Taking Charge

Physical Intelligence can help boost career performance.

- Claire Dale And Patricia Peyton

Our bodies are amazing examples of intelligent design and function, performing trillions of operations every second. Over 400 neurotransmitters and hormones influence how we think, feel, speak, and behave. Physiology drives performance, and yet most of us experience physical reactions, emotions, and thoughts without realising that we can transform them.

Physical intelligence is the active management of our physiology—the ability to detect and strategically influence the balance of chemicals in our bodies and brains.

Through the practice of physical intelligence techniques, we can increase our strength, flexibility, resilience, and endurance, enabling us to build our confidence, make better decisions, rise to more ambitious challenges and measurably impact our career performance. Physical intelligence may well be the most important intelligence for the 21st century.

Four elements—strength, flexibility, resilience, and endurance—are the backbone of physical intelligence training, as they are for many top performers in sport and the arts. We have devised and adapted techniques used by these same performers so that they can be used by business people.

Strength

Strength is having a robust and stable foundation of the nervous and endocrine systems that enables us to take risks. It involves being focused; maintaining high cognitive function and good decision-making skills under pressure; being confident and positively assertive; establishing clear boundaries; and remaining committed.

Flexibility

Flexibility is being creative, innovative, and collaborative; having high self-esteem and high respect for others; being great at adapting your style and influencing those around you; understanding others’ agendas and being agile and quick thinking in changing environments, ready to embrace and instigate change.

Resilience