21 Ways to Fuel Vitality in Challenging Reality
Drooping shoulders and hanging hands point to dark water ahead.
There’s a word for low energy leaders and low aspiration teams. Dying!
21 ways to fuel vitality in challenging reality:
High vitality leadership concerns the WAY leaders get things done.
- Decide. Neutrality drains vitality.
- Rest. Take a five minute walk between meetings. No phone.
- Adapt. Leaders who won’t adapt, drain brains and defeat creativity.
- Kind candor. Avoidance drains. Say what you really think, not what you’re supposed to say.
- Next steps. What “might be” is more compelling than what “used to be”.
- Establish direction. It helps to know where you’re going when the path is steep. What words define your aspirational destination?
- Focus. Paralysis is moving in five directions at once.
- How might you narrow focus today?
- What one thing would you like to accomplish in the next hour?
- Connection and conversation. Talk about something other than work. Banter lightens the load.
- Solutions. Move from problem to possibility.
- Shared goals. Shared goals fuel passion. Everything else is bland conformity.
- Gratitude. High expectations, challenge, support, and GRATITUDE create environments of performance. Gratitude says hard work is worth it.
- Initiative. Procrastination and delay drain. Remember the last time you tackled a project you’d been putting off? Imagined monsters are worse than the real thing. You can deal with real monsters.
- Generosity. Help an old lady across the street. Don’t make a long-term commitment.
- Affirmation. Say, “When I see you at your best, I see you ….” Affirmation has high Return on Energy for both givers and receivers.
- Hold your head up. I mean this literally.
- Breathe. Take a few moments to calm your spirit and clear your mind before your next task or conversation.
- Authenticity.
- Reward.
- Respect.
- Learn.
- Journal.
Which of these vitality building activities could you practice today? How?
What vitality building activities might you add to the “complete” list?
Love this!! Especially #7 “focus”; “paralysis is moving in 5 directions at once… These days with the speed of work and the ever present e-mail stream demanding action on all fronts is certainly a challenge for me… I need to find ways to dedicate blocks of time to specific tasks (and close my e-mail program); I know the sense of accomplishment will be worth it in the end…
#11 is resonant too; we have so much to be grateful for!! Thanks for the post, get so much from your Blog!!
Thanks Susan. You remind me of “Deep Work” by Cal Newport. You might enjoy it.
Things like turning of e-mail for an hour or two make a difference. Distraction dilutes vitality.
This is an eye-opening, realistic, and transformational list of methods to improve vitality and productivity. Thank you yet again for making me smart! I bear witness to the power of affirmation (#14), and the importance of rest (#2)- especially between meetings or events. Short ‘rest’ periods provide a significant energy and brain boost!
Thanks CD. I’m with you, I’ve found that short walks are very effective tools for fueling/maintaining vitality. Too often we run form one task to the next. At the end of the day we wonder what happened.
Simply so many simple things, even doing ONE of them would help, especially if it were a stretch. What continues to amaze me though, as an observer of this stuff for over 40 years, is how we KNOW any, every, and all of this but we as managers and workers and parents and spouses simply make the choice not to do them.
Is it simply human nature to muddle? From Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
“How ridiculous and how strange to be surprised at anything which happens in life”
“Humans have come into being for the sake of each other, so either teach them, or learn to bear them.”
“Though you break your heart, men will go on as before.”
“Do what you will. Even if you tear yourself apart, most people will continue doing the same things.”
Thanks Dr. Scott. This stuff isn’t rocket science, although science is behind it.
I wonder if tyranny of the urgent causes amnesia?
Dan,
So relevant, there are days its a “Blur”, the only way to get the clear picture is clear the head, take the walks, turn the telephone off for a brief period, these methods have helped me over the years. Granted when duty calls, we knock it out, yet maintain our direction!
Thanks Tim. You’re right. When duty calls we knock it out. The trouble is life becomes one long line of exceptions where taking a walk gets put on the back burner and eventually forgotten.
Dan,
Such is a “servants life”.
We groom ourselves for the outcomings.
Thank you!
I once read that we have been entrusted with some precious tools and machines. With all the others, we stop work to sharpen them, or let their motor cool, or change oil and lubricate bearings, like their manufacturers say to do. But with these precious tools, we run them and run them, and then blame the manufacturer when they don’t cut straight, or fail altogether. The precious tools and machines are me, and you, and all those other people. And that doesn’t even count our other purposes besides work, and joys and sorrows that the rest of our tools don’t even have. Today’s post was especially touching because of today’s circumstances, but they are nearly all good, Dan. Thanks!