The spiritual energy of leadership: Outward bound 2006

What ignites your human spirit?

An often-neglected part of balanced energy management is to focus, renew, and expend our spiritual energy. Many people equate spiritual with religion. Although religion may be a part of many people’s spiritual dimension this does not have to be the case.

Loehr and Schwartz define spiritual energy as “ the connection to a deeply held set of values and to a purpose beyond our self-interest.”

Most of us have done some type of values exercise but the key questions are:

When was the last time you looked at your values?
How do you act on those values?
How do you use your values in the service of others?

A popular business book was Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan. Part of the book said the most critical quality for leaders is the ability to put ideas into action. Bringing this impetus to spiritual energy:

How well do you put your values into action?
Do you execute a list of values or strengths into viable and on-going spiritual energy actions?

I conclude this post with Martin Seligman’s thoughts on a full life at the end of his book, Authentic Happiness:

…a full life consists in experiencing positive emotions about the past and future, savoring positive feelings from the pleasures, deriving abundant gratification from your signature strengths, and using these strengths in the service of something larger to obtain meaning.