Dagmara Asbreuk (00:00.328)
Welcome to the Extraordinary Leadership Podcast. This is a place for you if you aspire extraordinary. Fueled with inspiration, meaningful conversations and valuable insights that are going to support your journey of becoming an extraordinary leader and making truly a difference in your organization and living a desired life. My name is Dagmar Asbreuk and I am your host in this show and I'm also a founder and CEO of Extraordinary Leadership. I'm bringing you exceptional leaders.
exchange makers from different industries sharing their stories and above all what made them more successful, impactful and happy. Also sharing my discoveries from navigating and leading 15 years in a corporate world, building my business and empowering senior and executive leaders to go to their next level with their organizations and in their lives. I hope that you are excited and ready. So let us begin.
Only 20 % of individuals or teams are reaching their full potential. These are statistics from positive intelligence. And do you know what is the root cause of it? Our mind. Who is our best friend and the worst enemy? Playing a lot of games and mind sabotage that is unnoticed, unconscious, on autopilot, playing in our subconscious with many different narratives developed over the years.
and sabotaging our potential, our success, our performance, our well -being, our happiness, our fulfillment, our impact. So how do we take the driver's seat of our mind? This is exactly what we discussed in this episode together with my dear guest, Natalie Siston, who is the Director of Customer Success at Positive Intelligence. She's Leadership Development Coach and
speaker and out of a book, let her out. Together with Natalie, we are unpacking for you the transformational power of a framework that is called mental fitness that has been developed by Shirzad Chamine and Positive Intelligence. This backed up by science framework has been truly transformational for me and for many of my clients. Today in this conversation with Natalie, we
Dagmara Asbreuk (02:24.194)
Helping you to understand what is the root cause of those different narratives, how you can develop the capability to catch, those narratives, and only then access a far more wisdom and resources within yourself so that you can step into a more potential version of yourself, making a big impact, being more successful and happy at the same time. And obviously bringing that to your teams, enabling your organization and teams.
thrive. thank you very much for joining me here today in this episode of Extraordinary Leadership Podcast. I am so delighted to be here. For sure. Yeah. And I'm honored to have you here as well. Starting with you. And maybe you want to give us a little bit of a background of who you are, what you do and where the mental fitness even come in place to
Yeah, so I will start with the titles and the formalities. I am the head of client success for Positive Intelligence, and I'm also myself a coach and a speaker and an author. And I like to live this fully blended life where I'm living a mentally fit life and also serving the clients and audiences in my sphere the best way possible. I'm located in Ohio in the USA.
And I have been working with the Positive Intelligence Organization since 2020. Prior to coming to Positive Intelligence, I was leading the coaching function at a large Fortune 100 company in the financial services sector in the US and happened to through a series of very fortunate events get connected with the leaders of Positive Intelligence. First and foremost, Shirzad Chamine our founder and CEO. And second of all, Bill Carmody, our chief coaching officer.
And I was able to move from that corporate coaching role into helping positive intelligence both build their coaching program. And then since 2021, build and implement in lot of different areas in our business, a lot of our strategic business spaces. And I'm quite frequently out on stages and on the airwaves like we are today to talk
Dagmara Asbreuk (04:34.312)
different influencers and audiences about what we're up to at Positive Intelligence so that they can experience the transformation that both you and I have both personally experienced. And as you alluded, the clients that we serve also have experienced. Yeah, that's amazing. Thank you very much. And yeah, I'm happy to have such an experienced podcaster and speaker, right? In this show as well.
Yeah, so let us start unpacking. Let us start unpacking of what is mental fitness? What is positive intelligence? Apart from, both of us, you and me hold this book here close to us of Shirzad as well. So how do we unpack this conversation? What is mental fitness? Yeah, it's we have to start with the definition that we use of mental fitness, which is the ability to handle life's challenges from a positive rather than negative mindset. And
for the learners in the audience, when you really listen to that, it seems very obvious. Yes, I just need to think positive. I need to be happy. I need to read an affirmation and all will be well. And you and I both know through the work and the science that it's not just that easy because we have these neural pathways that we have, we have grooved into our brain. And typically for most of
We have the groove going to the negative thought pattern of our brain, which we call saboteurs at positive intelligence. And the positive side of our brain requires some rewiring. And that's, you know, the journey I think we're going to take your audience on today of how do you actually, you know, lessen those grooves and those, that wiring to the negative thought patterns in your brain. And how do you strengthen those, that neuro pathways into the positive thinking region of your brain, which we call Sage.
So, you like I said, if the definition were easy, you and I both would not be employed. And because of biology and neurobiology, we are wired the way we are and we can rewire. And so that's the exciting part about the work that you and I get to do in the world is to train people how to rewire their brains so they can actually make that definition true for themselves. Yeah, absolutely. And
Dagmara Asbreuk (06:58.132)
I love that you mentioned about rewiring and pathways and that all this basis on science, which is welcome also, definitely for many people to hear because sometimes, you know, there are so many suggestions, advice, frameworks and all of that. How can we be more happy? How we can be more successful, impactful, how we can thrive with themes and all of that. And I love that you mentioned this aspect of just let's be happy. Let's take
this fake positivity, right? It doesn't work so easy, isn't it? It's this conditioning, this programming, right? And there's no real pathways, part of our subconscious programming actually developed over the years from the early on, right? That we are kind of unconsciously stuck in, right? It's like being in a box, so like to see that we can't see actually because we're in this box.
You're exactly right. It's in the way positive intelligence is great is it actually asks you to lean into the emotions you're having. Toxic positivity is when we're shaking our head yes, when on the inside we're screaming no. And that's not what we're up to with building our mental fitness through positive intelligence, but instead being able to recognize when you're having the negative thought, when you're experiencing the negative emotion, when you're feeling that in your body,
it's to say, okay, this is actually helpful. This is helpful for me to recognize and we can start to put labels on those. And so hopefully we'll get to talk about saboteurs and how you label them potentially make it a little light and fun. So it's not so heavy and deep. And so then you can come to the other side into those positive thinking regions of the brain. So we absolutely have to wipe away the idea of toxic positivity or this won't work at all.
Yeah, exactly. And since you were mentioning, you know, about saboteurs and Sage, let us maybe unpack, you know, more around that operating system or framework, lots of however we want to name it here based on research, of course. Let us talk about what are the saboteurs? What is the Sage? What is it all about? Right. So, so what Shirzad did is he did a significant amount of research to uncover
Dagmara Asbreuk (09:18.708)
what is truly getting in our way from our peak professional and personal development. And the three elements of this framework are that we need to strengthen our saboteur interceptor muscle, we need to strengthen our self -command muscle and our sage. And through the level of research he did, he was able to boil down our top negative thinking patterns and our
positive thinking patterns. So there are 10 negative thinking patterns and there are five positive thinking patterns or we call them sage powers. And so the 10 are, all, every single one of us has a saboteur called the judge. And every day, all day, the judge takes its job and responsibility to judge ourselves. So the finger pointing inward, blaming ourselves for everything that's going wrong in the world.
It's also pointing the finger outward and judging all the others in the world for everything that's going wrong in the life. It could be a specific other person or just the generalized other. And then finally, judging the circumstances of the world and conditioning our happiness on what that judge of circumstance is saying. I'll be happy when I get the new job. I'll be happy when I live in the new house. I'll be happy when I'm in the happy relationship. And it doesn't allow.
to be fully present and happy with today. So that, so the judge voice, we all have it. For some it's super loud and very noisy and other people it's very, very sneaky. And I say it like sits on your shoulder. It's, it pretends to be reassuring every day when really it's keeping you small. So that's the master saboteur called the judge. And before we kind of talk about these other nuanced nine accomplice saboteurs, I'm curious what you would add.
about your learnings of the judge. Yeah, that's a great summary. And it feels like, yeah, that's nothing special. But it reminds me of a recent coaching conversation with the first week of discovering judge, even in the first days of discovering judge, that was like mind blowing awareness. Wow, I am attaching my happiness to circumstances. That's kind
Dagmara Asbreuk (11:35.654)
when you see it, when you experience that, it's a kind of new awareness, a shift already happening in that moment. Because it's like, wow, because I'm always waiting for something to happen so that I feel more happy, I feel more fulfilled. It's landing for everything that you just mentioned. I feel more confident. And we then are in this paradigm of doing more and chasing, chasing, all of these things to bring what we really want.
And yes, the three narratives, mean, these three judge sides, right? They are so much present in, of course, every of us personally, in my clients. is usually when we think about leadership scheme, it's one of the main contributor conflicts to lowering down trust and psychological safety to, it's the main blocker I see in empathy and compassion because it's actually on opposite end.
right? And fueling this fear and so many organizations and team are stuck then in this paradigm of judgment and blaming who did that and obviously based on fear. So the judge has only the judge of the stand is to say, which is within all of us, has an immense negative impact. if we lead it, leave it on unattended or not, we don't, if we don't think command and control or driver seat, I call it. And of course, I think for me, the biggest and for,
It was the revelation of the circumstances because this is where gift rights of sage perspective comes later into place. We're again, going back to business, something doesn't work out. You have a target. We don't reach the target. You have a plan. Things do not go according to plan. It happens often. Now how we go around that is different. We just literally embrace and most people do embrace unconsciously the lens of a judge.
It's like, it's bad. It's a bad situation. So we need to do what we need to do now. We need to pull all the strings, work harder. And let's say maybe sometimes we see who is the blame and, and it's completely different perspective when we talk about, we bring a sage perspective into that, but we are unaware. think what I see is this unawareness of being trapped in something that absolutely do not serve us or our teams and organizations.
Dagmara Asbreuk (13:55.148)
And one of the greatest resources that we have is our saboteur assessment where you can go and actually take a five minute online assessment to uncover your accomplice saboteurs. So once again, all of us have the judge, but based on how you respond to this assessment, it'll help point out, who's playing along with the judge? And most of us have one, two, maybe three, what we call accomplice saboteurs.
that have names like the controller, the hyper achiever, the pleaser, the stickler, hyper rational, avoider, victim, restless. These are the characters that join the judge on the journey of blaming self others and circumstances. And it gives, so it gives the judge a different character, different flavors, which is what makes
this work so a fascinating, but also challenging because we are all a mixed bag of a different sized and mode of judge playing along with different size and shape of accomplice saboteurs that guess what will shift and jive depending on your, situation you're in and depending on the stage of life you're in, it's, it's, know, at a carnival, you play the game whack -a -mole where it's like one goes down, one comes up, one goes down, one comes
You and I are never gonna rid ourselves of the judge and these accomplice saboteurs. We can work to tame them, which we will definitely talk about today. But the first step to your point is shining a light on these, on the judge, accomplice saboteurs. Because if we keep them in the dark, we are unconsciously hurting and self -sabotaging ourselves and then everybody around us, the people we work with, the people we're in relationship with.
our children, everybody around us suffers when we can't see what harm these saboteurs are bringing into our lives. Yeah. And maybe it's time to share from our side, maybe one two episodes. I'm willing to also share here. What are your key saboteurs, Natalia? And then maybe how one of them has been playing in your life that you discovered. That was really when I discovered it was such
Dagmara Asbreuk (16:16.088)
such as maybe mind blowing, know, the perspective awareness, first of all. I so one thing I will point out to your audience, I know they're all leaders, so I'll give the advanced concept and that's to know that these saboteurs actually are derived from your greatest
but it's when your greatest strength is taken too far and it's pulling you into stress and it's pulling you into negative emotion. So the job we have is both to identify the saboteur that's in our way. And then also a lot of people want to be like, I want to hold this around. I want to keep this. This is a good thing. And actually like, no saboteur is a negative emotion, not healthy for us. What is good is to remember where's the strength of where this came from. So the story I'll tell you is around my stickler saboteur.
So when I first started this work in 2020 off the charts from a stickler saboteur, mean, everything had to be perfect. I'm the type of person who would wake up in the middle of the night and wonder if the email I sent at 2 p that day had an error in it, which would then lead me sometimes to get up in the middle of the night, go into my bathroom, get my phone out, go into my send email box and check. And you know what happened?
99 .9 % of the time there was absolutely nothing wrong with that message. And in the 0 .1 % of times when there was, it was an easy revert or a non -issue. So that's like, that was how the stickler saboteur really affected me. affected my sleep. It affected my ability to be productive the next day then. And so through the work that I've been able to do, I've minimized that because what I've recognized is the strength
of that saboteur for me is the desire for high quality, the desire to put forward a really great work product. And so what it does now is I'm the spot the error person. I can look at something and just notice the quote flaw. And instead of that stressing me out now, I actually lean into that and say one of my gifts.
Dagmara Asbreuk (18:20.734)
is I can be the person who reads a contract and see what's missing, or I can be the one to look at a final product and say, okay, here's the thing that's missing. And I can do that with kindness. But once again, didn't start that way. It would have come off as mean, it would have come off as arrogant, it would have come off as you're wrong, it would have been the blaming, or pointing into myself, how could I have been so stupid? How could I have caught that error? So only through the work I've done have I been able
hone in and grab onto the strength, which is desire for high quality work. Yeah. And I like to mention that because at the end, what I'm hearing, you know, it allows you to get more balanced, right? That's the way I see this work as well. And to quiet this nasty voice that is, of course, putting us down and causing a negative impact in organizations, in lives, impacting all of that. And, and, elicit.
the good part of it, right? Which you just mentioned. So it's literally also this ability of recognizing which part of me is now in a driver's seat and which is the voice of the saboteur, is the voice of sage, right? So also seeing that, so that's important. And for me, it's transparency and sharing here, one of the biggest was hyperachiever for a long time. I have a colorful band, controller was there, even victim was there, which is not really so typical, right?
And as you say, they come and go in a different phases as well in a different situations that can be triggered in different situations. So yeah, from the classical hyperachievous saboteur lens, that's this constant pursuit of what it was right into this achievement and connecting to what you said even before. So trying to grab the next one and next one so that you are finally, I don't know, happy and finally, you know, successful, finally, maybe confident, finally recognize finally this, finally that.
And this finally, of course, never happened. And one of the biggest, let me say, drawback of that, of living in that paradigm or listening and buying into this narrative of a hyperachiever is of course you become to some extent workaholic. have problems with having more balance in your life and relationships you feel empty, disconnected at some point. So he has a lot of damage and not to mention stress.
Dagmara Asbreuk (20:40.598)
elevated. And I think the most fascinating is, and I see it by many leaders because many leaders have a hyperachiever. Somehow it's kind of a lot of them, at least in my clients. It's this attachment where I understood this attachment between results and self -worth, also value, which was a really big piece for me and for any person I work with because the reason why...
We triggered the reason why we are in this paradigm. We know we don't want to be there, but we always are trapped. It's because of attachment of results and whatever we plan or targets to our sense of value, a sense of worth. So we attach it to identity. And then we have those crises, right? And make a stories about ourselves that we are failure and, so detaching from that brings so
knowing how to navigate that voice and eliciting the good parts, picking up a good part, which is a drive, which is self -motivation. And of course then become much more inspirational. So liberating ourselves from this shade that or the negativity that the solitaire brings. It's actually, like that you brought it up. this narrative of you again, then we can shine the light. Now we can see really the strength in fullness, would say. Beautifully put, beautifully put.
So now I feel we unpacked with our personal examples, the first part of the story, which was saboteurs, which I hope audience getting even interested into, okay, where can I take this test? We'll be dropping the link. It's just five to seven minutes. Yes, it's free of charge. So no worry to pay for that. And it's going to give you some clarity. What is the next thing? And you mentioned about emotions. think that's what...
let you drive. That's the second important thing. The next piece of this system is building your self command muscle. And this is where the rubber meets the road. It's where the work happens. this is where the person who loves, so anyone listening today who loves to learn, you love reading books, you're the person you can always name the next trend. Yay. Love that. Love that.
Dagmara Asbreuk (22:58.101)
How much do you actually put that to work? It is the most important part of moving from this negative thinking patterns into positive thinking patterns. And the way we do this is by a practice called PQ reps. I mean, do you want to just do one together and invite your audience to the extent that they're why not? So we'll do -
Minute or so of PQ reps, I'll guide us through this. so for those of you listening, if you are, you're able to follow along with the prompts, go forward, if not pause and come to us when you're in a place where it's safe to do so, or, or adapt to your, to your surroundings. So what I'm going to ask everybody to do is whatever is connected to the earth, really feel that presence. If you're it's your feet on the ground, your seat on your chair, just feel.
Feel the weight of your body sinking into the earth.
Dagmara Asbreuk (24:01.958)
and take two fingertips and rub them together with such attention that you can feel the fingertip ridges on either
Dagmara Asbreuk (24:20.52)
And if you are able and it's comfortable for you, either close your eyes or gaze
and listen to the sounds around you. Particularly listen for the farthest away sound and focus on
Dagmara Asbreuk (24:45.864)
Now focus on the sound that's closest to you.
Dagmara Asbreuk (24:56.104)
If you haven't heard the sound of your own breathing.
Notice your breathing by taking one deep inhale.
and one deep exhale.
One more final time, inhale.
and exhale.
Dagmara Asbreuk (25:22.942)
There we did it. That is about two minutes of PQ reps, PQ standing for positive intelligent quotient and our short term. But if we were to put your brain under a functional MRI machine right now, we would see slightly, slightly, ever so slightly, the neural pathways to the negative thinking region of your brain would diminish just
teeny, teeny tiny bit, and the neural pathways to the positive thinking regions of your brain would brighten just a bit. And so the idea is what's happening right now is you have to be fully present in your body. You have to be fully present in that sense, in that the feeling of your feet on the ground, the fingertips rubbing, the listening to the sounds. As you can imagine, you can do these with any senses while you're eating food, while you're holding a warm
mug of tea or coffee. It's being fully present in the moment. it, unlike, you know, meditation and mindfulness, this doesn't require you to go sit in a dark room for 20 minutes in quiet. It's, it can be done in as short as 10 second increments. You're in the middle of a stressful situation. You rub your fingertips together. You're stuck in traffic. You feel the steering wheel under your hands.
you are, you know, you're in a tense conversation with a family member and you can just feel, you know, feel your feet on the ground. It's all about connecting to that sense in your body, because when you're connected to that sense in your body, you cannot be in that negative thought swirl. You have to be fully present. And so the beauty and I am not a doctor, I'm not a physician. I don't prescribe anything, but from a PQ perspective, I do is I tell people,
Do PQ reps when you wake up and at breakfast, lunch and dinner purposefully, build in the time in your day to do these four times, two minutes at a time. That's what ends up over six to eight week period of time committing to that level of practice, eight minutes to 15 minutes a day. That's when we see significant changes in an MRI after eight weeks of practice.
Dagmara Asbreuk (27:41.998)
and you can talk to Dagmar about doing a formalized program to make it easier for you. Please go to her. She'll talk to you all about it. That's what we also, do a positive intelligence, but the most important thing to know is this doesn't take a long time and you can do it, you know, throughout your day, just as part of your schedule, but also doing these in those moments of high stress when you feel that emotion coming on, because what happens, it prevents that saboteur hijacking from happening in the first place. Thank you for,
giving a space of presence or a moment of presence because that's what the speak is leading to. Right. And it's a beautiful short moment, you know, and you know, what came to me to build on, and then she, of course, how I integrated is first is, know, I see the speaker reps as the button and switch of button, you know, before I entered and came across mental fitness. mean, in camera across before I started to embark on the journey, but I never thought, you know, I've worked already.
You know, I've been seven years already in transformational space and coaching space. And, and I sense like, you know, I'm missing this switch of button because yes, know about limiting beliefs, all of that. I've worked on many of them by then, but that button of, know, you want to have peace and freedom in your mind because your mind is just keep on going has been missing. So I see the pick Europe's in the whole construct because pick Europe is just one of the three fundamental elements, right? It's a breakthrough.
because this is this practically this essence of bringing back the focus from the heads to the body dropping actually more even when we enter into Sage to the heart, right? And this is where by, the second one I discovered this and it helped me this discipline of bringing it a couple times in a day. So I remember the first six weeks, you know, that's of course not the easiest first week, you know, to get used to.
But then it becomes your being at certain moments. So you kind of let go of this. need to do it three times. I integrated it, right. And I had also extensions of it. So I definitely have my morning routine where I integrated this and other similar type of practices where I basically know that I'm setting my state for the day. And this is number one. And this is setting, we can call it from energy space on a high vibration. So that's what PQ do from the brain, brain, science. It's literally what you mentioned is this.
Dagmara Asbreuk (30:02.566)
evoking gray cells in the right regions of the brain, So super conscious decision to do it more than one time per day, but the morning, the longer you do and set yourself in that state, you basically, yeah, you're setting yourself for more ease and easier go through challenges during the day. So that's number one. that, you know, that is the foundation. The second, I think what I like about this PQ reps in comparison to, as you say, meditations and others is the easiness and
practical application during the day. And it works when you do that consistently, right? So it doesn't work in a, I first they do it, the second I expect miracles. No, it doesn't work like that. That's why there is a 6 -6 program. And why the 6 -wing foundational program is actually there, which maybe we need to elaborate is because we sabotage ourselves to do it even, right? So already the hijack of, of saboteurs without that program and that accountability and other resources there, we probably
miss with failure, because I know it myself too. There are practices of mindfulness. There are practices of breathing and I've been using them, but I've been using them not consistently beforehand, right? Before I entered to mental fitness, before knowing all the science behind which also I discovered in mental fitness. Yeah. I think that that's, that's basically what's, what I wanted to add on listening also to, to you and definitely, it sounds like, you know, it's just a two minutes, but the effect of
is profound. of course you stretch it over the time, need a longer session in the morning and things like that. And it's more the awareness of what it does that basically invites you to do more of that. And then seeing the progress and seeing that the voice of your saboteur you can first of all catch sooner. Because obviously we also work on expanding awareness of catching our saboteur in the body, in the mind.
in the trigger moment. So it's not just taking a test as we know, it's really, it's, would say it's an emotional intelligence in action. And then on top, on top of bringing the practical application of how can I help myself in the moment? How can I help myself in this moment of trigger, of negative emotion? How can I switch? Right? This is the miracle actually, I would say. In fact, that's what Pikira brings here.
Dagmara Asbreuk (32:24.906)
The reason for that is, if we want to create lasting, sustainable change, 20 % of that change comes from insight. So that comes from what people are learning as they listen to our conversation. The other 80 % is all around building the muscle, having a practice, doing something on a daily basis. Consistency is key here. There are no miracles. That's
that statement at the beginning seems so laughable. Like, I just think we'll think positive. Well, no, because you've got some wiring going on. And awesome, now you've got this tool that's easily accessible, available to you at any time to help you be fully present in the moment so that you can then open up to the third component of this operating system, which is called Sage. So shall I explain? Yes, go ahead. This one is an interesting territory too.
I know, and I don't know how deep we'll get in. We might need to refer people to the book or to the program on this one because Sage can go really deep. But at a high level, the idea of Sage is encompassed in this idea of Sage perspective, where every problem and challenge can be converted into a gift and opportunity. And so I'm going say that again, every problem can be converted into a gift or opportunity.
even the challenges, the biggest problems that we're facing can eventually be converted into a gift. So for many people at the beginning of their mental fitness journeys, it's really isolating something, smaller problem, a smaller challenge, and then putting a microscope on that and saying, how can I convert this into a gift and opportunity?
and that requires being fully in our positive thinking region of our brain. So it requires us having done PQ reps. We can't be fully sabotaged with our judge and accomplice saboteurs and be like, make it a gift. No, it doesn't work like that. We have to be in our sage brain. We can't just think it, we have to be it. And then we open up the idea of the sage perspective through five sage powers, which have names like empathize, explore, innovate,
Dagmara Asbreuk (34:40.09)
navigate and activate depending on the challenge, depending on the situation, you can utilize one or more of these sage powers to help get to that next level, which then continues to open up those neural pathways in the positive thinking region of your brain. Yes, I like, I like this, this first layer explanation of what sage is. And I think there's invitation for more in the sense of this, this concept, you know, I was listening to you on a sinking.
You know, my, my, evolve into how I see Sage in the last two years, because two years is since I've been on a, you know, starting journey with mental fitness and embracing also my further growth. And at first, when you hear, know, it's, it's no brainer. It's like empathy. Okay. We kind of grasp it on our mind level. What's the specialty here,
Because when we're in the six weeks, when we're in the program, we start to understand, that's a completely different, really the different perspective. So we get, think, touch into producing the voice of our nasty colleagues, some of the third part of us, which will always be there, but we can better handle them and really learning how to embrace empathy, embrace those different sage powers with those different tools and techniques that mental fitness brings.
And then I moved to this stage, which I think you learned that this word of being.
of really being that different parts of ourselves. Because what I also discovered already during the mental fitness and also through our journeys, I learned on connecting the dots. At the end, we had two parts of us, right? In a framework of mental fitness, it's two parts of our regions of the brain, right? But it's more than just the brain. It's more than just the mind. And for me, the sage is actually the aspect of our true self, which we also embrace it in and see already in mental fitness. And
Dagmara Asbreuk (36:38.596)
is that being that is the magical shift. That is where we talk about shift, transformational shift, where we can embody that. I use this word, embody those different sage powers and also get much more skillful in choosing which win. And let's face it, empathy is an example, which is one of the most powerful sage power for us to build for most of us because we are so much judgmental to ourselves. It's a game changer.
on every human being because this is anchored into self -love, into self -acceptance, into compassion to ourselves first, which we realize we need first to bring ourselves. Like I realized it too, obviously, and love my clients realize it too, so that I can actually be not only know I should be, but be empathic in the context of relationships, workplace or at home.
And then build better relationship, better trust, and then lead my team from that space, all of that. So it's that profoundness, I think, that Sage and embodiment that brings, which is a bit longer than six weeks, obviously, that is so transformational as well. you're right. It's a longer, you don't get that in six weeks. can taste it and feel it. I was able to experience our mastery level work at Positive Intelligence, which was a six month immersion into
everything, embodying all the saboteurs and all the sage power so you can really feel them. And I boiled down my six months of work into two words that I had tattooed on my wrist. And that is love. Choose love. The antidote to the judge is empathy, which is love. And we're in a world where, my goodness, don't we need more love? And you're exactly right. Love for self first.
especially the high achieving leader, tends not to step back and actually acknowledge who they are. And in most days when I'm beating myself up, I have to step back and say, okay, you handle quite a bit on a daily basis, Natalie, you've handled quite a bit in the last four years, like give yourself some grace. So that comes first, but then love for other people, just in general, love for specific people in our lives, but love just for everybody, given all the challenges we have going on, because I do think at our heart of hearts, most of us want the same things.
Dagmara Asbreuk (39:00.702)
We just find ways to make it as divisive as possible in our world. And then just love for our world. If we all had just a tiny fraction of a percentage of more of that, and I know you do a lot with energy work, like the shift in energy around ourselves individually and then how that would trickle out and have the ripple effect in the world is humongous.
That's why I do the work I do is because I do think this work can change the world. I mean, it's changed my life. It's changed the lives of the thousands of people that I've been able to be associated with directly or indirectly through my work at Positive Intelligence. It's the work that coaches like you get to do every single day. you know, my simplistic way of the solve is choosing love.
And it can go way more complex than that. can go way more detailed, but at the root of it, it's identify that we aren't loving to ourselves, that we need to catch it when it's happening. And then we have, we can make a choice. Absolutely. And this is also another thing we need to recognize what's the choices we are because we're not seeing them before that work. You know, when you mentioned, you know, there is so much, think it's maybe important also to mention the benefits and maybe some tangible benefits you work with, you know, with leaders, you work with teams. So do I.
What are the things that you observe that shift when they start to immerse themselves and embrace actually mental fitness? Two of the biggest effects that we see when specifically bringing positive intelligence into teams and organizations is the decrease in the individual stress level. Because we ask all of the participants, how is your stress level improved? More than 95 % tell us, absolutely, it's improved greatly.
or some letter greatly, Four out of five, right? And then the other, and you hit on this earlier and I can't remember how you phrased it, because I'm not writing things down right now, but you called it emotional intelligence something, but - In action, in action. intelligence in action, I love that. So we also ask our participants, how has your emotional intelligence increased since being exposed to positive intelligence?
Dagmara Asbreuk (41:17.962)
And it's off the charts. 95 % of our participants say, absolutely, my emotional intelligence has improved. Why? Wow, because all of a sudden you can see the emotions happening in you before you start to see it in other people. And so the secondary effect, so that's the primary effect, right? Stress decreases and my goodness, you can extrapolate so many performance changes, relationship changes, wellbeing changes that happen with that.
emotional intelligence changes, just think about the change that happens in a team. The secondary impact is then what this does to relationships in professional relationships. The, when we shift internally, other people feel that. And that's also oftentimes what people can't say out loud. They're like, what have you been doing? What's, know, when you go on a physical exercise and workout regimen, people can see that when you're doing it on the inside, people don't see it. So oftentimes they have to ask.
And people like, well, you I started doing this thing called positive intelligence. do PQ reps. And so it becomes noticeable to those we're working with. And then obviously the people that we're living with start to feel different type of person show up. And that is probably the most profound and incredible change. You know, we've heard from so many people that this has saved their marriage. This has brought them closer to their.
either they're adult children or maybe they're elderly parents because they have new language. They have a framework to talk about everything they've been feeling. can label it. When you can label it and spot it, you can start to do something about it. And that's exactly what this framework does. So you label the negative thoughts, negative emotion. You say, great, I have this tool called a PQ rep that can help me work through. And wow, I have access.
to sage and sage powers to help me take the next step. And this is also, I think, something to address that, you know, behind that there is a profound science and provides complexity of human beings. But what is also a benefit, and I see that as it is what shears it's turned it around to. So it's, you know, to honor his creativity here in this process and whoever helped him on a way because it is also done in a it's a practical.
Dagmara Asbreuk (43:39.88)
framework supported with an app and to bring it to that point, knowing many different concepts that I learned in coaching education. This is really so much powerful. It's just faster. It's just faster for anybody to explore. And I can totally recommend what you say. My children, at some point I got the feedback from them, wow, you changed. Hearing that from children is like, wow, okay.
much more relaxed, know, or you raise the voice or things like that. Right. And I also brought it to my, to my husband. I have offered him another coach to do it with to respect the ethics and biases. And, and it does help, transform your communication with your spouse. That's for sure. Even if, know, I'm on a much more profound and longer journey and everybody is on a different journey.
But justice is a part of common language, as you say, and it's exactly the same in a team. Because in a team, we are, it's fantastic, first of all, for a leader. So every leader that work with me actually is like a beginning process is to go through that because I know the profound shift that happens and then everything else is in a different state. And then the magic.
happens when of course everybody speaks the same language and that is populated inside. It's so much easier for a leader as well, right? To navigate the dynamic. yeah, profound. And apart from statistics you mentioned, which are amazing. The way to simplify this even further is for us to think of the brain as the hardware and positive intelligence then brings an operating system.
And when you run the same operating system as your spouse or those on your team, all of a sudden, any application you want to run becomes much easier. So as it applies to productivity, as it applies to performance, as it applies to change management, you can, can layer in this operating system with any of application and, and take things so much farther than you can likely currently in the current state of mental fitness that
Dagmara Asbreuk (45:50.558)
that you're at. Yes, absolutely. And this is the beauty of it, right? So you can basically see this game in a game we are every day, this inner conflict between fear and love, right? Between saboteurs and sage in every dimension of our lives. So once we get it and understand not only we, we improve in all areas that we can, we can also engage differently. So, you know, I think we both totally
You know, embrace the profoundness of it. And so I think I can speak for every of my clients who has gone and surely also yours and organizations that have been involved. So what is the last message, Nesli, that we want to pass here that you would like to say today to listeners? I would say that you're worth investing in your mental fitness. we can, Dagmar and I can talk at length.
about our personal experiences, but it's really worth you stepping back and say, what could be possible if I was more in command of my mind? So leaving you with that one question, what would be possible if I'm more in command of my mind? If you had stronger relationships, if you had greater productivity and performance, if your wellbeing was improved, you know, just those are three thoughts starters, what's possible for you?
and come back and start your journey once you've identified the answer, because you've got someone in Dagmara who can walk you through that journey, and certainly those of us at Positive Intelligence as well. Exactly. And thank you. It's very good question that you leave the listeners with. And we'll leave Ponder.
Because yes, it's the starting point of what if we could, and I love the driver's seat, driver's seat. Natalie, thank you very much for being here with me and also for guiding the PQ, mini PQ session that everybody can listen over and over again. And hopefully that also is already making an impact. And as you said, why would you like to waste your time and to wait any longer?
Dagmara Asbreuk (48:02.058)
to help yourself, your team and step into actually unleashing your potential because that's actually what it ultimately leads to. So thank you very much. I greatly appreciated it. was a wonderful conversation. Thank you. I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Natalie and are coming out with a lot of awareness of how to take driver's seat of your mind. And why is that even so much important for you to lead effectively and to thrive personally at the same time?
And to elevate your organization to the next level, mental fitness is part of a transformational journey that I accompany on every of the leader. And it's also the very first stepping stone in "Transform from within and embody external leadership". So I invite you to step into this journey so that you can step into being and drive a seat of your mind and create far better impact. Be that positive change maker and be happy fulfilled.
and successfully. Subscribe to this channel, share with us in comments what you're taking away from it. Help us reach more leaders by sharing it with others. And remember, be the change that you want to see and choose to be extraordinary.
