The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, Is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal

“Full engagement requires drawing on four separate but related sources of energy: physical, emotional, mental and spiritual.”

In our tremendously fast-paced reality, we rarely take the time to reflect on the quality of our lives and the path we would like to take to improve them. The most important aspects in our lives - work, health, and personal happiness - largely depend on how successfully we manage our energy during the day. 

Full engagement means being physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually energized. All four energy systems must function in concert because none of them alone is enough to realize your full potential. Top performance thrives in high and positive dynamics. 

Energy is not static, so overusing and underusing it hurts its balance. The energy we spend has to be renewed in order to keep that balance. However, taking time off to restore our energy is often seen as a weakness, rather than a strength. 

Although stress is a silent killer, paradoxically, it makes us stronger. 

Changing your life and learning to manage your energy by practicing positive energy rituals is crucial for achieving full engagement. 

Making long-lasting changes is a "three-step process," called Purpose-Truth-Action. The first step requires identifying your values in life and creating a vision for yourself in the future. The second step is about determining how you spend your energy now. The third step is about creating a "personal-development plan" that will help you become who you have envisioned to be.

“Balancing stress and recovery is critical not just in competitive sports, but also in managing energy in all facets of our lives.”

When our body is strained physically, emotionally, mentally, or spiritually, we need to renew our energy, or we risk burning out or breaking down. Humans alternate between states of activity and rest, so it’s natural to need some downtime. 

Practicing specific rituals at work can help you renew yourself. For example, you could walk around the office or connect with your colleagues. You can also take some days off to spend with your family and renew your energy with the people you love. 

This recovery period is even more important in situations where people become addicted to stress. When you constantly push yourself without taking some time off, it’s easy to forget how to relax. This is a "linear form of energy expenditure," which is detrimental to people's well-being in the long run.

Pushing ourselves beyond our limits can help us grow only if we allow for the renewal to take place.

“Full engagement requires the capacity to respond quickly and flexibly to whatever demands we face in our lives, but also to shut down and restore equilibrium quickly and efficiently.”

Physical energy is our driving force throughout our lifetime. There are two major sources of physical energy: rhythmic breathing and the food we consume. 

Breathing can help us relax and renew ourselves. Similarly, a diet consisting of proteins, vegetables, and grains will make us healthier and more energetic in a lasting way. Regular food intake, without overeating, is perfect for regulating energy. 

Since recovery is vital for normal functioning, quality sleep enables growth, healing, and stress release. Lack of sleep is detrimental to a person's health and will negatively affect your job performance, as well as your work-life balance. 

Exercise refers to building physical strength by constantly pushing your limits. Keep in mind that interval training yields much better results than moderate exercise..

“We must focus on building emotional capacity wherever it is that we are most out of balance.”

Positive emotions are an invaluable driving force in our lives. They foster progress, effectiveness, and satisfaction. 

Negative emotions, on the other hand, are detrimental to our well-being. They have been linked to a wide range of psychological disorders, especially if they are chronic. Negative emotions hurt our individual performance, whereas positive emotions have an opposite effect. 

Since we all live in a hectic world where we often feel overwhelmed by a variety of obligations, we owe it to our emotional side to find time and ways to refuel.

So, take up some enjoyable and fulfilling activities or hobbies and help yourself feel more positive emotions. This will also help you become more self-confident and empathetic. 

Emotional strength, just like physical strength, requires stepping out of your comfort zone and constantly pushing your limits.

“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.”

Expanding our mental capacity is crucial to improve our focus and our organizational skills. Full engagement thrives in positive environments, so living in the realm of realistic optimism can help us direct our mental energy towards improving our performance and our lives in general.

Research has shown that being physically active has a great effect on our cognitive skills. Similar to physical and emotional energy, mental energy has an oscillatory nature: it is expended and it is renewed. 

Thus, stepping outside our comfort zone and pushing past our limits can be highly beneficial for our mental capacity if it is followed by a recovery period. Constantly challenging the brain can protect it against mental decline and disorders.

“The key muscle that fuels spiritual energy is character.”

Spiritual energy is a dominant force that rules every aspect of our lives. It is born out of our character and our personal values. It is our spiritual energy that makes us feel invigorated, strong, passionate, and full of life. 

We can expand our spiritual capacity by nurturing qualities such as integrity, selflessness, reliability, and genuineness. That means accepting that you are not the center of the world and that you should focus on others without trying to put yourself first. 

Feelings of fear and concern create a negative environment in which spiritual energy cannot thrive. 

Expanding your spiritual capacity involves constantly pushing yourself more while taking enough time to renew the energy you’ve expended. It means commit

“Deeply held values fuel the energy on which purpose is built.”

The journey for improvement begins with a desire or a necessity for change: an epiphany, a goal, deep pain, disillusionment, or discomfort.

Discovering a purpose in life makes us determined, focused, energetic, and persistent. 

If you want to determine the level of your purpose presently, ask yourself how excited you are about going to work every morning, how much pleasure you derive from work, and how accountable you hold yourself with respect to your values. If you feel you are at 90% or higher, then you have a strong purpose in life and you work hard to maintain it. If not, you need to reexamine your life and your values and create a vision of yourself in the future. 

If you have a clear picture of your future, you’ll be able to direct your energy in the right direction. Your vision needs to stem from a set of values and a meaning in life. 

When your purpose is positive, internal, and focused on others, the energy you invest will be more enduring and powerful.

“Facing the truth about the gap between who we want to be and who we really are is never easy.”

People can be highly capable of self-deception, especially when they are unwilling to face the truth about their flaws. As long as they believe in a distorted version of themselves, they cannot begin the self-development process. 

We are different people at the beginning and the end of our transformative journey. In order to be able to see the gap between our present and our future self, we must face the truth about ourselves. 

We need to ask ourselves whether we live our lives according to our set of values, whether we are fully engaged in our personal and our professional lives, and whether we manage to balance stress and recovery. We need to answer these questions truthfully and unreservedly. 

The energy you’ve wasted on distorting and hiding the truth can be freed and directed towards fulfilling your purpose.

“Rituals serve as anchors, insuring that even in the most difficult circumstances we will continue to use our energy in service of the values that we hold most dear.”

Living our lives according to a set of values can be difficult - life is complex and unpredictable, after all. However, positive rituals can help us weather difficult situations we experience.

The vital role of positive rituals involves ensuring that there is a balance between the expended and the renewed energy, that is, between stress and recovery. 

If we maintain self-control and discipline, these positive rituals will start to feel automatic. Positive rituals foster lasting changes in our lives, especially if these changes are made deliberately, carefully, and steadily.