Mental fitness is your ability to handle life's challenges with calm, clarity, and focus. The program strengthens your Sage mindset, reducing stress and enhancing resilience.

Unlike other programs, PQ is rooted in neuroscience and offers practical tools to rewire your brain for sustained results in both personal and professional life.

Saboteurs are negative, automatic mind patterns rooted in survival instincts that undermine your best interests. They manifest as internal critics and negative thoughts causing stress, anxiety, and other negative emotions. These patterns work against your "Sage," which represents your positive mental powers. Saboteurs turn your greatest strengths into weaknesses by overusing them. Everyone has them, and they are active even when you are unaware of them. The Judge is the universal Saboteur, finding faults with self, others, and circumstances.

The "Sage" represents your positive mental powers and is tied to different regions of your brain than your Saboteurs. The Sage has five core powers: Explore (with curiosity and an open mind), Empathize (with compassion and understanding for self and others), Innovate (create new perspectives and solutions), Navigate (choose a path aligned with your values and purpose), and Activate (take decisive action without Saboteur interference). Utilizing the Sage allows you to approach challenges from a place of curiosity, empathy, and creativity.

A PQ Rep is a simple exercise to build your PQ Brain, which powers your Sage, and weakens your Saboteurs. It involves shifting your attention to your body and any of your five senses for at least ten seconds. Examples include focusing on your breath, the temperature of the air, the sensations of your body on a chair, or the texture of an object. Doing PQ reps is like lifting a mental dumbbell and the more reps you do, the stronger your Sage muscle becomes. A target of one hundred reps per day is recommended.

You can weaken your Saboteurs by observing and labeling their thoughts and feelings. Recognize their patterns, triggers, and give them names that reflect their personality. Every time you catch yourself being controlled by a Saboteur, give yourself a PQ Rep. This strengthens your PQ Brain and weakens your Saboteurs. Remember, you are not your Saboteur; your Saboteur is a pattern of thinking separate from your core essence. It's helpful to personalize your saboteurs with unique descriptions and names.

The Judge is a master Saboteur that finds faults with self, others, and circumstances. It causes feelings of guilt, regret, shame, disappointment, anger, and anxiety. It exaggerates the negative and assumes the worst, often leading to self-criticism and harsh judgments. It convinces you that without it, you would be lazy, complacent, and irresponsible. It activates other "accomplice" Saboteurs that reinforce its negative perspective. The Judge's voice becomes so familiar we mistake it for our own and often accept its negative pronouncements as truth. The Judge often focuses on a future state where happiness will be possible only after some condition is met ("when").

Since Saboteurs are always present, you can use their presence as reminders to engage in PQ reps. By catching and labeling a Saboteur, you immediately get a PQ Rep which strengthens your Sage. This shifts the energy away from the Saboteur and contributes to its eventual weakening. This strategy turns your Saboteurs into fitness trainers for your PQ Brain. Also, every Saboteur has an underlying strength that it is abusing. When you can access that strength from your Sage, you use that strength optimally.

You can apply these concepts by consistently practicing PQ reps and observing your thoughts and feelings. You can turn many daily routines (brushing teeth, showering, eating, walking) into opportunities for PQ reps. You can learn to make decisions from your Sage rather than your Saboteurs, making choices that align with your values, purpose, and meaning. It is valuable to teach children this framework of Sage and Saboteur. Use the concepts when working through situations so that you can be aware of when you have been hijacked. Recognize that the voices of the saboteurs will never completely go away, they will simply become weaker.

The Sage perspective involves seeing all situations, even difficult ones, as potential gifts or opportunities for growth. It requires shifting away from the Judge's negative view and recognizing that even negative events can be turned into something positive. It means recognizing that the immediate effects of a situation might not be the final outcome. Cultivating the Sage perspective means letting go of blame, regret, and worry and embracing the possibility of positive change. Even if you choose not to actively turn a negative into a gift, just knowing that you have the option will weaken your Judge and strengthen your Sage.