The mind can go either direction under stress — toward positive or toward negative: on or off. Think of it as a spectrum whose extremes are unconsciousness at the negative end and hyperconsciousness at the positive end. The way the mind will lean under stress is strongly influenced by training.
Frank Herbert, `Dune´
You once told me
You wanted to find
Yourself in the
world –
And I told you to
First apply within,
To discover the world
within you.
You once told me
You wanted to save
The world from all its wars –
And I told you to
First save yourself
From the world,
And all the wars
You put yourself
Through.
Suzy Kassem, `Apply Within´
I state the following key principle of Positive Intelligence: All your distress is self-generated. To be more precise, all your distress in the forms of anxiety, disappointments, stress, anger, shame, guilt – all the unpleasant stuff that makes up your suffering – is generated by your own Saboteurs.
Shirzad Chamine, `Positive Intelligence´
In the early days, before the turning point, my life was characterised by an immense amount of stress and drama. If there was a meeting to drive to and the recommended driving time was, say 90 minutes, I would get into the car 80 minutes ahead of the starting time and consider myself a hero for making it on time. Or, at the airport, if I did not hear: `Third and final call for Mr Little book on Lufthansa flight xyz to Warsaw, please proceed immediately to the departure gate´, I considered that I was not using my time effectively.
These are examples of self-induced stress. Others may appear less harmless, like trying to cook a meal in a kitchen which is still in a state of wreckage from the day before, driving until the needle shows the fuel tank is less than empty, and constantly losing important objects in the absence of having a defined place for where they should be. Such self-induced stress, often the result of a lack of structure, clarity, and awareness, seemed to give me a steady flow of adrenaline and fooled me into believing the nonsense which underpinned my VIP (`Very Important Patrick´) syndrome.
Life in the fast lane couldn’t last, of course. During my 43rd summer, the house of cards came crashing down and it took me well over a year to begin to emerge from the dark tunnel of apathy, depression, and lethargy, commonly referred to these days as burnout. Later it was pointed out to me that we don’t get burnout, we do burnout.
So much for the stress which could be avoided by living more consciously as we go about our daily business and making choices which could minimise the probability of its emergence in the first place.
Another category of stress is that which occurs beyond the pale of our personal agency. Stress is a natural phenomenon, a fact clearly borne out on my most recent visit to one of my favourite cities, Berlin. The sheer noise, the traffic, the amount of garbage, the ugliness of run-down urban environments; all of these presented something of a shock to the visitor who lives in the leafy riverbank of the Rhein halfway between Bonn and Cologne. I wonder at people’s capacity to remain healthy and sane in such a tumultuous environment.
Dr Elizabeth Blackburn, who won the 2009 Nobel Prize for Medicine for her work on DNA has, in her research, discovered that factors such as poverty, racism, and urban blight can directly impact our genetic and molecular functioning. In other words, societal factors, generational trauma, and environmental stressors all play into the human capacity to flourish or flounder, in this world we have created.
In this field of research, denoted `epigenetics´, we are beginning to understand that the genes alone do not determine how our bodies and minds develop, but rather the interaction of our genes and the environmental factors to which we are exposed. This, then, is a challenge which can be addresses on the collective level by means of political engagement, social activism, education, and leadership by example.
Another key stress factor is the family of origin into which we are born, or even the fact of being born at all. That journey through the birth canal would seem to have been extremely stressful for those of us who survived it, both mothers and children.
My arrival as the fifth of a group which ultimately comprised ten children, may have been one of the main causes of the constant state of feeling overwhelmed I experienced in my first two decades, and which still visits me on occasion today. While the stress certainly contributed to me learning many useful skills, and becoming independent at a very early age, it left its mark in a degree of disconnection from self which, while necessary as a survival strategy in those early years, took me to a point later in life where my feelings were deadened and my true identity obscured.
As the lucky beneficiary of a second chance at growing up ( we call it `recovery´), I began to work through the effects of my response to early childhood stress, in the realisation that many more resources were now at my disposal than at the time when the stress was initially experienced.
When Shirzad Chamine – quoted above –, the architect of the Positive Intelligence (PQ) Program, refers to Saboteurs, he is talking about belief systems and behavioural patterns which ensured our early survival, and which now return later in life as boomerangs which cut us to shreds. The Judge Saboteur, the internal critic, judges oneself, others , and circumstances. This judging drives a wedge between us and others, all of creation, and ultimately between ego and our true essence.
For anyone with a highly developed judge, a long journey of loneliness and alienation lies ahead, unless we can learn to identify this Saboteur, find ways to consciously intercept and turn down the volume of its voice, and switch to the right hemisphere of the brain where capacities such as empathy, exploration, innovation, navigation, and activation reside. In PQ, these are referred to as the Sage Powers.
By tuning into these capabilities, we can find new ways of handling the stresses which are a given of the human condition. As we gradually get more mentally fit, the gap between initial impulse and response, in terms of thinking or action, seems to expand, providing us with access to a wider range of options.
Blame will get us nowhere in this process. After all, if we go down that path, we are simply pouring oil on the flames of the Saboteurs. What is required is an approach referred to as `blameless discernment´ which allows us to see that things are simply as they are, and allow us to respond (not react) in a conscious, loving, life-affirming manner.
The mental fitness approach comprises the training of three muscle groups: the Saboteur Interceptor, the Sage Enhancer, and the Mind Command muscle, which, if trained daily, enables us to quickly switch from Saboteur (left hemisphere) to Sage (right hemisphere) mode, ideally in real time. The successful application of these techniques greatly reduces the impact of stress on our thinking and behaviour, thus leading to more harmonious relationships, improved physical health, higher performance, better leadership, and peace of mind.
The dilemma of the human condition is that the higher the stress levels, the louder the voices of the Saboteurs. The only way to crack this `Catch 22´ is the gradual cultivation of mental fitness. This is achieved by means of constant practice, just as is the case with physical fitness. In mental fitness, this means 30 – 60 minutes of practice each day, in short exercises spread out throughout the day. In my view this is a good investment, when we consider the results which can be achieved, in terms of better physical health, improved relationships, boosted performance, more effective leadership, and peace of mind.
