Imagine your mind as a compelling novel of different characters, each with their own unique personalities and roles to play. Within the realm of positive intelligence, two main characters take center stage: sage powers and saboteurs. These inner characters directly influence your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, determining whether you thrive or stumble on your path to success and happiness.
Sage powers represent your inner wisdom, intuition, and compassion. They guide you toward making wise choices, fostering positive relationships, and maintaining a sense of balance and fulfillment. Saboteurs, on the other hand, are sneaky troublemakers that hinder your progress and keep you from moving forward with your lives. They are the voice of self-doubt, judgment, and fear, keeping you stuck in negative patterns and sabotaging your potential.
Positive intelligence is the practice of strengthening your sage’s influence while weakening the grip of your saboteurs. It focuses on a framework developed by Shirzad Charmine, a positive psychology researcher who combined neuroscience and cognitive therapy to explore the power of the mind in achieving happiness and overall well-being. Chirzad’s premise is that our minds work against us, generating self-sabotaging thoughts and emotions that hinder our potential and limit our success. Through his framework, you can improve your emotional resilience, enhance your decision-making abilities, and increase your overall well-being.
Understanding the dynamics between sage powers and saboteurs can be a game-changer in your quest for personal and professional growth.
By diving deeper into these concepts, you can:
Enhance self-awareness: By identifying your saboteurs and recognizing their impact on your thoughts and actions, you can regain control of your life. You become more aware of the limiting beliefs holding you back so you can gain the power to challenge and overcome them.
Improve relationships: Learning about sages and saboteurs not only benefits your self-development but empowers you to better understand and connect with others. It opens up avenues for empathy, compassion, and effective communication, ultimately establishing healthier relationships.
Increase productivity: Taming the saboteurs enables you to channel your energy toward more productive results. As you build a resilient and positive mindset, you become better equipped to handle challenges, adapt to change, and achieve your goals with unwavering determination.
Let’s uncover more about how you can apply your sages and let go of some of your saboteurs to boost your breakthrough moment.
What are the Saboteurs?
Think of your saboteurs as the inner negative voices in your head. They live deep within the neural pathways of your brain and have been formed as your patterns of thinking over time.
The 10 saboteurs include:
Judge: This is your relentless inner critic who judges and analyzes you in a negative way.
Victim: This is the part of you that perpetuates a sense of helplessness and victimhood, triggering self-pity and disempowerment.
Restless: This saboteur manifests as a sense of dissatisfaction and an inability to feel content, leading you to constantly seek something with no result.
Stickler: This is your perfectionist, setting yourself up for impossibly high standards, fueling anxiety and self-criticism.
Pleaser: This version of you seeks validation and approval from others, often at the expense of your personal needs and boundaries.
Vigilant: This is you when you’re hypervigilant about potential threats and dangers, triggering anxiety and stress over irrational things.
High-achiever: This part of you constantly seeks external success and validation, often overworking and doing so at the expense of your well-being.
Hyper-rational: This saboteur excessively relies on logic and reason, disregarding your connection to your emotions and intuition.
Avoider: This is when you’re hiding from uncomfortable emotions, conflicts, or challenges, leading you to become stagnant and missing opportunities for growth.
Controller: This version of you feels the need to control everything and everyone around you, often feeling anxious, frustrated, and strained in your relationships.
I bet you could pinpoint moments where each one of these takes hold of you. But once you align with the traps you fall into most, you can start to assess what needs changing. By using the sages to guide you, you can rewire your brain and create a more positive mindset.
What is the Sage?
Your sage serves as a guiding force to help you navigate challenges, make wise choices, and lead a more fulfilling life. According to positive intelligence theory, the inner sage has five essential positive powers that align with the brain’s ability to reorganize itself and form new connections. Basically, sage powers help you form new habits and let go of old ones (your saboteurs).
Let’s dive into these five sage powers and how you can focus on activating them in your life:
Empathy: This is the compassionate sage who embodies understanding toward ourselves and others. To focus more on activating this sage, consider what it means to be an active listener. Cultivate a mindset of kindness and understanding toward yourself and others.
Explore: This is the curious sage who represents curiosity, openness, and a thirst for knowledge and new experiences. To focus more on activating this sage, embrace new challenges, pursue diverse interests, ask questions, and seek out opportunities for continuous learning and growth.
Innovate: Think of this as the creative sage who thrives through creativity and imaginative thinking. To focus more on activating this sage, engage in creative activities that support you to brainstorm or engage in hobbies that let you express yourself and your imagination. Create an environment for yourself that encourages creativity.
Navigate: This is the wise sage who embodies discernment and sound decision-making. To focus more on activating this sage, focus on mindfulness and self-reflection. Make your decisions based on your values and long-term well-being. Seek diverse perspectives and be open to learning from your past experiences instead of feeling shame.
Activate: This is the energetic sage who radiates enthusiasm, zest, and positive energy. To focus more on activating this sage, practice gratitude and positive affirmations, surround yourself with positive influences, and embrace a positive mindset.
The more you intentionally focus and practice connecting with your sage powers, you can make them more accessible and influential in your thoughts, emotions, and actions. These sage powers act as positive feedback loops in your brain that reinforce positive thoughts and behaviors.
How You Can Apply Your Sage Wisdom and Let Go of Your Saboteurs
By nurturing your sages, you tap into inherent wisdom, compassion, creativity, and other amazing qualities within you. It allows you to approach life with greater clarity, empathy, and resilience. Through these sages, you can navigate adversity, make choices more aligned with your values, and help you lead the life of your dreams. I’ve got some tips to get you started.
Recognize and acknowledge: Take a moment to identify the self-limiting thoughts as they arise. Once you become aware, your sage can step in and question their validity. For example, if your inner critic (judge saboteur) tells you you’ll never succeed, your wise sage (navigate) can ask, “Is this criticism based on facts or fear?”
Challenge and reframe limiting beliefs: Reframe your negative thoughts and challenge the beliefs your saboteurs perpetuate. When a saboteur tries to convince you you’re not good enough, let your innovative sage step in to offer an alternative perspective. Ask yourself, “What evidence exists about me to contradict this false belief?”
Practice self-compassion: Saboteurs will trigger feelings of inadequacy and self-criticism. Invite your empathetic sage to offer self-compassion. Remind yourself that everyone makes mistakes, and failures are an opportunity for growth, not to feel shame. You can affirm yourself by saying things like, “I am human and I deserve love and understanding regardless of what I do.”
Focus on your strengths: Engage with your energetic sage during moments you’re having negative thoughts about your self-perception. Acknowledge your skills and talents and remind yourself of your successes. Affirm yourself by saying things like, “Look how far you’ve come. You can handle anything that comes your way. See how you’ve done it before!”
Seek support and accountability: Surround yourself with a supportive network that wants to help your sages grow. You want to be around people who uplift and inspire you, and who share your journey with you. They will help you challenge your saboteurs and hold you accountable for maintaining a positive mindset.
Embracing the sages and releasing your saboteurs through these practices will lead you toward self-acceptance and self-empowerment. When your sages are activated, you get to unlock your true potential.
Final Thoughts
Embracing positive intelligence and your sage wisdom can have a profound impact on many aspects of your life. It will enable you to develop relationships through a place of empathy and understanding. You will start to think more innovatively and have more creative ways to problem-solve through clear decision-making.
It does take patience, and you will need to uphold accountability, but that’s the first step to moving forward with your life. If you want more guidance about how to apply these concepts to your everyday life, reach out to me. I’d love to connect about it.
