Are You Fully Engaged? Principle # 4

Continued from last week...

a reminder:
To be fully engaged, we must be physically energized, emotionally connected, mentally focused and spiritually aligned with a purpose beyond our immediate self-interests.

The challenge of great life performance is to manage your energy more effectively in all dimensions to achieve your goals. Four key energy management principles drive this process. They lie at the heart of change, and they are critical for building the capacity to live a productive, fully engaged life.

So…to fully engage the following 4 energy management principles will be key:

This week we'll address Principle #4

PRINCIPLE 4:

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

Change is hard…we are creatures of habit. Most of what we do is automatic and non conscious. What we did yesterday is what we are likely to do today. The problem with most efforts at change is that conscious efforts can’t be sustained over long haul. Will and discipline are for more limited resources than most of us realize. If you have to think about something every time you do it, the likelihood is that you won’t keep doing it for very long.

A positive ritual is a behavior that becomes automatic over time-fueled by some deeply held value.


I use the word ritual purposefully to emphasize the notion of a carefully highly structured behavior. In contrast to will and discipline, which requires pushing yourself to a particular behavior, a ritual pulls at you.

Think of something as simple as brushing your teeth. It’s not something that you have to remind yourself to do. Brushing your teeth is something you feel consistently drawn to.
You do it largely on auto pilot, without much conscious effort.

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 focus the energy available to us in creative, enriching ways.
Look at any part of your life where you are successful…you have probably built routines around that action.

With your eating. Exercise, at work, in your home…the areas that you have routine, you are successful.

This week as you identify rituals in your every day life, consider more that you might add regarding your choices to eat healthy and live a fit lifestyle.

I'll close this topic out next Friday. It's been good sharing the power and importance of full engagement with you.

Working to be fully engaged and always encouraging you,
Letha