Feeling Our Best to Do Our Best: From Sabotage to Mastery
Whether we call it Wisdom, our True North, our Muse, or Jiminy Cricket, there is a deep knowing inside each of us that exists to drive our actions.
Imagine: you’ve created an effective planning tool from your vision and SMART goals, and wake up the morning of an all-hands meeting, inspired to implement some new teamwork strategies.
But your car won’t start.
You start to panic.
One of your goals was to facilitate more teamwork within your company, and now you’re barely going to make it on time to the office. You’re catapulted into a series of thought distortions and follow the rabbit hole into rescheduled meetings, a failed presentation, lost time, and mental exhaustion. You’ve lost the voice of your Jiminy Cricket.
Your confidence? In a puddle on the floor.
Don’t worry–we won’t leave you there!
When we teach our minds to acknowledge moments of stress like these (and their accompanying negative emotions), we cultivate our mental fitness.
In last month’s blog, we outlined the process of differentiating resolutions from goals and creating SMART goals that inspire action.
This month, we’re exploring PointNorth’s approach to cultivating strong, positive, unwavering mental focus in order to make transition visions to reality.
Where Mental Fitness Can Make an Impact
When we’re unable to show up as the best version of ourselves, we may feel lost, frustrated, or stuck. It can feel like an insurmountable challenge to build a thriving career from this space – and we agree!
Discovering whether our work aligns with our values gives us a bird’s-eye view and a clear place to begin. From this clarity, we can identify the actions that truly bring us closer to the vision we have for our business.
Two of the elements we can measure include performance and wellbeing.
- How often are you following your plans to the T?
- How quickly are your long-term visions for your company coming to life?
- Are you finding all your energy depleted?
- Do you find yourself grappling for quick fixes?
These kinds of experiences may mean that you would benefit from training your mind to become more fit. But don’t worry – we’re not talking about push-ups or weight training!
Mental fitness is the mind’s ability to be aware of the emotion triggered, to discover the positive aspects in situations, and manage the emotions rather than being managed by them no matter what else is happening. A mentally fit mind can adapt, rather than react to stress.
PointNorth’s Perspective
At PointNorth International, our team has trained in specific toolsets, techniques, and programs that, when combined, offer a holistic and powerful perspective on coaching toward mental fitness and the kind of confidence that gets real results. We believe that when we feel our best, we can BE our best.
Our unique combination of tools allows us to:
- Effectively help you build around your strengths
- Identify and disrupt patterns of coping and give you simple yet effective mechanisms to reduce stress and anxiety
- Inspire you to ensure great relationships with others, and with yourself!
- Give you techniques to improve your focus and performance
- Lead clients in transformational one-on-one coaching sessions
- Conduct impactful group live coaching sessions that provide next-day applications
- Create action plans based on assessments, insight, and reflection
What’s Positive Intelligence?
Positive Intelligence is a research-based mental training program created by Shirzad Chamine that is designed to shift the balance of your mindset from self-sabotage to self-mastery.
Certified Positive Intelligence coaches, like those at PointNorth, partner with leaders and teams to build and support their capacity for high performance and improved wellbeing. Positive Intelligence begins by identifying Saboteurs, the mental patterns that influence actions, choices, and reactions to stress.
From there, program coaches teach specific strategies for activating the Sage within the mind (remember Jiminy Cricket?). Think of the Sage as the “THRIVE!” region of the brain.
Rather than recommending Positive Intelligence as an outside training, costing time AND money, PointNorth clients can benefit from a holistic approach to mental fitness that weaves these powerful strategies into a comprehensive toolkit for success.
Identifying Strengths to Maximize Our Potential
Strengths-based approaches allow coaches at PointNorth to build upon what is already working, leading to the kind of confidence that can move mountains.
We use validated assessments and tools to reveal what you do best, and why. Armed with real-life experience, PointNorth coaches leaders to gain insight into what will motivate and encourage their teams. Entrepreneurs can discover how to market their strengths and superpowers. Executives can leverage both their own individual assessment results and their company’s scaled results to establish a rock-solid company culture.
Identifying Saboteurs to Get Out of Our Own Way
Your mind can be your best friend, but it is also your worst enemy.
Saboteurs can be the underlying factors affecting wellbeing, relationships and performance; PointNorth is committed to the discovery of these patterns in order to disrupt them. It’s important to remember that there’s nothing inherently wrong with having Saboteurs – everybody does!
With strategies to disrupt the cascade of thoughts and emotions when something doesn’t go as planned, we can pause, pivot, and plan for new action with clarity and confidence.
Becoming Mentally Fit
Olympic athletes wouldn’t show up to their event after one or two training sessions. So why would we expect our minds to bounce back from adverse situations in seconds? Without training, we react out of the learned behaviours, patterns, and coping strategies that formed throughout our lives. When we react, we don’t get to powerfully choose our next move.
Mental fitness trains the brain to prepare, anticipate, and practice positive responses to stress and uncertainty and empowers us to see every moment as an opportunity for growth. Corporate meetings become full of potential. Sales become relatable, fun, and authentic. Conversations with colleagues become productive and action-focused.
We begin to operate from our goals and our vision, rather than our baggage.
This work is one of the most powerful ways to align our values, goals, and strategies with one another; when we stop expending our energy on stress, we can work with more clarity, sustainability, confidence, and power.
Very few athletes make it to the Olympics alone! And you don’t have to either. We’re here and ready to embark with you on your journey toward mental fitness.
To learn more about the ten different Saboteurs identified by Positive Intelligence, stay tuned to the PointNorth newsletter.
If you’re ready to elevate your leadership, transform your workplace culture, and align your people strategy with your corporate goals, we’re ready to be your guide.
