In preparation for a busier season, I started listening to the audiobook of The Power of Full Engagement by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz.
The premise of the book is to focus on managing your energy, not your time. That’s a punchy way of telling a busy person, “Be less busy, and make time to restore your energy.”
It shifts their focus away from time, because they’re already scarce on it and struggling to deliver results. Instead, it suggests that the reader focuses on energy, which they can renew in abundance.
It reminds me of a post my friend Peter Kang wrote, which I’ll excerpt in full below:
“There are two wolves and they are always fighting…
One wolf represents anger, envy, sorrow, and the other represents joy, peace, and love.”
A grandfather tells his grandson.
“Which wolf wins?” asks the grandson.
“The one you feed,” says the grandfather.
I heard variations of this parable over the years and didn’t think too much of it. “Ah nice, nice, I get it,” I would say.
But in recent years, I’ve come to value the lesson embedded in this story, that we each have the power to choose which wolf wins.
The first half of this year has been filled with high highs and low lows both on the business end and on the personal side.
In the past, I’d let the low moments linger & fester, casting a shadow over my time with family and in the my interactions with others. I fed the wrong wolf.
But little by little, I learned to accept that things won’t always go my way. Instead, I had the power to control my mindset. I could choose to be positive, to learn from the setbacks, and to believe that things would be okay. I could feed the other wolf.
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Years ago, I used to dread Sundays because I’d have mounting anxieties about the work week to come – new business calls, client work, employee issues, finances, and unexpected surprises lurking around the corner. I believed the only way to deal with my anxiety was to work, so I blocked off large chunks of my Sunday to try to get ahead.
But come time to go to bed, my mind would still be racing about how Monday would go. I had trouble falling asleep. I often resorted to drinking hard liquor to help me fall asleep, which only exacerbated my sleep quality.
In hindsight, it was clear I was mindlessly feeding the negative wolf, the one that was paranoid, insecure, and afraid. I chose to be in that mindset and my actions reinforced everything.
It took many lessons and attempts to build the muscle to feed the positive wolf–getting coaching, becoming a parent, reading books, journaling, building new habits and routines, etc. Things didn’t click all at once but I feel like over time, I could feel my outlook on life shift and become lighter and more hopeful.
I write this not to claim any success but to remind myself that the battle of the two wolves continues. Feeding the right wolf isn’t a one-time deal. It’s on-going and it takes deliberate effort.
Our mindset is a powerful thing. What’s empowering is that we have the ability to shape it with our choices.
This is also a call to be mindful of the compromises you make with your time. If you skip a workout at the gym to deliver on a deadline, you’re also skipping an important moment to renew your energy. You’ll feel the consequences of this later.