How to create a positive mindset through PQ reps?
Positive Intelligence (PQ) is the best predictor of how happy you are and how well you perform relative to your potential.
The PQ is basically our mind muscle and has impact on performance, happiness and relationships and like any muscle we need to train it. Mental fitness is measure between the Sage and the Saboteur.
Sage is the positive mental muscle and we train is by doing PQ reps and my imagining a different, more positive response to a previous situation when we got hijacked by our Saboteur.
The latter, is the negative mental muscle which has the role of, as the name states, sabotage us from fully developing our potential.
I will be going into depth on the Saboteurs and helping you identify them in my next posts but for now i would like to focus on the PQ. Before we can tackle the Saboteur we need to have some tools ready and that is working on our positive mindset and creating a more positive energy.
Doing PQ reps is a quick and, in time, easy way to silence your Saboteur. These can be done in a few different ways:
1. Tactile
Close your eyes and take a deep breath. Hold for 3 seconds and slowly release all the air. Repeat a few more times.
Take your hands and start touching your face from the roots of your hair, down the forehead, gently on your eyelids and down your cheeks, end on the chin. Do that with such a tension that you feel all the sensations in your fingertips.
Let go of any thoughts you might have, take a deep breath and bring you attention back to those feelings.
Then gently rub two fingers together with such a tension that you can feel all the ridges in your fingertips.
Do this for 2 minutes, 3-4 times a day.
2. Through breathing
Close your eyes and take a deep breath. Hold for 3 seconds and slowly release all the air. Repeat a few more times.
Feel the air coming in your nose, feel its temperature and any other sensations.
Feel the air coming our and observe the difference in temperature.
Put one hand on your chest or stomach and feel the raising and falling of your chest or stomach with each breath.
Let go of any thoughts you might have, take a deep breath and bring you attention back to those feelings.
Do this for 2 minutes, 3-4 times a day.
3. Auditory
Close your eyes and take a deep breath. Hold for 3 seconds and slowly release all the air. Repeat a few more times.
Focus your attention on the furthest thing you can hear. What is it? Try to listen to it and focus in bringing the sound closer to you. Keep your attention there for a minute.
Now shift your attention to the closest sound you hear. Try and listen to the sound of your breath, the air coming in and out.
Let go of any thoughts you might have and bring you attention back to those auditory feelings.
Do this for 2 minutes, 3-4 times a day.
4. Visual
This in my opinion is the hardest to do but the most applicable as we are keeping our eyes open and therefore can do it anywhere, anytime, even during a meeting or while on the bus.
Take a few deep breaths and look at an item in front of you - can be your phone or laptop as your read this blog, or a tree outside your windows.
Focus on this item with such a sharp tension that you can see all the texture, colours and shapes of this object. Look in great detail at the changes in shading, the ridges, its movement.
Try not to think about that you are seeing, just observe with deep acuity and let go of any thoughts.
If you are doing visual PQ reps in front of someone, try focusing on something in their face area. Maybe look at their eyelashes, the colours, their movement, their length. Observe this and let go of other thoughts.
If you work in an office with a window, try focusing on an object outside. For example, when i do visual PQ reps i look at the tree outside my window, at its leaves, bark, the squirrels running around and i try not to think about what I am seeing, not to analyse, just taking that in and letting go of other thoughts.
Do this for 2 minutes, 3-4 times a day.
These exercises will help you calm your mind when the Saboteur tries to take over.
In the next few blogs we will be going into some definitions and a full list of posts to help you identify YOUR Saboteur, because if you can identify it, it will be easier to figure out how to control it.
Till next time!
