Healthy High Achiever Blog

Yes, it is.

It takes time, like anything else, but it is simple. The problem is, most people and I mean the majority of people don’t understand the problem. That’s why they have so much trouble solving it.

In today’s day and age, "solutions" are often not solutions to a problem.

Take the problem of weight loss. Fat Loss, weight loss, losing weight… what ever you want to call it, is of course, not the problem but an important thing to consider as the symptom. There are many solutions to the problem of how to lose weight, but these solutions almost never solve the problem. They may be dealing with one of the consequences of poor lifestyle, like eating poorly or lack of exercise, but they still don’t solve the problem.

Lack of exercise and eating poorly are part of the problem, but not the problem.

How you manage your energy is a big missing piece of the problem and it goes even deeper than that. By the way, if you think Personal Energy Management is "woo woo" or somthing you can’t grasp at the moment, it’s no wonder you "may" be suffering from the overweight condition.  This is what it’s all about and I’m not just talking about sleep. 

Do you want to solve the problem of being overweight? Then you’ve got to understand lifestyle. Lifestyle Training is the new weight loss program, because it actually solves the problem.

This morning, I woke up at my usual 7:00 am and once again, I realized what a "performance" lifestyle is all about. I have these realizations all the time and every one of them connects me deeper and deeper into the realities of the world we live in today, what personal energy management really means and the scope and span of the idea.

My weekend was not my usual, I went into the city to support my friend, colleague and mentor Michael Port, author of Book Yourself Solid, who was speaking at ECA World Fitness conference and doing a tradeshow at the Marriot Marquis. Tradeshows as you know are major energy output.

My Sunday schedule changed significantly. Not only did we have the Spring Forward time change which meant I was giving up an hour, but I didn’t have the full regenerative day I usually have on Sunday. While still a relatively relaxed day, I also walked the city, watched a 15-minute side show on the streets of NY with this amazing band of Andes flute players, battled the cold wind in the city, and attended a church event on Sunday evening and talked to my cousin Terry in Colorado (to highlight only the main events) which got me back at 9:00PM.  Now Sunday nights are my movie night and I really wanted to watch “Blood Diamond”. I knew in that moment I had decision to make that was going to affect my entire Monday and the start of my week (without sounding dramatic).

Watching that movie at that time was going to mean I would lose roughly 3 hours of my recuperation time needed to be effective on Monday, and I did it anyway, because my desire to watch the movie was that strong. "I’ve worked all a week, this is my Sunday ritual and I’m not shifting gears for any reason", I thought quietly in my mind. Little did I consider… that my routine had already changed by going to the church event; I had already essentially "moved" my movie night, by choosing to do that. But no! I piled it on top, made it fit and now I’m paying for it as I write this post. No wonder America is running on Dunkin! I lost 4 hours of recuperation time yesterday and put out more energy than usual on a day that is reserved for energy regeneration.

It’s times like these that remind me of the ever so delicate balance we have to maintain today if we’re to maintain both our health and success. "Life itself" has to be kept in balance, and this is something the whole idea of work-life balance doesn’t address.

It’s all about the energy.

There is a lot of talk about energy today and understandably so. We have more demands on our personal energy than at any other time in history and I’m not talking about the kind of energy that we used to spend "plowing the field".

I’m talking about the vital energy (likened to the energy of a battery) that we spend processing information, staring at a computer screen for hours on end, communicating, contemplating, worrying, planning etc. This energy is in short supply, and a lack of it causes what you’ll soon come to know as the downward trend.

Discover how to reverse the downward trend. Download the Performance Lifestyle Manifesto.

On most people’s minds is how they can increase this "vital" energy. Don’t you feel that way? I do. Matter of fact, it was the need to manage my energy better for peak performance, to accomplish my goals in a more powerful way and improve my quality of life, that inspired the development of the Performance Lifestyle System.

For years, given the level at which I was performing, I was draining my vital energy in a big way and it was really hampering my attitude and success. Not only was I not looking or feeling the way I wanted, or performing at the level I wanted to maintain, my quality of life was going downhill because I always felt tired.

At one point I blamed it on "not getting enough protein", but how wrong I was. I was overlooking the fundamental idea of energy management.

But I didn’t want just to increase my energy a little I wanted what I later termed "breakthrough energy". Now you may think that’s just a great sounding spin on the idea of increasing energy, but it’s not. Breakthrough energy is the energy you get when you take a step or two back so that you can take many more forward in a position of strength.

Think about the last time you made a major stride forward in your body, with a business or life goal; I would venture to say if was after a sustained recuperative period where you were seriously recharged and rejuvenated. Well, it’s that kind of energy that I wanted to take advantage of on a more consistent basis, not merely once in a while after the opportunity to vacation, to achieve breakthough success in my body, business and life; which leads me to the main point of this post:

What we learn about in terms of "increasing energy” usually falls into tactical categories which are valuable, but miss the main point of energy management. To achieve breakthrough energy, you must have a lifestyle strategy or plan that works to regenerate the energy you need on a consistent basis.

Here’s what I mean. 

1) Getting more sleep or taking a nap are important ideas to understand, though they’re value is diminished if your lifestyle is burning you out, significantly out of balance to begin with and overspent.  What should be an enjoyable experience can actually become an uncomfortable experience.

2) Stimulation. There is no greater delusion in the world than thinking you are gaining energy when you’re actually losing it, especially when the method for stimulating yourself is not even health promoting such as when you consume commercial solutions for increasing energy like Red Bull. I suppose it has it’s time and place, but it’s not a method to depend on, more than every once in a while when the absolute need arises. 

3) Being more efficient. Energy allocation is one of the greatest skills you can learn. Especially today, we simply can’t spend our energy "all over the map". If we do, sleep and rest can’t even do their job! A great discipline yes, but you can’t allocate energy you don’t have. The less you have the more you spend.

4) Positive thinking is an important element of energy management, because negative energy is associated with a poor attitude and a poor outlook and that can dampen anyone’s spirit and success; but it’s just plain hard to be positive when you’re on a downward energy trend. Positivity takes energy!

5) Working with  the bodies’ energy center’s to increase energy flow (Chakra’s)… and other less practical, methods of energy management (not to diminish their value or the value of their practitioners), are useful practices as well. But I say “less practical”, only because energy management as we teach in the Performance Lifestyle System has to be something that anybody can do, anytime independently, and it has to be easy to grasp. Methods that fit this category have a degree of mysticism involved and require a great deal more understanding to be applicable to most people. It is my belief that there are many more “tier 1” answers that people overlook that should be put in play first, before “relying” on the less practical.

6) There are many others. Matter of fact, Jon Gordon Author of Energy Addict, will give you 101 Physical, Mental, and Spiritual Ways to Energize Your Life. Virtually all lifestyle factors can be discussed in the context of energy management.

So What’s Missing?

What’s missing is a lifestyle “strategy” that promotes energy balance as the basis to health and high performance. A lifestyle strategy is different for everyone, but nonetheless there are essential skills that make it possible. Athletes and other healthy high achieving people know and live by these skills, because their very success depends on it!

For example, when you learn how to "periodize" your week the quality of your life is going to change in a big Way. If you want to know how to achieve breakthrough energy, you want to learn this key to success.

This is just one of the skills you’ll learn when you take the 7 Steps to Look, Feel and Perform Better, In a Lifestyle that Works for You! - See The Driver’s Manual of the Performance Lifestyle.