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ENJOYMENT AND RENEWAL

During the past decade, we have been surprised and dismayed to discover how infrequently most people undertake activities simply because they are enjoyable and emotionally nourishing.

One of the most revealing questions that we ask the clients who come through our training is how frequently in their lives they experience a sense of joy or deep satisfaction. The most common answer we get is "rarely." Think for a moment about your own life. How many hours a week do you de­vote to activities purely for the pleasure and renewal they provide? What percentage of the time would you describe yourself as feeling deeply relaxed? When was the last time you truly let go and felt fully disconnected?

To sustain we must take a recovery break every 90 to 120 minutes. Any activity that is enjoyable, fulfilling and affirming serves as a source of emotional renewal and recovery. Depending on your interests, that may mean singing, gardening, dancing, making love, doing yoga, reading an absorbing book, playing a sport, visiting a museum, attending a concert, or simply spending quiet, reflective time alone after an intense day of engaging with other people.

Simply changing channels is an effective method to refuel emotionally. The key, we have found, is making such activities priorities, and treating the time that you invest in them as sacrosanct. The point is not just that pleasure is its own reward, but more practically, that it is a critical ingredient in sustained perfor­mance.

The depth or quality of emotional renewal is something else again. That depends on how absorbing, enriching and enlivening the activity turns out to be. Television, for example, is one of the primary means by which most people relax and recover. For the most part, however, watching television is the mental and emotional equivalent of eating junk food. It may provide a temporary form of recovery, but it is rarely nutritious and it is easy to consume too much.

Researchers such as Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi have found that prolonged television watching is actually correlated with increased anxiety and low-level depression. Conversely, the richer and deeper the source of emotional recovery, the more we refill our reserves and the more resilient we become.  Effective emotional renewal puts us in a position to perform more effectively, especially under pressure.

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