I really am learning from Loehr’s and Schwartz’s advice. They know their stuff. As you may or may not know about my experiment since the July 12 blog, I selected drinking more water and getting more sleep as the two baby steps I’d focus on to improve my production energy. Drinking more water helps significantly! Getting to bed earlier is bringing up some challenges! How is this important to you? Read on!
Drinking more water definitely helps! It’s working! My last blog of July 17 addressed my challenges with going to bed at an earlier hour and some thoughts about unconscious blocks to doing so. For now, let me report I actually went to bed at 10:30 pm last night – one and a half hours earlier than my typical very earliest midnight! I was giddily shocked. I do believe it was the EFT tapping I did on the aspects listed in my July 17 blog that helped me to very easily just go to bed. However, I didn’t tap on an unidentified aspect; the desire to plan my next day and tinker with some projects while in bed! So . . . it was 12:30 after all when I turned out the light.
What is important for you in this? Two things: One is that the effectiveness of EFT was what got me into bed by 10:30 in the first place. Normally, it would have been 12:30-1:30 am. Secondly, is the concept of baby steps. In former days, I would have chalked the whole thing up as a miserable failure since I didn’t turn the lights out until 12:30. My experimenting with new behaviors would have come to a screeching halt. With embracing the freedom and compassion of baby steps, I could acknowledge that getting into bed by 10:30 was huge progress for me. That acknowledgment felt great; a "way to go!" pat on the back. Normally I would have turned on a movie or Saturday Night Live or turned my computer on to get some necessary correspondence done. I didn’t do any of that, which is behavior change I want! My feel-good pat on the back is poised to allow me to go to bed earlier again.
I’ll apply some EFT on my “hard drive." I can clear the need to take those project files to bed. I can tap on the “North Dakota” habits in me where working sunup to sundown is just normal behavior. I’ve been doing that since seventh grade. Time to let it go. Time to take those rest breaks, be even more productive and have more fun. I'm already having more fun! Now that’s a combination I can live with!
Below segment excerpted from The Power of Full Engagement, Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz, page 71:
Physical Energy: Bear in Mind.
• Physical Energy is the fundamental source of fuel in life.
• Physical energy is derived from the interaction between oxygen and glucose.
• The two most important regulators of physical energy are breathing and eating.
• Eating five to six low-calorie, highly nutritious meals a day ensures a steady resupply of glucose and essential nutrients.
• Drinking sixty-four ounces of water daily is a key factor in the effective management of physical energy.
• Most human beings require seven to eight hours of sleep per night to function optimally.
• Going to bed early and waking up early help to optimize performance.
• Interval training is more effective than steady-state exercise in building physical capacity and in teaching people how to recover more efficiently.
• To sustain full engagement, we must take a recovery break every 90 to 120 minutes
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