Tips For Managing Stress And Improving Your Personal Health – Part 2

Mental Energy Check

With the physical and emotional energy side of things checked it’s time to check the mental quarter:

9. Real Goals
Your brain is supremely efficient in both its conscious and unconscious functioning and will not engage energy without having a clear purpose.

Lack of clear goals will lead to a lack of energy (if you don’t have goals you don’t need energy) and enthusiasm.

Goals which are not truly accepted as attainable (at a gut level) or at least “positively challenging” will de-motivate you, since you are smart enough (at some level) to recognise the pursuit of them as doomed to failure and therefore as a waste of energy.

Positively challenging goals may be accepted as “unlikely to be fully realised but as having strong positive collateral benefits” as when setting yourself an out-there production goal knowing that in the pursuit of it you will create new processes and systems that will provide on-going benefits independent of the goal.

10. Relevant Goals
Are the goals you have set for yourself relevant to your ultimate goal – your Vision for the business or for your career?

It’s hard to get enthusiastic about someone else’s goals if you have not bought into them or have had them imposed on you.

If you have no goals, on the other hand, your mind-body has no reason to be enthusiastic. In fact, to be so would be a profligate waste of energy. In organic terms, you are “supremely efficient”, remember? So, if you have “nowhere to go”, you will not generate any unneeded energy, and you can expect to experience a state of low enthusiasm.

11. Rewards
If the goal itself doesn’t engage you, can you put engaging rewards in place for yourself for achieving that goal? Toy-like or personal rewards can be powerful motivators for achieving non-emotional performance goals.

12. Satisfaction
Are you giving yourself credit for your achievements, acknowledging your own progress?

Many people adopt a drudge approach to their work, knocking over one goal or target after another without acknowledging to themselves the worth of what they have achieved. That can be extremely de-motivating over time, and any initial enthusiasm in the task will progressively dissipate unless it is topped up regularly with recognition and the occasional reward.

A key question to ask yourself: Given the way you treat you, if you were someone else, would you work for you?

13. Feedback
Are you seeking external feedback on your performance? If you are a leader it may be very worthwhile to seek a bottom-up review from your team.

Some leaders avoid this because they are afraid of what they may hear back, or feel that they will only be given platitudes and lip service about how good they are, which is not worth hearing.

On the contrary, those who do this type of exercise usually report a range of pleasantly surprising responses, some of which give them deeper insights into themselves and renew their faith in their work and their enthusiasm for it.

For a neat example of a “bottom up review” process ask us for a template based on Ricardo Semler’s supervisors’ review process.

14. Recharging
Are you the one who is always giving energy to others, and not seeking people who are at a higher energy level than yourself to recharge from?

The best sources for recharge are:

• Books/audios by inspirational leaders
• Webinars by leading thinkers in your field
• Seminars by those with something of value to share
• Strong members of your own team, taken out of context for the purpose of re-energising you both
• Your best positive competitor – take them out of your usual competitive context if they are up to it, and indulge in a bit of mutual brainstorming.

15. Myopia
Go back to point 3. in which we dealt with Stress: Are you looking down the road to your ultimate destination often enough so that you keep the day-to-day hassles in perspective?

Do you have your ultimate goal – you Vision – in front of you as a constant reminder of what is really important in the big scheme of things?

Are you looking at your current situation and challenges in the context of your Life as a whole? In the context of the Universe as a whole?

In Bill Bryson’s words when trying to create awareness in his readers of the scale of our own solar system:

“On a diagram of the solar system to scale, with the Earth reduced to about the diameter of a pea, Jupiter would be over 300 metres away and Pluto would be two and a half kilometres distant (and about the size of a bacterium, so you wouldn’t be able to see it anyway). On the same scale, Proxima Centauri, our nearest star, would be 16,000 kilometres away.”

And you thought that your momentarily low level of motivation was a challenge?

Thoughts…

When defeat comes, accept it as a signal that your plans are not sound, rebuild those plans, and set sail once more toward your coveted goal.
Napoleon Hill

When life appears to be working against you, when your luck is down, when the supposedly wrong people show up, or when you slip up and return to old, self-defeating habits, recognize the signs that you’re out of harmony with intention.
Aldous Huxley

Yes, time flies, and where did it leave you? Old too soon….smart too late.
Mike Tyson

It is amazing how much crisper the general experience of life becomes when your body is given a chance to develop a little strength.
Frank Duff

A wise man should consider that health is the greatest of human blessings, and learn how by his own thought to derive benefit from his illnesses.
Hippocrates (460 BC – 377 BC)

Order is not pressure which is imposed on society from without, but an equilibrium which is set up from within.
Jose Ortega y Gasset (1883 – 1955)

The best defence against misguided arrogance is a keen sense of humour.
Kathryn L. Nelson