A Simple Framework to Help You Handle Life’s Challenges, Without the Stress

[00:02] Bobbi: Welcome to UnYielded thriving no matter what where we talk about how to make your next chapter in life your best chapter. I’m your host, Bobbi Kahler, and I believe that the best is yet to come back, everyone am so excited that you’re here for this episode. In this episode, we’re inviting back a former guest expert, Georgina Halibi, and she’s going to dive into a fascinating topic, and it’s one that I am a huge fan of. Been through the program myself, and I absolutely love it. And for those of you who have listened to a lot of the podcast episodes, you’ve heard me talk about this before, but I love the way that Georgina breaks this down, and I know you’re going to love it too. So in this episode, Georgina takes a look at how to strengthen that part of the brain that serves you and how to quiet the part that sabotages you so that you can step into sustainable success, peace, and fulfillment. A little bit about Georgina. She is a professional certified coach with over 25 years of senior roles within business and marketing and a lifetime of experience in meditation and self discovery. It has always been essential for her to balance two fundamental needs outer success and inner peace. Today, Georgina helps highly motivated self aware professionals to achieve peak performance and well being, not one at the expense of the other. Using a unique blend of whole brain coaching that incorporates neuroscience, positive intelligence, NLP, and visualization techniques, Georgina works to resolve and align conflicting internal tensions that hinder personal and professional growth, creating the space to focus talent and energy where it most counts. Here’s Georgina.

[01:52] Georgina: Hi. Today I’d like to talk to you about mental fitness. Mental fitness is our capacity to respond to life’s challenges with a positive versus a negative mindset and without all of the stress. And when I talk to you today about mental fitness, it’s really within the framework of the Positive Intelligence Group, who have taken the best in the latest research from neuroscience, positive psychology, cognitive behavioral therapy, and sports performance science. And added in their own research to find out in what ways we sabotage ourselves so that we can strengthen the part of our brain that serves us and quieten the part that sabotages ourselves. And so, as we start to build up a picture, I want to give you an idea, I guess, of how the brain works and the neuroscience behind this. So part of our brain, the part that is situated in the back, in the back part, it’s wired to threat. It’s all about survival. And this is the part of our brain that our saboteurs live in. So when we talk about saboteurs, these are all the different ways that we show up to keep ourselves playing small but playing safe, the part of our brain that is all about survival. So the top saboteur is the judge how we judge ourselves, how we judge others, how we judge circumstance, but also how we perceive ourselves as being judged by others. And everything that we look at in our lives, we judge us either good, bad or neutral. And then we have a cohort of other Saboteurs, the accomplice Saboteurs, if you like. And some of these will be very, very familiar to you. So for example, you have the avoider, the controller, the hyperachiever, the hyper rational, those who default to logic and don’t trust their emotions. The hyper vigilance who are always anxious about what may happen in the future, the pleaser, the restless, the stickler, which is another way of saying the perfectionist and the victim. So all of these are the Accomplice Saboteurs that work with your judge in order to keep you playing safe and keep you protected. Now, each one of these Saboteurs will tell you a story about why they are important and why you need them to exist. So for example, the pleaser will tell you that you need to please others in order to remain loved and accepted. Whereas the hyperachiever might tell you that without this Saboteur, you won’t be as motivated, you won’t go as far. And the thing is, our Saboteurs motivate us through anxiety, through stress, through negative emotions. That’s how we know that they’re there whenever we’re feeling these negative emotions. And all of these come from the part of our brain, as I mentioned, that is really all about keeping us safe. Luckily, there is a different part of our brain that is equally, if not more powerful. And it’s the prefrontal cortex and it’s situated just behind your temple, the front of your brain, and in positive intelligence and mental fitness. We call this your sage brain because it’s the part of your mind and the part of your brain that is responsible for big picture, empathy, peace, calm, perspective. It’s the ability to be able to look at ourselves from that witness point of view and to notice our emotions and our thoughts without getting sucked into them. And so, with mental fitness, the opportunity then becomes to switch from that part of your brain that sabotages you, that keeps you in a state of anxiety, frustration and negative emotion. And to switch to that part of your brain that is empowering, that has perspective, creativity, resourcefulness, and to be able to do so at will. And I want to show you today how you can do this in seconds, anytime and anywhere. So first of all, let me outline the three core muscles that we train in mental fitness. The first one is your saboteur interceptor. Whenever you’re feeling negative emotions, stop. One of your saboteurs are playing up you’re in negative emotion, so stop. The next thing is to switch and to train that mind, that is the part of your mind that has self command, that can switch you from that survival instinct into that part of the brain that you thrive. So moving from saboteur brain to sage brain. That’s the second muscle we’re training, your self command. And then the third part of the third muscle that we’re training is your sage brain and the superpowers that you have within this sage brain. So things like empathy, curiosity, perspective, creativity, and the ability to activate with a clear, focused mind. So how do we switch? How do we switch from that part of our brain that sabotages us to the part of the brain that serves us? It’s very simple, and it doesn’t take long at all. We use our body as a vehicle to switch off our mind, to switch off our saboteurs. And we do this using either the breath or our senses, our sight, touch, smell, taste, and hearing. So let’s try this a moment together. I want you to just take a moment and really listen to everything that you can hear in the far distance. Now, what can you hear in the near distance, as close as you can as possible? Can you hear your breath? Can you hear your heartbeat? Another way of doing it is through touch, right? So take your thumb and your forefinger and ever so gently rub them together very slowly. And what you’re trying to do is feel the fingertip ridges on both your finger pads with exquisite attention, taking note of the texture, the heat. And as you do so, notice what the quality of your mind is. Does it feel focused and clear? Do you feel present? You’re not thinking what you’re having for dinner tonight, right? Or you weren’t thinking of what you’re doing yesterday. Your mind is in the now. And you use your body as a vehicle to switch off your overthinking mind and your saboteur brain. And that is really the self command muscle we tap into our senses or our breath to be able to switch off our sabotage brain and get present in the now. And the beauty of this is that you can do it anytime or anywhere. You could do it in the midst of a meeting or in a day where you’re just back to back. You just do it by focusing on your breath or very gently rubbing the two fingers together under the table, but doing so with an intentionality and an attention on what it is that you’re doing. And what that does is it takes your brain from what it’s focusing on in the anxiety of the future or rehashing of the past, and it brings it back into your body, into the present. This is the same methodology that we use in yoga, in meditation, in sports. It’s why, when you go out for a walk in nature, that it’s so pleasurable and so energizing. It’s because you’re switching off all of the overthinking, all of the overshouting, and you’re getting present in the now. And when you’re present in the now, you can deal with whatever life has in front of you. You can deal with it with a sense of perspective without the stress. That’s mental fitness. And so if this has resonated with you, I highly recommend you go to the Positive Intelligence website and you take the free Saboteur test. It’ll take a couple of minutes. It’s positiveintelligence.com and you go to the Saboteur test. Takes a couple of minutes and it’s absolutely fascinating. You get to see which of your Saboteurs are getting in your way. And if you’re interested, have a look at the program. It’s a six week boot camp and it completely rewires your brain so that you look at life through a positive and a resourceful mindset and you’re able to handle whatever life throws at you without the stress. If you’re interested, Bobbi is also going to put my details on the bottom of the website and you can reach out to me. By all means, share your Saboteur results. Come ask me any questions or if you want to have a one on one conversation or to explore how positive intelligence can help you mental fitness. I’ll be delighted to chat. Thank you very much for listening.