“Fatigue makes cowards of us all.”
—Vince Lombardi
Inspiration requires a reservoir of aliveness and openness, so energy management plays a large role in sustaining it over time. Left unattended, energy can wane, so it needs to be monitored and replenished regularly.
Researchers Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz argue that energy is the “currency of high performance,” and effective energy management enables great performance, health, and happiness. “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.”1 Often when people talk about energy, they think of it in physical terms—the energy in your body. But energy is not just a physical state. Instead, Loehr and Schwartz say it consists of four dimensions: physical, mental, emotional, spiritual. Not only that, but they argue that these different types of energies impact one another: for example, lower physical energy takes a toll on emotional energy. It makes sense; we are more likely to be irritable when tired. Informed by Loehr and Schwartz and our own research and work with clients, we focus on three distinct forms of energy that need to be managed to sustain inspiration over time: body, mindset, and emotions. In our framework, spiritual energy falls within these three.
To be clear, energy and inspiration are not the same thing. Rather, being energized is a necessary (though not sufficient) condition for sustaining inspiration. Physical, mental, and emotional energy fuel inspiration-related states in the following ways:
• Possibility. As a positive, optimistic high-energy state, possibility requires energy to achieve and to sustain when depleted.
• Invincibility. Passion and confidence underscore feelings of invincibility; both are harder to sustain when depleted and require energy to maintain.
• Intentional practice. Intentional practice of inspiration takes focus, attention, and self-discipline, much like a violinist practicing day after day requires both brain power and physical energy. As energy wanes, intentional practice becomes more difficult.
In this chapter, we explore all three dimensions of energy and how to create resets that help sustain inspiration through energy management.
It can be very difficult to maintain inspiration over time when you are feeling physically depleted, sleep deprived, or hungry. Providing your body with the fuel and opportunity to rejuvenate regularly lays the necessary groundwork for being able to spark inspiration at will and to sustain it. In an example from parole board judges in Israel, researchers Shai Danzigera, Jonathan Levav, and Liora Avnaim-Pessoa show2 how depleted physical energy can impact performance. The New York Times reported that prisoners who came before the parole board early in the morning or right after the lunch break had a 65 percent chance of being granted parole. That percentage dropped steadily as the morning wore on, hitting 0 percent, or close to it, right before lunch. Rejuvenated following their midday meal, however, the judges then started the afternoon session granting prisoners freedom 65 percent of the time, with those odds then dropping again throughout the afternoon.3
The judges revived their physical and mental energy by refueling at lunch, showing it’s important to eat! But, of course, what you eat also matters for keeping your energy (and thus your openness to inspiration) up.
Nutrition and vitamins also impact energy levels, making inspiration more or less likely. The type of food you eat and the time of day you consume it affects how energized you feel and for how long. Experts recommend eating every four to six hours, relying on complex carbs and omega-3 fatty acids more than processed foods and caffeine, which boost your blood sugar in the short term but subside quickly. Iron, folic acid, and thiamine are also essential for proper brain functioning and mood management.4 Vitamin D, and the lack thereof, also affects mood and energy levels. Research on sunlight found that depression can occur when vitamin D is depleted, especially during winter months.5
Everyone’s nutritional needs are different, and yours may need to be determined in consultation with a nutritionist or medical professional. What is true for all, though, is that ensuring your body receives sufficient nutrients helps manage energy over time. Still, sustenance isn’t the only thing your body needs to perform optimally. Sleep is also essential for your body to restore its energy reserves.
Media mogul Arianna Huffington has recently become a sleep evangelist, extolling the importance of a good night’s sleep to everyone who will listen. Sleep is essential if we want to perform effectively, she believes. The benefits of sufficient sleep are many, and according to her: “Empathy increases, our decision-making improves… As a result, every aspect of our lives improves.”6
Huffington was once sleep deprived. She was also much like the majority of Americans—very few adults in the United States are getting enough sleep, reports Gallup.7 The average American gets 6.8 hours of sleep a night, when at least 7 hours is really necessary to be fully functional. Unfortunately, 40 percent of Americans routinely get less than 6 hours of sleep and are, essentially, sleep deprived. It’s ironic to think that many of us could be more poised for inspiration just by sleeping another hour every night.
Physical movement is another source of energy. Research has shown that exercise releases endorphins, which enhance our mood. That elevated mood then makes sparks of inspiration more likely or, once sparked, helps sustain them. Movement can include individual activity, such as swimming laps, or group exercise, such as yoga or Zumba. In the workplace, activity can be integrated into the day by taking the stairs rather than the elevator or implementing walking meetings. Dance, or moving in community, can be especially powerful, perhaps harkening back to ancient times when tribes danced around fires in preparation for a hunt or in celebration of success. (Note that dancing in unison activates three inspiration engines at one time—“sharing a group mission,” “activating body movement and presence,” and “belonging.”)
Elite athletes understand the importance of managing their physical energy through good nutrition, sleep, and taking care of their bodies: they have to so that they can physically perform at their best. And yet we have found that many of our clients compartmentalize physical energy from their jobs. They think of exercise and eating healthy as desirable but not necessary, meaning they get pushed off the to-do list by higher priority items. We argue that paying attention to our bodies, including eating well and getting necessary rest and movement, helps us monitor our overall physical energy levels and keep them at a high level, which optimizes our ability to become and stay inspired.
Mindset can also impact energy, which in turn can impact our ability to sustain inspiration. Our mindset reflects how we approach our current reality—the stories we create and tell about ourselves or others or the stories we hear from others. When in a negative or judgmental mindset about ourselves, others, or a situation, energy is likely to drop: you will likely see faults more easily than positive qualities. Likewise, when in a more positive, learning-oriented mindset, energy is higher. Therefore, the ability to both identify what kind of mindset we’re in and shift the story as needed is a powerful approach to sustaining energy and inspiration.
“If I think about the biggest superpower or almost only skill that I’ve had to lean on, it’s storytelling, over and over, whether it’s with my cofounders and we are questioning the right thing to do at the right time, or in recruiting, whether it’s convincing investors that this is inevitable and possible. It’s all storytelling. What is the story that you’re telling yourself that’s different than the other cofounder, or the engineer, or the designer, or the salesperson? And tailoring the overall message, and trying out thousands of different stories, and helping people actually rewire the story, in their mind, of what they’re doing and why they’re doing it.”
—Alex White, Vice President of Content and Programming, Pandora
Although your mindset is shaped by your circumstances and influences, it is not cast in stone. You can shift your mindset to be more aligned to your purpose, values, and what drives you. The “connecting to and voicing values and purpose” engine energizes us to continue striving toward our life’s purpose. In fact, in doing so, you can expand your capacity for inspiration.
Stanford researcher Carol Dweck and her team demonstrated this when they discovered that there are two types of mindsets: fixed and growth.8 Dweck found that when students believed they had the capacity to improve, they put in the effort and succeeded. They had a growth mindset. However, students who believed that their capabilities and control were fixed or limited did not invest the extra effort and did not progress. They had a fixed mindset. They gave up trying to change their circumstances while those with a growth mindset continued to strive for improvement and change—and achieved it.
Nelson Mandela is a prime example. Most people, when sentenced to life in prison, might succumb to the environment and accept their fate. Not Mandela. Soon after being sentenced to life in prison in 1964, he arrived at the place that he would call home for decades and almost immediately began encouraging small acts of rebellion among the prisoners. Although he was behind bars, his anti-apartheid work and rebellion continued unabated. For example, instead of rushing to the quarry to crush gravel each day, the prisoners slowed their walk to the point that they would barely reach the quarry before it was time to return. The prison guards eventually had to negotiate with Mandela to get the prisoners to quicken their pace. He refused to be a prisoner and instead became a leader; he shifted his mindset to look for opportunities to make the lives of his fellow captives better.9 Despite being in prison for twenty-seven years, Mandela kept his mind and spirit alive by focusing on what he could accomplish behind bars: “I am fundamentally an optimist. Whether that comes from nature or nurture, I cannot say. Part of being optimistic is keeping one’s head pointed toward the sun, one’s feet moving forward.”10
But mindset shifts like Mandela’s don’t have to involve traumatic life events, such as imprisonment. They can also occur in the moment, based on the situation. As we discussed in Chapter 8 (“enemies of inspiration”), when you notice negative or self-defeating messages you are telling yourself, you have an opportunity to recraft the story by remembering what matters to you the most.
Stories and mindsets affect not just your cognitive energy but also your emotions, the third source of energy. While positive emotions tend to generate energy, negative emotions deplete it, making inspiration a more challenging state to reach. Researchers at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence found that positive, high-energy emotions are more effective for brainstorming and inductive reasoning—considering possibilities, an important part of inspiration. On the flip side, negative, low-energy emotions, while adaptive and helpful for critical thinking, can get in the way of cultivating inspiration.11
The ability to take charge of our own emotions, to effectively process ones that are difficult, and to generate positive emotions when needed is a skill called emotion management.12 Managing emotions does not mean trying to be happy or positive all the time. In fact, difficult emotions, which are a natural part of the human experience, can provide us with information about what is most important to us. As psychologist Susan David says: “Discomfort is the price of admission to a meaningful life.”13 However, we need to be emotionally agile, to process daily stresses and frustrations swiftly, generate upbeat emotions when needed, and sustain them when faced with challenges.
Music is one of the quickest ways to shift emotions and generate sparks of inspiration. A company called 00114 (pronounced “double-oh-one”) has made a business out of engineering positive emotional experiences through music. It brings together groups and teams of employees and partners them with musicians in a recording studio, where they witness and make music together. The experience is designed to inspire, by making people part of the creative process as a collective—working together to create music and listen to music (engines of “shared experiences” and “new perspectives”).
Retreats are another type of experience that can stir up positive emotions or memories that can refill your energy reserves and help sustain inspiration. People often use personal retreats and meditations as a way to manage their emotions over time or recharge. Attending a retreat is an intentional practice of placing yourself in environments designed to create positive emotions. In fact, twice a year Jen goes on retreat to recurring events in October and June. One is a rich stimulating reunion and conference at the University of Pennsylvania and the other a quiet meditative escape at Tydeman farm in the Hudson Valley with friends. She knows that she needs this time to reboot and reset deeply. Participating in these retreats has become an intentional practice to get away from the daily grind of work, so that her emotions stay high and she’s in a good place to create inspiration.
While there are many types of experiences that can generate positive emotions, you know best what types of situations do this for you. The important skill to develop is noticing when your emotional energy is low—noticing when you feel irritated, bored, apathetic, discouraged, or pessimistic—and, when ready, doing something to shift your emotional energy back up to a higher quality.
Just as monitoring your inspiration levels is critical to sustaining them, part of the ability to sustain your inspiration comes from monitoring your energy levels so inspiration doesn’t wane. Being aware of your energy levels and when changes occur—either when you receive a boost of additional energy that fuels you or when you’re feeling unmotivated or tired—it is essential to recognize when you need to respark your inspiration and/or engage it by directing it to positive outcomes.
There are numerous tools and technologies that have been developed to aid in self-awareness. Many wristwatches, for example, report on physical activity, heart rate, and other physical characteristics. The FitBit monitors footsteps. The Mood Meter App15 helps you track your mood and assess whether how you are feeling is ideal for the situation at hand or if you need to shift. You can use these types of tools to improve self-awareness or develop your own systems and processes to monitor your own energy levels. When we’re able to monitor the energy that comes from our bodies, mindsets, and emotions to keep ourselves energized, upbeat, and open, we can sustain inspiration more easily.
We know that our emotions, mindset, and body are important for keeping inspiration high, but how, exactly, do we boost or renew our energy—especially when life gets busy and stressed? The key is to focus on intentional practice, or consciously choosing to refuel our body, mind, and energy levels. That’s how we sustain inspiration over time.
A common approach is to focus on one specific area at a time, such as committing to getting more sleep or drinking more water. However, a more holistic approach is to reboot your body, mindset, and emotions simultaneously, since they are all interrelated, using something we call a reset. Although a reset that just uses one of the three—body, mindset, emotions—can be effective, a reset that uses all three at the same time has more potency to shift our energy. We call a reset activating all three areas 3-D, or three dimensional. For example, an example of a 3-D reset that Allison uses regularly to manage her energy is listening to a particularly energizing song (emotions) while doing a series of kickboxing punches (body) and thinking of the strengths she will activate in an upcoming situation (mindset). Any one of these three activities would boost her energy, but all three together carry a power punch.
Resets are practices we recommend using throughout the day. You can shift your energy through a general energy reset, get back on track quickly when things go awry with a pivotal reset, or prepare yourself for an upcoming situation with a pregame reset. Resets are personal and quite varied; they can be anything from a thirty-second quick mental shift to a two-minute breathing exercise to a two-week sabbatical.
Resets work by essentially creating a firewall to prevent previous feelings, memories, or physical symptoms from the past from staying with you. They are a way to break away from a negative mindset, jettison baggage from earlier in the day or the week, and move forward with a positive attitude and an invitation to inspiration. Resets often overlap with inspiration engines and are a short-term intervention strategy, not long term. However, when resets are practiced regularly and you develop an improved ability to monitor and manage your energy using resets, you are in a much stronger position to sustain inspiration over time.
As noted earlier, there are three types of resets: general energy, pivotal, and pregame. General energy resets clear your mental slate and refresh your focus and energy when you feel stuck, tired, negative, or distracted. Some of the most effective general resets include breaking away from the situation to clear your head, taking a walk, engaging in measured breathing, listening to music, or holding a yoga pose. To clean the slate and refresh your focus when you’re feeling tired, stuck, or negative, try box breathing, a technique used by the US Navy SEALs to stay calm and focused before combat.16 Inhale to the count of four while moving your hand along one side of an invisible box, hold for four while sliding your hand across the top of the box, exhale for four while you move your hand along the third side, and hold for four while your hand goes across the bottom. Do this at least three times. Listening to music is another way to reset, or you can try one of many meditation apps like the Smiling Mind17 or Calm, which can help you ground and calm yourself.18
Pivotal resets are effective when you’re caught off guard emotionally by something in the moment and need to recover from it quickly. For example, imagine you are offering a solution in a business meeting that the CEO publicly shoots down in front of all your colleagues—in a moment like this, you might become emotionally grabbed by frustration or anger or feel discouraged. At the same time, it may be pivotal for you to take a quick reset to stay engaged in the meeting and communicate effectively. Some great examples of pivotal resets include taking a series of deep breaths, relaxing your arms and shoulders, putting both feet on the ground and thinking of a positive result you want, cracking a joke to inject some humor and dissipate tension, or asking a question of someone nearby. You can also use a rubber band on your wrist that you snap when you recognize negative thoughts that you need to break free from; snap the rubber band to distract yourself and focus on something new.
Pregame resets are intentional energy shifts to feel inspired for something coming up. They are purposeful preparation that activates your mind, body, and emotions at the same time. A perfect example of a pregame reset is the haka, a war dance of the Maori tribe of New Zealand, originally performed in unison as a group to psych out the other warring faction. It is rhythmic, with stomping feet and loud chanting. Today, the haka is used as a unifying battle cry before sporting events or special events. The New Zealand rugby team the All Blacks is known for performing a haka before every match.19 Performing a haka is a way to unify the thoughts and actions of a group. Haka is not just for sports. After hearing the history of the haka during an engagement with us, one of our clients, Peach, decided to create their own. Each member of the team contributed to the battle dance, which they use to focus everyone’s minds on the task at hand. At Peach, the haka is a call to inspiration—a shared experience to focus the team’s energy on the task in front of them.
The most effective pregame resets are experiential, like the tribal haka ritual; although the major emphasis of the haka is on the body (through dance), it aims to shift the emotions and mindsets of the players to be more in tune with one another, focused on the game, and confident. Pregame resets can also involve other types of physical activity, such as a long walk in the woods before a major presentation or listening to an upbeat song before making a sales pitch. When you need to prepare for an upcoming situation that may be challenging or stressful, try a pregame reset, like doing something nice for someone around you to put yourself in a positive mood, taking a walk around your building, or listening to your favorite song while thinking of your strengths. These resets act as vaccines against negativity.
Your energy level, influenced by your physical state, emotions, and mindset, has an enormous impact on your capacity to become and remain inspired. Taking steps to manage your body, mind, and emotions can positively impact the degree to which you can spark inspiration and sustain it over time personally and professionally.