Such a man knows that whatever is wrong in the world is in himself, and if he only learns to deal with his own shadow, he has done something real for the world.
Carl Jung, Psychology and Religion
It is a spiritual axiom every time we are disturbed, no matter what the cause, there is something wrong with us. If somebody hurts us and we are sore, we are in the wrong also.
Bill Wilson, Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions
It’s so easy to believe that external things hold the power in life. We think money, or lack of it, determines our abundance; we think other people’s behaviour determines our happiness; we think success or failure, as the world defines it, determines our self-worth. But it is ultimately our thinking, more than our outer circumstances, that determines whether we live lives of harmony and peace or of pain and despair.
Marianne Williamson
All your distress is self-generated. To be more precise, all your distress in the forms of anxiety, disappointment, stress, anger, shame, guilt; all the unpleasant stuff that makes up your suffering, is generated by your own Saboteurs.
Shirzad Chamine, Positive Intelligence
Hardly a day goes by without some form of disturbance or other. It may be the anonymous altercation with that driver who, on our way to work, suddenly cuts into our lane on the motorway, apparently without any consideration. An idiot road hog!
Or it could be the misunderstanding with our intimate partner leaving us bewildered, asking ourselves: how could she have interpreted my suggestion in such a bad light, as if I were hell bent on hurting her?
It might even be our self-righteous condemnation of a political movement (how could people support a man convicted of sexual assault?), or the behavior of a government (instigating war) or a multi-national corporation (wreaking widespread ecological destruction).
We feel indignant and put out by the words, behaviors, and even the imagined intentions of others, or we are simply sore at the world. We take everything personally. We focus our attention on how the world would be a better place if only they changed.
Over the years, my experience has shown me that whenever I become restless, irritable, or discontented with issues out there, real or imagined, I can welcome this situation as a signpost to look at what is out of kilter within myself.
As the quotes at the beginning of this essay demonstrate, I am not alone in this observation. Indeed, many of the leading thinkers and spiritual teachers throughout history have been telling the same story. It seems incredulous that we have succeeded in ignoring their wisdom, for the most part, since the dawn of human history.
We have created a culture which promises success and happiness, if only we identified and acquired the right ingredients out there. The right education, the successful career, the perfect partner, the recognition of our peers, even the right car. The title of this game is: `I’ll be happy when…..´ This is the lie of the Inner Critic, or Judge Saboteur, which is constantly engaged in judging self, others, and circumstances.
It is a loser’s game, as we are bound to find out, sooner or later. Even when we have gained the prized, shiny object of our desires, the satisfaction proves to be ephemeral, and we find the goalposts have moved once again for the next round. For there is always a next round in this game. We play until be burn out, get off or are catapulted off the treadmill, or until we die.
Essentially, what our Judge Saboteur is telling us here is that, right now, we do not have all the ingredients necessary for our happiness. By shifting our mental perspective towards gratitude, empathy, trusting the process, and opening ourselves to the concept of the gift and opportunity inherent in any given situation, we may find we have everything we need to be happy, just for today.
To believe that external factors hold the power in life is not only an abdication of our own agency and immanent power; it is a recipe for bondage to illusion and blackmail. We are taught to think that money, or lack of it, determines our abundance; that other people’s behavior determines our happiness; that success or failure, as defined by the world, determines our self-worth.
`But´, in the words of Marianne Williamson, `it is ultimately our thinking, more than our outer circumstances, that determines whether we live lives of harmony and peace or of pain and despair.´
In the realm of thought, there are two main drivers: love and fear. Every single moment, whether we realize it or not, we choose between the two. If our thinking is fueled by love, then we are more likely to behave lovingly and to attract love from others. When the heart is closed, we are more likely to act out of fear. The fear at the core of saboteur behaviour is often well camouflaged. It may look like high self-confidence, intense engagement, justified anger, or even `just wanting the best for everyone´. Fear generally elicits reactions from others that reflect my fear. This is called saboteur contagion.
The biggest obstacle we face in experiencing the happiness of reaching our true human potential is our mental Saboteurs. These fear-driven patterns of thought and behaviour have been deeply ingrained over the years and are now running on autopilot. They started out as adaptive, intelligent survival strategies, and we have them to thank for getting us this far in life.
They are the life jackets which prevented us from drowning at the age of five which, being too tight for the adults we have become, are now suffocating us. Without us truly being aware of it, our thinking, our lives, our relationships, and our jobs are influenced by the Saboteurs.
In his scientific research, Shirzad Chamine, – the developer of the Positive Intelligence (PQ) Mental Fitness Training modality, – has identified the following nine Saboteur types (who, together with a Universal Master Saboteur – Judge – repeatedly take us hostage in thought and action): Avoider, Controller, Hyper-Achiever, Hyper-Rational, Hyper-Vigilant, Pleaser, Restless, Stickler, and Victim. In line with our experience during the formative years of childhood, each of us has a very personal combination, an individual core team or constellation of Saboteurs, of varying respective strengths.
By way of example, let’s say all the important projects and tasks are piling up on your desk at work, while your relaxed colleagues are off enjoying their lunch. It is highly probable that certain saboteurs are at work here. If everything somehow always ends up on your desk, this may not necessarily simply reflect an unfair distribution of workload; the cause may well lie, to some degree, within yourself.
Perhaps your Controller is running amok, and you find it difficult to give up responsibility and trust in the performance of others. If this is true, you probably prefer to double or even triple-check everything again, which ultimately results in your overwhelming workload. The lie of this Saboteur is: Either I am in control or out of control.
Maybe your Pleaser is prominent, and saying `no´ is incredibly difficult for you, for fear of making yourself unpopular, or disappointing others. The lie here is: Only if I keep everybody happy, will I be safe.
Or you have a pronounced Stickler, that is, `good is never good enough for you´. In your view, there is always a compulsion for improvement or revision. Again, the lie here is: There is only one `perfect´ way of doing things, namely my way.
The root causes of our problems are not the circumstances, but rather our own imprinted – often unconscious – mental patterns. When you work on identifying these negative saboteur patterns, you will get good at recognizing them and seeing through their fear-fueled lies, as they arise in any given situation. Their activation is the mental equivalent of touching a hot stove.
The healthy response to the hot stove scenario is to remove your hand swiftly and then, in processing the alarm signal, finding the appropriate response to the situation. Nobody in their right mind would voluntarily choose to keep their hand pressed to the stove. Yet, lacking in awareness and mental fitness, we tend to move into old patterns of anxiety, disappointment, stress, anger, shame, guilt, resentment, retaliation, or passive aggressive stances which keep our hand firmly placed on the hot metal, causing even worse damage. This generates even more distress, creating a downward spiral.
As an alternative, we can practice recognizing the instance of disturbance as a signpost and learn to intercept the Saboteurs before they can cause serious damage. Once this is achieved, we can use simple body-oriented exercises to restore our mental balance so that we can return to our strengths. These simple exercises, referred to as PQ Reps, strengthen our Mind Command Muscle.
Once we have achieved self-regulation in this fashion, we can consciously switch to the Sage Perspective (identify the gift and opportunity) and decide which of the Sage Powers (Empathy, Explore, Innovate, Navigate, Activate) would be most useful to best begin to tackle the challenge at hand. This will not only help you in overload situations. With practice, you will begin to consciously shape your thinking, and therefore your life, both personal and professional, differently as you move forward.
If you would like to learn more about the Saboteurs or are curious about which of your Saboteurs are particularly pronounced, you can find out with this (free) PQ Saboteur Assessment Test – Saboteur Review. Having identified which Saboteurs are the most active – and thus the greatest obstacles to reaching your full potential, – you can start with the actual Mental Fitness `training´.
After two years of daily PQ practice and training as a PQ Coach, I still sometimes get hijacked, but not nearly as often as before. Also, the recovery time after being hijacked, another good metric of resilience, has also become shorter. Practice makes progress!
The world is but a reflection of what we think. As we change our thoughts, we can break free of the shackles of the past and change our world. As we grow in Mental Fitness, we become more adept at shaping our lives.
