Vedere Consulting

This is the ninth and final post in a series on maximizing performance through managing energy based on the work of Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz in their book, The Power of Full Engagement.

Did you know that up to 95% of what we do during the day is done automatically? Our brains work hard to create habits because it takes a lot less energy to function that way. As we know intuitively, exercising self control is much more draining! Since so much of our behavior is habitual, the more our habits serve our deepest values and our life’s purpose, the more satisfied and fulfilled we’ll be.

I wrote earlier about the importance of creating new habits if you want to manage your energy more effectively. Today, I’d like to expand on that a bit. Creating a new habit is hard, but the sooner the new behavior becomes automatic and effortless, the more likely it will become permanent.

Many of us have negative energy habits, automatic behaviors that drain us of the energy we need to perform at our best. Here are some examples of common ones:
• Skipping lunch or other meals
• Checking e-mail throughout the day
• Working long hours without a break
• Staying up late and then relying on caffeinated beverages to get us going

You will be most successful in changing your negative energy habits if you create a positive habit to replace it. And you will be more successful in creating and maintaining a positive habit if you:

• Make sure the new habit is precise and specific—that is, you decide on a specific time of day and a very clear behavior. For example, when I wanted to change my eating habits to maintain my energy, my dietitian recommended I eat small meals or snacks at 6:00 a.m., 8:00 am, 10:00 a.m., noon, 3:00 p.m. 6:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. Eating at those specific times (or close to them) kept me from getting hungry and kept me on track. A couple trying to find time to talk about their deepest thoughts to each other were unsuccessful until they agreed to start at 8:00 a.m. on Saturday morning.

• Make the sure the new habit you create is about something you want to do rather than about something you don’t want to do. One of my clients found that checking e-mail all day long was interfering with her concentration. She made her day much more productive by scheduling 3 times a day when she responded to e-mail. Because she created a new habit for checking e-mail, she was able to let go of checking it constantly.

• Revisit the reason you’re creating the new habit regularly and occasionally change it up so it doesn’t get boring.

• Make your changes incremental. You can overwhelm yourself with too many changes at once. Try one or two, gain some success, and then try something else. One of my clients felt she was unproductive because she didn’t get enough sleep. She was a night owl and sometimes stayed up until 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning and then got up at 7:00 a.m. She first created a bedtime ritual that would end at midnight and then gradually moved it backwards until she was able to go to sleep regularly at 11:00.

• Monitor your progress. It’s important that you know how well you’re doing. Many people find using a simple tick sheet or a brief journal entry at night is enough to track progress. After all, although it’s great to know what you want to do, it’s much better if you’re actually doing it! Monitoring yourself is not about beating yourself up if you’re falling short of your goal. It’s about looking for hidden barriers to your success. Perhaps your goal was too ambitious and you need to scale back. Perhaps the new behavior isn’t tied to what’s truly important to you. Or perhaps the old behavior has benefits you don’t want to let go of. In any case, recording your progress is intended to be instructive.

The goal of creating a new habit is the embodiment of what you hold most dear. Cultivating the habits you want is key to a satisfying life.

For more ideas on small changes you can make to increase your performance:
contact Plum for a free brainstorming session: plum@vedereconsulting.com or 804-261-6483.
or
read The Power of Full Engagement, http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=the+power+of+full+engagement+

For a free or an inexpensive Full Engagement Profile, see: http://www.lgeperformance.com/assessment_diagnostic.html

For more information about the authors of The Power of Full Engagement and their work, see:
Jim Loehr is the Chairman, CEO and Co-Founder of the Human Performance Institute, http://www.lgeperformance.com/index.html .
Tony Schwartz is Founder and President of The Energy Project, http://www.theenergyproject.com/home.html .

Labels: Emotional Intelligence Self Mastery, Work and Life Balance

Click for more information on executive coaching with Vedere Consulting. You can also follow Plum on Twitter.

This is the eighth post in a series on maximizing performance through managing energy based on the work of Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz in their book, The Power of Full Engagement.

As noted in my last post, change is driven by a purpose so powerful it overcomes our inertia. Yet purpose alone isn’t enough. You also have to recognize the truth of the present. You have to take a hard look at your current behavior and how it falls short of your values. You have to recognize it’s you who are creating the gap. You have to acknowledge the consequences of your actions. When you do that, the gap between reality and the ideal creates the impetus to act.

This happened to me recently. Although my family, my friends and my colleagues are very important to me, I am chronically late—to everything. Family gatherings. Meetings. Movies. I have driven my husband crazy with my lateness for the 33 years we’ve been married. One day, I asked a friend who is always on time how she did it. She said it was hard, but she believed keeping people waiting is disrespectful so she made a conscious effort to be on time. She also said, in a very gentle way, that she had learned to expect that I’d be late when we were getting together.

Well, that got my attention. I had to acknowledge how my behavior communicated a lack of respect to the people who matter most to me. I felt ashamed. The gap between my values and my behavior couldn’t have been clearer. And I decided right then that I would be on time from now on. And so far—at least six weeks into it, I’ve been fairly successful although not perfect. To achieve this, I had to take a hard look at my behavior. I learned that I tried to squeeze in one more task when it was time to go. I learned that I hated to wait so I would leave at the last possible minute and get caught in traffic. I learned that I would let what was in front of me take priority over my commitment to a friend. This scrutiny helped me clarify what I had to do differently to change my behavior.

Loehr and Schwartz identified typical executive dysfunctional behaviors and their consequences (as well as the short term benefits that reinforce the behavior). I’ve listed three of them here. To see the whole list, look on pps. 154-155 of The Power of Full Engagement.

Expedient Adaptation	Benefit Now	Cost	Long Term Consequences
Poor Work/Life Balance	Accomplish more at work, less emotional risk, avoid responsibilities outside work	Lack of time for intimate connection, resentment of family and friends	Unfulfilling relationships; tendency to impatience and anger; burnout; regret; guilt; and loss of passion
Multi-tasking	Get more tasks accomplished; feel productive; high excitement	Divided attention; less fully engaged with people; lower quality of work	Shallowness of connection to others; less capacity for absorbed attention; lower quality of work
No Exercise	More time for work and other obligations	Less energy, strength, general well-being; lost source of recovdery from mental activities; more susceptibility to sickness	Undermines health; lowers concentration and access to high positive energy; increases chance of early death

Are any of these behaviors familiar to you? Finding your gaps pays off. Ask people for feedback. Pay attention to yourself. Where do you fall short of your ideal? What are the consequences? What actions are contributing?

For more ideas on small changes you can make to increase your performance:

contact Plum for a free brainstorming session: plum@vedereconsulting.com or 804-261-6483.

or

read The Power of Full Engagement, http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=the+power+of+full+engagement+

For a free or an inexpensive Full Engagement Profile, see: http://www.lgeperformance.com/assessment_diagnostic.html

For more information about the authors of The Power of Full Engagement and their work, see:

Jim Loehr is the Chairman, CEO and Co-Founder of the Human Performance Institute, http://www.lgeperformance.com/index.html .

Tony Schwartz is Founder and President of The Energy Project, http://www.theenergyproject.com/home.html .

Labels: Emotional Intelligence Self Mastery, Work and Life Balance

Click for more information on executive coaching with Vedere Consulting. You can also follow Plum on Twitter.

“He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how.”
--Friedrich Nietzsche

This is the seventh post in a series on maximizing performance through managing energy based on the work of Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz in their book, The Power of Full Engagement.

In my November 12 post, I discussed how difficult it is to change a habit—even one that no longer serves us. Our brains are wired to resist change. Without sufficient energy and focus to move in a new direction, we remain inert. What gives us the strength to change—to exercise more, become more organized, to listen to others more carefully, to run more efficient meetings—is the power of purpose. Purpose is connecting deeply to the values that are driving us to change, recognizing what we are doing now that is disconnected from that value and creating a clear picture of where we want to go.

Purpose creates resolve and gives us the motivation and energy we need overcome inertia. Loehr and Schwartz write about an overworked executive who was overweight, flabby and irritable because of the long hours and weekends he put in at the office. It was only when he was able to reconnect to the deep love he had for his wife and children and recognized how he was failing them by his constant absences that he was able to change his ingrained work habits. In essence, he found something important to say yes to that enabled him to say no to his old habit.

According to Schwartz and Loehr, purpose becomes a more powerful and enduring source of energy when it is positive rather than negative—it moves toward something you want rather than something you fear, it is internal rather than external, and it is focused on others rather than on yourself. In another example from Schwartz and Loehr, a lifelong smoker was only able to quit when she recognized the harm she was doing to her children by smoking and she became clear about how she wanted to be there for them as they matured. It was her love for her children that was strong enough to overcome her addiction. No external motivation, not even her own health, was as powerful.

Purpose is more motivating when we see for ourselves how the old habit or behavior is no longer serving us. No habit is created in a vacuum. The behavior served a purpose and that’s why we did it often enough to create a habit. Once we recognize the original purpose and decide it’s less important than our new goal, or that we can achieve the original purpose in a different, more nourishing way, we can make a more conscious choice about our behavior in the future. Sometimes this takes a while, and it requires honest introspection and evaluation, but it makes a permanent behavior change possible.

Finally, purpose is more powerful when we have a clear picture of where we want to go. A question I often ask my clients is “what will be different when you make this change.” The more specific and clear that picture is, the more motivating it becomes. Visualizing success over and over, as elite athletes do in competition, actually anchors that picture in our brains. We rehearse the new behavior in our minds, we can see, hear and feel the results, and it actually becomes easier to do in reality.

So yes, we can change even ingrained habits when we recognize them for what they are and decide the purpose they serve is not worth the cost. We can change when we create a powerful new purpose that gives us the energy, focus and resolve to stick with it, even when we temporarily revert back to our old ways. We can change when we focus on that purpose, visualize our success and practice the new behavior one day at a time.

Good luck!

For more ideas on small changes you can make to increase your performance:
contact Plum for a free brainstorming session: plum@vedereconsulting.com or 804-261-6483.
or
read The Power of Full Engagement, http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=the+power+of+full+engagement+

For a free or an inexpensive Full Engagement Profile, see: http://www.lgeperformance.com/assessment_diagnostic.html

For more information about the authors of The Power of Full Engagement and their work, see:
Jim Loehr is the Chairman, CEO and Co-Founder of the Human Performance Institute, http://www.lgeperformance.com/index.html .
Tony Schwartz is Founder and President of The Energy Project, http://www.theenergyproject.com/home.html .

Labels: Emotional Intelligence Self Mastery, Work and Life Balance

Click for more information on executive coaching with Vedere Consulting. You can also follow Plum on Twitter.

The Master acts without doing anything and teaches without saying anything. Things arise and he lets them come; things disappear and he lets them go.
--Lao Tsu

A client of mine—a physician with a thriving practice-- was feeling overwhelmed. She was struggling to meet the demands of her work, a husband and two active children, a large network of friends, and service on a non-profit board. On top of this, she was planning a 50th wedding anniversary for her parents. She was sacrificing her exercise and meditation routines in an effort to get everything done and she still felt important things were falling through the cracks.

My client is, like many of us, is trying to juggle a multitude of priorities. Her job, her family, her friends, community service, her parents are all important to her. Exercise and meditation had been keeping her sane. What was she to do?

The typical response to such a dilemma is to either keep putting one foot in front of the other or to start problem solving. I find neither response works well. As Albert Einstein famously said, “The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them.” Instead, I encouraged my client to pay attention to her current experience. What emotion does being overwhelmed evoke? What does she feel in her body when she experiences being overwhelmed? What does that feeling tell her about what she needs to feel less anxious?

These questions might sound strange at first, but they help a person observe their current experience rather than becoming stuck in it. The person is able to get some distance from the experience while still staying connected to it in an immediate way. Attention is focused on the experience rather than the myriad of theories our minds create to explain our dilemmas. And because our experience is more closely connected to the core of who we are, it becomes easier to let go of preconceived notions and allow our creative core to suggest new ways to solve the problem.

My client’s creative solution was to hire a stay-at-home mom who wanted a few hours of work to help her organize her home office. She felt her current system of sticky notes and piles of bills on the foyer table was contributing to her sense of chaos and that if she could get that organized and a system in place it would be easier for her to stay on top of things. She also decided to look at all she had on her plate to see if there were tasks she could let go of, delegate to others, delay, or diminish in some way.

Lao Tsu calls this process of problem solving “non-doing.” Non-doing doesn’t mean doing nothing, it means becoming fully aware of one’s current experience, accepting it and seeing what it has to offer, in other words, going with the flow of life rather than trying to change it. It is counter-intuitive to those of us taught that the best way to solve problems is through effort and hard work. Yet non-doing unleashes a creative force that promotes better “problem solving” simply from paying attention and remaining curious about our experience. I invite you to try it and see for yourself.

Labels: Emotional Intelligence Self Mastery, Work and Life Balance

Click for more information on executive coaching with Vedere Consulting. You can also follow Plum on Twitter.

This is the sixth post in a series on maximizing performance through managing energy based on the work of Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz in their book, The Power of Full Engagement.

When I coach people who want to manage their energy more effectively, I am often shoulded upon. As in, “I know I should exercise,” “I know I should spend more time with my family,” or “I know I should take more time to develop my staff.” Of course, we all recognize that knowing we should often doesn’t equate to doing what we should or even doing what we want.

There’s a good reason for this. We form habits consciously or unconsciously. According to David Rock (http://www.davidrock.net/ )in his interview with neuroscientist Jeffrey Schwartz, our brains are responsible. When we first start doing something (like learning to drive) that activity is controlled by our “working memory,” which is responsible for new activities. There isn’t a lot of storage in our working memory and it’s easily fatigued, so once we start doing something over and over and we get used to it, that activity gets stored in the basal ganglia, which is located near the brain’s core. The basal ganglia functions a bit like automatic transmission, it works without our conscious thought. Once an action gets to the basal ganglia, it becomes a habit. It’s comfortable and we just do it without thinking. The same thing happens when we begin a new behavior, like turning on the TV as soon as we get home or checking voice mail on the way to work—do it often enough and it becomes an unconscious habit.

Two other brain functions make habitual behavior stronger. First, as actions and thoughts occur, they form connections between the brain’s neurons. The more frequently the action and thought occurs, the thicker and stronger the connection. Habits form really strong connections. Secondly, the brain is built to detect anything unusual in the environment and to alert us to the change. This alert is closely connected to the emotional brain, so a feeling, often anxiety or uncertainty, accompanies the alert.

What all this means is that once we form a habit, like checking e-mail before going to work, we start doing it without thinking, we have a strong tendency to keep doing it, and our brain sends out an alert when we do something different! No wonder change is so hard. We know we “should” do something, but just knowing we should isn’t enough to break past the brain’s reliance on the habits we’ve already formed.

So are we doomed to follow the same old behaviors forever? Of course not! We add and subtract habits many times in our lives. But it isn’t easy. First, we have to wake up to the habits that are no longer serving us. We have to become conscious we have a habit. We then have to recognize what we truly want, what is really important to us and why we want do something badly enough to get past the brain’s alert system. Next, we have to create a new habit—a ritual that can quickly become automatic itself, so we don’t have to continue relying on our working memory to get us going.

The next two blog posts will go into successfully changing your habits in more detail.


For more ideas on small changes you can make to increase your performance:
contact Plum for a free brainstorming session: plum@vedereconsulting.com or 804-261-6483.
or
read The Power of Full Engagement, http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=the+power+of+full+engagement+

For a free or an inexpensive Full Engagement Profile, see: http://www.lgeperformance.com/assessment_diagnostic.html

For more information about the authors of The Power of Full Engagement and their work, see:
Jim Loehr is the Chairman, CEO and Co-Founder of the Human Performance Institute, http://www.lgeperformance.com/index.html .Tony Schwartz is Founder and President of The Energy Project, http://www.theenergyproject.com/home.html

Labels: Work and Life Balance

Click for more information on executive coaching with Vedere Consulting. You can also follow Plum on Twitter.

This is the fifth post in a series on maximizing performance through managing energy based on the work of Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz in their book, The Power of Full Engagement.

In earlier posts, I’ve discussed the physical, mental and emotional wellsprings of our energy and the importance of balancing and developing each source to maximize performance. The fourth wellspring, our spiritual energy, flows from our deepest values and purpose. This energy is the most powerful source of our motivation and perseverance. Without it, we run the risk of living expedient, dissatisfied and, paradoxically, less productive lives. To tap it, we must be connected to the things we hold most dear—giving them our time and attention, and to a purpose that extends beyond ourselves.

In his Harvard Business Review article, Tony Schwartz identified three important sources of spiritual energy: doing what you do best and enjoy most at work, allocating enough time to the areas of your life you think are most important, and living in accord with your deepest values. In each of these areas it’s important to become conscious of what matters most to you and to align your life in a way that nourishes those areas.

In the work I do with executives at the Federal Executive Institute, one of my favorite exercises is to ask participants to look at how they spend their time in a typical week and to determine if they are spending it in a way that’s consistent with what they value most. It’s a pretty sobering experience to identify something like your family as the most important thing in your life and then to see how little time you devote to them. But it’s an important realization. For some, it’s discouraging. For others, it’s life changing, because they realize that the way they spend their time matters deeply. Newly conscious of their unconscious choices, they have more control over what they do in the future.

As with the other wellsprings of energy, it is making small, incremental changes and forming new rituals that are most successful in boosting your spiritual energy and making higher performance possible. To spend more time at work on things you do well and enjoy most, you first have to find your “sweet spots”—the areas of work that are almost effortless, inspiring and productive for you. You then design ways to do more of these things and less of the work that bores and tires you. For example, a former colleague of mine enjoyed public speaking so much that he began conducting workshops for Dale Carnegie. That led to increased opportunities to do training in his regular job and finally to a role that was much more aligned with his passions.

Other rituals support connecting yourself to the things you care about most and your deepest values. One of my clients, a busy executive who wanted to devote more time to making pottery, a source of great satisfaction for him, worked two hours later one night and left work two hours early the next afternoon so he could have several hours of concentrated time in his studio at least one day during the work week. A client who deeply valued her relationship with God took 20 minutes each night to read the Bible before going to bed.

Because it is more intangible, we don’t realize what an important source of energy the spirit is to us. Even if we do, it is easy in our fast-paced lives to let external demands rather than internal callings dictate our actions. However, cutting ourselves off from this energy source is ultimately debilitating. The deep, spiritual part of our being is our connection to the Divine, to something greater than ourselves, to all life. What Schwartz and Loehr tell us is that tending to our spiritual selves is also practical. We become more productive.

For more ideas on small changes you can make to increase your mental energy:
contact Plum for a free brainstorming session: plum@vedereconsulting.com or 804-261-6483.
or
read The Power of Full Engagement, http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=the+power+of+full+engagement+

For a free or an inexpensive Full Engagement Profile, see: http://www.lgeperformance.com/assessment_diagnostic.html

For more information about the authors of The Power of Full Engagement and their work, see:
Jim Loehr is the Chairman, CEO and Co-Founder of the Human Performance Institute, http://www.lgeperformance.com/index.html .
Tony Schwartz is Founder and President of The Energy Project, http://www.theenergyproject.com/home.html .

Labels: Work and Life Balance

Click for more information on executive coaching with Vedere Consulting. You can also follow Plum on Twitter.

This is the fourth post in a series on maximizing performance through managing energy based on the work of Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz in their book, The Power of Full Engagement.

If there’s one thing that gets my clients (and most of the rest of us) in trouble, it’s the myth of multi-tasking. We believe that if we do several things at once, we’ll get more done. It simply isn’t true. Our brains are wired to focus on one thing at a time. When we switch from task to task, for example when we interrupt writing a report to answer the telephone or read an e-mail, it takes time for the brain to refocus and we lose concentration. Tasks take up to 25% longer to complete.

Concentration and focus are the key components of mental energy, the third energy wellspring Loehr and Schwartz describe in The Power of Full Engagement. Like physical and emotional energy, mental energy relies on exercise mixed with intermittent recovery. We are better off concentrating on one task at a time, taking a break when we complete it and then switching to the next task. Following this strategy allows us to get far more done in less time.

If that seems impossible in today’s world, think again. Tony Schwartz, in a Harvard Business Review article, talked about a group in a national accounting consulting firm, whose boss, Michael Henke, announced at the beginning of the winter busy season that he was turning off his instant messaging system for periods of time during the day so he could concentrate on his work. During those times he would be unavailable to his staff, unless it was a true emergency.
He also encouraged his staff to take regular breaks throughout the day and eat more regularly. According to Schwartz, the group finished the busy season, “under budget and more profitable” than other teams who didn’t follow the same program. They got more done in less time.

Many people begin the work day checking phone messages and answering e-mail. That’s a recipe for inefficiency because it’s so easy to get caught up in other people’s deadlines and emergencies. Julie Morgenstern, in Making Work Work, tells clients to block off the first hour of the day to concentrate on the most important thing they need to get done. Making progress on or completing that task produces a feeling of accomplishment that powers the rest of the day. Morgenstern also recommends setting aside regular, concentrated times to do e-mail, maybe 2-3 times during the day. The duration depends on the volume and urgency of one’s inbox, but clients find that they can empty their in-box at each session.

Mental energy is also impacted by oscillation. As I stated in an earlier post, we can concentrate fully for up to 90-120 minutes. After that point, we begin to lose focus and tasks take longer. Regular breaks, even if they are brief, can do much to restore our mental energy. A brisk walk, listening to music, deep breathing, stretching, eating away from your desk, a conversation with a friend—anything you find refreshing—will restore your mental energy and concentration.

Physical, emotional and mental energy all impact each other. Research shows that exercise sends more blood to the brain, which enhances our capacity to think. Negative emotions can interfere with concentration. Eating small, healthy meals at regular intervals fuels the brain’s capacity to work.

If you want to get more done in less time, it pays to focus on how you’re focusing! Take a break. Eat right. Do the most important thing first. Resist being sucked in by e-mail. You’ll be glad you did.

For more ideas on small changes you can make to increase your mental energy:

contact Plum for a free brainstorming session: plum@vedereconsulting.com or 804-261-6483.
or
read The Power of Full Engagement, http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=the+power+of+full+engagement+

For a free or an inexpensive Full Engagement Profile, see: http://www.lgeperformance.com/assessment_diagnostic.html

For more information about the authors of The Power of Full Engagement and their work, see:

Jim Loehr is the Chairman, CEO and Co-Founder of the Human Performance Institute, http://www.lgeperformance.com/index.html .

Tony Schwartz is Founder and President of The Energy Project, http://www.theenergyproject.com/home.html .

Labels: Work and Life Balance

Click for more information on executive coaching with Vedere Consulting. You can also follow Plum on Twitter.

This is the third post in a series on maximizing performance through managing energy based on the work of Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz in their book, The Power of Full Engagement.

You’ve got an important deadline. You try to work on it but you keep getting interrupted. You’re finding it hard to concentrate. The pressure is starting to build. You’re getting anxious. You may not be aware of it, but your breathing is getting shallower, your muscles are starting to contract. Your system is getting flooded with adrenaline and cortisol. Blood is being diverted from your brain and you no longer can think clearly. You are under too much stress.

Ladies and gentlemen, your negative emotions have taken over and your performance will suffer. Emotions are the key to the quality of our energy just as our physical state is key to the quantity of our energy. If we are to manage energy to maximize performance, we must learn to manage our emotions—to turn from negative emotions like fear, depression, anger and impatience to positive emotions like joy, excitement and challenge.

According to Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz, optimum performance requires high amounts of positive energy. This is not about being naïve or unrealistic, it is about recognizing we have more control over our emotions than we realize. It means looking at any reality—even a harsh one—honestly, and then choosing your reaction to it. A successful sales manager I know didn’t get a job promotion he wanted. He was given a training assignment instead. He found an aspect of the new job that played to his passions and strengths and turned it into an award winning program. He looked for the hidden opportunity in the hand he’d been dealt, found it and then exploited it. That's realistic optimism.

Schwartz and Loehr point out that we can run down our emotional energy just like we can exhaust ourselves physically if we constantly spend emotional energy without recovery. Negative emotions are more costly to our energy levels than positive ones just as a gas guzzling car uses more gas than a hybrid.

We build our capacity to respond optimistically and confidently to challenges when we seek out and maintain sources of emotional renewal. Spending time with people who are important to us, building friendships that are truly give and take, and engaging in activities that are enjoyable, affirming and/or fulfilling are important sources of emotional renewal. Because they are more that a pleasant activity, we must treat the time we devote to them as sacrosanct if we are to perform at our best.

Another way to build our emotional capacity is to develop ways to build optimism. Tony Schwartz, in an article in the Harvard Business Review, suggests developing rituals such as taking time to express gratitude for what you have, taking time to express appreciation to others, and reframing. Reframing means examining your interpretation of an event and determining if another interpretation is plausible and more “hopeful and personally empowering.” For example, if I contact a client and they don’t call me back I can easily interpret their silence to mean they are uninterested in my services. I get discouraged and maybe write them off. On the other hand, it is just as plausible and more empowering to interpret their silence as they are busy and/or out of town. If I wait, they will probably call me back, or I may choose to follow up in a week or two. In either case, I’m going to be more confident when I talk with them and if I’m more confident, I’m more likely to respond in a way that will win business now or in the future.

As always, the key to building emotional capacity is to make small incremental changes. For example, one client of Loehr and Schwartz’s decided to call his parents at least one time a week during his commute home. Another client made it a habit to take a bike ride with his son every Saturday. Another took a report to lunch once a week and told them something about them she appreciated. Still another asked himself when faced with a tough situation “how will I see this in 6 months?” Another started taking a dance class once a week.

Take a look at your emotional energy. Do you need to build it?

For more ideas on small changes you can make to increase your emotional energy:
contact me for a free brainstorming session: plum@vedereconsulting.com or 804-261-6483.
or
read The Power of Full Engagement, http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=the+power+of+full+engagement+

For a free or an inexpensive Full Engagement Profile, see: http://www.lgeperformance.com/assessment_diagnostic.html

For more information about the authors of The Power of Full Engagement and their work, go to these websites:

Jim Loehr is the Chairman, CEO and Co-Founder of the Human Performance Institute, http://www.lgeperformance.com/index.html .

Tony Schwartz is Founder and President of The Energy Project, http://www.theenergyproject.com/home.html .

Labels: Work and Life Balance

Click for more information on executive coaching with Vedere Consulting. You can also follow Plum on Twitter.

Physical energy is the foundational energy source. Without it, we have difficulty maintaining focus, positive emotional energy, creativity or even a sense of mission. It literally fuels everything we do. Because we work primarily in sedentary jobs that require mental capacity, we forget that our capacity to think and act is rooted in our bodies—in our brains and circulatory systems, our muscles and our respiratory systems. How we care for our physical selves either creates or depletes the energy we depend on.

We don’t have to be marathoners to work at our best, but we do have to bear in mind the principles of full engagement discussed in last week’s post (and based on Tony Schwartz and Jim Loehr’s book, The Power of Full Engagement): oscillation, overuse and underuse, change in one energy source produces change in all, and small changes produce the best results. The point of paying attention to our energy sources (of which physical energy is one) is that we ultimately can do more in less time—much more so than if we focus solely on managing our time.

The first challenge in developing our physical energy is to pay attention to our bodies’ physical needs:
· A steady source of high quality energy
· Oxygen
· Sufficient balance between work and rest
· A sufficient level of cardiovascular fitness
· A sufficient level of strength

A steady energy supply comes from eating several small meals a day (i.e. breakfast, lunch and dinner with a small, 100-150 calorie snack between each meal) and from eating foods low in simple sugars and with high nutritional value like proteins, whole grains, fruits and vegetables.

The idea is to keep your blood sugar at a steady level and to avoid the spike and drop pattern that comes from eating sugary foods and skipping meals. Another important factor is eating the right amount—to little and we are starving ourselves, too much and we are sluggish.
We all take oxygen for granted. Who goes about their day thinking about breathing? Yet controlling our breath helps us calm ourselves in tense situations and brings us energy when we exert ourselves. A yoga practice first begins with a focus on the breath-- learning to pay attention to this life force and use different breathing to serve different purposes.

The balance between work and recovery encompasses two key dimensions. We are rhythmic beings—that is our bodies have several rhythms we must support if we are to perform at our best. The first is our circadian rhythm—the balance between the time we sleep and the time we are awake. Research shows that most adults need between seven and eight hours of sleep a night, although many of us don’t get anywhere near that much. Over time, sleep deprivation affects our moods, our ability to concentrate, etc. The best habit is to go to bed early and wake up early. However, we can increase our performance with a short nap (10-20 minutes) or two when a full night’s sleep is impossible.

A second rhythm is the ultradian rhythm, where our energy level oscillates every 1 ½ to 2 hours from high to low. If we try to work longer than 2 hours without some form of recovery, our energy level suffers. That’s why those 3 and 4 hour meetings are such a challenge. It’s impossible for people to retain a high level of concentration over such a long period of time. However, a short break, even if it’s only 5-10 minutes, will produce sufficient recovery to restore energy if one truly disengages from the work at hand. It doesn’t do any good to take a walk around the block if you’re still thinking about the problem you need to solve!

Put these dimensions together and you see the need to balance work with recovery—working long hours with no time for rest ultimately reduces productivity and effectiveness. In addition, our fitness level impacts our ability to manage stress. Our bodies need exercise to handle daily and long term pressures—both cardiovascular and strength training. Again, at least 20-30 minutes of cardiovascular exercise 3 days a week and 2 days of strength training are optimal, but research has shown that any exercise improves our capacity to handle stress, even if it is a short amounts of exercise spread throughout the day.

The second challenge is to increase our physical energy if this is one area we tend to under use. Fortunately, small, incremental changes work best and if we develop new habits that enhance our physical energy, we will see enhanced capacity in the other energy sources (emotional, mental and spiritual) as well. The important thing is to make a small change that you enjoy. For example, if you normally skip lunch or eat at your desk, think of something simple you’d enjoy doing that would get you out of the office for a few minutes. You might bring your lunch and eat it at a nearby park, you might bring a protein smoothie and sip it while you window shop for half an hour, you might take a half hour at lunch to read a favorite book. The idea is to do something enjoyable that allows you to completely disengage from work for a little while. Instead of reducing the amount of work you get done, you’ll actually increase it because you can be more focused.

For more ideas on small changes you can make to increase your physical energy, read The Power of Full Engagement, http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=the+power+of+full+engagement+
or
Contact me for a free brainstorming session: plum@vedereconsulting.com or 804-261-6483.

For a free or an inexpensive Full Engagement Profile, see: http://www.lgeperformance.com/assessment_diagnostic.html

For more information about the authors of The Power of Full Engagement and their work, see:

Jim Loehr is the Chairman, CEO and Co-Founder of the Human Performance Institute, http://www.lgeperformance.com/index.html .

Tony Schwartz is Founder and President of The Energy Project, http://www.theenergyproject.com/home.html .

Labels: Work and Life Balance

Click for more information on executive coaching with Vedere Consulting. You can also follow Plum on Twitter.

The year is 1999. I’m working for a health insurance company as an internal OD consultant and trainer. I’m supposed to work a 32 hour workweek so I can spend more time with my family. But I’m working five days a week instead of four, and putting in many late nights and weekends in an effort to keep up with everything I have on my plate. I’m tired and depressed. I often can’t sleep and I have a difficult time unwinding when I am at home. My husband is complaining about my long hours. I’m missing my children. I’m getting desperate but I don’t see any way out.

Does any of this sound familiar? If so, you, like me, have fallen into the trap of working longer and longer hours in an effort to be more productive. The result? We get so tired and unfocused that work takes longer and so we have to spend even more hours at work and then we’re even more tired and unfocused—well, you get the picture.

The solution, according to Tony Schwartz and Jim Loehr in their book, The Power of Full Engagement, is to learn how to manage your energy rather than trying to manage your time. Energy is “the capacity to do work.” Schwartz and Loehr contend that by managing your energy you become more productive because you can do more and higher quality work in less time. Energy is expansive while time is finite. The secret is creating the optimum balance between expending and recovering energy.

You see, when you work longer and longer hours, you expend energy that is never recovered. Without recovery, your energy becomes depleted and you lose the ability to concentrate, your emotions become more negative (irritation, depression, etc.) and the quality of your decisions deteriorate. Your productivity suffers because you can’t focus.

Optimum energy (or engagement) is achieved when energy is high and positive. There are four “wellsprings” of energy—sources of renewal and places where energy is expended: your body (physical energy), your mind (mental energy), your emotions (emotional energy), and your core self or soul (spiritual energy). In subsequent blog posts, we’ll explore how understanding and building strength in each of these wellsprings contributes to your energy capacity and therefore to your productivity. The result is a greater capacity to do more and higher quality work, and to stay focused, motivated, and balanced.

Loehr and Schwartz identified four principles that are critical to energy management. First, as I stated earlier, energy relies on a balance between stress and recovery. After a period of work, we must rest and recover. This is true whether the work is physical, mental (as is most of the work we do today) or emotional. Work and recovery are cyclical—they oscillate between each other. Too much work or too much recovery causes a loss of energy.

We have to build in recovery periods if we are to work at our best. We also have to work each of the four areas of energy. This leads to the second principle, overuse or underuse of any of the four wellsprings reduces our energy capacity. Most modern Americans overuse their mental and emotional energy and underuse their physical and spiritual dimensions.

Third, a shift in one dimension produces a shift in all of them. If we decide that we need to strengthen our physical capacity, this will impact our mental, emotional and spiritual well being. For example, regular exercise often gives us more mental energy, a more positive outlook and often leads to a deeper commitment.

Finally, small, incremental changes work best. Schwartz and Loehr suggest developing “positive energy rituals.” These rituals (or specific routines) are new habits you develop to increase your energy. They are carefully designed to fit easily into your current routine and to provide enough enjoyment to keep doing until it becomes a habit. For example, one of my clients spends the first hour on Monday morning reviewing her to do list, estimating how long her tasks will take, and scheduling them into her calendar. Because of this, she approaches her week with a greater sense of control and calm. To improve her mood, another client thinks of 10 things she is grateful for when she first wakes up in the morning. These rituals, which are developed using the principles outlined above, have produced dramatic productivity improvements in Loehr’s and Schwartz’ clients.

More next week!

Jim Loehr is the Chairman, CEO and Co-Founder of the Human Performance Institute, http://www.lgeperformance.com/index.html .

Tony Schwartz is Founder and President of The Energy Project, http://www.theenergyproject.com/home.html .

The Power of Full Engagement is published by The Free Press: http://www.simonsays.com/content/destination.cfm?tab=1&pid=427723 .

Labels: Work and Life Balance

Click for more information on executive coaching with Vedere Consulting. You can also follow Plum on Twitter.