Practice what you preach. That’s what I say. However, I was quite pleased that no one was watching today.
In the world of coaching, we often make our clients aware of four different energies known as the Lover, Fool, Warrior and King/Queen energies – the idea is that each one serves us in different ways and achieves different results.
The Lover energy allows us to connect with caring, listening, nurturing; the Fool gets us being creative, thinking out of the box; the King/Queen energy brings us calm in the middle of a storm while the Warrior energy gives us steely determination.
Well, to explore these energies a little more, I undertook a very scientific experiment. I decided to run up my local hill four times adopting a different energy each time.
This is where I was quite pleased that no one was watching.
To get into the Fool energy, I ran in circles on tiptoes with my tongue hanging out making strange noises; for the Warrior, I was focused on the tree at the top of the hill and sprinted; for the Lover, I was open, smiling, relaxed and receptive to my surroundings; for the King/Queen, I ran a mantra in my head “everything is okay”.
The impact from each of these was very different. Warrior was extremely effective in getting me from A to B however not sustainable and quite exhausting. Lover made running enjoyable in its own right, full of appreciation and awareness; the Fool allowed me to see running in an entirely new way, it broke the obsessive need to always reach a target; the King/Queen energy did something rather startling, it shifted me from “running to prove something” to “running on my own terms”.
So my nugget in this thought piece is to always keep in mind - what energy do you need to bring to all the challenges in the day? How good are you at shifting in and out of different energies to create a different results or open up new opportunities? What energy (or energies) would serve you best in your next meeting? Next speech? With your next child tantrum?
I will share a moment that still amuses me today. I was going through the initial contracting session with a Head of an international organisation and I noticed that it was all too serious – so out of nowhere, I tapped my client on the arm and said “You're it” and disappeared down the corridor. We ended up playing cat and mouse for 3 minutes.
This change of energy brought about lightness, spontaneity, fun and most importantly human-ness in our relationship. All essential for learning.
