3rd Best Decision Ever

The 3rd best decision I ever made was … 

… applying for a grant for the 6-week Positive Intelligence mental fitness program and then deciding to continue on to become a mental fitness trainer and coach. 

There are 4️⃣ reasons why this was such a good decision. 

1️⃣ The first reason is that it gave me the tools to effectively combat my nasty, mean, insidious Inner Critic.

I had tried many things to tame my Inner Critic:

— Weekend retreats

— Writing letters to my Inner Critic

— Reasoning with her

— Thanking her and telling her that I could take care of myself now and she could retire. 

Problem was… 

None of these tamed my Inner Critic for more than a week or two.

On a moment by moment, day by day basis, I wasn’t even aware of …

… what my Inner Critic was saying to me

… the thoughts and feelings that were automatically being triggered in me because of what she was saying

… or how much she controlled my actions and behaviors, and thus, the results I was getting (because our thoughts and feelings dictate our actions and behaviors which dictate our results.)

According to research, 90% of our decisions and behaviors are made subconsciously or unconsciously and we have little or no control over them.

So no surprise … 

My Inner Critic had control over most of my decisions and behaviors.

It’s no wonder I wasn’t getting the results I wanted. I was doing the things I didn’t want to do and not doing the things I wanted to do. … and I didn’t like myself much.

I needed a tool to wake myself up, to increase my awareness of when my Inner Critic was talking to me. 

And I needed a way to break my Inner Critic’s control of my thoughts, feelings, actions, behaviors, habits, and results.

The Positive Intelligence mental fitness program gave me all that and more. 

Now I have a process for catching my Inner Critic and specific things I can do to disarm her.

2️⃣ The second reason it was such a good decision is that it gave me a better understanding of what was going on in my brain.

I learned that there are two parts of my brain – the part of my brain that generates positive emotions and the part that generates negative emotions.

I learned that, because our brains defer to the negative, the negative part of my brain was doing most of my thinking for me by default. I discovered that I am (and you are) hardwired to think negative thoughts and feel negative feelings. It’s my (and your) basic hardwired instinctual survival strategy handed down to us from our ancient ancestors. They survived because of this hardwired survival instinct so they could pass their genes down to us, but this bias toward negativity no longer serves us. 

I learned that I had been thinking the same negative thoughts for so long that they had become habitual automatic thought patterns in my brain – what neuroscience calls neural pathways. 

I learned that I had to rewire my brain – I had to create new positive thought pathways to replace the deeply entrenched negative thought pathways. 

I learned that this rewiring process takes daily practice over an extended period of time. After all, I’ve been thinking those old habitual automatic thoughts for a very long time. It takes time to forge new positive thought habits.

3️⃣ The third reason taking the Positive Intelligence mental fitness program was such a good decision is that it made me feel better about myself.

I discovered that I wasn’t the only one that had an Inner Critic. In fact, we all have an Inner Critic – Positive Intelligence calls this our judge. We ALL have a judge who is pretty much always judging us, others, and our circumstances … and is negatively impacting our self-esteem, well-being, happiness, performance, productivity, and relationships.

4️⃣ The final reason this was such a good decision is that it gave me daily habits to put into place. 

Everything else I had tried gave me insight, but had not resulted in lasting behavioral change. Long-term lasting behavioral change can only be achieved by a combination of 20% insight and 80% muscle building. 

Positive Intelligence leads to lasting behavioral change because it combines AND mental muscle building. 

Think of it like this: if you want to run a marathon, you might buy a book about how to run a marathon – that would be the 20% insight. If you wanted to actually run the marathon, you couldn’t just read the book. You would have to train for months to build muscle and cardiovascular strength. That is the 80% muscle building.

PS: in case you are wondering: The first best decision I ever made was marrying my husband and the second best decision was adopting our son.