So welcome everyone. Thank you for being here today. My name is Amy. If I am a life transformation and mental fitness coach, uh and I just wanna check.So can everybody just put in the chat where you're from and also say yes, if you can hear me and you can see the slides. Yes, perfect. All right. Um So as I mentioned, I'm a life transformation and mental fitness coach. And the purpose of today's topic is to take you through growing your mental fitness. So what it is why it's important and how you can strengthen your mental fitness muscles so you can shift from surviving to thriving. So as a starting point, what is mental fitness anyways? You know, what, what do you think mental fitness is? You can throw it in the chat or you can just ponder this question. But essentially mental fitness is your capacity to respond to life's challenges with a positive mindset rather than a negative mindset. So oftentimes people hear mental fitness and equate it to mental health and these two things are very different. So mental fitness is about being proactive, so you can handle what life brings for example, using a physical analogy, if you were signed up to do a marathon, what would you need to do? You would probably need to strengthen your physical fitness, right? At least I would.

And so on marathon day, you would be prepared for that 26.2 miles without getting physically stressed and exhausted. And the same notion is true with mental fitness. The idea is, can you strengthen your mental fitness ahead of time so that you are prepared for whatever life brings you so that you can put, respond to it with a positive mindset rather than getting upset and stressed. So that essentially is what mental fitness is all about.

So now that you know what mental fitness is, why do you think it matters? Any thoughts or reflections? Why do you think mental fitness matters? And you could throw it in the chat and as a starting point, mental fitness matters because your mind is a very powerful thing, more than many of us realize, right? Take a wild guess. How many thoughts do you think the average person has per day? And you could throw it into chat, chat if you'd like? But how many thoughts do you think the average person has per day? 10,000? You are close. It is between 12 to 60,000 thoughts a day. So you are having 12 to 60,000 thoughts a day. Guess what percentage of those 12 to 60,000 thoughts are negative? What percentage do you think are negative? And you could throw it into the chat. You could take, just say it out loud to yourself. 70%. It is 80%. So 80% are negative, Jackie. You got it. Got it right. Yes, 80% are negative. Take a wild guess. How, what percentage of those 12 to 60,000 thoughts do you think are repeated? So, the same day after day after day, what percentage do you think are repeated? 5050 it is 95 95%. And so you have 12 to 60,000 thoughts a day, 80% are negative. 95% are repeated day after day after day, right? And what consumes your mind consumes your life. And that is why growing your mental fitness is so critical to building a lasting change and happiness.

So what I'm going to cover for the rest of the short time that we have today is a quick background on the mental fitness research. Go through the three core mental fitness muscles and then we are going to put all of those together so that you have a three step process to being able to shift from surviving to thriving. So the concept of mental fitness, as I'm talking about it today is based on some research uh called Positive Intelligence. And it was conducted by a man named Shirzad Shamin. If you want to learn more about the research, you can check out the book on amazon.com. I don't have much time here with you today. So, what I do want to do is dive into the one thing from the research that I want to share today, which is that three core muscles at the root of mental fitness. So, what are those three core muscles, the saboteur interceptor, the Sage Muscle and the self command muscle. And you're probably wondering what the heck are those? And I'm glad you asked because that's what I'm going to share. So let's start off by talking about that first muscle, the saboteur interceptor muscle. And in order to understand this, we need to talk about survival because survival is our number one priority.

So very early on cave man, cave woman days, we needed to survive from this, the saber toothed tiger, right? When the tiger came, we needed to know do I fight flight or freeze? We also need it to be liked and accepted into the tribe. And this is for survival reasons also because if this tiger came, are you more likely to survive if you're part of a tribe or if you're alone? And so all though we may live in a different world today, our minds continue to operate in much the same way. We're constantly assessing and judging. Am I fitting in? Am I worthy of being accepted into this tribe? We are also constantly judging and assessing others for survival reasons. Also, I'm looking at you and thinking are you part of my tribe or are you my enemy? Right. So we're constantly assessing, we're constantly judging and that's why the number one master saboteur that all of us have is known as the judge. I promise you have the judge, I have the judge, we all do and the judge judges in three different ways. The first way it judges is judgment of self, also known as the inner critic. And the judge will say things like, oh, you didn't get the the promotion. You're such an idiot or you're a complete failure, right? It's constantly berating for past imperfections and for future failures.

The second modality of the judge is judgment of others constantly sizing people up saying, oh, that one's too dumb, that one's too ugly, that one's too short, right? This or that it's constantly looking for what is wrong, who's in my tribe and who is not. And the third way the judge judges is situations and circumstances. So it's the thing that's looking at the trees rustling and saying, oh, is there a saber toothed tiger or not? And in our situation, it's constantly looking for circumstances of life and telling you you cannot be happy until you cannot be happy until you have a certain job title career. Maybe until you retire or all the things on your to do list are done. So the master saboteur is this judge and the judge has friends and the research has shown the judge has nine different friends and the friends are the avoider, the controller, the hyper achiever, hyper, rational, hyper vigilant, pleaser, restless stickler and victim. What a cast of characters, right?

And so the key to this first muscle, the saboteur interceptor muscle, it is about getting intimately familiar with your own saboteurs. Who are your saboteurs? How do you cause your own stress? What impact does it have on you? I promise you it is a combination of the judge and a couple of these saboteur friends that is impacting your well being, your relationships, your happiness, your performance at the same time recognizing it is important and don't feel bad about it because we all have saboteurs, right?

So how do you figure out which are your top saboteurs? There is an assessment that you can take on positive intelligence.com, positive intelligence.com and you can take this as assessment and you will find out who are your top saboteurs and what you will get essentially are your results.

So, what you see on here are my results. My top saboteurs are the pleaser controller and hyper achiever. And the way the assessment helps you to figure out who are my saboteurs and, and build this first muscle of the saboteur interceptor is that you get this list and then you can dig deep and you'll get a huge description of each sabo tour. So what you see here is my third saboteur, the hyper achiever and you might be thinking but isn't being an achiever a good thing, how could that be a bad thing? The thing to recognize and to think uh is that the saboteurs are essentially strengths overused. It's like a knife, right? A knife is a tool that can be used by a surgeon to save someone. It can be used by murder to kill someone. Same tool, different uses. And so saboteurs use your strengths in a way that does not serve you. So people who have hyper achiever are have lots of strengths right? Able to achieve full potential, self directed can be inspiring to self and others. But issue comes when the hyper achiever, saboteur tells you this lie, it tells you you will be happy when you achieve this thing, right?

And so if you're anything like me, what happens are you truly happy when you achieve the thing for most of my life, I was looking at all the mountains to climb and I was climbing up the mountain. And before I even got to the top, when I knew I would almost be there, I was not celebrating. I was not happy. I was already looking for the next mountain to climb and it was mountain after mountain after mountain, right? And that's the thing with these abattoirs, they tell you, you'll be happy, you'll when you do get this thing or whatnot. But the truth is it is a lie. And so the way that the assessment works is you get that description and it's almost like po posting a wanted poster for for a criminal so you can catch it faster, right? Really becoming so aware of how it impacts you that you can catch it before it causes a disruption. It gives you more choice by being aware of how it impacts you. And that is how you strengthen this first muscle, the saboteur interceptor muscle. So that was the saboteur interceptor muscle. The second muscle is the sage and who is the sage before jumping into the sage? An important part of this is to understand that your saboteur and your sage live in different parts of the brain, right?

So when they get activated, they produce different emotions, thoughts, attitudes, and I could put your head into an MRI machine and actually see which side is being activated. And so the sage operates from the sage perspective and lives in this other side of your brain. And the sage perspective is that every outcome or circumstance can be turned into gift or opportunity. Every outcome or circumstance can be turned into gift or opportunity, including the current situation in the world. And to bring this wisdom to life, I want to tell you one of my favorite stories and this is the story of the stallion. So there's an old farmer that lives on a farm and he has this beautiful black stallion that he enters into a competition and his stallion wins first prize. His farmers come congratulate him and he calmly says, who knows what is good? Who knows what is bad? Puzzled. They leave. And the next week, some thieves heard about the stallions increased value and they come and steal the horse. The neighbors come to commiserate with the farmer. And he again calmly says, who knows what is good? Who knows what is bad? They're puzzled again, they leave and several days later, the stallion escapes from the thieves finds his way back to the farm and brings with him a few wild mares. He's befriended neighbors, come to congratulate him. And the farmer again says, who knows what is good?

Who knows what is bad? They're puzzled. They go away and a few weeks later, the sons, the farmer's son is uh riding the stallion and is thrown off as the neighbors gather to commiserate with the old farmer. He once again reminds them, who knows what is good? Who knows what is bad? The neighbors are puzzled. They think he's losing his mind but they go away. And the following week, the army is conscripting young men for war that has just broke out and the farmer's son is spared because his leg is fractured and the neighbors no longer come to commiserate with him or congratulate him because they already know what his response is.

And what's he going to say? Say it out loud with me? So we can all remember it. Who knows what is good, who knows what is bad? And there's profound wisdom in this story. If there's nothing else, you remember today, remembering this stallion story changes everything because it brings the perspective to everything of life. And one of my favorite quotes as Albert Einstein says, the most important decision we make is whether we believe we live in a friendly or hostile universe.

So my question to you is which do you believe? And that is what the sage perspective is all about. So we talked about the first two muscles. This last muscle is the self command muscle. And for this muscle, you know, uh I am curious, do you believe that you are in control of your own mind? And just answer that question, you can put it in the chat, you can think about it. But do you believe that you are in control of your own mind? And if you think that yes, I am in control of your own mind, how many of you still live and respond from a place of anxiety, frustration, restlessness, guilt, shame, anger, even though you know, it doesn't serve you, right? And so I wanna look at everybody here and say you are not in command of your own mind because if you were in command of your own mind, would you really command your own mind to wake you up at three in the morning? Worrying about things that are not in your control. Would you be commanding yourself to berate yourself, right? All of the stress and negative emotions and things are not things that you would choose.

So if you're not choosing it, who is it is because your mind is running the show, not you. And too often it is running the show from that saboteur mode, right? And so this third muscle, the self command muscle is so important because essentially when your saboteur has taken over that side of your brain is being activated, it is hard to shift, right? At least for me when I'm, I'm in that mode, I just feel like I'm in a spiral. And so this third muscle, the self command muscle is really about being able to observe yourself and shift into that stage perspective. And how we do that is essentially with something called A P. QR PQ is positive intelligence quotient like Pqiqeq. So PQ and so for physical fitness, if I wanted to strengthen my bicep muscles, what would I do? I would pick up a bi a dumbbell, do some bicep curls, right? So the equivalent of that is this PQ rep. And by doing a PQ rep, you're essentially um building up the self command muscle, which are the fibers right under your forehead. And so how do we do this? Let's do one together. OK.

So take two of your fingertips and rub them together gently and notice all the sensations of touch, see if you can feel all the fingertip ridges against each other with such attention that you can feel the fingertip ridges. So that was 10 seconds. And if you had an MRI machine, you would see the one side where your saboteurs live ever so slightly quieted and the side where your sage lives ever so slightly activated, that was just 10 seconds. It was one rep. It won't change the world. But imagine if you continuously did that and built up that muscle, right? You would be really strengthening your mental fitness muscle. And if you are a long time meditator, you might be thinking, oh, that feels familiar. The beauty of these are that you can do them anywhere.

If I were in a meeting, I couldn't and someone triggered me, I couldn't say, oh, I need to, I need to go meditate. Now. Let, let me pause. Right. But what you could do the fingertip exercises, keep your eyes open and still be present in the room. And that's the beauty of the PQ reps. There are lots of different types of PQ reps. There's uh visual ones, sound ones, breathing ones. We won't have time to go through all of them today. But the magic of them is there's a variety and being able to find the one that works best for you is what matters. And so those are the three core muscles, saboteur, interceptor, intercepting that saboteur before it impacts you sage, the gift and opportunity and being able to, you know, see the gift and opportunity in all circumstances and that self command muscle, which is the thing that we just did to shift from saboteur to sage.

Now, I know that, you know, life is challenging. So I put this into three easy steps for you to remember. So the first step is notice and stop. If you're feeling any sort of negative emotion, notice and stop, doesn't matter who did what to you. You're in Sabo to mode it is not helping and sometimes it is hard to just stop. What I have found helpful is to me, my saboteur, for example, if hypervigilant saboteur is here, I call her Miss Worrywart and I say, oh hello there. Hi, Miss Worrywart. And then I just stop. Ok, step two, shift your awareness. So those PQ reps that we did do them until you feel you have shifted, right? You will notice a difference and the last step activate your sage. So what is the gift or opportunity here? How might I generate a gift or opportunity and really approaching it with that mindset? And so these are your three steps shifting from saboteur to sage, shifting from, from um the just merely surviving to truly thriving, being able to turn down those saboteurs and the power they have over you. So, you know, there is so much more to mental fitness. This is just the tip of the iceberg and just like physical fitness, mental fitness. Requires you to consistently work on building those muscles and your capacity. So I encourage you don't stop those habits here. I invite you. The link is there. You could take the assessment.

You can email me the results Amy at Amy at coaching.com and feel free to schedule time with me, schedule a session and let's talk through your saboteurs. Thank you very much. I am over time but it was such a pleasure to be here with everyone. Enjoy the rest of your conference. Thank you.