Bringing the Energy!

Energy is life.  Are you bringing the energy?

Today we’re going start with an exercise.  Now, if you’re out running, driving in the car or folding the laundry you may have to wait until you get back, but here’s what we’re going to do:

Pull out a piece of paper.  (That’s the flat, thin stuff, made out of dead squished trees that we used to use to write on and wrap dead fish).  If you really have to you can bark audio commands at your electronic digital task master, but I still like paper.

There’s something ancient and powerful about writing.

It’s the creative magic that our ancestors understood.  It’s a summoning into existence of physical things from the metaphysical dust.

They climbed deep into the caves at Lascaux to print that magic onto the walls in the dark, thin places between this world and the next.  And in doing so they gave ideas birth.  They brought to life thoughts and images and plans and doubts and … ENERGY!

And that’s what I want you to write on your piece of paper in big, bold, bright letters. Write on it in sharpie with an exclamation point. “Bring The Energy!”

Bring the energy!

Leave it where you can see it in the morning.  Make a few copies.  Put it where you can find it when you need it.

Bring the energy.

Why? Because we get caught up in all the stress and problems and challenges of this life, on this side of the thin walls, in this brief corporeal reign of glorious life and we let it beat us down.

We forget to bring the energy.

It’s a simple variable.

It has a giant impact on everything.

It is totally under your control.

It doesn’t take any training or advanced degrees.

It doesn’t require an executive title.

It doesn’t need experience.

It doesn’t’ care how old you are.

It doesn’t care about your race, creed or color.

It doesn’t require permission.

It’s free.

It’s inside you right now, at your disposal and I’m asking you to reach in and find it.

It’s the energy you bring to your life, to your interactions to your world.

“Oh!” you say “I can’t do that.”  You moan, “Chris, you don’t understand, I’ve got problems!”

Really?  What’s your situation?

Maybe you’re trapped at home?  Maybe your living through some sort of global crisis?  Maybe you’re worried about keeping your job?  Maybe your worried about hating that job?  Maybe you’re worried about money, sex, food – whatever!

Maybe, it’s enough to make you climb into a hole, pull the zipper shut and pull the shade in after you.

And you think you’re different?

Yeah, you’d like to climb back into bed, but, you can’t.

You can’t hide.

You have to get up and face the world.

You have to flip on that camera and help customers and interview people and dig ditches.

How could you possibly bring the energy?

There is the problem statement.  There is the cognitive dissonance.  On the one hand, you’re a drooling zombie from all your worries.  On the other I’m asking you to bring the energy.

It’s not a disconnect.  Why? Because the energy is the antidote!

When you bring the energy it evaporates all those worries.

Energy is life.

Energy kills the drooling zombie in you, or, more precisely, revives or reinvigorates the zombie.

Let me tell you a story.  I was running sales at a startup during a global financial crisis.  The board of directors hired a new CEO.  Every day he would hover around my office door and ask me how the revenue picture was.

I would reply “It’s all good.”

Which would really frustrate him.

Because, revenue-wise, from the new CEO’s point of view, things were not good.  Why was I calm and happy then?  Because everyone else was freaking out and jumping out windows.  I was focused on doing what I could.  I was bringing the energy.

The energy you bring is independent of the situation.  If you consistently bring the energy you will have a positive impact on the external world. Bring the energy in your words and actions. That’s a manifestation of leadership.

“But Chris,” you say,”I have challenges, I have unsurmountable barriers!”

My answer is you should be smiling.  You have found a worthy opponent.  You have a reason to fight.  You have purpose.

These challenges that are keeping you in your bed with the blankets over you head.  Clutching the channel changer in one hand and your iPhone in the other, shivering in fear of the scary world?

You can tell a better story for yourself than that.  These challenges are the seed of your great stories.

The stories we tell don’t start with ‘everything was ok, and then we did some stuff, and then it was still ok.’  That is dead and boring.

The stories we tell, we live, we love, start with the challenge.

“I was lying in the grass throwing up and didn’t know if I could continue!”

That’s how a good story starts!

Bring the energy and watch the world change around you and get pulled into your gravity well.

It is exactly those times of extreme stress that change us.  These are the times when we find out that we are stronger than we thought.  These big challenges force you to adapt.  They force positive change.

Life with out challenges is not life.

Honor your challenges.  Embrace them.

Bring the energy.

I’ll tell you another story.  My puppy Ollie.  He is a lot of work.  Imagine the things he can possibly do or get into to cause trouble and he is doing that on a daily basis. Ollie is a challenge.

When Buddy died and we had no dog, it was quiet and peaceful in the house – but it was lifeless and dull and dead.  Ollie is that magic coin in our lives now.  And like all magic he blows like the wind good and not-so-good.  But he is full of energy, full of life!

I’ll take that chaotic breeze of life over the Sargasso sea of lonely death every moment of every day.

Challenge is life. Energy is life.

Pull out a piece of paper. Write on it in sharpie with an exclamation point. “Bring The Energy!”

For things to get better the world doesn’t have to change.  You have to change.

And what’s under your control?  That energy that you bring.

Seek out those big challenges and bring your energy.  Lean into the things that everyone else is afraid of.  Lean into the things that everyone else says can’t be fixed.

What do you have to lose?

Bring the Energy.

Don’t be that timid soul lurking in the shadow, cowering.

Be the brave one that says, “It’s all good!” in the midstof the storm and puts a smiling shoulder to the wheel of life.  Be the one who brings that energy to give life the big push when life needs a push.

So… What do I want you to do?

I think you know…

{whispering} Bring.  The. Energy.