“Know your enemy and know yourself and you can fight a hundred battles without disaster.” – Sun Tzu
Boy, that quote is getting more real to me as I fight battles later in life. If I don’t know myself, I don’t know where I need help or where I am vulnerable.
If I don’t know my enemies, I cannot plan, prepare and anticipate their attacks.
The enemies in the Positive Intelligence program are labeled saboteurs. They are mental enemies. So, they are invisible enemies. Kinda weird but this sounds a lot like the enemies mentioned in Ephesians 6:12.
The first step in preparing for your enemy is knowing your enemy. These enemies will tell you lies and convince you that you need them to perform at your best.
As much as I hate to admit this, these saboteurs were created in our heads as ways to help us cope with negative situations. Our experiences do affect where we are at today (knowing yourself) but they do not dictate our future.
Why? Because by knowing our enemies, we can create a plan to beat them.
Let’s review five of the enemies listed in Positive Intelligence.
The Judge
The judge is the universal saboteur that inflicts everyone at some level. The judge and his accomplices (the other nine saboteurs) are responsible for the great majority of our stress and performance shortfalls. The judge is also behind most of our relationship conflicts.
The judge is always pointing out your shortcomings and the shortcomings of others. His job is to make you feel worthless and then have you pick out the faults in others. Can you see how this would create relationship issues?
Hyper-Achiever
The hyper-achiever is my No. 2 saboteur. If you don’t know who your top enemies are, go to positiveintellegence.com and take their five-minute saboteur test.
The hyper-achiever tries to tie your worth with your performance. It works closely with the stickler to say if you are not the best or real close to perfect, then you are worthless. The hyper-achiever is great at getting you to compare your abilities, status and position with others. That puts you in the comparison trap and nothing good comes from comparison unless your goal becomes to learn from the person you are comparing yourself to.
Listening to your inner hyper-achiever leads to perfectionism and workaholism.
Stickler
The stickler seems to hang around with the hyper-achiever. Where you see one, you generally see the other. The stickler is perfectionism. It is a need for order and organization that is taken too far.
Order and organization are necessary for good performance. The stickler takes these good things too far causing our productivity to drop and creating friction with others when we hold them to the impossibly high standards we hold ourselves to.
Hyper-Vigilant
The hyper-vigilant is often a result of the lies we hear from the hyper-achiever and the stickler.
Hyper-Achiever: You are only worthy when you are the best.
Stickler: If you are only worthy when you are the best then you need to be perfect all the time.
The hyper-vigilant runs with those two lies and is always anxious and looking for danger on the horizon. That danger could be making a mistake or some other danger that hasn’t happened and probably never will. I love this quote from Mark Twain on this subject:
“I am an old man and have known a great many troubles but most of them never happened.”
The hyper-vigilant causes us to burn too much energy chasing immaterial dangers. This wears us out and those around us.
Pleaser
The pleaser loses themselves in trying to be everything to everyone else. Most of us want to be liked by others but the pleaser takes that good motive too far. The pleaser seeks validation and self-worth through what others think of them.
The pleaser wants to be recognized for the good they do for others because they often do that good to improve their image. When they don’t receive that external validation they can become disgruntled.
The pleaser can cause us to not take care of ourselves. When we feel run down we are more likely to find fault in others who are not as giving as we are. Tired and judgmental is no way to lead a team!
The way to defeat our saboteurs is to recognize them. Once we know where this negative thought is coming from, we can dismiss it and get back to life and the work at hand.
We’ll cover the next five saboteurs in a future article.
Curt Fowler is president of Fowler & Company and director at Fowler, Holley, Rambo & Stalvey. He is dedicated to helping leaders build great organizations and better lives for themselves and the people they lead.
Curt is a syndicated business writer, keynote speaker, and business advisor. He has an MBA in strategy and entrepreneurship from the Kellogg School, is a CPA, and is a pretty good guy as defined by his wife and five children.
Boy, that quote is getting more real to me as I fight battles later in life. If I don’t know myself, I don’t know where I need help or where I am vulnerable.
If I don’t know my enemies, I cannot plan, prepare and anticipate their attacks.
The enemies in the Positive Intelligence program are labeled saboteurs. They are mental enemies. So, they are invisible enemies. Kinda weird but this sounds a lot like the enemies mentioned in Ephesians 6:12.
The first step in preparing for your enemy is knowing your enemy. These enemies will tell you lies and convince you that you need them to perform at your best.
As much as I hate to admit this, these saboteurs were created in our heads as ways to help us cope with negative situations. Our experiences do affect where we are at today (knowing yourself) but they do not dictate our future.
Why? Because by knowing our enemies, we can create a plan to beat them.
Let’s review five of the enemies listed in Positive Intelligence.
The Judge
The judge is the universal saboteur that inflicts everyone at some level. The judge and his accomplices (the other nine saboteurs) are responsible for the great majority of our stress and performance shortfalls. The judge is also behind most of our relationship conflicts.
The judge is always pointing out your shortcomings and the shortcomings of others. His job is to make you feel worthless and then have you pick out the faults in others. Can you see how this would create relationship issues?
Hyper-Achiever
The hyper-achiever is my No. 2 saboteur. If you don’t know who your top enemies are, go to positiveintellegence.com and take their five-minute saboteur test.
The hyper-achiever tries to tie your worth with your performance. It works closely with the stickler to say if you are not the best or real close to perfect, then you are worthless. The hyper-achiever is great at getting you to compare your abilities, status and position with others. That puts you in the comparison trap and nothing good comes from comparison unless your goal becomes to learn from the person you are comparing yourself to.
Listening to your inner hyper-achiever leads to perfectionism and workaholism.
Stickler
The stickler seems to hang around with the hyper-achiever. Where you see one, you generally see the other. The stickler is perfectionism. It is a need for order and organization that is taken too far.
Order and organization are necessary for good performance. The stickler takes these good things too far causing our productivity to drop and creating friction with others when we hold them to the impossibly high standards we hold ourselves to.
Hyper-Vigilant
The hyper-vigilant is often a result of the lies we hear from the hyper-achiever and the stickler.
Hyper-Achiever: You are only worthy when you are the best.
Stickler: If you are only worthy when you are the best then you need to be perfect all the time.
The hyper-vigilant runs with those two lies and is always anxious and looking for danger on the horizon. That danger could be making a mistake or some other danger that hasn’t happened and probably never will. I love this quote from Mark Twain on this subject:
“I am an old man and have known a great many troubles but most of them never happened.”
The hyper-vigilant causes us to burn too much energy chasing immaterial dangers. This wears us out and those around us.
Pleaser
The pleaser loses themselves in trying to be everything to everyone else. Most of us want to be liked by others but the pleaser takes that good motive too far. The pleaser seeks validation and self-worth through what others think of them.
The pleaser wants to be recognized for the good they do for others because they often do that good to improve their image. When they don’t receive that external validation they can become disgruntled.
The pleaser can cause us to not take care of ourselves. When we feel run down we are more likely to find fault in others who are not as giving as we are. Tired and judgmental is no way to lead a team!
The way to defeat our saboteurs is to recognize them. Once we know where this negative thought is coming from, we can dismiss it and get back to life and the work at hand.
We’ll cover the next five saboteurs in a future article.
Curt Fowler is president of Fowler & Company and director at Fowler, Holley, Rambo & Stalvey. He is dedicated to helping leaders build great organizations and better lives for themselves and the people they lead.
Curt is a syndicated business writer, keynote speaker, and business advisor. He has an MBA in strategy and entrepreneurship from the Kellogg School, is a CPA, and is a pretty good guy as defined by his wife and five children.
