It’s Saturday morning, and I am up. Too early on a Saturday morning, I must say. I walk downstairs to prepare Israeli coffee for myself. Waiting for the water to boil I lay down on my mat and begin stretching. I am in child position and I allow myself to breath. Connecting with my breath, I hear the sounds of migrating birds. I am tuned to the far sounds of an airplane passing by realizing that I can hear the sounds much longer than I ever imagined. The plane must be in Seattle by now! I shift my hearing to the crackling sounds of my home and the sounds of the refrigerator releasing ice into its box, normal sounds that oddly I hear much louder now. Listening even closer I am hearing the second-hand ticking of the clock in the kitchen, tick tack, tick tack. I am shifting in to hearing my own breath, my own heart beating. Do you know that silence actually has a sound? When you are really really quiet you can hear the silence around you. And that silence is beautiful. It is peaceful, yet piercing, it is rejuvenating, it wakes you up. And it also calming, centering you into your own body.
Positive Intelligence in action. PQ reps done. Charged my body. Starting my Sabbath in the right mindset. This is how I use my Mental Fitness practice on the weekends!
I am writing part of this reflection the weekend before the end of 2020. Oh, what a year it has been. I call it “the year of vision that no one envisioned.” This pandemic, to start with! Covid19 (which I suggest should be called Covid192021, but I guess it is too long and might be too confusing for generations after us.) So many people have been lost this year. People who could and should have been alive today. Add to that the demonstration for the essence and morality of who we are as human beings, equal treatment of all people regardless of their color and gender. And since I live in the Northwest of the United States, I will add the fires that engulfed our state, the smoke that we have faced for days, causing us inability to literally leave our home.
And as it all began, Positive Intelligence came into my life.
I have always been a positive person. My book, Moments of the Heart, four relationships everyone should have to live wholeheartedly is about being positive, finding the good in yourself and others, looking for the glimmer of possibilities. I often delve into the essence of the human being and the relationship we have with ourselves as the foundation to all relationships that can follow (the relationships with others; with the “powers at be;” and the relationships we have with the events that happened to us during our lives).
Positive intelligence provided me the practical tools to achieve the results I was talking and preaching for years, how one grows in positivity from the inside out! PQ is all about the inside. It starts with our brains! I have discovered the “eco-system” shared between what I have been preaching for decades and the Mental fitness objective’s; namely the practice of shifting our minds from a negative mindset to a positive one. That was one of the easiest concepts for me to grasp– the philosophy that embodied in it the shared values of love and empathy, curiosity and discernment.
Talking about people’s brains and how we form our thoughts that influence our emotions and our behaviors, causing us ultimately to behave in a certain way and gain a particular attitude, is very interesting, as well as captivating. But the tools to shift our behaviors, to be aware of our mindset, to understand and practice shifting our emotions, is paramount to our feeling of happiness and success in the long run.
And that is what Positive Intelligence has offered to me.
As I delved deeper into Positive Intelligence work, I found several concepts difficult to grasp: First, that our judge is so destructive. That our saboteurs are not the “protective mechanism” I thought I had, but rather the opposite. Having the controller/judge/pleaser is NOT to our benefit. That took me by surprise. I had to adjust to this “new truth.”
In addition, it is not easy to pay attention and connect with your breathing, your thoughts, sometimes interrupting your work in a middle of your crisis, in the middle of your interaction. To stop everything I do, and turn to do some PQ in the gym or listen to the focus of the day and the following audios. But once I did stop, and “interrupt” my day, I began to feel ever so slightly more relaxed, more focused, and more positive of the outcomes that I may be facing, whatever they may be. The daily practice of the self-command muscle, the ability to stop our negative emotions, and shift our brain activity from the survival brain to the sage perspective has been a difficult practiced to get used it and once I did, an enriching practice for my being.
While I love the concept of meditation, in truth I have not taken the time to practice meditation in the middle of the day. EVER. I would, once and a while, listen to an audio relaxing me before I retire to bed. The Positive Intelligence tools, offered in the middle of the day, served as a constant reminder to do it. What started initially as completing the gym work because I did not want to “fail” the project, turned into looking forward with anticipation to hear today’s focus. This has been for me the hardest task to accomplish—the ability to drop what I am doing and listen to the audio. Doing this work made me realized my saboteurs (controller and pleaser) in action. It may sound ridiculous but doing this work consistently over the last few months have “polished” my personality, ‘un-dust” my true self, the person that I am in reality, to be more loving, less judging, more open to other views. A kinder person.
I will keep on working on growing in all the three muscles as I am building my practice. While I know that I will not be a black belt anytime soon, I am hopeful and optimistic that every week I progress! Looking into the future, and at the same time realizing my strengths and talents as a trainer (coming from decades working in the education field), I can see how I can be further helpful to organizations, corporations, executives and other professionals, cultivating positive relationships, sharing what I have learned personally, and the impact it has made of me. While I am excited to share the insights, I am ever more committed to my own self to developing the habits that can be everlasting and thus more beneficial!
My emphasis to my clients is that we do not want to change who we are born to be, the person with all the strengths that make us the unique and valuable person we are, but rather dust off that which we put on ourselves as an armer and lean into the sage perspective that is within each and every one of us. The belief that, in time, we can turn what happens to us to a gift or opportunity is something I cherish and always stive to explore. The practice of developing even greater empathy to us; to the people around us; to explore different and possible solutions without judgment; to innovate other ideas that are born out of a genuine conversation with other; and to navigate our way, professionally and personally, activating our inner strength to lead us through with laser focus intent on the results we wish to have.
If you wish to hear more about Positive Intelligence and how it can impact your life, your work, your team, your relationships, please connect with me!
To Positivity!
Dorice