Welcome to PQ for Christians, a global podcast exploring the intersection of Positive Intelligence (PQ) and Christian spirituality. This podcast brings together believers from 82 countries and territories (and counting) across a variety of Christian traditions to engage in a transformative journey of mental fitness, faith, and personal renewal.
Each episode unpacks how PQ's framework aligns with biblical principles, supporting Christians to move beyond self-sabotaging thoughts and embrace a renewed mind in Christ (Romans 12:2). Through deep conversations, personal insights, and practical applications, we explore themes of:
✅ Renewing the mind – Overcoming fear, doubt, and judgment through faith and mental fitness ✅ Living in the True Self – Identifying and healing saboteurs while embracing your God-given identity ✅ Bridging faith and neuroscience – Exploring how spiritual growth and cognitive science work together ✅ A global Christian conversation – Uniting believers from diverse backgrounds in a shared journey
✅ Christlike living – Applying PQ insights to ministry, relationships, and daily life
Whether you're a Christian leader, coach, or someone seeking a stronger, more resilient faith, this podcast invites you into a supportive and inclusive space where transformation happens. Join the conversation and discover how mental fitness and faith can reshape your life, leadership, and walk with God.
PQ for Christians is proudly sponsored by The Center for Biblical Coaching and Leadership (TCBCL)—equipping believers and leaders with biblically centered coaching and leadership training for personal, organizational, and church renewal.
Tune in and take the next step toward wholeness in Christ!
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The hardest part of personal or spiritual growth is not learning a new tool or practice. It’s facing what the tool or practice reveals and staying with God long enough to be changed by what we see. That’s the heart of this gathering from PQ for Christians, a community built to integrate Positive Intelligence coaching with Christian faith in a way that feels honest, compassionate, and spiritually grounded. We open with grace guidelines that honor diverse Christian backgrounds and invite us to let discomfort be part of transformation rather than something to avoid.
From there, we move into a guided contemplation focused on “the mirror and the door,” drawing from James’s image of seeing ourselves clearly. We talk about noticing without fixing, releasing shame, and letting God meet us in stillness. As the conversation unfolds, we name familiar saboteur patterns like Hyperachiever, Controller, and Pleaser, then challenge the subtle spiritual stories they can create, including “pleaser theology” and defensiveness toward God. The result is a shift from striving to receiving, from resentment to love, and from anxious performance to real presence.
We also get practical about discouragement. What if the wall you hit is not proof you’re failing, but an invitation God has set up to grow you? You’ll hear stories about discerning which “door” is truly yours, stepping into uncomfortable callings, and releasing the pressure of trying to open other people’s doors for them. We end with a simple, powerful practice the group now calls the sacred pause, plus a book recommendation that fits this journey: Saint Teresa of Avila’s Interior Castle, translated by Peter Northcutt. If this resonates, subscribe, share it with a friend who feels stuck, send us a message sharing your thoughts, and leave a review so more people can find the conversation.
PQ for Christians was one of the first communities of practice established in the PQ coaching community. It began as a small interest group of six people in November 2020. The purpose from the beginning has been to integrate positive intelligence with our Christian faith and practices. At the outset, the initial group wondered how compatible PQ would be. So they began exploring together the potential blocks as well as alignments. Six years later, we are still in exploration mode, discovering how God might be leading us deeper into communion and how to reach others with PQ as a sacred tool. So I'd just like to hand over to Steph.
right, I'm going to just run us through our grace guidelines. We recognize that we all come from diverse branches of the Christian faith and that everyone is on their own transformational journey. So we are just here to offer support and compassion to each other at whatever stage we happen to be in that journey. And we accept that we are all learning and we lead by building wisdom together. So we ask that you would be open to feeling uncomfortable because all growth comes from some kind of discomfort. And ask the Holy Spirit to help you speak with love and grace. We're here to care for each other by listening and operating in our stage power.
as we prepare to do our PQ integration contemplation, you can stay on screen if you want to. Just get yourself comfortable. Since your feet touching the ground. And listen for your heart rate. I mean your heartbeat. Focus today is gonna be on the mirror and the door. Settle in for this moment. Allow your body to become still.
SPEAKER_07
Take a deep breath in. Breathe out.
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There's nothing we need to accomplish in the next few minutes. Just simply become present to God that's here with us.
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And allow God to meet us.
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Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what the word says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror and after looking at himself goes away immediately, forgets what he looks like.
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There's no judgment here. No condemnation. Simply an invitation to see. Don't try to change it. Don't try to fix it. Simply allow yourself to see what is there.
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And it will be given to you. Now becomes an invitation beyond yourself.
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Hear the words of Christ.
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I am here. Not just to give another technique or practice.
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Communion. Father, we thank you.
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We consent to your presence in action within. We open ourselves up to receive from you today. In Jesus' name. Amen. And when you're ready, you can come back on camera.
SPEAKER_09
So, Steph, I was able to set everything up. Oh, awesome. Then you go ahead. So
we are going to move into breakout rooms where you're going to discuss what you saw in the mirror when you first entered PQ and how it changed you and you had a better idea of who you were because of this tool. We're going to discuss have you hit a wall of discouragement? And if so, what would it mean if God had set up that discouragement to help you grow? Part of this discussion is about the fact that as coaches, we're closer to our clients than we think because as we observe them going through that growth process of being all excited to learn the thing, and then they hit a wall, right? There's it's hard. But we're also in the same process of learning, correcting ourselves to who we actually are, but then being called by God to walk through the door, being called to something bigger and greater. So I'm gonna enter some questions into chat, and I'm gonna, oh Mindy Lee. Wow, I'm gonna have to increase my groups here. Okay. Good to see you, Mindy Lee. I've put questions into the chat. What did you go through in the reflection of the mirror? What did you learn? Did you hit a wall of disappointment? Can you see the door that Christ made possible and what's he calling you to? What does it feel like to walk through that door? Share with one another in your breakout groups. Oh, you know what? I didn't do how long do you want these? Oh, they changed their format. Does anyone know? It's not in here. I know it's like that.
So is there anything that anybody would like to share with the bigger group that you talked about in your breakouts?
SPEAKER_07
Anything that you learned? I'll go.
SPEAKER_08
Thank you. No, I I was telling the ladies, it was Vanessa and Jackie as we were ending, just how hearing their story, it was actually their testimony, right? And and them recounting it, what they might have thought would have been an obstacle, a challenge, a problem, maybe they weren't enough, or maybe something was not working out. As they told their stories and the end results, it was as if seeing how God redeems everything where we think we have a plan, but his plan supersedes our plan. We have no idea what he's working on. But it ends up being a tremendous blessing. It's almost like what we thought was a setback becomes and will become a setup for something bigger and greater when we trust that it's his plans that are center stage. So I was very encouraged. I was very encouraged and grateful. Thank you, ladies, for sharing.
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Thank you, Maria. That's yeah, it's it's always better to give up control to him.
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Always. Mariselle says finding the gift.
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That is it. It is a gift.
SPEAKER_04
Marty, are you willing to share about the tool?
SPEAKER_03
Oh, Donald, you're muted. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04
Marty, are you willing to share about just the the language of tool and how how that affected you, the use of the word tool?
SPEAKER_07
You're on mute.
SPEAKER_01
Not only am I muted, I also, when I exited the room, I exited the meeting because I did not have my glasses on. Yeah. So struck me when the use of the word tool, and when Donald came into our meeting, he said, you know, we've really started calling it a sacred tool, which kind of puts a real special place for that in my toolbox. But the PP of my journey has been instrumental, as well as my other coaching and education in helping me understand me. And uh the mastery journey that we were on, that some of us were able to do during the mastery program, reemphasized the importance of our lives are like a quest. And there are small ones, and sometimes there's big ones. But for me, it's just understanding collectively how it's changed how I view the world, how I view my fellow coaches, my fellow my family, and even as I mentioned, a barisa across the counter. It doesn't have to be a 60-minute session, it can be a 30-second session. That's how how I want to show up is that the way that we've been taught and the use of all of the special tools that we've been given, secret or otherwise. But uh my my vision that I had was like a collage of just my life. And the and it wasn't like a video collage, it was moving. So thank you, Mindy, for giving me that video piece when we're discussing that. But it's been really beautiful just to sort of quiet my heart, my mind a little bit while you talk about that, Donald, and allow those images to come forward. Thank you, Marty.
SPEAKER_09
Steph, may I share what you would thought? Please, yes. Yeah,
something that Steph said really impacted me. She said, PQ helped me drop my defensiveness against God. And I was like, ooh, like that is heart deep, right? Defensiveness, and then like, what what was behind that defensiveness? And it was pleaser. And so we talked about, well, what's pleaser theology? Right? God's upset upset at me because I'm not perfectly pleasing everybody around me in my world, right? So then I'm defensive with him, and then PQ, like that all dropped away. And then you realize you can serve out of love, and it feels good to serve out of love, and there's no resentment, and then you realize, oh, God's not chronically mad at me. I don't have to be defensive with him. He loves me. And that was just so beautiful stuff. I just love it.
SPEAKER_04
Yeah, thank you for sharing that.
SPEAKER_10
I I love Alexa that you just said, or maybe it was Steph who said it, like pleaser theology. I want to take that concept with all of the saboteurs of like, where's my theology, Caddy Wampus? Because I'm putting it under the saboteur theology, not biblical, godly, holy spirit-driven. That's good. Thank you.
I didn't get too far through the door or standing at the door with Christ, but it was just a hug. The door was open and we just hugged and hugged and hugged, and there was there were no words. There was nothing. It was just hugging.
SPEAKER_07
That was enough for me. Now I'm crying, saying it.
SPEAKER_04
Yeah, I I appreciate you said that there were no words. Isn't that beautiful? Anyone else? Did you notice a door or an invitation?
SPEAKER_08
I noticed the door, and I went through the door. I had several other doors that maybe for a second I thought were meant for me, but there was something inside that said those weren't the doors. So the door that I went through is one that opened to me by the Lord, and all he did was open. Open his hand as if to point, not just come in, because it was already clear that I needed to step into something. But he pointed as if I went into a space and there were people, there were beings that I was supposed to, I don't know, be with. And maybe it's indicative of my life over the past, I don't know, year or so, where I've stepped into a new environment and I've been coaching clients that PQ business training never pointed out to me. But it's been so spiritually rewarding because I feel like storing up treasures in heaven. It's been very unusual, in some ways, very odd and uncomfortable, the places I've had to go, but I feel like I'm in the right place.
SPEAKER_04
Thank you for sharing about that door. Cause at times I even I realize that sometimes the door when we open it, it may not be comfortable. And it may not be something that we already know. That's why it's an invitation.
SPEAKER_09
Anyway, and what I love about that example is discernment.
SPEAKER_04
Yeah. You remember how we talked about that?
SPEAKER_09
Right? Many doors and discerning the call, the direction. Whole different ball game.
SPEAKER_03
And I wonder if PQ didn't give you the clarity, the ability to stop, to pause, to be quiet and discern, and not just rush through the first door.
SPEAKER_04
Well, I I shared that in the group where PQ uh taught me how to be okay in the stillness. Be okay in not doing and not think that I was doing something wrong. Whereas in before, because I wasn't doing, I felt like you're wasting time. You should be doing more. And I realized that that was my saboteur telling me, hyperchiever trying to get me to do more, or controller trying to get me to do more, which was taking me away from the invitation that God had been presenting for 20 years. So it allowed me to see beyond my seeing. That's what the tool did for me. One of the things it did for me. I can list a thousand things that PQ opened up for me. But anyone else.
SPEAKER_11
And the other one's just sitting at Jesus' feet.
SPEAKER_07
Yeah.
SPEAKER_09
I love what Jackie just wrote in the chat based on the verse. You know, looking in the mirror after looking at himself, he goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. And she said, I notice he goes away immediately, not dwelling.
unknown
Yeah.
SPEAKER_09
Right? Like dwelling at the mirror, soaking in, spending time with God, listening, soaking in. That's really good. Dwell. Thank you, Jackie.
unknown
Yeah.
SPEAKER_04
Yeah, I will say this because I liken that. And this is, man, this is wearing me out today. But I liken it to the fact of how I used to show up as being conversations, and I'm listening and formulating an answer while I'm listening to you. So that image that you just said is like I never dwelled in the conversation. I never dwelled in the meeting. I was always strategizing on how to do whatever. I don't even know what it was. But that dwelling is now for me is understanding presence. And PQ allowed me to understand presence, even with starting out with just the the little rubbing of the fingers together, like focusing on that that sensation was like, whoa, how is that doing that? So anyone else?
Anyone want to talk about a wall that you might have experienced and now realize that it's it's an invitation?
SPEAKER_05
I I felt the wall, and it was the disappointment, frustration that you were bringing up or mentioning, right? And I was just telling the group that I had just literally had a few minutes in between, had a conversation with my daughter that was a little bit like this before I walked in here. I was I was feeling all that frustration. And and so the whole meditation was a moment of the word that I used is I felt just innipotent. Like I could not in between what was I what did I write down? I felt like I couldn't do anything. I felt like my arms would have been clipped off. I was flying and I had no power, right? In that moment, there was this sense of it doesn't matter what you say, it doesn't matter how you help, it doesn't matter what's going on. It's just I felt a little bit neutered, I guess that might be the best word. And so the frustration that I was feeling. And when you said open the door and see if there's an invitation, the funny part was is that, and this was the what actually is very comforting, is that I opened the door really aggressively. And she just was there, and I was like, I don't know what to do, and I don't know, let's just talk about it. Like that was the energy.
SPEAKER_04
Wow.
SPEAKER_05
And he so welcomes that. Like he welcomes that it's not always soft, and it's not always gentle, and it's not always calm, and he welcomes that too. You know, if the limit that I feel is apparent at times is the exact same place that God moves in. And when you said that, I was thinking, okay, okay. And and but I still have this frustration. So here, I'm right here. Let's talk, let's let's just talk about this, you know? And so yeah, there's that that was it was an interesting path walk down coming from this moment where you know you're dealing with children. They're not children, I have adults living in my homes. It's a different, it's a different availability to control anything. You can't. It's lighthouse work, you know, that you're trying to guide. And when they don't listen, or they don't care, or they seem like they don't care. It's frustrating as a as a parent with adults living in your home. Yeah, so I I knew that I could even take that to the door, open it up, and have a conversation. And it was welcome. And that was really comforting to have that. So it's a totally different experience, maybe than other people have had, sparked by a small trigger.
SPEAKER_04
No, but I Sarah, I appreciate you sharing that because that in itself is the invitation to come as you are with whatever, and just open the door. And the ability to see that now, right? I just hope we we we grab this today because I couldn't see that before. And I was I was functioning as a high performing man of God, a minister of the gospel, and still couldn't see and didn't know I wasn't seeing. And now that I'm seeing, I don't go backwards, I just stay in the present, and now I share what I have received that others may see. Because see, we think seeing is what we see, but seeing might be what is perceived also, and what we hear. It's the still current, like we'll go to Elijah. It was in the still small voice or the whisper that he heard God. So, where is God whispering to us now? You know it, because you get glimpses of it. He's whispering, and then you hear the knock, and he's like, I'm not gonna leave. I'm not gonna leave. I'm still here patiently waiting.
I think it's interesting because as you as we went through the contemplation, I I don't recall ever having that feeling of getting to a door. I feel like I went through it, it was kind of open. I think Maria, you said something about that, that it it was or somebody said something about it just being open. And I just walked through what I'm what I felt as we were going through the contemplation is I felt like I'm on the other side of the door. I'm doing centering prayer. I feel like maybe I should be opening doors for other people, and that's not my thing. I am never on the other side of the door. There is no handle on the other side of the door. I can't open somebody else's door for them. Only God can be on the other side of the door, and they have to open the door. God is taking them through the process. It's not my yard. I can't open that door for them. And that in itself takes a whole lot of pressure off. I'm not responsible for them opening the door. That's not mine.
SPEAKER_09
That's wisdom right there.
SPEAKER_04
Anyone want to share anything else before we end? I don't want to end today, y'all. This is such a beautiful presence today.
was just gonna piggyback on what Sarah said about being in the midst of something and then stopping, but that's exactly what PQ trained us to do, to be in our hectic midst of the day and to stop and completely recenter. And so yeah, I mean, I'm packing up a van again for a road trip. Like I've got so much going on behind me. And it was like, well, PQ rep, PQ rep, you know, and it's um we're all we're all gonna walk away and always refresh, right? Refresh and energize. So stepping into those moments, it's exactly what the PQ training was set up for, so that we don't skip it and say, uh, not today, or I really no, that's when you really need to just sit down and be still for a few minutes.
SPEAKER_04
And and thank you, Vanessa, for sharing that. And Marty, you you'll like this one too. So we've come to name that stop as a sacred pause. So we took the tool and everything that we learned from it, we now are it's sacred to us because that pause is where we're inviting God in. Yeah, Sila, love you, Marty. Right? And and you think about it this way, and as we get ready to leave in the tool, I was just reading and thinking about the children of Israel when they left the Egyptian, when they left slavery, they took gold with them, right? And it was pagan gold. But God took that pagan gold and used it to build parts of the tabernacle with. So God sanctified a tool that was given. And in the same way, that's what we we do here. We come together to learn how to use this tool for believers or non-believers, but we are the one that is bringing the presence of God into the conversations. And like Marty said, the 32nd encounter. So as you leave today, I'm I'm led here. I haven't
recommended a book for you, but we're talking about it, and it just came up. I just had it over here. If you haven't read it, Saint Teresa of a Villa's Interior Castle. This is the modern version by Peter Northcutt, and she likens the spiritual journey into seven castles within, and you progress through those castles. So I think it would be an awesome read. It's interior castle, Saint Teresa of a Villa. As soon as you put that in, trust me, thousands of them are gonna come up in Amazon. But Peter Northcutt is the modern version of it, so all right. So if we're willing before we go, just you can put it in chat or you can just say it out. What's one thing you're taking away with you today? God's love, provision, and grace over us all. Unearned love. Dwell in the conversation, dwell in the presence, present and dwell in his presence. Oh, that's beautiful. He meets you where your limits are. Good Lord, that's so wonderful, right? I have to step out all the best. Friendship with God, pause and be present. All God is faithful and trustworthy, strength and community, allowing myself to be loved. Oh, I'm gonna read that again. Allowing myself to be loved by him, because that's important. Receiving. Mindy said that earlier today, the ability to receive. Vanessa, even though I'll be mobile, moving around, traveling in my RV, I will always be in a in dwelling with God wherever I go. Live by who God says I am, not the old image in the mirror. And as we get ready to go, as we end every meeting, let me pray. And I pray that you being rooted and established in love may have the power together with all of the Lord's holy people to grasp the width, the length, the height, and the depth of the love of Christ. And to know this love, and to know that it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good pleasures. Be blessed, and we're here until next time. Stay the course and keep walking.
