Episode 156 transcript: The Power of Positive Intelligence for Entrepreneurs with Carol Clegg

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[00:00:00] Carol: Sometimes we ourselves feel out of whack. But it's beautiful to have this in the back of my mind because I can go back and remind myself, and just go, we'll slow down, take a deep breath. Remember that you've got tools in your toolbox. And allow what your body's feeling to talk to you, because so often our brain spins around and around, and then we are so busy thinking and trying to sort out what we're thinking that we're not listening to our body.

[00:00:27] Aneta: We often hear people wishing us a long, happy, and healthy life, but what if the length isn't what matters most? What if instead, it's the breath depth and purpose of each day that matters most? Welcome to the Live the Width of Your Life podcast. My name is Aneta Ardelian Kuzma, and join me weekly as I interview guests who have made changes in their own lives to live more fully with intention, gratitude, and joy. Be prepared to be inspired by their stories of how they shifted their mindset, took courageous action, and designed the life that they always wanted to live.

Welcome back to Live the With of Your Life podcast. My guest this week is Carol Clegg, and she assists women entrepreneurs and solopreneurs in achieving real progress and finding joy in both their business and personal lives. She's a business mentor, a mindset coach, and she started with a foundation bootcamp from Positive Intelligence to learn techniques to boost mental fitness and to continue to uncover powerful strategies for addressing challenges and shifting mindsets effectively. We had such a great conversation talking about the strategies that she uses to really shift mindset. We talked about sage powers from positive intelligence and how we can use those to navigate life's challenges, and also how you can start to cultivate some of these sage powers of your own.

We talked about some key habits that contributed to a positive mindset, and really, some techniques if you feel stuck in a negative mindset. So we had such a great conversation, and I really enjoyed it. Take a listen.

Welcome back to Live the Width of your Life podcast. I'm so excited to have Carol on my show today. Carol Clegg, welcome.

[00:02:11] Carol: Thank you. This is exciting to be here. I know we just share so many different visions and places that we both appreciate together. So this is wonderful.

[00:02:20] Aneta: It is. I'm so delighted to talk to you, and tell me where you're dialing in from today.

[00:02:26] Carol: So I am in the desert area of New Mexico living at 7,000 feet, which sometimes I'm quite amazed, but it's gorgeous because it gives me all four seasons.

[00:02:37] Aneta: Know that about New Mexico.

[00:02:40] Carol: We get snow.

[00:02:42] Aneta: I've never been, but it's on my list of places to visit. So, how long have you been in New Mexico? Because I know that you're not originally from the States.

[00:02:52] Carol: No, I'm not. I'm from Cape Town, South Africa. And funnily enough, this is the longest that we have lived anywhere in my entire life. And I'm an ocean girl. So how did I end up in the desert? I don't know, but it's very peaceful where we are. We'd love to have a bigger hub of an airport that can get me out and about, but we make it work.

[00:03:12] Aneta: That's wonderful. Tell us a little bit more about your background. You just mentioned that you're originally from Cape Town, South Africa, and I've had the pleasure of being there once and absolutely loved it.

[00:03:23] Carol: It is. It's a beautiful city offering so much from beautiful beaches, gorgeous wine, you know that, and amazing food. But we left, over 30-something years ago, and did something crazy. We left South Africa, bought a sailboat, and ended up raising our children on a sailboat in the Caribbean.

Which led me to be a homeschooling mom all the way through. So homeschooled my kids all the way through and just have always, funny enough, loved marketing. And I think through marketing and social media, it's brought me the long road around to ending up being a facilitator of masterminds and then getting into coaching. That's where I am now. So we took the ocean route to get where I am.

[00:04:08] Aneta: Whose idea was it to say, you know what, we're going to leave and we're going to go explore the world?

[00:04:14] Carol: So, leaving was a mutual we decided that we wanted to leave the sailing part, and buying a boat, which we ended up buying in the U. S. was not on the agenda.

[00:04:25] Aneta: How did you end up doing that? Were you both sailors?

[00:04:28] Carol: No, not at all. So my father had actually come over to the U. S. and he'd bought a boat, and long story short, convinced us that we should join them as they did their trip. And then we fell in love with the lifestyle. And ended up selling that first boat, the sailboat that we bought, and we bought a bigger boat, and we continued.

They went back to South Africa and gave it all up, but we actually continued, and just to add a twist to the story, we've actually bought that same sailboat back again, and she's been back in our lives for five years now, crazy.

[00:05:01] Aneta: That's so crazy. How long was your sailboat gone? 

[00:05:04] Carol: So the period in between was about 15 years, but we had this arrangement with the person who bought her that when either of us says we're done, we're going to offer it back to him first.

[00:05:14] Aneta: And you have a sailboat and you live in the desert.

[00:05:16] Carol: I know.

[00:05:19] Aneta: What's the plan?

[00:05:21] Carol: I said, I told you I'm an ocean girl. So that is the funny thing for 2025. I've got big plans that we are taking off for a couple of months to be retired digital nomads, not retired. I shouldn't say retired because I'll be coaching on the road. And we'll be on the sailboat for January and February, down at the bottom part of the Caribbean, Aruba, Curaçao, Bonaire area. And hope that I'll have good internet.

[00:05:49] Aneta: That's amazing. So when you sail like this, do you have a hub and you just go out for long periods of time? I'm so fascinated by this.

[00:05:57] Carol: So we kept her in Bonaire for the last five years, and we have just moved her to Curaçao. And Bonaire, my husband and I both dive. Our daughter got us into scuba diving because she was a diving distractor. And she actually lived on the sailboat first. That's part of the reason we brought her back.

She got a job in Bonaire, and she's come on, Mom and Dad, let's buy the sailboat back. And I'm like, do you realize this responsibility? And she lived aboard by herself. So she'd been raised on the boat, and it was really cool. So there she was, yeah, 24, back on the boat by herself. And so Bonaire gives us everything: beautiful diving, beautiful sailing.

And we had done the Caribbean up and down. So there was no need. And so that's our playground now. It's just those bottom three islands. It's all we need. 

[00:06:47] Aneta: And so you love the ocean. You also love being a coach. So tell me a little bit more about how you moved from marketing into coaching. And specifically, I know you work with the positive intelligence program or assessment. I don't even know what to call it. Is it a program?

[00:07:03] Carol: I guess we could call it a program. It's a coaching modality because you start off doing the training yourself. And then once you've moved through that training, you have all the facilities and all the resources from positive intelligence, along with the assessment, and it's app-based.

So I went from marketing and social media and handling people's social media to wanting to facilitate masterminds. I just believe in the power of bringing people together. Building communities, learning from each other. And then I realized that through those masterminds, I was often putting on the coaching hat, and then positive intelligence came across my radar. And while I was in the middle of the training, I went, This is it.

[00:07:49] Aneta: Wow.

[00:07:49] Carol: My husband even said to me he could see the shift in my way of handling things, things that would normally perhaps spin me out a little bit and get me a little anxious. He was seeing a much calmer effect. I led him through the program. And so it's fun because you're familiar with some of those, the terminology, even when you just see somebody rubbing their fingers together.

[00:08:10] Aneta: Yeah, I do that. Yeah.

[00:08:13] Carol: We're calming ourselves down. And there's a reason behind that. And to me now, it just makes so much sense. It's a foundation. It's not something that you grab and then you go, okay, this is done. And I'm completely changed, and I'm fixed to me; it's something that you build on all the time. And then just like we spoke a little earlier, sometimes we ourselves feel out of whack. We feel, we can have all the wisdom in the world.

But it's beautiful to have this in the back of my mind because I can go back and remind myself, and just go, we'll slow down, take a deep breath. Remember that you've got tools in your toolbox. And allow your body, this is one of the other things that I just, yeah, allow what your body's feeling to talk to you. Because so often our brain spins around and around, and then we are so busy thinking and trying to sort out what we're thinking that we're not listening to our body.

[00:09:08] Aneta: So true. And so for folks that aren't familiar with positive intelligence, there is an assessment. There's a book, I think.

[00:09:16] Carol: Yes. He wrote a book, correct.

[00:09:18] Aneta: And then there's an assessment. It's pretty quick and it's free, actually. And I know I love to do it, and I love to do it with my clients, and it identifies your top sabotaging behaviors or your saboteurs, as he refers to them. Can you talk just a little bit more about saboteurs and then also like the sage power?

[00:09:35] Carol: Absolutely. The primary saboteur is what we call the judge. And it's not, I am the judge of the circumstances. You've got to think of it as being something apart from you. But it interferes with our process of thinking about things and then sends us on a negative spiral, and we then end up anxious, stressed, concerned, angry, and all these different emotions.

And we talk about these saboteurs, various other personality tests like the Enneagram, and some of these others identify things that have been with us basically from birth. And so we talk about the saboteurs as being part of us in a sense that have strength, so I don't want people to forget that there's strength to the saboteurs, but we tend to overuse and abuse them.

And then what happens is they run the show. And so the beauty of learning more about the Sage powers is to quieten. And it's not that we're going to get rid of them. It's not that they're going to go away, but we want to quieten them down so that they don't hold the driver's seat. I always laugh and get in the back seat, or can you get outside or get out of the room for now?

I don't need you. And so the Sage Powers that come into this, that's our toolbox. And it's looking at the situation that you're trying to deal with. You won't necessarily pull on all those sage powers at the same time, but it's moving us into looking at life through a different lens and having a growth mindset.

And so the bottom line, what we're trying to get to is accepting the situation or trying to find the gift in it, and accepting takes some work. So the judge is going to tell us this is no good and we need to change it, and we need to do something. But if we can look at this for a moment, and this is where the PQ refs will be spoken about, rubbing the fingers together is shifting that brain from that spiraling or even analytical left-hand side and going, slow down, stop.

Can I accept this for now and make peace with it? Okay. And later look for the gift and the opportunity because that can be a challenge. We can't always find the gift. So, just a brief rundown on the sage powers. There are five of them that we talk about, and basically, we're looking at exploring, wanting you to just put on your thinking hat and just explore the situation, but without judgment.

So, can you look at this, and can you just look at it from a few different viewpoints? But that often gets accompanied by what we need is empathy. Empathy, compassion, self-love. And I know we often find that easy to give to others, but it's giving to ourselves. If we can give it to ourselves, we're much more likely to give it to others.

And then, the interesting thing, often we're told, let's look forward, jump forward in your life. And what would you consider about this current situation, that's really important. So we call that the navigation and consulting with your elder, wiser self. And I like to be, that could be next week.

That could be tomorrow. That could be six years from now, or it could be 10 years from now, but just spending time in that space and realizing what is important right now. And what can I let go of? And then the last two, the one innovative, where you just explore some different ideas. I love to wrap that around mind mapping because mind mapping helps me dump things out and put them on a piece of paper.

And then the last one is action, taking action. And that ties in beautifully for me as an accountability coach. Deciding on what action you can take to make the change. So those are the powers in our toolbox that we call the sage powers.

[00:13:19] Aneta: I went through the first part of the training, how he offers I think you could sample it. I went through it and I just love that reminds us to be aware of the situation that you're in, and then he provides some of those tools, like rubbing your fingers or taking some deep breaths in a way to basically regulate your nervous system like, moving from a very reactive state into this parasympathetic and I've taken the assessment a couple of times, and I feel that in different stages, I get a different score in the terms of the saboteurs. The ones that are at the top are always at the top. It's just that the numbers might vary. Do you find the same thing? Do you find that it could shift as we continue to do more work on ourselves?

[00:14:03] Carol: Absolutely. And so that the awareness of all of them is important because sometimes we can get so fixated on the top three and go That's mine. And I'm not any of the others, but what people have actually found is when they start to work on those top ones. And pull on these tools, some of the others rise, and then they become prominent.

So it's these different areas that all require work. They all require awareness. And yeah, so there's definitely, there's a switch. I'm the same; my top three have stayed up at the same. The numbers have come down. They've jockeyed for position. But we need to be aware of all of them because they all play a part.

[00:14:43] Aneta: Absolutely. Yeah, it's so funny, my avoider is zero. That's always at the bottom, and I'm like, I don't avoid any of it, probably why some of the other ones you can guess bubble up to the top, but it's just interesting. I love the assessment because it gives you so much detail around how the saboteur impacts me.

How does it impact others around me? What are the typical behaviors or even things that we tell ourselves, like justification lies and the origin story, which I think is really helpful for people because, as coaches, we are not therapists, but I do feel like this assessment is so helpful to take to a therapist and say, I have this and I know where it came from.

Can we do a little extra work? And so I think is just a gift as well that you can get so much information from it.

[00:15:33] Carol: I absolutely agree with you. It's on this journey of life that we want to learn, and then, as you said, in this awareness, because then you can recognize that this is to help relationships. So those could be relationships at work, but they could be your personal relationships at home.

And if you're aware of the other person's saboteurs, and then you're aware of when you're together, you can activate each other and then that spiral again, so there are methods, and it's interesting because each of the saboteurs doesn't necessarily have the same step to reduce them.

[00:16:07] Aneta: That's right. 

[00:16:07] Carol: Yeah. So, some are; let's turn to empathy. Some have turned to a PQ rep. Some ask themselves, what's 10 percent that you can accept about the situation and be okay with?

[00:16:18] Aneta: Yeah, I love that. And it's funny, I've had my family take the assessment because I do think that it's so important from a relationship perspective. And of course, the family's that's why you do what you do. And we get each other's once you go through the description, which is fun.

I just find that anytime I've done this assessment, it's not one where people don't feel really bad, somehow. They laugh often because it's such a truth, but it does help explain why we have some of these tendencies. And I do think too, asking like, I would say, what is the healthy range for this?

What does it look like to make, as you said, just a small shift where it doesn't have to feel like so consuming, for example, like a hyperachiever, maybe not everything needs to be perfect. Maybe not everything on your list needs to be given a hundred percent effort; maybe some is 80, and that's okay.

And so really does help. So what are some of the things that you've been able to do with your clients to help them, maybe work on those saboteurs, or really just improve their Sage powers as well? If you have any examples that you can share.

[00:17:23] Carol: So one of the things I encourage people is starting your morning with a routine, and, you win the morning, you win the day. So, taking care of yourself and what we now call sage steps is just creating an awareness. Wake up to sensations of what you can hear, what you can see, so being present and then celebrating that you've noticed that, because what we're trying to do is rewire the brain and give it this opportunity to be in a sage power.

But it's interesting. You mentioned the avoider, and one of the things I find really helpful for clients who have the avoider is to just pick the thing that you need to do and step into it. Just start the action and permit yourself. So, say if I just spend five minutes on this task, and then the important part of that is the celebration.

And there's a range to choose from with celebration, but we do have to stop because that's what's rewiring our brain. For me, I've just found smiling because smiling comes really easily to me, but then you've got people that are a little bit more extroverted who might go I'm going to dance on the spot or I'm going to do something.

But it's once again, talking about bringing it into your body. It's all very well to have it in our head and go, I should celebrate, or I'm celebrating by doing that. You're just saying the words you want to feel it.

[00:18:47] Aneta: Yeah. I love that. And so for people who have been stuck in a negative mindset for a while, or maybe really stuck, even convincing themselves that these saboteurs are actually. What has made them successful, and I've had some of that with some of the clients, how do you help people get in stock? How do you help them take that 1st action? Or you said, lean into maybe the next step or the next action.

[00:19:14] Carol: I think one of the things that this comes with compassion and empathy for yourself is to realize that, think of it as, to me, I like to think of it as waves, and there's going to be the up and there's going to be the down, and fighting against the fact of no stress.

I don't want any negative results; they're there for a reason. They're there to bring awareness to a situation. But if you had to, so creating that awareness, having that knowledge and having the awareness of the saboteurs, but at the same time exploring what would the result be if relationships were better, if you felt more joy, if you felt more peace and more calm, and to know that while you're in this negative and saying, my hyperachiever has served me well, I think you really need to dig deep and go, there's some other life choices.

What is really important? Have I stepped over people? Have I lost friendships? There's definitely, even Shehzad talks about the way he's run his company in the beginning to the way he runs it now, and what a difference. And I know that they take positive intelligence into corporations and companies, and what a difference it has made to the company cultures. 

And the spouses and people have seen when they've come home at that extends into their home relationships. So to me, it's so powerful, and it's not an overnight fix. As I said before, it's something that you steadily work on, have awareness and explore. And then when you feel that judge going, okay, I'm in there, get a negative place.

I can't get out of this. I need my hyperachiever. We come back to the PQ reps and go, give yourself a moment. You need to be switching into a Sage, one of the Sage powers, and then let's relook at this through a different lens.

[00:21:04] Aneta: Yeah.

[00:21:04] Carol: And what can that tell you?

[00:21:06] Aneta: Absolutely. What are your favorite PQ moments? 

[00:21:09] Carol: So for me, actually funny enough, the tense one, which is that's not very pretty to do on the show, but tensing up all the muscles. And the beauty is now, with this exception, before finding the gift, is to just tense up for 10 seconds.

And then allow yourself. So the tensing up these new stage steps, which is just saying 10 seconds. So you don't have to sit for two minutes. If you can just switch your brain. So the 10 seconds is the other one. And then I love when you're looking at something. Whether he calls that walking one, the moving one, or the sitting one, but when you look at something and really deeply allow yourself to get lost in it, and the beauty of that is even when you're meeting with somebody, you can look at their hair, look into their eyes.

What I find myself doing now is I love to look at a color, especially when I'm walking, and then move, for instance, the trees outside across the different greens, and just allow myself to look at the contrast of all these greens. And so it is beautiful when you can move yourself into that sage space. 

[00:22:15] Aneta: Absolutely. It just creates such a sense of peace, and rather quickly. I think that's the thing for those listening, is you can do these things and make these shifts in a really short amount of time, but it does start with the awareness and then choosing to take a moment, and that helps just reframe everything, doesn't it?

[00:22:33] Carol: It absolutely does. It's very powerful. Yeah.

[00:22:36] Aneta: So if someone wanted to work with you and to learn more about positive intelligence and the programs that you have, what would be the best way that they could find you?

[00:22:45] Carol: So I think coming to my website, which is carolclegg.com. Connect with me on LinkedIn. That is my favorite place to hang out, and on my website, I do have a link that takes you straight to Positive Intelligence to take this assessment. And book a call with me. We can have a complimentary discussion to explore the saboteurs, hear your thoughts, and provide feedback.

Whether this resonates with you, and then the important thing is to share with you the strengths. Because sometimes people do beat themselves up and go I'm all of these things, and this isn't the happiest place to be. So I love to share with you the underlying strengths. And then we talk about how to bring those strengths back or how to use them and reduce the loud voice of the judge. 

[00:23:31] Aneta: So loud. And Carol, I know that you've designed a life that gives you this freedom to be able to do all these things. What other adventures do you guys have planned that are coming up? I love to hear all your stories 

[00:23:43] Carol: It's funny because we talk about the saboteurs, and my top one is the restless, but I look at the strengths of the restless, and that has me as being spontaneous and curious and just wanting to live life. And so, yeah, there's a restless where the avoider comes in, or there's a restless where you're chasing off to the next shiny object.

But the good parts of the restless have given me a wonderful life. So we're on our next stage now. Our daughter and her husband are coming to actually look after our home. Theoretically, the umbrella says two years. So we are supposed to now in my 60s be hitting the road as a digital nomad. If that's the right term, no, I prefer coach on the road, but we're breaking it up. So that is the plan that we're going to be breaking up our travel. Some in the Caribbean, some in Portugal, and then we'll spend some time in South Africa, in Cape Town.

And during the summer, my husband is a pilot working on the fires. And so he will be. Flying the fire season. So it's just, yeah, I'm nervous because it's changed, but I'm excited.

[00:24:51] Aneta: That's amazing. And how do you prepare or pack for something like this? What do you bring? Because for folks who are like, it sounds amazing to be a digital nomad. I just packed for Portugal, and then I'm going straight to Northern Ireland. So two different climates it's and I'm a pretty good packer, in I still feel like you're bringing too much. So what does that look like for you when you are making these moves? 

[00:25:13] Carol: Absolutely, you are always bringing too much because that much I have learned, learnt, and you look, and I never wore that, and I left that out, I keep that visual of carrying these heavy bags and dragging all the stuff very top of mind and remind myself, the freedom.

When there's hardly anything to carry. So I am fortunate in that on the sailboat, we have left clothing there, summer clothing. So it's gorgeous. I could literally go with my computer to the sailboat, but then we would, same as you, we'll be moving on to Portugal, and it's going to be spring, which is wet in Portugal in March.

And I'm just getting a color. I'm a very much a black and white, gray girl. And coordinating and keeping that with a splash of color, and just remembering you can wash things. So you don't need a million things. And there's something I have never tried, but I've heard this before, that some people do is they go with almost nothing.

And then they'll go to a thrift store in the country that they're in and buy whatever they need. And then donate it back again. And funnily enough, when I was in Portugal a couple of years back, there was a coworking space that encouraged this. And so you came into the coworking space, and they had all these different activities, but they had a room.

And I guess it's because Portugal is very digital nomad-friendly. I mean, it really is. And so they had this room where people had donated and left their clothing, and you could purchase a coat or whatever. So, for those who want to experiment, you could always take nothing and jump into a thrift store.

[00:26:52] Aneta: That's such a great idea, and I should let my daughters know cause my oldest especially loves, she thrifts almost everything. It pains her to buy anything new just from a sustainability perspective. I should let her know that maybe she should do that, but I have seen there are so many digital nomads and people working there, and you're right.

You don't want to have to bring a rain jacket just what, just in case it happens. And so being able to have all of those things available, I have to try that for some of these things, but I always look for, washer. I was like, I need to be able to wash my clothes, and I feel better. I don't have to bring too much.

I love this adventure for you, Carol. And it just sounds like it's going to be so amazing. And the final question I ask all my guests is tied to the title of the podcast, and I think you've just woven in these messages throughout our entire conversation, which is What does it mean to you to live the width of your life?

[00:27:46] Carol: And as you ask that, I think it's to try not to let fear get in the way because fear and love are the two opposite sides of the coin. And so if you can, and I'm working really hard on this right now, I have this on my board is I will accept and find joy in the unknown of today

[00:28:08] Aneta: Oh my gosh. I love that. Say that again. I will accept.

[00:28:11] Carol: And find joy in the unknown today. Because there is so much unknown and we worry so far ahead and want all the solutions that's normal but if we can just for a moment go I accept and I'm just going to live in this unknown right now in this present moment and I'll get to next month and I'll get to next year, it's not all smooth sailing, but if I'm going to sit here now and be totally anxious and worry about all the details, because they'll work out, they'll work out in time and then I've got my sage powers to pull out.

[00:28:47] Aneta: There you go. Carol, it's always a delight to speak with you. Thank you so much for joining me today. And for everyone, please check out the links. Take the positive intelligence assessment. If you haven't at the wonderful offer that Carol has. Continued success to you on all your adventures.

[00:29:03] Carol: Thank you. 

[00:29:03] Aneta: Thank you.

Thank you for listening to today's episode. If today's conversation inspired you to dream again, break out of your comfort zones or reflect on what it means to you to live more fully, then please follow this podcast because every week you'll hear more stories from people just like you who took imperfect action towards their goals, created more joy and are living the life that they always dreamt of living.

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