compliments of
FutureVisionsSM
creating sustainable results in growth and performance
Conventional wisdom
holds that if you find talented people and equip them with the right
skills for the challenge at hand, they will perform at their best. In
our experience, that often isn’t s. Energy – more precisely focusing on
managing your energy more effectively - is the X factor that makes it
possible to fully ignite talent and skill.
Increased
demand progressively depletes our energy reserves-especially in the
absence of any effort to reverse the progressive loss of capacity that
occurs with age. By training in all dimensions we can dramatically slow
our decline physically and mentally, and we can actually deepen our
emotional and spiritual capacity until the very end of our lives.
By
contrast, when we live highly linear lives - spending far more energy
than we recover or recovering more than we spend-the eventual
consequence is that we break down, burn out, atrophy, lose our passion,
get sick and even die prematurely. Sadly, the need for recovery is often
viewed as evidence of weakness rather than as an integral aspect of
sustained performance. The result is that we give almost no attention to
renewing and expanding our energy reserves, individually or
organizationally.
To maintain
a powerful pulse in our lives, we must learn how to rhythmically spend
and renew energy. The richest, happiest and most productive lives are
characterized by the ability to fully engage in the challenge at hand,
but also to disengage periodically and seek renewal. Instead, many of us
live our lives as if we are running in an endless marathon, pushing
ourselves far beyond healthy levels of exertion. We become flat liners
mentally and emotionally by relentlessly spending energy without
sufficient recovery. We become flat liners physically and spiritually by
not expending enough energy. Either way, we slowly but inexorably wear
down.
Stress is
not the enemy in our lives. Paradoxically, it is the key to growth. In
order to build strength in a muscle we must systematically stress it,
expending energy beyond normal levels. Doing so literally causes
microscopic tears in the muscle fibers. At the end of a training
session, functional capacity is diminished. But give the muscle
twenty-four to forty-eight hours to recover and it grows stronger and
better able to handle the next stimulus.
While this
training phenomenon has been applied largely to building physical
strength, it is just as relevant to building "muscles" in every
dimension of our lives-from empathy and patience to focus and creativity
to integrity and commitment. What applies to the body applies equally to
the other dimensions of our lives. This insight both simplifies and
revolutionizes the way we approach the barriers that stand in our way.
The message - both explicit and implicit - is that
working longer and more continuously is the best route to high
productivity. We aren't rewarded for taking regular breaks, or for
building a workout into the middle of the day, or for any pattern of
work other than keeping our heads down and grinding away for as long as
we can. Like sprinting, this works well in the short term. It rebounds
over the long term, however.
We build
emotional, mental and spiritual capacity in precisely the same way that
we build physical capacity. We grow at all levels by expending energy
beyond our ordinary limits and then recovering. Expose a muscle to
ordinary demand and it won't grow. With age it will actually lose
strength. The limiting factor in building any "muscle" is that many of
us back off at the slightest hint of discomfort.
To meet
increased demand in our lives, we must learn to systematically build and
strengthen muscles wherever our capacity is insufficient. Any form of
stress that prompts discomfort has the potential to expand our
capacity-physically, mentally, emotionally or spiritually - so long as it
is followed by adequate recovery.
Old Paradigm New Paradigm
Manage
time Manage energy
Avoid stress Seek stress
Life is a marathon Life is a series of sprints
Downtime is wasted time Downtime is productive time
Reward fuels performance Purpose fuels performance
Self-discipline rules Rituals rule
The power of positive thinking The power of values
