Sue Johnston
Leadership Coach & Facilitator
Founder of LifeStar — The Operating System for Sustainable Leadership
Mental Fitness
Build the mental habits that make everything else work better.
Mental fitness is the capacity to respond to life's challenges with a positive rather than negative mindset. Like physical fitness, it can be trained — and the results show up everywhere: in your decisions, your relationships, your resilience under pressure, and your ability to lead well over time.
Positive Intelligence®
The Positive Intelligence® (PQ) Six-Week Foundation Programme is one of the most practical mental fitness tools I use with coaching clients.
Developed by Shirzad Chamine at Stanford, PQ is grounded in neuroscience, positive psychology, and cognitive behavioural psychology. It identifies the internal "saboteurs" — the mental patterns that undermine performance and wellbeing — and builds the "sage" capacities that replace them.
Curious which saboteurs are running your show? Take the free Saboteur Assessment →
Over six weeks, the programme combines:
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The PQ app with daily mental fitness exercises — just 15 minutes a day.
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Weekly focus areas building progressively through the programme.
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Three or six coaching sessions with Sue to apply the learning to your real leadership context.
WHAT TO EXPECT
Participants typically notice and this happens quite quickly):
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Quieter self-criticism and less reactive thinking
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Greater clarity and focus under pressure
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Stronger relationships and more effective communication
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More consistent energy and emotional regulation
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A calmer, steadier way of leading.
HOW IT FITS
Positive Intelligence® is a powerful, standalone programme in its own right. I offer it as such — it stands completely on its own merits and delivers real results independently of any other work.
That said, in my experience it is one of the most effective precursors to any leadership or personal development work. It gets to the heart of our internal operating system — the mental patterns running quietly in the background that shape every decision, relationship, and response under pressure.
For that reason it sits beautifully alongside courage-building work and the LifeStar Operating System. Leaders who have done the PQ programme arrive at deeper leadership work with greater self-awareness, steadier mental habits, and more capacity to do the work that matters.
But it's equally valuable on its own. Many clients do the six-week programme and find it genuinely life-changing — full stop.