PQ Training


Boosting your mental fitness requires building powerful new muscles in your brain, not just insight.

Combining weekly video sessions and an exclusive App, Coaches Carla and Thornley guide you step-by-step over a six-week period to boost the 3 core muscles of mental fitness.

The increased grey matter in the “Sage” region of the brain is visible in MRI imaging within 8 weeks.

The experience is often described as lifechanging.

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.

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 with Shirzad 

Shirzad 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. 

call 613-334-1716 or email thornleybay@gmail.com for more details