Mind Your PQ With Author Shirzad Chamine

In this podcast, author Shirzad Chamine is back to remind us who we are and who we've always been. Embrace your superpowers and defeat your saboteurs, because you have everything you need to be happy right now!

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This podcast was recorded on June 04, 2025.

David Gardner: This week, I'm thrilled to welcome back a Rule Breaker favorite Shirzad Chamine, best-selling author of the book Positive Intelligence. Shirzad's work has taught us how to quiet our inner saboteurs and strengthen our inner sage. If those words don't mean much to you right now, they will about 45 minutes from now. It's transformed how we think, how we lead, and for me, this too, how we invest. This week we'll dive even deeper, exploring how mental fitness can supercharge our resilience, creativity, and joy, not just in investing, but in every corner of our lives. It's time to reconnect with Shirzad Chamine. Let's build some positive intelligence. Shall we? Only on this week's Rule Breaker Investing.

Welcome back to Rule Breaker Investing. The sound of rules being broken. It's June 2025. I hope the stock market is as good as it was in May of 2025, although I don't think anybody should expect that. Welcome to Rule Breaker Investing, I'm delight to have you with me, whether you're a longtime listener who may have heard our special guest this week. Four or five years ago when I previously had him on this podcast, or whether you're a brand new listener, just discovering how to break the rules, Rule Breaker Investing. We spend one third of our time on this podcast talking about investing, one third talking about business and our professional lives, and one third talking about life, and I think we're going to touch each of those bases this particular week. I do want to mention coming up this June, it's our game show in a couple of weeks. The Market Cap Game Show makes its return to Rule Breaker Investing. That'll be a couple of weeks from now. As I shared at the start of the year, my 2025 book, Rule Breaker Investing is available for pre-order now. After 30 years of stock picking, this is my magnum opus, a lifetime of lessons distilled into one definitive guide. It's the playbook for anyone who dreams of beating the market, living richly, and having a laugh along the way. Each week until the book launches on September 16th, I'm sharing a random excerpt. We just break open the book to a random page, and I read a few sentences, so let's do it. Here's this week's page breaker preview. A couple of sentences, setting up a key section.

I quote. "Last chapter in discussing when to sell, I noted that it's not always as simple as trimming a position back to your sleep number or dumping a loser to zero out a capital gain. Sometimes your quarterly review asks a tougher question. What will you sell to buy that new stock you're excited about or to fund a down payment on a home? Why we invest in the first place?" That's this week's page breaker preview to pre-order my final word on stock picking, shaped by three decades of market crushing success. Just type Rule Breaker Investing into amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com, or wherever you shop for great books. You know what might be most rule breaking about this book is? It teaches people something rarely taught in this world, and yet so valuable, it teaches people how actually to invest and a tip of the jester cap to you, dear listener, if you've already preordered one or more copies for yourself and your loved ones, thanks. That means a lot to me. Shirzad Chamine is the author of the New York Times best-selling book Positive Intelligence. He's lectured on it at Stanford University. He's trained faculty at Stanford and Yale Business Schools. Shirzad has been the CEO of the largest coach training organization in the world. A preeminent C-suite advisor. Shirzad has coached hundreds of CEOs and their executive teams. His background includes a BA in Psychology, an MS in Electrical Engineering, and an MBA from Stanford. Shirzad Chamine, welcome back to Rule Breaker Investing.

Shirzad Chamine: Delighted to be here. I've been so looking forward to, David.

David Gardner: I started talking about, I think it was last month, I said, we have to have Shirzad back on, and I'm so glad that here we are a month later and you are here, and I'm thinking back Shirzad to our first podcast together. We did it in October of 2020. You introduced us to Positive Intelligence, PQ. In fact, I had not yet read your book by that same name. I just knew that you were an interesting fellow and probably a fellow Fool, maybe a fellow rule breaker, too, so I wanted to have that conversation. We later did do one about your book in August of 2021, but I want to spend a little time just restating the eternal verities here and have you just share that framework, Shirzad. You defined our saboteurs and our sage. Just briefly, for new listeners, what do you mean by saboteurs and sage, and why is distinguishing between them foundational to Positive Intelligence?

Shirzad Chamine: Yeah, David, so the premise of the work is, which is all research space, neuroscience space, is that every single day, every single one of us is sabotaging our well being performance and relationship. You're sabotaging your well being, performance, and relationship. The voices in your head that do that, the patterns in your head that do that, we call those the saboteurs, the ones who sabotage you. There are 10 of them. Our research have identified 10 of them based on factor analysis, and their names are the judge, the avoider, the controller, the hyper achiever, the restless, the pleaser, the victim, the stickler. I won't go through all 10, but you get the point. You probably think, my wife has that, my husband has that, my brother has that and hopefully you're saying, well, what do I have? Most people have a few of these that sabotage their well being, performance, and relationship. All live in a part of the brain, we call the survival part of the brain. When that part of the brain is energized and you are producing negative emotions and sabotaging yourself.

In a different part of your brain, we have what we call your sage. Your sage being the positive one inside of you, instead of sabotaging you, it serves your best interest. It optimize your well being, performance, and relationship. My Stanford students call this work jedi mind training, and they said, what you're doing here is help us see the war inside of our head between our inner dart waders, the saboteurs and inner jedi, the sage. That's really what we are doing. We are wanting to quiet your inner dart waders, your saboteurs and energize and activate your inner jedi, inner sage. The way we do that is through neuroscience based techniques that usually are just 10 seconds long. You're literally rewiring your brain. As you do that, you become more mentally fit. You recover faster from setbacks. You convert problems into opportunities. You have more positive relationships. You perform better as an athlete. You perform better in business, and your well being, you sleep better and you feel less stress. All of those changes come from the work of quieting your saboteurs and energizing your sage using 10 second techniques that everybody can do.

David Gardner: These things are universal. These things are timeless. We're hard wired into our biology and our psychology to do this. Shirzad, having read your wonderful book, Positive Intelligence, by the way, anybody can go to positiveintelligence.com and take the quiz and find out your own PQ, find out what are your saboteurs. You should have all your family members do it because we did that in our family. It was hilarious to learn these things about my children and my wife and for them to learn these things about me.

Shirzad Chamine: It's a really fun dinner conversation. Everybody do their saboteur assessment. It just takes five minutes. The way to find the saboteur assessment is positiveintelligence.com/assessment. It's a really fun dinner conversation. You find out what irritates you about each other is that person saboteurs, and kids have a lot of fun telling their parents, I'm so glad you finally have a name. How it is that you irritate the heck out of me, and of course, it's vice versa. It's positiveintelligence.com/assessment, is where you go to get your saboteurs assessment, just takes five minutes.

David Gardner: Last time, Shirzad, you described your own dominant saboteurs as the hyper rational, the controller, and the restless. I think I have that right. You said these saboteurs rarely disappear entirely. They still show up, even if you recognize them and have called them out, they're still present. But part of being positively intelligent is being able to recognize them faster, to call them out and take command of them by using our PQ brain, as you say, the positive intelligence, not the IQ. That's another part of the brain or the EQ, which is very popular these days, emotional intelligence. But Shirzad, you have created a new category of understanding human psychology, and it's the PQ, the positive intelligence. How has your own relationship with your saboteurs evolved over the years?

Shirzad Chamine: Well, I have profoundly changed my own life through this practice. I believe in walking the walk. I don't believe in teaching stuff that you don't do yourself. My family knows my saboteurs. My daughter holds me accountable for when I talk in a frustrated way, which is the voice of my judge saboteur, she says, daddy, who's talking right now, and sure enough, it's my judge talking, so I stop and shift my brain activation and change what I say. You're right. These saboteurs don't go away. In my brain, still, every hour of every day, one of my saboteurs, which actually is the universal saboteur that everybody has, is the judge saboteur. The judge is the one, is the commentator on your right-hand shoulder that's constantly looking at what's wrong with you, constantly looking at the stupid mistakes you made, shame on you, what's wrong with you? Why don't you ever learn? Constantly looking at what might go wrong with you because you're going to screw up, aren't you?

Finding what's wrong with you, what's wrong with others and what's wrong with your circumstances. The judge does that all the time, and that's where a lot of our stress and upset comes from, is that voice is still in my head, absolutely it is. What has changed is that he used to be a very loud voice, and I used to trust him and really get hijacked by him all the time. Now, I hear him and it's like, here we go again, you're calling me an idiot. You're trying to beat me up over the mistake I made seven days ago. Leave me alone, I have things to do. The voice is still there, but I can quickly shift from it and not have it dominate me. Same with all the saboteurs. Everybody who does this work rewires their brain. These voices get a lot quieter and they don't dominate as much.

David Gardner: Since you showed us yours, I'll show you mine. I'm a hyper achiever, avoider, pleaser kind of a person. Each of those are my dominant saboteurs that I need to keep in check. Again, now in my fifth year or so of really listening on a regular basis to you, Shirzad, you have an app that people can use, you have your website. Well, this is the third podcast we've done together, so there's been a lot of opportunity for me to think about these things and try to be a better version of myself, and try to share that work through this podcast, some of my favorite moments, Shirzad, and I know you hear this all the time, but some of my favorite moments have been when listeners of this podcast drop me notes later and say, you have changed their lives through my podcast because they discovered your work and realized all the negative self talk that predominated in their life and it was all self-generated. I'll talk about that a little bit more later, but it's been just a fantastic experience to have been following you and learning from you for some years now. Let me say one more thing, Shirzad.

That is, I intend this conversation to fit with the first two we had together. We just spent about five or 10 minutes laying down those foundational elements, so many new listeners who didn't hear us five years ago, who may not yet have read your book now get what we're talking about. But I really want this conversation to stand on its own and fit with the two previous in the ways that Star Wars movies were supposed to. The third one was supposed to speak back to the second and first, even though sometimes they all ran together, especially across different Star Wars series, anyway. But the world has changed since our first two conversations. We've lived through global events and transformations that were unthinkable five years ago, COVID-19, its lasting impact, AI, and its mainstream adoption, social divisions intensifying in some cases, Shirzad, how is your understanding or application of positive intelligence shifted or evolved in response to some profound global changes?

Shirzad Chamine: Actually, David, the work that we do has become more and more critical. The reason for it is that change creates stress. Even positive change creates stress, and saboteurs are a stress response. Basically, a lot of what happens with saboteurs is under stress, we use our saboteur go to strategies to deal with challenges, and as we do that, it generates more negative emotions and actually more stress. It feeds on itself. If you have a controller saboteur under intensified stress and change, you become more controlling. As you become more controlling, you become more rigid, you generate more negative emotions around you and it ricochets right back on you. You mentioned you have the avoider saboteur. As change intensifies and your stress goes up, you become more and more avoiding.

If you have the pleaser saboteur, you do more pleasing. If you have the restless, you become more restless. If you have the victim, you become more victim, feeling victimized. Basically, what's happening is that I believe the level of saboteur orientation and the negativity that that generates has increased steadily over the last several years. I think that we are almost at epidemic levels. I was talking to the head of wellness in a well known university in this country, who was saying 49% of the pre-med students, in this well known university now, are in need of psychological intervention. He said the number used to be less than 10%. We are at an epidemic level in terms of level of stress and how activated these saboteurs are and people really needing help for exactly the kind of work that we do because you can rewire your brain.

David Gardner: You certainly can, and I'm also thinking because I can now reflect on our conversations that we had a few years ago, Shirzad. I'm reflecting on our August 2021 conversation when you emphasize that pain is actually good. Pain is how we learn and grow. Given that escalating mental health challenge you referred to and the awareness, I would say, there's more awareness today of mental health challenges than probably a generation ago, which in part, I think, has more people reporting it because we're just more aware of anxiety, isolation, and burnout today. But since that conversation almost four years ago, now, Shirzad, how do we constructively process collective pain?

This is a big question at a societal level, what role can PQ play in fostering collective resilience?

Shirzad Chamine: Pain is a really great analogy for the work that we do. I asked the question, is pain good for you to feel as a human being, physical pain? The answer is, of course, it is. Why? Because if you put your hand on a stove that's accidentally left on, if you don't feel any pain, you'll keep your hand on the hot stove and you'll burn to the bone. Therefore, it's really important for you to feel pain. However, the million dollar question is, how long would you like to feel the pain of your hand on the hot stove before you get the message and before you do something about it? Hopefully, the answer is, well, split second. The job of pain is to give you an alert that something needs your attention. Once that alert is delivered, then the pain is no longer helpful it just hurts you. The same exact thing with negative emotion. Is stress over what's happening in the world helpful? Of course, it is. Is anger, disappointment, rage, upset, all of those helpful? Of course, they are.

Without them, you will not have conscience. However, if you stay angry, if you stay upset, if you stay stressed, if you stay outraged, then all you're doing is you are going into the world and spewing more negativity in a world that desperately needs positivity. When you wake up in outrage about what's happening, great. That first second gives you your conscious. Awesome. Then what we want you to do is those negative emotions if you stay in them, they're going to have you go to your judge, go to your controller, go to your avoider, go to your victim, all of that stuff, which generates more negativity in the world. Instead, what we want you to do is after that initial second of useful negative emotion, we want you to say, oops, I am in [inaudible] world let me shift my brain activation. Practice these 10 second techniques that we teach you so that you shift your brain activation and go to the sage mind then in sage mind, you can choose to be empathic. You can choose to be curious. You can choose to be creative to figure out what to do with this. You can choose to take clear head action. There are five say superpowers.

But you choose something positive in reaction to what's happening so that you become a force of good in the world rather than a victim of what's happening and spew more negativity in the world that needs more positivity. You said, David, what can we do collectively? Well, collective action comes from individual actions adding up so what I want to say is that you are on any given day, either a generator of more negativity, or an interceptor of negativity and converting that into positive contagion on you. If you are in positive contagion, then the person coming in front of you is almost unconsciously going to be shifted more to their own positive self. The question I want everybody to ask is, are you a generator of more negativity in the world today in the way you respond to life challenges, or are you a generator of positivity becoming a part of the solution rather than continuing part of the problem. You really have a choice, and it starts with intercepting your response to things.

David Gardner: That is beautifully explained by the person whose own life story we don't have time to capture today, but it was there in our first conversation, and you, more than anyone I know, have taken what was a very hard lot early in life and converted it into so much good. Shirzad, I want to spot you up with some of my favorite catchphrases of yours so that you can maybe give us a mini sermon on the topic. Which you're very good at doing. I've got three in mind. You ready?

Shirzad Chamine: I love it. Go for it.

David Gardner: First one up is you'll be happy when?

Shirzad Chamine: That's a lie most of us live most of our life on. There is a judge voice in your head that says, right now, you don't have what it takes to be happy, right now, something is wrong with the circumstances of your life. You will be happy when? Fill in the blanks. When you were in high school, oh, you can't be happy, you're stuck with these damn parents. You'll be happy when you finally leave home when you finally have that girlfriend or boyfriend, when you finally get into college, when you finally get that first job, when you finally meet somebody and marry, when you finally have that child, when you finally have that house, and on and on. You keep saying, I can't be happy quite yet, I'll be happy when. Whatever is in the when gets renegotiated. When you get it, you'll be happy for a minute for a day if you're lucky, and then you say, but I can be happy yet I'll be happy when. Question I want everybody to ask is, what are you waiting for right now to still be happy?

You have absolutely everything you need to be extraordinarily happy right now. If you can energize a sage part of your brain where you feel happiness and joy and peace and love and all those good stuff. It's in your brain if you energize that part of your brain. If you're not feeling happiness right now, it's not because of the circumstances of your life, it's because your saboteurs the negative part of your brain is activated, and you can be in paradise and still complain why you don't have as much as your neighbor. Whatever you're waiting for in order to be happy one day is a lie of your saboteur. You may want to intercept that.

David Gardner: Wonderful. You'll be happy when. That was the first. Here's the second. There are a lot of these, by the way, and part of my experience of your program is getting to hear these from time to time and sometimes getting to hear them repeated that's why it's a delight to have you share them on this podcast. The second one that I picked almost at random, but there it was. Remember who you are.

Shirzad Chamine: David, I love you bringing some of my favorites back to me. I love it.

David Gardner: Greatest hits.

Shirzad Chamine: I don't want to change you. You don't need to be changed. I want you to remember who you are, who you have always been, who you will always be because here's the deal. Anybody who's a parent and I'm a parent of two kids, knows that every child is born with a different essence self. My daughter and my son were born as incredibly different human beings. One was a rose and one was a carnation, completely different. Each of them in beautiful essence, being and none of them has changed in that essence. My 25-year-old son and my 21-year-old daughter are identical in the essence of who they were. That essence has never changed, will never change. The same is true with you. You were born as unique as your fingerprint. You were born as a unique, beautiful essence being. That is your sage that's your true self. That will never change, will never change. I don't need you to change. I want you to remember who you already are, who you have always been. Some of the work that we do is really about you remembering. You looking at yourself in the mirror and looking into your eyes and seeing that unchanging beautiful essence being that you are and falling in love with yourself, falling in love with yourself again, rather than allow the saboteurs to constantly look at what's not so right and what's not so perfect and what you have to change in yourself all the time.

If you watch my Stanford TEDx Talk, you'll see that I start my Stanford talk by saying, I want you to know that I'm absolutely incredibly and totally awesome. I do that with delight in my heart because I do love myself. I do think I'm absolutely incredibly beautiful human being. This is not coming from my arrogance it comes from me saying, I am beautiful, lovable, essence, being, I adore myself. Oh, by the way, you are also gorgeous, beautiful, lovable human being. I want you to discover that about yourself. We all are we are all born as that, fall in love with yourself again.

David Gardner: I really appreciate you saying that. I will say, as I have grown up, I'm 59-years-old now, I have realized increasingly that the majority of us have pretty persistently negative self talk I was not oriented that way. I was a joyful, cheerful kid. I won most cheerful at my sleepaway summer camp in Maine. I'm on the Hall of Fame plaque there. I've always been a cheerful, positive person. I assume most people are that way, and what I've learned is most people are talking themselves down on a constant basis. Of course, I do it some too we have to guard against that. But I just did not realize that until becoming more mature. That's why I think the work and what you're sharing is so important for so many people. Let me spot you up with a third one.

Shirzad Chamine: David, before you go there, can I tell the story with my son of how I made sure that he doesn't forget who he is? My son was into tickling, and as he was growing up, I taught him a tickling game and the job was to make sure that he has unconditional love for himself and never forgets who he is. I would tickle him and say, Kian tell me, why do I love you so much? He had learned to say, I don't know daddy. Why do you love me so much? I would say, Well, is it because you're so handsome? My son is very handsome, goes after my wife, and he would say, No, dad it's not because I'm handsome. Tickle him some more and say, is it because you're so good in sports? He had learned to say and say, No, daddy, it's not because of that. Tickle him more, is it because you're so good in math and schoolwork? He would say, No, that's not because of that. Then I tickle him some more is it because you're so kind and generous? He would say, No, daddy it's not because of that. I would at the end, feign a great frustration and say, why is it, Kian, why do I love you so much? He had learned to say, and he would say, Dad is because I am me. Occasionally, I would ask him, what does it mean? He would say that I am the person you held in the hospital when I was born. That person has never changed, will never change, and you love that person and that's who I am. This is my way of making sure my son never forgets that he unchanging beautiful essence, worthy of all the love in the world, regardless of whether he has a successful day or a bad day, regardless of whether he has all sorts of accomplishments happen or not, doesn't matter. He's worthy of his unconditional love and mine.

David Gardner: Beautifully said. Remember who you are. The third one I wanted to spot you up with, there are many more we could do, but we'll run out of time if we do this all day. The third one I want to give you, Shirzad is tune in to the PQ channel.

Shirzad Chamine: Ah, yes. Anytime you're communicating with somebody, there are two channels of communication. One is the data channel. The data channel is a channel in which you're using words and communicating information and that's helpful. But the PQ channel is the energetic channel in which more context, more emotion and energy is being communicated. Between these two channels in communication, the PQ channel, which is the invisible channel, where energy and emotion is communicated is far more important in terms of the communication and how it lands. For example, if I just say to you with a big smile and say, get out of here, you're such a fool. Notice what I did is in the data channel, I said, You are a fool. But in the energetic channel, I said, basically, I was saying, I love you. I'm teasing you, I like you. Which of these two channels impacted you? Did you believe that I really think you're a fool, or did you believe I care about you enough so that I'm teasing you? I bet you the second is what you believe, which shows that the energy and emotion is more important than the words you use. In our communication, what I suggest is pay attention to that invisible channel. It's more important, the energetic of what's coming through rather than figuring out the perfect word. A lot of leaders miss out on that a lot of people miss out on that in their relationship with each other.

David Gardner: Well said and thank you for sharing that. In fact, I was reminded in my reading recently. Actually, I was reading the note of one of our listeners who wrote in and said, he has a fascination as an English speaker with words from other languages that describe cultural constructs that we just don't have in English because we don't have a word for. As you talk about observing the PQ channel instead of just the data channel, Shirzad I'm reminded of Nunchi, a deeply cultural Korean concept that refers to the subtle art of sensing others moods, feelings, and social dynamics. It's the ability to read the room. It's a valued skill in Korean society. Our Korean listeners, I hope are nodding their heads right now, knowing Nunchi. But for the rest of us, isn't that awesome that there is a word for for navigating relationships with grace and awareness by observing others moods and feelings from an early age.

Shirzad Chamine: Beautifully said, David, I learned something. Appreciate it. That was wonderful.

David Gardner: Well, if there are a few chapters of this conversation, we're turning the page right now. In the next chapter says something about PQ and the future, Shirzad Chamine. In our first interview, you describe the sage perspective. You've mentioned it again. It's one of empathy, curiosity, creativity, clear headed laser action. Artificial intelligence, that's where we're headed right now. Artificial intelligence can now convincingly simulate some aspects of empathy, of creativity, of decision making. Shirzad, how do you view AI's role? Could it amplify our saboteurs? Could it enhance our sage or both? How should we navigate this new landscape positively and intelligently?

Shirzad Chamine: The sage perspective that you referred to that we bring to everything is that every challenge can be converted into a gift or opportunity. That every obstacle or problem or challenge can be converted into a gift and opportunity that's how we come at it all the time that includes AI. AI is something that can be used for good and it can be used for the opposite of that. The one in us that determines how we use AI is going to be our saboteur or our sage. I think more than ever in our planet now, because there are existential conversations about the misuse of AI, more than ever on the planet, we want to make sure humanity begins to tap more into its sage rather than its saboteur because humanity is going to have access to tools that could be profoundly destructive if the saboteurs get hold of it. The work that I do in the world has become even more urgent in wanting to make sure we create a sage contagion rather than saboteur contagion. Now the saboteurs contagion may well be beginning to happen in that one thing we know with AI for sure is that it profoundly accelerates the pace of change what we know is that as human beings, we are just not wired for this pace of change. This is far more than anything that our species has ever experienced, which means this is a recipe for a lot of stress.

In unknown circumstances and in pace of change, stress goes up, and as stress goes up, all saboteurs go on hyper drive. We really need to get in front of that and making sure that we become much more resilient in embracing change in a way that we use it as a force of good rather than have our saboteurs react to change, which could create the opposite effect.

David Gardner: Do you use artificial intelligence yourself? Is it a part of your daily habit, work, ritual? Are you ignoring it, avoiding it? What is your take personally on AI?

Shirzad Chamine: I'm incredibly excited about AI. I think that there is, of course, potential misuse of AI, but the promise AI is profound level of abundance in terms of what science is going to bring, what's going to happen. In medicine, what's going to happen to our producing energy and energy that becomes ubiquitously available material production. There are on and on. What AI enables is profound level of potential prosperity and abundance unheard of and never imagined in the history of humanity. I'm incredibly excited about AI, and, of course, there is a risk to AI that hopefully, some of the work that I do will help diminish.

David Gardner: Thank you for that. I mentioned this chapter of our conversation is about the future, and so let's think briefly about younger generations. People like Jonathan Hat have pointed out that a lot of the younger generation has been raised with a phone in its hand and not always creating positive psychological effects on our kids. We didn't actually anticipate that. Technologies unleash themselves. We try to make the best use of them, but we're not sometimes aware of the secondary effects, so it takes 10 or 20 years to figure this out. I'm curious whether you generally agree with Jonathan Hat in terms of what smartphones have done to younger people. But even more important than that, I'm wondering about Gen Z and younger audiences and PQ.

Shirzad Chamine: Let's use our own app as an example. The smartphone is what has enabled us to change millions of lives because they are using our app. Without the app technology, there is no way that people like you, David, would be waking up every morning and say, he's that's something for me to do. There's this muscle that I want to strengthen and the app energizes you and excites you through gamification to want to keep building up that muscle. We absolutely have used the app technology to enable personal transformation. Once again, the technology is what it is. It can absolutely be abuse and it can be used for good, and there are a lot of kids generation you're talking about that are really being victimized by the misuse of technology. I believe social media is profoundly damaging to kids of this generation. I don't know what I would have done if I had grown up and when I was 18 or 20, I would have just been aware of my popularity measured by how many followers I have, how many likes I have, and constantly under microscope of all these fake happy lives that people pretend to be living and comparing mine to it, and saying, what's wrong with me? I'm not having as much fun or as much adventure. There's such a recipe for continuous judgment of ourselves because we live under the microscope of social media. I think that's profoundly harmful and that's one of the reasons that 49% of pre-med students in this university are in need of psychological intervention. Yes, but we don't want to throw out that technology. We want to bring in uses of technology that helps remedy that.

David Gardner: Everything is a tool, and it's all how we use those tools, and I really appreciate that point, Shirzad. We're about to move to our buy, sell, or hold game. I've got a bunch cued up for you, which I'm looking forward to sharing, but I do want to cover a couple of bases before we get there. Let me just ask you for listeners who are inspired by this conversation, whether revisiting positive intelligence from having heard you four years ago on this podcast or following you in the past, or many encountering you for the first time. What is the simplest and best next step that you would recommend that they take after finishing this podcast?

Shirzad Chamine: Yeah, please spend five minutes do your saboteur assessment so that you realize how your self sabotaging, starting with that awareness is critical, and then share it with your loved ones. Have a conversation with your loved ones, with your colleagues so that you can begin to bring awareness into what's happening in your relationship with one another because you're going to realize that saboteurs on both sides in a relationship are what irritates in relationship, and this awareness is going to you move to a healthier element in those relationships. Start with the saboteur assessment and from there, you can hopefully, get inspired to take additional action, including using our apps to begin to revive your brain.

David Gardner: I'm wondering, since so much of your work, Shirzad has been research based, and I know you've done a lot of that. You've also drawn on the work of other academics and researchers as we all do. Are you creating any new research? Is there another book coming? Are you discovering the 11th saboteur that you missed the first time round or that has emerged because of society in the meantime? I'm curious what's next for you?

Shirzad Chamine: Actually, David, one of the things that I'm most proud of is the work was based on factor analysis on how we sabotage ourselves or how we optimize our performance well-being and relationships. Many years after that analysis was done, we now have trained more than 100,000 coaches around the group, and now these coaches focus on an entire range of applications of this operating system. Neurodiversity, working with people with ADHD, working with people with trauma, working with executives in high places, working with athletes, Olympic athletes, NFL athletes. You just name it. There are all these applications and all these coaches are coming back and saying, and it's happening in more than 100 countries. Now, they are all coming back and saying, this operating system absolutely applies. No, there has not been a need for an 11 saboteur. These 10 saboteurs are it in all these countries, in all these applications. These five sage positive superpowers are the five superpower. These 10-second techniques to shift brain activation are the techniques, so it's working. The work keeps being validated. Basically, all we are doing is now applying it to more and more things rather than change the foundational stuff because the foundational stuff has proven very resilient. More than two million people now have been involved with that first level of the saboteur assessment research. This has been very rigorous work.

David Gardner: Congratulations. Just briefly to toot my own horn, I would like to say I can connect in with that in so far as the book I have coming out this fall, Rule Breaker Investing, I'm presenting the six traits I'm looking for in the great stocks of the next generation. As it turns out, they're the exact same six that I presented 25 years ago in my book. I also recognize the benefits not of finding some new thing, but simply reasserting the things that were true in the first place and then getting to sit there and with a sense of wonder, I think about what that could mean for our minds or what that could mean for our investment portfolios. Thank you for being you and sticking to your knitting as I have, as well.

Shirzad Chamine: David, I want to congratulate you for that. What I believe you have done is what I have done to make the work sustainable, which is root cause analysis. When you do root cause analysis and go to the very root of things, 10 years, 20 years later, those root causes are still the same. Nothing wants to change, which tells me what you did so many years ago was root cause analysis. Those six principles are root principles, and they never want to change. They are timeless. Congratulations. That's awesome work.

David Gardner: Thank you, and thank you for a good concept and a new phrase I can use, as well. Shirzad, well, you've graciously allowed me to close out our conversation here in 2025 with our traditional Rule Breaker investing buy sell or hold game. Now, as you know, Shirzad, these are not stocks. But I'm asking you if they were stocks, would you be buying, selling, or holding and a few sentences as to why are you ready?

Shirzad Chamine: Yes.

David Gardner: Great. Let's kick it off with mindfulness apps like Calm or Headspace. These have become billion dollar businesses, but is this trend built to last or will people eventually crave more direct human connection, Shirzad mindfulness apps buy, sell, or hold?

Shirzad Chamine: A hold. Mindfulness is one leg of a three legged stool of mental fitness. I believe it's missing the two other legs, which is interceptor saboteurs and energize your sage. Hold because it provides one leg of the three legs of the stool.

David Gardner: Well said. Let's go for something Number 2, much colder. Ice baths and cold plunges. They're everywhere from TikTok to your local gym. Shirzad, are you buying this chilly wellness craze, or is your inner sage perfectly content staying warm and dry?

Shirzad Chamine: Buy. I know some people are less respect a lot who swear by it.

David Gardner: Excellent. I need to do it myself. Have you done it?

Shirzad Chamine: No.

David Gardner: Next up, let's go with the four-day week. Recent studies keep suggesting it's better for productivity, happiness, even profits, in some cases. Shirzad Chamine, is the four-day work week a buy, a sale, or a hold?

Shirzad Chamine: It's a hold. I believe when you are in sage mode, it doesn't matter how many hours you work. You are always in joy of what you do. Therefore, it's in the middle for me.

David Gardner: Yeah, that works. Let's shift gears. Let's talk, pickleball. Easy to learn, highly social. It's taking over parks everywhere. Does this rapidly rising sport have staying power or will it eventually fade back into obscurity? Pickleball, Shirzad, buy, sell, or hold.

Shirzad Chamine: Buy. I hear a lot of enthusiasm.

David Gardner: I haven't played pickleball the last few years, and I haven't taken an ice bath or a cold plunge. Clearly, I need to get out there and enjoy life a little bit more. Thank you for that. Let me throw a curveball at you next. Let's shift gears with the metaverse. Mark Zuckerberg has bet big on virtual worlds. Public interest still seems lukewarm. Is it fair to say, Shirzad, are you buying, selling, or holding the metaverse?

Shirzad Chamine: Buy. It's only a matter of time.

David Gardner: What do you expect as the metaverse shows up?

Shirzad Chamine: I believe that's where AI taking us, and it's not just through Meta, and that's a lot of the premise of AI. It's a bold reimagining of what's possible in our future, lot of exciting thing happening. Mark just happens to be one of the first who publicized talking about it.

David Gardner: Yeah. Thank you. Let me try a publishing twist out on you. Just a few more, by the way, I don't want to overstate my welcome, but let's try a publishing twist, AI generated self help books with ChatGPT, similar tools authoring full chapters in some cases now. Can artificial intelligence genuinely resonate and offer authentic wisdom AI generated self help books buy, sell, or hold?

Shirzad Chamine: Buy. I believe AI will be fully capable of very empathic quite insightful discourse.

David Gardner: I really appreciate that. While I think that's a contrary opinion here in 2025, I think that will be the majority conclusion by 2035. Thank you for that. I also want to point out that the personalization is particularly interesting because most self help books just read the same for all of us these days, and that's the way books have always worked. But the possibility and opportunity of having a self help book personalized to you or to me based on maybe PQ insights seems potentially very powerful.

Shirzad Chamine: I would say, a book is not necessarily the format that's going to be delivered in. The book may becoming more or less obsolesce modality of the communication relative to the modalities that are emerging.

David Gardner: Yeah, it makes a lot of sense, although I hope people will still go out and buy positive intelligence and give it to each other on birthdays.

Shirzad Chamine: Absolutely.

David Gardner: Let's step into the kitchen, second and last one here. Let's step into the kitchen. Plant-based meats. Companies like Beyond Meat and others have enjoyed some hype here. They've also struggled a bit recently. Is there still room for plant-based foods to thrive or is the trend cooling down? Plant-based meat Shirzad, buy, sell or hold?

Shirzad Chamine: Buy. I believe it's just the beginning of how much they can improve, and there is no end to the level they can achieve, especially with the help of AI Innovation.

David Gardner: Well said. Obviously, you're a huge believer in innovation, which means you are a Rule Breaker investor by default, because that's what we do. We hunt the most innovative companies industry by industry. You and I haven't really had a stock market talk, and that's not what we did this time, but I can clearly see how future oriented you are. I appreciate that want to underline that. Last one, Shirzad, Marie Kondo, Spark Joy, Brene Brown spoke courage. Could positive intelligence be the next big Netflix series, or do you think the PQ story is always better told face to face? A positive intelligence Netflix series, Shirzad buy, sell, or hold?

Shirzad Chamine: Absolute buy. We are heading that way without a question in my mind. The time is upon us.

David Gardner: I can't wait, and I just hope to be invited to the launch party with the glam people and the red carpets, and you dressed like a king.

Shirzad Chamine: That's great.

David Gardner: Final question for you. You've been gracious with your time this week, Shirzad. Your positive intelligence work has touched countless lives, and as you look back on your journey so far and ahead to what's next because it continues. What's one final reflection for us right now or a piece of wisdom that you'd like to leave with our Foolish listeners today?

Shirzad Chamine: Well, look how much time we are spending on daily habits related to our physical body, whether it is physical exercise or even physical hygiene. How many minutes we spend brushing our teeth fussing, taking taking shower and stuff like that. We spend daily minutes on maintenance of our physical body and physical fitness. The one thing that is even more important is mental fitness and I would love. My mission in the world is to make mental fitness as ubiquitous as physical fitness is today. To have everybody realize that 5, 10 minutes of building their mental fitness is just as critical for their happiness and well being as physical fitness or physical hygiene might be. Hopefully, this becomes a lifelong habit the way it is for me and for many people that we have reached.

David Gardner: Shirzad Chamine, I'm honored to have you back on this podcast to have you share that message with all of our listeners. I feel badly. It's just the negative self talk. The only negative self talk I have today is that I let three or four years slip before having you back for a conversation. I will not make that mistake again, but I congratulate you on your work in this world. It's making for a better world. It certainly has for me and those connected to me, and there are a lot of people connected through the Motley Fool. Being positively intelligent by the way, is the best way to thrive with your investing, as well as your day to day life. Thank you. Mental floss is something that we could all use a little bit more of. Shirzad Chamine, thank you for joining with me again and Fool on my friend.

Shirzad Chamine: Fool on, David. I have really enjoyed my time together. I would love to come back. Let's make this a habit.

John Mackey, former CEO of Whole Foods Market, an Amazon subsidiary, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Randi Zuckerberg, a former director of market development and spokeswoman for Facebook and sister to Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. David Gardner has positions in Amazon. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Amazon, Beyond Meat, and Meta Platforms. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.