The Four Intelligences of Holistic Peak Performance

As an ambitious leader do you feel a nagging sense that you haven't yet accessed your full potential, despite your achievements??

Whether it's a plateau you’ve hit in your career, unproductive personal patterns you can't seem to break through, or the emotional rollercoaster of leadership, you can sense there's another level—a more actualized version of yourself and the results you can create—waiting to be unlocked.

What I’ve seen is that regardless of how driven, talented, or growth-minded, the vast majority of leaders are are operating at only a fraction of their potential.? This is because the mainstream approach to growth, performance, and success is surface-level and one-dimensional: it focuses on doing more to achieve more.

But the most optimal way to reach your goals and achieve your next level of growth isn’t about working harder, sacrificing more, or pushing yourself to burnout.

It’s about becoming more: activating and optimizing the vast, untapped potential within you.

The Four Pillars of (True) Peak Performance

What if you had hidden aspects of yourself - intelligences - that, when activated, would dissolve your current obstacles, unlock hidden abilities, collapse time around your goals, create thriving relationships, and connect you to more clarity, self-trust, peace, and fulfillment in all areas of your life?

That would take everything you’re currently doing and amplify it exponentially?

These are the intelligences of what I call the Four Aspects of Self - Mental, Unconscious, Emotional, and Spiritual - and they’re the four pillars of true, holistic (whole-self) peak performance. They’re how you start becoming the most actualized, optimized leader and human that you’re here to experience yourself as, and how you exit the exhausting treadmill of doing more to achieve more.

Let’s take a quick look at each “Self” and it’s corresponding intelligence.

Mental Self: The Architect of Reality

The conscious mind or “Mental Self” is what we typically relate to as “who we are” because it’s the part of us that makes sense of and continuously narrates what’s happening in our reality.? It’s in charge of problem-solving, strategic thinking, goal-setting, planning, evaluating, and other executive faculties.

But it’s important to note that the Mental Self doesn’t operate in isolation, and without alignment with our other “Selves” it will bump into continual barriers in its agenda.? For example: being thwarted by an internal conflict with our Unconscious Self, being controlled by the powerful influence of the Emotional Self, or pursuing goals that aren’t authentic or fulfilling because it is disconnected from Higher Self.

Now that we’ve covered a bit about what (or “who”) this Self is, let’s look at the corresponding Intelligence.

Intelligence #1: Mental Mastery

While you might assume that the intelligence of the Mental Self would be IQ or intellectual intelligence, this is just one of its capabilities that, on its own, can actually hold us back.? For example, over-analyzing a problem we’re trying to solve can often make that problem appear bigger, or block us from seeing the easy solution that’s hiding in plain sight.

Instead, true Mental Mastery is about meta-thinking: thinking about how we think so we can get beyond the ways our thinking is limiting us.? It’s about understanding that our perception, thoughts, and narratives - not our actions - are what actually shape and create our results.

*As a leader: this Intelligence fosters mental agility to quickly bounce back from even the most challenging setbacks, find solutions (and better solutions) in a fraction of the time, and move from a default mindset of reacting to circumstances to actively creating them.

Unconscious Self: The Current We’re Swimming In

We’ve all heard of the unconscious (or subconscious) mind, but did you know that it is 100x more powerful than the conscious mind, influencing an estimated 95% of our daily thoughts, actions, and behaviors?? And that it operates on a completely different agenda and set of rules that creates all kinds of internal conflicts and resistance to our goals?

You can imagine the Conscious/Mental Self (or mind) as a swimmer on the surface of a vast ocean - the Unconscious.? It’s swimming as hard as it can towards its goal (using conscious effort/willpower) and if the Unconscious Self is on board with the goal it will be swimming with the powerful current and carried swiftly and easily to its desired outcome.? But if it’s not, it'll either make slow progress, or stay stuck in place altogether while exhausting itself (and you) in the process.

Some manifestations of this look like: self-sabotage, “upper limiting” (unconsciously holding ourselves back from growing beyond a certain level), and the unproductive patterns we engage in despite consciously knowing better (procrastination, etc.)

Let’s look at the corresponding intelligence of this Self.

Intelligence #2: Unconscious-Self Awareness

This intelligence consists of understanding how the Unconscious Self operates, it’s inherent aversion to the growth and change our conscious minds are continually striving for, and how to meet the conditions necessary for Conscious-Unconscious Self congruence and become the swimmer that’s carried along easily by the ocean current.

It also looks like identifying the internal conflicts and shadow aspects undermining your conscious goals or leadership, and alchemizing them into breakthroughs.? (Breakthroughs at this level are some of the most significant we can experience as they’re typically lifelong patterns/structures that have their roots in multiple aspect of our lives.)?

*As a leader: Unconscious-Self Awareness can be the make-or-break when it comes to being able to fully align yourself with the person and leader you aspire to be, and the vision and impact you desire to create.? This is the Intelligence that allows you to finally release those pesky unproductive habits, behaviors, and patterns that have so far felt impossible!

Emotional Self: The Force that Moves Us

As humans, we are emotional beings first and foremost: information hits our limbic system (emotional brain) first, elicits a reaction, which our rational brain creates a story around to make sense of them.

This means that whether you’re aware of it or not, this aspect of you - your Emotional Self - is influencing you at every level: your thinking, communication, decisions, relationships, and the emotional tone you set as a leader.? Regardless of what you’re presenting to others? - this Self can always be “felt” behind your words and your actions, and it’s either creating trust and influence, or it’s sabotaging it.

And because emotions are the language and currency of humans, mastering them is the key to mastering leadership - both of self and of others.

I call the intelligence of this Self: Emotional Fluency.

Intelligence #3: Emotional Fluency?

Some of what this Intelligence looks like:?

1)? Moving from fear and avoidance of emotions to embracing them and extracting the intelligence they hold; being able to neutralize or take the “charge” out of any situation - no matter how big or upsetting (this is not the same as repressing or bypassing which are ineffective and harmful).

2)? Understanding how to connect at a deeper level with others, and to create powerful emotional responses - the depth of feeling that actually make things “land” and impact others.

*In leadership: Emotional Fluency allows you to step into a baseline of unconditional calm, clarity, and neutrality and how you get off the emotional rollercoaster for good - a super-power for leadership if there ever was one!? And, it’s how you speak the language of influence to become a more effective and inspirational communicator and leader.

Higher Self: Our Built-in GPS?

Higher Self refers to the unchanging, wiser part of you beyond your ego/personality (the default setting we all start out operating from). Where ego lives in a world of constant threat, scarcity, competition, and fear, this aspect of self lives in a world of unconditional safety, abundance, cooperation, and trust.

Which aspect of Self you’re leading yourself, your life, and the people around you from will determine which paradigm of results and reality you create around you and see reflected back to you.

Some of the most powerful breakthroughs with clients have come from the most subtle shift into the Intelligence of this Self; they’ve watched as both team and company cultures shifted towards more cooperation, alignment, and generosity in response to their new choices at this level.

Intelligence #4:? Spiritual Intelligence

Spiritual Intelligence describes the ability to connect to the perspectives and wisdom of Higher Self, access intuition for faster and better decision-making, tap into the well of your creativity, and become the most authentic and aligned version of yourself.

*In leadership: this Intelligence allows you to become a more confident, authentic, magnetic, and visionary leader who creates effortless buy-in, engagement, and impact as a result of who you are being. And it’s how you leave self-doubt, analysis paralysis/decision fatigue, and imposter syndrome behind for good.

**In all areas of life: this Intelligence unlocks unprecedented experiences of ease, flow, and connectedness (or what you might call a more “spiritual” experience).

Tying it all Together

After exploring these four pillars, has your definition of peak performance, potential, or what it would look like to self-optimize started to shift?

Let’s recap a bit.

In order to tap into true, holistic peak performance, you have to:

• Stop looking outside yourself and thinking it’s externals like productivity, strategy, or information that hold the key to your greatness.
• Start getting to know, understand, and activate all parts of you.
• Stop overvaluing and limiting yourself with mental intelligence because it’s the only intelligence that’s openly acknowledged and valued by the society we live in.
• Start getting curious about the multifaceted, infinitely powerful nature of your (whole) being that most of us have barely begun tapping into.

These four pillars, which make up the framework of my M.U.S.E. Methodology, provide a starting point to begin exploring and activating all aspects of yourself and the Intelligences that synergistically transform all aspects of your personal and professional life.

And not through doing more, but through the exponential power of becoming more.

Curious to learn more or explore what kind of impact this could have on your current challenges, goals, relationships, and your overall quality of life?

Send me a message to setup a quick confidential connection chat!