Get good at catching your own mood

How aware are you of your own moods?

How fast do you notice when you are slipping into frustration? Impatience? Anxiety? Anger? Worry?

Flip that around. How fast do you become aware of playfulness? Cheerfulness? Curiosity? Appreciation? Compassion toward others?

The best way to tell if you are in Sage or Saboteur brain mode is by observing your emotions, energy, and mood. If you’ve been reading these articles, you know that you will get much more benefit of performance and happiness from staying in Sage mode as often as you can. Sage is where the positive abilities and energy are activated.

The Saboteurs, on the other hand, come from your survival brain that locks down your emotions with fear-based responses.

Being aware of your mood allows you to intercept your Saboteurs faster and recover faster.

Here’s a PQ technique you can try.

Today, simply observe and notice your emotions and mood as often as you can. To keep it simple, just label each observation as negative, positive, or neutral.

Negative emotions and moods include stress, anxiety, fear, anger, disappointment, self-doubt, shame, and irritation.

Positive emotions and mood include peace of mind, gratitude, curiosity, compassion, delight, joy, and love.

Neutral is where there isn’t much of an emotional charge at all, such as just getting things done.

This blameless self-observation is key to determining whether you are in Saboteur mode so you can decide to shift. But for today, don’t worry about shifting to Sage and don’t judge yourself if you catch yourself in a negative mood.

Simply observe your emotions and moods as often as you can and label them as positive, negative, or neutral.

Your Judge Saboteur may consider this a waste of time! But you’ll see that simply observing your emotions will generate a powerful shift over time. This is because you’ll discover how much mental and emotional energy you’re wasting and you will learn to more quickly and automatically shift from negative to positive.

Change always starts with accurate real-time awareness of what your current state is before shifting to a new state. It’s a matter of awareness, desire for the difference, and then building a new habit as you practice over time. Becoming a great self-observer is key.

So, again, don’t worry about shifting any emotions for this exercise. Just observe and label without judging yourself. You’ll find that just this can be enough!

Good luck and have fun becoming a stronger self-observer.

Wishing you Sage discernment,
–Steve

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​P.S. - As a reminder, my April class on Positive Intelligence® still has some room. Please contact me or schedule a 30-minute demo​ if you are curious.

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