Saturday, August 27, 2005
The Power of Full Engagement
The Power of Full Engagement
(c) 2003 by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz
Energy not time is the fundamental currency of high performance. Without the right quantity, quality, focus and force of energy we are compromised in any activity we undertake. To be fully engaged we must be superbly energized, emotionally connected, mentally focused and spiritually aligned with a purpose beyond our immediate self-interest. Life is a series of sprints. Down time is productive time. Purpose fuels performance. Rituals rule the power of full engagement. Professional athletes typically spend about 90% of their time training in order to be able to perform 10% of the time. You must be a corporate athlete.
High positive is integrated, confidence, challenge, joyful connected. We must balance energy expenditure with intermittent energy renewal. The happiest lives are characterized by the ability to fully engage in the challenge at hand but also to disengage periodically and to think renewal. We must learn to live our own lives as a very big sprint. Fully engaging for periods of time and then fully disengaging and thinking renewal. To build capacity we must push beyond our normal limits, training in the same systematic way that elite athletes do. We build the emotional, mental, and spiritual capacity in precisely the same way that we build physical capacity. Positive energy rituals are the key to full engagement. Define purpose by how should I spend my energy in a way that is consistent with my deepest values.
Log on to www.poweroffullengagement.com. As Aristotle said we are what we repeatedly do, as Dalai Lama said there isn't anything that isn't made easier through constant familiarity and training. Through training we can change we can transform ourselves. Great leaders are stewards of organizational energy. The concept of maximizing performance by alternating periods of activity with periods of rest was first advanced by Flavius Philostratus in A.D. 170-245 who wrote training manuals for Greek athletes. Too much energy expenditure without sufficient recovery eventually leads to burnout and breakdown. Too much recovery without sufficient stress leads to atrophy and weakness. The same process occurs emotionally, mentally and spiritually. Emotional depth and resilience depend on active engagement with others and with our own feelings. Mental acuity diminishes in the absence of ongoing intellectual challenge. Spiritual energy depends on regularly revisiting our deepest values and holding ourselves accountable. Full engagement requires cultivating a dynamic balance between the expenditure of energy (stress) and the renewal of energy (recovery) in all dimensions. We call this rhythmic wave oscillation. In the 1970s, further research showed that aversion of the same 90 to 120 minute cycles ultradian rhythms operates in our waking lives just as our sleeping lives. Somewhere between 90 and 120 minutes, the body begins to crave a period of rest and recovery.
To live like a sprinter is to break life down into a series of manageable intervals consistent with our own physiological needs and within the periodic rhythms of nature. Overwork is this decade's cocaine, the problem without a name. An estimate of as many as 25 percent of Americans have the addiction. To build capacity we must systematically expose ourselves to more stress followed by adequate recovery. Challenge the muscle past the current limit from the phenomenon known as super compensation. The body responds by building more muscle fiber. The key to expand capacity is to push beyond ones ordinary limits and to regularly seek recovery.
Eating 5 to 6 low calorie, highly nutritious meals a day ensures a steady re‑supply of energy. These snacks should be 100-150 calories and should have low glycemic foods. We allow too much time to lapse between meals and then compensate by eating too much at once. The ideal performance state is feeling satisfied you can’t feel food in the stomach and it lasts for 2‑3 hours. Drinking water is the most undervalued source of physical energy renewal. Caffeine is a diarrheic it prompts dehydration and fatigue. Add energy bars, sunflower seeds, protein powered bottled water to regular shopping list. Packed snacks for the weekends on to briefcase on Sunday evening. Replace the coffee mug with the bottled water. Even small amounts of sleep fast have a significant impact on strength.
Several studies show that human beings in isolation sleep between seven and eight hours. Mortality rates from nearly all causes of death were lowest among the people who slept between seven and eight hours. Medical errors cause 100,000 deaths a year, more than those from motor vehicle accidents, cancer, and aids are combined. Develop a ritual to go to sleep earlier. Somewhere between 3:00 p.m. or 4:00 p.m. we reach the lowest phase of both our ultradian and circadian rhythms. This is the breaking point the point of the highest level of fatigue. A short nap of just 40 minutes improves performance by an average of 34 percent and alertness by 100 percent. Winston Churchill understood the strategic value of nap. “You must sleep sometime between lunch and dinner and no halfway measures. Take off the cloths and get into bed that’s what I always do. Don't think you will be doing less work because you sleep during the day. That's a foolish notion held by people of no imagination. You will accomplish more. You get two days in one.”
Just because something feels real to us doesn’t make it so. The practice of Vipassana meditation is sometimes referred to witnessing, observing our thoughts, feeling some sensations without getting caught up in them. He followed similar routines in every dimensions of his life. Ivan Landel also practices series of daily mental focus exercises to improve his concentration. Whatever he did he was either fully engaged or strategically disengaged. What Landel understood brilliantly and instinctively was the power of positive rituals. Precise consciously acquired behaviors that become automatic in our lives filled by a deep sense of purpose. Positive energy rituals are powerful on three levels. They help us to ensure that we effectively manage energy in the service of whatever machine we are on. They reduce the need to rely on our limited conscious will and discipline to take actions. Finally rituals are powerful means by which to translate our values and priorities into action to embody what matters most to us in our everyday behaviors. The bigger the storm the more inclined we are to revert to our survival habit and the more important positive rituals become.
If you are like most of our clients you already have many rituals in place often outside your conscious awareness. The limitations of conscious will and discipline are rooted in the fact that every demand on our self-control from deciding what we eat to managing frustration from building an exercise regimen to persisting at a difficult task all draw on the same small easily depleted reservoir of energy.
The sustaining power of rituals comes from the fact that they conserve energy. We should not cultivate the habit of thinking what we are doing. Civilization advances by extending the number of operations which we can perform without thinking about them.
A well-defined ritual pulls up if we want to build into our life new behaviors that last we can’t spend much energy to sustain them. Since will and discipline are far more limited and precious resources than most of us realize they must be called upon very selectively. Because even small acts of self-control use up this limited reservoir consciously using this energy for one activity means it will be less available for the next one. The truth is that we have the capacity for very few conscious acts of self-control in a day. Few positive rituals are automatic. The rituals of basic training are so exacting especially in the Marines that soft, fearful and slovenly teenagers can be transformed into lean, confident, mission driven soldiers in just eight to twelve weeks.
There are several key elements in building effective energy management rituals but none as important as the specificity of timing and the precision of behavior during the thirty to sixty day acquisition period. The specificity of timing and precision of behavior dramatically increases the likelihood of success. Focus on one significant change at a time and set reachable goals at each step of the process.
Chart progress by holding yourself accountable at the end of each day. Accountability is the means of regularly facing the truth about the gap between your intention and your actual behavior. This exercise can be as simple as a yes or no check on a sheet kept by the side of your bed.
Full engagement, physically energized, emotionally connected, mentally focused, spiritually aligned. Physical capacity is defined by quantity of energy. Emotional capacity is defined by quality of energy. Mental capacity is defined by focus of energy. Spiritual capacity is defined by force of energy. The optimal performance requires the greatest quantity of energy, the highest quality, the clearest focus and the maximum force.
Performance is optimized by scheduling work into 90 to 120 minute periods of intensive effort followed by shorter periods of recovery and renewal. Most of us are under-trained physically and spiritually not enough stress and over trained mentally and emotionally, not enough recovery. Most important physical energy strategies is to go to bed early and wake up early at the same time. Eat breakfast every day in five to six small meals daily minimizing sugars. Drink 8 to 10 glasses of water daily. Take breaks every ninety minutes get some physical activity daily. Good food; almonds, apples, beans, chicken, cottage cheese, eggs, green vegetables, mozzarella cheese, peanuts, pears, tomatoes, tuna, turkey.
What are the three important lessons you have learnt and why they are so critical at the end of your life? Who are you at your best? What is the one sentence inscription you would like to see on your tombstone? Write your vision statement in the present tense. My top work related performance barriers, energy performance consequences, ritual building strategy, targeted muscle performance barrier, value driving change, effective performance consequence, positive energy rituals supporting this change. Accountability log, rate yourself daily on the scale of 1 to 5 with 5 being very successful and 1 not so successful.
Those among our clients who find a way to get real recovery break throughout the day consistently report that they sustain high energy well into the evening. Interval training is a means by which to build more energy capacity and to tolerate more stress but also to teach the body to recover more efficiently. By the age of 90 one in three women will have suffered a fracture of the hip. More women die as a consequence of hip fractures than from breast cancer, groin cancer, and ovarian cancer combined. We must take a recovery break every 90 to 120 minutes.
To perform our best we must access pleasant and positive emotions, enjoyment, challenge, adventure, opportunity. A study of 700 aging nuns, the nuns who wrote expressing the preponderance of positive emotions, happiness, love, hope, gratitude, and contentment tended to live longer and more productive lives.
The Gallup Organization found that no single factor more clearly predicts the productivity of an employee than his relationship with his direct supervisor. Gallup found the key drivers of productivity include whether they feel cared for by a supervisor or someone at work, whether they have received recognition or appraise during the past seven days, and whether someone at work regularly encourages their development. The ability to communicate positive energy consistently lies at the heart of effective management. How many hours a week do you do devote to activities purely for the pleasure and renewal they provide. What percentage of the time would you describe yourself as feeling deeply relaxed? When was the last time you truly let go and felt fully disconnected? Any activity that is enjoyable, fulfilling, and affirming tends to prompt positive emotions. Depending on your interests that may include singing, gardening, dancing, yoga, reading, playing sport, etc. The key is making such activities priorities.
For the most part watching television is the mental and emotional equivalent of eating junk food. It is correlated with increased anxieties and low-level depression.
Ritual and one step action – Erica told that this new routine seems almost intolerably indulgent, akin to cutting a class in school; that the blend of dance classes, gardening, and her time in the park make her feel so much better that all three activities began to exert strong pull on her. One of the key factors in sustained performance is having at least one good friend at work. The motivations that make a change may often just be the first step.
People launching a major change in their lives often failed several times before succeeding in a sustained way.
Allan’s ritual felt awkward at first. By the end of the month he noticed he was more affirmative, nodding head when he listened, paraphrasing what he had heard. It all had a passively positive impact on others. He decided to institute a routine of getting up from his desk in the afternoon in order to visit the offices of one of his direct report. Allan could sense that the colleagues he stopped in to see were very happy by this undivided attention. He had a mantra, kindness matters. This simple mantra made him instantly aware of how he wanted to behave under pressure. In situations in which Paul’s irritation continued to rise he took a deep abdominal breath and relaxes the muscles in the shoulders and his face.
Any activity that is enjoyable, fulfilling, and affirming serves as a source of emotional renewal and recovery. Emotional muscles such as patience, empathy, and competence can be strengthened in the same way that we strengthen a bicep or triceps, pushing past our current limits followed by a recovery. Nothing so interferes with the performance and engagement as the inability to concentrate on the task at hand. Anything that prompts appropriate focus and realistic optimism serves performance.
The key supportive muscles that fuel optimum mental energy include mental preparation, visualization, positive self-talk, effective time management, and creativity. Where are you when you get your best ideas? Almost no one claims to get their best ideas at work. The greatest geniuses, De Vinci told his patron, sometimes accomplish more when they work less. He told his staff that he is less interested in how much time they devoted to their job but in the quality of energy they brought to their tasks. While the liver, lungs and kidneys wear out the brain gets sharper the more it is used. Indeed it improves with use.
Every time you learn something it builds new connections for the brain cells. If you do have a few changes, a few plaques and tangles associated with Alzheimer's and a few brain cells become damaged you still have a reserve because of all these additional connections you have built up. Continuing to challenge the brain protects us from decline as we age. Even learning the few new words of vocabulary each day pushes up to develop mental muscles that serve performance. Time management is not an end in itself. It serves the higher goals of effective energy management. We have a limited number of hours in a day; we must not only make intelligent choices about how to use them but also ensure that we have the energy available to invest in our highest priority.
She took a certain pleasure in her multi-tasking ability answering e-mail while she talked on the phone for example. The result was that she used to really give all of her attention to anything. The first ritual that Sarah decided to launch was to spend 20 to 30 minutes when she awoke in the morning shifting her attention from her usual external focus to an internal one. Spiritual energy is the unique force for action in all dimensions of our lives. Supportive spiritual muscles include passion, commitment, integrity, and honesty. The irony is that self-absorption ultimately drains energy and impedes performance. The more preoccupied we are with our own fears and concerns, the less energy we have available to take positive action. Nietzsche said he who has a ‘why’ to live for can bear with almost any ‘how’.
The most compelling source of purpose is spiritual. Purpose creates a destination. We become fully engaged only when we care deeply. Purpose is what lights the star, floats our boats, and feeds our souls. We seek help from a mentor. The supreme ordeal we finally slay the dragon. Because we so often lack deep roots with firm beliefs and compelling values we are easily buffeted by the prevailing winds. If we lack a strong sense of purpose we cannot hold our ground when we are challenged by life’s inevitable storm. How excited are you to get to work in the morning? How much do you enjoy what do you for its own sake rather than for what it gets you? How accountable do you hold yourself to a deeply held set of values?
Arthur Ashe said from what we get in life we make a living; from what we give we make a life. Defining what mattered to him created a breakthrough for Andy. He settled on five key values - persistence, integrity, excellence, creativity, and commitment. I am asking myself am I generating the kind of leadership providing directions, setting strategy and responding to the market place in a way that is reflective of my five key values. For me the values create a very simple mirror. They keep me on purpose and they renew me when I find myself wandering off course. My sense of commitment is way up and I am communicating that energy to others. I am leaping out of bed in the mornings. I have absolutely retaken responsibility for the results of my company. I am leading with purpose which I was not doing before.
Imagine for a moment that you are on the sea in a boat that springs a leak. Your purpose immediately becomes mobilized around keeping the boat from sinking. But so long as you are busy bailing water you can’t navigate towards the destination. The same is true in our lives. When we are preoccupied with filling our own holes to stay afloat we have little energy available to define any deeper or more enduring purpose. By contrast when we are able to move from the inner experience of threat to one of challenge we introduce a whole new range of possibilities into our lives. Rather than reacting to fear we can focus on what moves us and feels meaningful.
Researchers have found almost no correlation between income levels and happiness. Between 1957 and 1990 per person income doubled. Reports of happiness did not increase at all but rates of depression grew nearly tenfold. Money may not buy happiness but happiness may help you get rich. The third factor that ignites a deeper sense of purpose is shifting attention from fulfilling our own needs and desires to serve something beyond ourselves. Jump ahead to the end of your life. What are the three most important lessons you have learnt and why are they so critical? Think of someone that you deeply respect. Describe three qualities in this person that you most admire. Who are you at your best? What one sentence inscription would you like to see on your tombstone that will capture who you really were and your life?
Here is a deepest values checklist - creativity, family, freedom, friendship, honesty, humor, integrity. The next step in defining purpose is to create a vision for how we intend to invest our energy. R.D. Lang captured this in a short poem. The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice and because we fail to notice that we fail to notice there is little we can do to change until we notice how failing to notice shapes our thoughts and deeds. Denial was akin to holding a finger in a dike. Denial was effectively a form of disengagement that means shutting down a part of ourselves. Selective inattention does not necessarily mean denying or avoiding troubling issues. Instead it may be a strategy for putting them on hold in order to deal with them at a more appropriate time.
Self-deception is unconscious and provides short-term relief while prompting long-term costs. Drugs and alcohol can temporarily blot out uncomfortable feelings and provide a delusion well being. Every form of addiction is bad no matter whether the narcotic, the alcohol, or morphine, or idealism. Rationalization is another common defense against the truth. Intellectualizing is a means of acknowledging a truth cognitively without experiencing its impact emotionally. Projection is an especially insidious defense against facing the truth. It involves attributing ones own unacknowledged impulses to others. We often see anger or hatred or arrogance or greed in those around rather than fully owning the same feelings in ourselves. Carlos Young coins the term shadow to describe those aspects of ourselves that we split off because they violate our self-image. If expressing anger was deemed unacceptable as we grew up and doing so now violates our self-image we may express it covertly by being critical and judgmental or stubborn or chronically resentful.
For millennia sages have understood that the ultimate spiritual challenge is to wake up. It is not until we have truly been shocked into seeing ourselves as we really are instead of those we wish or hopefully assume we are that we can take the first step towards individual reality. Most people put a positive spin on their own experience. Roger was deft at rationalizing his unhealthy behaviors aided by a dose of self-deception. We call this a not-yet dead syndrome.
How fully engaged are you in your work on a scale of 1 to 10? What is standing in your way? How closely does your everyday behavior match your values and serve your mission. How fully are you imbibing your values and vision for yourself at work, at home, in your community? How effectively are the choices that you are making physically of nutrition, exercise, sleep, balance obstructing recovery, serving your key values? How consistent with your values is your emotional response in any given situation? For what degree do you establish clear priorities and sustained attention to tasks? How much energy do you invest in yourself and how much in others and how comfortable are you with that balance? How much energy do you spend worrying about feeling frustrated by and trying to influence events beyond your control? How wisely and productively are you investing your energy?
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0743226747
(c) 2003 by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz
Energy not time is the fundamental currency of high performance. Without the right quantity, quality, focus and force of energy we are compromised in any activity we undertake. To be fully engaged we must be superbly energized, emotionally connected, mentally focused and spiritually aligned with a purpose beyond our immediate self-interest. Life is a series of sprints. Down time is productive time. Purpose fuels performance. Rituals rule the power of full engagement. Professional athletes typically spend about 90% of their time training in order to be able to perform 10% of the time. You must be a corporate athlete.
High positive is integrated, confidence, challenge, joyful connected. We must balance energy expenditure with intermittent energy renewal. The happiest lives are characterized by the ability to fully engage in the challenge at hand but also to disengage periodically and to think renewal. We must learn to live our own lives as a very big sprint. Fully engaging for periods of time and then fully disengaging and thinking renewal. To build capacity we must push beyond our normal limits, training in the same systematic way that elite athletes do. We build the emotional, mental, and spiritual capacity in precisely the same way that we build physical capacity. Positive energy rituals are the key to full engagement. Define purpose by how should I spend my energy in a way that is consistent with my deepest values.
Log on to www.poweroffullengagement.com. As Aristotle said we are what we repeatedly do, as Dalai Lama said there isn't anything that isn't made easier through constant familiarity and training. Through training we can change we can transform ourselves. Great leaders are stewards of organizational energy. The concept of maximizing performance by alternating periods of activity with periods of rest was first advanced by Flavius Philostratus in A.D. 170-245 who wrote training manuals for Greek athletes. Too much energy expenditure without sufficient recovery eventually leads to burnout and breakdown. Too much recovery without sufficient stress leads to atrophy and weakness. The same process occurs emotionally, mentally and spiritually. Emotional depth and resilience depend on active engagement with others and with our own feelings. Mental acuity diminishes in the absence of ongoing intellectual challenge. Spiritual energy depends on regularly revisiting our deepest values and holding ourselves accountable. Full engagement requires cultivating a dynamic balance between the expenditure of energy (stress) and the renewal of energy (recovery) in all dimensions. We call this rhythmic wave oscillation. In the 1970s, further research showed that aversion of the same 90 to 120 minute cycles ultradian rhythms operates in our waking lives just as our sleeping lives. Somewhere between 90 and 120 minutes, the body begins to crave a period of rest and recovery.
To live like a sprinter is to break life down into a series of manageable intervals consistent with our own physiological needs and within the periodic rhythms of nature. Overwork is this decade's cocaine, the problem without a name. An estimate of as many as 25 percent of Americans have the addiction. To build capacity we must systematically expose ourselves to more stress followed by adequate recovery. Challenge the muscle past the current limit from the phenomenon known as super compensation. The body responds by building more muscle fiber. The key to expand capacity is to push beyond ones ordinary limits and to regularly seek recovery.
Eating 5 to 6 low calorie, highly nutritious meals a day ensures a steady re‑supply of energy. These snacks should be 100-150 calories and should have low glycemic foods. We allow too much time to lapse between meals and then compensate by eating too much at once. The ideal performance state is feeling satisfied you can’t feel food in the stomach and it lasts for 2‑3 hours. Drinking water is the most undervalued source of physical energy renewal. Caffeine is a diarrheic it prompts dehydration and fatigue. Add energy bars, sunflower seeds, protein powered bottled water to regular shopping list. Packed snacks for the weekends on to briefcase on Sunday evening. Replace the coffee mug with the bottled water. Even small amounts of sleep fast have a significant impact on strength.
Several studies show that human beings in isolation sleep between seven and eight hours. Mortality rates from nearly all causes of death were lowest among the people who slept between seven and eight hours. Medical errors cause 100,000 deaths a year, more than those from motor vehicle accidents, cancer, and aids are combined. Develop a ritual to go to sleep earlier. Somewhere between 3:00 p.m. or 4:00 p.m. we reach the lowest phase of both our ultradian and circadian rhythms. This is the breaking point the point of the highest level of fatigue. A short nap of just 40 minutes improves performance by an average of 34 percent and alertness by 100 percent. Winston Churchill understood the strategic value of nap. “You must sleep sometime between lunch and dinner and no halfway measures. Take off the cloths and get into bed that’s what I always do. Don't think you will be doing less work because you sleep during the day. That's a foolish notion held by people of no imagination. You will accomplish more. You get two days in one.”
Just because something feels real to us doesn’t make it so. The practice of Vipassana meditation is sometimes referred to witnessing, observing our thoughts, feeling some sensations without getting caught up in them. He followed similar routines in every dimensions of his life. Ivan Landel also practices series of daily mental focus exercises to improve his concentration. Whatever he did he was either fully engaged or strategically disengaged. What Landel understood brilliantly and instinctively was the power of positive rituals. Precise consciously acquired behaviors that become automatic in our lives filled by a deep sense of purpose. Positive energy rituals are powerful on three levels. They help us to ensure that we effectively manage energy in the service of whatever machine we are on. They reduce the need to rely on our limited conscious will and discipline to take actions. Finally rituals are powerful means by which to translate our values and priorities into action to embody what matters most to us in our everyday behaviors. The bigger the storm the more inclined we are to revert to our survival habit and the more important positive rituals become.
If you are like most of our clients you already have many rituals in place often outside your conscious awareness. The limitations of conscious will and discipline are rooted in the fact that every demand on our self-control from deciding what we eat to managing frustration from building an exercise regimen to persisting at a difficult task all draw on the same small easily depleted reservoir of energy.
The sustaining power of rituals comes from the fact that they conserve energy. We should not cultivate the habit of thinking what we are doing. Civilization advances by extending the number of operations which we can perform without thinking about them.
A well-defined ritual pulls up if we want to build into our life new behaviors that last we can’t spend much energy to sustain them. Since will and discipline are far more limited and precious resources than most of us realize they must be called upon very selectively. Because even small acts of self-control use up this limited reservoir consciously using this energy for one activity means it will be less available for the next one. The truth is that we have the capacity for very few conscious acts of self-control in a day. Few positive rituals are automatic. The rituals of basic training are so exacting especially in the Marines that soft, fearful and slovenly teenagers can be transformed into lean, confident, mission driven soldiers in just eight to twelve weeks.
There are several key elements in building effective energy management rituals but none as important as the specificity of timing and the precision of behavior during the thirty to sixty day acquisition period. The specificity of timing and precision of behavior dramatically increases the likelihood of success. Focus on one significant change at a time and set reachable goals at each step of the process.
Chart progress by holding yourself accountable at the end of each day. Accountability is the means of regularly facing the truth about the gap between your intention and your actual behavior. This exercise can be as simple as a yes or no check on a sheet kept by the side of your bed.
Full engagement, physically energized, emotionally connected, mentally focused, spiritually aligned. Physical capacity is defined by quantity of energy. Emotional capacity is defined by quality of energy. Mental capacity is defined by focus of energy. Spiritual capacity is defined by force of energy. The optimal performance requires the greatest quantity of energy, the highest quality, the clearest focus and the maximum force.
Performance is optimized by scheduling work into 90 to 120 minute periods of intensive effort followed by shorter periods of recovery and renewal. Most of us are under-trained physically and spiritually not enough stress and over trained mentally and emotionally, not enough recovery. Most important physical energy strategies is to go to bed early and wake up early at the same time. Eat breakfast every day in five to six small meals daily minimizing sugars. Drink 8 to 10 glasses of water daily. Take breaks every ninety minutes get some physical activity daily. Good food; almonds, apples, beans, chicken, cottage cheese, eggs, green vegetables, mozzarella cheese, peanuts, pears, tomatoes, tuna, turkey.
What are the three important lessons you have learnt and why they are so critical at the end of your life? Who are you at your best? What is the one sentence inscription you would like to see on your tombstone? Write your vision statement in the present tense. My top work related performance barriers, energy performance consequences, ritual building strategy, targeted muscle performance barrier, value driving change, effective performance consequence, positive energy rituals supporting this change. Accountability log, rate yourself daily on the scale of 1 to 5 with 5 being very successful and 1 not so successful.
Those among our clients who find a way to get real recovery break throughout the day consistently report that they sustain high energy well into the evening. Interval training is a means by which to build more energy capacity and to tolerate more stress but also to teach the body to recover more efficiently. By the age of 90 one in three women will have suffered a fracture of the hip. More women die as a consequence of hip fractures than from breast cancer, groin cancer, and ovarian cancer combined. We must take a recovery break every 90 to 120 minutes.
To perform our best we must access pleasant and positive emotions, enjoyment, challenge, adventure, opportunity. A study of 700 aging nuns, the nuns who wrote expressing the preponderance of positive emotions, happiness, love, hope, gratitude, and contentment tended to live longer and more productive lives.
The Gallup Organization found that no single factor more clearly predicts the productivity of an employee than his relationship with his direct supervisor. Gallup found the key drivers of productivity include whether they feel cared for by a supervisor or someone at work, whether they have received recognition or appraise during the past seven days, and whether someone at work regularly encourages their development. The ability to communicate positive energy consistently lies at the heart of effective management. How many hours a week do you do devote to activities purely for the pleasure and renewal they provide. What percentage of the time would you describe yourself as feeling deeply relaxed? When was the last time you truly let go and felt fully disconnected? Any activity that is enjoyable, fulfilling, and affirming tends to prompt positive emotions. Depending on your interests that may include singing, gardening, dancing, yoga, reading, playing sport, etc. The key is making such activities priorities.
For the most part watching television is the mental and emotional equivalent of eating junk food. It is correlated with increased anxieties and low-level depression.
Ritual and one step action – Erica told that this new routine seems almost intolerably indulgent, akin to cutting a class in school; that the blend of dance classes, gardening, and her time in the park make her feel so much better that all three activities began to exert strong pull on her. One of the key factors in sustained performance is having at least one good friend at work. The motivations that make a change may often just be the first step.
People launching a major change in their lives often failed several times before succeeding in a sustained way.
Allan’s ritual felt awkward at first. By the end of the month he noticed he was more affirmative, nodding head when he listened, paraphrasing what he had heard. It all had a passively positive impact on others. He decided to institute a routine of getting up from his desk in the afternoon in order to visit the offices of one of his direct report. Allan could sense that the colleagues he stopped in to see were very happy by this undivided attention. He had a mantra, kindness matters. This simple mantra made him instantly aware of how he wanted to behave under pressure. In situations in which Paul’s irritation continued to rise he took a deep abdominal breath and relaxes the muscles in the shoulders and his face.
Any activity that is enjoyable, fulfilling, and affirming serves as a source of emotional renewal and recovery. Emotional muscles such as patience, empathy, and competence can be strengthened in the same way that we strengthen a bicep or triceps, pushing past our current limits followed by a recovery. Nothing so interferes with the performance and engagement as the inability to concentrate on the task at hand. Anything that prompts appropriate focus and realistic optimism serves performance.
The key supportive muscles that fuel optimum mental energy include mental preparation, visualization, positive self-talk, effective time management, and creativity. Where are you when you get your best ideas? Almost no one claims to get their best ideas at work. The greatest geniuses, De Vinci told his patron, sometimes accomplish more when they work less. He told his staff that he is less interested in how much time they devoted to their job but in the quality of energy they brought to their tasks. While the liver, lungs and kidneys wear out the brain gets sharper the more it is used. Indeed it improves with use.
Every time you learn something it builds new connections for the brain cells. If you do have a few changes, a few plaques and tangles associated with Alzheimer's and a few brain cells become damaged you still have a reserve because of all these additional connections you have built up. Continuing to challenge the brain protects us from decline as we age. Even learning the few new words of vocabulary each day pushes up to develop mental muscles that serve performance. Time management is not an end in itself. It serves the higher goals of effective energy management. We have a limited number of hours in a day; we must not only make intelligent choices about how to use them but also ensure that we have the energy available to invest in our highest priority.
She took a certain pleasure in her multi-tasking ability answering e-mail while she talked on the phone for example. The result was that she used to really give all of her attention to anything. The first ritual that Sarah decided to launch was to spend 20 to 30 minutes when she awoke in the morning shifting her attention from her usual external focus to an internal one. Spiritual energy is the unique force for action in all dimensions of our lives. Supportive spiritual muscles include passion, commitment, integrity, and honesty. The irony is that self-absorption ultimately drains energy and impedes performance. The more preoccupied we are with our own fears and concerns, the less energy we have available to take positive action. Nietzsche said he who has a ‘why’ to live for can bear with almost any ‘how’.
The most compelling source of purpose is spiritual. Purpose creates a destination. We become fully engaged only when we care deeply. Purpose is what lights the star, floats our boats, and feeds our souls. We seek help from a mentor. The supreme ordeal we finally slay the dragon. Because we so often lack deep roots with firm beliefs and compelling values we are easily buffeted by the prevailing winds. If we lack a strong sense of purpose we cannot hold our ground when we are challenged by life’s inevitable storm. How excited are you to get to work in the morning? How much do you enjoy what do you for its own sake rather than for what it gets you? How accountable do you hold yourself to a deeply held set of values?
Arthur Ashe said from what we get in life we make a living; from what we give we make a life. Defining what mattered to him created a breakthrough for Andy. He settled on five key values - persistence, integrity, excellence, creativity, and commitment. I am asking myself am I generating the kind of leadership providing directions, setting strategy and responding to the market place in a way that is reflective of my five key values. For me the values create a very simple mirror. They keep me on purpose and they renew me when I find myself wandering off course. My sense of commitment is way up and I am communicating that energy to others. I am leaping out of bed in the mornings. I have absolutely retaken responsibility for the results of my company. I am leading with purpose which I was not doing before.
Imagine for a moment that you are on the sea in a boat that springs a leak. Your purpose immediately becomes mobilized around keeping the boat from sinking. But so long as you are busy bailing water you can’t navigate towards the destination. The same is true in our lives. When we are preoccupied with filling our own holes to stay afloat we have little energy available to define any deeper or more enduring purpose. By contrast when we are able to move from the inner experience of threat to one of challenge we introduce a whole new range of possibilities into our lives. Rather than reacting to fear we can focus on what moves us and feels meaningful.
Researchers have found almost no correlation between income levels and happiness. Between 1957 and 1990 per person income doubled. Reports of happiness did not increase at all but rates of depression grew nearly tenfold. Money may not buy happiness but happiness may help you get rich. The third factor that ignites a deeper sense of purpose is shifting attention from fulfilling our own needs and desires to serve something beyond ourselves. Jump ahead to the end of your life. What are the three most important lessons you have learnt and why are they so critical? Think of someone that you deeply respect. Describe three qualities in this person that you most admire. Who are you at your best? What one sentence inscription would you like to see on your tombstone that will capture who you really were and your life?
Here is a deepest values checklist - creativity, family, freedom, friendship, honesty, humor, integrity. The next step in defining purpose is to create a vision for how we intend to invest our energy. R.D. Lang captured this in a short poem. The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice and because we fail to notice that we fail to notice there is little we can do to change until we notice how failing to notice shapes our thoughts and deeds. Denial was akin to holding a finger in a dike. Denial was effectively a form of disengagement that means shutting down a part of ourselves. Selective inattention does not necessarily mean denying or avoiding troubling issues. Instead it may be a strategy for putting them on hold in order to deal with them at a more appropriate time.
Self-deception is unconscious and provides short-term relief while prompting long-term costs. Drugs and alcohol can temporarily blot out uncomfortable feelings and provide a delusion well being. Every form of addiction is bad no matter whether the narcotic, the alcohol, or morphine, or idealism. Rationalization is another common defense against the truth. Intellectualizing is a means of acknowledging a truth cognitively without experiencing its impact emotionally. Projection is an especially insidious defense against facing the truth. It involves attributing ones own unacknowledged impulses to others. We often see anger or hatred or arrogance or greed in those around rather than fully owning the same feelings in ourselves. Carlos Young coins the term shadow to describe those aspects of ourselves that we split off because they violate our self-image. If expressing anger was deemed unacceptable as we grew up and doing so now violates our self-image we may express it covertly by being critical and judgmental or stubborn or chronically resentful.
For millennia sages have understood that the ultimate spiritual challenge is to wake up. It is not until we have truly been shocked into seeing ourselves as we really are instead of those we wish or hopefully assume we are that we can take the first step towards individual reality. Most people put a positive spin on their own experience. Roger was deft at rationalizing his unhealthy behaviors aided by a dose of self-deception. We call this a not-yet dead syndrome.
How fully engaged are you in your work on a scale of 1 to 10? What is standing in your way? How closely does your everyday behavior match your values and serve your mission. How fully are you imbibing your values and vision for yourself at work, at home, in your community? How effectively are the choices that you are making physically of nutrition, exercise, sleep, balance obstructing recovery, serving your key values? How consistent with your values is your emotional response in any given situation? For what degree do you establish clear priorities and sustained attention to tasks? How much energy do you invest in yourself and how much in others and how comfortable are you with that balance? How much energy do you spend worrying about feeling frustrated by and trying to influence events beyond your control? How wisely and productively are you investing your energy?
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