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Power Hour Optometry
Mental Fitness Is the Missing Link: How Your Mindset Might Be Undermining Your Practice’s Growth
00:54:02
Every leader has saboteurs. The question is — are yours running the show? In this episode of Power Hour, host Eugene Shatsman sits down with Natalie Siston, international speaker, bestselling author, and Lead Presenter at Positive...
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Natalie Cistin
Foreign.
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Eugene Shotsman
Optometry's biggest and longest running show, now in its 13th season. I'm your host, Eugene Shotsman. And today's episode is a little different in an interesting way. So today we're diving into a conversation that isn't necessarily about technology, specialty services, KPIs, or at least not directly. Instead, today we're exploring something that is even more foundational in some ways, your mindset. So my guest is Natalie Cistin, and she's a speaker, she's an author, she is the lead presenter at a company called Positive Intelligence. And she brought to the show a framework of sorts that's helped thousands of professionals retrain the way that they think and maybe more importantly, how they react to certain situations. So in this episode, we talk about this concept of saboteurs that I learned about that are kind of inner thought patterns. They're predictable patterns that we all fall into and all of us have different ones. And they end up killing productivity, they end up hurting relationships, costing us time, money, team engagement. And I even took the positive intelligence test and we discussed some of my test results live on the air and what it means for me and my business.
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So if you've ever left a tough.
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Patient conversation super frustrated, or you struggle to explain why a team member isn't working out in your practice, or just felt yourself spiraling over something like a one star review, this episode is a really interesting exploration. Natalie and I end up talking through a four part system that they have to understand the types of things that set you off, regain control, reframe the challenges, and then ultimately lead with some serious clarity. So the reason I invited Natalie to the show is because we both spoke at an event together and I heard feedback from the audience members that Natalie actually helped people change the way they think about how they show up as leaders.
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So I really hope that this episode.
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Does something similar for you. But as always, if you have questions, feedback, or just want to email me with an idea, feel free to reach out directly@eugene shotsman.com or on the PowerHour website. And also please make sure you're subscribed on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever.
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You get your shows.
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And now, here's today's episode.
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Natalie, welcome to the Power Hour. Excited to have you on the show.
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Natalie Cistin
I'm really happy to be here, Eugene. This is going to be a fun conversation.
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Eugene Shotsman
Yeah. So I think I want to get right into the heart of the matter. So whether our audience is familiar with the work that the Positive Intelligence team does, or it's Not. I think it's important for you to just articulate why should an optometry clinic care. Why should an optometry practice care about the work that Positive Intelligence is doing?
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Natalie Cistin
So obviously, I want everyone to care about this. And specifically for an optometry practice owner, doctor, manager, whatever the case might be, what you need to know is that your negative thought patterns are getting in the way of your success every single day. It's getting in the way of the success of you as a business owner, success as a community leader. However you see yourself in running that business. Our negative thought patterns, which we call saboteurs of positive intelligence, are getting in our way. They cost us time, they cost us money, they cost us relationships. And so what we're up to at Positive Intelligence is teaching people through research and science and easy to use tactics, how you can actually train your brain to experience more positive emotions. And that inevitably will lead to greater success, greater relationships, greater profits inside of your optometry practice.
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Eugene Shotsman
Yeah, and I think it's really important to explain some, or to give some examples of how somebody's, you know, what you call this, negative thought patterns. What do those even look like? And how do those actually negatively impact the business, just so that our audience, again, can kind of put their mind, wrap their minds around this concept that we're going to be talking about for the next hour.
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Natalie Cistin
Absolutely. And I'm going to give everybody a way to actually go measure their own negative thought patterns. If that's okay, Eugene.
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Eugene Shotsman
That's great. Yeah, do it.
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Natalie Cistin
Send them right there. So the negative thought patterns, we label those as saboteurs. And there's a free online assessment. You go to positiveintelligence.com saboteurs and you can take a 5 to 10 minute online assessment and it will actually give you a report of what your top negative thinking patterns are. And so why I love this and why I work and teach this concept, Eugene, is because it gets to the very simplest level of why I should care where this comes from and what I can do about it. So it'll boil it down and show you your saboteurs. There are nine of them. And I know, Eugene, we're going to unveil a little bit about yours in a bit, but it'll give you a report and it'll show you the strength of those saboteurs. And based on your unique saboteur combination, that's what's costing you day to day. And so we're obviously not going to go through all nine. Eugene. I'll let people learn on their own and take the assessment. We can give a few examples, but it's really the idea of how these, these negative thought patterns are eating into our day to day life, eating into our ability to lead a successful business.
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Eugene Shotsman
Yeah. And you know, let's maybe jump into one or two examples. So I pulled up my report and by the way, this is super interesting. And one of the reasons why, Natalie, I wanted to have you on the show is because I found my results really interesting. And I think getting people into the mindset of understanding these thought patterns that we all have. Right. Like we all have. So it helps create, I think, a good understanding for what, how you're impacting other people and then also how you're impacting really your work and yourself and yourself at work. And so I will throw one out there. Right. My top one. And I actually just pulled up my report to make sure that I was accurate. So my top one is I am hyper rational and I have an 8.1 score on hyper rational. That's my top saboteur. So let's talk about what a hyper rational person is, Natalie. And if I am, you know, if it's, if it's, if you were giving me advice or if you were saying, hey, Eugene, you know, this is the types of things you got to watch out for. What does a hyper rational person look like?
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Natalie Cistin
Great. That's a great start. And I love that we're going to give specific examples and you can even just put your own hat on, Eugene, of how this might be get getting in your way. I might ask you to get a little bit vulnerable. You know, just, just be prepared. But with the hyper rational saboteur one, to know about any saboteur, hyper rational or otherwise, these are your greatest strengths overused and abused. Your greatest strengths taken too far and that leads into a negative emotion. And so what this is pointing to, Eugene, is that you clearly have a strength in rational thinking. It's just been like beat on its head too much. And so when this is showing up in saboteur, when this is showing up in negative thought patterns, what this is saying is that you're going to be so focused on right, wrong, black, white, yes, no, that you may overlook the emotions, you may overlook the ideas of other people. And I often tell people that for me, thinking about hyper rational saboteur, sometimes living in a yes, no, right, wrong, check the box. One way or the other feels like a great way to live. It would make things a lot easier. Except we live in a very, very, very gr. Made up of human emotions. And so what happens with the hyper rational saboteur is it can't get in touch with those deeper feelings and other people feel that. And so when you're thinking about running an optometry practice, whether you're thinking about how you're interacting with your patients or how you're interacting with your team, these saboteurs are at play all day long. And so someone interacting with hyper rational might not feel safe seen, they might not feel heard, they might not feel like they can share their idea because, oh my gosh, they're always going to have the right answer and they're going to kind of pound on it so that they know that I know they're right.
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Eugene Shotsman
Oh, yeah. That's something that I've had to work on for a long time, I think in my career is that I naturally feel like I can jump to a solution very, very quickly. And then I do get frustrated with other people being not rational enough, maybe in, in their thinking. And it's, you know, it's like, well, you have a problem and you're looking for a solution and like, we don't really need to talk about it anymore. The solution's pretty clear. But no, like you still want to talk about it. I get it. And so I have tried to become more patient over the years when it comes to, when it comes to being, I don't know, available for people to, to talk about how they feel about certain things. But in all reality, the shortcut in my mind is always to be like, okay, whatever it is, we're going to figure it out, let's jump into it. And it is a little bit frustrating and I think it feels like a waste of time when someone wants to go around the tree, so to speak, to evaluate. When we're like, okay, we already know the answer, we're going to get there in 20 minutes. We could also get there in the 20 seconds.
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Natalie Cistin
Yeah, I think you're pointing out something really important is that with a lot of the saboteurs, we use them because there are shortcut, there are shortcut to saving time, there are shortcut to getting there faster. And a lot of times we're getting there with force, we're getting there with fear, we're getting there with frustration. And so that's where we really just have to be present to where is this overuse and abuse of this strength I have turning into a negative emotional response? And how am I feeling that and how might other people be feeling that? So the first step in the work that we do at positive intelligence is self awareness because, you know, we're, we're never going to get rid of these saboteurs. Eugene, you mentioned the, you have an 8.1. And we're not going to get into numbers today because that's really unique to you. So my goal for someone is like their numbers would come down over time. It's not going to disappear for you, but you can learn to your point, to work with it. And it's going to feel awkward. It's going to feel probably a little not normal. You're going to feel like you're wasting time because, oh my gosh, all of a sudden I might need to, I might need to ask more questions or I may need to generate more buy in. Because you're ready, Eugene. You're ready. You were born ready to like, make the call, to have the answer. And as a leader, you know, you need to pull other people into that space, right? Even if you're thinking about working with patients, you need to pull them into the space that you're in so they, they understand, you know, you may have the knowledge and depending on how you bring that into the conversation will help you determine how you work with them to get to your solution.
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Eugene Shotsman
Well, and that's the thing is that I think about myself in the. If I had to be in the chair, so to speak, or if I was in clinic and I had a patient in front of me and I, and I knew the answer, right? Like, I know, but like, Mrs. Jones still has to describe every little detail of everything that she's seeing and what not seeing. And I'm like, nope, I got it. But. So I can totally see how my bedside manner as an optometrist might be a little bit compromised by this particular saboteur. I also understand that that's one of the reasons why I think about the people who succeed in working really closely with me and who don't succeed in working really closely with me. And I, you know, it's almost like I have to think about if I put someone in a position of working directly with me on a project, am I going to set them up to fail if they, you know, if they react negatively to the way that I tend to, you know, move very quickly and, you know, very, very intentionally through the, through, through the work that I do. And at the same time I recognize I don't want to set those people up for failure. But I also realize that for me, I also have to kind of slow down and work on my management style. And so I recognize. And that's just one example. Is it? Okay, by the way, Natalie, if I say all of them just so that people know what these sound like, I.
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Natalie Cistin
Was just going to suggest that we run them top to bottom, alpha order. You're reading my mind. Okay.
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Eugene Shotsman
Why don't. Why don't you do it? Because, I mean, obviously it's your stuff.
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Natalie Cistin
Because I don't have a cheat sheet, but clearly I know these like the back of my hand. So. Yes, I'm just going to tell you what the names are. Maybe I'll say a brief thing and some.
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Eugene Shotsman
Yeah, just do that. Explain like, you know, two sentences on each one.
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Natalie Cistin
Sentences. Okay, so we start out. Avoider would just rather not. Would rather not have the tough conversation, would rather not take on the task because they want life to just remain peaceful, as is. These saboteurs deliver exactly the opposite that they promised. So we know the longer we avoid, the more stress we have. So that's our avoider. Then we have Controller, which has a, you know, a need to take control of all situations, all decisions. And Eugene. Usually controllers push back, saying, without me, nothing will get done. This is where I remind people, greatest strength taken too far. Leadership is great. Leadership under fear is Controller. And that, that destroys relationships. Okay, then we have three Hypers. Hyper Achiever. This is really feeling valued for your achievements. So I'm just going to keep going after the accolades, the awards, because that's how I feel. Value, instead of just feeling valued for who I am.
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Eugene Shotsman
By the way, you can raise my hand. That was my second one.
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Natalie Cistin
Ah, you're. You're the double hyper. Double Hyper. So hyper Rational. We already talked about just, you know, having the answer, seeing. Seeing it being right, but not being able to touch into those emotions as a result. The third Hyper is called Hyper Vigilant, which I just like. The picture I'll put in people's head is, you know, just shoe dangling above head. Because this Hyper Vigilant is always waiting for the other shoe to drop. It's a constant fear and anxiety about what's going to go wrong. There's those people who have contingency plans and there's the Hyper Vigilant, who has a contingenc plan on a contingency plan on a contingency plan. So once again, greatest strength taken too far. And then we have a pleaser saboteur, another one I get a lot of pushback on to say, Natalie, isn't it good to take care of other people? Absolutely. We call that servant leadership. Pleaser is where that's taken too far and it leads to burnout and resentment when you never take care of yourself. Then we have the restless saboteur. Go, go, go.
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Eugene Shotsman
Do, do, do.
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Natalie Cistin
Fear of missing out. I have to keep up with the latest and greatest. And Eugene, what I think the sentence I would underscore for anyone here is the restless. We all have a little bit of restlessness, especially with the digital world we're living in. We will stay in motion in order to not feel emotion. I'll say that again for those at home. We stay in motion so we don't have to feel the emotion when, as you and I will talk a little further, it's really important to feel our emotion. We don't want to a lot of times, but it's actually really important. Then we have stickler saboteur. So this is a need for perfectionism. A stickler would like 100% of 100% to be perfect, when really what they need to do is focus on the 20% that needs to be perfect and let the 80% be good enough. Find me online if you want to debate those numbers. And then the final saboteur is called the victim saboteur. This tends to be a quieter saboteur where the victim is very, very in touch with their own emotions. So much so that it comes off as needing to be rescued at times. Like, I will receive love for mothers when they come up and they show up to rescue me and do the work on my behalf. That's how I feel appreciated and I feel loved.
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Eugene Shotsman
So going through those saboteurs, let's talk about. And you know, obviously all of these are present to some extent in all of us, because everything you were saying, I was like, oh, yeah, I guess I do that sometimes. I know. Oh, yeah, maybe. So that's where the, the test that you can take online, like, really, really helps, helps you figure out which ones are your top ones and which ones are not so present or relevant for you. And I guess what I'm wondering is, as you've worked with lots and lots of people, which of these do you want to focus on or draw a little bit more attention to? Because we talked about mine with the hyper rational one. But are there some really common ones with some, I guess what I call, like, common things that we're always seeing and as we're, as we're moving through our businesses that. That tend to be some of the biggest areas of. I'll call them danger zones, where we actually could be in, like, fully sabotaging. I Guess that's the whole concept of a saboteur. So we really could be sabotaging our own businesses.
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Natalie Cistin
Well, let me. I'm going to come back to that question because there's another kind of higher order concept I need to put on top of all of this because it's really important to tie it all together, and then I'll get to your specific questions. So what Eugene and I are talking about now, our accomplice saboteurs. So we have the test. You can take it, you can figure out what's your magnitude of order, because as Eugene said, we all have a little bit of each of them for sure. I want people to be focused on their top two from an awareness perspective. But sitting above these accomplice saboteurs is something called the judge saboteur. And this, for many of us, is this really distracting voice that we've been carrying around in our brain for a really long time. And the judge and these other saboteurs, they came to us early in life. They were trying to protect us from something. It might have been actual or perceived harm. But for all of us, the biggest saboteur we have in our life is the judge. And we don't measure that one because it's universal. So I think what it's really important for your audience to understand, Eugene, is that I think especially if you decide to take this concept back and talk to your team about it or talk to your practice manager about it, whatever the case might be, it's really important to identify that we all have this voice. And if we can just start to listen in and think about what does it sound like? Is it really loud and distracting? Is it quiet and sweet and just keeps me playing small in the background? It comes in all kinds of flavors, and it's aided and abetted by this accomplice saboteur. Hopefully that's helpful because we all have this judge. And so really, if I want anybody to take care of anything, it's how do I recognize when my judge is at play and how can I start to simmer that voice down?
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Eugene Shotsman
But how do you distinguish between. And I guess I think about all of us as business professionals striving for excellence on some level. Right? So look, if I'm gonna send an email to a client, I'm gonna write that email. And then I've learned over the years this is actually something that I do or that I used to do before AI but now I just have AI proofread my email. But I used to. I'm not kidding, Natalie. What I used to do is I used to write the email and then I would read the email backwards to forwards, one sentence at a time. Because I felt, and I've been, maybe there's some legitimacy to this. But look, I am the face of our organization. I have dozens, hundreds of people who report to me and who. It is my responsibility to represent them as positively as possible. Me taking an extra 30 seconds to reread something that I wrote to a client is a behavior that is going to prevent a client potentially of thinking less of anyone who works for me. So I'm really doing a service for the client. I'm also helping, I'm helping my team be presented well. And of course, I'm trying to represent myself well as well from professional standpoint. So that 30 seconds, I mean, on one end it seems like super, like compulsive behavior, right? Like, I double reread my emails backwards. Like, you know, it's freaking crazy, right? On the other side, it's a, it's a performance technique that, you know, helps me, I don't know, sleep easier at night knowing that I didn't do something stupid in an email and that, you know, I didn't, I didn't end up, you know, embarrassing one of our employees. And you know, my, my employees are like, man, like, I wish, I wish Eugene would check his emails before he send them to our clients because now we have to do more cleanup, right? So I'm thinking about that and my question is there's this concept of natural performance behavior, which, you know, I am judged for the work that I produce, right? Like, my clients have a right to judge me on the effectiveness of the work that my team does. And at the same time, there's, so that this, like that, that's the productive reality of being in business, right? If you don't get a positive review in your optometric practice, if you get a one star review, like, you probably should care about that. But then there's the unhealthy version of that. So talk about the distinction.
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Natalie Cistin
That's great because what you're talking about, I actually love that practice. So the reading the email backwards, whoever's listening, whatever your version of reading the email backwards is to make sure you're showing up how you want to in your business. That, to me is very healthy. And this is the, this is the distinction. It's the distinction between judgment and discernment. So the way you explained that to me was very neutral. You didn't tell me, like, I do this because if I didn't read it backwards. I would stay up all night, I would beat myself up, I would go in this spiral, right? Like if you were doing it because you were spiraling out of control, that would be leading from negative emotion. But the way you presented it to me is very discerning. I do this business practice because it helps me show up in my business the way I want to. So what we need to do is separate out judgment, which is laden with emotion. It's laden typically with negative emotion. Discernment is neutral. Discernment is saying, this is how I do something. So to your point about the one star review, we might have a little bit of a flare up and our judge is like, how dare they give me the one star review or what happened? I'm going to go point fingers and figure out who took care of this person, what happened. We may have a judge judgment moment and then when we bring that back and say, okay, now, now I'm going to be calm, I'm going to simmer down and I'm going to be in a place where I can look at this to solution, that's where we're bringing ourselves in discernment and into positive thinking mode. So that's kind of how the swing of that whole thing can happen. Right? It's just where am I being kind of pulled from this? Like, ah, yeah, you know, just really this big emotion, negative emotion, into calm, positive space. And so what you do, your, your practice is like preventing hopefully from needing to be in that, oh my gosh, we just made a mistake. It made us look terrible. Like. And so I think to the extent you have business practices in place because, you know, it works time and time again, that's very healthy behavior.
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Eugene Shotsman
So what you're saying is that if it's really part of it is that you have to be aware of how your saboteur will react to a mistake that you make and then possibly include some behaviors that prevent you from putting yourself in a situation where that saboteur is activated. Right.
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Natalie Cistin
Spot on. And so this may be a good time to explain that this is a four step process. There's like a, we call it an operating system at positive intelligence because we think of our brain as the hardware and we overlay this mental fitness operating system. So step one is exactly what we've been talking about. We have to understand and identify our saboteur and we can lay that on any situation that we're facing in a day to day context in our business, in our personal life. It doesn't really matter. But having that awareness is step number one, because we can't change if we don't have the awareness. And, and step two is actually bringing ourselves into more calm, neutral territory. So I think it'll be helpful actually to use this one star review as we go out through the conversation. I would imagine this is something that everyone's concerned about. And so it's, you know, you, you see the review happen, you experience the saboteur reaction of seeing that, you know, that negative one star review. And, and this is where I would say you asked me earlier if there's any specific saboteurs I'd have your audience think about in particular. And in this one, anyone listening, even as I walk through those very briefly, kind of has a little idea what their top might be and they can know immediately what their reaction is when that one star review comes in. So an avoider is going to duck and cover. They're like, I'm going to go get coffee and you know, I'm just going to bounce for a while, right? And someone with like hyper vigilance going to like, want to really research and get in there and find out what went wrong and dig, dig, dig. And the stickler is going to be in that inbox reading the email backwards 14 times, figuring out what happened, how this go, you know, wrong. So every sabo tour is going to have a different reaction to that one star review. So that's step one. It happened. Okay, step two, calm myself down. And we have a practice that we call PQ reps. PQ is the short term for positive intelligence. And this is simply getting still and being in our body and feeling sensations so we can stop the mind swirl. Do you want to do 30 seconds of one, Eugene?
- [26:26]
Eugene Shotsman
Yeah, let's do it. Okay, wait, wait, hold on. Before you do that, tell everybody what the four steps are and then we'll come back to them. So.
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Natalie Cistin
First step is identify that your saboteur is activated. Second step is what we're going to practice here in a second. Third step is to accept something called the sage perspective that what this, what this challenge is offering, actually there's a gift or opportunity here. So we can talk about that a little more after we practice the technique. And then there are what we call Sage power. So much like we have, we have nine saboteurs, we have five sage positive thinking powers. The fourth step would be to identify a sage power that you can use to help you get through the situation. So it's identify, calm down, accept what's happening and pick a positive Thinking power that can help you move forward in a different way.
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Eugene Shotsman
Yeah. And it's. I think it's the. The situation that could potentially cause us to. You know, maybe the right expression is fly off the handle, whatever that means. Right. And the fly off the handle is like, you know, just kind of like you feel like you lost control or like this thing is. This thought is dominating your mind and you can't focus on the things that are in front of you. Right? So, like, hey, you know, maybe it is that negative review, but you just keep thinking about it and you're like, man, like, how. How did that happen? How do we screw that up? That was such an important patient or whatever. You know, they had three family members, and now they're pissed. And you're going through that in your mind as you're sitting in front of the next patient, and you're not really paying attention to what's happening in the exam room. You're still dwelling on this thing in whatever way you're dwelling on it. So that's what's happening. That's what the reaction is. So now then you say, okay, my reaction now I got to recognize which of these saboteurs is at work here and what's causing this. Because if I understand that, then I know how to. How to counteract that potentially. But then you're saying, okay, now, like, calm down first.
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Natalie Cistin
Yeah. And even with that first part, you don't have to do a diagnosis of which saboteur. You just have to recognize, whoa, yeah, I'm. I'm. I'm sabotaged. I'm ruminating. I'm sitting in this negative emotion, whatever that is. Just recognize you're there. I don't need to know if it's your avoider, your controller, your hyper rational. Doesn't matter. Just need you to recognize, like, oh, okay, I'm there and I have a choice now. I have a choice point where I can stay in this. So this is from a neuroscience perspective. What's happening is we're just feeding the negative circuitry in our brain. We're feeding all of the neural pathways that are leading to our amygdala, negative thinking regions of our brain, limbic system, fight, flight, freeze. Like, that's where all those emotions are living. And so what we would prefer is to actually release the. Release the thoughts so we can have access to the different regions of our brain where executive thinking happens. Prefrontal cortex, empathy circuitry. We want to open up neuropathways into other areas of our brain, and we cannot do that as long as we're ruminating in this negative emotion.
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Eugene Shotsman
So you're saying, like, objectively, there's data that supports that we're actually blocked when something happens, like the formula is, something happens that causes you to fly off the handle. And for different people, that might be different things. But in, like, objectively, you're saying from the neuroscience standpoint, there is something that's blocking us from reacting in a way that's actually productive.
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Natalie Cistin
Yes. I don't know if I'd use the word blocking, but I would say that what we've done is we've reinforced. If we think about our brain being These. This connection of highways, like we're just driving the car on and off the ramp, that's in the negative circuitry in our brain when we're ruminating, when we're negative emotions. So, yes, I guess if driving on that loop is preventing you from driving on the other loop, where we're open, we're opening our positive neurocircuitry in our brain, then, yes, absolutely, we're blocked. So we want to be able to be open up to that. So in order to do that, we have to detach ourselves from that negative thinking pattern. All right, so what we want to do, Eugene, now, is the second step. And the best way to learn this is to actually experience it, listening. And you're in a place where you can stop what you're doing and join Eugene and I. Please do. So if you're driving, please don't.
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Eugene Shotsman
Not driving on the. On the. On the freeway is what Natalie said. Well, even if.
- [30:54]
Natalie Cistin
Even if you're driving, there are some of these pieces you can do. And that's the beauty, is you can be doing them while in active, active participation of other activities. So let's just do. We might go for a minute, Eugene. So let's just roll with it. Okay, so the first thing that I would like everyone to do is RUB2 fingertips together with such attention that you feel the fingertip ridges on either finger. All right, now I want you to feel your feet firmly on the ground, whether you're standing or sitting. Just feel each of your toes connect to the earth. And what I'd like you to do next is look at something that's in front of you. If you're at a desk, if you're in your kitchen, if you are in the car, that's fine. Just focus on one area in front of you and look at it very intently. Look at the colors, the texture, the shape. Just focus on that object or area all right, now, if you are in a place where you can close your eyes and that's comfortable for you, please do so. If you don't want to close your eyes or are not able to just follow along, just close your eyes. And with those eyes closed, I want you to listen for the farthest away sound you can hear and listen for the closest sound you can hear. And if you haven't heard the sound of your own breathing, focus on the sound of one deep breath and that will be the way we wrap this up. All right, so that was a little over one minute of PQ reps. And what we did is we put ourselves into each of the senses. We focused on sense of touch, sense of sight, sense of hearing, and also our breathing. You can do this with eating. You can really focus on the taste and texture of food. You can hold a mug of coffee in your hand and really feel it. But what's happening is we are slowing that negative thinking brain or shutting it down completely by being in a physical sensation. And why I said you can do this while you're actively doing something like driving, you can be feeling the steering wheel under your hands. You can be just focused on the connection of that. You can be doing this when you're with a patient. You can. I just think of the movements that you make throughout an experience in your office. It's just like I'm going to feel each step I'm taking as I walk back to the exam room. I'm going to feel the water on my hands as I wash them in between exams, as I turn the equipment. I can really just be in that moment. And so, Eugene, when you were talking earlier about, gosh, I saw the one star review. I'm really fired up and I carry that into the next appointment. You really can't carry it into your next appointment if you're focused on being there through your bodily sensations.
- [34:41]
Eugene Shotsman
So, and this is how you essentially turn off the nag and allow yourself to do something productive, which we'll talk about right after the break. We'll jump into with the next two steps in the process that once you understand the whole concept of the saboteur and you've gone through this concept of the PQ rep, now you can move into harnessing your, I guess, pre existing mindset for positive intelligence. All right, we'll be right back. All right, welcome back to the Power Hour. Natalie, we're having such a fascinating conversation. And this is, is a little bit different because I think we recognize that these patterns of behavior are costing US money, but we're not necessarily talking about specific, I don't know, revenue generating activities that you can specifically tie to revenue. But I think subconsciously, or maybe even consciously, we all recognize that, hey, if we were, if we could show up better as managers, if we could show up better as employees, if we could show up better as caregivers, there's obviously a revenue benefit that comes with that. So I'm going to talk about that in a little bit in the show. But I was fascinated by your kind of four steps, and I think you got to finish the link there for the audience. Take them through the remaining two steps. Once you understand the saboteurs, you've done the PQ reps, what do you do next?
- [36:10]
Natalie Cistin
Great. Well, so if we were to have put everybody's head under a functional MRI machine after doing that one minute exercise, we would just see ever so slightly are the regions of our brain where those negative emotions live would just be diminished ever so slightly. And our positive thinking regions of our brain, we ever so brightened up. So right now you're primed to step into the final two steps. The third step of this is to assume something that we call the sage perspective. So this is where every opportunity can be converted into a gift. Every challenge, every problem can be converted into something, you know, better. And so this is really where we're looking at this one star review again, right? And if we're looking at that through the lens of the sage perspective, it's saying, okay, how can I take this one star and see this as a gift? And so that just is really allowing us to sit with the idea that this isn't necessarily a bad thing. And so what we do, what sage perspectives allows us to do, is really to ask ourselves the question, who knows what is good or bad? Because our judge wants to hop in and say, ooh, a one star review, that's bad. One star review is no good, I can't have this. So then we do PQ reps to calm ourselves down and say, okay, what's the opportunity here? What is the gift in receiving this one star? And that then allows us with the team to take the right action so we can unpack that one star review and actually convert that into something that's more positive.
- [37:45]
Eugene Shotsman
Do you recommend doing this right away or is this like, you know, for me, I imagine that kind of going back into the day of I saw the one star review, I'm now, I now have a patient waiting, like, do I go through the whole process or do I just say okay, I'm going to do my PQ rep. That allows me to maybe compartmentalize it for a little bit. And I'm not sure how you feel about compartmentalization, but then I can bring it back. If I'm not a total avoider, that allows me to bring it back. And then when I bring it back, I get a chance to think about how I can turn it into an opportunity.
- [38:24]
Natalie Cistin
It's a great question because I think in the fast paced moment of running your practice, you probably aren't going to have time to do like we're going to all huddle around the whiteboard, we're going to look at the charts, we're going to go through and walk step by step how this appointment went. No, we probably aren't going to have time to do that. So you're exactly right. What we need to do in the moment is to calm ourselves down, do the PQ reps, be in the moment with the patient, and then say, okay, we're going to make sure this is covered at our next team huddle, or this is something that I'll address with the practice manager after hours or whatever the case might be. So you find the right time. But yes, compartmentalizing to me is actually just calming ourselves down through PQ reps. You can use that word, I'll use my word. We're all good.
- [39:09]
Eugene Shotsman
All right, that's good, that's good. All right, so now go to step four.
- [39:11]
Natalie Cistin
Step four. And we aren't going to go too into detail because, Eugene, I am going to admit this is where it feels a little more woo woo. But if you like this and you want to dig more into it, Positive Intelligence is a book by the same name. And we go through each of these five sage powers. And so the idea of a sage power is helping you either ask a question or take an action to help you get to your solution or see that problem, that challenge, as an opportunity. And so I think, Eugene, what might be most helpful is just, you know, once again, kind of like I ran the saboteurs, I'll just run the sage powers down and give folks a glimpse into a question they might ask themselves or a small activity they might do. So the first sage power is empathize. And this is the idea of having empathy for self and others in the situation. And we are all really bad at this, Eugene. We're particularly bad at having empathy for ourselves, especially when we screw up. We'd rather beat ourselves up, say it's all my fault, you know, go into this Doom spiral. When what we really need to do invite the Sage power of empathy to say, okay, I am allowed to have a bad day, I'm allowed to screw up, I'm allowed to make mistakes and I'm going to just grant myself grace right now. So that's, that's the first one is just empathy for all involved in the situation. The second Sage Power is Explore. And this is probably the one that I would, I would personally use in a one star review situation. Because what this has you do is, you know, when I was talking about the hyper rational earlier, it's like I want to jump right in and I want to figure it out, I want to solve it, I want to, you know, I just want to get in. That's what our judge wants to do. In our saboteur from an Explore Sage Power moment. What we're doing is we're saying, okay, let me zoom out, let me become extremely curious and fascinated about this one star review. What happened? What's the situation? And we really need to almost pull ourselves out of our own body to do this is really separate ourselves from the situation so we can be in that pure, discerning and even leaning toward positive emotion when we're doing this. Because what's important to note, Eugene, is if there's any negative emotion present when we're in these, these five powers, we're not there actually. Like we need to be in neutral or positive emotions. So it's almost just like, okay, hey, we're going to gather around and just see what happened and explore. The third one is called Innovate. And this is where we're looking for a lot of solutions. This is, I call this the turning Corporate Brainstorming on its side. And so typically when we do a brainstorming session, it's all ideas are good ideas, you know, bring them forward and within five minutes people are already cutting down ideas because have been there, done that, tried that, too expensive. Name it. You name the reasons why we're not going to do these things with Sage Power Innovate. We actually set it up and I'm going to give you words you can use right now in this situation where if all we're trying to do is generate ideas about how we can get through this one star review situation or create solutions to solve that problem. We're going to just set it up by saying, okay, we're going to brainstorm and Eugene's going to give the first idea and then the next person, before they speak, they have to acknowledge Eugene and say, eugene, what I like about that idea is. And they share what they like about that idea and then they share their idea and on and on we go. But the key phrase is, what I like about that idea is and Eugene. What's funny is. So Eugene and I met each other at the power practice retreat this year. And this phrase, we kept hearing it all day long after we shared it because people just played off of it. But the key word is like, it's not love. I don't have to like or I don't have to love a hundred percent of Eugene's idea. I just have to like 1%, 10% of his idea.
- [43:05]
Eugene Shotsman
And this, I think it's brilliant because it does create a really interesting dynamic for people where it almost. It forces people to work together in a super productive way way. And it. And rather than being, you know, you can see a brainstorm sessions and I've been part of these, unfortunately, where it's just constant one upism of, okay, well, no, I got a better idea, I got a better idea. What we're going to do is this. And oh, that'll never work. To your point, this forces you to like, if you set that one ground rule, the what I like about that idea is. And then you say whatever you're going to say, that creates a. It creates a really interesting pattern of thinking that is just immediately requires you to listen actively. So you're not like just bouncing around waiting for your turn to speak. And then it also requires it to become a collaborative process.
- [44:01]
Natalie Cistin
Exactly. Collaboration is the key word. So if there are relationship challenges in the practice, this is a great, great sage power to use. And the other person doesn't even need to know that you're using it. You can be in conversation and your inside voice can just be saying, all I'm going to listen for this conversation is what I like about their idea. What do I like about their idea? What do I like about their idea? So it's priming me to look for those things that I appreciate. All right, the final two. So the next one is called Navigate. And this is my favorite because I tend towards stickler. And if you're ever caught in a stickler cycle, this is really helpful because the key question is at the end of my life, looking back, what's important now? So this is really going to have you focus on what is important. And so all of that negative emotion that's connected to that one star review all of a sudden dissolves when you put this in this perspective. Like at the end of my life, looking back. Do I really want to be focused on all of the one star reviews and the emotions that came with that? Probably not.
- [45:06]
Eugene Shotsman
It's almost like a mechanism to give yourself permission to let it go.
- [45:11]
Natalie Cistin
Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah. And that's actually what's happening with a lot of our saboteurs, is they're holding on to things that don't deserve to be hung onto any longer.
- [45:20]
Eugene Shotsman
That makes sense. Yeah. Okay, the last one.
- [45:23]
Natalie Cistin
All right. The final is called Activate. Sage Power. Activate. This is taking calm, clear headed, laser focused action. And this is unique to think about because typically where most of us are wired, that our saboteurs can get us into action. I'm talking like they can get us to move, they can get us to make the call, they can get us to have the conversation and that's not healthy. And we feel that among each other. So this is saying, no, I'm just going to actually take this from a positive emotion perspective. And the way we need to do this is by saying, how might my saboteur get in the way? How might my saboteur get in the way of me taking action? And then you have that awareness so you can let it go and be in that calm, clear headed, laser focused place.
- [46:11]
Eugene Shotsman
Say the five in order again, just so. Because it almost feels like a framework for solving a lot of problems.
- [46:20]
Natalie Cistin
Yeah. And if, and this is if there's a really big, juicy, deep problem or even opportunity, just challenge. Yes. You can go through all five of these steps. Steps. So you can insert these one at a time as needed or you can go through all five. So we've got empathize, explore, innovate, navigate. Activate.
- [46:43]
Eugene Shotsman
Yeah, it really does sound like a, like a way that you can approach a problem solving, just a problem solving mindset really. And you're right. Like, I mean, at the end, at the end of the day, it's the understanding what, what are the kinds of things that make you go crazy and then, you know, stopping yourself from doing that and then shifting the perspective into opportunity and then using this framework to ultimately gain control over that situation and turn it into something positive. So with that in mind, if that's an okay summary, let's talk for a few minutes about now that I know this. If I'm listening to this podcast and I'm running a program, practice, and I, you know, I'm sitting there and thinking, okay, well this is great stuff. It's a, it's a really good intellectual framework. But how do I actually do something with this? How do I make an impact in My practice tomorrow.
- [47:37]
Natalie Cistin
So what I love about the Positive Intelligence framework and why I've been teaching it and prophesizing it for the last five years is because you can do something with this immediately. So step one that I would do if I were running a practice is personally take the saboteur assessment. So I have an idea of what I'm dealing with. It's number one is self awareness. And the second step is I would have my entire team and staff take it as well. And it comes with a full report. And so you have enough at your disposal to have a dialogue around. How do these saboteurs show up in our practice? And when you label the saboteurs, you almost take some of the emotion out of it. Because, Eugene, you are not your hyper rational saboteur, but all of a sudd, your colleagues could start to say, hey, Eugene, this is how the hyper rational saboteur affects either us as a staff or gets in the way of our success as a practice. So there's awareness. And so just knowing what each other is dealing with is amazing and really helpful and can really put a dialogue on it. And if you take it even a step further, Eugene, it's inviting each other to do PQ reps. Whether it's, hey, why don't you just go take a minute and take PQ reps or whatever you might want to call it within your practice, but make it okay to take a beat. I watch a lot of TV shows with restaurants in them. And I know a common cooling off technique in restaurants is literally to go in the refrigerator or freezer. And so I think about that from any business is like, what's your equivalent of the refrigerator or freezer in a restaurant where you can go and take a beat when you need to. And then finally it's when you are in staff meetings or when you're thinking about the night next strategic planning session that you're going into is how can you use the idea of sage perspective and sage powers? And as you properly pointed out, Eugene, how can you use this as a framework to help guide you? So it really, it's a full package and it walks you through, through all the steps, which I think is what a lot of these personal and professional development frameworks miss is they laser in on one part, but miss the other part. And this takes you really from self awareness all into solution.
- [49:47]
Eugene Shotsman
Yeah. And you've been teaching this for a long time. What are some of the impacts from a revenue perspective, from a business standpoint that you've seen people have in their organizations when they apply some of the things we've just talked about.
- [50:04]
Natalie Cistin
The three biggest areas where we see impacts when you put this operating system into practice are in performance relationships and well being. And so obviously many times we tie that performance into revenue, into roi, into retention. And so really, I mean, all of these three work together. But if you think about it, if all of a sudden you as a team have a new way to articulate your challenges and opportunities into solution together, all of a sudden more voices get to be heard and then that's what really opens up the door to creativity opportunity, even finding what people are good at that they might not be doing on a day to day basis. You know, I know that growing team members is a really big challenge in this industry. And so all of a sudden if you give people a tool like this, it might surface areas of interest or areas of passion or areas of skill that you didn't even know you had in your practice. And all of a sudden you're feeling really positive about. You know what, let's give this person a chance. Let's let them go explore in this space to see how that may both improve their performance and lead to some revenue generation opportunities. I think when people are, when people are given you space to thrive and to be in their gift, that's when we get the return from a revenue retention perspective, 100%.
- [51:30]
Eugene Shotsman
And there's some great literature about this in addition to the positive intelligence literature. I think that, you know, the Dan Sullivan talks about this in some of his work and it's absolutely true is that finding that unique ability that, that every single one of us has, it's the stuff that doesn't feel like work and the stuff that allows us to just continuously grow and expand. So I totally agree with you and I can see how the overall approach definitely helps with that. I think this has been a fantastic and wonderful conversation. Natalie, obviously there's a book, there's also you mentioned the website. We'll put it in the show notes. Is there anything else that you want to share about how you mentioned People get started by taking the quiz online, which I think it took me like five minutes to do. So it's not really complicated. Anything else you want to share about how people can learn more?
- [52:32]
Natalie Cistin
Absolutely. So you gave the top two. So Positive Intelligence's website, take the saboteur assessment, read the book, listen to the book if you're interested, and then kind of the magic to positive intelligence is that we have an app guided program that guides individuals or teams through building up your operating system. So instead of just doing it all by yourself, instead of just trying to catch yourself in the moment, there's actually a guided program. It takes about eight weeks to what we say install the operating system but it's an app guided program that walks you step by step through that self awareness of saboteurs, working with your judge, working with your unique saboteur, leaning into self command which are those PQ reps and then learning about and using the Sage power. So that's absolutely an opportunity that would be available to any practice owner who is looking to really take their team to the next level.
- [53:26]
Eugene Shotsman
Yeah, that's great. Thank you Natalie for sharing some of this important work with us and thank you for talking us through the types of things that impact us every single day. They definitely enjoyed the conversation here on the Power Hour.
- [53:40]
Natalie Cistin
I really appreciate you having me here to represent positive intelligence and hope everyone takes this back and uses it to make where you are even better.
- [53:50]
Eugene Shotsman
Fantastic. Thank you Natalie.