When was
last time that you truly took a mental break from work? Many of us in North America are now getting out our calendars to gear up for summer vacations, so it’s timely to discuss how we use our “downtime” to enhance our ability to excel in our businesses and our workplaces. The book The Power of Full Engagement, by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz, 2003, uses an enlightening analogy from their studies of world-class athletes. They remind us that muscles are grown most effectively by stretching beyond limits of comfort and then allowing them to recover. Alternating activity with periods of rest is a training method used by elite athletes throughout world. To quote Loehr and Schwartz, “The key to expanding capacity is to both push beyond one’s ordinary limits and to regularly seek recovery, which is when growth actually occurs.”
What are you doing to ensure optimum stretch AND recovery of your mental muscles?
Looked at this way, it’s not that difficult to buy-in intellectually to this principle. It makes sense that our creativity flows best when we are refreshed. It’s logical that our ideas are more focused when our minds are sharp. We know that we are better able to “pour it on” in times of crisis when we have energy reserves to drawn on. So what gets in our way of acting on this principle?
Somewhere along way we started to equate being available to our customers, clients and employees with being “responsible” and almost “noble”. We joke about our workaholic tendencies with an odd sense of pride.
