Quotes from Jim Loehr

Even if you're ill, physical activity at a lower level will help you beat it.

The pulse of a strong relationship involves a rhythmic movement between giving and taking, talking and listening, valuing the other person and feeling commensurately valued in return.

It's not how many hours you put in with a client or on a project. It's the quantity and quality of your energy - your focus and force - that determine whether that time is valuable.

And what's the point of doing something just to do it?

The more we blame others or external circumstances, the more negative and compromised our energy is likely to be.

As a leader and a manager, how valuable would it be to bring more positive energy and passion to the workplace?

Leaders are the stewards of organizational energy

The skillful management of energy, individually and organizationally, makes possible something that we call full engagement. To be fully engaged, we must be physically energized, emotionally connected, mentally focused and spiritually aligned with a purpose beyond our immediate self-interest.

THE POWER OF FULL ENGAGEMENT Old Paradigm New Paradigm Manage time Manage energy Avoid stress Seek stress Life is a marathon Life is a series of sprints Downtime is wasted time Downtime is productive time Rewards fuel performance Self-discipline rules Purpose fuels performance Rituals rule

Purpose also becomes a more powerful source of energy when it moves from being externally to internally motivated. Extrinsic motivation reflects the desire to get more of something that we don't feel we have enough of: money, approval, social standing, power or even love. "Intrinsic" motivation grows out of the desire to engage in an activity because we value it for the inherent satisfaction it provides.

if you find talented people and equip them with the right skills for the challenge at hand, they will perform at their best. In our experience that often isn't so. Energy is the X factor that makes it possible to fully ignite

We focused instead on helping them to manage their energy more effectively in the service of whatever mission they were on.

At a practical level, they build very precise routines for managing energy in all spheres of their lives—eating and sleeping; working out and resting; summoning the appropriate emotions; mentally preparing and staying focused; and connecting regularly to the mission they have set for themselves. Although most of us spend little or no time systematically training in any of these dimensions, we are expected to perform at our best for eight, ten and even twelve hours a day.

Because energy capacity diminishes both with overuse and with underuse, we must balance energy expenditure with intermittent energy renewal.

The primary markers of physical capacity are strength, endurance, flexibility and resilience.

Emotional flexibility reflects the capacity to move freely and appropriately along a wide spectrum of emotions rather than responding rigidly or defensively. Emotional resilience is the ability to bounce back from experiences of disappointment, frustration and even loss.

Take Proverbs 16:32, for example: 'He who is slow to anger is better than the mighty and he who rules his spirit is better than he who takes a city.

Sprinters typically look powerful, bursting with energy and eager to push themselves to their limits. The explanation is simple. No matter how intense the demand they face, the finish line is clearly visible 100 or 200 meters down the track. We, too, must learn to live our own lives as a series of sprints—fully engaging for periods of time, and then fully disengaging and seeking renewal before jumping back into the fray to face whatever challenges confront us.

PRINCIPLE 3: To build capacity, we must push beyond our normal limits, training in the same systematic way that elite athletes do.

PRINCIPLE 2: Because energy capacity diminishes both with overuse and with underuse, we must balance energy expenditure with intermittent energy renewal.

Full engagement requires drawing on four separate but related sources of energy: physical, emotional, mental and spiritual.

Stress is not the enemy in our lives. Paradoxically, it is the key to growth. In order to build strength in a muscle we must systematically stress it, expending energy beyond normal levels.

Stress is not the enemy in our lives. Paradoxically, it is the key to growth. In order to build strength in a muscle we must systematically stress it, expending energy beyond normal levels. Doing so literally causes microscopic tears in the muscle fibers. At the end of a training session, functional capacity is diminished. But give the muscle twenty-four to forty-eight hours to recover and it grows stronger and better able to handle the next stimulus.

Most important is the third question. When our grand purpose for living is more about serving others than ourselves, or when we focus what we do primarily to serve others, it matters less what we're chasing, or what we do to make a living. In the words of the former tennis great Arthur Ashe, "From what we get, we can make a living; from what we give, we can make a life.