It’s interesting how society talks about human potential being nearly limitless. I am one of those people who believe this to be true. In my senior year of high school, I took my first physics course. This course completely shifted the way that I viewed energy.
Energy in physics is simply the capacity to do work. There are multiple kinds of energy, we will talk about two kinetic energy and potential energy. Kinetic energy is the energy an object possess by virtue of its motion.
A few examples of kinetic energy:
- Hitting a baseball
- Combing your hair
- Driving a car (the car has kinetic energy)
- Water rushing from a water hose as you wash your car
In contrast potential energy is the energy an object possesses by virtue of its position in a field, where the field could be gravitational, electromagnetic, etc.
A few examples of potential energy:
- Tree branches high in a tree
- A stick of dynamite or a firework has chemical potential energy
- A stretched rubber band
- Food we eat
So why are we discussing kinetic and potential energy? We are working to answer or clarify the 5 question asked by George Leonard in Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fulfillment
- How can you avoid backsliding?
- Where will you get the energy for your journey?
- What pitfalls will you encounter along the path?
- How can you apply mastery to the commonplace things of your life?
- What should you pack for the journey?
To understand where we will get the energy from for our journey, we first must understand the forms it can take. The interesting part of the human body is that often when we “feel” like we have no energy, it’s probably because we need momentum and to move in our lives.
In The Reasons behind our Reasons I talked about how I had a lack of momentum and urgency in my life. And in late Dec 2016, after purchasing a
Fitbit Charge 2
I agree… but I take it one step further in that the power plant transforms energy. Metaphorically, you are the power plant and you are capable of transforming your potential energy into kinetic.
7 Steps to Transform your Energy
- Maintain Physical Fitness: In our society we have been trained to sit and not move as much starting from as early as first grade. We have to overcome that conditioning and start moving.
- Acknowledge the negative and accentuate the positive: Negativity isn’t so bad, if it weren’t for having a negative pole and a positive pole there would be no arc of electricity. The goal is not to act as if there are no weeds in your yard, instead you acknowledge them and pull them out.
- Telling the Truth: Revealing the truth of how you feel can be a liberating experience, you no longer have to suppress your emotions.
- Honor but don’t indulge your dark side: Anger contains a great amount of energy, if you choose to suppress your anger instead of acknowledging it…. you completely lose access to that power and energy. The goal isn’t to suppress your anger or release it on others instead transform it.
- Set your priorities: By setting your priorities you are allocating potential energy to accomplishing a given set of tasks. You give it potential energy by giving it your intention and you transform it into kinetic energy through executing on those goals.
- Make commitments: I’ve met too many people are just like “meh”… they don’t have an opinion one way or another. I don’t judge them for that, but often their life also reflects that too. Make commitments and start taking action.
- Get on the path to Mastery and stay on it: One of the things I often forget when I am executing or pushing myself for growth is not to be hard on myself when I backslide. Tips for avoiding the backslide.
“I don’t want to be saved, I want to be spent” ~Fritz Perls
We are all responsible for the energy and the attitude we bring to life, our relationships, and to one another. All of use can start by taking responsibility of our energy, starting now. How can you transform your energy today? I will be discussing, “What pitfalls will you encounter along the path?” in the next blog post. If you’ve enjoyed this post, please do me a favor, share it and sign up to be notified of future posts.