Scott H Young

One of the core concepts behind energy management is that you increase your energy by cycling between stress and recovery. Weightlifters use this method all the time by stressing their muscles at the gym and then taking suitable downtime for the muscle fibers to recover and grow stronger. If you skip the recovery phase and keep trying to build muscle, your body will eventually start eating away the muscle, destroying your progress.

Cycling between stress and recovery is essential in all areas of your life. When you are working hard on a project, if you continue working constantly without rest your performance will suffer. If you keep going without rest you will eventually burnout. Like a car that has run out of gas, you can’t keep functioning without recovering your energy.

In their fantastic book, The Power of Full Engagement, Tony Schwartz and Jim Loehr talk really flesh out the concept of energy management and the stress/recovery cycle. Their book contradicted many time-management philosophies that stated you could produce as much as you had time for and that rest was wasteful.

The stress and recovery cycle extend beyond just getting work done or getting in shape. I believe that harnessing these two components is the key to making progress in any area of your life, whether it is social, conquering your fears or even enjoying life more.

Homeostasis

The reason cycling stress with recovery is important comes from the physiological principle of homeostasis. Much of what your body does is regulatory. If your body gets too hot, it tries to cool off. If it gets low on blood sugar, it makes you feel hungry to try to find food. If the blood becomes too acidic, it releases calcium from your bones.

What the body is trying to do is achieve the stable state of homeostasis. This is the equilibrium point where it isn’t too hot or too cold, too hungry or too full, too acidic or alkaline.

This homeostasis doesn’t just apply to your bodily functions but to your mind. When you exert yourself beyond what your body is used to it creates the feeling of stress as it wants to retreat to your internal set point. By cycling stress and recovery in the different areas of your life you can adapt your body to form a new internal equilibrium.

Pushing Yourself

I believe that we all have our own internal equilibrium points for various areas of our life. This could represent the amount of social interaction we can handle and need to feel comfortable. The amount of organization we naturally maintain or the amount of variety we need to keep from getting bored. Even the term “comfort zone” seems to imply that people are inclined to seek homeostasis.

The old model of personal development was to push yourself as hard as you can outside of your internal set point. If you want to be disciplined, just focus and commit. If you want to achieve goals, focus on them constantly. If you want to be successful you need to work harder.

Although this advice was certainly valid, it oversimplified the reality. Almost everyone intuitively understands the notion that working harder is important to success, but then they would fail to do so. People who set goals for themselves and failed to take the action necessary to achieve them. Internally their body was saying that this extra pushing was abnormal and it put up resistance to try and stop it.

In order to make any changes in your life you are going to have to push yourself. You are going to have to disrupt your homeostasis. Without offering some form of recovery your body is going to scream louder and louder at you to stop what you are doing. You can’t win this battle in the long-term. If you don’t recover your energies, your body will force you to.

If you are hyper-focused on your goals, spending some time to disengage can recover the energy you need to be in top shape. Hobbies, new activities or even a challenging activity that can take your mind off your larger problems can help recover energy.

If constantly interacting with people is giving you stress, periods of alone time can recover your energy. Similarly if you are feeling restless working on a project, spending time socializing can help recover that energy.

Cycles of stress and recovery are critical to making long-term change. Short-term dramatic change is possible, but sustaining it requires you to shift your internal equilibrium. Taking time to recover your energies and making progress in incremental steps is the key.

Whether it is in your career or your personal life, it is important to do something you are passionate about. The enthusiasm you feel when engaged in an activity you are passionate about is powerful. That’s the feeling that makes you want to rise up early in the morning and leaves you feelings satisfied when going to bed at night.

What exactly is passion? What does it mean to be passionate about something? I’m sure almost all of us can describe the feeling, but what exactly does it take to find passion?

I believe that in order to be passionate about anything, be it your work, hobbies or relationships there are three necessary components. By looking to see where these components overlap in your life you can find passion. Out of the infinite choices you have in the world, seeking to invest your very limited time and energy in these small areas of overlap can unleash that experience we call passion.

A State of Flow

The first ingredient for passion is that you need to be able to enter a state of flow. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi first coined this term when describing how people enter into a highly focused state. Time and events outside your activity seem to blur out of existence when in a state of flow. As all your energies become fully invested in the now, a state of flow is a prerequisite to passion.

Entering into a state of flow is easier with some tasks than others. Some activities trigger enough of the mind for complete engagement, but not too much that the person gives up. Achieving flow is a fine balance from feeling bored to feeling overwhelmed. Certainly some activities make it easier to enter flow then others. Playing a game is probably more accessible to flow than is doing your taxes.

But entering a state of flow is also a skill of the mind. Removing distractions, increasing your personal energy and being patient can all help create this mental state.

Training yourself to get into a state of flow more easily greatly expands what you can be passionate about. Do you know someone who seems completely disengaged except when playing a video game or watching a television program. These people find it harder to get a true passion because they have a limited range of what activities generate flow for them. As a result the chances of finding this area overlap with the other two prerequisites to passion are slim.

An Opportunity to Learn

Entering into a state of flow isn’t enough to create a feeling of passion. You also need the second component which is an opportunity to learn. All areas of passion provide some chance for growth. If there is no opportunity for growth or learning, there is no real possibility for passionate engagement.

A monk may be able to focus his mind while doing a menial chore such as sweeping, but sweeping rarely offers major opportunities for learning. Sweeping is harder to be passionate about because it is a fairly straightforward task. Although it is possible to learn and grow from every activity, some activities are far more obvious in this regard.

Finding opportunities to learn in an activity comes when you have the ability to improve within it. Improving your career might mean making more money, receiving promotions or even just becoming a master at your discipline. Improving your relationships might mean more open communication, more fun or support. The opportunity to learn is essential to create a feeling of passion.

An Underlying Meaning

The final component to passion is purpose. Without meaning, then you can’t become passionate about something. Even if you can become engaged in the activity and have room to improve, if the task is meaningless it is impossible to create passion.

This final component also explains how some of the activities you were passionate about before you no longer are. At some point you decided that there wasn’t enough greater meaning in the task. Whether it is a profession, hobby or relationship, if you don’t see a greater meaning to participating in it, passion is difficult to muster.

The level of meaning you experience in a task varies. At the lowest level of meaning you have those tasks that fulfill your survival needs. Then you have tasks that fulfill your needs for esteem, love and support. Finally you have the tasks that fulfill your drive to contribute. As your life situation improves, the tasks that create passion for you shift as well.

Creating an Overlap

With this understanding of what passion is, I feel there are two paths to increasing the amount of passion in your life. Each path will create more engagement with life but following both of them at once is the key to creating full engagement.

The first path is to identify what pursuits already overlap strongly with a state of flow, an opportunity to learn and an underlying meaning. Shifting your time to these areas can create a great increase in your level of happiness and fulfillment in life.

The second path is to take the tasks you are already doing and work to create a greater state of flow, opportunities to learn and more purpose. There are many ways you can improve these areas, but the foremost is awareness. Simply by being aware that these attributes are critical to a passionate life you will be able to create more of them.

If any experience relates to the description of feeling truly alive, I would say that feeling extremely passionate comes close. By harnessing a state of flow, structuring opportunities to learn and choosing pursuits with a greater underlying meaning you can experience more passion in life. A life where you are fully engaged.