Are you as MENTALLY FIT as you think you are?

Our saboteurs are responsible for causing us stress, anxiety, doubt, frustration, regret, shame, guilt, and unhappiness.?Their biggest lie is that we need them to improve and succeed in life.?

However, research has shown that we can achieve both better performance AND be far happier when we use our internal sage/wisdom, which helps us deal with challenges with curiosity, empathy, creativity, compassion, and laser-focused actions.

Do you know what your saboteurs are?

Is it time for you to take control of your life, and be less stressed, more productive, and more fulfilled?

Do you want to know more about your saboteurs and how you can interrupt them??Leave a comment or stay tuned for the next post.

In this blog post, we’ll explore Mental Fitness, what it is, and if you are mentally fit or are you standing in the way of your own performance and happiness and also how to grow your mental fitness, especially during challenging times like the past 2 years.

Ever since our first lockdown, many people have taken the opportunity to improve their physical fitness, however, in terms of mental fitness, it’s generally been on a decline.

What comes to mind when you hear the phrase Mental Fitness?

On a day-to-day basis,

• What brings you energy and joy?
• What stresses you out?
• What do you notice yourself experiencing more? Is it joy or stress??Which one lasts longer each time?

Mental fitness is defined as “Your capacity to handle the challenges of life with a positive/effective mindset (one that serves you) rather than getting upset and

stressed.”

To understand what that means, I’ll use a physical fitness analogy – if you have average physical fitness, you can climb average hills and would not get physically stressed. But if you put a mountain in front of you, your physical fitness is not quite enough to scale a mountain – you’ll be out of breath and physically stressed and not able to handle it.

Maybe it’s similar for you in your everyday life – you have average mental fitness that can handle the average challenges without much stress. However, there have been days when you face mountainous situations/life-changing events, like covid, or being newly married, new parents etc., and these are the times that you might require stronger mental muscles to handle.

This talk is all about that – how to build stronger mental muscle so that you can climb those mountains and handle the challenges of the endemic with ease and flow rather than stress and upset. This will help reduce your overall level of stress, perform better, be happier, and have better relationships.

My invitation to all of you today is that instead of waiting for these endemic or challenging times to pass (or go back to normal if there’s even such a thing anymore), let’s get excited about building mental muscles that will serve you for the rest of your life by changing our response to what’s happening – the caveat here is – YOU GOTTA DO THE WORK.

My job today is to show you that there is science (neuroscience) behind Mental Fitness – this is not all made up. The study of mental fitness is known as Positive Intelligence, founded by Shirzad. There are science, research, and data collected from studies done on 500,000 participants of CEOs, Stanford students, athletes, etc. from over 50 countries.?I will not get into the science of it all in this post but if anyone of you is interested to know more, do let me know, send me an email, and I’ll get in touch with you.

Your mental fitness directly impacts your:

1. Peak performance

Whether you’re a young adult who is into sports. The highest peak performance, even in athletes, comes from being mentally fit.

Or whether you’re an executive/working – your effectiveness, efficiency in your work, or in being a leader – success in these areas comes from being mentally fit.

2. Peace of mind/wellness (which we all are becoming more in search of)

This is becoming more the currency of success rather than just pure performance or results.

3. Healthy relationships

Being able to manage relationships with less tension and conflict – all come from building mental fitness.

How do we do this? How do we build our mental fitness? One of the ways we do this is by actively identifying our saboteurs and growing what we call the saboteur interceptor muscle – how you build up the muscle of intercepting your saboteurs and preventing these saboteurs from doing all the damage that they do and all the stress they cause.?

So, what are these saboteurs? We all sabotage ourselves, in our own ways.?They are often so deep-seated into our beliefs and thought patterns that we operate life without being aware of them.?These saboteurs are the ones responsible for causing us stress, anxiety, doubt, frustration, regret, shame, guilt, and unhappiness.?Their biggest lie is that we need them to improve and succeed in life.

According to research data by Shirzad Charmaine, founder of Positive Intelligence, also known as the study of Mental Fitness, there are 10 saboteurs that mess with our performance and happiness, causing you all your negative/unpleasant/ineffective emotions.?Some saboteurs are more destructive than others.?

That’s the good news! You don’t sabotage your work, relationships, effectiveness, or performance in 50 different ways, you only sabotage in 10 different ways and most people have a few of those, not all 10.

One of the keys to improving and strengthening mental aptitude and fitness is weakening these internal saboteurs that generate all their negativity in the way we respond to challenges.?

So, what are these 10 saboteurs??The very first of them is the mother of all saboteurs – The Judge – the master saboteur.

The only saboteur that every human being has – I have the judge, I promise you to have the judge, your parents have the judge, your spouse has the judge – we all have the judge character.

The Judge shows up in 3 distinct ways:

The first one – you probably know already – self the judge – also known as our inner critic.

1. This is the one that wakes us up at 3 in the morning and says “you idiot, why did you make that stupid mistake yesterday? What’s wrong with you? When are you ever going to learn?
2. These are the words that are constantly berating you for either past imperfections or future failures and stressing you out. So that’s the self-judge.

The second is the one that constantly finds out what’s wrong with other people. These are words in you that are always sizing people up – saying that this one is too ugly/stupid/lazy, too this/ too that.?This is probably very familiar too.

3rd way that your judge shows up – you probably are not aware you’re doing that.

1. This is the one that’s constantly finding what’s wrong with your situation and the circumstances of your life.
2. Constantly finding what’s wrong with it so you can’t be happy.
3. One that keeps telling you “You cannot be happy right now because the circumstances are bad, and you can't be happy till this thing changes.
4. Until this thing changes; until you have this; until you buy that.

A lot of the damage to our happiness and stress comes from our judgment.?This master saboteur that everyone has usually has a couple of accomplice saboteurs – sidekicks.

Everyone has a couple of these accomplice saboteurs.

Research shows that there are only 9 accomplice saboteurs and each of us usually has a couple.

The question is WHAT ARE THEY and WHICH ONES DO YOU HAVE? Most people have a few and their names are:

1. Avoider

The avoider focuses solely on the positive and the pleasant in an extreme way. It avoids difficult and unpleasant tasks and conflicts altogether.

2. Controller

Anxiety-based saboteur who needs to take charge and control situations and people’s actions to one’s own will. It becomes highly anxious and impatience when that is not possible.

3. Hyper Achiever

Dependent on constant performance and achievement for self-respect and self-validation. Highly focused on external success, leading to unsustainable workaholic tendencies and loss of touch with deeper emotional and relationship needs.

4. Hyper Rational

Intense and exclusive focus on the rational processing of everything, including relationships. Can be perceived as cold, distant, and intellectually arrogant.

5. Hyper Vigilant

Continuous intense anxiety about all the dangers and what could go wrong. The vigilance that can never rest.

6. Pleaser

Indirectly tries to gain acceptance and affection by helping, pleasing, rescuing, or flattering others. Loses sight of own needs and becomes resentful as a result.

7. Restless

Restless, constantly in search of greater excitement in the next activity or constant busyness. Rarely at peace or content with the current activity.

8. Stickler

Perfectionism and a need for order and organization are taken too far.

9. Victim

Emotional and temperamental as a way to gain attention and affection. An extreme focus on internal feelings, particularly painful ones. Martyr streak.

At this point, you might be thinking:

• “Oh this nails it, my parents have the hyper rationale. I get it now, I’m going to tell them.”
• “My spouse has the controller, so obvious! Which drives me nuts! I’m going to tell her/him that.”

While this is very tempting, I don’t encourage you to be focusing on the saboteurs of others right now.?What I’d love for you to look at is:

• What are your saboteurs?
• How do you cause your own stress?
• How do you impact your relationships, performance, and effectiveness negatively?

I guarantee you this is how we all self-sabotage – a combination of our judge and a couple of the accomplice saboteurs – is how we sabotage your wellness, health, performance, effectiveness, and relationships.

More importantly, I cannot stress this more – is to not feel bad about it nor judge your saboteurs in return – “I must be a horrible person for thinking this way.”?Because we all have it and will continue to have them.?What is important is that we become increasingly aware of our saboteurs so that we can start doing something about them to interrupt them.

So, how do you know what are your saboteurs?

If you want to get more insights about what your top saboteurs are, you can find the free online saboteur assessment on my website.?

It’s an online assessment. In 5min, you’ll be able to find out what your top saboteurs are and then you can start to focus on these top saboteurs.

The way I help my clients in this program to become better at their saboteur interceptor muscle is I give them a description of each of the saboteurs so that they can begin to see the ways their saboteurs sabotage them.?

It’s like helping them create a “wanted” poster for a criminal so that they can identify and catch them faster.

The more you recognize the lies of your saboteurs, the faster you can intercept them when they show up.

What I’d like you to think about is – in your life until now, how have you been motivating yourself mostly?

Have you been pushing yourself through stress, fear, anger, or a big one is guilt? – I have to be interested in that promotion otherwise my boss will think otherwise of me. Or “I need to be strong and do everything myself and be the supermom that everyone thinks I am.”

If yes, then it’s very highly likely that your saboteurs have been running the show.

Because the way your sage/wisdom will motivate you or others is through emotions like empathy, curiosity, etc., and achieve the results you want with joy and fulfillment.

They both can move you forward but very differently and have different outcomes.

At this point, a very important question that usually comes up is:

If my negative emotions are caused by my saboteurs and saboteurs are bad for me, are negative emotions good for me?

Doesn’t stress give me my performance edge? That’s why I motivate myself that way. Whom will I be without my negative emotions?

This is a very important question – which is the same as asking:?Are my saboteurs really not good for me?

Is pain good for you??What do you think?

Hopefully, your answer is yes. Why??Because if I were to put my hand on a hot stove, the pain is good for me otherwise I’ll keep my hand on the hot stove and end up burning my hand to the bone! So yes, please feel pain because it tells us something important so that we can take the necessary actions.?

The next equally important question I’d like to ask is – for how long?

For how long would you like to feel the pain of your hand on the hot stove before you get the message and remove your hand?

Hopefully, your answer is a split second! The moment I feel the pain, I’ll take action and remove it!

That’s the same with negative/unpleasant emotions – is it good for you to feel stressed about something that might be dangerous? Eg. covid? Yes! If you don’t feel stressed about it then you will take no precautions and expose yourself to unnecessary risk/danger.?

Or you might be in the middle of an important school/work project, and something is messed up.?Is it good for you to feel stress, frustration, disappointment, etc.??Absolutely! Why??Because if you don’t feel any of that, you’ll continue to do the same thing and the problem you have will get worse.

Then the same question also applies – For how long would you like to feel stressed, upset, frustrated, shame, guilty, etc.??Hopefully, your answer is also – for that split second – as quickly as I get the message, I take action!

There is a purpose and value for all emotions, whether they are positive/negative/effective/non-effective.?It is so that you wake up to something that needs your attention but the moment that the information/message is delivered, then if you stay in that emotion – your saboteurs create a vortex of unpleasant emotions – firing up the part of your brain that keeps looking at what else can go wrong rather than taking actions to resolve it.

So, do your saboteurs run your life??Is it time for you to take control of your life, and be less stressed, more productive, and more fulfilled?