June 2005

eri, 36, a married mother of two, has always been a hard worker and it's paid off: In a six-year period, she has been promoted four times. Lately, however, she just doesn't feel the enthusiasm for her work that she used to. She's often tired, impatient and makes more mistakes. She also feels increasingly distant from her husband and kids. On paper, her life is everything she's ever wanted. Then why isn't she enjoying it more?

One clue: Several months ago, Teri started putting in more hours at work. She started burning out as well as neglecting other areas of her life. She wasn't managing her physical and mental energy well.

A less obvious clue: Teri had lost sight of her passions. She worked, mothered and was a wife. But she no longer danced or painted, and she had stopped the political activism that had so fired her up in younger years. An essential part of her, her passionate nature, had, in effect, atrophied much like an unused muscle.

"The energy that pulses through us is physical, emotional, mental and spiritual," write Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz in The Power of Full Engagement. "All four dynamics are critical, none is sufficient by itself, and each profoundly influences the others. To perform at our best, we must skillfully manage each of these interconnected dimensions of energy. Subtract any one from the equation and our capacity to fully ignite our talent and skill is diminished, much the way an engine sputters when one of its cylinders misfires."

Loehr and Schwartz identify three key management principles that must be considered to manage energy and maximize our performance:

• The four separate but related sources of energy—physical, emotional, mental and spiritual—must all be addressed.
• Energy expenditure must be balanced with periods of renewal.
• To grow, we must push beyond our normal limits in the same systematic way that athletes do when they train.

< continued on page 2 click here >