The Energies That Drive Success

THE ENERGIES THAT DRIVE SUCCESS

     Recent research by motivational and success gurus such as Brian Tracy, studying highly successful people, reveals that these success achievers all have very high levels of three different and distinct types of energy. The previous view that they are all different forms of the same energy may be inaccurate. The apparent fact that these three distinct forms of energy do interact to help us succeed or fail is what has a lot of potential for good application.

     The three different types of energy are:

1. Physical Energy—Pure "sweat of the brow" raw energy that gets you through the physical aspect of your work or play (walking, lifting, looking, driving, writing, communicating, staying awake, etc.). This type energy requires good nutrition and proper rest to replenish it on a daily basis.
2. Emotional Energy—This type of energy is the feelings of enthusiasm and excitement that make the quality of life, work and play more (or less) enjoyable.
3. Mental Energy—This is the energy of creativity that drives important mental activities such as learning, planning, organizing, analyzing, listening, judging, solving problems, applying common sense solutions, and making decisions.

     The interesting thing about this scheme is that unsuccessful people who frequently fail at things, burn too much emotional energy, feeling and reacting to negative emotions, which cuts into their physical and mental energies. Of course, this is what all the present day positive psychologists have been preaching. Note that five minutes of an angry outburst or period of excessive worrying will literally wipe out 8 hours of physical energy. That is pretty serious!

     It has been of great interest to me lately to explore the relationship between certain words with their psychological connotations, and the negative emotions they produce and then the subsequent failures that these two things result in, by depleting both physical and mental energies.  So, the bottom line to this is, if you want to be more successful in anything you do in life, work or play, be very careful about maintaining the highest possible level of all three energies, by eating right, sleeping well, and replacing negative emotions with positive ones. You can do this by being critical of the negative words you may be unconsciously using that effect emotional energy in a negative way, thus robbing you of the physical and mental energies you need to be successful.

     What negative words are you guilty of using? What positive ones can you replace them with? I'll start with the word "better." I think it is a very negative word that insinuates one thing is better and more valuable than another and that there is ultimately one best thing, which nobody can agree upon and hence why there are wars defending the claimed best approach. Maybe we can replace "better" with "different." That's just my two cents, but it may be the idea in the first part of this tip that is worth considering—to see how this can help you improve your successes and reduce your failures. This whole approach is what makes most sense.     

     Probably the most guilty negative word we have which may be robbing us all of the high levels of these three energies we need to be successful, is the notion of "separation of opposites."  When we mentally divide the world into halves—the this's and the that's—it is this dichotomy itself which sets up the win-lose, success vs. failure outcome of all activities. Whoever proclaimed that it has to be one way or the other?

     We are obviously not going to reconcile all the pairs of opposites that we have divided since we invented language, but perhaps in the meanwhile, a slightly more productive and positive way to view success and failure is to view them as different sides of the same coin:

Success—what comes as a result of being persistent through a series of failures.

Failure—the opportunity to learn how to be successful with new information.

     My generation was guilty of spreading the propaganda about the utter importance of self-esteem, which now turns out to be only one side of the coin in the win-lose, success vs. failure dichotomy. After too much emphasis on building the self-esteem of the next generation, now we find ourselves with too many quitters and cry-babies, not being able to accept and deal with the inevitable failure side of life's equation.

     So, if we have a great insight on how to improve the quality of people's lives, we must also accept the inevitable fact that it is probably only half the story and will eventually do as much harm as good, at least at the point of no return with the word that represents it. In the end, we all finally wake up to the reality that when we nurture our three energies in a good state of balance, we become the things that define success and failure in a whole, not half measure of truth—tentativeness, responsible freedom, equality, empathy, acceptance, unity and understanding.  These are the virtuous behaviors that reenergize themselves synergistically, maximizing success and minimizing failure—with the real rewards of joy and freedom.

    Again, I suggest we all be more critical of using exclusionary words that have serious negative connotations and replace them with inclusionary ones that have serious positive connotations. I suspect the resulting energy will move mountains, so to speak. It's worth a try, don't you think?

William Cottringer, Ph.D. is President of Puget Sound Security, Business Success Coach, Sport Psychologist, writer and photographer from Issaquah, WA. He is author of You Can Have Your Cheese & Eat It Too and The Bow-Wow Secrets:  How Dogs Live Simple Lives & People Don't. He can be reached for comment at (425) 454-5011 or bcottrigner@pssp.net