Your Mental Fitness = Your Business's
In the last few weeks, I have been immersed in learning about Positive Intelligence, which is a Mental Fitness program designed to help you boost your self-mastery over your self-sabotage.
This has brought to the forefront the many saboteurs I have and who are running interference even more so than, or in cahoots with, the other parts I’ve spoken about before.
To recap the four parts: Your Beginner Self, Your Amateur Self, Your Professional Self and Your Personal Self, are all parts of a whole, that I recognize as being integral and influential in my being an entrepreneur.
The needs of which can hijack the progress you are wanting to make, if the wrong part of you is making the decisions.
This training created acute awareness of my number one saboteur, that can run amok in life and in business, The Judge.
Rest assured, the judge doesn’t work alone….
According to Shirzad Chamine’s findings, the Judge, is universal, and is backed by nine other saboteurs, with varying levels of prominence which are unique to each of us.
This information has added another layer of understanding, coupled with tools to send the judge and their cohorts, back to chambers.
My Unique A-Team of Saboteurs
It has been shocking to recognize how much time I was unconsciously in ‘self-sabotaging mode’, since this program has had me attuned to catch myself doing it.
Here is what I have observed about my dominant personal saboteurs:
The Controller: shows up when I start playing with an idea for a post, dampening my creativity because it isn’t good enough or right.
The Avoider: Likes to hang out with the controller, and does it’s bidding making me procrastinate in my writing or content creation.
The Stickler: shows up when I have written (even a paragraph) because it’s not perfect, EVER.
The Victim: gets activated by the all of the above, believing nobody will read what I write or like what I post. (very needy)
Support Saboteurs
Others which are not leaders but still active are:
The Restless: Besties with my Beginner Self, because it loves to learn new things, like about mental fitness or any other training that feels akin to what I do.
The Hyper Achiever: Which used to be a big part of my Personal and Professional parts, now hangs out with my Amateur Self, pushing me to perfect what I’ve learned; wants to just practice and give everything away for validation instead of income.
The Hyper Vigilant: my personal self has been training in vigilance since 1998, when I became a Mom, constantly scanning the horizon for storms of the mental or emotional variety, and pulls the plug on all my other parts especially my professional self.
The Hyper Rational tag teams with The Pleaser: Loves to paint the front of my biz door with Beige. Colours my communication and content with it too. Mantra: Best to edit my language so not to offend anyone.
Force vs Flow
Have you ever had to force yourself to get a task done, that needs doing?
When the task that isn’t on your favourite to-do list and you have avoided and procrastinated it; sometimes forcing yourself to just do the thing—can get you into flow state.
The resistance fades away (eventually), and voila you have your receipts organized for your accountant, and afterwards may think, “That wasn’t that hard after all.”
Have you ever wanted to bottle up what it feels like to be in flow?
So you could take a swig when needed?
The liquid courage, in this case, are tools that you may already use for nervous system regulation. Such as focused breathing, noticing and naming things around you, physical movement, or tuning into your senses.
Simple and effective techniques that I, personally, never considered adapting to the times when I was frustrated or stuck, when doing tasks that I was having to force myself to do. 🤦🏻♀️
Flow state isn’t as illusive as it was a mere two months ago, since using tools I already had regularly and pre-emptively to get into a flow state seems like a no-brainer now, and I’m grateful.
Inquiry:
Want to learn about your saboteurs?
Fun Fact: My Judge came in HOT! When I realized I hadn't updated or cleared the email header--but then I laughed!