Index
The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal (Loehr, Jim;Schwartz, Tony)
Human beings are complex energy systems, and full engagement is not simply one-dimensional. The energy that pulses through us is physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual.
We, too, must learn to live our own lives as a series of sprints—fully engaging for periods of time, and then fully disengaging and seeking renewal before jumping back into the fray to face whatever challenges confront us.
As Nietzsche put it, “That which does not kill us makes us stronger.”
The power of rituals is that they insure that we use as little conscious energy as possible where it is not absolutely necessary, leaving us free to strategically focus the energy available to us in creative, enriching ways.
Too much energy expenditure without sufficient recovery eventually leads to burnout and breakdown. (Overuse it and lose it.) Too much recovery without sufficient stress leads to atrophy and weakness. (Use it or lose it.)
Cultures that encourage people to seek intermittent renewal not only inspire greater commitment, but also more productivity.
We are oscillatory beings in an oscillatory universe. Rhythmicity is our inheritance.
Expanding capacity requires a willingness to endure short-term discomfort in the service of long-term reward.
“We can experience pleasure without any investment of psychic energy, whereas enjoyment happens only as a result of unusual investments of attention . . . ,” writes psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, author of Flow. “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 key to expanding capacity is both to push beyond one’s ordinary limits and to regularly seek recovery, which is when growth actually occurs.
The most important rhythms in our lives are the ones we typically take for granted—most notably breathing and eating.
simplest antidotes to anger and anxiety is to take deep abdominal breaths.
researchers found that a series of short doses of intense aerobic activity—each one sixty seconds or less—followed by complete aerobic recovery, had a profound positive impact on participants. In a period of just eight weeks, the subjects exhibited significant improvements in cardiovascular fitness, heart-rate variability and mood.
Rigorous training improves a person’s ability to perform on the battlefield. . . . The concept of stress inoculation is very much like the concept of preventing a particular disease through vaccination. Like immunization, which occurs only when the vaccine is given in the proper dosage, stress inoculation occurs only when the stress intensity is at the optimal level—high enough to activate a person’s psychological and biological systems, but low enough so as not to overwhelm them. If the stress level is not high enough, inoculation will not occur; if the stress level is too high, stress sensitization will occur, and the individual will probably perform less effectively when he is stressed again.
Snowden discovered that those nuns whose writing expressed a preponderance of positive emotions (happiness, love, hope, gratitude and contentment) tended to live longer and more productive lives.
Researchers such as Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi have found that prolonged television watching is actually correlated with increased anxiety and low-level depression. Conversely, the richer and deeper the source of emotional recovery, the more we refill our reserves and the more resilient we become. Effective emotional renewal puts us in a position to perform more effectively, especially under pressure.
To be fully engaged emotionally requires celebrating what the Stoic philosophers called anacoluthia—the mutual entailment of the virtues. By this notion, no virtue is a virtue by itself. Rather, all virtues are entailed. Honesty without compassion, for example, becomes cruelty. We are, in effect, the sum of our complexities and contradictions. Practically, we must focus on building emotional capacity wherever it is that we are most out of balance. The ultimate goal is to move more freely and flexibly between our own opposites.
The brain represents just 2 percent of the body’s weight, but requires almost 25 percent of its oxygen.
“The greatest geniuses,” da Vinci told his patron, “sometimes accomplish more when they work less.” In his Treatise on Painting, da Vinci wrote, “It is a very good plan every now and then to go away and have a little relaxation. . . . When you come back to the work your judgment will be surer, since to remain constantly at work will cause you to lose the power of judgment.”
Five stages are now widely recognized: first insight, saturation, incubation, illumination and verification.
The quantity of energy we have to spend at any given moment is a reflection of our physical capacity. Our motivation to spend what we have is largely a spiritual issue.
Some activities generate considerable spiritual renewal without demanding significant energy expenditure. These include walking in nature, reading an inspirational book, listening to music, or hearing a great speaker. Spiritual practices, by contrast, can be renewing and demanding at the same time. Meditation, for example, requires mobilizing highly focused attention to quiet the mind, but may also prompt a rejuvenating experience of expansive openness, connectedness and even joy. Like yoga, meditation is a practice that can cut across all dimensions, building spiritual capacity while also providing mental and emotional recovery.
all service to others, which involves considerable effort and even inconvenience, but may also provide a profound source of meaning and deep satisfaction.
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. Subordinating our self-interest to something beyond ourselves may feel threatening at first, but as Gary discovered, it can also be immensely rewarding—a means by which to experience a deeper sense of meaning and greater self-worth. The commitment to live according to our deepest values not only creates a more stable center in our lives but also helps us to better navigate the challenges we face along the way.
Nietzsche’s famous words, “He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how.”
we learned that visualizing a performance challenge in advance is a very effective way to allay anxiety and to perform without awkwardness or self-consciousness.
Wade Roofs has defined spirituality as “knowing our deepest selves and what is sacred to us.”
Arthur Ashe once put it: “From what we get in life, we make a living. From what we give, we make a life.”
emotions such as fear, anger and even hatred can be a powerful source of energy. The problem is the cost. As we saw earlier, negative emotions drain energy and prompt the release of hormones that are toxic to our systems over time.
Sometimes it’s more important to stay connected with people than to be right.”
we feel more passion for and derive more pleasure from doing what we freely choose and most enjoy.
capitolo molto bello. Deepest purpose.
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.
When we aren’t investing energy in protecting our turf, we have the potential to see more of the truth and to continue to learn and grow.
We can derive as much value from studying and understanding our failures as we can from celebrating and reinforcing our successes.
“What amazes me most,” Roger told us, “is that once my values became clear and I got the hang of building rituals, most of the changes I made weren’t that hard. My life acquired a certain rhythm. I can feel how much my energy has rubbed off on the people in my life. My challenge now is just to feel the pulse and keep the beat.”