you, when someone comments, you’re like, oh, I didn’t notice that.

And that’s happening with me too. And so you learn to, then you learn how to catch your judge, and then you learn another week how to know your sage and, and different tools that you can use to catch your judge and switch and create new neural pathways in your mind, in your brain. From your automatic reaction to a much better reaction.

And then the app has this battery like a, like your phone does and it’ll show you how charged up you are. So like if you haven’t done, and we’ll show you what a PQ rep is, but if you haven’t done any PQ reps in the morning and you go right to a meeting and you’re all stressed, you gotta look at your battery.

I remember one day I was talking to, um, cuz when you do the PQ reps, You get credit in the app and then it shows you’ve [00:25:00] charged your battery. And I remember one day, Jenny, you and I were talking and, and you could tell that I was just like, huh. And I, after that c call, I looked at my phone and my app was my, my battery was empty.

No wonder. So, yeah. And what I really like about it is that you, it’s almost like you challenge yourself because it measures for you. It’s not you’re ha not having to do the work to do that. But I always like the fact that when he does a, on the on the SA Saturday sessions, he gives you examples. He tells about his own experiences.

Yeah. He tells how it changed things for him. And during the sessions he also says, Here’s an exercise to do it. Imagine yourself as, and the one I really like is imagining yourself or somebody that you would possibly have a confrontation with, but imagine them as a five year old. Yes. And you know, when you’re, when you’re five years old, that’s the age at which you [00:26:00] have great awareness, but you don’t have the limits that you place on yourself.

We learn our limits. From going to school and we learn and we just kind of fall into that, right? And so that’s what I try to do. So I was getting ready to have a meeting the other day and I was like, oh my gosh. I know how I react to this, these people, because I’ll be in a meeting and I’m trying to head them down a path and I really just want, just do it my way.

Right. Just do it my way, don’t you? Do you have a controller saboteur? I have that. I have that. And so I think, well, I did a pq, I did some PQ reps before I went in there because I had to recognize of the four or five people in the meeting what they, what their reactions were and how many times in earlier sessions.

That will trigger me to speak faster, to speak louder, and to be more demanding. And so when I went through this, this process, before I prepared for the meeting, what I was able to do is instead of me leading the questions, I was able to ask people [00:27:00] what they wanted to accomplish and give them a chance to talk about it, observe, and then come up with something where we would all feel more comfortable moving forward instead of me trying to tell people what to do.

Although I really like telling people how, what to do. Well, that probably works with your relationship with the, uh, your significant other as well, right? Oh my gosh. No, it doesn’t. That’s really been fun because he’s got a stickler one uhhuh. It’s very, very tight. Very, very tight. But we talk about it and he’ll even say that.

Does that sound like a stickler to you? And I’ll say, yeah, it does. I’m not gonna. Spend the entire morning trying to figure out the answer to that question. Let’s just move on. It’s like, so it’s, it helps you to communicate, especially if you’re in a leadership team, it helps you com communicate because you can say, oh, you know, I shouldn’t have said that.

You know who said that? Yeah. What else can we do? Right, right. And then gives everybody the opportunity to come up with better answers together. Because so, so often, right [00:28:00] now, when we go into situations, we cannot control those situations ourselves. We’ve gotta be able to w work with our team collaboratively and find the best solutions.

And if we’re trying to do it from an authority standpoint or be a dictator to it, it’s not gonna work. They’re gonna walk out of the office, roll their eyes like they usually would. And say, well, Jenny, Jenny’s never gonna give up on this. It’s just not gonna work. And. That’s going to in increase everybody’s stress, plus we’re not gonna accomplish the goal.

Yeah. I’ve been there as a leader. I, you know, I can go back and think of times that I wish that I had approached it differently and I can’t change that, but I can change how I do it now. And you know, I have my roommate. From the Naval Academy on a few weeks ago, and she talked about how this really improved her relationship with her husband.

And he didn’t take the assessment, he didn’t go through the program, but she changed her way of being and the way she responded and reacted, and it changed the way he responded. And so they just, Get all, she said it [00:29:00] really helped her marriage. Not that it was a bad marriage, but it’s helped. I improve it.

So another thing is, is that sometimes people go through this with their, as a family or with their teenagers or, you know, as a couple. So it’s really helpful in, in that way. And so let’s talk about what a PQ rep is. It’s basically, you know, so you notice that you’re being hijacked by your saboteur. You’re like, ah, that person is just.

You know, driving me crazy. How long are you gonna leave your hand on the stove and be driven crazy by that person? You can, you can change your mind. So stop. And you do a PQ rep. And so we’ll just do one for a few seconds, few minutes of a minute or so. So if everyone wants to follow along, take a couple deep breaths and close your eyes.

And rub your fingertips against your thumb with attention. Such a tension that you can feel the ridges on your fingertips. [00:30:00] And I’m gonna stop talking in a minute. But what you’re gonna notice is that your mind, you can close your eyes. Your mind is going to wander to something that you’ve, this is a waste of time.

Something that you’ve gotta do today, something that happened yesterday. Bring your back mi mind back. That’s strengthening your self command muscle. So keep rubbing your fingertips. I’m gonna be quiet for a minute. Bring your mind back to notice the ridges on your fingertips. Okay, you can open your eyes.

Another way, one that you can do is rubbing your hands, your one hand down the other, and just feel and notice how that feels. Let’s say you and, and you on your app, you would have, you have some of these exercises where with somebody leading you through them, you have the one I just did. It’s for, there’s one for two minutes.

There’s one for, I think five minutes and one for 15 minutes. So the two minute one is gonna help you with two minute light stress [00:31:00] feelings. The five minute one and the 15 minute one really help build your self command muscle even further. Really help you create those new neural pathways in your brain.

Really help you handle tough challenges. So it’s called in the app the PQ gym. So it’s a gym. You’re gonna go to the gym different times throughout the day, not just in the morning, different times throughout the day. And the app will remind you. And another way of doing the PQ rep is when you’re e eating to just notice the texture of the food.

How many times do we eat and don’t even know that we ate? Notice the texture of the food. The taste, the smell. Really feel yourself chewing or when you’re washing your hands or cutting food in the, uh, kitchen, really notice the te, the feeling of the water on your hands as you’re washing your hands. Or notice the texture of the vegetables as you’re cutting your mind’s.

Gonna water to, oh, I’ve gotta do this tonight. Or, [00:32:00] oh, the kids are arguing, or whatever. Bring it back. And it takes practice and it takes commitment. And, but it’s not a lot. And like my hyper achiever saboteur will tell me, you do not have time for two minutes for a PQ row. But guess what we do? And Jenny, I mean, Judy Brat who took this, she’s got a, um, testimony on my website that talks about how she was able to sleep through the night.

Her saboteurs were waking her up at night, beating her up for things that she wasn’t doing well in her business. She felt, they felt, they felt, her mind felt beating her up. She couldn’t sleep. She’s an entrepreneur. You gotta get sleep. Now she can, she can sleep, um, through the night. So I think that’s awesome.

And, and she started ending meetings five minutes early so that she can do a few PQ reps before the next one. Well, what I like about it is it brings you back to the present moment. It reminds you of what to focus on. And so [00:33:00] often we have all this mind clutter. And it, it’s a way to help you clear your mind so you can be more effective.

And I think you described it really well when you said, when you’re all upset, what kind of answers are you gonna come off of? But when you’re, when you’re comfortable and relaxed, your mind is clear. And you can start to see different options. And that’s really what we need to be able to do. Instead of squeezing and saying, this is all we’ve got.

We want that awareness, that openness, right, to make decisions to make. How many times have you gone to a brainstorming session and, uh, let’s practice this. Jenny, you come, you know, this is something else we learn. Jenny, you come up with an idea and we’re in a brainstorming session to improve something.

What’s your idea? Oh, we’re gonna plan our Thanksgiving dinner. That sucks. That’s a stupid idea. I think what we should do is this, but Emily, I’m just thinking about how wonderful it smells to when Turkey’s cooking and you, she’s like a unique feeling because you’re full family. [00:34:00] Everybody’s better to just go out.

Okay. So that’s like sometimes at work or at home, how brainstorming sessions go, right? Like someone talks over the other person, someone just discounts their idea. You’re waiting for the, you know, for them to just shut up so you can get your idea out or you interrupt them. So now we’ll do the yes. And so, Jenny, you wanna go?

Jenny, what’s your idea? Well, I, I wanna stay with the Turkey theme because I think I’m going over to, I, I know I’m going over to my daughter’s house to have Turkey, but you know, my son-in-law is one of those super chefs. He’s so good, so precise and everything else, it can be intimidating for me. Oh, yeah.

What, what I like about your idea is that you want to have Turkey for Thanksgiving, however, and. It makes me think that, you know, if some people don’t like Turkey and your son is such a good chef, maybe he can come [00:35:00] up with some other things to serve in addition to the Turkey, to have like a bigger option.

You know, I hadn’t thought about that. I hadn’t thought about how much pressure it is on my son-in-law to have to create this beautiful feast. But he’s such a great, he takes it so seriously. He’s got all the right equipment, and it’s fun to watch him. But you also feel like, can I help? Can I help? Because you know, sometimes Thanksgiving dinner is like crazy and other times it’s very precise.

But you have to tell me what you like about my idea. Your idea of being able to come up with some other things to, to cook means that I’ve got some other options of how I could participate cuz it’s important for me to participate in Thanksgiving. That’s the whole idea and what I like about it is that it makes me think about how much I love to make soups.

What I like about that idea is that there’s gonna be different options, uh, for meals, not just Turkey. And everybody gets to [00:36:00] participate and the participation is something that’s so fun for you. It makes me think that, you know, it would be really fun. What would make it even more fun is if you had a whole bunch of alcohol and everybody could be just partying while you’re fixing the meal.

Yes. And that would work if I wasn’t a great for recovering alcoholic. I know, but you have to see. But I have to find my own version of fun. So I like to bring, uh, cider or ginger tea or different things like that to make it. But you can see that what this yes and does is lets us kind of expand the list instead of contracting.

And that’s really what positive intelligence is all about, is don’t limit yourself to what you know in your usual patterns. Right. Let’s create and, and say what you like about somebody’s idea. And then what we talk about is, you know, saying something that’s ridiculous. Like, let’s, I know Jenny’s an alcoholic, so that’s why I say, yeah, and let’s just have a huge party and everyone can [00:37:00] just drink while we’re making Thanksgiving dinner.

I know that’s ridiculous, but it might. Generate a different idea in Jenny, you know, so, but we’re not like beating each other up over the ideas. So imagine how that would work, you know, in brainstorming at at work to solve some problems if everyone’s coming from their sage mode and not the saboteur mode, not having the, the judge, the hyper achiever, the stickler, the controller, the avoider.

The victim like, Ugh, I’m always the one that has to do that. You know, all in the room. Let’s get them out of the room and let’s, well, I’m glad you brought that up. Yeah, because there, there’re what you’re talking about is the different tools that Shaza gives us as part of that positive intelligence program.

And there’ll be days where I will have forgotten about it, but because he rotates the information so constantly in the app and even after you finish the program, you can sign up to stay in, stay [00:38:00] active in it. And I just, every time I think about it, he, he gives me so many ways. Yeah, to reinforce what I’ve already been trained on and Tori remind myself, why don’t I try that today?

Yeah, yeah, definitely. I’ll go over some things that are in that, in that app. So, You know, one, this is fairly new, the app and everything. She’s been coaching on it in a while and he’s realized that, you know, there’s no way he can coach everybody. You know, he wants it to spread and, you know, I’d love to see the whole Navy do it.

Bec the, I’d love to see the Marine Corps, the, the military do it, and he coaches Motorola, Facebook, all these other, uh, places. And so the role of the coach too is, you know, I’m, Significantly trained by Shaad. So I’ve done much more than just the app. I’ve participated in hours and hours and hours of coaching with Shaad as a group, with other coaches going into more depth on the saboteurs and learning more how I can help.

So the six weeks, that initial program [00:39:00] is basically what he calls installing the operating system in your mind. And then he has the GROW Program. And I think when he comes out with, uh, positive Intelligence 2.0 at the end of the year, he’s going to not recommend just letting people sign up for the six week program, because some people do.

And then they’re like, well, I’m too busy. I’ll, I’ll get to the Grow program, and then they just fall off track. I mean, imagine you go to the gym for six weeks with a trainer. And then you say you’re gonna do it on your own, how often do you really do it on your own? It’s so important to have that support and to stay with your pod and to encourage each other, and to encourage others in the app.

But you know, so in this Grow program, you know, some of these topics that you have are. I improve. Improve your performance using the explorer power. That’s one of the sage powers. Another sage power is navigate. Another is empath, em empathize. Another part of the program is, you know, to just kind of play with your saboteurs.

Make it fun. Make it [00:40:00] a game, you know, catch ’em. Ha. Got ya. Um. Love your body. Shift from push to pull. Accept your imperfections. Find the path of ease and flow. These are daily things that pop up in your app with a short video and a reflection. That help you implement them throughout your day. It’s like a daily reminder and you’re, you’re kind of encouraged to go into the app at like nine in the morning, noon and around three or four in the afternoon and not, and, uh, not just wait till the end of the day and be like, oh, forgot to do my PQ reps.

If you do them, would you have been doing religiously? You’re going to be able to be so much less stressed. Well, what I, I really like about it is it sends me a message when they’re open to remind me to go do that. It checks in on me. Yeah. And there’s a journal that you can record your thoughts at the end of the day.

And before, when I would first started doing, I was like, oh my gosh, I gotta stop and do all of this. But it’s so easy. I mean, you’re just sitting there and [00:41:00] go, I, I could take care of that right now. Yeah. And when you do, There. I like the meter where it tells you, you know, overall what number you’re at. And I’m at like four 60.

I think I should be further along cuz that’s my judge. I can always make that decision to go and do more. So there was one weekend where I was kind of stuck doing things that I, I don’t know if I was sitting in a doctor’s I was. I had a bike wreck and I was sitting, waiting to see the doctor to, to look at my arm and I just sat there for the 20 or 30 minutes and caught up on ones that I had skipped cuz I’d gotten busy.

And you know, it helped me have my mindset right and be positive about, okay, well this is not gonna be any big deal. And here we go. So what we’re really talking about though, Emily is having a teaching program, a coaching activity, a way to be participate as part of a community. A community of people that want to continue to improve their skills.

Yeah. Become better [00:42:00] leaders, become better role models, become better mentors and coaches to other people as well. Yeah. Well, so how does it work? Well, let me, let me just say something too. He, he al, we are also encouraged in this program too, look at every situation and find the gift or the opportunity. So you crashed your bike and you were hurt.

What’s a gift in that? What’s an opportunity from that that sucks? Well, it was funny because part of me, I was supposed to do a, a training class that next day and I texted and let her know and sent her a picture of my, I had a bloody lip and, and all this other stuff, and I said, I’m not sure if I can make it.

Because part of me wanted her to say, oh, don’t worry about it. I got it covered. The other part of me wanted to say, you know, this is I was be speaking to a group of women veteran entrepreneurs that wanted to be in federal contracting. And tho I wanna give them encouragement. And I thought those women showed up so many times, [00:43:00] I’m not gonna not show up unless I can’t speak or something else.

And so that morning I text her and said, I’m gonna be there. And so I went ahead with my bloody lip or whatever and went ahead and talked and had a great time because we’ve gotta push ourselves a little bit sometimes to accept challenging situations. And after that, I felt good about myself because I was not so aware of how I looked or any of that.

I wasn’t judging myself on that. And I was actually kind of happy that I said you did. You did your usual pattern of suck it up, be a people pleaser, but you also were able to get the energy from that group. Yeah. And hear their enthusiasm about what they wanted to do, and that is how we lift ourselves, lift our energies, and become better leaders.

That’s awesome. So, and your opportunity was to, to to know that you can go in front of a crowd, look with a bloody [00:44:00] nose or cut on your lip and not be self-conscious and still contribute, you know? That’s right. That’s right. And I think it’s helped me with. You know, saying, when is that thing gonna heal? But, you know, I, it, it’s also funny when you have situations in your life where I, I turned around and just.

Hit hit like that. And you don’t wanna beat yourself up for it and say, well, it’s because of this or because of that. You gotta say, well, that was kind of funny. Yeah. And now I think I can live off that joke for a while, you know, talk about my bike wreck. Well, I’m glad you’re okay. So as we wrap this up, if you’re watching, still watching, and you have some questions for me and Jenny, please post them.

This is the Positive Intelligence website. On, on, on my page. Page and it goes into a lot more detail on the program. You can also set up a call with me to discuss the program. The thing is, is with, um, this program, what happens is you, you sign up a few days before [00:45:00] and the program starts on a Saturday. So by Monday or Tuesday you should have signed up with me.

The program starts. A new program starts every Saturday, so you would be in a pod of five, you know, ideally five to eight people that pod would meet on a Monday or a Tuesday because you wanna meet and discuss the video that came out on Saturday and get mentally prepared for the week. And you talk about what you’ve got out of that video, what your experiences are.

I, you get some coaching from me during that hour long meeting, you learn from others. That’s the best way to learn. When somebody brings something up and you’re like, oh, I hadn’t thought of that, and, and whatever. And you encourage each other. And then in the app, your group is together in the app so you can message each other and you’re encouraged to every day go in and post how you’re doing.

You know? Oh, I didn’t get to the. The, the, the things today, or I did them all, you know, I did all my PQ reps at 10 o’clock at night, I got hijacked. And [00:46:00] so it’s, but that’s the, that’s what happens. And you start to become more aware and so, You, you sign up and then you meet, you know, either on a Monday or Tuesday.

And on my website I have some times set aside for the meetings so you can pick and know. If you come to me with a group of people like these five, we wanna go through it together. We can work to put together a time. My times on Monday or Tuesday are, are filling up starting the week of 10, January, so I still have slots.

Starting, you know, in the next week or two, but 10 January, you know, cause everyone wants to do their new year revolutions and stuff. They’re, they’re starting. So if you’re interested, I just encourage you to take a look at it and, um, sign up. Well, this is a great time forward, treating it like a New Year’s resolution because I will tell you that I’ve studied and done lots of courses and worked with lots of different, um, groups on it.

But this one really was easy. And it, it’s engaging and I love being with the [00:47:00] group and being able to hear other people having the same challenges that I did and how they overcame, and it’s like, it, it gives you that inspiration. If they can do it, I can do it. Yeah. And it allows you an opportunity to really be honest.

With a small group about what you’re struggling with and you can laugh about it. Yeah, and I’ve made a lot of progress with this because I know it’s because of the work that you’ve done with me on positive Intelligence, that I’ve really been able to clear my board, cut out the clutter and get more of my time back because that was the thing I was really struggling with.

And it, I think when we’re going into the new year, we should be thinking about. What would be one thing we’d like to do that would give us some, some joy and happiness and coming up with what that would be and what it would look like. The other thing I’m super excited about, your little play sessions you’re doing in December.

Yeah. Oh yes. We’ll talk about that. So Maria says, what has been the best experience you’ve seen from the program [00:48:00] that has impacted your daily people interaction? It’s, for me, it’s just. The awareness of when I’m triggered, when my saboteurs are triggered by somebody else, and the ability, and I’m not always the best at it.

I’ve, you know, if it’s a big trigger, like something happened with me recently where, you know, I was emotionally abused by one of my hu, my by my husband, my kid’s dad. And so something that happened triggered that in me, and I did not get my hand off the hot stove as quickly as I would’ve liked. And I actually felt myself coming above my body and looking down and saying, Emily, stop.

Cause I got sucked into this discussion that wasn’t healthy. But I did catch myself sooner than I would have. And then the other thing that this program helps you with is not beating yourself up for that, but going back and reflecting and doing a visualization of how you would’ve liked to have approached it.[00:49:00] 

And that’s training your mind because visualization trains are subconscious. That’s training your mind so that the next time it happens, I still could be hijacked, but it wouldn’t be as bad, or maybe I wouldn’t be hijacked at all. So you do some reflections that help you put things in perspective.

Another reflection that we do in this program is to go and take a journey. You’re, you’re closing your eyes, you’re visualizing, so you wouldn’t be able to feel it now, but. Go and take a journey to your well. Well, elder wiser self, your 90 year old sitting in a rocking chair or laying in bed, what would she tell you to do right now?

What would she say about the stress you’re feeling right now? How can you put that, take that what she would tell you and come up with some better options or some ideas of ways to move forward. So I spend a lot of time in my thinking brain. This helps me to get more into my subconscious and my [00:50:00] emotional brain, which helps me raise my energy, which helps me make better decisions.

So I, Jenny, do you want to answer that question? Well, what I think what it really also does is it helps you break the pattern. Yeah. And when you talk about how he says, think back to a time when you did X, you’re, you’re creating alternatives off of that based on your elder self. Who has like a plot, better perspective about it.

But I think for me, the main thing that it’s helped me to do is recognize that when I’m going into a conversation or I’m talking with somebody and I want the outcome to be X, I need to be open to what different ways I can approach that. Mm-hmm. And so it’s made it less stressful for me to go into those situations because I know that I’m going to operate from a higher level.

Starting out instead of going in there negative, whiny, all of those things. And, and many times you see these [00:51:00] patterns in other people, but you don’t see ’em in yourself. Yes. And what this really helped me is to kind of measure it and see it in myself so I could have a different option. Yeah. But a lot of what we do is based on preexisting belief systems.

The patterns we’ve learned, it’s almost like in our brain we’re wired to do something and what this program has helped us do is disconnect some of those. Yeah. So that I don’t automatically go down that path. Yeah. So it’s fabulous for me. Yes. Hey, Maria, I loved your podcast with, with Emily, by the way.

Yeah, that was a good one. Yes, Maria. So, yes, we are talking about, so in addition to this, a positive intelligence program, which just go on the website and take the assessment. It’ll, and the key is if you want me to be your coach and lead you through this, you’ve gotta sign up on for the program on my website.

If you sign up on Shards web, you will not get a coach guiding you through the program. So that’s the difference. And it’s the same price. So, and that’s something to think about. There’s also another [00:52:00] assessment. So there’s one button that says, I think it says, tell me my top saboteurs. And there’s another one that will tell you when you take it, what percentage of the time you’re in Sage versus sh saboteur mode.

And a lot of us are in saboteur mode more during the day than we really think that we are. So, all right. So joining the Onward Movement, the Onward Movement’s, a Facebook group, but when you join too, you can also give me your email address and I can, so if you’re not on Facebook, send me your email address and I’ll hook you up with my newsletter.

But basically what we’re doing is, um, having. Two events, but it’s really one event broken into two sections, so you gotta attend both. But we’re gonna be, um, celebrating 2021. Throughout my life, I’ve never really taken the time to celebrate many of my accomplishments. My hyper achiever and restless saboteur says on to the next.

Great. Go on to the next and we’re gonna celebrate as a group what we accomplished in 2021. You know, whether it be getting a promotion, whether it [00:53:00] be just improving our relationships, investing in ourselves, slowing down, you know, it doesn’t have to be like a work accomplishment. We’re looking at all areas of our lives and celebrating.

Because I know we all have something to celebrate, and then we’re gonna do some exercises that helps us get out of our thinking brain and into our subconscious, and really start to uncover what our dreams are like, what would I love in my life? You may love your life right now, but there’s probably some longing or discontent or some things that you would want differently.

So this is different than setting a New year’s resolution. This is really getting into the, you know, that comes off the top of our head, you know, yeah, I’ll do that. I’ll exercise, whatever, and then we don’t really stick to it. This is really using all sides of our brain, like we’re gonna do some watercoloring and things like that, that I’ve done with another coach that help us get to other aspects of ourselves that we have forgotten about.

As we plan, as we think through [00:54:00] where we wanna go in the next few years. So one event is, uh, December 5th, which is a Sunday night. I think it’s seven to eight 30, and the other one is the 10th. So those two events, um, combined create this one event. So well, I know I’m signed up and you just reminded me I had to go get some watercolors, didn’t I?

You can get watercolors or you can get, you know, markers or something. But water, I’ve got plenty of crayons. I might do my crayon thing. Crayons is fun. Anything, you know, just getting to a different side of our mind. I know you’re like me, Jenny. We’ve just been, you know, in our thinking brain all the time, and how do we access a deeper part of ourselves?

So, well, I’m really looking forward to it and I know what I’m gonna celebrate this year. What is it, my man? Yeah, that’s awesome. I know you, you, you really have, you really, you know, that came within with flow, with ease and flow. Absolutely. The man that you love. Yes, that’s right. And when we’re in that group, you could share how you [00:55:00] did that if you want.

Yes. I, I’ve got lots of things to share. Yeah. Well, thank you everybody for watching. Hi Ruthanne. Thanks for, uh, watching. Thanks, Maria Ngor. Thank you so much. Good morning, Pilla. Thank you. You joined from Nepal. That’s awesome. Donette. Thank you for joining. Virginia. Look, so many people joined Osama. He had to go, but he joined.

It was awesome. I think I caught everybody. Oh, Joel. And I haven’t met you. If you’d like to meet me, just message me on LinkedIn. We can set up a time to meet and then pve. So good morning everybody, and thank you for having some coffee with us and joining us on this conversation. Thank you for listening.

Thank you, Jenny, for being my Onward podcast guest. I greatly appreciate you and I appreciate our friendship. You are. For everybody listening, I hope you have a wonderful, wonderful week. You can check out my coaching programs on my website, emily harmon.com. Let’s move [00:56:00] onward together.