Harness your positive energy! Here’s how!

How are you feeling? Strong, excited, determined? Or back in the grind?

I am asked so often about time management and dealing with outside distractions. We lament about where the day, the week, the year…our life.. goes. The speed of time is directly related to our energy. Our energy level is enhanced when we are fully present in our time. To LIVE your life means:

• You STOP thinking about an upcoming prospect appointment while you absentmindedly watch your kid’s game. 
• You STOP half-listening to your major giver as you think about the paperwork you need to catch up on after this day of calls. 
• You STOP glancing continuously at your phone from the second you wake up. 
• You STOP asking “What if’s?” What if that big gift doesn’t come in? What if the tax laws change? What if our kid acts out? WHAT IF MY CELLPHONE DIES?  OMG! 

Do you see that when you check your cell phone first thing in the morning, you have just given away control of your time and energy to someone else?  You are reacting to somebody else’s priority, not your own.  You have surrendered (and perhaps squandered) your emotional energy and time to someone else’s comment, question, crisis or rant. 

Mind research shows that constantly reacting and splitting your attention makes you feel like time is racing. It’s also exhausting. Perhaps you share the fear that if you slowed down, you’d never be able to get back “up to speed.” Ouch.

Communications today are spun to get you riled up! Reporters, bloggers, and marketers count on you being so unconscious that you can’t NOT click if the story involves opinions, outrage or controversy. This election has been one long outrage orgy – on all sides – leaving many of us exhausted. Many are striving to be more offended, more critical, more sarcastic, more hurt, more ready to fight.  

Perhaps it’s time to be more aware. More aware of how this environment places demands on and expends your time and energy. Do you spend these gifts intentionally and proactively for the benefit of your non-profit, your personal relationships and your well-being?  Or do you need to make some different choices? All of these research-based suggestions will increase your positive energy. 

1. Focus on what you want. What you focus on you bring more of into your life. Do you want to be anxious or excited – both use your energy. You choose.

2. Use your Words wisely.  Do you want your words to support, encourage, hurt, attack, educate, promote your opinion, bring you sympathy, make you look noble?  Are you feeling compelled to join in the outrage orgy? You choose, but notice which remarks, posts and conversations leave you feeling energized or drained. If ALL your donors viewed your words would it help foster giving, trusting relationships? 

3. Clear our “Clutter.” Excess anything is clutter. Its mere presence drains your energy from your greatest priorities. Turn off the news and talk to your family. Turn off the phone and enjoy the space. Go through the piles yelling at you for attention. Schedule specific times to manage your email.

4. Throw Kindness around like Confetti. Only 25% of Americans believe we are living in a kind society. Our brain is wired to get an immediate positive energy hit when we’re helpful and compassionate. Regardless of how others are behaving, you can be kind and polite. A big piece of building rapport with our major donors is being likable. They experience less anxiety over major money decisions. Kindness is a value that transcends borders, faith, race, and age. (www.Kindnessusa.org for more)

5. Purge your inputs. “Unsubscribe” and “Unfriend” exist for a reason. Use them.

6. Listen. Deep listening is not distracted.  Even when we are not entirely interested, we don’t agree, and we have “a million things to do.” It is the best gift you can give another human being.

7. Give thanks. Being thankful turns our focus on what is right in our lives and generates more to be thankful for. 

8. Energy generates energy. Walk, clap, dance, wiggle throughout your day. Breathe in and think, “I am breathing in good energy.”

9. Bring yourself fully to your work role each day. All of us make a choice each morning how we will show up each day. Terry Chadsey, ED of the Center for Courage and Renewal suggests sharing something positive that captured our attention as a way to slow down and connect with our role. Watch

the Movie Monday video Bringing Yourself Fully to Your Nonprofit Role

10. Be proactive. Stephen Covey defines proactive as “being responsible for our own lives. Our behavior is a function of our decisions, not our conditions. Proactive people focus on things they can do something about. The nature of their energy in doing this is positive, enlarging and magnifying.” 

All of this doesn’t mean I’ve numbed down or dumbed down my energy. It means I have great clarity in what I will allow to push me off center, deflect me from my purpose or get me riled up (energy drainers).  There will be differences, objections, and concerns between your donors, you and your organization. YOU and all of our givers benefit most when we can leap over the drama and blame. Then we can get down to authentically connecting prospective givers to creating solutions with their giving investments that help to compose a good world.

Invest in Joy!