If you are anyone like me, you would be looking back at the events, either it happened yesterday, or it would have happened months/years before, and you would be wondering why you reacted like that. At the same time, you would imagine what you could have done differently, how you could have improved the odds in your favour. You would have a bad taste in your mouth from something gone wrong, something that you could have dealt with in a much better way. And lastly, you would wonder what made you act the way you did.
Well, why does it happen to you? You are hardwired to protect yourself and the moment you sense a threat, you would react. This reaction would come from the primitive side of your brain, the “reptilian”. Based on Positive intelligence, there are certain behaviours that would act as self-saboteurs; each of them puts you in inconvenient state. Reaction takes the choice away from you. It seems that you do not have control.
Well, that is not true. Your manager giving you negative feedback is not life threatening. Your friend is making some critics on you, which would not harm you that much. What is going to harm you is a negative response to these events. If you build a bad reputation with your manager, it may impact you and if you lose a friend due to bad temper, you would regret it later. You can justify it by blaming others, but you know that you were wrong. And that is what happens when you revisit the scenario later.
What would be different when you revisit, why other options you are able to come up with then? What really stops you from generating these options in the heat of the moment?
Let us ask another question, how can you choose to respond and not react?
I am going to answer this from the perspective of Positive Intelligence, a discipline developed by Shirzad Chamine - Stanford Lecturer and CEO Coach. Positive Intelligence is a synthesis of recent breakthroughs in neuroscience, cognitive and positive psychology, and performance science.
What does the above-mentioned breakthrough really do?
It allows you to train your mind and create new neural pathways. It allows you to recognize the sabotaging behaviours, stop the reaction, take a pause, and think how to respond. It powers you to use your whole brain. So how does it do all that? By working on those three mental muscles would help you in building new muscle memory!
Saboteur Interceptor Muscle
The first part is to learn about your sabotaging behaviours. Each one of us has different challenges. You could discover your saboteurs from simple and free assessments. Saboteurs are the voices in your head that generate negative emotions as you handle life’s challenges. These sabotage voices would generate both your happiness and performance.
Next, you would learn to expose and intercept your top Saboteurs. You need to detect when the saboteur takes over your mind and take a pause.
Sage Muscle
Sage powers are the one in you that would allow you to handle challenges with a clear mind, and positive emotions. It allows you to respond every situation in a most favourable manner. It allows you to use the full power of your mind. For peak performance, you would learn how to boost all these powers and when to use these powers.
Self-Command Muscle
Even though when you have all the powers, you might still struggle to respond. You should not stress over what you could not control, push away self-doubts, cannot recover from disappointments immediately, and spend little time in anger, regret, or blame. You could do all these things by using mind exercises (referred to as Positive Intelligence) that are innovative exercises, which build up this crucial Self-Command muscle in the brain. You learn to run your brain, rather than allow your Saboteur-hijacked brain to run you.
It is not magic; it takes practice. Positive Intelligence institute have developed an app where you can do all this starting with six weeks of guided program and practise; you can develop these muscles and give yourself the opportunity to achieve your full potential. And you can also measure your readiness with a PQ (Positive Intelligence Quotient) score in the app.
Choose to respond; choose to be successful.
About the Author
Ms. Manbir Kaur is an Executive and Leadership Coach (Professional Certificated Coach, PCC - ICF). She is also a Conversational Intelligence(C-IQ) Enhanced Skills Practitioner and a key-note speaker.