Your mind is your best friend, and also your worst enemy. That's the reality that Shirzad Chamine, the popular Stanford lecturer, has us wrestle with in his book Positive Intelligence.

His research shows that the path to ultimate success goes through overcoming the "Saboteurs" that are holding you back, whether you realize it or not.

You've heard of IQ and EQ, now join us for the next 12 minutes as we explore how to increase your PQ so you can reach your maximum potential.

What is Positive Intelligence

Positive Intelligence measures the relative strength of the two modes of your mind - the friend and the enemy. Your Saboteurs and your Sage.

If you have high Positive Intelligence, your mind acts as your friend far more than as your enemy. If you have a low Positive Intelligence, the reverse is true.

Unfortunately, Chamine's research has shown that 80 percent of all teams operate below a critical Positive Intelligence level, and thus fall short of achieving their true potential for success and happiness.

Here's why.

The Ten Saboteurs

In this section, we'll cover the Ten Saboteurs so that you can start to see how they pop up in your life.

The Master Saboteur: The Judge

The Judge is the master saboteur.

Its main job is to find faults in yourself, others, and circumstances. It justifies its existence by reminding you that without it you would get lazy and complacent.

It will hound you for your past mistakes and current shortcomings. In your relationships with others, it focuses on what is wrong rather than appreciating the good.

The thoughts it typically conjures up sound like "what's wrong with _______."

Those thoughts then get turned into emotions like anger, guilt, regret, and shame.

The Nine Accomplice Saboteurs

The Judge will always have accomplices to help it do its work. Nature and nurture will determine which accomplices you will develop to pair with your Judge.

This happens subconsciously, and is typically driven by a combination of your core motivations and style.

You have three core motivations and will typically prioritize one over the others:

• Independence: you have a need for boundaries with others;
• Acceptance: you have a need to maintain a positive image so that you can be accepted by others;
• Security: you have a need to control life's anxieties and minimize them whenever possible.

You also have three core styles, and will typically prioritize one over the others here too:

• Assert: you take action that demands the fulfillment of your primary need for your core motivation;
• Earn: you work hard to earn the fulfillment of your core motivation;
• Avoid: you withdraw yourself from activities in order to fulfill your need for your core motivation.

The intersection between your primary motivation and your primary style will determine your most likely saboteur. For the rest of this section, we will work through each of the nine Saboteurs. As we do, look for the one that you most strongly identify with.

Controller (Independence/Assert)

• How it shows up: The Controller has an anxiety driven need to take control of situations, often forcing other people to do it their way.

• Characteristics: It connects through others through competition and challenge, and comes alive when doing the impossible and beating the odds.

• Thoughts: It plants thoughts in your mind like "no one tells me what to do" and "I'm either in control or out of control."

• Feelings: It causes feelings of high anxiety when things aren't going his or her way, and anger when others don't follow their lead.

• Justifications: It justifies itself with thoughts like "I'm trying to get the job done for all of us" and "Without me, nothing would get done."

• Impact: Temporary results at the expense of others feeling controlled and resentful.

Stickler (Independence/Earn)

• How it shows up: The Stickler shows up as perfectionism and a need for order that gets taken too far.

• Characteristics: It can show up as methodical, highly critical of others, and a strong need for self-control.

• Thoughts: It plants thoughts in your mind like "If you can't do it perfectly, don't do it at all," and "Others have lax standards."

• Feelings: It causes feelings of frustration and disappointment when you or others don't live up to the high standards you have set. It also causes sarcastic and self-righteous overtones.

• Justifications: It justifies itself with thoughts like "I know how things should be done and it's up to me to do them."

• Impact: It is an ongoing source of anxiety and frustration.

Avoider (Independence/Avoid)

• How it shows up: The Avoider focuses on the positive and pleasant in an extreme way.

• Characteristics: It avoids conflict and downplays the importance of some real problems.

• Thoughts: It plants thoughts in your mind like "Maybe if I let it go it will take care of itself" and "If I get into conflict with others, I'll lose the connection I've built."

• Feelings: It causes feelings of anxiety about what has been avoided and suppresses anger and resentment.

• Justifications: It justifies itself with thoughts like "no good comes out of conflict" and "it's good to be flexible."

• Impact: Denying prevents Avoiders from turning problems into growth opportunities and gifts. Others trust them less because they are not sure when negative information is being withheld.

Hyper-Achiever (Acceptance/Assert)

• How it shows up: The Hyper-Achiever depends on constant performance for self respect, and often shows up as a workaholic.

• Characteristics: It is good at covering up insecurities and adapts their personality to fit what would be most impressive to others.

• Thoughts: It plants thoughts in your mind like "I must be the best at what I do" and "emotions get in the way of performance."

• Feelings: it causes fear of intimacy and vulnerability, and sometimes feelings of emptiness and depression. But ultimately doesn't like dwelling on emotions.

• Justifications: It justifies itself with thoughts like "Life is about producing results" and "Feelings are a distraction and don't help."

• Impact: Happiness is always short-lived, and self-acceptance is always dependent on the next big win. It makes connecting with others difficult.

Pleaser (Acceptance/Earn)

• How it shows up: The Pleaser shows up as indirect attempts to gain acceptance by helping others. It often causes you to lose sight of yourself and become resentful as a result.

• Characteristics: It needs frequent reassurance and expresses its own needs indirectly by making people feel obligated to reciprocate.

• Thoughts: It plants thoughts in your mind like "I give too much and don't think about myself enough." and "I'm a good person and so put the needs of others ahead of my own."

• Feelings: It causes feelings of worrying that expressing my own needs will drive others away, and resentment for being taken for granted.

• Justifications: It justifies itself with thoughts like "The world would be a better place if everybody helped others selflessly and didn't expect anything in return."

• Impact: This can lead to resentment and burnout.

Victim (Acceptance/Avoid)

• How it shows up: The Victim shows up as an extreme focus on painful, internal feelings. Often plays the martyr.

• Characteristics: If criticized, will often withdraw and sulk. Represses rage, resulting in apathy and constant fatigue.

• Thoughts: It plants thoughts in your mind like "Terrible things always happen to me" and "No one understands me."

• Feelings: It tends to create feelings of loneliness, even when around family or close friends, and dwells on envy and negative comparisons.

• Justifications: It justifies itself with thoughts like "if I act this way, at least I'll get some of the love and attention I deserve."

• Impact: This typically backfires and results in pushing people away even further.

Restless (Security/Assert)

• How it shows up: The Restless show up in search of greater excitement in the next activity.

• Characteristics: It is easily distracted, and stays busy with many different tasks and plans.

• Thoughts: It plants thoughts in your mind like "this isn't fulfilling" and "why can't anybody keep up with me?"

• Feelings: It causes feelings of impatience of what is happening now, and fear of missing out on other options.

• Justifications: It justifies itself with thoughts like "life is too short" and "I don't want to miss out."

• Impact: it causes avoidance of the issues and relationships that truly matter.

Hyper-Vigilant (Security/Earn)

• How it shows up: The Hyper-Vigilant has intense anxiety about the dangers of life and focuses on what could go wrong constantly.

• Characteristics: It is suspicious of what others are up to, and seeks reassurance and guidance in procedure and rules.

• Thoughts: It plants thoughts in your mind like "when is the other shoe going to drop" and "If I make a mistake, everybody is going to pile on me."

• Feelings: It causes feelings of skepticism and anxiety.

• Justifications: It justifies itself with thoughts like "life if full of dangers" and "if I don't look out for them, who will?"

• Impact: Constant anxiety burns a great deal of energy that could otherwise be put to good use.

Hyper-Rational (Security/Avoid)

• How it shows up: The Hyper-Rationalist has an exclusive focus on the rational processing of everything, leading to being perceived as cold and distant.

• Characteristics: Sometimes comes across as intellectually arrogant, and mostly shows feelings through passion for ideas.

• Thoughts: It plants thoughts in your mind like "others are often irrational and sloppy in their thinking" and "needs and emotions of others distract me from my work."

• Feelings: It causes feelings of frustration with others for being emotional and irrational, and often feels alone and misunderstood.

• Justifications: It justifies itself with thoughts like "the rational mind is the most important thing and should be protected from other people's emotions and messes."

• Impact: This severely limits the depth of relationships in work and life.

How to Weaken your Saboteurs

This strategy involves figuring out which of your emotional and thought patterns come from your Saboteurs, and seeing (maybe for the first time) how they don't serve you.

The tricky thing is that your Saboteurs will usually pretend to be your friends, when they are really your enemy. And they do their best work when the are hiding under the radar.

Dealing with them involves observing and labelling your Saboteurs when they show their face. For instance, you might say "Oh, the Judge is back again, telling me I'm going to fail."

Notice the difference between "I'm going to fail" and "The Judge is telling me I'm going to fail."

Then, in the space you've created by "outing" your Saboteur, you can instead use your Sage superpowers to deal with the situation in a healthy and more powerful way.

The Five Sage Powers

This strategy involves tapping into your inner Sage, which is the antidote for the Saboteurs, and it has five powers that it uses to help you meet the challenges you face.

Empathize

Empathizing is about feeling and showing compassion and forgiveness. It can be deployed equally for yourself and others. The Judge hates empathy, and will do whatever it can to make sure you don't use it, especially on yourself.

One of the ways you can have a deeper sense of empathy is to visualize yourself or others (depending on who needs the empathy in the moment) as a child. See yourself or others in a setting where your true essence is shining through. Maybe it's holding a puppy, or playing your favorite game with unbridled joy.

Explore

When we were children, we all naturally explored our worlds with curiosity and fascination. Chamine reminds us that we can activate this mindset, even in the midst of a big crisis.

The question you can ask yourself in these situations is "what more is here for me to discover?" Try and focus on being the "Fascinated Anthropologist" and to discover things exactly as they are.

For instance, if you are in a conflict with somebody, let go of your demands just for a minute or two and become fascinated with why the other person feels the way they do.

Innovate

If exploring is discovering what is, innovating is about inventing a new path forward. It's about asking yourself "what is a whole new way to do this?"

This power will allow us to break free of our limiting beliefs and assumptions, and find unique solutions to otherwise impossible problems.

A powerful technique to foster this sage power is "yes and." It's about appreciating each idea that you come up with rather than judging it immediately.

Navigate

Innovating comes up with possible paths, navigating is about choosing between them. The compass you'll use are the deeply-held values you have that give your life a sense of meaning and purpose.

One of the most powerful ways to correctly identify your compass in otherwise cloudy situations is to play the game of "flash forward." You imagine yourself at the end of your life looking back on the problem you are facing today. From that place, ask yourself what you wish you would have chosen.

Activate

Finally, now that you've chosen a path, it's time to get into action and use your activate power. In this state your mental and emotional energies are laser-focussed on action and not distracted by your Saboteurs.

In order to do this well, you can play the game of "preempting the Saboteurs." You simply put yourself in the shoes of your Saboteurs and try and anticipate how they will sabotage your action. Then, create a plan to overcome them.

Conclusion

We'll repeat what we said in the beginning. Your mind is your best friend, and also your worst enemy. But now, after tapping into your Positive Intelligence, you get to choose.

If you can identify and name your Saboteurs, and neutralize them with your Sage Powers, you'll be well on your way to transforming the way you interact with the world, and the success you see as a result.