S14E7: What's Your PQ in Relationships? w/ Shirzad Chamine

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The Dateable podcast is an insider's look into modern dating that the Huffington post calls one of the top ten podcast about love and sex. On each episode, we'll talk to real daters about. From sex parties to sex droughts, date fails a diaper fetishes and first moves to first loves.  I'm your host Yue Xu, former dating coach turned dating sociologists. You also hear from my co host and producer Julie Krafchick as we explored this crazy dateable world.

Hello dateables, welcome to another episode of the dateable podcast. We are here to answer all of your questions about modern dating 'cause we're also trying to answer those for ourselves. And that's why we do this podcast. So we can learn to be better daters. This week's episode is a little bit, I don't know, I like that we have this mix of experts and then we have real stories. We do have an expert on this time. This is all about positive intelligence, but his entire program is really centered around every aspect of life, and we have to remember that our dating life, our love life, is connected to every aspect of our entire life. Yeah, this episode of a UA could go into a war because you're actually in his program. So you came to me and you were like, I have the best guest. I have the best guess sure zod shamin, and I'll take you his course of a positive intelligence. And I'm like, what the fuck is positive intelligence? And then you started to go into it of just how we learned how we sabotage our love lives. And as soon as you said that, I was like, we need to get him out the podcast. And I'm so glad we did because like you said, we do this podcast. This podcast started because we were genuinely curious about modern day day. And we did not have it all figured out ourselves. And now that both of us are not actively dating anymore, but we are navigating relationships. And fun fact, it doesn't stop after you go to a relationship, you never stop dating, and you just have to do things pop up and I think what I've been learning personally over the last, you know, I would say I'm hitting a year. I'm going on my year anniversary next week for going away. And I'd say the first, you know, the first like 6 months you're in the honeymoon phase, everything's great. Everything's going well and not to say it's not going great now. It definitely is, but we're just going to a different level. You know, we're heading different things and what I've learned from my relationship, talking to you, talking to other people in relationships and some friends that have been married for years. There's always something. There's always something you need to navigate. And it makes sense because you're bringing gears and years of your own way of doing things and thinking about things and processing things to a relationship and I love in this, how we break it down and see how it's actually impacting our relationships with our loved ones and how we're getting in our own ways. I was kind of reminiscing about my previous relationships and even the current one the first few months because you and I always talk about like the early stages of a relationship. And I don't think we ever went through that honeymoon phase because I think what it was was my UA bullshit phase. That's what I call it. That's what the honeymoon phase was for me. I threw out so much bullshit at this guy and every other person I've dated because I never thought being in a relationship meant it should be easy. So I made a very hard in the beginning. I want to do like the games and the chase and kind of make it not so easy for my partner, but then the next 6 months was about him breaking down my bullshit and being like, let's work on these issues instead of this like me versus you mentality. So I look back on previous dating, the early stages of dating, and I just fucking cringe, Julie. I can't believe I was that person who would never say thank you at the end of the dinner if someone picked up the bill. Like I would just act like I was entitled for some reason because I wanted the guy to feel like he should feel lucky to be with me. Like, what the hell was wrong with me? So yes, for me, honeymoon phase never existed because there's just UA bullshit phase. Well, I think even if you're not at a relationship, this episode is equally as applicable because you could sabotage yourself, even if you don't have someone to sabotage a relationship with. And that's exactly what you were doing. You finally just met someone that was willing to just break through it with you. It's interesting because I think Biden was the opposite that we were just so enamored and in love and then we started to be like, okay, this is the real selves, not that we weren't showing real selves, but it's different. Start to dig in a little more and get more comfortable. And honestly, I think actually, even if when there's conflicts, I always think of our episode with Vienna. Farron and Connor beaton, which was last season about how conflict is actually the key to a successful healthy relationship and I do believe actually it's broken down barriers that we can get to know each ourselves better.

00:05:01 - 00:10:06

Each other better and you build something that has a lot more depth than when it's just surface level at honeymoon ish. Yeah, like wishers odd is going to go into with this episode. We have two different sides of ourselves. We have the sage self which is the compassionate empathetic, peaceful side of us, and then we have the saboteur self which is just multiple layers of sabotages. I don't even know if that's right word, but saboteurs that can come and really ruin a good relationship. And in early dating, you're a sage side comes out because you want to be loving compassionate and empathetic, but the more you grow closer to each other, the more you can use your own saboteurs to bring out the saboteurs and other people. So you kind of like feed off of each other's negative energy. So it's like it's inevitable in relationships that we have both sides, and that we always say like someone can bring out the best in you and they can bring out the worst in you. That is so true in a relationship. Yeah, or what you're saying is sometimes maybe you're saboteurs come out before the sage. So I think everyone's different based on how you process relationships, your past experience, if you're protecting yourself and how you're doing it, it's a great topic. And it definitely gives me schemas vibes. You know, like identifying how you fit in, there's a quiz you can take, you a set me the quiz. Immediately, I was like, oh my God, this exploits everything. Similar to how I felt what I was realized I was a perfectionist on schemas in. What I love about this and schemas is that there's nothing wrong with you. There's none that are better than the other. It's bore just how can you get more knowledge about the way you process things, the beliefs you hold. So when it comes up, you're able to just be like, oh, yep, it's this. Not like there's something actually flawed with my relationship. I'm so glad you found it. Yeah, I'm so glad you said that, because we always say that with personal development and self help sort of like these quizzes and assessments you can take, it's not to tell you what is wrong with you, not to diagnose you. It's to give you hope that you can work towards someone a better version of yourself and we're constantly working on the better version of ourselves. So with this episode with the schemas with the personality test, it is just capturing you in this moment in time and then gives you a road map for where you can go towards. And that's always progress. Yeah, it even reminds me of last week's episode, which got such rave reviews about securing your anxious attachment style. We know that a lot of our listeners identify this way. Similar to me, because you might never lose that aspect of yourself. You might always have some anxiety, for instance, or you might always have some perfectionism or whatever it may be, but you can learn how to control it and you learn how to share it with someone, and you learn how to not let it get in your way, ultimately. So I've been wanting to ask you this way. So you took this course, wishers odd. And you were obviously felt very strongly about it. And one of the things I admire about you is your growth mindset in that you're always looking for ways to continue personal development. What made you decide to do this course? It's a very good question. I'm going to call out my good friend Eddie. Hi Eddie. Thank you so much for thinking of me and my partner. So he was able to have access to this course through his company. And he was able to bring on some close friends to be part of a circle to go through the program together. And he asked me and my partner. And so we were like, let's do this as a group. That sounds like a lot of fun. But through the course of the last 6 weeks, what I think what motivated me in the beginning was one, I get to do this with close friends. So we get to keep each other accountable, but also to show compassion for each other as we work through these issues. The second motivator was in an introductory video. Shirzad says, how many times have you gone through a motivational speaking event or gone through a program and you're like, I'm going to change my life and this is going to be so much better and then you forget about it a month later, right? Because he's saying that the lot of personal change comes from habit change. So it has to be a habit and behavioral daily exercise for it to last. So the way he programs this is that every day you do exercises. So you can keep this in your repertoire for the long term. So those are like the two main motivators for me. How is doing it with your partner? Because I've been greatly debated doing this with my partner. I would highly fucking recommended Julie. And this for anybody, you don't have to it doesn't even have to be this program. Go through any program together with a partner. I feel like one, it gives you a common language with your partner. You do these PQ exercises as part of this program, so my partner and I will, on a daily basis, be like, did you pick you today? How many times did you today? And it gives you a big shit. Yeah. It's like an inside joke, right? And then I also think it's a fun thing to do because you can be more vulnerable.

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It's a very structured program. So instead of you figuring out all the things you want to bring up yourself, the program actually elicits that out of you. So it's kind of like group therapy in a way. Yeah, I like that a lot. It's not just you educating your partner, right? Because I think a lot of us and I include it obviously, we host this podcast, but all the people that listen to this podcast, I sometimes think that everyone has a leg up a day day because you're taking the time to actually understand dating not just doo doo doo and taking that step back to reflect, but I love this part of not just educating not that that's a bad thing, but it does make it more collaborative that you could do it together. Yeah, that's a key word collaborative and I also think that if you find a partner who's willing to go through any of these programs with you, that's already a big step forward. Oh my God, this was such a vetting requirement for me. I remember when I was dating, you know, this time around when I met my partner because I like fucking, I'm not hiding aspects of myself. It's really important to me that someone wants to grow, like personal development is a core of who I am and I want someone that's on the same page. And I would bring up the schemas quiz and all that stuff. And some people just were like, what the fuck? What is wrong with you? And then my partner today, he took the quiz on his own, came back and told me what his answers were. And I was like, okay, he's on the same page. So I think sometimes we want to hide the best aspects of ourselves, but it can be a way to really filter and find that match that's on the same page. You know, what I love about this is that you know that when you're in a relationship, your partner today is not going to be the same partner next month or next year because they're constantly changing. So this is a great way to grow together, right? So you can be on the same path and have that common language to grow together. And I really love that. And for anybody who's been through therapy or these really kind of intense programs, when you ask them what they're looking for in a partner, they always say I look for growth mindset, right? You always hear that. I just want someone who's been through it, who's still going through it and who wants to keep going through it. This is a great way to find other people who are in that kind of same class of thinking. Yeah. I mean, the person you are today is not who you will be tomorrow, and that's a good thing. Oh, I can't wait to meet her. Love it. Well, we're going to stop there because we got a whole episode that's really diving into it. We made the announcement last week. We'll be shortening these intro slightly because we have bonus content coming every Sunday. We're calling it brunch talk so you can listen. It's going to be released around 10 a.m. PST one. I'm like, what does the equation one be have? Yes. Yes. So you know, I think people on the east coast had to eat later brunches so it works out. The idea is you can fuel your brunch talk for real life. Julie, when have you ever eaten brunch at 10 a.m.? Let's be honest here. Never. Never. Even though I'm on the east coast, I'm like, I probably actually fall into the one people. But brunch is supposed to be breakfast and lunch. It literally supposed to be between ten and 11. And I always have brunch after 12. So it's perfect. You listen to this short episode. They're going to be 20 to 30 minutes long. You're ready to go for your brunch that you can just dissect it even further on your Friends. And what we're trying to do too is there's some things that are worth discussing over brush that there's somethings that aren't like analyzing text messages or profiles. We think that's a gigantic waste of time. But the topics that we're going to be talking about are worth analyzing over a project, so. Yeah, they're juicy. Anyway, yes. Tune in. And while we're talking about being collaborative with potential dates, Friends, whoever, share this episode with a friend, because, you know, we all need this. We all do this revelation of how we might be sabotaging ourselves. And also, like I mentioned, share this with your next date and see how receptive they are to doing the work and taking the quizzes and learning about themselves. His learning is sexy, so find that out. Yeah, I think it's a great date question or a friend question. To ask, what are you currently working on? What's something you're working on about yourself? And then send them this episode, done. Yep. Before we get into it, let's hear a quick message from our sponsors. This podcast is sponsored by better help online therapy, people don't always realize that physical symptoms like headaches, teeth grinding, and even digestive issues can be indicators of stress, and let's not forget about doom scrolling, sleeping too little, sleeping too much, under eating and overeating. For me, stress takes over my life sometimes to the point where I spend more time stressing than actually being productive. For many of us, stress shows up in all kinds of ways. In a world that's telling you to do more, sleep less and grind all the time, here's your reminder to take care of yourself. Do less, and maybe try some therapy, personally, therapy has been a life-changing experience, helping me truly feel my feelings and have the tools to make progress in my mental health better help is customized online therapy that offers video phone and even live chat sessions with your therapist.

00:15:12 - 00:20:11

So you don't ever have to see anyone on camera if you don't want to. It's much more affordable than in person therapy. Give it a try and see if online therapy can help lower your stress. This podcast is sponsored by better help and datable podcast listeners get 10% off their first month at better help dot com slash dateable that's BET TER HELP dot com. This episode is made possible by switchcraft. I love match three games, but they all can seem so redundant with the same format and similar storylines. Switchcraft, on the other hand, as a brand new take on match three games that's both fun and interesting. I absolutely love that there are literally thousands of levels to play, so you never get bored, and the storylines also very engaging. You're trying to help Bailey and her friends uncover the mystery of the disappearance of her best friend, where every match presents a new piece of the story. And along the way, you can make decisions. This is my favorite part because it's like choose your own venture because of the decisions drive the narrative. For example, who to antagonize and who to befriend. In switchcraft, you take on the role of the witch at pendle hill, the world's top academy of witchcraft, along the way you'll find unique characters, a gripping story, and even little romance. The best part is that your choices in the game determine the outcome of the story. So you're in the driver's seat, download switchcraft for free and unlock the magical mystery. Okay, let's hear it from shirzad. We're gonna just get right into this conversation because we've heard of IQ, we've heard of EQ and now there's pq, which is positive intelligence and this positive intelligence quotient. You know, we got shirzad here and you've talked about how we go to the gym to exercise our muscles. So there's also a way for us to exercise our mental strength. Shazad is the author of The New York Times bestselling book, positive intelligence. He has lectured on positive intelligence at Stanford University. It has trained faculty at Stanford and Yale business school. He currently lives in San Francisco, been there for 20 years, grew up in Tehran, 61 years old, and he is married, high sure zod. How are you? Great. So glad to have you here. I mean, as someone that has not taken your course yet and I've heard so much about it, what is positive intelligence in your own words? Yeah, positive intelligence is a measure of your mastery over your own mind. If you are a fan of Star Wars, what we talk about is that inside your mind, there is a war raging between your energetic eye and inner dark wagers at all times your inner Jedi is the positive one in you who serves you and serves your interests and helps with your relationships and all those good stuff and your inner dark waders, which we call your saboteurs are the ones that are constantly sabotaging you. So we believe inside of your mind, there are voices that are constantly sabotaging you and there's a voice that's your true self that is serving you the balance of power between those two things is what we help change, we help strengthen your inner Jedi, weaken your inner dark raiders and as a result, you end up transforming your relationships, transforming how you feel, you feel about happier and less stressed and also perform a lot better in whatever you do. And so the measure of how strong you are at that is what we call that your positive intelligence level PQ. That is so fascinating. It's so important for dating. We hear this all the time. That's not as we get in our own ways. And it's hard to just suffer what our areas of our mind we should be paying attention to versus the areas that are sabotaged us. Yeah, as a matter of fact, I can look at you in the eye and everybody else is listening to us and say, you are actively every single day, sabotaging the effectiveness of your relationships. Your own wellness and your own performance, you are in a constant self sabotage mode. The question is not if you're doing it. The question is how strongly are you doing it and in what way are you doing it? There are ten ways we self sabotage. We call those the saboteurs every single one of us has a few of those. So I can absolutely guarantee you that your business self sabotaging without knowing it. And I want to get to the saboteurs, but before we do that, why is it that we're constantly sabotaging our lives and our relationships? Yeah, this is a part of evolutionary development of our brain. Let's use one example, which is the judge saboteur, the charge is the one saboteur that's universal. The judge saboteur constant defined what's wrong, not what's right with me with you and everything else, right? And it's the one that makes you up at three in the morning and says you idiot what's wrong with you like did you make that stupid mistake again? When are you ever going to learn or the one who says, you know, you're going to screw up tomorrow or do you think you are? It's also the one in a relationship that's constantly finding what is wrong rather than what is right with the other person.

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And that's devastating to a relationship and the other party. Every time you open their mouth, criticize what else you have found wrong with them rather than appreciation of what's right with them. So the question is, why do we all have the judge saboteur? And the answer is millions of years of evolution that predisposition to look at the negative and amplify the negative and this obsessed with the negative was actually helpful for the survival of our ancestors. For our distant ancestors, if the tree started shaking and you weren't quite sure what animal is going to emerge from behind the tree if you were in a judgment and always assume the worst and said I bet you there's going to be a Tiger coming up hit me. That negative predisposition was helpful for your survival. If you were very positive and you said, you know, I have a good feeling today. I think it's any day. I'm very optimistic, I think. It's a collaborative coming to give me a hug. How long do you think you survive? Exactly. It'd be dead. So predisposition to the negative was very helpful for our survival now. The other 9 saboteurs also are helpful for the survival of us as kids as kids we are very vulnerable, physically and emotionally. So saboteurs are your initial protectors and this crazy scary thing called life and we need them as kids, but by the time we are adults, they become habits of our minds. So without knowing it, we keep going back to the old thing we used to do to feel safe our physical animal. That negativity can really be detrimental for a lot of our relationships because we could sabotage really great relationships by doing that, but you personally experience a very tumultuous upbringing involving both physical and emotional abuse and in your program you talk about how that really affected your adult life. So can you give us a little bit background about your upbringing and then how you how this is inspired you to come up with positive intelligence? Yeah, I was I was very sensitive kid growing up and really harsh circumstances. Four siblings, my parents living in poverty in a tiny apartment, but the worst thing was my father was a pretty terrifying guy. I was really scared of him. I wasn't getting much love or attention from either of my parents and basically early on the survival mechanism of the judge came in, I needed to explain why is it that I'm not getting much love or attention from my parents. And I could not admit the reality to myself, which is, hey, I just have a very imperfect parents, because when you think about it, it is absolutely terrifying for a child to realize that his parents are imperfect why, because my life depended was in the hands of my parents. So we can not come up with a scenario that says, yeah, the truth is your parents are pretty broken people. So I needed to tell a story that had me keep my pants perfect because that would have actually helped me survive. And so the story was, shares that your parents are actually perfect. And the reason they're not giving you much love or attention is because shares that you are onboard of any love or attention. And that was the beginning of myself judge. It appears like a brutal thing to do to yourself, but actually the lord me to say, okay, my parents are perfect things. I have a reason why they don't love. And you're not sure that you're going to survive because your parents are really pretty powerful perfect things. Now, once I started doing that, I also needed to start finding what was wrong with other people because it would have been terrifying for me to think that I am the only envoy person and broken. So I also started finding what's wrong with every single person, except for my parents. Every person who came in front of me I would instantly find what's wrong with them, you're too ugly or to tell you to short your two factors is skinnier to this. I needed to find what's wrong with you because I need that also the judge you and drag you down. So again that for my survival, I said, I'm going to survive because I am not the only one who screwed up anybody else's too. So that was the formation of a very powerful judge, judge of self and judge of others. I had completely no idea I was doing it until 25 years later and Stanford business school I was an MBA student. We were sitting in a circle and the work of this particular class was we had to tell the truth to each other about how we were feeling. And at some point, every single classmate turned to me and said, cheers, we got to tell you something, you're incredibly judgmental. It's drives us nuts because standard anymore. Wild. And when the 5th person said the same thing, all of a sudden, I woke up to, oh my God, they are right. I judge everything instantly. Such automatic mechanism on my mind was a terrifying and life-changing moment in my life because all of a sudden I saw this judge character in my head filtering things and I realized I'm not seeing reality I'm not responding to reality I'm just reacting to the filter of this judge and this judge saboteur just got revealed to me when I was at 27 years old at Stanford business school that changed my life.

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I'm like nodding my head because like a lot of us can relate to that is that it does tie back to childhood. We've heard that so many times and we don't know how to put those words into our mouths of what's actually the psychology behind this. So I'm dying to know I guess is it innate that it's from your childhood that you have these saboteurs or are there other ways that you can identify with different ones? Just like every child grows temporary teeth and then they get permanent eater evolutionary stages of mental development and other emotional development. So every child develops saboteurs regardless of what your parents are like and all that stuff. This is not the you got screwed as a child kind of a thing. And an example is I have to beautiful kids that I adore and from day one, they were night and day different from each other. My son was a very introverted, gentle life is Ebola cherries, kind of a guy, and that beautiful tendency that he had taken too far became his key saboteur, which is the avoider saboteur. So one way to think about what are some of those are, is it's your natural greatest strength being taken too far and becoming your greatest weakness. So my son having this ease about him or everything wanted to be pleasant and life is a bottle of cherries and all those wonderful qualities that he had, which is his greatest strength. Taken too far, it becomes a Voyager who doesn't want to deal with the challenge or conflict and just wants to take it off turn and not confront it. Now, my daughter was born from day one as an exchanging extrovert, very powerful being hard charging coal oriented. All those wonderful things, which is awesome transfer for her to have taken too far. It becomes the controllers avatar bless her heart. She was predisposed to develop more of the controller. So the question is not whether you develop saboteurs, the question is how strong they are and how you aware of them so that you can intercept them when you're an adult. My daughter and I absolutely complete awareness of our controller saboteur and knows when to use her power to be an awesome leader. And when to take it easy, go to empathy, go to curiosity, other powers so that she is inclusively the right and controlling reader. And my son knows when to use his ease and flow and positive nature and the hand of his sage, the counterpart to sabotage that serves him and when it's being taken too far and becomes the avoider. So they both have deep understanding of these. This is the most exciting part when I got to this portion of your program. I kept thinking, well, if we can label this, then we know when they're showing up in our relationships, and that's step number one is labeling them. So I think we should get into who these saboteurs are, how they're showing up in our relationships so that we can recognize it and label it. And you've already touched upon the judge which is like the overarching saboteur. How does the judge show up in relationships? Let me maybe tell a story of how relationships happen and one of the judge comes in there to answer your question. So first of all, in relationships often what happens is people get drawn to the others who have a complementary saboteur, not the same saboteur. As an example, typically a strong controller doesn't get together with another strong controller. Why? Because somebody is going to kill somebody. So two people can't control the situation. So a hard charging controller tends to get drunk to somebody with softer, less aggressive type of saboteurs. For example, avoider or pleaser. So I already have to have had fun conversations with my daughter that she has the strong heart charging satellite control vision they have will likely be drawn to a guy who is more gentle type saboteurs are fueled by stress. So any time you feel stressed, our go to way of dealing with things is true are saboteurs. So let's imagine, let's say marrying meets Mark. When marrying its work in the early days, what's happening we see the sage in the other person, the original essence beauty of the other person. While we call your saboteur your false self, your negative self, the sage is your true self energetic. Initially in a dating scenario, we see what's beautiful and the other.

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And by seeing their sage, what's beautiful about them, we actually draw that out more from them. So they show up more and more as they're beautiful essence, amazing being that they are. And that's contagious, so the stage in one person is contagious. It brings out the stage in the other person. So marry seeing this Asian markets bringing out more sage, essence beauty, that's not bringing out more of that in Mary and it's a beautiful positive reinforcement through contagion effect. And what's there not to love, the sage in every human being is incredibly beautiful. So love is occurring and all the good stuff is happening. And then they get together and 6 months later, 9 months later, they are living together and Mark is walking by the bathroom and all of a sudden realizes that Mary is as she was brushing her teeth. She's actually squeezing the toothpaste from the middle, not from the end, but from the middle. Oh my God, this is so crazy. What are you doing? This is literally what's happening in my relationship. Yeah. Were you at my apartment last night? Yeah. No, no. Thrust me to have any all over the world right now. So his judge comes up and judges Mary's watch Mary's doing and points out, you know, hey, and with the judge answered, like me, what the hell are you doing? You know, they're not supposed to a middle and all that stuff. Now let's say Mark has the controller saboteur and he is now with Mary, who has an avoider saboteur. So it's not saboteurs or contagious when Mark came out with his judge and controller trying to control what Mary is doing was that trigger in Mary is her saboteur, which is avoided, which means she doesn't want to deal with this. She's going to, instead of actually discussing this and coming to a resolution, she just tries to whitewash it and not deal with it. And continue with what she's doing. And that avoiders tendency that shows up really now drives my crazy like, what is this? How did I get stuck with over here? Why are you so evasive? So the judge and controller gets even stronger. And now let's end that's totally going to bring out Mary's judge now and she's saying, I didn't know I got such a rigid controlling judgy person. Before you know it, they're beautiful sage, bringing out the sage, me bring it up best in you, has shifted to saboteurs, bringing out the saboteur, because true mirror neurons, what we know is that one person being in saboteur mode triggers the saboteurs and the other to a contagion effect and so we have gone from bringing out the best in each other to bring out the worst in each other. Which is why in our most intimate relationships, we are the cruelest. We are the ugliest in terms of allowing our saboteurs to come out and play free. So we do the most damage actually to the people we love the most, because the saboteurs are getting into a contentious stance with each other. Well, can you just say that again? We did the most damage to the people we love the most. Yeah, we are the crew that's, right? I mean, we behave better at work if my boss came to me with a saboteur. I would do my cure so I would behave because there are consequences and sometimes when we don't quite have the same consequences, we let our saboteurs run free and the other thing that happens is think about the tango of the saboteurs. My in this particular example marks judge and controller reliably bring out Mary's avoider judge, which then reinforces mark's judge and controller. This becomes a tango that reinforces itself. And every time it happens, it becomes more of a habit. So that in a few months or in a few years, Mark says three words and before finishing the sentence, Mary has started her on her whole paragraph because it's just based on muscle memory. We are no longer even listening to what the other is saying. They're going right into the dance of a saboteurs. And the saboteurs get charged up by this. So every time Marx judged does this and gets the behavior from Mary does an avoider behavior Marx judge becomes more reinforced like something is wrong with Mary. The controller becomes more certain like very, really needs some controlling here because without the control she's actually done avoid everything and nothing good is going to happen. So the saboteurs proved themselves right every time they come in and create a behavior from the others person that behavior they get from the other person reinforces what they have made up about the other person. So they keep generating the behavior they actually believe is wrong with the other person. And then they say I was right to begin with, right? So it's a very self reinforcing thing. Once we get into these dance, dance of the saboteurs, it's very challenging to step out of it and realize what you're doing. Well, I'm so glad that we are learning about this today because this feels like the death of relationships to me. And I see this really spiraling out of control if you don't get ahead of it. Can you walk us through these 9 saboteurs and how they show up a bit in love and dating? Yeah, that's actually getting into a couple of things.

00:35:08 - 00:40:02

One, so that's the mystery of what are the saboteurs, people have a better sense of what they are. Let me give you all the names for them. Yeah, let's get all the names. So the judge is a saboteur, which is the only sabotage everybody has. Then there are 9 other saboteurs and we have an assessment that helps you figure out which of those samples you have. Usually people have a few of those. Their names alphabetically are the avoider, the controller, hyper achiever, hyper rational, hypervigilant, laser, restless, stickler, and victim. Yes. Why the cast of characters? I'm pretty sure you just recognize yourself and your significant other. Yes. Just by the names alone. So we both took the quiz. A UA which ones did you get that you were the highest in? Oh, restless, restless, interesting. I could see that with you, for sure. Just from the day of it. And you got which one did you get again? Hyper achiever was my number one and then controller was behind that. Yeah, hyper achiever was my number two. So can we go into then how they show up while dating? Yeah, so I can go alphabetically, the first is avoider, avoider, there's an element of avoider that's avoiding unpleasant tasks and deadlines and things like that. So they avoid it could be a lot into procrastination last minute stuff, which totally drives the controller types and some of the other types up the wall. So there's avoidance of tasks and stuff and procrastination, but also just as importantly, avoidance of conflict. So instead of dealing with conflict, telling the other people what you're really feeling confronting things, where there are new and fresh, you let it faster, faster, faster, faster and grows up in your face. So that's the avoider impact on the relationship, not really being upfront for things that are not working for you and dealing with them real time. I feel like that shows up in early dating too, especially with people who ghost for people who don't want to talk about the conflicts at hand because they just want a honeymoon period to happen. So avoider, I think that's abattoir for me personally shows up very early in relationships because I'm trying to be on my best behavior and try to avoid the red flags that I'm seeing. And one metaphor that this kind of connects with me with is think about a relationship, let's say, initially, it's like a perfect rose garden. And in this perfect rose garden, no matter how perfect it is, reads will start to grow. And what we saw early on, it's like something the other person said or did that rub you the wrong way, but it's kind of not huge yet. It's kind of small initially. Now, if you don't deal with it, if you don't discuss it, if you don't bring light to it and communicate around it, you're not going to pull the weed, what happens is that little bit will actually get grow because you're start making assumptions about it. You grow into something bigger and bigger. And if you're keep avoiding dealing with the reason before you know it, there are more reads in the garden than roses. Controller basically tries to dominate the way the other person does things that is a certain about what the right way is versus the wrong way and typically the other person shapes against that and says I feel controlled and it has quite an impact where people push back against it. I can see in dating how the controller definitely shows up. I think a lot of times we believe we know the way that dating should work. That's someone should text after a certain amount of days or ask for date. This many days and a lot of times we see relationships or budding relationships fall apart because someone's not playing by your rule book. So I could see this one being real dangerous in getting in people's way. By the way, I know that since we talked about controller and avoider as complementary saboteurs, notice what's really happening. I used the example of actually my son having a strong tendency towards the avoider my daughter towards the controller. What I suggested is that they were born with those predispositions, my son being easygoing, very creative adaptable in the flow, my daughter being hard charging color oriented driven. Notice these two strands actually are complementary and harder the reason unconsciously we are drawn to the other person is not their saboteur but their strength at the saboteurs overusing. So that's why I was saying to my daughter, your heart charging and goal oriented and directive and all that stuff. Chances are you're going to find it very, very attractive when a man has a complimentary strength to yours that can be easygoing be in the flow being the moment be in touch with the joy of life and all that stuff. That's awesome confirmation tissue you're probably going to be drawn to each other because of that complementary mass.

00:40:03 - 00:45:01

That's why you would feel the love, then the problem is that while you're attracted to that opposite style, at some point you start judging that opposite stuff and say, I'm kind of drawn to this, but I've done it, why don't you also more like me? Why aren't you more charging? So we want to have our cake and eat it too. We are drawn to the complementary nature, but at some point we want them to be just like us and have all of those trends too. And so a real big thing is for us to realize you can't have your cake and eat it too. There is this person's brain is wired differently. They can't bring all those strands, and at the same time bring all of your strands. That's two different human beings. So let's appreciate the difference. And not judge the difference. And that's what typically we go to in the relationship. Okay, so what's after controller? Okay. So hyper achiever which really you mentioned you have two so that challenge with the hyper achiever, which a lot of us have, whether or not it's our top saboteur, is a conditional self love and self acceptance, which says, I am really not worthy until and unless I achieve and achieve and achieve some more. And the problem is that the essence of it is we are attaching ourselves self worth with achievement. Rather than saying unconditional love says, I am this beautiful being regardless of whether I achieve or not, and one of the things that I wanted my kids to grow up, but there's no that they were born as a beautiful essence. As unique as their fingerprint, and that beautiful being is worthy of all the love in the world. And so one of the ways that I wanted to make sure that my son and daughter didn't develop the hyper achiever is my son is into tickling game, and he loved tickling. So I would start, I would start tickling him. And I say, and I taught him to say it all the right answers. Technically I would say key on tell me, why do I love you so much? And he would say, I don't know daddy, why do you love me so much? And I would say, well, is it because you're so smart and get good grades? And he had learned to say, and they would say, no, that it's not because I'm swallowing it with grace. And I'll take it in some more, is it because you're so great in sports and soccer and all that. And you say, no, that it's not because of that. Take it in some more. Is it because you're so handsome? And my son is really handsome, goes after my wife. But for Damien, he would say, no, that is not because of that. Is it that you're kind and generous? No, that is not because of it. So at some point, I would pretend great frustration. And I would say, so why is it Keanu? Why do I love you so much? And he had learned to say, and he would say that it's because I am me. When you think about it, fundamentally what I was teaching my son is when I ask him so when he would say that is because I mean, then I would ask him, what does it mean? He would say, well, I am the person you held in the hospital when I was born. That being is beautiful and worthy of all the love in the world. He does not have to do anything and it does not have to be performed to be loved or they have love. That is a profound realization for any human being to have rather than I'm only worth if I perform. And same thing in a relationship, if in a relationship you are there so that you are loved by the other person. So that you feel more worthy so that you feel this void inside yourself that says I am not worthy until I achieve not only in my performance outside in the job, but also in relationship I achieve wordiness through being loved and all of it is trying to fill a void that can only be filled by you saying I am worthy just because. That's huge. We hear it all the time. It's like, I'm not going to enter a relationship until I lose that 5 pounds or until I get a promotion or until I have X amount of my bank account. So I think it is the external, but also the societal pressure of not having what we think we should have. And the frustration, the other person will feel in the relationship, you're asking them to fill a void that's impossible for them to fill. No matter how much love they give you, you still feel unloved. Yes, yes. And I see that manifesting as our relationship is not going the way that it should be going. We are not hitting these milestones that we should be hitting as a couple. And then you start creating that resentment towards your partner because they're not helping you achieve these external milestones. Yeah, the way I kind of talk about is like the Teflon surface, nothing will no amount of love from the outside will stick to you because the surface will become sticky only if you feel self love. Then other people's love will stick. We believe it, you retain it, you appreciate it. But if you don't have deep soft love, other people's love comes and it just doesn't stick because if you are not feeling worthy of love, there's something suspicious about other people's love.

00:45:01 - 00:50:01

There's something wrong with them loving you. What's wrong with this person loving the sound really person that I am? They must be dumb or stupid or something. What's wrong with them? Or I don't quite believe the love. It probably isn't for real. It's far better than not last or something. But the impact on the other person is they are in a no win situation. At some point they're exhausted by just no matter how much I love I gave it's not enough. Oh my God, this is heading home. And here's the way this avatar is proved themselves right. Remember, why keep saying I am not already and I'm not really one of the other person is actually at some point when their love is not being received. They get frustrated and they leave and then you say, see, I told you, I'm not already. I told you, I was right to begin with. So the saboteurs generate their own reality, which reinforces their life. They get more powerful because they keep providing their own evidence for the story they tell. They become a self fulfilling reality. Wow. I feel like so much of the last week for me has been explained right now. Julie is like, all right, I got enough out of this. That's realizations on the moment. Okay, so what's our next one in line? Hyper rational. Hyper rational is the rational function being taken too far. So I'm very analytical. I'm very logical and everything in life, the best way to resolve it and solve problems is through the rational mind. Including if I'm having a conflict with my relationship, well, we figure a figure this out and fix it for you. This is what's happening. And this is what's happening there for the answer is this. So the hyper rational brings the rational mode to problem solving in a relationship which has the other person feel unheard uncared for the emotions are not listened to. The emotions are not responded to, so you come across as intellectually arrogant, unloving distant, all of that stuff trying to fix the other person's problems in this relationship is quite devastating to a relationship. And what I tell the hyper rational is the other person will not feel her on their emotions are actually registered and responded to rather than you're trying to fix the problem for them. And so they really step back and realize emotions are not just noise factor emotions are incredibly critical to pay attention to respond to. One of the misunderstandings about the hyper rational is because of this behavior, we think they are insensitive people, but actually they can be incredibly sensitive. They just have learned not to pay attention to emotions because they think that just makes them not objective. So they could be quite sensitive, but we end up judging them as insensitive because we don't see them in our caring way. This is a saboteur that just can't read the room. This is I mean, we hear this in early dating too. It's like, oh, everything on that date went really well. We talked about sports and all the things we have in common, and we got food and drinks. How come they didn't want to go on a second date? You didn't read the room and they weren't in the moment. They were more just putting in this formula of what a good day is and hoping that the result would be a second date. Exactly. Same emotions were just not. Let's hold that thought for a few messages. This episode is made possible by sugar break. I have a confession. I have a sweet tooth. Every year I make it a goal to eat less sugar, and I'm not alone in this 90% of Americans are actively trying to reduce their sugar intake. But this year, I may actually accomplish that goal with sugar break. A plant based natural solution that helps people manage their blood sugar as part of a healthy lifestyle without completely altering their daily lives or costing an arm and a leg. 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Have you ever thought about how much better dating would be if you had a whole army of people supporting you along the way. We know that dating can be frustrating and lonely, but it can also feel fulfilling and fun. Have you recently decided you want to make some changes to your love life. Maybe you've recently reentered the dating scene. Maybe you've gone on one too many dates that went nowhere, or maybe you're just ready to take your current relationship to the next level.

00:50:02 - 00:55:01

That is exactly why we created the sounding board, a true extension of our podcast that delivers a personalized experience, which includes monthly office hours where you can drop in and chat with us about anything. Weekly sound offs with guided discussions and regular virtual happy hours, allow Julie and I to become your dating sherpas to provide real-time guidance and wisdom in a more intimate way so we can all navigate dating and relationships together. Join the sounding board today by going to dateable podcast dot com slash sounding board. Again, that's dateable podcasts dot com slash sounding board. Okay, next one. This is fast. So the hyper vigilant is the one that's finding dangers and risks every verse. So it's the kind that walks into a room and you just feel their anxiety about life is a dangerous place. I've got to be richer than I was. I got to be on top of everything. Things can go wrong. And it's exhausting energy because there's such an anxiety and risk awareness that when you're around them, it's pretty exhausting because they see they see risks and dangers everywhere. And that becomes contagious where we can't really be resting in front of them. The impact is it just takes the fun of it to exhausting way to live when you think there is and you cry well, way too often because you see danger everywhere and there is an actual wolf, the other person is no longer believing you because you probably also the time. Are these the people that, you know, freak out when they start dating someone because they fear that it's going to end or it's not going to work out the way they want. Yeah, presumption of everything that could go wrong will go wrong and again a self fulfilling prophecy of there could be so many risks and you become self fulfilling there too if you are predicting all the things that can go wrong sooner or later enough on will because people get exhausted around you. Right, or like you don't even take a chance when it comes to love, you're just too in your head. You don't trust that it's just too risky. Just a reminder for our listeners right now, we're halfway through the saboteurs. I think it's important to note that not just one saboteur defines who you are, we could have multiple saboteurs appear and some are just more loud than the others. So don't think like, oh, I am the hyper vigilant person. You could be a combination of few and it's good to recognize all of them. Yeah, most people have the judge plus a couple of others. I think I had every single one except for the voice. Well, let's get to the pleaser. Let's see what Julie has that too. Well, let's see. So after hyper vigilant, we have, indeed, pleaser. So the police are kind of better known where I am trying to give to you and be kind and say yes to you and all of that stuff. But there's a condition that I'm really wanting to make sure you like me. Yeah. And so there is a string attached. It's difference between me being loving and kind, just because there's joy in that versus loving and kind because I really want you to like me. There's a neediness to the placer. And the problem is that I give and give and giving give it give and I don't even ask for anything for myself because I'm not quite in touch with my own needs and don't express it. At some point the other person hasn't given me back enough in response because first of all, they don't know what my needs are. Secondly, I've been busy giving and not really standing for my own needs. And then I start getting frustrated and saying, what the hell, this is one dimensional, one directional, here to selfish, you're not giving me enough of all that stuff. So we end up getting quite frustrated and resentful in our relationships. Why am I the one who's always giving up? Part of the reason is because you're not making your own needs known and these sugar codes are made when there is an issue that we have. We don't quite directly tell people that we have an easier that's not being met because in our pleasing tendencies hard for us to actually stand from and what it is that our boundaries are our needs are. And it's not the other person's fault that they don't know and they don't give back. It's a lot of it is our own creation. So it generates weirdly it actually destroys relationships because at some point we keep getting the relationship becomes one dimensional and give and take and also at some point we are resentful and because people away are the frustration. This is the classic nice guy cool girl syndrome. Exactly what's happening. And there's a reason why those archetypes struggle with relationships. For exactly what you just said. And the love bomber too, the person that's just like, I'm going to give, I'm going to give you all the love and do all the courting in the beginning, but then feel a very resentful to the fact that they're not receiving anything back. Yeah. And so we have people take responsibility for that. And ask, create boundaries for when am I saying yes because I lovingly choose to say yes, what am I saying? Yes, because I can't say no because that's a comfortable for me.

00:55:01 - 01:00:00

I bet if I did this a couple years ago, I would have scored a lot higher on this one than I did because I definitely never told people what was going on. I expected them to be by readers and I held it in because I didn't want to rock the boat. And I think you just build a lot of resentment that way that one day you snap and it's not good. Yeah. And you don't want to give at all. Exactly. Don't forget that. Give people that opportunity to meet you. Yeah. Okay, what's next? Let's go to Andy's fund. Next one. Is restless. Oh, you weighs number one. Yay. So some of these saboteurs are ones that we all have to some extent, but maybe a little bit more extreme people score high on it. So there is a restlessness in all of us to some extent. The Buddhist called the mind the monkey brain because they say that the mind can't just stay in long branch jumps from one branch to another to another to another in mind is restless. So all of us have a restless mind and with those with the rest of saboteurs even a little bit more so. And the issue with the restless is not quite being present that was in front of them and I was thinking there's something better somewhere else. Maybe that next thing and the next thing. So instead of really being present for what is there, you're always wanting to be somewhere else where there could be more joyful experience of life, the excuses that I want to life is short and I want to experience it fully and the paradox is by never quite being there for what's in front of you. You're not experiencing life at all. Instead of experiencing in most fully, you're never quite present for life happening right this minute. So the experience is that you jump to too many things, you don't finish things that you start. There's always a nice, The Shining, The Shining next thing that attracts you in relationships. You might be drawn to the initial phase of a relationship that shiny and beautiful brand new one or that stuff. And not see it true to the place where it is less shiny and more steady. And one of the metaphors I use is, you know, it's like wanting to get the water and you dig it well by like ten feet and then you get bored with that. No, let me take another well, maybe another row another well. Dig a thousand wells and never get the water because you don't stay with anyone long enough to hit water, right? So when it comes to relationship with maybe not investing in a relationship long enough to actually get the everyday right now. This is the biggest problem with DNA. Yeah, exactly. It's like everyone wants the next item. And if they, you know, especially with data gaps, it makes it easy to believe there's so many options out there. And if someone doesn't meet every last part of your checklist, you just move on. The maximizer. That's exactly what this is. Yeah, and it minimizes, right? Because you never get the water so you're never present for what is. And everyone's gonna have a flaw every single person you eat is gonna have a floss so you gotta just double down on someone. There's no one out there that's perfect. And everybody's sage, they're energetic, much more beautiful and gorgeous than even they realize. So the magic of a relationship, can you bring out the best in the other so much so that they even get surprised by what they discover, how beautiful they discovered themselves to the most human beings have no clue how beautiful they are in their sage. And that's part of my work, you know, have people discover how amazing they are by letting them figure out how to activate deeper and deeper stage in themselves and quiet the saboteurs. Well, I think that's what's really interesting about restless is that it's kind of passive. You're letting all these things happen to you and you're searching for stimulation, but you're not actually living that moment. So it's a very passive way of not being in your own body. I feel like why I identify with this one is when I was dating, I just didn't identify with where I was, who I was. I was just more about the act of going on these dates. I was squeezed them in, you know, pack it all in in a day, but who was I in that moment? What did people bring out in me? I didn't even sit in my sage because I didn't even care about that. It was just more about finding that next stimulation. And it's like maximizing you feel like you need to squeeze all these dates in so you can find the best person and it's like a perpetual cycle. But you don't sit to think about how does this person make me feel? You spread yourself thin, there's you don't get to discover your own amazing beauty and power. Or other people see either, right? Yeah. Okay. I think we all that one. Yeah, let's do this. I'm excited to stick. That's my partner. So the stickler again, the strength that's taken too far is the ability to focus on detail and to bring organization to chaos. And so that's a wonderful strength when you're able to bring order and organization to chaos, the detail oriented, all that stuff. But taken too far becomes a stickler and the stickler wants everything to be perfect.

01:00:01 - 01:05:03

And everything has to be really great. And the problem is that instead of seeing what is good enough as good enough and appreciating anything that's good, they're always pointing to the 1% 2% 3% where it's not good enough and seeing incredibly discouraging in a relationship cause no matter what the other person does, but they hear from you as the part that wasn't perfect. That is incredibly discouraging because after a while you say, if I work really, really, really hard and I'm 97% perfect in this thing. She's going to refer or he's going to refer to 3% that wasn't. So why bother? Let's just do a 50% job, because then she's trying to focus on 50% that wasn't. The result is going to be the same satisfaction and critique. And so it generates a lot of anxiety and discouragement in the partner and in our cells because life is not perfect. Everything will keep falling from order to chaos. And so it creates a lot of anxiety constantly where we are constantly trying to fight life for what it is, which I found to be in the flow and a little bit messier than this wants to allow it to be. The reserve rigidity and anxiety that it brings to both ourselves and our partners. So my partner is not taking this, but I'm going to go on a gamble that this is him also. So great. So one of the things that comes up is unrelenting standards with this. Do you see that as a flip side of perfectionism? Or is that different in this case? Yeah, well, what I teach the people with stickler saboteurs to do is say, create two buckets, 20%, 80%, and a lot of what you're currently trying to make perfect. Actually, when you think about it, good enough is good enough for those things. That's 80% of the stuff you fret over, you've got a really relaxed take a breath and say good enough, it's good enough for these things. That's 80% of what you worry about and criticize others. Now there is a 20% staff where action is a good thing to strive for. That thinks really do matter and then for those 20% lovingly put your attention on, you know what the city tried to make this better, right? But that's 20% not a 100%. And it allows you to breathe a lot of other people around you to breathe and then focus on things where really high standard is very important. And then you approach that positivity rather than constant frustration because the telltale sign you're in saboteur mode is negative energy and emotion. If you're frustrated and upset and all that stuff you're in saboteur mode it doesn't matter what's happening. If you are in sage mode of trying to make something perfect, there is joy. There is fun. There's creativity all that good stuff is happening while you're trying to create great stuff. So if you are in a relationship and you're like, this is something that's second nature to you. How do you decide what areas? Because no one's ever going to be perfect, right? Yourself and your partner. How do you decide what the 20% is that needs to be perfect in the 80% that needs to be good enough? Well, let's take principles and values. I mean, the deal breaker if my partner is unethical as my partner doesn't have a sense of mission and purpose that guides their life or stuff like that. What is really what needs to be a deal breaker. And those are foundational stuff that are about purpose, meaning values, all of that stuff. But then hi, brush my teeth. Okay, so give me a break. You know, there are multiple ways to skin that. Got it. This is helpful. As Julie's taking notes. Well, I think with my partner, we kind of talk about he's just a stickler for everything. The way things should look and be placed in the house, the way a date should go down, a birthday should go down. It's like very much innate in him so that he doesn't even realize that he has these expectations. So something we've been working on is are you open to a new way of putting this sideboard or a new way of where the bed goes, you know, just being open to the idea of something new is just a nice start to it all. Yeah, and realizing how much you're imposing on the others on the other with the assumption that there is only one way. That's a real imposition on people just feel so constrained around that much of a sticker. And of course, there is compassion. The other thing we want to bring to our partners is we are equalizing the playing field here by saying you know what we are all imperfect things with saboteurs, now your service there might be a stickler minus an order avoid there is no better or worse than the sticker. I'm going to take responsibility for my avoider. I'm going to work on my order. I'm going to try to improve on that. And lest you please also work on your stickler, right? Because both of us in this relationship are sabotaging the relationship through our saboteurs. So very powerful conversation is that I would love for people to do is take the saboteur assessment, which is in our website. We'll link it also. Bring that information into a conversation that says how do I self sabotage? So you don't attack the other person to actually only focus on yourself. How do I self sabotage? How do I go negative? The way we know you're in saboteur mode is when you go into negative emotion. And so what we say is any time you're negative emotion for more than a second year in south road.

01:05:03 - 01:10:05

It doesn't matter what has happened. Who did what to whom? He find still a negative emotion about it or more than a second. I am responding to this through my saboteur. The stage, the energetic new finds a positive mind, modality, curiosity, empathy, creativity, calm, clear headed, a mode that's positive to respond to anything. So basically the question that I would love both artists to come to is how do I sabotage our relationship? And there's a judge thing. We started with a judge. How does my judging of myself? By the way, my judging of myself, not just my judging of you, but my judging of myself, sabotages our relationship, because if I'm constantly finding myself unworthy of love, and you give me love and I don't quite receive it because I find myself here, but I am sabotaging our relationship by judging myself. So how am I judging? How is my judging to write myself and judging you? Sabotaging our relationship with my avoiders, declare controller, restless, whether those have that in a relationship. So it's a self reporting, not let me tell you how your Sabbath approaching us. So do we have any more laughter do we get? Victim, one more victim. This is a really good one. Yes. So the victim clear, it's a very well known saboteur, I'm feeling particularly singled out for bad things happening to me. And for things that you did, oh my God, poor me, so there is an orientation towards self pity and feeling sorry for myself and constantly finding what's being done to me by the world by others by you and it was one of my top saboteurs of very sneaky one. It was actually very protective for me. I was I was in a cocoon of depression. I find I found out when I was 30 or so that I've been in depression all my life in a cocoon of self pity through this victim's saboteur, which actually helped me remove myself from the world and sued myself. What I realized thinking about victim was I so wanted love, but in the absence of love, I was giving myself pity and pity is actually quite soothing. And so a lot of people in the victim's saboteur, they find it addictive to being self pity because self pity is soothing at some point I realized of while self believe was soothing and comforting. It was a very bad substitute for actual love. We see this all the time and dating. I think people that are quick to blame the apps, their city, all the external factors, and feel like dating is out to get them. And we always say too. It's like, what is the benefit? We know that stones you need a vet. We're not going to say that you don't. But a lot of times this misery loves company, just everything is going wrong, poor me, mentality. How is that actually serving you in the quest for love? Yeah. And again, at some point, that's becomes very self fulfilling because if I think that people are particularly mistreating me and particularly not loving me and all that stuff, at some point, people get so fed up that they do reject you. And then you say, I told you. I told you people are singling me out and it's also a thing prophecy like every other Sabbath. Right. If you think someone's going to ghost, they're probably going to go. Yeah, exactly. And you're always in this why me why me mentality. So then you start seeing, oh, oh, my Friends are in healthy relationships. You start finding evidence to prove your victim when it's actually not the truth. Exactly. This one's this one's tough. I think we've all been in the victim mode. It's hard to get out of it. Which I guess is the next question is now that we know all this, which I think I've connected so many thoughts just knowing it. So that alone is helpful. But what are some steps we can take to make sure our relationships don't suffer from this? Yeah, so the most important is become aware of your own saboteurs and so what we want you to do is do the saboteur assessment, which is a free assessment, positive intelligence dot com. So you do the 5 minute takes 5 minutes. Once you understand your saboteurs, then we want you to witness yourself the moment you go to saboteur. By the way, we know the way we tell if you're in South Carolina is negative emotion. So the moment you go to any negative emotion, you stop and label that normal and say right now I'm in saboteur mode stop. The thought in my head and the emotions is generating a saboteur is not serving me. I need to shift. So there's a three step process. First step is you witness yourself in saboteur mode and you label that moment as out there and say, no, the study in my head is my judges thought it's not my thoughts. My controller is saying this. My judge is saying I'm unworthy. My judge is saying you are unworthy, my control is saying this. I will just say this. I am not saying it's not me. That's savitar saying, it labeled it as a matter. It takes away the power and credibility of that voice. So that's step number one. Step number two, you do these things we call a PQ wrap. It only takes ten seconds, and it shifts the brain activation. It requires the region of the brain versus avatars live, it activates the region of the brain, where your energetic or your sage lives.

01:10:05 - 01:15:09

And I want to do a picture of at least so that we know how to do it. So let's do a picture up with me that there are many ways to do it, but that's the one popular way. So please take two fingertips and gently rub two fingertips against each other. Gently rub two fingertips against each other with such attention that you can feel the fingertip bridges on both fingers. Gently rub two fingertips against each other with such attention that you can feel the fingertip bridges on both fingers. So that was a little bit more than ten seconds. We call this a PQ wrap. It just stands for positive intelligence quotient. And the peculiar rep is each time you do this and takes only ten seconds. If you had your head under a function MRI machine, you would have noticed that it just is ten second thing you did. Ever so slightly quieted the region of your brain where all your saboteurs live and ever so slightly activated the region of your brain that you're energetic or your sage lives. So what I did was I intercept the saboteurs that no to that started doing this particular abstract, maybe ten seconds won't be enough initially, maybe you need to do a minute or two, but as you do these, I promise you you will feel the shift in your mind. And you now have access to a part of your brain that has access to your energetic stage who can figure out how to be more empathic, compassionate, loving towards yourself and towards the other people and how to be in deeper curiosity, creativity, or calm clear how that action, all of those are powers of the sage. They have just shifted yourself to the part of your brain activation that has access to these great positive powers. And step number three is then you respond to the situation with one of these positive nodes and 5 nodes that are in the book I go into deeper thing that, but the first one is empathize, second one is explore, which is beginner's mind deep curiosity, the third one is innovate, think out of the box about how to do the situation for one is navigate your guided by a deeper sense of meaning and purpose. What's really important here, the kind of question you ask. And the final one is activate, which is how clear headed laser focused fearless action. Those are the 5 positive modes that you're energized I have. They all get activated if you do this ten seconds stuff. So it's very repeatable. Like every challenge you have, every difficulty you have in a relationship. I promise you if you intercept undo this, it's going to have a profound impact on your relationship, including the fact that you want to make a promise to each other in a relationship that when one party is very strongly hijacked, you will stop having a conversation, your cut each other sounds like and you will literally give each other a time a break to do to go out for a walk and do this picture ups or actually sit there, do pick yours together or just take time off so that you recover back to the positive part of your brain before you continue your conversation. We just did this last night. I can tell you it worked. My partner and I were to heat a conversation. My judge came out so hard and I rubbed my two fingers against each other. I was like, I gotta peek here. I love it. And it works. I came back as a perfect angel. No, it really does help. To intercept the train of thought. The recommend having a weekly cadence, and I give you an example, one other CEOs that I coach in Boston for the past 20 plus years now, every Wednesday, he and his wife are holding hands. They walk into this restaurant in their neighborhood. The staff in the restaurant knows there's this corner table that this husband and wife will get. And they always serve them rose in the beginning. And they're holding hands, walking in, and the conversation they have every Wednesday is. Since our last Wednesday dinner has anything happened that we might consider reading our garden. Did I do anything or say anything that you really need to err? Make sure I understand, make sure I hear. And each party makes sure they deeply understand what the other has said apologize for things if they understand or explain things over that stuff. This is weed pulling because we have only had a week to worry about it and make assumptions about it. And it also allows the husband and wife, let's say he's running out the door on Monday and he said something in a rush that she thinks was disrespectful or whatever. She doesn't have to stop him right then and there and say, stop, you just hurt my feelings or anything like that. Why? Because she knows on Wednesday they're going to get to talk about it. So during the week, you can actually be more gentle with each other, cut each other some slack because you know there is a time and a place where you will actually sit down and make sure you talk about it. Now, this is an example of having commitment to keeping your relationship healthy because no matter what you do, there are things you do and say that rub the other person a little bit the wrong way.

01:15:09 - 01:20:04

And if you have a cadence that says every week, we're going to talk about it. Then you don't have to walk on eggshells with each other. You don't need to have a difficult time bringing it up because you know it's going to be brought up. So I would highly recommend a cadence like that. So how do you have that type of conversation in a way that doesn't feel combative and as the person receiving that information? You don't take it personally. Well, notice that already by having a time and a place for it, it makes it easier, right? Because we now know we are going into this dinner conversation, we're going to have our rose, we're going to be in a sage mode and we have an agreement with each other, which says our job number one is deep understanding of the other person in this conversation. So there's the rule is when the other person says, when this happened, this impact on me, my job number one is to say, here's what I'm hearing to that yoga correctly that I understand your feelings, but all that stuff. So already there is a thing we are making sure is happening is that this conversation is happening on both people are in a sage mode. When I'm in my sage mode, I am activating a part of my brain that's more empathic, more compassionate, more understanding. The time you don't want to have these conversations is when people are hijacked. When the other person is all hijacked and their judge controller avoid whatever, you're wasting your breath to say to say, you know, you got to hear me now. This is what happened. This is how often have you experienced that when you're in that kind of mode, there's any hearing happening whatsoever on the other side. There isn't. So what we recommend is recognize when any party is hijacked on one of our agreements with each other is we cut each other sounds like when somebody is hijacked in a situation, we don't insist on having a conversation right here now. Let's do some cure apps to take time out so you shift your brain activation so you stop being Isaac actually activate the region of your brain where your Jedi lives. Your sage lives routed on your saboteurs. We call this work mental fitness and the reason we are mental fitness is that having the ideas is not enough. How often do you read a book and at the end of it you say, oh my God, this was life-changing I got it. How often do you go to a workshop and say, oh my God, this was live Shenzhen I got it. And three months later, you're right back to the old behavior. And the reason is the reason is that saboteurs have built muscles in your brain by repeating and repeating and repeating their behavior. They have built neural pathways in the brain that becomes the muscle of that mode in your brain. You can't fight muscle within sight. You need to fight muscle with muscle, which means you're sage, which hasn't practiced as long. It needs to build up that muscular power so that you have a fighting chance against yourself. What they have found is that you need a minimum of about 6 to 8 weeks. 6 weeks minimum, 15 minutes a day of practice of shifting from saboteur to sage, building up these positive powers so that you can really break through years and sometimes decades of south or behavior. So for that, the main program my company offers, which UA is doing right now is actually a 6 week positive intelligence app guided training where every day we give you 50 minutes of practice. And we focus on your exact specific saboteurs. We focus on a whole week of doing this with Europe. We focus three weeks on this positive powers of your sage so that you build mental muscle memory, counter the old stuff. So if a really committed you want to rebuild up the muscles, not just stop at the insights. Now that's so important. I think it's really important for people to hear that your Doc of a solve all this just by listening to this episode. This is just step one. Of it. This has been such a fascinating conversation. I've personally learned so much from it. I think the biggest takeaway I have is that the more information we know about our behavior, our mindset, our intelligence, the way we process information, the better, because there's nothing wrong with us, there's nothing wrong with our relationship. This is natural. I think just even hearing that this happens to everyone, everyone has these saboteurs, and they come out in different ways. And this is what makes relationships so difficult, but also wonderful at the same time, because it does shed awareness to ourselves. And the reality is, even if we're not in a romantic relationship, we're going to be in a relationship with people in our lives unless we're lock ourselves away and we're a Herbert, but that's not a fulfilling life either. We need that connection. So it's important to flex these muscles regardless of what relationship status you are in, or if you desire to have that deeper committed relationship where this is bound to come out, getting ahead of this information up front is so essential.

01:20:05 - 01:23:26

And there's a reason why relationships are called relationships, because we're relational to each other. And I think the part around how we bring out and our other saboteurs are kind of activated because of the other person's saboteurs. It's really fascinating the cycle that we can get in. So getting ahead of this stuff and taking that time to address it, to become aware of it in all the exercises that you shared with us, sit downs, all of that, I think that is so important to prioritize to have a relationship that lasts. Yeah? Absolutely. In the interest of time, I'm going to keep my really short. My biggest takeaway is we can't expect other people to be like us and we can't expect to control other people or change their behavior. The only thing we have control over is ourselves. And that's why this type of work is so profound because it labels the saboteurs, but also just the lies, our mind is telling us and for me what has been most eye opening through your program shazad is in doing my PQ reps. My mind defaults to my saboteurs. And I realized I have this default setting that influences everything I do in life. And if I can change that default setting to something that's more beneficial for me, that is the most powerful gift I can give to myself. So I think for anybody that's in the trenches of dating, you feel like dating is out to get you, the industry is out to get you. There is a very powerful way to shift that mindset. So you see evidence to support the fact that dating is not against you, in fact, you have the power to change the situation that you're in. So thank you, sharzad, for being on our show. There's just so much more information. So for anybody who wants to learn more about the program, get a hold of your book, we will link positive intelligence dot com in our show notes. And for all of our listeners, if you want to improve your PQ score, just give us 5 stars in Apple podcast reviews. I'm telling you it is scientifically proven that your PQ score will go up if you give us a very nice review in Apple podcasts. We really do appreciate that. Thank you so much again. She's not cute. My pleasure, happy dating, everybody. Take the show. Okay, so on that note, we're going to wrap up this episode. The dateable podcast is part of the frolic podcast network. Find more podcasts you'll love at frolic media slash podcasts. Want to continue the conversation? First, follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter with the handle at dateable podcast. Tag us in any post with a hashtag stay dateable and trust us. We look at all those pose. Then head over to our website dateable podcast dot com. There you'll find all the episodes as well as articles, videos, and our coaching service with vetted industry experts. You can also find our premium Y series where we dissect, analyze, and offer solutions to some of the most common dating conundrums. We're also downloadable for free on Spotify, Apple podcasts, Google Play, overcast, stitcher radio, and other podcast platforms. Your feedback is valuable to us, so don't forget to leave us a review. And most importantly, remember to stay dateable.

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