PQ Mental Fitness Program

Mental Fitness is the X-Factor 

If you’re not physically fit, you’d feel physical stress as you climb a steep hill.  

If you’re not mentally fit, you’d feel mental stress, such as anxiety, frustration, or unhappiness, as you handle work and relationship challenges.  

80% of people score below the minimum level of mental fitness required for peak performance and happiness.  

The great news? With recent breakthroughs in neuroscience and technology, you can now improve your mental fitness significantly within 6 weeks of practice. 

The results? Dramatically improved performance and productivity and a calm, clear and happier mind.  

Measuring Mental Fitness (PQ)

Mental fitness is a measure of the strength of your positive mental muscles (Sage) versus the negative (Saboteur).  

Saboteurs react to challenges in ways that generate negative emotions such as stress, disappointment, self-doubt, regret, anger, shame, guilt, or worry.

Your Sage handles challenges through positive emotions like empathy, gratitude, curiosity, creativity, self-confidence, and calm, clear-headed, laser-focused action. 

The relative strength of your positive Sage versus negative Saboteurs is called PQ (Positive Intelligence Quotient).  

PQ is the measure of your Mental Fitness. It’s the best predictor of how happy you are and how well you perform relative to your potential. 

You can boost your PQ significantly with practice. 

Breakthrough Research 

PQ is a synthesis of recent breakthroughs in neuroscience, cognitive and positive psychology, and performance science. 

Research included: 

  • hundreds of CEOs
  • sales, operations, and technology teams
  • Stanford students
  • elite athletes
  • 400,000 participants from 50 countries

This research was summarized in Shirzad Chamine’s book Positive Intelligence, a New York Times bestseller, translated into 20 languages.  

The research reveals that:

  • Saboteurs and Sage live in entirely different regions of the brain.
  • You can cause a dramatic shift in brain activation to weaken Saboteurs and boost Sage.
  • 3 core muscles constitute mental fitness.
Shirzad Chamine’s New York Times bestselling book, Positive Intelligence

“A brilliant breakthrough.”

“The Positive Intelligence (PQ) model is a brilliant breakthrough as it defines, measures, and improves your awareness of your own performance and happiness. It also helps solve the mystery of why so many smart people still fail to be successful.”

– Jim Lanzone, Chief Digital Officer, CBS  

3 Core Muscles of Mental Fitness

3 Core muscles constitute your mental fitness: 

1. Saboteurs Interceptor Muscle You Saboteurs generate all your negative emotions, including stress, anxiety, self-doubt, anger, avoidance, procrastination, insensitivity or discontent. Mental fitness requires the ability to intercept and discredit the Saboteurs.

2. Sage Muscle Your Sage is the one in you that handles challenges with a clear and calm mind, and positive emotions. It also has access to your 5 primary powers. 

All you need to paint any canvas is 3 primary colors. Similarly, through factor analysis research we’ve discovered that there are only 5 primary powers: Empathize, Explore, Innovate, Navigate, and Activate.  

For peak performance, you learn to boost all 5 powers and know when to use which power.  

3. Self-Command Muscle You’re not in full command of your mind. If you were, you would choose to entirely silence the Saboteurs in your head. You would choose to not stress out over what you can’t control, push away self-doubts, recover from disappointments immediately, and spend little time in anger, regret, or blame.  

PQ Reps are innovative 10-second exercises which build up this crucial Self-Command muscle in the brain. You learn to run your brain, rather than allow your Saboteur-hijacked brain to run you.  

Introducing the PQ Program 

Designed like a mental fitness bootcamp, the PQ Program gives you the insights, motivation, and structure to practice 15 minutes per day for 6 weeks. 

The program combines weekly video sessions with daily app-guided practices to boost your 3 core mental fitness muscles. 

Weekly 1-hour Video Sessions

In these highly engaging sessions, Shirzad guides you through experiential exercises that deepen and personalize your understanding of the mental fitness tools. You leave inspired and energized for the week’s daily practices.

Exclusive App Guiding Your Daily Practice

Each day a different focus for daily practice is assigned through a personalized companion app available exclusively to program participants. 

This builds one small muscle at a time, laying down new neural pathways to form lasting positive habits of your mind. The cumulative impact by program’s end is substantial.

Interactive PQ Gym

Innovative 10-second PQ Reps build up your Self-Command muscle. You learn to be clear-headed and calm even in the midst of great challenges, able to command your mind to shift from Saboteur to Sage response.

Daily Progress Tracking

The app tracks your daily progress against minimum targets associated with new neural pathway (muscle) formation. Personalized daily coaching tips from Shirzad continue to both encourage and challenge you to keep going.

Cohort Community

Richard Marks remains an active member of your cohort community, answering your questions or providing online coaching. Participants report the online cohort community to be key to sustaining their enthusiasm for daily practice. 

“Life changing on so many levels.”

“Most of the trainings I’ve done fizzle out very quickly. I started this program a year ago and its impact on me keeps growing. It has been life changing on so many levels. 

“I’m so much more effective and have so much less stress in every area of my life — from blowing past revenue targets at work, to far more fulfilling relationships at home.”

– Bruce Zali, VP of Sales & Marketing, Promise Technology  

Breakthrough Results

Within 6-8 weeks of mental fitness training you’d be able to see the results in MRI imaging:  

  • Increased grey matter in the PQ Brain region, where your Sage lives 
  • Decreased grey matter in the Survivor Brain region, where your Saboteurs live  

Improvements in these competencies lead to substantial results:

  • At MetLife, trained salespeople outsold the control group by 37%
  • Motorola recorded improved productivity in 93% of trained employees
  • In a UK restaurant group, higher competency resulted in 34% greater profit growth
  • At Sanofi-Aventis Pharmaceutical, the average salesperson with improved competency sold $55,200 more per month
  • At L’Oreal, strength in these competencies resulted in a $91,370 increase per salesperson
  • At CIBC, strength in these competencies account for 32% of booked sales and 71% of pipeline sales

“The most impactful training I ever experienced.”

“This has been the most impactful training I ever experienced. You develop powerful mental muscles to deal with challenges with much less stress and greater clarity, creativity, and resilience. Every sales professional would benefit greatly from this.”

– Adam McGraw, Sales VP & GM, American Express  

Enroll in the PQ Program!

For Individuals

For Teams

Contact rm@richardmarks.com or 1.650.302.3500 for scheduling and special pricing.

Six Weeks of Inspired Practice

Week 1: Boost Your Self-Command Muscle

The first week you learn innovative 10-second PQ Reps that boost your self-command. This enables you to run your brain rather than being run by your Saboteur-hijacked brain. Self-command is key to intercepting unhelpful mental habits and rewiring your brain to respond more effectively.  

  • Try out and discover PQ Reps that are most effective for you.
  • Reach the minimum target for PQ Reps/day to achieve rewiring goal within 6 weeks.
  • Use the app’s breakthrough PQ Charge Meter to ensure optimal brain activation before important activities.
  • Declare an audacious aspiration–what you want to achieve through this program.  

“The ‘mind control’ is life changing.”

“What is new and life changing is the ‘mind control,’ the ability to ‘let go’ when any negative feelings take over. This program has given me the ability to be in the driver seat of my life.”

– Nathalie Brys, General Counsel, Philips

Week 2: Intercept the Judge Saboteur

For this entire week, you’ll intercept and weaken the most damaging Saboteur, the Judge. You discover how judging yourself, others, and circumstances is a key source of your stress and quite damaging to your performance. Most participants discover their Judge to be far more prevalent and damaging than they suspected. 

  • Expose your Judge’s hidden lies, limiting beliefs, and negative patterns.
  • Reveal your Judge’s impact on performance, relationships, and stress.
  • Practice intercepting your Judge before it hijacks you. 
  • Rewire your negative neural pathways by redirecting the Judge response.  

Week 3: Intercept your Accomplice Saboteurs

This week you intercept and weaken the top accomplice to your Judge Saboteur, identified through the Saboteur Assessment from the following: Avoider, Controller, Hyper-Achiever, Hyper-Rational, Hyper-Vigilant, Pleaser, Restless, Stickler, Victim. 

  • Expose your accomplice Saboteur’s hidden lies, limiting beliefs and negative patterns.
  • Reveal this Saboteur’s impact on performance, relationships, and stress.
  • Discover how to quickly intercept this Saboteur before it hijacks you. 
  • Rewire your negative neural pathways by redirecting this Saboteur’s response.  

“This is the best training I’ve done.”

“This is the best ‘training’ I’ve done in my 37 years here… I personally have experienced a new sense of energy, engagement and possibility both at work and at home — and I am actually getting full nights of sleep!”

— Gale Beckett, Former VP, Quality Assurance, P&G

Week 4: Shift From Saboteur to Sage 

After weakening your Saboteurs, it is now time to strengthen your Sage, the counterpart to your Saboteurs. Your Sage lives in an entirely different part of your brain, generates all your positive emotions, and achieves peak performance through a calm and clear mind. 

  • Practice the Sage Perspective that every outcome or circumstance can be turned into a gift and opportunity. 
  • Use the 3 Gifts Technique to find the opportunity in setbacks.  
  • Replace draining self-judgment with energizing self-acceptance and empathy. 
  • Boost speed of recovery from failures and setbacks.  

“Greatest happiness in years.”

“I am much calmer and have a greater sense of happiness than I have felt in years. I feel physically lighter, and my energy is higher. Sage is now present all of the time. I sleep better, eat better, exercise better.”

— Sandi Sandiland, Head of Global Sales P&D, Amazon

Week 5: Boost the Sage Powers

The Sage region of the brain enables 5 primary powers. Analogous to the 3 primary colors, these 5 powers recombine to form all of the emotional intelligence competencies considered crucial to professional success. 

  • Augment your mental toolbox with 5 Sage powers. 
  • Practice 3 techniques to activate each power.
  • Know when to use which power–right tool at the right time. 
  • Boost emotional intelligence through combinations of the 5 primary powers.  

Week 6: Take Clear-Headed, Laser-Focused Action

In our final week, you use your Sage’s Navigate and Activate powers to take clear-headed, laser-focused, decisive action.

  • Use your Sage’s Navigate power to align your actions with a deeper sense of meaning and purpose.
  • Use your Sage’s Activate power to act without fear or emotional distractions even in midst of great crises.
  • Discover your Sage’s deep wisdom, far surpassing your analytical intelligence.
  • Discover how your Sage generates your highest performance while enjoying every step–“in the zone.”

“I’m now enjoying every day, not just the final accomplishments.”

“All my life I thought my high achievements were impossible without feeling constant stress. I’ve now learned to achieve even more with a calm and clear mind. I’m now enjoying every day, not just the final accomplishments. At the end of the quarter, I don’t feel the need for a long vacation any more.”

— Sharon Pinedo, Head of Sales (Workplace), Facebook

Final Session: Sustain the Momentum 

In this final session, you discover how to continue using your PQ tools for a variety of work and life applications.

  • Learn how to further apply to peak performance in selling and persuading, conquering stress, managing conflict, and relationships mastery 
  • Discover how to use the PQ app to maintain your new mental muscles and Sage habits
  • Chart your path to keep progressing towards your audacious aspirations
  • Establish support and accountability agreements to sustain your momentum

“One of the very top experiences I’ve had.”

“I have found this to be one of the very top experiences I’ve had in the past 34 years with my company. The impact on me personally has been profound, and the business impact is evident.”

– Bonnie Curtis, Former VP, Product Supply, P&G

“This workshop changed my life.”

“This workshop changed my life. I’m working half as hard and generating twice the results. It’s amazing what’s possible when you use these powerful tools.”

– Brad Fisher, Executive Director, Featherstone Holdings

PQ Program vs. Traditional Training

Traditional training and development tends to have short-lived impact for 3 reasons:  

  • Focus on insight rather than muscle. For example, the insight that being frustrated isn’t helpful doesn’t automatically lead to you not feeling frustrated. That would require mental muscles to shift brain activation. 
  • Treating symptoms rather than cause. For example, teaching you techniques of active listening to improve empathy will have temporary impact if your deeply-seated Judge Saboteur is not exposed and intercepted. 
  • No common operating system. Since each training you attend uses a different framework—the 7 steps of managing conflict, the 5 secrets of managing time, etc.–the frameworks compete for mindshare and all fade away. 

Through extensive factor analysis research, PQ has identified the 10 root-level negative factors (Saboteurs) and the 5 primary powers (Sage). This enables a common operating system.  

All personal and professional development become applications of the PQ operating system. Whether learning to manage conflicts, manage time, or perform better under pressure, you’d apply the same exact operating system: 

  • Intercept Saboteurs
  • Issue Self-Command (through 10-second PQ Reps)
  • Mobilize Sage (Empathize, Explore, Innovate, Navigate, Actvate)  

You’d be using one simple framework for a variety of applications, boosting root-level mental fitness.

This dramatically simplifies personal and professional development.  

Impact on Emotional Intelligence

Due to the power of factor analysis, the PQ Program boosts the root-level building blocks that automatically boost all 18 Emotional Intelligence competencies

“The concepts are phenomenal.”  

“This has been an extraordinary gift for my team. The concepts are phenomenal — a true revelation in the way to think and handle work and life’s challenges. Besides the lasting impact on myself, I’ve loved hearing how many people this has touched in my company.”

– Jessica Herrin, CEO, Stella & Dot

Frequently Asked Questions

Is this the right program for me?  

This is the right program for you if you are a) committed to improving your performance and effectiveness dramatically while reducing stress, b) looking for a science-based and trusted system to make it stick, and c) willing to put in the initial effort to rewire years of mental habits that don’t serve you.

Aren’t negative emotions sometimes helpful?

Some people believe that negative emotions are helpful. For example, they think stress gives them their performance edge, or beating themselves or others up is helpful for continual improvement. 

Feeling pain for a split second when your hand touches a hot stove is indeed useful, delivering an important alert. But your Saboteurs keep your hand on the hot stove, continuing to feel negative emotions which harm both performance and happiness. 

In this program we learn to use negative emotions as a helpful alert, and then quickly shift to the positive region of the brain that has the calm clarity, objectivity, and creativity to handle the challenge most effectively.

Who will lead the Positive Intelligence Program?

Richard Marks will connect you with a Pod of others to go through the program with, provide weekly updates and cheer you on. Shirzad Chamine will conduct each of the weekly video sessions in the app.

Richard is one of under 100 Certified Positive Intelligence Coaches worldwide, a Change Management Consultant, and a Certified Professional Co-Active Coach specializing in helping women (and men) leaders and teams in the technology/life science space grow and succeed.

Shirzad is the New York Times bestselling author of Positive Intelligence, translated into 20 languages. He has been CEO of the largest coach training organization in the world and has trained faculty at Stanford and Yale business schools.  

How much time and effort is required?  

You’d be committing to watching a 1-hour video once per week and doing a combined total of 15 minutes per day of practice guided by the Positive Intelligence app exclusively designed for this program. 

This might sound like a lot of time. In fact, cumulatively, it constitutes less than 2% of your awake time for the duration of the program. Please consider that your Saboteurs are costing you far more than 2% of your time, effort, energy, and productivity. Consider how much more than 2% of time and productivity this six-weeks investment will save for years to come.  

How is this different from reading the book?  

You’d never learn to ride a bicycle by reading a book about it. You’ll be asked to read the first 8 chapters of the book while participating in the program. The book provides the research foundation and introduces the tools. The video session guides you through experiential exercises that help you personalize the tools to your own personality and needs. And the app coaches you to practice one tool at a time in the context of your own daily work and life challenges. 

Should we participate as a team?

Even though the focus of the program is individual development, team leaders often call this experience the best team building experience they have ever had. Going through this program together significantly deepens trust, helps clear the air related to recurrent team member conflicts since they’re mostly generated by Saboteurs, and gives the entire team a common framework for helping each other grow, making decisions, responding to setbacks, and managing conflicting styles and agendas. 

Do you have corporate/group discounts?

Yes, if you would like to purchase the Positive Intelligence program for your employees, or any group of 8 people and above, please contact me for more information.

Contact/Questions?

For any questions, please contact rm@richardmarks.com. 

“This has been a profound growth experience.”

“This has been a profound growth experience. I now consistently feel joy and calm in the middle of handling the many challenges of running my company.  

“Almost a feeling of ‘Throw it at me… I can handle it’ – like I want more challenges now, as if nothing is too much.”

– Becky Sharpe, CEO, Collegiate Sports Data

Enroll in the PQ Program!

For Individuals

For Teams

Contact rm@richardmarks.com or 1.650.302.3500 for scheduling and special pricing.