3 Core Muscles constitute mental fitness for CFOs

Based on research that included 500,000 participants from 50 countries, including hundreds of CEOs, finance, operations, sales and technology teams, elite athletes and Stanford students described in the New York Times best-seller Positive Intelligence, these 3 key muscle groups are:

1. The “Saboteur” Interceptor Muscle.

The concept of a Saboteur is a useful metaphor, a personification of a group of behaviors that don’t serve you well. In fact, these behaviors derail you and get in the way of your own success. It’s the reason that only 20% of CFOs and their teams achieve their true potential.

Your Saboteurs generate all your NEGATIVE emotions – such as self-doubt, stress, anger, blame, guilt, procrastination, discontent and the like. Mental fitness equips you with the ability to discredit the false messages of your saboteurs, intercept them and disarm them. Below, we paint a clear picture of the 10 saboteurs, so you can more quickly identify which 2 or 3 most frequently interfere with you. None of us are beset by all 10; we typically have a few favorites we’ve allowed to form as strong habits.

2. Your “Sage” Muscles.

The “Sage” is a metaphor for your inner leader. The true you. The part of you that delivers peak performance with relative ease through the POSITIVE powers of your mind and body. This inner leader in you equips you to Empathize, Explore, Innovate, Navigate and Take Action, all at just the right time. Your Sage has great access to wisdom and insight. To clarity and certainty. To courage, and boldness. The key is to quiet the negative, interfering voices and to amp up the volume of your inner leader so you can hear it more quickly and easily.

3. The Self-Command Muscle. 

These are the mental muscles that enable you to more silence whichever Saboteurs are jostling for undue influence, faster and easier. You can build strength in the part of your brain that dissipates self-doubt, and recover from disappointments with greater speed than you have ever known.  You can spend much less time in anger, regret or indecision. These muscles can be built with an innovative set of 10-second exercise that build up the crucial Self-Command muscle in the brain. This enables you to prevent a Saboteur-hijacked mindset from running your decisions and actions.

Because insight is not enough. It does not last. Most change comes from building the core muscles that give you the strength to act in the face of an onslaught of negative thoughts and behaviors.