I used to be more of an adventurer, maybe some of you can relate to that.  Time happens, things change, thoughts settle. Well, more specifically, marriage happens, kids change and bills settle… it all settles you into one place.  So, here I sit, having lived in the same home for almost four years, the longest I have ever lived in one place in my life.  No, not from a military family, just a family with an interesting mother.  Anywho, over the last year, I’ve been getting signals from my loved ones on the other side to take off for a traveling adventure.  Not just any adventure, the kind where you sell everything and go.  We were hoping for a while, that we could buy a boat and cruise the Caribbean (we still may one day).   After a little research however, it turned out that the down payment was understandably large and not something we could do quickly.  So, while I was talking to a good friend about it, she suggested taking baby steps, starting with a motor home and traveling the U.S. first.  I considered it for a moment and then quickly dismissed it because I was too worried about all of life’s “what ifs”.  Then, a few days ago, I had a amazingly clear vision and in it was my deceased Grandfather.  I could see very clearly his blue cotton pants walking away from me with the limp he developed from years and years of driving truck. When he came into focus, I couldn’t help but feel emotional from missing him and just then, he walked up to me and swatted me upside the head with his hand!  I was shocked, I asked him what the hell that was for and his response was, “What happened to my granddaughter?  Why have you become such a chicken shit?”  (Even though I know he is a no-nonsense guy, I didn’t expect that.)  I picked my jaw up off the floor and gaped at him with huge eyes.  I asked him what in the world he meant.  Just then, the ground turned to dirt and he started to walk backwards, waving his hands in the air like he was directing a large vehicle to back up.  And then there it was, I could see it out of the corner of my eye, he was backing up a large motor home.  When he was done, he strolled over casually toward me and made himself comfortable on the picnic table to my left.  He asked me to sit down.  From there, this is the conversation that ensued…

“So, what’s wrong with a little adventure?”  he asked me.

“Nothing.”  I said, “I am just scared to make the leap because I’m not sure of what it would take, and if we can do it financially, and I have no one to fall back on anymore.  Grandma’s gone, mom is gone and you’re gone.”

He laughed, “First off, you never actually ever fell back on any of us, you always made your own way.  And second, if you would have fallen back on me when I was alive, I couldn’t have helped you anyway, I was broke!”

The conversation ended and we just sat together on the picnic table bench.  As I stared at him in silence, I received a deeper understanding of what he meant.  I realized that if he was to ever help me, the best help he could give me would come from the other side, not from the days that he was physically here on earth.  I may work with guides everyday and grasp the concept that we are being assisted and guided by those on the other side, but I realized in that moment that I never completely trusted the process for myself.  It was something I understood logically… people die, they cross over and they aid us from the other side.  But what I hadn’t done up to this point is take the knowledge I had and made it a reality in my heart.   I hadn’t yet trusted it for myself but I now knew I need to start.  I do want to travel and explore this world, and I want to walk away from the white picket fence.  I realized from this vision that nothing is stopping me but myself.  I thanked Poppy and the vision was over.

So, here we are, the Esby family, getting ready to now buy a motor home and tour the country.  We’re not leaving until fall, but we’re taking steps each day to get us closer to the goal.  I’m looking forward to the adventure and I am praying all the time, asking my guides to bring to us what we need to make this adventure happen.  My job is simply to trust that they will.

To my clients out there, don’t worry, we’ll just be gone for the winter.  Right now, the plans are rough and estimated that we will leave this fall and return the following spring.  Plus, you can always reach me via phone!  I might not be in town, but I’ll be there if you need me.

This spiritual linkage also nurtures forgiveness to the point that the leader learns not to blame others for his shortcomings.  Instead one discovers the wisdom to shed excess baggage and, feeding off a reservoir of positive energy, to resume his life’s journey from a fresh perspective.

At the same time, one learns the virtue of sacrifice, the ability to endure pain and suffering for a higher purpose.  He also becomes more resilient, better able to bounce back from adversity. 

Each time the leader rediscovers or reaffirms his place in the universe, he draws power from that inner spirit – what Oriented philosophers refers to as chi and what Star Wars mythology has made popular as the “Force”.  In simple terms, it is the ennobling and enabling power of love, a boundless spiritual energy that keeps him mindful and appreciative of every living moment. 

Armed with this, the leader is able to live – not just articulate – the values and principles he stands for.  From there, he has only to commit his best and trust that he will find the right way for others to follow.

The Washington Post has been running a series of essays by religious authorities in response to the recent earthquake in Haiti.  The idea of the series is to examine how people of different faiths explain the age old question of why bad things happen to good people.  I would like to say something about this tragedy as well, but I approach the issue from almost exactly the opposite perspective.   I do not believe that there is any good answer to the question of why terrible things happen, but I do believe that it is insensitive to explain away such calamities with fables or myths.  Moreover, I think that "spiritual consolation" becomes offensive when it implies that suffering could have been prevented through alternative thinking, praying, or other "spiritual" practices.

If you believe that God has a Plan or that there is a "cosmic order" to the universe then you necessarily believe that awful things happen for a reason.  This applies not only to natural disasters but also to diseases, acts of malice, and personal tragedies.  Of course, you may believe that particular events are exacerbated by evil human intent (or corruption) and that those who knowingly do wrong things ought to be punished, but this does not get you out of the deeper metaphysical problem of evil.

Let us start with the idea of God’s Plan.  If it is the case that God is omniscient, then God Knows that some priests are going to rape some alter boys.  It is an unpleasant but entirely necessary part of the gift of free will that God allows such acts to occur, just as it is a part of God’s Plan that every day thousands of people will die in accidents, epidemics, and massacres.  From a philosophical perspective, I do not find this position to be particularly problematic because I can accept that God could be omniscient and omnipotent but that His omnibenevolence is so far from what we imagine (usually some kind of cosmic Santa Claus) that it can contain atrocities and still be, ultimately, Good.   What puzzles me is why anyone would take comfort in believing in a god like that.  Moreover, the idea that praying to a god who already has a set plan will make any difference in the course of future events is both absurd and borderline offensive.  After all, if I accept that the same God that allows earthquakes and child rape occasionally answers prayers, then it looks as though I must accept that people who suffer devastation may, in fact, be responsible for their own suffering.  If prayer works, and some people still suffer and die from things God could have prevented, then they must not have prayed or prayed the right way.

So, to recap, the two religious alternatives appear to be that 1) Your suffering is a part of God’s Plan, and can’t be helped or 2) Your suffering is a part of God’s Plan but can be helped by prayer, so if you continue to suffer even after prayer, then it is your own fault.  In light of this, I can see why the not-religious might seek out some alternative form of consolation.  I expect that the appeal of New-Age self-help programs like "Heal Your Life" and "The Secret" has a lot to do with this.  The idea behind New Age thought seems to be that we can explain away our old suffering in terms of a cosmic order (usually something like Karma, but it varies) that we didn’t understand before, and that we can prevent new suffering by understanding this cosmic order and harnessing  "positive thinking" or "positive energy" in our lives.  On the surface, New Age thought seems appealing because it offers up all the reassurances of religion (ultimate meaning, a purpose-driven life, etc.) without a nasty god who may hold you accountable for all of the bad things you did in your miserable life.  Unfortunately, the "cosmic order" view doesn’t offer any insightful explanation for why bad things happen, and it is even more conducive to a blame-the-victim conclusion than the "God’s Plan" view.

What virtually every New Age system holds in common is the belief that "non-physical" aspects of people such as "positive" or "negative" beliefs, "auras", or "spiritual energy" have an effect upon the physical world such that they determine the health of the body as well as events in a person’s life.  For example, the New Age self-help guru Louise Hay claims that she cured her cancer without drugs or surgery through "an intensive program of affirmations, visualization, nutritional cleansing, and psychotherapy."  In other words, Louise Hay claims that she cured cancer by thinking differently.  Leaving aside the obvious empirical problems with this claim (and the serious philosophical problems, and the fact that she is lying), what is troubling about Louise Hay is that her program implies that those who suffer and die of illnesses such as cancer could have chosen to do otherwise (by thinking differently!)  and that, for this reason, they are ultimately responsible for their fate.   The same implication follows from the principle of the self-help documentary "The Secret" which suggests that economic success is not the result of mere fortune and labor but is instead the result of a mysterious "Law of Attraction" whereby individuals attract fortunate events and interactions through positive thinking.  Thus, people who live in poverty could have done otherwise and those who remain in poverty have failed to take available measures to improve their luck.

I understand that most people who offer up their prayers, thoughts, meditations, and/or "positive energy" to those who suffer do so with honest intentions and good will, but this is no excuse for promoting a position that blames the victim.  The people of Haiti did not make a deal with the Devil nor tip the Karmic scales so as to necessitate an earthquake, and no amount of prayer or positive thought could have changed their circumstances.  Consolations based upon spiritual conjecture are an insult to their injury.

Email to a friend

I went to a metaphysical discussion group Monday night in Rollinsford.  There were great people there, very deep thinkers.  I love that stuff!  So, one of the participants is a herbalist and works with herbs and plants through intuition.  For her it seemed to be less about following the book and more about going with what you felt which I find to be a very refreshing point of view these days.  Anyhow, we got on the topic of plants and a few people in the group who work very closely with plants in a spiritual capacity discussed the importance to asking a plant permission before pulling it out of the ground or taking a cutting from it.  While I don’t necessarily do that myself, I can see the importance of it and the gratitude position one would take by doing such a thing.  Heck, as I type it I’m thinking maybe it’s something I should do more of.  They also spoke of plants each having a spirit and being interconnected with each other and with a higher source.  Thus, when the spirit of a plant leaves the plant body it returns to the main energy (higher) source for plants.  I could probably explain this more elegantly but plants aren’t my thing, humans are.  Back to the story.  As the night progressed, one participant then asked a fantastic question.  She asked what happens if someone pulls a plant or hurts a plant without acknowledging the spirit of the plant.  When she asked it, an image immediately came to me of a small boy, yanking out plants, squashing and destroying them.  He then stood up and went home to take out some frustration on his sister.  The vision followed as he aged, continuing a pattern of abuse to friends and lovers.  It ended at a scene where the grown boy stopped the pattern, woke up to what he was doing all those years and learns compassion.  I was struck by this vision because it was another way of seeing compassion, from another angle.  Compassion is something that few of us have at birth, it is something that many of us come here to find and without that plant, we would not have a starting point on which to grow.  True growth needs a reference point, a place that we can reflect back upon.

Plus, in general, I think plants have a better grip on life than we do.  I can’t imagine plants being as neurotic as humans, thus they wouldn’t have as much of the crap to deal with when they die.  Makes for a much simpler life… and death.

When you are thinking about what role you play here on earth, there are many more roles available than just sheep or shepherd.  Sometimes we are too quick to ask if someone is a leader or a follower.  When I think of myself, I am both.  I am a blend of leader and follower slightly mixed with an “in the moment being”.  I have met countless people who have fallen too far in one direction and have become lost, disconnected and unaware… and sometimes righteous.

For those who decide they are a leader, they can at times step too far into it, believing that their way is the only way and that all others are just unaware of “the” one special secret.  Then there are the solid followers who can’t seem to decide what shoe laces to put in their shoes without looking at the television or fashion magazines.  Naturally, these types of followers can be lured into trances by the extreme leaders and follow as if they are wearing a bullring through their noses.  Life can be about extremes but when it comes to following and leading, it is my opinion that it is healthier to be about balance.  The key is to recognize when you are in an extreme, if that extreme is healthy for you and if not, how to get back to a balance.  I am a leader because I teach others to open up to their intuition and because I have the drive in me to make change and push forward regardless of what others think.  In order to balance the leadership however, I continue to stay in a place of understanding that all students that cross my path are only supposed to learn from me for a short time before going to the next learning situation.  My hope for them is that they learn from me and use what I can offer, keeping what resonates with them, leaving the rest, and then continuing along their path of growth.  I am not the final destination for anyone.  I am not a life long teacher for any soul.  I am one of many leaders that are grateful to share what they know and are also excited to see their students grow up and above them.  I am also a follower.  I know deep in my heart that I am a life long student.  I know that the day that I decide I know it all is the day that I’m just plain stupid!  I will follow the lead of others, balancing it with the wisdom to move on when the time is right.  In the middle somewhere I like to think of myself as an “in the moment being”, open to anything and everything that comes my way, taking from it what works and leaving the rest behind.  To walk the middle road means being open to moments of teaching others, moments of learning from others, and moments of just being.

Spirituality is like a mountain.  We all are climbing it, all heading in the same direction, we just are on different paths.  The moment you think there is only one way up to the top, you will most likely follow too closely behind a leader, either in the form of a human or an ideal.  If it is in the form of human, that isn’t the best climb visually if you get my drift!  Either way, it’s important in this life to look around, take in the scenery, enjoy the climb.  I love the analogy of the mountain because I sometimes picture a few of my family members climbing up a different path, freaking out, waving their hand at me in the air, screaming “Beau, come to this path or you’ll burn in hell!”  Shrug, what can I do but wave, take a touristy photograph of them and then keep moving forward, loving my space and my experiences.

Doesn’t matter how you climb the mountain or where you start.  You can climb it on your own or with an organization, just make sure that you are climbing up the path that speaks to your heart.

I just saw Avatar and it touched me in several ways. For one thing, it resonated loudly with what I am trying to do with this blog: promote positive energy.

It’s a movie that, at the same time as it is “fast” and “action-packed,” is also very spiritual, and makes some crucial points about the cancerous nature of negative energy and how we are all connected and affected by the energy around us. And how fragile it all is. It shook me to my core to watch.

If you’ve ever seen Dances with Wolves, there are a lot of parallels between the two stories. Preview for Avatar, below.

Dear Lightworkers,

A strong movement of change and evolution is happening now, even when you are not aware of it. Rather than worry and stress, trust the process; relax and enjoy the ride. Allow moments of reflection and meditation—they clear the way for inspiration.

People will automatically join the scene.  Watch for the arrival of others to help in the plan.  Adjoin with us and others to promote the message of hope and strength.  Allow your true purpose to emerge from within.  Accept and forgive others as you progress down your path.  Places will be taken by those necessary in the transitional process.  Join with others freely to amass the critical proportion to effect change.  Deliverance from pain is the result of love and forgiveness of self and others. Why do anything else?

The average person doesn’t know what they want, why they exist or their true purpose. You choose to eliminate possibilities when you have no direction. Choice is the major force in evolution. Without choice, there is no change. Benefits and experiences in your life remain neutral, repetitive and unexamined. This leads to stagnation and even despair. Providing chances to see things/life anew is the springboard to new opportunities. Place your faith in your divine direction, making every choice with your inner guidance. Place doubts and fears behind you. Allow your spiritual connection to guide you at all junctures—you need only ask for assistance from those in this dimension assisting your world. Proud moments lie ahead and projects will move forward.

To assist you, ask yourself these questions:

Who is worrying, who is doing the self effacing, who is trying to distract you and who is doubtful?

Whenever you feel these thoughts or emotions, know that you are in your ego and not your awakened, true self. Addictive, self deprecating thoughts take enormous energy and perpetuate your pain and suffering. Renounce destructive thought patterns and choose your true, inner spiritual self.

In order to choose your true self, you have to experience operating from it—to operate awake. Practice every opportunity to be aware and present. Wake up and stop falling into the traps of the mind. Become aware of the inner, critical dialogue and know it is not you.  Wake up. Embrace yourself, love yourself. Healing the world begins with healing yourself.

-The Twelve Wise Ones

This entry might be a bit touchy for some and my hopes is that it does not alienate. My hope is that it educates.  Over the years I have met many people with the work that I do.  There are a broad range of reasons that people come in to get a reading, everything from a missing person to life path guidance to reconnecting with someone they love.  As you can see, there are a lot of good reasons to get a reading. Consulting the medicine woman has gone on for thousands of years and some of my clients check in a few times a year and that is perfect for them. But there are a handful of those who true professional psychics call psychic junkies, expressing their junkiness as either addicts or lookie loos.  Personally, I have read for very few of these addicts and lookie loos, probably because I’m not a street psychic and I don’t have a glowing neon tarot reading sign hanging up in my window off some busy road.  Over 90% of my business is word of mouth and that certainly helps.  But on a rare occasion I’ll get that rare breed sitting in front of me.

Let’s start with the Lookie Loo.  The lookie loo fanatically watches psychic television shows, studying people online like John Edward, Sylvia Browne, and Lisa Williams and wants to experience the exciting paranormal experience for themselves.  They want proof that what they are seeing on television is true.  So, one day, the lookie loo hears that there is a woman who can do super human things with her mind right here in their neighborhood and they call me to book an appointment.  Lookie loos are easy to spot, it takes a very short amount of time for me to decide if the person sitting in front of me is one.  A lookie loo does not want to pay the full amount, they repeatedly ask for pointless proof items like “what was my dad’s favorite color”, they don’t care at all about the meaningful messages that are coming through, and they talk in lengths about amazing readings they’ve seen on television and online.  One lookie loo in particular sticks in my memory.  She came in because I was offering a discounted rate a few years back.  She was not interested in hearing the messages that were coming through from her loved ones about her marriage and her life path and she wasn’t interested in connecting with any one person in particular.  When the messages would come through, she would confirm them but didn’t want to talk about them.  She continually wanted to “move on”.  She kept saying, “what else do you see?”  Then, when a woman came through from spirit, identified herself as a former neighbor, told me her hair color and how she died, the client jumped with excitement because what the client hadn’t told me earlier was that her sister was the one who had referred her and when the sister came in to see me, that same neighbor showed up in her reading.  At this point I was hoping we may have found something that we could actually focus on but no, the client sat back, studied me for a minute with a skeptical stare and proceeded to ask me if I knew the neighbors name, as if all the other pieces I had provided her with were not enough proof.  Ok, yes, sometimes someone is looking for one more piece to make sure they have the right link or to differentiate between two people who might be coming through for them, but couple this behavior up with someone who continually blows off the important messages that come through and you have a lookie loo.  The only thing left is to get them a stick of cotton candy and a camera. I lovingly refer to these experiences as people wanting to watch the monkey dance.  Last time I checked, I wasn’t a monkey, lol.

The other type of psychic junkie is the addict, this one doesn’t frustrate me as much as the lookie loo, this type of junkie saddens me.  The addict is easy to recognize because they have a problem in their life but aren’t facing it or working on it themselves.  They are desperate for answers and they want the answers immediately.  Sometimes an addict will even press you to answer “just one question” while you’re trying to book the appointment for them.  They will be almost desperate to talk about the situation, as if their lives depended on it.  They will text you 20 times begging you to “just tap in for a second for them”.  They will easily search out and get readings from 14 different psychics, hoping eventually someone will tell them what they want to hear, hoping some psychic will have the magic answer or be able to magically take away the negative energy.  When the first 2 or 3 don’t fix their lives, they move right on to the next.  All the while, their life is passing them by.  Moments where they could be doing something pro-active about their situation slip away while they wait for one of the psychics to say the magic words they are waiting to hear.  The reason that the addict saddens me is that for some (not all), the addiction wasn’t created by them. Many of the addicts I have met found themselves at a horrible low at some point in their life and some ridiculous street psychic fraud tricked them out of huge amounts of money by stringing them along and telling them just enough to keep them hungry for more.  I recently met a wonderful, intelligent, and caring woman who found herself a victim of this type of psychic.  She had struggled with issues with her husband and stumbled across one of these frauds.  In the end, the bullsh*t psychic conned her out of thousands of dollars and her self-strength!  I met with the young woman and spoke to her for over an hour about her situation.  I hope that after meeting with me that she sees that the power is in her hands, not in anything a psychic tells her.

Remember, nothing a psychic tells you should decide your path.  Information from a psychic is simply confirmation and one opinion.  If you find you are living your life according to what your psychic tells you to do, you just might be in a relationship with a fraud.

And, for you lookie loos out there, I get it, I understand how cool it is to see a super human trick.  But please, take in the information that is given to you in addition to the proof.  If a psychic tells you that your (deceased) father is worried about your (living) mother because she had a stroke 5 years back, take that as proof and allow your father the time and respect to continue to give you the messages he wants to give.  Don’t interrupt him to test the psychic to see if she can tell you his favorite hobby.  It irritates them just as it most likely would if they were still living.  Be patient, the proof will always come.

With love,

Beau

God is seen to many as the dude in the white robe and kickin’ beard,
but is this a good description of him or are we missing something?
Some followers of organized religion will say that it is deeper than
just a man and although they go deeper in their description of God,
many times they will fail to go really deep.  They speak of a God that
is in your heart and with you at all times, and while this is at least
one step closer to a reality that makes sense, it’s still not far
enough away from the image of a man who perpetually looks 90 years
old and hangs out on a cloud.  I’ve always wondered what people
thought they would find on the other side, a big bench with one guy
that runs it all?  And why is it a guy?  Hmmm… I’ll deal with that one
on a later date, back to the understanding of God.  On the surface,
the most basic description is that He is one guy “up there” loving us.
The next level of understanding is that He is someone who is in all
of us, who is everywhere and in everything. This is an excellent start
but I’d like to take it even one level higher.  I’d like to present
the idea of God as not a man, but as the actual love that binds
everything and every spirit together.  He is more of a thing than a
man. When I attempt to explain the other side to people, I explain
that it’s like a multi directional and multidimensional spider web with
each point of connection being a spirit, or soul.  The strings of web
that connect the spirits would be God.  God is not simply one soul
looking over all of us like a parent figure, He is the web structure.
He is the glue that is love, a love that supports, connects, and holds
all of us.  He is a form of energy that loves and flows through
everything.
I still speak of God as a person for ease of conversation but I
understand that there are depths and levels that are beyond anything a
mere human can understand.  When I pray to God, I am praying to my
support, my connection, and my source of higher power and love.  I may
have a deeper understanding of God, but that doesn’t change my
position of looking to that web of love (God) to catch me when I fall.

Nope. Guess that answer is too short hey? Well, I ran into this idea a while back when I was hosting one of my spiritual community gatherings. A guest of the gathering mentioned that he was frustrated in his life and that another spiritual practitioner he had met had informed him that if he was unhappy, all he had to do was fire his spiritual guides and get new ones! I can’t even tell you how much I had to restrain from busting out laughing. That, to me, was the epitome of American culture. If it’s too difficult, throw it away?  In many ways we have it WAY too easy here in America.  It is not supposed to always be easy, it is a challenge that we’ve stepped up to, some more than others. So, this guest of mine, an incredibly nice man, was sitting next to his wife, clearly the love of his life, telling the group how he had landed a number of filming jobs that all fell through in the last moments before they were scheduled to begin. He was so frustrated that the opportunity for good money was always offered and then always taken away, like carrots being dangled in front of him. He was mad at his guides for not providing the financial support he needed. It was getting tough for him and very stressful and then he heard the idea… just fire your guides. When I heard him tell the group this, it cracked open a conversation with me that I was happy to dive into. I asked him about his dreams and his goals. He expressed that he loves making films and wanted to work for someone so he could do just that. As we talked, he opened up further to admit that his true dream, one that he had put completely by the wayside, would be to make a movie of his own and not film for someone else. Now we were getting somewhere! When I asked him why he wasn’t doing that, he responded with a very reasonable answer, it cost too much money, equipment alone was a huge expense. So, instead of working at manifesting the equipment and gear he needed to make his own film, he was desperately trying to get hired to work a large amount of hours per week for someone else, leaving no time for him to follow his dream.  It was obvious that if he was to take on one of those jobs then his real dream would continue to fall by the wayside.

Here are my thoughts on this…

You can’t fire your guides any more than you can chop off your right hand and expect to get another.  If they weren’t for your highest good and there to help you get to where you deeply wanted to get to then they wouldn’t be with you.  Sometimes what we want and what this culture demands of us are two different things.  Sometimes all your guides want is for you to spend even a small amount of time each day reaching for your dream.  We hear inspirational stories all the time of people who beat the odds.  Well, they weren’t beating the odds as much as they were persistent in the face of struggle.  When it got hard, they didn’t give into the grind and lose sight of their dreams, they pressed on.  Most importantly they kept their focus on their goal, on their passion.  We do have to live in this culture, we do have to pay the bills, I acknowledge that.  What we don’t have to do is fall for the belief that our dream is too expensive or too far out of our reach.  If you are struggling right now and repeatedly finding you are running into a brick wall, thank your guides for putting the brick wall up and start to look around for a different direction.  My hopes for his film career is that he finds a job that pays well but still leaves him time to search for ways to make his dream come true.  That is something that his spirit guide would love to set up for him!

I was speaking to a student of mine last night and she was expressing how she was puzzled that her intuition seemed to fail her on a particular day last week.  She asked me if that can happen.  Can your intuition be “off” one day and back in full form another?  I believe we can look to our intuition but not connect with it as well as we may have in the past.  If we used our intuition perfectly and never made a wrong turn, what would the point of life be?  Even deeper than that, your intuition typically is not “off”, that would be like saying your taste is off or your sense of touch is off.  Another way to view this is that your spiritual guides might actually be leading you down a road that to you looks like a mistake but to them looks like an opportunity for your path. In my student’s case, I suspected that her intuition was exactly on but her guides were leading her in a different direction, a direction that would cause her to go the wrong way.  The pull from her guides was stronger than her intuition.  Her intuition might have been telling her to turn left but the voice of her guide was telling her to turn right, and his voice was louder than her intuition.  When she told me more about her experience, she explained that she was driving with her husband and she continued to take wrong turn after wrong turn.  In the end, the two of them were riding in the car for almost two hours, lost.  As I watched her standing in front of me telling me this story, I saw the image of her guide behind her with a smirk on his face. He intended on getting her lost, he wanted the two of them to be stuck in the car for a length of time.  He pointed at her and told me to ask her what the two of them achieved in their relationship during that overly long car ride.  When I asked her, she smiled and said that they had conversations that were really needed between the two of them. So, in the end, her intuition wasn’t necessarily off, her guides just had a different plan for her that day.  This student of mine is a great soul, a real go getter and a fantastically motivated person.  I suspect for her it might take getting lost in the car to slow her down enough to have some of those conversations that she might not have had time for before that.  She is highly intuitive and rapidly developing that intuition, but this is a good example to remind us that just because you’re intuitive doesn’t mean every single thing falls perfectly in your lap.  A wrong turn might not be a wrong turn, it might be exactly what you need at the time!

I attend 3 weeks ago a great training on “leadership from the core”. We’ve learned to manage our energy (and not our time) thru 4 levels of enegry : physical, emotional, mental and emotional.

This is a very interesting approach that you can easily practive in your daily life both at work or in your private live.

I find back a very interesting article in the harvard business review that explains this approach. You will find here-below a summary of this approach and if you want to read more, just click on the the link here-below.

HBR Manage Your Energy Not Your Time (2)

The Idea in Brief

Organizations are demanding ever-higher performance from their workforces. People are trying to comply, but the usual method–putting in longer hours–has backfired. They’re getting exhausted, disengaged, and sick. And they’re defecting to healthier job environments. Longer days at the office don’t work because time is a limited resource. But personal energy is renewable, say Schwartz and McCarthy. By fostering deceptively simple rituals that help employees regularly replenish their energy, organizations build workers’ physical, emotional, and mental resilience.

These rituals include taking brief breaks at specific intervals, expressing appreciation to others, reducing interruptions, and spending more time on activities people do best and enjoy most. Help your employees systematically rejuvenate their personal energy, and the benefits go straight to your bottom line. Take Wachovia Bank: Participants in an energy renewal program produced 13 percentage points greater year-to-year in revenues from loans than a control group did. And they exceeded the control group’s gains in revenues from deposits by 20percentage points.

The Idea in Practice

Schwartz and McCarthy recommend these practices for renewing four dimensions of personal energy:

Physical Energy

• Enhance your sleep by setting an earlier bedtime and reducing alcohol use.
• Reduce stress by engaging in cardiovascular activity at least three times a week and strength training at least once.
• Eat small meals and light snacks every three hours. Learn to notice signs of imminent energy flagging, including restlessness, yawning, hunger, and difficulty concentrating.
• Take brief but regular breaks, away from your desk, at 90- to 120-minute intervals throughout the day.

Emotional Energy

• Defuse negative emotions–irritability, impatience, anxiety, insecurity–through deep abdominal breathing.
• Fuel positive emotions in yourself and others by regularly expressing appreciation to others in detailed, specific terms through notes, e-mails, calls, or conversations.
• Look at upsetting situations through new lenses. Adopt a “reverse lens” to ask, “What would the other person in this conflict say, and how might he be right?” Use a “long lens” to ask, “How will I likely view this situation in six months?” Employ a “wide lens” to ask, “How can I grow and learn from this situation?”

Mental Energy

• Reduce interruptions by performing high-concentration tasks away from phones and e-mail.
• Respond to voice mails and e-mails at designated times during the day.
• Every night, identify the most important challenge for the next day. Then make it your first priority when you arrive at work in the morning.

Spiritual Energy

• Identify your “sweet spot” activities–those that give you feelings of effectiveness, effortless absorption, and fulfillment.
• Find ways to do more of these. One executive who hated doing sales reports delegated them to someone who loved that activity.
• Allocate time and energy to what you consider most important. For example, spend the last 20 minutes of your evening commute relaxing, so you can connect with your family once you’re home.
• Live your core values. For instance, if consideration is important to you but you’re perpetually late for meetings, practice intentionally showing up five minutes early for meetings.

Time to time I get insights into things that I wasn’t curious about in the first place.  I’ll come across an experience that opens up a new door to information and understanding, but I didn’t necessarily go searching for it.  That happened again recently when I was moved to tears by a song I heard playing in a store.  What intrigued me is that I didn’t hear the words and the song was not a familiar one to me at all yet I was still deeply moved.  It was the tones and the music that seemed to pour right through me.  I could feel it as if it was altering my physical makeup!  I know there are many of you that can relate to at least one specific song really hitting home for you, but I’m talking about something energetic, spiritual, deeper than coming across some really meaningful lyrics.  I’m talking about a piece of music that matches with your energetic body in such a way that it actually shifts you, it tweaks and restructures your energetic/spiritual body to its new position, setting you up for the next stage in your life.  I have always found music to be really interesting in the patterns, the mathematics and how it is put together.  Visually, when I ask my guides about the general effects of music on humans, they respond by explaining it to me a with very interesting picture. I get an image of a window with my physical body on one side and my spiritual body on the other.  The music pours into my physical body which receives it, collects it, and them sends it through the window into my spiritual body.  The window is important, it is the way music reaches our spirit. The physical body receives it (hearing the beat, feeling the wave patterns), the window translates it and the spiritual body receives the energetics of it.  I agree that there are a host of songs that many of us can relate to, but many of them are because of their chosen lyrics.  The vision that I see and how I understand these special songs to affect our spiritual body is in the details of the composition of a song, the falls, the lifts, the tones and chords.  There are a handful of these special songs in each person’s life that have all of the musical elements patterned together in such a very specific way that it energetically matches and combines in an amazingly perfect picture with our unique energetic body pattern.  Those songs will only come to you a handful of times in your life.  They will move you physically, spiritually and mentally.  They will rebuild you, support you and restructure you to prepare you for the next phase of your life and I believe firmly that they will be given to you at the exact moment you need them.  I have come across two of those songs in my lifetime.  I have recently been given the second song and I welcome it.  I am told that I will only have four songs in total with the fourth being given to me shortly before my death.  I guess I should be patient for the other two being that I’m not dying anytime soon!

Being afraid of what people think of you will slow your energetic vibration and cause you to slow down on your spiritual path.  When you are worried about what someone else thinks of you, you take your attention away from where it should really be which is in the moment, on your own personal path.  I understand that it is very common practice to worry about what others think. Heck, I used to be knee-deep in it myself, and at times, I still find that I can judge myself unfairly and make assumptions based on what others think. But, what I’ve learned by submerging myself in the work that I do is the minute you make an assumption, you’ve lost your footing. The reality of the situation will begin to fall away from you. The truth can only be discovered through curiosity, witnessing and open communication with others.  Standing in silence, assuming what is most often the worst, does absolutely nothing positive for your spirit. Open your discussions, calm your mind, center yourself in your spirit. Remember, your reality is within you and unique to you, it is not created by someone else’s opinion.

You are energy.  Pure and simple, you are energy.  Everything about you is energy.  Your thoughts, emotions, actions.. all are energy.  As a matter of fact there is nothing that is not energy.

Within you are chakras, energy wheels that correspond to color and certain aspects of your physical, mental, emotional and spiritual life. Whenever you feel out of sorts you are experiencing the energy that you are in a state of imbalance… asking to be brought back into balance.

All aspects of the chakras are equally important and balance in your emotions, body and life experience are the result of you being All Balanced.  Some will spend more time trying to enhance the upper energy or chakras in order to “be more spiritual”, this is not balance.

True balance is the result of you allowing All That You Are to flow throughout the chakra system.  Only as you are aware of and respectful of All Aspects of Self are you feeling safe, confident, spiritual, loved, capable, wise.

Pulling energy in by focusing on the colors of the chakras is a simple way to restore balance within the body.  Go from red, orange, yellow, green/pink, light blue, dark blue, purple, gold.. thinking and feeling the colors moving from your feet to your head and down again.

Feel the difference in your body and emotions.  This balance is maintained as you experience yourself as all aspects being One. 

There in not a single aspect of your Being that is more than or less than another.  YOU are a Spiritual Being.. all of you is spiritual energy.

Wearing clothing the color of a certain chakra will help you in restoring balance when you feel out of sorts.  Let your intuition guide you as you dress… or choose colors for the room of your home.

You can also benefit from hanging Feng Shui Chakra sun catchers as shown in the photos in your home/windows. 

Being in balance allows you to experience yourself as Who You Really Are.

Celebrate all aspects of Self.. Divine Spiritual Physical YOU!

I create a beautiful line of gemstone / crystal chakra Feng Shui Cures for your home. Click here for more information.

Author: Andre Kibbe
Source: ezinearticles.com

Tony Schwartz’, Find Email, The Power of Full Engagement is a transformational book, especially with for anyone concerned with, Find Email, time management as the key to enhanced productivity, Find Email, . Instead of managing time to become more productive and fulfilled,, Find Email, The Power of Full Engagement focuses on managing energy, based on co-author Jim Loehr’s work with the world-class athletes, Find Email, .

While time is a limited resource, with 24 hours in a day, we can always take our energy reserves to the next level. We do this by building capacity and by building in periods of recovery. We have four types of energy to work on and with:

Physical energy. This includes cardiovascular fitness, muscular strength, and proper nutrition
Emotional energy. Healthy relationships and enjoyable activities that often get suppressed by constant busyness
Mental energy. The ability to maintain singular focus on, Find Email, an, Find Email, activity and avoid distraction
Spiritual energy. The commitment that comes from having a clear purpose in life

Let’s look at each of these types in detail.

First is the physical. Instead of thinking of ourselves as machines capable of working indefinitely, Schwartz maintains that humans are cyclical, periodic beings, requiring periods of recovery in order to be fully, Find Email, engaged during periods of, Find Email, work. Instead of doing slow, steady work like a marathoner, we should work in short, high-energy bursts, like a sprinter. Then we take a break to recover, then engage in another work sprint, and continue to alternate between rest and reengagement, Find Email, . Breaks can be anything, Find Email, from 20-minute naps to 1-minute deep breathing exercises.

This is based on the counterpart to our circidian rhythm (physiological sleep cycle), the ultradian rhythm, Find Email, – our natural energy (“wake”) cycle. According to Schwartz, our energy waxes and wanes in cycles, Find Email, of 90 to 120 minutes. Constantly working on a task past this length of time is suboptimal. We start to glaze over, losing concentration, momentum and motivation.

By segmenting work to fit these cycles, staging short recovery periods in between, we can get much more, Find Email, done in, Find Email, less time. Towards the end of the book, Schwartz provides a dramatic example of much faster we was able to write the book within a few weeks, working only four hours a day, by splitting his writing periods into short, intense work sprints.

Through exercise, Find Email, we increase the supply the reserve of energy we have to feed into our work. To make exercise a habit (as well as anything we want to make habitual), Schwartz recommends creating what he calls positive rituals, consciously scheduled routines which, over the course of three or four weeks, become ingrained in the fabric of our lives to the point where they no longer have to be consciously enforced.

According to the author, we should limit ourselves to establishing only one or, at most, two rituals at a time. Once we accept that willpower is more finite than we would like to believe, it becomes clear that trying to add more than a couple of rituals to our lives at once is guaranteed to spread ourselves too thin.

Emotional energy involves emotional renewal. Many of us work in what Schwartz calls the grey zone, where we’re preoccupied with, Find Email, work issues during periods of rest and recreation, or we’re consumed, Find Email, by personal issues when trying to be productive at work.

To get out of the gray zone, we need to acknowledge our emotional needs and commit to addressing them with the same, Find Email, discipline we apply to our work tasks, scheduling in rituals to satisfy these needs. This, Find Email, might be committing to coming home at 6 p.m. to spend time with family as reliably, Find Email, as getting into the office at 7 a.m.; or it might be committing to gardening three times a week, taking dance classes, taking day trips on the weekend, or any other activity we find personally gratifying.

Mental energy is largely built by removing distractions and working within our ultradian cycles. During sprints, we need to shut off any potential disruptions like cell phones, email notifiers and browsers. The biggest distractions are negative thoughts, since they tend to have a cascading effect. Though it might be considered a platitude,, Find Email, positive thinking is the key, Find Email, to increasing focus.

As with the physical realm, recovery periods are vital to maintaining mental energy. We often tend to forget that the mind – the brain – is a physical organ that expends energy with use, so spending extended periods devoted to a single tasks can hit a point of diminishing returns, Find Email, . There’s a critical threshold where our single-minded focus becomes diffused, at which point our output begins to flatline. The best way to maintain peak concentration is by limiting our work sessions to two hours at a time at most, then doing a recovery activity.

Spiritual energy is the power of purpose. Schwartz doesn’t necessarily mean confrontation with a deity – in fact, most of his case studies are fairly secular examples. The point is to clarity why we live. To what end are we applying our life energy? Are we spending our work lives doing things that we know will have a positive impact on the world, our families or communities? Are we challenging ourselves to, Find Email, achieve something beyond ourselves?

Sometimes this transpersonal focus, Find Email, is suddenly thrust upon us, like the book’s example of the Cantor Fitzgerald executive to whose responsibilities increased dramatically after the Word Trade Center, Find Email, attacks of 9/11. But it can also take the form of another executive in the book becoming a basketball coach for kids, experiencing, Find Email, the joy of mentorship.

The Power of Full Engagement is a more humanistic, yet more realistic, approach to personal fulfillment and performance enhancement than the time management paradigm. You don’t have to be an athlete or executive for this book to have a huge impact on the way you engage yourself with the world. Students, parents, teachers, and just about anyone can benefit from taking even a couple of principles from the book and applying them.

Andre Kibbe is a content analyst for Internet Brands. In his spare him, he writes about technology, productivity, personal development on his Full Engagement hub and his personal productivity blog.

Dear Lightworkers,

Enjoy the rapture of our arrival—it elevates your frequency to the level of love and mastery.  Be quiet and know that we are here. With an open heart, softened by pain, empathy, and breakthroughs, you each can enlist our help in all that you do.  Do you understand that? Do you know we are at your side at every moment, at every second—mighty companions to assist you in transformig the planet?  Believe in nothing else.

In a world of charlatans, actors, misfits and massive confusion, staying true to your inner voice requires the faith of Job.  Trust not in the outside appearances. Rely on that place in your heart where deep emotions arise; the wellspring of your deepest desires, wants and hopes for this world.

You can count on us at the deepest level with an instantaneous response.  Indigenous to your species is a culture of suspicious fear and mistrust. Your ability to transcend this is so necessary.  With open hearts and supporting arms, we resurge, support and catapult you to a new level.

Parlaying through the obvious, it is time to take up arms—not of weapons—but of strength–advancing forward to untested territories.  Take down the walls of defense, disarm the fearful, cast doubt of the pervading and strongly held belief systems.

Undulating waves of energy are coming your way–providing support, sustenance and mastery of skills needed to perform the steps of this next phase of the plan.

A powerful surge of energy is coming–leading to a new resurgence of optimism and hope for a better way. Practically speaking, you who are Light Teachers will have a greater impact than ever before in the areas that are the darkest.

Proudest moments lie just ahead–known henceforth, as Emancipation. Be not deterred or bogged down by the illusion of the world. Be of good cheer. Remain firm knowing you are held with mighty hands.  Allow no one to dissuade you—even in the darkest moments—be a light.

-The Twelve Wise Ones

I sleep inside
and do not feel the power of the night
the breath of the world in my soul.

I am warm
I do not shiver or lay huddled in a ball,
The cold does not penetrate these thick walls
And the wind does not blow through.
I no longer feel its call.
The air I breathe in the place of another is stale
the life force is faint.

I am dry
no longer washed clean by the rain.
A solid roof over my head
blocks out not only the clouds and rain but the stars and moon
the power of the universe becomes less intense.

I sleep in a comfortable bed that cushions the bones
Far above the lap of mother earth where she soothes the aches and whispers to my soul.
I read late into the night and wake when i need,
lose track of the cycle of the day, of the year.
bedtime no longer determined by the setting of the sun
and i no longer stir awake in bed awaiting the crack of dawn.

I barely feel the power of the moon as she waxes and wanes
am not intricately aware of her phases, or where and when she rises and sets
of how she lights up the nights and shines into your eyes
or of the darkness that surrounds in her absence.
The vibrations of the power that runs through the walls are different
that those of the voices of the night.

 It is quiet here, the sounds outside do not seep in
but i feel the hum and buzz, of the fridge, of the implements of our lives
and the breathing of the dogs and cats that keep me company.
Gone is the roar of the ocean, the wind blowing through the trees, the coyotes howling, cows giving birth, the patter of rain, the steps of others, the birds at dawn and the rustling of animals in the night
But i am safe
protected from the vibrations and spirits of the night
protected from the animals and people who might harm me
protected from the elements

The night outside is cold and wet as storms blow through.
I am safe
but less connected to that force of life
cut off in my created world
and that of another.

Universal Love

These two things—let it be known:

• Love asks nothing and receives everything.
• Pain and suffering are the result of misguided  intentions that block love.

Your ego strategies and neediness block the very love you so desire. Universal love is the source of everything. Universal love is the power that sustains all life.

Love in its purest form shines away all doubt.
It strengthens your resolve and confirms your intentions.

It spreads far and wide.
It limits nothing and controls no one.
It builds hope and faith.
Love fortifies your strength and increases your intensity.
It moves mountains.

In its purest form, love flourishes in spite of uncertainty.
It provides comfort and dissolves all fear.

Love is the very reason you exist.

Love eliminates no one but shines on everyone.
Love paves the way for a smooth journey. 
It creates opportunities that lead to fruition.
It is both practical and masterful.

Love abandons no one.
It does not shrink or cower in the face of obstacles.
It cuts through the clouds of confusion and clears all interference.

We need to envelope the world in love. Love radiates peace and joy.
Love multiplies and amplifies all your efforts.

Give up your worries and concerns that limit your power and energy.
Love is patient and enduring.

Be joyful and what you need will follow. Not the other way around. The world believes you will be happy when you get what you need but this is not true.

Your needs and desires will be met.

Trust in that.

-The Twelve Wise Ones

I wander about Goat Island, and the Three Sisters, chunks of land that rise from the Niagara River, and stand seemingly solid amongst the rush of water between the Horseshoe and the American falls. Here I feel alive, bathing in the energy of the place. There is a bounce to my step, a glimmer in my eyes and a smile upon my face. The raw energy of the falls enlivens me and it is more than just the negative ions in the air that do so. I know there is something special about this place, something deep and spiritual, a power greater than us all. Here I am hit by that sense of knowing, connecting with that universal life force.

Momentum builds up above the falls – the flow of water in the rapids is intense, and the air around becomes more dense – dark squiggles surround as the water from four of the great lakes is about to fall over a cliff, crescending down through the layers of time. From the stasis and stillness of the great lakes, the water runs through a narrow river, a channel, momentum increases, circles, crashes and stills, then whirls and jumps as it heads for the last lake and down another river on its journey out to sea. The energy is alive and rapid on this phase of its journey – a journey from the inside of a continent, where it appears still, enclosed and contained by land, to a joining in the sea of life, that basin of water that surround the lands and is in perpetual motion. The mist that rises above and permeates the air is the soaring of the greatest inland waters combined.

The Falls are not only the water that rushes over, but the land that lay around and beneath. I sit on one of the Three Sisters and feel the power of the molted deep grey rock that i sit upon, and i become more grounded. I feel the history in the rocks, the energy that has built up slowly over time and is being revealed. The land – the denser energy form – is molded and sculpted over time by the power of water – a lighter, vibrating active energy, and by the eons of time. The land was forming and transforming long before the falls existed and will continue to transform long after they pass through.

So many questions spring to mind. What is it about the raw power of this place that makes people want to feed on it? To hoard it in and harness it for ourselves? To transform it and control it and use it for their own ends? And in seeking to transform it, what effects to we have? Do we diminish the energy? enhance it? Warp its sense of being? To what extent can we transform it, and how much does it transform us. How do we value it? For what ends is this power used? 

The actions of those who sought and seek to profit from the power of the falls have dulled the energy in their zones. There are creators and maintainers of the “tourist trade” who build attractions and amusements from thrill seeking rides to today’s casinos and line the banks with garish hotels, with an eye to profit and blinders to the glory. There are those who immediately sought to harness the energy for industrial ends, building power plants and factories that line the banks, creating a heavy industrial “oasis” permitted and enhanced by the cheap energy from the falls. As i meander away from the island, I feel my spirit sink.

The energy of the falls is used to light much of the eastern seaboard, and thus its power is spread and diffuse. As we turn on the lights do we remember and are we thankful to the source from which it came. And if we do not, do we push the energy away from the falls. The flow of the falls themselves is controlled by the power plants and international agreements – much of the water is diverted for electricity for the power plants that fuel our lives. It flows the strongest in the summer day lights hours, and more is diverted in non-peak tourist times. How would the power of the falls affect us if we felt its full force? What we experience today is mediated, the power harnessed for other ends, for industry, for a softer life, for the artificial lights that illuminate the night. But how would we feel if we bathed in its glory and how would our internal lights glow? And how do we feel when we stand under the massive power lines that carry this generated power along its way?

The lights that shine from the amusement places seek to divert our attention from the falls. The goal not to illuminate the”light” that shines from within but to make a profit, and i feel it sucking, as it seeks to suck the dollars from my pocket. As a child i always wanted to visit the haunted houses and arcades that fanned Lundys Lane on the Canadian side, and now i want to cover my eyes and shrink from it. And the goods sold, the tourist trinkets to help create memories, the items that say, hey, i was there create another experience all together.  Like the overpriced candies, ice cream and sodas that are sold along the streets and boardwalks, they pull the energy from me, temporary highs, but ones that leave you to crash, and come crawling back for more. And i feel it sinking, sinking, the empty Rainbow mall and storefront, decaying cheap motels, and a lack of life. 

And how much garbage can we dump into a place – taking the light and leaving our discards behind. I think of Love Canal as i pass the decaying factories and current chemical plants and wonder how long this contamination will linger. Once factories lined the gorge, the “tailrace” of colourful waterfalls of waste that gushed out of the factories was once a major attraction that came second to the falls themselves.

Mother Nature, the universal force struck back with storms and rock slides that destroyed a major power plant back in ‘56 (in recent times considering the history in the stones). Was she telling us that we could not just take without honouring her. The industries have now gone, the remaining ruins barely visible, the town hollowed out, with vacant boarded up homes, empty shells of buildings and people, and high crime.  The energy in these places is heavy and sad now, yet life flows on and away.

And we rebuild. A newer power plant sits further down the gorge. Shiny casinos built to replace the dying industries provide some glitz and bring in busloads of people who sit in front of machines in a trance, eyes glazed, hoping, praying for that magical moment where they will strike it big. Attention diverted from the falls to the machines and the chance to win some money. Despite the shine, there is a heavy gloom.

Yes there is also life renewed. Along the gorge on the American side past the Rainbow Bridge where factories once stood, there are now trails and parkland. Parks line both sides of the gorge with paths for walking and benches for sitting, resting and contemplating. Preservation efforts continue, and if it were not for those of the past, those which created the parks, and the gardens, those which came from those who valued the falls for themselves and sought to maintain them, we might have decay all around. It is thanks to the consciousness of others who valued the natural energy of the place that i was able to sit on Goat Island and bask in the universal life force. it is and was that energy that feeds joy to a place. As i remember this, my spirit soars, and i and my writing feel less heavy.

How do we interact with the energies of a place?

What is a sacred place, and what does sacred mean?

Where to borders begin and end? What are zones of being?

 Has a place ever uplifted you, send you spinning, or dragged you down? How does the universal life force, prana, chi flow through places, and what is our relationship with it?

 What clings and what is left befind? What deposits to we make, individually or collectively? And how much of a place do we carry through?

 How does the energy of a place change over time – be it a minute or eons. Is place just an illusion?

As a wanderer, a traveller, and a seeker I have asked myself these and many other questions over time. In this blog i will write about my musings drawing on personal experiences, stories, metaphysics, energy studies and the like.

There have been recent changes in thinking about the use of the term ‘Spiritual Healing’  using the term ‘Energy Healing’ instead. 

Please read my article.

Author: Andre Kibbe
Source: ezinearticles.com

Tony Schwartz’ The Power of Full Engagement is a transformational book, especially, Find Email, with for anyone concerned with time management, Find Email, as the key to enhanced productivity. Instead of managing time to become more, Find Email, productive and fulfilled, The Power of Full Engagement focuses on managing energy, based on co-author Jim Loehr’s work with the world-class athletes.

While time is a limited, Find Email, resource, with 24 hours in a day, we can always take our energy reserves to the next, Find Email, level. We do this by building capacity and by building in periods of recovery. We have four types of energy to work on and with:

Physical energy. This includes cardiovascular fitness, muscular strength, and proper nutrition
Emotional energy. Healthy relationships and enjoyable activities that often get suppressed by constant busyness
Mental energy. The ability to maintain singular focus on an activity and, Find Email, avoid distraction
Spiritual energy. The commitment, Find Email, that comes from having a clear purpose in life

Let’s look at each of these types in detail.

First is the physical. Instead of thinking of ourselves as machines capable of working indefinitely, Schwartz maintains that humans are cyclical,, Find Email, periodic beings, requiring periods of recovery in order, Find Email, to be fully engaged during periods of work. Instead of doing slow, steady work like a marathoner, we should work in short, high-energy bursts, like a sprinter. Then we take a break to recover, then engage in another work sprint, and continue to alternate, Find Email, between rest and reengagement. Breaks can be anything from 20-minute naps to 1-minute deep breathing exercises.

This is based on the counterpart to our circidian rhythm (physiological sleep cycle), the ultradian rhythm – our natural energy (“wake”) cycle. According to Schwartz, our energy waxes and wanes in cycles of 90 to 120 minutes. Constantly working on a task past this length of time is suboptimal. We start to glaze over, losing concentration,, Find Email, momentum and motivation.

By segmenting work to fit these cycles, staging short recovery periods in between, we can get much more done in less time. Towards the end of the book, Schwartz provides a dramatic example of much faster we was able to write the book, Find Email, within a few weeks, working only four hours a day, by splitting his writing periods into short, intense work sprints.

Through exercise we increase the supply the reserve of energy we have to feed into our work. To make exercise a habit (as well as anything we want to make habitual), Schwartz recommends creating what he calls positive rituals, consciously scheduled routines which, over the course of three or four weeks,, Find Email, become ingrained in the fabric of our lives to the point where they no longer have to be consciously enforced.

According to the author, we should limit ourselves to establishing only one or, at most, two rituals at a time. Once we accept that willpower is more finite than we would like to believe, it becomes clear that trying to add more than a couple of rituals to our lives at once is guaranteed to spread ourselves, Find Email, too thin.

Emotional energy involves emotional renewal. Many of us work in what Schwartz calls the grey zone, where we’re preoccupied with work issues during periods, Find Email, of rest and recreation, or we’re consumed by personal issues when trying to be productive at work.

To get out of the gray zone, we need to acknowledge our emotional needs and commit to addressing them with the same discipline we apply to our work tasks, scheduling, Find Email, in rituals to satisfy these needs. This might be committing to coming home at 6 p.m. to spend time with family as reliably as, Find Email, getting into the office at 7 a.m.; or it might be committing to gardening three times a week, taking dance classes, taking day trips on the weekend, or any other activity we find personally gratifying.

Mental energy is largely built by removing, Find Email, distractions and working within our ultradian cycles. During sprints, we need to shut off any potential disruptions like cell phones, email notifiers and browsers. The biggest distractions are negative thoughts, since they tend to have a cascading effect. Though it might be considered a platitude, positive thinking is the key to increasing focus, Find Email, .

As with the physical realm, recovery periods are vital to maintaining mental energy. We often tend to forget that the mind – the brain – is a physical organ that expends energy with use, so spending extended periods devoted to a single tasks can hit a point of diminishing returns. There’s a critical threshold where our single-minded focus becomes diffused, at which point our output begins to flatline. The best way to maintain peak concentration is by limiting our work sessions to two hours at a time, Find Email, at most, then doing a recovery activity.

Spiritual energy, Find Email, is the power of purpose, Find Email, . Schwartz doesn’t necessarily mean confrontation with a deity – in fact, most of his case studies are fairly secular examples. The point is to clarity why we live. To what end are we applying our life energy? Are we spending our work lives doing things that we know will have a positive impact, Find Email, on the world, our families or communities? Are we challenging ourselves to achieve something beyond ourselves?

Sometimes this transpersonal focus is suddenly thrust upon us, like the book’s example of, Find Email, the Cantor Fitzgerald executive to whose responsibilities increased dramatically after the Word Trade Center attacks of 9/11. But it can also take the form of another executive in the book becoming a basketball coach for kids, experiencing the joy of mentorship.

The Power of Full Engagement, Find Email, is a more humanistic, yet more realistic, approach, Find Email, to personal fulfillment and performance, Find Email, enhancement than the time management paradigm. You don’t, Find Email, have to be an athlete or executive for this book to have a huge impact on the way you engage yourself with the world. Students, parents, teachers, and just about anyone can benefit from taking even a couple of principles from the book and applying them.

Andre Kibbe is a content analyst for Internet Brands. In his spare him, he writes about technology, productivity, personal development on his Full Engagement hub and his personal productivity blog.

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