79: Positive Intelligence, Self Sabotage and Healthy Relationships with Positive Intelligence Coach Dorice Horenstein

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Positive Intelligence Coach, Dorice Horenstein, is dropping some absolute bombs on today’s episode. This one is packed with insight, wisdom, love and understanding and this is blow-your-mind, melt-your-brain, kind of stuff. I’m so excited to share this juicy news with you, friend. Number one take away: Love yourself enough to take action.

In this episode we’re chatting about:

• Positive Intelligence and Psychology 
• Self Sabotage and Sages 
• Empathy and Relationship to others and self
• Positive intelligence book: by Shirzad Chamine
• Self assessment for self sabotage

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Related resources: 

Free Guides – Mindset Makeover & more: http://brittniclarkson.com/freebies/ 

Planners, Journals, etc: https://a.co/iQGnc2a

Courses collection: http://blossomacademy.teachable.com 

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Meet Dorice Horenstein:

After serving as an officer in the Israeli army followed by many leadership years in the education field, Dorice, Oy to Joy speaker, uses her energy and charisma as she transitioned to make the world her platform.  Her award-winning bestselling book Moments of the Heart: Four Relationships Everyone Should Have to Live Wholeheartedly was published in 2020, providing Dorice with the opportunity to use her knowledge and expertise to speak on international stages. Through sharing personal stories, concepts, and tools in Positive Intelligence, Dorice helps others improve their mental fitness, navigate challenges, discover opportunities for growth and thus find their champion within.

Presenting and training is Dorice’s superpower. She defines T.E.A.M. as Together Everyone’s Attributes (are) Magnified. Dorice motivates others to identify their strengths and improve effectiveness and become the leaders they are meant to be. She promotes healthy and positive relationships that reduce stress and helps clients achieve higher retention as well as a positive atmosphere in the workplace (and at home!).

When giving keynotes, Dorice invigorates audiences using impactful stories of challenges sprinkled with tips of positivity to gain awareness.

When coaching, leaders are moved to take actions that bring their potential into reality. 

When delivering training and workshops, Dorice enhances teams’ effectiveness and promotes healthy and positive relationships by using AMEN to CORE, her 4-step approach, Awareness, Mental fitness, Communication, and Resilience.  

Dorice passionately believes that positivity is an “inside out” practice that instills a calm, laser-focused approach, produces success and growth, AND can be taught to strengthen, cultivate and inspire others to live a joyful, healthy, and positive life!

Dorice gained her coaching certifications through the International Coaching Federation and Positive Intelligence organization. Dorice is a member of the National Speaker Association, serves on the NSA Oregon board, is a fellow member of IOC, at McLean Hospital, a Harvard Medical School affiliate, and is Past President of Toastmasters for Speaking Professionals.

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Contact me:

Website: www.BrittniClarkson.com  

Email me hello@brittniclarkson.com 

Submit a question to be answered on the show: https://brittniclarkson.com/q-a-form/  

Episode Transcript:

Brittni: Welcome my friends to the Meant to Bloom podcast. I’m so excited to introduce to you today my special guest, Dorice Horenstein. She is here to share with us a little bit about positive intelligence and relationships and It’s just all her best advice she’s got for us today. So Dorice, would you go ahead and tell us more about you? 

Dorice: Hi Brittni. Thank you so much for having me and uh, I’m so pleased to meet all of your listeners on Meant To Bloom and it’s so beautiful because when first I heard of Meant to Bloom, I heard in my own head mental bloom.

and I thought this is, it’s two of the same, right? Meant to bloom. How do you bloom? How do you become, you know, flourish and be the best that you can from my perspective is from being mentally fit right? And when we are mentally fit, the more we bloom. So that’s, that’s the angle that I would like your listeners to maybe tune in today as I am a positive intelligence coach, uh, coach.

And what is a positive intelligence Coach? Let me just say it. So Positive Intelligence is a science based on four different sciences, cognitive psychology, positive psychology, neuroscience and performance science. And we have put all of these four sciences together and we. Three different steps for us to achieve our peak performance and wellness and relationships by following three commanding muscles, muscles of the brain.

So, you know, I wanted to actually start by talking about how our brain is a muscle and you can shape it the way you were born. Doesn’t mean that that’s the way you are, the challenges that you have. Doesn’t mean that these will be the challenges that forever will be inside you. You can overcome challenges.

So in my talks, and I hope today I can give you a few tips of how to overcome challenges, especially for the busy, overworked overwhelm. Mom and my daughter right now is in that. She’s 32 with a two year old child living on the east coast while I am on the west coast, and she doesn’t have as much support, you know, because she’s far away from family.

And so she’s overwhelmed and she’s working full-time as a nurse practitioner, and her husband is a dentist. And it really puts a lot of, um, pressure raising a child without, without the village. Without the village. And I remember myself doing that years ago when I came to the United States. So if you listen and you hear, uh, uh, an uh, um, um, an accent, so that’s because I’m Israeli.

I was born and raised in Israel. I was an officer in Israeli military. I came to the United States in 1986 with one suitcase, $600. No coat in the month of December and talk about being overwhelmed, right? Yes. And , and I made my home here raised three kids, so I can definitely relate to the overwhelmed that we experience.

and my, and my hope is to, in a very small way, to affect one person. And if I affect one person, then it’s a ripple effect. Then that person goes and affects their children or their girlfriends in the park or their spouse or anything like that. And any, and any. And then it grows and grows and grows and it becomes a positive vortex.

and that’s the key, right, is to stay with our positive vortex. Not to put our head in the sand and say, oh, we have no issues. We have no problems. That’s, that’s the toxic positivity that many people are talking about. I’m talking about knowing the problems, knowing the difficulties, acknowledging the difficulties, and at the same time, looking for opportunities of.

Looking of the gifts within the difficult situation and imagining where do I wanna be in a year, sometimes maybe when I wanna be tomorrow, , not in two years, not in five years tomorrow. Survival, right? Tomorrow. Where do I wanna be? How do I keep my head above water?

B: I love this. Okay. Yeah. We didn’t really talk about what positive intelligence was before we talked. Like I was just like, I heard it and I liked it. And hearing like that, it’s like psychology and everything. It’s just, it’s like sparking so much going on in my head right now and I’m really excited to like hear about all this and like how that really plays into like,  getting the most outta motherhood.

D: Okay, so great question. So first of all, just so, uh, everybody knows, uh, the, the founder of Positive Intelligence, if you were looking at the video right now of me and talking to Brittany, you would be able to see that there is a book behind me that’s called Positive Intelligence, and it’s written by Shirzad Chamine, who wrote this bestseller, by the way, it’s translated to 20 languages. It appears in 50 countries. It is a real thing, and it’s a way of looking at ourselves, acknowledging our strengths, and at the same time being aware of what sabotages us. And when we talk about what sabotages us in positive intelligence, there are 10 things.

10 what we call saboteurs, that sabotage. , every human being on this earth. And the stronger you are in realizing what your saboteur, your specific saboteur, because not all of us have all the 10, that would be like a really miserable living . So we have only, you know, two or three that are higher. And the way you find out is by taking a self-assessment and it’s free and anybody can take it, and perhaps I will share with you a link.

To take it. So people will know what sabotages them. I always say the, the grading is from like zero to 10. Zero being I’m not sabotaged at all. This is not my thing. And 10 is I am constantly being sabotaged by this particular saboteur. And I always say, listen, if you score anything above five on any of these, Then you know, you are an incredible human being, living the human experience.

Don’t expect yourself to score less than five. If you do less than five on all of them. You are so happened to be an angel roaming through this earth, figuring out where you’re gonna land. I e that is not. So except that you do have saboteurs that interfere, that hijack your own amazing brain and you sometimes react in a way that is not productive to who you are truly, right?

So, so that’s the saboteurs. So I’m gonna give you example. Out of the 10 saboteurs, there’s one that all of us have. All of us, regardless of how old we are, of our gender. Which country we come from. It doesn’t matter what your, uh, work situation. If you are a homemaker or you are a c e o of a company does not matter.

And that saboteur is called the judge. We constantly, and I say we, me included you, everybody. We are constantly judging and the way we judge our on a three different levels, one, we judge ourselves, I’m not good. Um, you know, how did I, why did I say what I said? Nobody will believe me. It’s the imposter syndrome, you know, how can I do that?

I have that. You have that. Everybody have that. . The question is, how much is it in check? Okay. So that’s the first level of judging. We judge ourselves and I think a lot of parents, am I a good parent? You know, am I doing a good job? Um, that, that, that constant blaming ourselves. That’s, that’s the judge of ourselves.

Then the second part is judging other. . You know, they are the idiot ones. They are the ones, you know, if it wasn’t for whatever they said, we will be so much better off. Okay? It’s judging the other people. And sometimes it could be your spouse, your children, your team at work, if you work outside of the house.

And then the last piece is the judging the circumstances. If I wasn’t born into this family, my life would’ve been so much better if I didn’t leave my job right when the pandemic started. I would be so much better off. It’s because of the climate that I am if A, B, C, D, E. So that’s the judging of the circumstance.

And if there is one tip, and I’m gonna just say it right now, is hear.  when you are judging and just sometimes just the first week monitor, literally say, Hmm, that was judgment. Hmm. That was, that was judgment. Now, how do you know? I have some clients that ask me, Brittany, but I thought it’s good to judge, you know, because then you know what to do, what not to do, what’s right, what’s wrong?

And I say, I want you to pay attention to the emotions that are attached to this feeling of judgment. If you have negative emotions, and when I say negative emotions, I mean blame, fear, hate, criticize, anything that is, doesn’t feel good inside of you. That’s what is a negative emotion is, and while it is good at the beginning because it alerts you to something remaining in that state of feeling negative.

Is not beneficial to you as a human being. So when you feel that you are judged and you’re saying, oh, Dorice said, where is it stemming from? If you feel negative emotions, you are in saboteur mode. You are in judge. If you feel a sense of clear, calm, laser discernment, then you are discerned when you. Love for the other person.

If you feel compassion, if you feel empathy, then you are not in a place of judgment. So that is really an important dis distinction to make, uh, when you are dealing with this particular saboteur. And I think that saboteur is the source for a lot of the stress, the anxiety that we feel, the burnout that we.

in every, every day, and I think moms and, and parents and to young kids, or not so young kids, we feel that all the time. I remember those days when my kids were young. Now I’m, I’m blessed to have three adult children, and so I can tell you that there is a beautiful path. Sometimes when you’re in it, it’s like you don’t see the light at the end of the tunnel because you’re in it.

I am here to offering you an encouragement that there is the other side. When all of the seeds that you plant as parents, seeds of love and compassion and understanding and listening, it’s going to come back and the more you model it, and I guess that’s my second tip, model, the behavior that you want to see in your children.

because kids don’t do what we say. Kids do what we, what they see. So what do they see in us, in our behavior? While our intention is important, it is, I think, more important the action that is derived out of that intention. . And sometimes we judge ourselves and we say, well, you know, I may not act well, but my intention was good.

And I say, let’s take that and reverse it and think of other people like that. Maybe they didn’t act well, their intention was good, but for us, let’s judge ourselves by our action, not by our intention. And let’s give the other person the benefit of the doubt and the.  and judge them by their intention, not their action.

And I think that’s sometimes easier said than done because I know how hard it is. I know how hard it is for me to practice on an ongoing basis. So I guess that’s the third tip that I’m giving  as we speak. 

B: Yeah, I love that, like honestly, one of the little like mantras I’ve picked up that I feel like has really shaped and changed my relationships over the last year or so is this understanding that everybody is doing the best they can with what they have.

D: You know, you remind, that’s beautiful. You remind me of a mantra that I say when I speak on stages, when I do my motivational speaking mm-hmm. , I say about, this is the mantra, um, every day. , I get better and better. No, every day and in every way. That’s it. Every day and in every way, I get better and better.

So we’re not looking for perfection, we’re looking for improvement, and I think that’s another thing that a lot of time people say, oh, you know, I’m not at that, so I might as well not try it at all. Perfection is. , I don’t wanna say a bad word, but it’s . It’s not a good thing because no one is perfect. No one is perfect, not, we as parents are perfect.

Our children are not perfect. And if you think your child is perfect, somebody along the way is gonna come and tell you that they’re not, you know? So it’s okay for us to say it’s not perfection we’re seeking. Maybe what we’re seeking is. Not perfection, just be excellent in what you do. Don’t feel like you have to be perfect.

Perfect means that no blemishes, we have blemishes. They’re on our hearts that are our soul, they’re on our behavior. But no, we, this is part of being in the human race. Otherwise, you’re an angel and you’re so happy to be roaming through earth, right?

B: Yeah. 

D: So, so anyway, so these are the saboteurs.  and in positive intelligence, we have these commanding muscles that is called a pq. And what a PQ does, it is 10 seconds to two minutes or three minutes as long as you want, but the minimum of 10 seconds of connecting to the physicality of the here and now.

So it’s done through breathing, it’s done through sensing your body on the seat of the chair. Touching your computer pad. So feeling of touch l, listening to sounds, and then listening to your own breath, recognizing your own breathing, counting your own breathing. All that is pcu. And what happens is, is when you do that, you create new neural pathways, and that’s the neuroscience piece.

You create new neural pathways in your brain that shifts you from where your saboteurs live, which is in the limbic system, mostly parts of the left brain into the right brain where the Emory Empathy circuitry lives and exists. So when you are on the saboteur, we call it the survival brain, when you are in the survival.

You don’t have access to those positive emotions. You don’t not have access to empathy and happiness and joy, and curiosity and innovation, and exploring the possibility and the opportunities out there. You are incapable. You are hijacked, and that’s why it is. . So the only way, and I, and I do mean the only way to access that part of our brain is by doing what we call pq, which is an acronym, positive intelligence quotient.

That’s what it actually means. And then when you do that, your brain can access more of your sage and the sage. So I talked to you about the saboteurs that have 10 of them. One of them I mentioned was the judge. There’s nine others. The sage is five. Five sage powers, and there is a sage perspective that in every challenge there is an opportunity and a gift, and at the very, very beginning when people are not mentally fit, it’s very hard for them to say.

To look at it like that. They say, oh my God, there is absolute, there is, you are not. This is nonsense. You, there is no gift and opportunity in what happened to me, to us, to our family, and here’s my words of advice and support. When you are hijacked and when a bad thing happen, don’t think right away. Okay?

I’m gonna look for the opportunities. I’m gonna look for the.  you. This could be irritating to you. Don’t just do the PQ to try to shift yourself. Don’t ask yourself, oh, where is the opportunity here? It’s too raw. It’s too soon. Just calm yourself down. That’s the first thing. And then when, when you are ready, you start percolating and contemplating on what is the gift.

and in in, in positive intelligence, we have three kind of gifts. Gifts of power, gift of knowledge, and gift of inspiration. And with everything that happens to us in our life, it fits into one of these three buckets. And being with a coach that can lead you through it can be absolutely paramount to your understanding.

And then when you are doing that, when you think of the three bucket, , what positive intelligence offers you is five sage powers. One of them is empathy, and I say empathy to yourself is the number one, and I think as moms and as people who are meant to bloom and not really yet finding that piece of a seed to bloom, give yourself grace, give yourself.

Ask yourself if I was, if my child was having this issue, how will I talk to my child? So often we talk to ourselves in a much harsher way than we would ever, ever out loud talk to people we love, but yet we talk that to ourselves. Why is. Why do we put our ourselves under the bus of our own? Right? So, so that’s, that’s the empathy, that’s the cultivating that self-love.

And a lot of the time is, I think what you mentioned before, Brittni, it’s the self-talk, it’s the mantra that we say.  and then that we believe it. We believe, because if we just say it out of automatic saying it, but we don’t sit with it and believe that it is true and trusting ourself to be true, then it may not be as effective.

So the empathy is the first power. And if we had to stop here, I would say that’s it. Take that. Take that empathy self. Self-compassion as you are dealing with the overwhelm of being a parent. The second part is exploring of what really is going on. And again, none of this is you can do without doing a PQ to move your brain activation to a different place in your brain.

So just understanding what is actually going. Can you write down what is underneath your negative emotions? What is hiding there? What is hiding? When you blame somebody, when you are sarcastically, make fun of someone. When you are hard on yourself. What is underneath it, and most often did not, is uh, some kind of a.

Some kind of a fear is hiding underneath.

And then so, so you delve into that. And again, I, I do suggest coaching for those people because it’s kind of hard sometimes to go through that. And it’s not necessarily therapy because therapy, and that’s, I think, a difference between therapy and coaching. Right. Therapy is going into the past and healing your past.

Coaching is more looking at what you are now looking at. At, at the map of your behaviors presently and wanting to move forward with improvement, and for that, the explorer is, is an amazing power. Then this third sage power is innovate. How do you want, what is the creative juices in you? Tell you what are other ways that you can look at this situ?

and what can come up with like, and then, then we have a game that we call the Yes end and how we do this. And, and it’s really funny and, and sometimes when I do it with my clients, we come up with the most ridiculous ideas. Ridiculous ideas. And that’s part of the fun because when you talk about, when you give an idea that it’s way out in left field, you actually release the brain from the constraints of the ideas.

You don’t judge your ideas as you say. So there is not the, the, there’s no quality control. It’s just quantity of, of material, of ideas. Don’t do quality. Is it good, is it bad? Because then what you’re training your brain is to judge yourself every time you say something. So we do this activity to release your judge, to say, Uhuh, sit on the side, giving me some frequently crazy ideas.

And so a lot of the time my job in, in the. Is to give the crazy ideas because it releases this, this thing with that within the clients. It’s kind of cool. And then, and then we go into the navigate power. And the navigate power is what is the purpose and the meaning in what I want to achieve and what is the purpose and the meaning in where I am today.

And we consult our elder wiser self. So think of yourself five years from. Depending what age you are. It, it could be sometimes, it could be a year from now, you know, five years from now, 10 years from now. And you consult that person and I, we have this process in how we make it happen, and it’s incredible.

I wanna tell you, Brittni, it’s just, I mean, I’ve talked to my wiser older self with my 70 year old Dorice. It was amazing. I could actually see her in front of my. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we go through this imaginary activity and then the last piece, which I think is the important, I mean, you, you can’t finish it without that, and it’s the activate.

What actions are you going to take? It’s all good to speak. It’s all good to show love for myself. It’s all good to get come up with ideas and to find the purpose and the meaning. Bottom line, what are we doing? What are we. , and I think that’s the action piece. So I always encourage and hold my, you know, uh, we have a mutual accountability.

We hold them accountable. What is it that you, the two actions that you’re going to take from now to the next session of our coaching? So, so that’s in a natural, what positive intelligence is, what are the pieces, how it fits together to make your life a better life? . Wow. I am mind blown by this. You just, you so sucked me in and I am like moved by so much of what you’ve said.

B: Oh, and yeah, this is, I am so glad you came in here. Came on my show. I can’t wait for people to hear this. Oh my goodness. So how can my listeners find you? How can they work with you? This is good stuff.

D: Okay. I can tell you, I mean, you are giving me goosebumps because I left my work in education, so I was 30 years in education, you know, and people can find the story about me on my website http://www.Dorishornstein.com. You can find out that I was in education for 30 years. I left at the at in 2018 because I wanted to be of service to other people who would’ve never come into my building. I wanted the world and I say it on my website.

I wanted the world to be my classroom and my stage. That’s what I want. So my stage is when I go and I give, um, motivation, inspiration talk, telling people about ways they can lift their spirit and overcome challenges by looking at opportunities of growth for themselves. So I give talks on conferences and summits.

That makes me so happy to speak to a large group, 400, 600, 800 people. That is like, oh my God, I’m in my zone. The other parts, when I’m in my zone is when I’m in service of people who come into my Zoom room wanting their life to be better, and I always take them through, uh, seven. Program at the least seven week in positive intelligence program.

But I don’t stop there. I tell them, you have to do a 12 week program because then we take the seven weeks and we go deeper down into the true essence and how it applies to you, because now we have shared. Language we have the terminology we understand. We have the, um, mental fitness, uh, commanding muscles, the operating system.

It’s like you, you put in your brain a new operating system and how does that work? So I take them through that, and then I always offer them to continue to be in a champion circle mastermind where everybody who graduates from this 12 weeks and wants to keep on polishing their skills.  and using topics.

So for example, just the other day I gave a parenting session to my champion mastermind circle group, and I’m now gonna do stress. And I did wellbeing. So then we take topics and we delve into those topics as a group setting. And uh, so, so that’s what I would offer, I would offer for your. To do the 12 week program.

It’s a group program, and I usually have no more than five to seven people in a group because I want it to be intimate and because it is, um, for your, anybody who’s listening and come from you, you can have offer them 20% discount from the price that is right now on my website by using the code speaker.

So if you use Speaker 20, you will be able to take 20% off and join my positive Intelligence pod. And when we have five to seven people, we start. 

B: That is awesome. That is amazing. Um, and I wanna thank you again for coming on the show today and sharing so much like knowledge, wisdom, insight, inspiration, motivation. So much has happened here. Oh my goodness. Yeah. I’m gonna go back and re-listen. I love so much what you said. I am, I’m into this. Thank you, . 

D: You are so welcome. You are so welcome. I am, uh, absolutely honored that you invited me. I wish you and all your listeners, um, a peace of mind, a peace of mind, and, and knowing inside your heart that you are a champion.

A lot of the time I say that you are a champion, and at the beginning, people. Question me. Many women to be specific men will say, yeah, yeah, I’m a champion. Women will have a harder time internalizing how awesome they are. And I go through it from the education lens. I put in some Hebrew knowledge. If you go onto my website, you will find a video on my YouTube channel about.

Listen to it. It’s a five minute thing. And then you’ll say, oh, that’s what Doris means when she says champions. Yes, I am. So, because you are embedded, this is your, your origin story. It is your origin story. Sometimes we have so much cover on ourselves and we don’t realize that the origin story, that we are champions.

We were born champions. It’s shedding the light onto us and sometimes we are in a dark. . 

B: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much. 

D: You are so welcome.