Positive Mindsets are Important. Great. How Do You Actually Do That?

Part of a series of articles on the work of Dr. Joe Dispenza.  Dr. Joe’s work is extraordinary and powerful.  My hope is to show that Positive Intelligence coaching can make the work of personal transformation more simple, accessible and practical.

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Dr. Joe Dispenza’s work has helped millions of people (including me - read my story here).  He teaches how our negativity can become an actual habit.  Our nervous systems, the literal “wiring” of our brain can get stuck in a “default mode” of negativity.

The brain wants to be efficient.  We have mental and emotional processes that get triggered as we go through our day.  The brain develops neural pathways that facilitate these processes so they’re more automatic.  Whenever we have a certain mental process, it’s as if we have a specific set of neurons that all fire together.  It’s as if our brain creates a network of neuron wires to facilitate this new process.  Wanting to be efficient, the brain recognizes that this set of neurons is being used frequently.  It then starts to build up the fatty myelin sheath around the long wiry part of the neuron so that the electric signal can travel faster and easier.  The fatty myelin sheath acts as an electric insulator.  At the ends of the neurons there are these little dendrites - like the branches or roots of a tree, that reach out to make a synaptic connection to other neurons in this network.  All of this makes it so that this process is more and more efficient and automatic.  This is a (very rudimentary) description of the actual neurological process of learning - and the potential for change.  This is what is meant by “Neurons that fire together wire together.”

This is a great process for brushing our teeth - but what happens when some of our habits have to do with shame, blame, guilt and judgment?  This same process that makes it so that we can ride a bike, read automatically, and drive to work without thinking, is also the same process by which we develop automatic habits of thinking and feeling around shame and stress and insecurity.

Dr. Joe’s work is a masterclass in explaining the scientific explanation of change.  And Positive Intelligence, created by Shirzad Chamine and the incredible people at the PQ (short for “Positive Intelligence”) organization, provides a simple process of how you actually do the change.

Most frameworks for growth and development, like Dr. Joe’s teachings, focus heavily on insight, on the intellectual concepts.  But, a lot of these frameworks fail to create lasting change because they don’t focus enough on muscle growth.  In my work with PQ clients, I train people with the PQ course to understand that lasting positive change is actually only 20% about insights.  In this digital age of informational overload, we already have enough information!  I train people to understand that lasting positive change is 80% muscle growth.  The muscles we’re talking about are the same networks of neurons that Dr. Joe teaches about.

To begin the process of re-wiring these automatic habits of negativity, I train clients to build up their “Saboteur Interceptor” muscle.  Shirzad Chamine has contributed something very powerful to the field of personal development and healing through all his work and research into these “Saboteurs.”  By digging through the research of personality tests and psychological metrics (introverted vs. extroverted, aggressive vs. passive, conscientious vs. non-conscientious, etc.) and applying their signature root factor analysis process, the PQ team has discovered that there are only 10 main ways that people self-sabotage.  And each of us only have 2-3 top Saboteurs.  By identifying our top Saboteurs and implementing the practice of intercepting these self-sabotaging patterns as they hijack us, we begin to grow this muscle.

Dr. Joe’s teaching was transformational for me.  And I’ll be forever grateful.  With these articles on how Dr. Joe’s work overlaps with the Positive Intelligence framework, my hope is to both educate people on how great Dr. Joe’s work is, and to show people that Positive Intelligence is a powerful practice that takes this work beyond education and into sustained positive change.

If you’ve made it this far in this article, then I invite you to do the PQ work with me.  I offer you the free gift of a Saboteur Discovery session.  Take the Saboteur Assessment (link here) and then schedule time on my calendar for this free session.  Seriously, totally free.  It’s my purpose in life to build up the Positive Intelligence muscle of the people in my little corner of the world.  I would therefore be honored and grateful to help.