The Power of Full Engagement

Our energy, not our time is “the fundamental currency of high performance”, and that skillful management of energy makes it possible for us to be fully engaged.To accomplish this, Loehr and Schwartz present a step-by-step process to help us:

(1) examine how we currently manage our energy

(2) identify specific areas where we don’t manage it well

(3) gain clarity about why 

(4) how to create a plan to manage it with more skill.

It is impossible to chart a course of change until you are able to look honestly at who you are today.

Brief version of the Full Engagement Inventory 

 

Lesson #1

• “Full engagement requires drawing on four separate but related sources of energy: physical, emotional,mental and spiritual.” These 4 sources of energy are interconnected in much the same way as the cylinders of a car engine: if one cylinder misfires, the entire engine sputters. Physical and emotional energies are our most fundamental energies. 

 

Fully engaged energy, not time is our most precious resource!

 

• All of our thoughts, emotions and behaviors have an energy consequence. The ultimate measure of our lives is not how much time we spend on the planet but rather how much energy we invest in the time that we have. 
• Managing energy, not time is the fundamental currency of high performance. Performance is grounded in the skillful management of energy. 
• Great Leaders are stewards of organizational energy. They begin by effectively managing their own energy. As leaders, they must mobilize, focus, invest, chanell, renew and expand the energy of others. 
• Full enegamet is the energy state that best serves performance 

 

Principle #1 

• • Full engagement requires drawing on four separate but related sources of energy:

• Physical, Emotional, Mental and Spiritual 

Principle #2

• Because energy diminishes both with overuse and with underuse, we must balance energy expenditure with intermittent energy renewal. 

Principle #3

• To build capacity we must push beyond our normal limits, training in the same systematic way that elite athletes do. Stress + rest = recovery 

Principle #4 

• Positive energy rituals, high specific routines for managing energy, are the key to full engagement and sustained high performance. 

 

Making change that lasts requires a 3 step process 

• Define purpose

1. 1. 1. surface and articulate the most important values to define a vision both personally and professionally. Connecting to a deep set of values and creating a compelling vision fuels a uniquely high- octane source of energy for change, it also serves as a compass for navigating the storms that inevitable arise in our lives.

• Face the truth 

1. 1. 1. it is impossible to chart a course for change until you are able to look honestly at who you are today. The first question to ask is “How are you spending your energy today?” Facing the truth begins with gathering credible data

• Take action 

1. 1. to close the gap between who you are and who you want to be –between how you manage your energy now and how you want to manage your energy to achieve whatever mission you are on. This step involves building a personal development plan grounded in positive energy rituals. Building rituals requires defining very precise behaviors and performing them at very specific times – motivated by deeply held values.

 

Paradigm of Full Engagement

• Manage energy
• Seek stress
• Life is a series of sprints
• Downtime is productive time
• Purpose fuel performance 
• Rituals / rules
• The power of full engagement 

The authors worked with the best athletes and executives for years, and found that the best ones knew how to push themselves, then recuperate, push, recuperate. Take this same approach to your emotional, mental, physical, and even spiritual life, and it’s a powerful metaphor. Think of sprints, not marathons. Be fully in whatever you’re in, then give time to recuperate. But push further each time, past your comfort zone, like a good exercise plan.

 

The size of our energy reservoir depends on the patterns of our breathing, the foods that we eat and when we eat them, the quantity and quality of our sleep, the degree to which we get intermittent recovery during the day, and the level of our fitness.

 

Chapter 3. The Pulse of High Performance. Balancing Stress and Recovery 

• • Energy is the capacity to do work. Our most fundamental need as human beings is to spend and recover energy (oscillation)
  • The opposite of oscillation is linearity: too much energy expenditure without recovery or too much recovery without sufficient energy expenditure
  • Balancing stress and recovery is critical to high performance both individually and organizationally 
  • We must maintain healthy oscillatory rhythms at all four levels of the “Performance Pyramid”- Physical, emotional, mental and spiritual 
  • We build emotional, mental and spiritual capability in precisely the same way that we build physical capacity. We must systematically expose ourselves to stress beyond our normal limits, followed by adequate recovery. 

• Expanding capability requires a willingness to endure short-term discomfort in the service of long-term reward. The key to expanding capacity is both to push beyond one’s ordinary limits and to regularly seek recovery, which is when growth actually occurs.

 

5 Factors of overwork 

• Extremely long hours that interfere with normal recovery and rest patterns 
• Night work that interferes with normal recovery
• Working without breaks or holidays 
• High-pressure work without breaks
• Extremely demanding physical labor and continuously stressful work 

 

Karoshi- Japanese term that means “death from overwork”. It is not the intensity of energy expenditure that produces burnout, impaired performance and physical breakdown, but rather the duration of expenditure without recovery. 

 

Chapter 4. Physical Energy. Fueling the Fire

• Physical energy is the fundamental source of fuel in life even if our work is almost completely sedentary. It not only lies at the heart of alertness and vitality but also affects our ability to manage our emotions, sustain concentration, think creatively, and even maintain our commitment to whatever mission we are on.
• Physical energy is derived from the interaction between oxygen and glucose.
• The two most important regulators of physical energy are Breathing and Eating.
• Balanced nutrition and hydration are fundamental for performance 
• Most human beings require seven to eight hours of sleep per night to function optimally.
• Going to bed early and waking up early helps to optimize performance.
• Interval training is more effective than steady-state exercise in building physical capacity and in teaching people how to recover more efficiently.
• To sustain full engagement, we must take a recovery break every 90 to 120 minutes.

 

Chapter 5. Emotional Energy: Transforming Threat into Challenge 

• In order to perform at our best, we must access pleasant and positive emotions: the experience of enjoyment, challenge, adventure and opportunity.
• Emotional intelligence is simply the capacity to manage emotions skillfully in the service of high positive energy and full engagement. 
• The key muscles fueling positive emotional energy are self-confidence, self-control,interpersonal effectiveness and empathy.
• Negative emotions serve survival but they are very costly and energy inefficient in the context of performance.
• The ability to summon positive emotions during periods of intense stress lies at the heart of effective leadership.
• Access to the emotional muscles that serve performance depends on creating a balance between exercising them regularly and intermittently seeking recovery.
• Any activity that is enjoyable, fulfilling and affirming serves as a source of emotional renewealand recovery.
• Emotional muscles such as patience, empathy and confidence can be strengthened in the same way that we strengthen a bicep or tricep: pushing past our current limits followed by recovery.

 

Chapter 6. Mental Energy. Appropriate Focus & Realistic Optimism 

• Mental capacity is what we use to organize our lives and focus our attention.
• The mental energy that best serves full engagement is realistic optimism seeing the world as it is, but always working positively towards a desired outcome or solution.
•  Nothing so interferes with performance and engagement as the inability to concentrate on the task at hand. To perform at our best we must be able to sustain concentration, and to move flexibly between broad and narrow, as well as internal and external focus.
• The key supportive mental muscles include mental preparation, visualization, positive self-talk,effective time management and creativity.
• Changing channels mentally permits different parts of the brain to be activated and facilitates creativity.
• Physical exercise stimulates cognitive capacity. 
• Thinking uses up a lot of energy. The consequences of insufficient mental recovery range from increased mistakes of judgment and execution to lower creativity and a failure to take reasonable account of risks. The key to mental recovery is to give the conscious, thinking mind intermittent rest,
• Maximum mental capacity is derived from a balance expending and recovering mental energy.
• When we lack the mental muscles we need to perform at our best, we must systematically build capacity by pushing past our comfort zone and then recovering.
• Continuing to challenge the brain serves as a protection against age-related mental decline.

 

Chapter 7. Spiritual Energy

• He who has a why finds a how. 

• • Spirituality doesn’t necessarily mean adhering to a particular religion but describes a commitment to a set of personal values that give us purpose as individuals and so compel us to act.
  • Purpose creates a destination.

• Spiritual energy provides the force for action in all dimensions of our lives. It fuels passion, perseverance and commitment.

• Spiritual energy is derived from a connection to deeply held values and a purpose beyond one’s self-interest.
• Character- the courage and conviction to live by our deepest values is the key muscle that serves spiritual energy. 
• The key supportive spiritual muscles are passion, commitment, integrity and honesty.
• Spiritual energy expenditure and energy renewal are deeply interconnected.
• Spiritual energy is sustained by balancing a commitment to a purpose beyond ourselves with adequate self-care.
• We often only act based on our immediate needs and desires, doing things because they provide us with immediate gratification. All too often, we don’t stop to consider whether these actions ultimately prevent us from living at our full potential.
• Spiritual work can be demanding and renewing at the same time.
• Expending spiritual capacity involves pushing past our comfort zone in precisely the same way that expanding physical capacity does.
• The energy of the human spirit can override even severe limitations of physical energy.

 

Part II: The Training System 

Chapter 8.Defining Purpose: The Rules of Engagement  

• • The most compelling source of purpose is spiritual, the energy derived from connecting to deeply held values and a purpose beyond one’s self-interest. Purpose creates a destination. We become fully engaged only when we care deeply, when we feel that what we are doing really matters. The search for meaning is among the most powerful and enduring themes in every culture since the origin of recorded history.
  • The “hero’s journey” is grounded in mobilizing, nurturing and regularly renewing our most precious resource –energy- in the service of what matters most.
  • When we lack a strong sense of purpose we are easily buffeted by life’s inevitable storms.
  • Purpose becomes a more powerful and enduring source of energy when its source moves from negative to positive, external to internal and self to others.
  • A negative source of purpose is defensive and deficit-based.
  • Intrinsic motivation grows out of the desire to engage in an activity because we value it for the inherent satisfaction it provides.
  • Values fuel the energy on which purpose is built. They hold us to a different standard for managing our energy.

• A virtue is a value in action.

• A vision statement, grounded in values that are meaningful and compelling, creates a blueprint for how to invest our energy. Regularly revisited, it serves as a source of sustaining direction and a fuel for action. On the one hand, in order to provide inspiration it needs to be lofty, ambitious and even a bit overreaching. On the other hand, in order to have teeth it needs to be realistic, specific and personal.

 

Chapter 9. Face the Truth:How are you Managing Your Energy Now? 

• Avoiding the truth consumes great effort energy. Facing the truth frees up energy and is the second stage, after defining purpose, in becoming more fully engaged.
• At the most basic level, we deceive ourselves in order to protect our self-esteem.
• Some truths are too unbearable to be absorbed all at once. Emotions such as grief are best metabolized in waves.
• Truth without compassion is cruelty to others and to ourselves.
• What we fail to acknowledge about ourselves we often continue to act out unconsciously.
• A common form of self-deception is assuming that our view represents the truth, when it is really just a lens through which we choose to view the world (Mental Models)
• Facing the truth requires that we retain an ongoing openness to the possibility that we may not be seeing ourselves or others accurately.
• It is both a danger and delusion when we become too identified with any singular view of ourselves. We are all a blend of light and shadow, virtues and vices. Strong opinions, weakly held 
• The success of any large venture depends on giving people a sense of ownership and a feeling of being valued and valuable. Genuine humility also meant that these leaders were open to opinions contrary to their own and to the possibility that their views weren’t always necessarily right. They were confident enough to be wrong without feeling diminished.
• Accepting our limitations reduces our defensiveness and increases the amount of positive energy available to us. Be open 

 

Chapter 10.Taking Action: The Power of Positive Rituals 

• Rituals serve as tools through which we effectively manage energy in the service of whatever mission we are on.
• Rituals create a means by which to translate our values and priorities into action in all dimensions of our life.
• All great performers rely on positive rituals to manage their energy and regulate their behavior.
• The limitations of conscious will and discipline are rooted in the fact that every demand on ourself-control draws on the same limited resource.
• We can offset our limited will and discipline by building rituals that become automatic as quickly as possible, fueled by our deepest values.
• The most important role of rituals is to insure effective balance between energy expenditure and energy renewal in the service of full engagement.
• The more exacting the challenge and the greater the pressure, the more rigorous our rituals need to be.
• Precision and specificity are critical dimensions of building rituals during the thirty-to sixty-day acquisition period.
• Trying not to do something rapidly depletes our limited stores of will and discipline.
• To make lasting change, we must build serial rituals, focusing on one significant change at a time.
• Two behaviors dramatically increase the likelihood of successfully locking in new rituals during the typical thirty- to sixty-day acquisition period. The authors call these behaviors Basic Training.
  • Chart the Course – to launch each day’s ritual-acquisition mission by revisiting our vision, clarifying not just what we intend to accomplish, but how we want to conduct ourselves along the way.
  • Chart the Progress – The second key to building rituals that lead to sustaining change is holding yourself accountable at the end of each day. Accountability is a means of regularly facing the truth about the gap between your intention and your actual behavior. Defining a desired outcome and holding yourself accountable each day gives focus and direction to the rituals that you build. Accountability is both a protection against our infinite capacity for self-deception and a source of information about what stands in our way

 

Getting out of our comfort zone

• To build capacity, we must systematically expose ourselves to more stress – followed by adequate recovery.

• We grow at all levels by expending energy beyond our normal limits, and then recovering.

• The catch is that we instinctively resist pushing beyond our current comfort zones.

• The best moments in our lives usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.

• The deepest satisfaction comes from our willingness to expose ourselves to new challenges and engage in novel experiences.

• The willingness to challenge our comfort zones depends partly on our degree of underlying security. To whatever degree we are consumed by anxious concerns, we are less willing to expose ourselves to any discomfort.

• Gradual and incremental exposure to increasing doses of stress.

 

Eight Steps to Balancing Your Energy

1. Change Your Eating Habits

• Food is your only source of energy, so consciously eating to maintain energy will have an impact. 

2. Balance Your Recovery Time

• With any major energy expenditure in your day, create a wave of recovery to balance the scales, which means taking time to relax, breathe deeply, and settle down.

3. Create Rituals

• Most people have very little will and discipline. Building rituals into your time will help you keep your commitments. Your rituals should be as rigid as possible so that they become automatic over time.

4. Be Positive

• Whatever you’re doing that you consider a struggle, invent ways to look at it more positively. Shift from negative to positive thinking to start really enjoying your life.

5. Stop Multitasking

• When you’re doing more than one thing at one time, you’re not giving all of your energy to anything. Focus on the most important thing at that moment to save energy in the long run.

6. Know What Matters to You and Focus on What Matters to You

• The only way to make your life extraordinary is to know what extraordinary means to you. On your dying day, what criteria could you use to measure the success of your life?Once you know what matters, set your priorities accordingly. Use rituals to help you make sure to spend enough time every day on the things you care about.

7. Beat “Energy Vampires.”

• “Energy vampires” are negative drains on your life. Beating them is often a matter of making good choices. Ask yourself how important the things draining your energy really are. Eliminate the ones that aren’t included in your core list of values or desires.

8. Use Your Stress

• Instead of trying to eliminate your stress or stormy periods in your life, use them and recognize that these periods are your best times for growth

 

• In Order To Increase Performance, We Need To Focus On Managing Our Energy Rather Than Our Time
• We Can Reach Full Engagement By Maximizing All Four Of Our Energy Levels.
• In Order To Maintain Energy Levels We Need To Train Our Energetic Muscles And Give Them Time To Recover.
• To Reach Your Full Potential, You Must Develop And Maintain Good Physical Energy.
• In Order To Maintain Positive Emotional Energy Levels, Never Neglect What You Enjoy Or Your Physical Health.
• Training Your Mental Energy Helps You Stay Focused And Creative At The Same Time.
• Spiritual Energy Is The Source For Motivation, Derived From Committing To Others As Well As Ourselves.
• To Live At Full Engagement, You Must Find A Positive And Intrinsically Motivating Purpose.
• We Have To Connect To Our Deepest Values To Fuel The Energy Which Gives Our Lives Purpose.
• Facing The Truth And Accepting Our Limitations Increases Positive Energy.
• Rituals Are Powerful Tools To Effectively Manage Energy Capacity.

 

“Across cultures, religions and time itself, people have admired and aspired to the same universal values—among them integrity, generosity, courage, humility, compassion, loyalty, perseverance—while rejecting their opposites—deceit, greed, cowardice, arrogance, callousness, disloyalty and sloth. To begin to explore more deeply the values that are most compelling to you, we suggest that you set aside uninterrupted time to respond to the following questions: Jump ahead to the end of your life. 

• What are the three most important lessons you have learned 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 would capture who you really were in your life?”

 

The road to success, power and efficiency is energy management. This is the technique of “full engagement.” With complete engagement, you will wake up every morning upbeat. You will go to work feeling positive. When you leave after work, you will look forward to coming back home. You will be fun, innovative, satisfied and feel challenged. If you are the boss, your staff will be happy to follow you. This is because you will direct them to the path of full engagement. Also, with your help, they can align their goals with your company’s goals.

 

Life Training 

• Professional athletes typically spend about 90 percent of their time training, in order to be able to perform 10 percent of the time. Their entire lives are designed around expanding, sustaining and renewing the energy they need to compete for short, focused periods of time. At a practical level, they build very precise routines for managing energy in all spheres of their lives – eating and sleeping; working out and resting; summoning the appropriate emotions; mentally preparing and staying focused; and connecting regularly to the mission they have set for themselves.
• To build capacity, we must push beyond our normal limits, training in the same systematic way that elite athletes do.
• Building “muscles” in every dimension of our lives – from empathy and patience to focus and creativity to integrity and commitment.

 

Stress + Rest = Growth

• 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.

 

Facing The Truth 

• Facing the truth about the gap between who we want to be and who we really are is never easy. Until we can clear away the smoke and mirrors and look honestly at ourselves, we have no starting point for change. When it comes to engaging in the world, high positive energy clearly serves us best. To perform optimally, we must learn to set aside negative feelings. 
• Denial is effectively a form of disengagement: It means shutting down a part of ourselves. When we fear the truth, we become more defensive, rigid and constricted. Run towards Truth. 
• “Whatever is flexible and flowing will tend to grow,” says the Tao Te Ching.
• Facing the truth also gives us an opportunity to understand and address negative feelings rather than inadvertently acting them out. Rather than denying our shortcomings and missteps, by acknowledging them we can learn from them.
• To be effective in the world, we must find a balance between looking honestly at the most painful truths and contradictions in our lives and engaging in the world with hope and positive energy. From an energy perspective, it is easy to be negative. Optimism requires courage, not just because life itself is finite, but also because we all inevitably face challenges, obstacles and setbacks along the way. 
• More often, self-deception is unconscious and provides short-term relief while prompting long-term costs. At the most basic level, we deceive ourselves in order to protect our self-esteem—our image of who we are or wish to be. To keep at bay the truths that we find most painful and unacceptable—most notably the places in our lives where our behavior conflicts with our deepest values—we use a range of strategies.
• The truth may set you free, but it won’t take you where you need to go.

Blindspots 

• Carl Jung coined the term “shadow” to describe those aspects of ourselves that we split off because they violate our self-image. Freud characterized repression as the means by which we exile unwanted feelings into our unconscious. Whatever we fail to notice and acknowledge, we tend to act out.
• When we have blind spots, we can blindside others without even being aware that we are doing
• Trapped in a narrow vision of ourselves, we may also fail to notice and nurture our hidden strengths. Much as we suppress that which we find distasteful in ourselves, so we may fail to give ourselves credit for our best qualities. To face the truth also means acknowledging and celebrating our strengths.
• Greeks wrote two exhortations into the side of Mount Parnassus. “Know Thyself” is the most celebrated. The second translates roughly as “Know All of Thyself”—a recognition that we must look beneath the surface to find the truth.
• “It is not until we have truly been shocked into seeing ourselves as we really are, instead of as we wish or hopefully assume we are, that we can take the first step toward individual reality.”- Edward Whitmont
• Facing the truth requires making yourself the object of inquiry—conducting an audit of your life and holding yourself accountable for the energy consequences of your behaviors. To get a quick overview, take out a piece of paper and a pen and set aside at least thirty quiet minutes to answer this series of questions: 
  • On a scale of 1 to 10, how fully engaged are you in your work? 
  • What is standing in your way? 
  • How closely does your everyday behavior match your values and serve your mission? Where are the disconnects? 
  • How fully are you embodying your values and vision for yourself at work? 
  • At home? In your community? Where you are falling short? 
  • How effectively are the choices that you are making physically—your habits of nutrition, exercise, sleep and the balance of stress and recovery—serving your key values? 
  • How consistent with your values is your emotional response in any given situation? Is it different at work than it is at home, and if so, how? 
  • To what degree do you establish clear priorities and sustain attention to tasks? How consistent are those priorities with what you say is most important to you?

 

How do your habits of sleeping, eating and exercising affect your available energy? 

• How much negative energy do you invest in defense spending—frustration, anger, fear, resentment, envy—as opposed to positive energy utilized in the service of growth and productivity? 
• How much energy do you invest in yourself, and how much in others, and how comfortable are you with that balance? How do those closest to you feel about the balance you’ve struck? 
• How much energy do you spend worrying about, feeling frustrated by and trying to influence events beyond your control? 
• Finally, how wisely and productively are you investing your energy?
• We call them barriers to full engagement because they impede the optimal flow of energy. Whether it is impatience, or lack of empathy, or poor time management, they are problematic because they have negative energy consequences—in your own life and on others.
• When it comes to making specific changes in the way you manage your energy in the service of performance, these barriers will help guide your choices about what new, positive rituals to build in your life. 

COMMON PERFORMANCE BARRIERS 

• Low energy Lack of trust in others Impatience Lack of integrity Defensiveness Indecisive Negative attitude Poor communication skills Critical of others Poor listening skills Low stress tolerance Lack of passion Moody/irritable Low self-confidence Poor team player Lack of empathy Inflexible/rigid Overly dependent… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
• Another way that we deceive ourselves is by assuming that our view represents the truth when it is really just an interpretation, a lens through which we see the world.
• Just because something feels real to us doesn’t make it so. The facts in a given situation may be incontrovertible, but the meaning that we ascribe them is often far more subjective. 
• It is both a danger and a delusion when we become too identified with any singular view of ourselves—for better or for worse. We open to a more complete picture when we can step back and develop the capacity for self-observation. By broadening our perspective, we can become the audience for the drama in our lives rather than becoming identified with the drama itself.
• Facing the truth requires that we retain an ongoing openness to the possibility that we may not be seeing ourselves—or others—accurately. Confidence unmediated by humility becomes grandiosity, egomania and even fanaticism.
• To his surprise, Jim Collins found that it was not the most charismatic or visibly brilliant leaders who built the most successful companies. Rather it was the leaders who demonstrated a balanced blend of two seemingly paradoxical qualities: fierce resolve and humility. It is hardly surprising that the ability to persevere in the face of setbacks is critical to success.
• it was that their humility gave others room to flourish. They recognized instinctively that the success of any large venture depends on giving people a sense of ownership and a feeling of being valued and valuable. Genuine humility also meant that these leaders were open to opinions contrary to their own and to the possibility that their views weren’t always necessarily right. They were confident enough to be wrong without feeling diminished as a result.
• Difficult and unpleasant as it may be to accept, we often feel most hostile to those who remind us of aspects of ourselves that we prefer not to see.
  • Think for a moment of someone you actively dislike. What quality in that person do you find most objectionable? Now ask yourself, “How am I that?”

“How might the opposite of what I’m thinking or feeling also be true?”

• In aikido, the warrior gains his advantage by blending with the aggression of his opponent rather than fighting against him directly. Until we embrace all of who we are, we remain our own worst enemies.
• If the truth is to set us free, facing it cannot be a one-time event. Rather, it must become a practice. Like all of our “muscles,” self-awareness withers from disuse and deepens when we push past our resistance to see more of the truth. At the same time, it is not healthy to relentlessly seek the truth any more than it is to continuously stress our biceps.

 

“There is always an optimal value beyond which anything is toxic, no matter what: oxygen, sleep, psychotherapy, philosophy.”

• The Serenity Prayer is a perfect primer on ideal energy management: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; the courage to change the things I can; and the wisdom to know the difference.”
• We spend vast quantities of energy worrying about people and situations over which we have no control. Far better to concentrate our energy on that which we can influence. Facing the truth helps us to make the distinction.
• We need courage to jump into the unknown but also compassion for our resistance to accepting what we discover. We must keep moving deliberately in the direction of truth, recognizing that the forces of self-protection will slow our progress at times.

Facing the most difficult truths in our lives is challenging but also liberating. When we have nothing left to hide, we no longer fear exposure.

 

Positive Energy Rituals 

• Whatever he did, he was either fully engaged or strategically disengaged. He even meticulously scheduled his time for relaxation and recovery, which included recreational golf, daily afternoon naps and regularly scheduled massages. On the court, during matches, he relied on another set of rituals to keep himself centered and focused, including visualizing entire points before playing them and following the same multiple-step ritual each time he stepped up to the line to serve.
• Positive energy rituals are powerful on three levels. 
  • They help us to insure that we effectively manage energy in the service of whatever mission we are on. 
  • They reduce the need to rely on our limited conscious will and discipline to take action. 
  • Finally, rituals are a powerful means by which to translate our values and priorities into action—to embody what matters most to us in our everyday behaviors.

• Great performers, whether they are athletes or fighter pilots, surgeons or Special Forces soldiers, FBI agents or CEOs, all rely on positive rituals to manage their energy and achieve their goals. The same is true, we have discovered, of anyone whose life is grounded in clearly defined values.

“Every time we participate in a ritual, we are expressing our beliefs, either verbally or more implicitly,”

• Far from precluding spontaneity, rituals provide a level of comfort, continuity and security that frees us to improvise and to take risks. Rituals provide a stable framework in which creative breakthroughs often occur. They can also open up time for recovery and renewal, when relationships can be deepened and spiritual reflection becomes possible. The sustaining power of rituals comes from the fact that they conserve energy.
• 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 sobering truth is that we have the capacity for very few conscious acts of self-control in a day.
• Much as it is possible to strengthen a bicep or a tricep by subjecting it to stress and then recovering, so it is possible to strategically build the muscle of self-control. The same training regimen applies. Exercise self-control or empathy or patience past normal limits, and then allow time for rest and these muscles become progressively stronger. More reliably, however, we can offset the limitations of conscious will and discipline by building positive rituals that become automatic—and relatively effortless—as quickly as possible.
• The same stress-recovery balance is critical in any venue that demands performance. The more precise and effective our recovery rituals, the more quickly we can restore our energy reserves.
• Lendl was recalibrating his energy: pushing away distraction, calming his physiology, focusing his attention, triggering reengagement and preparing his body to perform at its best. In effect, he was programming his internal computer. When the point began, the program ran automatically. Successful executives, managers and salespeople often have their own pre-performance rituals. In advance of an important meeting, these rituals might range from taking a walk in order to shift gears to abdominal breathing in order to relax; from rehearsing the key points to be covered to reciting a series of affirmations around desired outcomes.
• In addition to creating continuity, rituals help to facilitate change.
• To keep rituals alive and vibrant requires a delicate balance. Without the structure and clarity they provide, we are forever vulnerable to the urgent demands in our lives, the seductions of the moment and the limits of our conscious will and discipline. On the other hand, if our rituals become too rigid, unvarying and linear, the eventual consequence is boredom, disengagement and even diminished passion and productivity.
• Our dual challenge is to hold fast to our rituals when the pressures in our lives threaten to throw us off track, and to periodically revisit and change them so that they remain fresh. It is critical, for example, to create structured workouts as part of any weight-training regime. However, if you continue to challenge the same body parts in the same way, you will eventually stop gaining strength, become bored and frustrated, and likely quit. Healthy rituals straddle the territory between the comfort of the past and the challenge of the future. Used to best advantage, rituals provide a source of security and consistency without thwarting change or undermining flexibility.

Timing & Precision 

• There are several key elements in building effective energy-management rituals but none so important as specificity of timing and the precision of behavior during the thirty-to sixty-day acquisition period. A broad and persuasive array of studies confirms that specificity of timing and precision of behavior dramatically increase the likelihood of success. The explanation lies once again in the fact that our conscious capacity for self-control is limited and easily depleted. By determining when, where and how a behavior will occur, we no longer have to think much about getting it done.
• “At all times the focus must be on doing things properly. Every play. Every practice. Every meeting. Every situation. Every time.” Walsh’s point applies to any performance venue. Practice makes perfect only if the practice is perfect—or at least aims for perfection. If you cannot perform a particular task effectively when you are feeling relaxed and unpressured, it is unlikely that you will be able to do so when the pressure is high, or when you are in the midst of a crisis. Building precise rituals makes it possible to push away the distractions and fears that arise under pressure. “The less thinking people have to do under adverse circumstances, the better,” explains Walsh. “When you’re under pressure, the mind can play tricks on you. The more primed and focused you remain, the smoother you can deal with out-of-the-ordinary circumstances.”
• Precision and specificity also help to assure that our rituals themselves remain fueled by our deepest values. It is not enough simply to create a vision statement. Only by building a ritual to regularly revisit this vision can we insure a strong, continuing connection to the unique source of energy such a statement provides.
• The key is not how we make the connection to our purpose. Rather it is assuring that we do so in a regular way.

Incremental Progress is Sustainable 

• • If nothing succeeds like success, it is equally true that nothing fails like excess. Because change requires moving beyond our comfort zone, it is best initiated in small and manageable increments.
  • Our method is to build rituals in increments—focusing on one significant change at a time, and setting reachable goals at each step of the process.
  • Your odds of success are far higher if you begin with a highly specific but carefully calibrated training plan. That might mean walking for fifteen minutes a day three
  • Growth and change won’t occur unless you push past your comfort zone, but pushing too hard increases the likelihood that you will give up. Far better to experience success at each step of a progressive process. Building confidence fuels the persistence to pursue more challenging changes. We call these “serial rituals.”

• Chart the Course 

• • This practice can take many forms, but the aim is always the same: to launch each day’s ritual-acquisition mission by revisiting our vision, clarifying not just what we intend to accomplish, but how we want to conduct ourselves along the way.
  • Charting the course may include different elements. Some clients find it most effective to connect to specific deeply held values such as generosity, empathy, honesty or confidence and to use them as fuel for instituting a particular behavior or achieving a specific goal. Others find it most powerful to actively imagine how they will handle potentially difficult challenges in the day ahead. Still others simply like to set aside a designated block of time when they get up to reflect on their vision for themselves.

• Chart the Progress 

• • The second key to building rituals that lead to sustaining change is holding yourself accountable at the end of each day. Accountability is a means of regularly facing the truth about the gap between your intention and your actual behavior. Defining a desired outcome and holding yourself accountable each day gives focus and direction to the rituals that you build. For many of our clients, the best way to do this is to create a daily accountability log. This exercise can be as simple as a yes or no check on a sheet kept by the side of your bed.

If you are falling short in implementing a particular ritual or achieving the outcome that you are seeking, several explanations are possible. It may be that the ritual isn’t grounded in a value or a vision that is truly compelling to you. It may be that the goal that you set is simply too ambitious and needs to be implemented more slowly and progressively. It could also be that the ritual you put in place is faulty and needs to be restructured. Often, the failure to follow through on a new ritual masks the benefit that you derive from holding on to an existing behavior and an unacknowledged resistance to changing it. Whatever the explanation, measuring your progress at the end of the day should be used not as a weapon against yourself, but as an instructive part of the change process. We can derive as much value from studying and understanding our failures as we can from celebrating and reinforcing our successes.

 

Summary of the Full Engagement Training System 

1. Objective: Perform in the storm. 

• Build the necessary capacity to sustain high performance in the face of increasing demand. 

2. Central conclusion: Energy is the fundamental currency of high performance. 

• Capacity is a function of one’s ability to expend and recover energy. 
• Every thought, feeling and action has an energy consequence. 
• Energy is the most important individual and organizational resource. 

3. Full engagement: Optimal energy in the context of high performance. 

• Physically energized 
• Emotionally connected 
• Mentally focused 
• Spiritually aligned 

4. Full engagement is a consequence of the skillful management of energy in all dimensions. 
5. Full engagement principles: 

• Managing energy, not time, is the key to high performance. 

6. Full engagement requires drawing on four separate but related dimensions of energy: physical, emotional, mental and spiritual. 

• Because energy capacity diminishes with both overuse and underuse, we must learn to balance energy expenditure with intermittent energy renewal. 
  • To build capacity, we must push beyond our normal limits, training in the same systematic way that elite athletes do. 
  • Positive energy rituals—highly specific routines for managing energy—are the key to full engagement and sustained high performance. 
  • Full engagement requires drawing on four separate but related sources of energy: 
  • Physical capacity is reflected in one’s ability to expend and recover energy at the physical level. 
  • Emotional capacity is reflected in one’s ability to expend and recover energy at the emotional level. 
  • Mental capacity is reflected in one’s ability to expend and recover energy at the mental level. 
  • Spiritual capacity is reflected in one’s ability to expend and recover energy at the spiritual level. 
  • The most fundamental source of energy is physical. The most significant is spiritual.

7. Four sources of energy: 

• 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. 

8. Measuring energy: 

• The quantity of available energy is measured in terms of volume (low to high). 
• The quality of available energy is measured in terms of unpleasant (negative) to pleasant (positive). 
• The focus of available energy is measured in terms of broad to narrow and external to internal. 
• The force of available energy is measured in terms of self to others, external to internal and negative to positive. 

9. Optimal performance requires: 

• Greatest quantity of energy 
• Highest quality of energy • Clearest focus of energy 
• Maximum force of energy

 

10. Barriers to full engagement: 

• Negative habits that block, distort, waste, diminish, deplete and contaminate stored energy. 

11. The Full-Engagement Training System: 

• Removes barriers by establishing strategic positive energy rituals that insure sufficient capacity in all dimensions. 

12. Positive energy rituals support effective energy management. 

• Skillful energy management requires summoning the appropriate quantity, quality, direction and force of energy. 

13. Lifelong energy objective

    : To burn as brightly as possible for as long as possible in the service of what really matters. 

• Strongest possible physical pulse. 
• Strongest possible emotional pulse. 
• Strongest possible mental pulse. 
• Strongest possible spiritual pulse. 

14. Chronological age is fixed. Biological age can be modified with training.

• Biological age (reflected in performance capacity) is determined by one’s ability to effectively expend and recover energy. 

15. Full engagement requires periodic strategic recovery. 

• The energy that serves full engagement is renewed and stored during periods of strategic recovery (disengagement). 

16. The rhythmic movement between energy expenditure and energy recovery is called oscillation.

• Oscillation refers to the optimal cycle of work/rest intervals. 
• Chronic stress without recovery and chronic recovery without stress both serve to reduce capacity. 
• In sport, these conditions are referred to as overtraining and undertraining. 

17. The opposite of oscillation is linearity. 

• Linearity is excessive stress without recovery or excessive recovery with insufficient stress. 
• High-pressure situations generate powerful forces of linearity. 

18. Sustained high performance is best served by assuming the mentality of a sprinter not a marathoner. 

• Over the span of a thirty to forty year career, performance is optimized by scheduling work into 90-120 minute periods of intensive effort followed by shorter periods of recovery and renewal. 

 

19. Most of us are under trained physically and spiritually (not enough stress) and overtrained mentally and emotionally (not enough recovery). 

20. Interval (cyclical) exercise is far superior to steady-state (non cyclical) exercise in terms of enhancing energy-management skills. 

21. Energy in the human system is multidimensional. 

• A dynamic relationship exists between physical, emotional, mental and spiritual energy. 
• Changes in any one dimension of energy affect all dimensions. 

22. Energy capacities follow developmental lines. 

• First level of development is physical. 
• Second level of development is emotional/social. 
• Third level of development is cognitive/mental. 
• Fourth level of development is moral/spiritual. 

23. Each of the four dimensions follows its own developmental stages (emotional development, cognitive development, moral development) 

24. The Full Engagement training system begins spiritually with a connection to purpose. Change occurs from Spiritual -> Mental -> Emotional -> Physical 

25. High positive energy is the fuel for high performance. 

• High positive energy flows from the perception of opportunity, adventure and challenge (approach). Negative energy is precipitated by the perception of opportunity, adventure and challenge (approach). Negative energy is precipitated by the perception of threat, danger and fears about survival (avoidance). 

 

Organizational Energy Dynamics 

• A corporation or organization is simply a reservoir of potential energy that can be recruited in the service of an intended mission. 
• Every individual in the corporate body is a reservoir of potential energy. 
• Just as every cell in the human body is important to the overall health and vitality of the body, so every individual is important to the overall health and vitality of the corporate body. 
• The corporate body is a living, breathing entity comprising individual cells of dynamic energy. 
• The total capacity of the corporate body to do work is the sum of all of the capacities of the individual cells within the organization. 
• The same principles of energy management that apply individually also apply organizationally. 
• The most important organizational resource is energy. 
• In order for an organization to optimize its potential, four separate but related forms of energy must be recruited in the service of the corporate mission: physical, emotional, mental and spiritual. 
• Organizational energy capacity increases as individuals increase their collective capacity. 
• A shared sense of corporate purpose, grounded in universal values, is the highest octane source of fuel for organizational action. 
• The foundation of energy mobilization in the corporate body is physical. The quality of fitness, diet, sleep, rest and hydration among individuals plays a foundational role in determining overall organizational capacity. 
• The corporate body has a strong or a weak physical pulse which reflects its capacity for rhythmically expending and recovering energy. 
• The corporate body has a strong or weak emotional pulse which reflects its capacity for caring, compassion, confidence, enjoyment, and challenge. 
• The corporate body has a strong or weak mental pulse which reflects its capacity for good decision making, logical thinking, clear focus and creativity. 
• The corporate body has a strong or weak spiritual pulse reflecting its capacity for honesty, integrity, commitment and conviction. 
• Great leaders are experts in mobilizing and focusing all of the energy resources in the corporate body in the service of the corporate mission. 
• Great leaders recognize that high positive energy is the fuel for high performance. Every aspect of their leadership clearly reflects this understanding. 
• The energy of each individual cell in the corporate body must be actively recruited. This requires aligning individual and organizational purpose. 
• Alignment drives performance. Lack of alignment significantly restricts the quantity, quality, direction and force of available energy. 

 

Questions to answer 

On a scale from one to ten how fully engaged are you with your work? What is standing in your way? 

• How closely does your everyday behavior match your values and serve your mission? Where are the disconnects? 
• How fully are you embodying your values and vision for yourself at work? At home? In your community? Where are you falling short? 
• How effectively are the choices that you are making physi- cally—your habits of nutrition, exercise, sleep and the bal- ance of stress and recovery—serving your key values? 
• How consistent with your values is your emotional response in any given situation? Is it different at work than it is at home, and if so, how? 
• To what degree do you establish clear priorities and sustain attention to tasks? How consistent are those priorities with what you say is most important to you? 

 

Now take this inquiry one step further, and make it more open-ended. If energy is your most precious resource, let’s look at how well you manage it relative to what you say matters most. 

 

• How do your habits of sleeping, eating and exercising affect your available energy? 
• How much negative energy do you invest in defense spending—frus-tra-tion, anger, fear, resentment, envy—as op- posed to positive energy utilized in the service of growth and productivity? 
• How much energy do you invest in yourself, and how much in others, and how comfortable are you with that balance? How do those closest to you feel about the balance you’ve struck? 
• How much energy do you spend worrying about, feeling frustrated by and trying to influence events beyond your control? 
• Finally, how wisely and productively are you investing your energy?

 

1. Energy, Not Time, Is The Fundamental Currency Of High Performance

“Performance, health and happiness are grounded in the skillful management of energy. The number of hours in a day is fixed, but the quantity and quality of energy available to us is not. It is our most precious resource. The more we take responsibility for the energy we bring to the world, the more empowered and productive we become.”

If we want to perform at our best, we must first and foremost manage our energy, not our time.

 

2. The Best Way To Optimize Your Energy

• We are not meant to run at high speeds, continuously, for long periods of time. Instead we are performing at our best when we move between expending energy and intermittently renewing energy.
• We live in a so-called oscillatory universe that is characterized by rhythmic, wavelike movement between activity and rest.
• “Nature itself has a pulse, a rhythmic, wavelike movement between activity and rest. Think about the ebb and flow of the tides, the movement between seasons, and the daily rising and setting of the sun. Likewise, all organisms follow life-sustaining rhythms—birds migrating, bears hibernating, squirrels gathering nuts, and fish spawning, all of them at predictable intervals. So, too, human beings are guided by rhythms.” We are guided by rhythms.
• The most famous rhythm which we adhere to is the circadian rhythm. We live our lives in 24 hour periods. We’re on and awake for 16-18 hours (spending energy) and then we’re off and asleep for 7-9 hours (renewing energy).
• A period of activity is followed by a period of rest. A period of energy expenditure (activity) is followed by a period of energy renewal (rest).
• If we want to be at our best, we need to live a rhythmic life with periods of intense activity followed by periods of intense rest. We need to live life as a series of sprints, not a never-ending marathon.

3. You Either Fully Engage Or Strategically Disengage

“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 should be living like a sprinter. 

We’re never fully engaged and never fully off. Never fully engaged and never fully disengaged.

 

4. The Power of Rest

“To live like a sprinter is to break life down into a series of manageable intervals consistent with our own physiological needs and with the periodic rhythms of nature. This insight first crystallized for Jim when he was working with world-class tennis players. As a performance psychologist, his goal was to understand the factors that set apart the greatest competitors in the world from the rest of the pack. Jim spent hundreds of hours watching top players and studying tapes of their matches. To his growing frustration, he could detect almost no significant differences in their competitive habits during points. It was only when he began to notice what they did between points that he suddenly saw a difference. While most of them were not aware of it, the best players had each built almost exactly the same set of routines between points. These included the way they walked back to the baseline after a point; how they held their heads and shoulders; where they focused their eyes; the pattern of their breathing; and even the way they talked to themselves.”

They optimize the rest between each point. Tony Schwartz and Tim Loehr have found that the top players are able to lower their heart rates between points by up to twenty beats per minute. The average player’s heart rate stays the same, because he hasn’t optimized his recovery/rest period.

The best players in the world balance energy expenditure with energy renewal. 

 

5. The Ultradian Rhythm

To get the most out of your working day, go full out for 90-120 minutes* (fully engage) and then take a 15-20 minute break (strategically disengage).

(*Taking 2-3 short 1-5 minute breaks during your 90-120 minute work sprint is fine and even a smart idea.)

6. Use Energy Rituals to Replenish Your Tank

 

• Potential energy-renewing activities are going for a walk, having a conversation with a work buddy, doing a quick workout, meditate, do some breathing exercises, take a nap, or whatever. All of these renew your energy and optimize your performance for the next 90-120 minute work or full performance section.
• Now here’s the key with those energy-renewing activities: You want to turn them into rituals…
• When you perform an energy-renewing activity, you usually need to use some willpower and ironically some thinking energy to perform that activity. (You may have to “force” yourself to meditate or go for a walk). On the other hand, when you perform an energy ritual, you don’t need any conscious energy or willpower whatsoever.

Let’s see how a typical day of adhering to these principles might look like:

• 07:00 – 08:30: Work Sprint (Full Engagement)
• 08:30 – 08:50: Energy Ritual (Strategic Disengagement)
• 08:50 – 10:30: Work Sprint (Full Engagement)
• 10:30 – 11:00: Energy Ritual (Strategic Disengagement)
• 11:00 – 12:30: Work Sprint (Full Engagement)
• 12:30 – 13:00: Lunch
• 13:00 – 13:30: Nap (also an energy ritual and strategic disengagement)
• 13:30 – 15:00: Work Sprint (Full Engagement)
• 15:00 – 15:15: Energy Ritual (Strategic Disengagement)
• 15:15 – 17:00: Work Sprint (Full Engagement)

​(It’s a constant on and off. A full sprint followed by a break. A period of full engagement followed by a period of strategic disengagement. A period of energy expenditure is followed by a period of energy renewal. That’s oscillation. And that’s how we optimize our energy throughout our days and lives.)

 

Precision and Specificity 

“A broad and persuasive array of studies confirms that specificity of timing and precision of behavior dramatically increase the likelihood of success. The explanation lies once again in the fact that our conscious capacity for self-control is limited and easily depleted. By determining when, where and how a behavior will occur, we no longer have to think much about getting it done. A series of experiments have confirmed this pattern…

-You are far more likely to get something done when you set the exact time and place for when you’ll do it. Schedule things if you want them done. 

Our Will Power is much weaker then we think hence the importance of using rituals. Researchers say that 95% of our behavior is habitual. Only 5% is conscious. The challenge is systematically building RITUALS into our lives that allow us to put the energy enhancing behaviors on auto-pilot. As they say: “All great performers rely on positive rituals to manage their energy and regulate their behavior.” And: “The more exacting the challenge and the greater the pressure, the more rigorous our rituals need to be.”