Books, Authors

Ana Sánchez
Positive Intelligence

Mireia Mujika: Hi everyone to another episode of ‘Ways to Grow’ - the podcast for people who learn to look inside and decide they want to heal, they want to learn, they want to improve, they want to grow. Today, I have invited Ana Sanchez to join me, to talk about positive intelligence. Ana got her master's degree in advertising and public relations from the European university of Madrid. She has been in the entrepreneurial world since 2003. She is also certified professional, co-active coach by the coaches training institute and an associate certified coach by the international coaching federation. She is also certified as chief happiness officer by Creantum, Spain and a positive intelligence professional certified coach. Ana says she doesn't like titles as she feels like they put her in a box, which I have to agree with that. And the most important thing is that she is passionate about people and their potential; and consciously or unconsciously, this has been her passion or motto in life. So, welcome, Ana.

Ana Sánchez: Thank you. Thank you very much.

Mireia Mujika: Thank you for being today with us. Thank you for taking your time out to be with us. 

Ana Sánchez: It's a pleasure and thank you for inviting me.

Mireia Mujika: So, before we get into positive intelligence, I like telling our listeners how I met our guests. So, in in this case, I had gone to Barcelona to do my fourth course of co-active coaching. It was a process and you were there as a helper or as an assistant for that weekend. Now, you remember, right?

Ana Sánchez: Yes, I did.

Mireia Mujika: Yeah. I don't know, you were already doing your certification, was it?

Ana Sánchez: I can't remember. I think I was in, probably almost at the end of my co-active certification, yes. 

Mireia Mujika: Yeah. So, and one thing that I actually love about Ana that weekend, I mean, so during this this weekend, we had opportunities to coach each other. So, Ana was coaching me at some point and the thing that I love most in that moment was that I actually didn't need to talk. Ana could see through me and she would understand what was happening. I don't know if you could actually see or maybe a better word to say is maybe you could ‘feel’ it through me. I remember I was talking about my child. 

Ana Sánchez: Yeah, your first child. 

Mireia Mujika: She was small at the time and it was the first time that I had left her at home and going abroad, taking a plane and living here for several days and I remember that I started talking and I said like, oh I don't need to talk, she understands. She knows what I’m talking about.

Mireia Mujika: I remember that since that moment, I had a very special feeling for you. It was a very special emotion but I always remember you and when I always remember you, I remember that moment. Yeah, it was very special.

Ana Sánchez: Wow, this is the gift for me.

Mireia Mujika: You could hold all that emotion that I had, you know, without even a word, it was very special moment for me. Thank you for that. 

Ana Sánchez: Oh, well, thank you very much for bringing this here is a gift because I didn't know, it was that impactful for you and it was impactful for me. It was a very beautiful moment and so, thank you. Thank you for giving me this gift and remind me that this is a special moment. 

Mireia Mujika: It was great.

Ana Sánchez: It's beautiful.

Mireia Mujika: Yeah, it was. So, well, Ana, I haven't mentioned that you are also a mother to three children. I always put this when I talk about the certifications of the people, I also say “and she is a mother to three children” because this is a great achievement. 

Ana Sánchez: Yeah, they're a little bit grown now but yes, it's a great adventure in motherhood. 

Mireia Mujika: I like the word that you used, adventure. Well, so today, we're going to talk about positive intelligence. As we said, Ana is a professional certified coach in positive intelligence. So, Ana, tell us what is positive intelligence?

Ana Sánchez: Well, positive intelligence is a methodology created by Shirzad Chamine. He is a psychologist, he is an IT engineer and he is also a professional coach. I think he's been in the coaching world for 20-25 years and he's created this method. He's also got the book, the best-selling book, ‘Positive intelligence’. Actually, it's mental fitness training, in order to gain the ability to be good most of the time. So, what this mental health fitness helps you is to increase the amount of time your mind is working in your favor, in contrast to how much of your time your mind is working against you.

Mireia Mujika: Okay. Let me see. So, if I’m like one of these people that is always like, “Ah! I’m not, I did that horribly, oh my god, this is not how I should have done, blah-blah.” So, instead of that chat that we have that negative chat, so positive intelligence will help me in actually putting that in a positive way, right?

Ana Sánchez: Yes. That's another way of saying it. It's a way to handle the life challenges with a positive mindset instead of a negative mindset. It's like, for example, if we think from the physical fitness point of view, if you want to climb a hill and there is different levels, there is the low difficulty, the medium and the high difficulty. If you want to climb a high difficulty hill and you're not physically fit, you're probably going to suffer physical stress. You're not going to be able to breathe. You're not going to finish and maybe even you're going to get injured. So, the same happens with the live mountains, the challenges that life throws to us. If we are not mentally fit, we are going to handle those challenges from stress, anxiety, disappointment, frustration, shame etc. Whereas, if we are mentally fit, we can access to a whole different experience when we handle those challenges, being able to have access to peace of mind, to calmness, to curiosity, creativity etc. So, we really have a whole lot of different possibilities. 

Mireia Mujika: Yes, I see. I see. And how does it work? 

Ana Sánchez: Yeah, thank you. I like this question because it drives us to one of the characteristics of positive intelligence, is that it's a very simple, it's very easy to use. So, it has used the factor analysis by which it goes to the root of the cause of everything and so it has discovered that by exercising three main muscles; we can really reach peak performance, we can increase our happiness and we can have healthier relationships.

Mireia Mujika: Sounds great. So, which application methods?

Ana Sánchez: So, the simplicity of the application of the method is great. These three muscles are: the first one is the saboteur interceptor, the second one is the muscle of the Sage

, and the third is the self-command.

Ana Sánchez: And what this means, basically, I think we all know that inside of us, there's always this battle between, Shirzad Chamine, he likes to compare this to Jedi. If we think about the star wars, the film, there is the Jedi and the Darth Vader and we all have a Darth Vader inside and a Jedi mind. And there's always this battle between these two. And so by working these three muscles, we can get to command that balance, that power balance between the Jedi mind and the Darth Vader. And the Darth Vader in positive intelligence is these saboteurs, which we work through the saboteur interceptor muscle and also, it's known that we don't sabotage ourselves in infinite ways. There is 10 ways we tend to sabotage ourselves and so we have the church, which is like the master saboteur. I think we all are familiarized with this judge inside of us, which is the like the inner critic but it has a wider approach because it's not just the inner critic, it also judges others and also judges circumstances. And then it has this accomplished saboteurs, you know, everybody has two or three primary saboteurs that mess with us. They are the controller, the hyper achiever, the hyper rational, the victim, the pleaser, the hyper vigilant, the restless, the avoider and the stickler. And I’m sure just by the titles, we can all identify who is more present in our lives than others. And so, working the muscle of the saboteur interceptor is exactly this, is being able to identify when we are in saboteur mode. And we use these characters because, at the end, it is what really happened. We kind of become those characters, if we don't put conscious on that and we start operating and making decisions and having relationships.

Mireia Mujika: That's right. Can we say that they keep ourselves this saboteur ourselves and then that's it? We don't live from our essence.

Ana Sánchez: Exactly. Yes, from our true self. Yes. And how we know they sabotage ourselves and probably a good example is, if you are sleeping at night and you wake up at three in the morning thinking about the meeting you're going to have in the morning and thinking how you're going to screw up that meeting, how bad you're going to do it, you're not prepared, you're not good for this and all that. You know you're sabotaging yourself because you won't really choose to stop your sleep in the middle of the night and start having that kind of conversation with you, loading you of incredible amounts of stress and anxiety and darkness and all that, not allowing you to have a good sleep, to be confident and to think in the best you can do etc. So, by that, you have more possibilities of really having a bad presentation, a bad meeting or whatever.

Mireia Mujika: Of course.

Ana Sánchez: Well, I was just going to explain quickly that then is the self-command, which is the second muscle, which is the practice that we do. What it is actually, is to concentrate our sensations and concentrate our attention in feeling the sensations in one sense, in one physical sensation. 

Mireia Mujika: Okay.

Ana Sánchez: I don't know if I’m explaining okay but it's like concentrating our attention for more than 10 seconds in just one physical sensation. From our five senses, we could find the touch, the hearing, the visual or maybe the breathing… it’s concentrating our attention in one of those senses at a time. 

Mireia Mujika: Okay. Let me see if I’m following. So, with the self-command is that we actually help ourselves and let the saboteurs voices go down?

Ana Sánchez: Well, it's one of the practices that help you get that. What it's known now, what signs show now already is that our brain has two regions and they work completely differently. The left side of the brain, which is the survival brain, is the one that operates for survival; and it's not just physical survival but it's also emotional survival. And when we have that part of our brain activated, we can't help but feel negative emotions like anxiety, stress, disappointment, frustration, rage, anger etc. And this is because we have those patterns we have acquired by our experience since we were a child and we had to survive whatever circumstances we had, even if we had wonderful circumstances, we all face the challenge of protecting our identity in family, in school, in our environment. And that leads us to create certain patterns in order to physically and mentally survive. And it's okay when we are kids but what happens when we are grown up and we are not in that context or ready but we function through those patterns unconsciously and what the self-command does is to… when we have identified that we are in a sabotage mode and we exercise the self-command muscle, we pause, we stop our mind from going to one way to another unconsciously and automatically and compulsively. And by pausing, stopping and putting all our attention into the feelings, the physical sensations so it's like stopping our thinking mind and activating the non-thinking mind, we are creating the space for us to choose a different response. 

Mireia Mujika: Okay.

Ana Sánchez: So, yeah. That's the key. 

Mireia Mujika: Let me just put it another way to see if I understood correctly. So, let's say that I’m in a meeting or in a board meeting maybe. I have all these colleagues with me and I’m starting to get triggered by this colleague of mine because he's saying something that I consider that is being against me or against my work or this colleague right now is not being very helpful and I’m here in front of all these people and he's kind of ridiculing my ideas. So, now, I would have started, I mean that's already quite a sabotage model, right, because I’m saying that he's ridiculizing, I’m playing the victim, so I’m already getting in that sabotage mode, I guess. Right? And now, if I do the self-command which will be concentrating in a physical sensation, right, that can be anything, I don't know. 

Ana Sánchez: It could be, yeah. I like that you bring that because, first, because you are inviting me to give examples of self-command exercises, which I will give you now and also because you are actually putting one of the best things that positive intelligence has, which is resources on the go. I mean, you are in the middle of that meeting and it's just there when you are being hijacked and when you are starting to feel that stress, that anxiety, you're sweating but you are there, you have to carry on. And so, in the middle of that meeting, you can maybe put your attention in the simple thing of touching your fingers, giving all the concentration in that feeling of touch of your fingers, touching each other to a point that you can feel the fingerprints on both.

Mireia Mujika: I’m touching them now, I’m trying to feel them.

Ana Sánchez: Yeah. And as you can see, our speed lowers a little bit when we start giving our attention to the sense of touch in this case and you can do that while you are probably listening to that person or listening to others before you know how you're going to handle the situation but you are using this strategy, this exercise so in that moment that you find that you're being hijacked, you have a resource to stop your primitive mind and just go to the non-thinking mind and accessing to calm, you know, more clear-headed. And you would feel it. You could start to maybe have access to see your colleague with more curiosity and more creativity, how you can use what he's saying to your advantage and so on. But at least just by calming down your stress, physical and mindly stress, you will start feeling different and so you will have new possibilities to handle the situation. 

Mireia Mujika: I see. Okay. So, that's when it comes to the self-command.

Ana Sánchez: Yes. And same as that, you can put your attention to maybe touching both hands. And this is something you can do, again, in front of anybody and nobody can know that you are actually doing a self-command practice and so you can just touch your hands, the palm, both palms and give you a few seconds to just feel that feeling of touch. Also connect with your breathing, and just feel how you breathe, how you're breathing in that moment, what's the temperature when your air goes into your nostrils and how's the temperature going when it goes out and how your body moves when you breathe and you can do that by being in the meeting, listening to others and at the same time, be absolutely concentrated, giving your attention to how is the act of breathing in you right now in that moment. 

Mireia Mujika: I feel more calm already 

Ana Sánchez: Because it does actually happen is that you can't help but feeling those positive emotions. 

Mireia Mujika: But I think what you were saying is really important. The fact that actually I can't calm down myself if I’m at home, I’m just not talking to anyone and I can go and meditate if needed. Well, I have my difficulties meditating but I know that most people can actually meditate and close their eyes and be in a calm way but for me, the most difficult thing is when it comes to that, right? You are in a meeting and suddenly you feel that you are being attentive or suddenly your husband said something that triggered you or your children, whatever, or your mom, I don't know what. So, I think in those moments, there's no way that you can actually say, wait, I’m going to pause, I’m going to go to meditate and half an hour later, when I come back and we continue – there is no such luxury in real life.

Ana Sánchez: That's right. Yeah. 

Mireia Mujika: So, I think the fact that I can get a tool that can help me calm down and respond instead of reacting, that is helpful.

Ana Sánchez: Yeah, very much. I like that you say that because it's actually one of the great values of the positive intelligence fitness, which is half resources, as you go, you know, as you are actually driving your life and things are happening and you're having a difficult situation. Suddenly, you get something you didn't expect and then is when our judge comes in. The judge mind functions in dualities. Things are either good or bad. And when the judge thinks this is bad then you're triggered because then there's a fight between you and the person, the situation etc. and that happens all the time. So, having those resources gives you new possibilities.

Mireia Mujika: I see. Okay. So, we have touch upon the Saboteurs, the Self-command and I think, with the third one is the Sage. Right?

Ana Sánchez: Yeah.

Mireia Mujika: The Sage muscle.

Ana Sánchez: And the sage muscle is already activated through the self-command because once we put our attention to this physical sensation, we are already, if we had like a brain scan, we could be able to see after several weeks that our gray matter has increased in the right side of the brain compared to the left side of the brain. It would have decreased by doing these exercises. And so it is already activated by that but we also have the Sage perspective and five such powers, which are like access points, access points to our Sage to connect and function from that sage mode and have access to our wisdom. So, the Sage Perspective is the one that says that every outcome or circumstance can be converted into a gift, an opportunity. 

Mireia Mujika: Beautiful.

Ana Sánchez: And I think it's a challenging perspective.

Mireia Mujika: Yes, it is a challenging statement. 

Ana Sánchez: I can feel all saboteurs probably in you and in all the audience saying, what? This is silly, this is unsafe, this is crazy. But yes. This is the sage perspective that every outcome or circumstance can be converted into a gift and opportunity and we work that in different ways but one of the things that I like most is that there are ways to – actually, it means that things happen. Not everything that we live in our lives is something that we would have chosen to live it but that's one of the things of life. We don't have control of life and we just can’t control every little part of our life. So, when things happen you know, some people believe that everything happens for a reason, actually when we work that perspective depending of the, maybe, spiritual tendency of the person or the religion that they practice, they can feel very aligned with that perspective because this is what their religion invites them to believe that everything happens for a reason, there's always something good, some positive learnings from anything that you experience but not everybody has that act of faith. There's people, they don't have any religious practice, they don't have any spiritual relation and so we can actively work and actively convert that situation into a gift or opportunity. It's a choice and by putting and activating certain methods and certain practices, you can actively decide to convert any circumstance or outcome into a gift or opportunity. And I think that's wonderful because, you know, gift we all have. If we all look our stories, if we all look back and we review our lives, I’m sure we can all see moments where we've had difficult times and we've experienced situations that we thought it was terrible at that time and now, from where we are now, we can see learnings, we can see positive things that they've come out from that situation. But, sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn't happen. We can be connected to that faith in a passive way and just hope that with time, things will get better. With time, there will be learning. With time, I’m sure I’m going to find some positivity in that. But we can also engage in an active mode where I consciously convert that situation into a gift or opportunity and that's very relieving. It's actually very relieving and empowering, very empowering. 

Mireia Mujika: Yes. I completely agree. Wow. A lot of internal work, yes. 

Ana Sánchez: Sorry. We have the five sage powers, which I just titled them, which are those access points that connect us with. The five sage powers are:

1. Empathy, which is connected to unconditional love. 

2. Explore, which is deep curiosity. 

3. Innovate, which is the greatest creativity. 

4. Navigate, which connects us with a deep sense of meaning. 

5. Activate, which is calm and later focus on action.

Mireia Mujika: There's a whole world into each one of them. 

Ana Sánchez: I think it's interesting to you to just mention.

Mireia Mujika: Oh, that's great. So, I think one of the things that I mean you do in positive intelligence is to be a lot so what you were saying is like that physical sensation. So, trying to be a lot in the body. So, here, in this podcast, we're very interested in the body because that's from a personal experience that I had but the thing is that I think the body wisdom is not, I don't think it's been talked about enough about how our bodies, keeping intelligence, there is a wisdom there, you know, our body knows. So, I think there is a correlation here, also a deep connection in positive intelligence with the mind and the body. So, what can you tell me about that?

Ana Sánchez: Yes, that's a very interesting question because we've been talking about all these concepts and from the intellectual point of view but yes, actually, positive intelligence works a lot with the body because at the end, what we are working with is with the emotions. We identify negative emotions, we know what negative emotions make us feel, we know what positive emotions make us feel and is actually a physical experience and one of the ways of working with the saboteur intercept muscle is by identifying the physicality of our saboteurs. 

Mireia Mujika: Okay. So, wait. Let me see. So, if I’m feeling the victim now, I have to find where that is in my body?

Ana Sánchez: You can work out. You can start working on how you play the victim. How when you are hijacked by your victim, not just how you feel emotionally, but how your body feels, how your physical position is, how your face looks…

Mireia Mujika: My shoulders down forward.

Ana Sánchez: Yes. And you can start actually seeing those patterns that whenever we are in saboteur mode, we are normally in a kind of physicality there that expresses closeness, rigidity, the head, looks down. Yeah. Why do we identify that? Because to know the relation between our mind and our body, we are very used to identify the relation in the direction from mind to body and have clarity, when I feel bad, when I’m having those thoughts, my body expresses this in a certain way and I know this really means I’m having a very low energy, I don't feel like affording these, whatever. But what is known now is that this relation mind body works is bi-directional.

Mireia Mujika: Yeah, sure. 

Ana Sánchez: So, for example, following the example of the victim that you were saying. If you identify your body, you're feeling the victim and you get conscious of how you are, your posture and how is your face, you can start with, instead of changing what you think, you can start moving your body and that creates a difference. Because emotion is energy in motion. So, by moving your body, you're moving your emotions and that's very powerful. Very powerful. And we do the same with the sage. We can actually work the physicality of the empathy power, the physicality of your deep curiosity mode, the physicality of creativity, deep meaning etc. And, for example, I have a friend, a very old friend. He doesn't live now but he used to say, if you want to smile, smile. And we can invite everybody who is listening to the podcast that they don't need to think of something that makes them smile. By just doing the act of smiling, put a big smile on your face and if you stay there a few seconds.

Mireia Mujika: And now we are smiling.

Ana Sánchez: Yes, we are smiling. And I think I would love to know what everybody has to say. I think we can't help but feel an inner smile.

Mireia Mujika: Gratitude, yes. One thing that you were saying that caught my attention. You were saying bad emotions and good emotions but I know that lately, we haven't been using this bad emotions concept. So, what can you tell me about it? 

Ana Sánchez: Yeah, that's one of the things that Positive Intelligence method is very clear about, negative emotions and positive emotions. And what we mean by negative emotions is it's not that they are bad and we don't need them but it is that we really feel bad when we feel.

Mireia Mujika: They make us feel bad

Ana Sánchez: So, it's not something that we would choose to feel stressed, to feel anxiety. If you're going to have a presentation tomorrow and you could choose how to feel, would you choose to feel anxiety?

Mireia Mujika: Stress.

Ana Sánchez: High levels of stress.

Mireia Mujika: Exactly, pretty much. 

Ana Sánchez: I want a lot of shame. That’s what we mean by negative emotions. And also, everybody asked, so then what? Are negative emotions bad? And when we have this question, I also have the question, is pain bad? 

Mireia Mujika: Can I answer?

Ana Sánchez: Oh, yes. Please. 

Mireia Mujika: I don't think so. 

Ana Sánchez: I don't think so?

Mireia Mujika: No, I don't think pain is bad. For example, when I was feeling pain when I was giving birth to my children, pain was helping me push. Pain was helping me. So, like okay, we're going through this and I’m going to deliver this baby. And at that point, I was feeling pain and real pain and I think I have never felt so much pain and I would have probably never felt so much pain but that pain was helpful. 

Ana Sánchez: Yeah. And that's the response. Pain is good for us, pain is needed. Pain is needed, is an alert. It's our body intelligence, our body wisdom saying to us, hey there's something going on here, pay attention to this. The same happens with the negative emotions. They are there as an alert to move us and say, hey there's something going on here, you must pay attention to that. But the same that happens with negative emotions, it happens with pain. If we put our hand on a hot stove, immediately we're going to take our hands out of the hot stove because we feel that pain. If we keep our hand on the hot stove, we're going to burn ourselves. We're not getting the message, we're going to burn. And the same happens with the negative emotions. After a few seconds, Shirzad Chamine, he's very radical with this. He says, “After one second, you are being hijacked. You're burning yourself, you're harming yourself.” 

Mireia Mujika: So, get out.

Ana Sánchez: Yeah. So, get out. So, that would be the look we have from positive intelligence to the negative emotions. 

Mireia Mujika: Now that I was expecting to ask you this question later on but actually now that you brought the stove, the hot stove, so I’m going to give you the sample of this friend that we have. His name is Mike and he's 38 years old and he suffers burn out at work. So, how can positive intelligence help him?

Ana Sánchez: Well, good question. I think just by working with the three muscles that we've said recently. First of all, with positive intelligence, we drive all our attention to ourselves. We drive the attention of what we are living, what is happening and what's going on in our lives. It puts all the attention on us and how we can work out what's going on and get a different outcome. So, by working the three muscles, identifying our judge and saboteurs. By identifying that, I mean that what part of us is also interfering in creating that burnout. So, we start identifying how our judge and the type of saboteurs that are activated in me that are having an active role in creating that burnout, start even giving us clarity of how to handle that and understanding why and how we've had maybe certain reactions, we've made certain decisions etc. and it help us understand how we are having our relationship with our work environment and work in general. And then exercising the self-command and the sage muscle already connect us with the kind of emotions like empathy to ourselves to be able to embrace how we feel and how we are living in this moment, peace of mind, that would already create peace of mind and reduce the amount of stress that you are experiencing and also the sense of meaning. So, you would start creating within you access to positive emotions where, at the same time, will reduce the amount of negative emotions and that together with getting insights of how you've been operating and who you are in essence. It's a whole lot different experience and way of going out from the burnout situation. And I don't mean that positive intelligence only can be the method.

Mireia Mujika: Let’s move to the next question actually. So, which other disciplines do you use together in your work?

Ana Sánchez: Before I answer that question, what I wanted to say before is that maybe a person also needs to go to another therapist, maybe to a psychologist or maybe to another kind of therapy that fits better to the level of burnout because there's also a spectrum. There's not just one burnout level. There's this quite a wide variety of levels and positive intelligence on its own might not be the unique and the right method for Mike at this moment but I am a hundred percent sure that he can add and alter a lot of support, a lot of tools for that person to have in a positive way. 

Mireia Mujika: Yes. The self-awareness that positive intelligence can bring to a person. It's already quite a lot. 

Ana Sánchez: Yeah.

Mireia Mujika: So, it helps you begin in order to get out from that burnout. 

Ana Sánchez: Yeah. And you say the consciousness on the inside and it's together with the practice. Actually, in positive intelligence, we say 80% is practice, 20% is insight. So, imagine the importance of practicing. And then moving to your question about who's the kind of person to –

Mireia Mujika: So, it's both, right? Like, who is the client that will most benefit from positive intelligence, can be your first session with you or also what other disciplines do you use together with positive intelligence?

Ana Sánchez: Actually, now I am using, well, co-active coaching. It is an incredible method that provides us with a lot of insight and tools to work with our clients and I love it and it's very, I don't know the word. It combines very well with the positive intelligence fundamentals. Actually, Shirzad Chamine, years ago, was in the center. He was the CEO of CTI. 

Mireia Mujika: Training institute which is the one that certifies the co-active coaches?

Ana Sánchez: That's right. So, there's a lot of connection between those two methodologies and so they combine very well and that's how I work. 

Mireia Mujika: Yes, that's great. Perfect. So, I’m checking here, I have my questions. And I haven't asked yet, so what can we expect to happen in a session with you?

Ana Sánchez: Well, first, there will be a certain amount of learning because we won't just go into the practice and there's a lot of putting the client into the context and explain and there's a stage of learning and then there's a stage of practice and in the practice stage, we can expect so many things like we can expect visualizations, body consciousness, we can expect silence, we can expect movement, open eyes, closed eyes. 

Mireia Mujika: That's funny enough.

Ana Sánchez: Yeah, playing. There's so much we can use to create awareness and deep insights and also to do the practices, the actual which we call PQ reps, which I haven't said, you know, in the self-command muscle, those exercises that I told you about giving our attention to the physical sensation, we call them PQ Rep, which is repetitions of positive intelligence activities. 

Mireia Mujika: In the same way that we do squats or lunges.

Ana Sánchez: That's right. The same thing, exactly.

Mireia Mujika: Three rounds of ten repetitions.

Ana Sánchez: Yeah, three rounds of touch PQ Reps. 

Mireia Mujika: Okay, I see. 

Ana Sánchez: And also, we give everything, you know, all these things happen in a session. Just one or two things happen in one session and other ones in another session but all agreed between the client and I. We create our sessions together. 

Mireia Mujika: Okay, that's great. You were also mentioning to me before that you have an intensive ad that you have a program that you run for your clients, a six weeks intensive program.

Ana Sánchez: Oh, yeah. Ideally, to work with me through mental fitness, through positive intelligence, there is a six weeks intensive training program. It's all online, weekly videos. So, it's made online and so it's to actually acquire in those six weeks the fundamentals of positive intelligence in terms of knowledge and practice. And people can find more information about these six weeks program in positiveintelligence.com and if this program is done through me, apart from the weekly video sessions and the practices and all that, we will have a weekly meeting in person. Well, it would be online but it would be direct and one-on-one or in-group. So, as a way of facilitating the integration of all the practice and the learning of the week, it's very powerful, very interesting and it brings everybody the fundamentals of positive intelligence and to keep the practice because the same is with the physical fitness. It's not something that you do for a month and that's it. You are fit for all your life.

Mireia Mujika: I wish. That's right, that would be great.

Ana Sánchez: But I’m afraid it doesn't work like that. You must go to the gym every week and do your exercises or walk or whatever. There's so many ways of doing it but you have to do this physical training and so it happens the same and as you were so kind to invite me to your podcast, there's a special, a “ways to grow” special prize for everybody who would like to participate in the six weeks PQ program. And people, if they just write to me at my email address annasanchezcoach@gmail.com. We can activate this special price. 

Mireia Mujika: Okay. So, listeners, listen to that. So, anasanchezcoach@gmail.com, you can write to Ana and participate in her six weeks positive intelligence program and there you will have a special prize for listeners of ways to grow. 

Ana Sánchez: Yeah.

Mireia Mujika: That's great. So, finally, the last question. So, what book or all the resources would you recommend to a person interested in your discipline?

Ana Sánchez: Well, I think the main book is the Positive Intelligence book.

Mireia Mujika: I highly recommend this book as well.

Ana Sánchez: Because it's very easy to read. It's very interesting and everything that we've been talking about is there in detail and very clear. And people can even start with practice, just by reading a book. So, it's very recommended. And also in relation to these, how the two sides of our brain work and the relation with the emotions and how they perceive reality, I would recommend to everybody to see the Ted talk of Jill Bolte, a stroke of insight, which is marvelous. I have no words actually. It's very good in terms of having a more emotional experience of how these two sides of our mind work and it's beautiful, the conclusion that she gets to at the end. 

Mireia Mujika: Yes, I think she just blends it really well as well, like it says. 

Ana Sánchez: Yeah. There's a lot of wisdom in that tech talk.

Mireia Mujika: Okay. Anything else? Any other book, any other author?

Ana Sánchez: Well, I like this author very much, the neuroscientist, Natharet Castellanos. She is Spanish and she does a lot of work in uniting or friending neuroscience and humanism and so she is very good also, explaining how the brain works and how we can use it in the best way to have a good life, to be happier and get the most of it. 

Mireia Mujika: Okay, that's great. Okay, listeners, so you can also go to waystogrowpodcast.com and there you will find all the information about Ana Sanchez and the authors’ biography, her biography, her contact details but also the authors and books that she recommended. So, waystogrowpodcast.com. And Ana, one question that I ask my guest always, like is there anything that you would like to say or any questions that I haven't asked that you like me to ask?

Ana Sánchez: I don't know. I think we've covered a lot and I feel very grateful for having had this conversation with you, for you to be spreading all these resources for everybody that is interested in growing and so I’m just saying that I feel grateful and thank you very much.

Mireia Mujika: Oh, thank you. I know that you are busy. Thank you for taking your time out and coming to us here. Thank you so much. And that's for today. So, I think if something is clear for me today is that we have these saboteurs that we have to get them under control. And for that, there are these beautiful techniques that Ana can help you with, which is the self-command and the sage mind. And yes, again, as we say here in this podcast, our body has a lot of wisdom so we have to listen to it a little bit more than we do. Thank you very much. Thank you, everyone. And see you in two weeks. Bye.

List of Authors, Books and Resources:

Positive Intelligence – Shirzad Chamine

A stroke of insight – Jill Bolte (Ted talk)

Natharet Castellanos (neuroscientist) – author