Positive Intelligence by Shirzad Chamine

 Here is yet another book about how to find happiness and success. In this one Chamine focuses on developing positivity through using mindfulness to defeat emotional "saboteurs."  He describes two mental states, the "sage" state that is peaceful, creative, and energetic, and the "judge" state that is insecure, negative, and limiting. The mental "judge" has nine kinds of "saboteurs" or mindsets that lead to self-defeating behaviors and attitudes: avoider, hyper-achiever, controller, hyper-rational, hyper-vigilant, pleaser, restless, stickler, and victim.  In the book he explains each of these and how they can sabotage relationships, work teams, and happiness. Then he describes how mindfulness can put people into their "sage" mind state that allows them to avoid the saboteurs and instead move forward with creativity, energy, empathy, and joy.  He includes case studies and refers often to scientific research.

This is a book I read as part of a staff development initiative at work.  Like all such self-help books there were a lot of good ideas and I welcomed the opportunity to examine my life and see if any of the ideas would be useful to me personally.  There were some things that bothered me a bit.  He tries to quantify what he calls the PQ (positivity quotient) state by giving people tests that ask how often then feel anxious, or frustrated, etc.  He assigns a score to their answers and then has them retake the test after they have instigated his program of "strengthening PQ muscles".  He claims that once the person hits a score of about 75 (74.4 to be exact :) out of a hundred, their Positivity will swirl upward, but under 75, it tends to swirl downward. It is all very subjective and suspectable to confirmation bias. His attempts to quantify this sounded pretty much like nonsense to me, and it made me laugh when he admitted his main saboteur was "hyper-rational."  No kidding. It also bothered me that the book seemed to be mostly an advertisement to by into his corporate training program. I am being a little harsh.  I thought reading the book was a good experience, and I have tried to be more mindful since reading it and I think that has helped decrease some of the anxiety I have felt recently. (2012, 224 p)