I read chapters 6 through 9 of The Power of Full Engagement last week. The topics included mental and spiritual energies and the need to define purpose.
Mental Energy
The brain needs to be treated as a muscle. Without constant training, the mind atrophies and loses its sharpness. Without recovery, mental capacity is not fully replenished. It was interesting to learn about creativity - occurring when the brain is relaxed instead of a state of systematic concentration. “Our best ideas come to us in the shower.”
Negativity draws on mental energy reserves that could have been applied elsewhere.
To perform at our best we must be able to sustain concentration and to move flexibly between broad and narrow, as well as internal and external focus. We also need access to realistic optimism, a paradoxical notion that implies seeing the world as it is, but always working positively toward a desired outcome or solution.
Spiritual Energy and Defining Purpose
Spiritual energy is defined in terms of personal values rather than religion. It often requires service towards other people, which replenishes spiritual energy. Personal values act as a beacon guiding every action and decision.
“Mental health is based on a certain degree of tension,” he wrote, “the tension between what one has already achieved and what one still ought to accomplish, or the gap between what one is and what one should become. . . . What man actually needs is not a tensionless state, but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task.” - Viktor Frankl.
Defining purpose is closely tied to spiritual energy. The values that we hold dear are the ones that will serve as a compass in all the actions that we take regardless of the obstacles that may come our way. Negative purpose keeps us stationary, looking inwards and dwelling on the problems, while Positive purpose propels us to take new actions.
Even then, when we are guided by clear values, we can continue to make choices about how to behave from a position of confidence, strength, and dignity rather than from anger, resentment, and insecurity. In some cases, it may make sense to change our circumstances. But challenges and difficulties never disappear.
Facing the truth
Chapter 9 is about facing the truth about one’s shortcomings and relies on completing the online assessment introduced in the first chapter. The online evaluation requires you to seek out 3 or 5 people in your life to provide feedback. This is one criticism I have about this book, in that this may not be easy for everyone to do. Pursuing the “real” truth requires courage. It requires extracting that truth from other people - people close to you and people who are your colleagues. They may not be comfortable parting with the facts because the truth can hurt and affect relationships. If you don’t obtain this truth, you are only left with your version of the truth.
Without realizing it, we often create stories around a set of facts and then take our stories to be the truth.
The facts in a given situation may be incontrovertible, but the meaning that we ascribe to them is often far more subjective.