Want more energy? Seal your integrity leaks.
To us at CLG integrity means full aliveness, being in flow, and energetic wholeness. Energetic wholeness is our natural state that we interrupt with energy leaks, which are open loops, incompletions, and sloppy agreements. They drain our energy because our minds expend energy keeping track of them, and because they live in us as things we should have done or be doing.
To be clear, energy leaks are unconscious. They’re repressed and not on the forefront of our minds. Until we shine a light on them, they run in the background of our minds like open apps on our phones. They drain our life force and slow us down. To get back into integrity we need to notice and repair any energy leaks.
Here's a practical tool to surface energy leaks.
Simply ask yourself the question:
“Is anyone waiting on me for anything?”
Ask the question, then sit with an open mind and heart and pen and paper or phone to capture what comes up. Examples:
- A colleague is waiting for a call back.
- The plumber is waiting to be paid.
- My child is waiting for me to finish reading a book with her.
- A customer is waiting for a proposal.
- My brother is waiting for me to get back to him about going fishing.
- My neighbor is waiting for me to return their drill.
- HR is waiting for me to fill out a performance review.
- My assistant is waiting for my expense report.
- My editor is waiting for the next chapter.
If your list seems long, pause and take a breath. Know that most people’s lists are long when they first do this exercise.
Often when our minds tells us that someone is waiting on us for something it’s pointing to a sloppy agreement. Each one of the example statements above point towards a sloppy agreement. An agreement is something you’ve said that you would or wouldn’t do.
Clear agreements are ones to which you have a whole body yes and you know WHO will do WHAT by WHEN.
How unclear agreements come to be:
- You aren’t clear with yourself and the other party about WHO will do WHAT by WHEN.
- You made an agreement that you don’t have a whole body yes to doing.
- You haven’t yet made an agreement and you know you need to make one.
- You made an agreement and you haven’t kept it.
- You broke an agreement and you haven’t cleaned up the broken agreement with the other person.
- You don’t have a record of the agreements you’ve made and your mind is trying and failing to keep track of them.
Whatever the case, you’ll come back into integrity, energetic wholeness, more aliveness and better relationship if you clean these integrity breeches up.
How to clean up agreements:
- Keep the agreement. Do what you said you would do when you said you would do it.
- Have a candid conversation to reveal that you made an agreement that you no longer have a whole body yes to. Don’t just announce this and walk away. Stay with the person while they have their reaction (thoughts, feelings, wants) to you changing your mind.
- Go to the person and make a clear agreement.
- Renegotiate an agreement with a new delivery date.
- Clear up the broken agreement: “I said I would be home by 7:30 and read to you. I didn’t get home until 8:30 and you were asleep. I broke my agreement with you and I want to clear that up with you.”
With each of these actions you’ll find that you have more energy and feel more fully alive. For a short period of time life might get messier, but in the long run you'll be more effective and powerful, and life will be more easeful.
Now, for those of you who really want to go deeper, do all of the above with yourself.
In addition to energy leaks around what others are waiting on you for, you also may have energy leaks when you're waiting on yourself to do something. You’ll discover that many of your energy leaks are with yourself.
You’re waiting on yourself to …
- Create the new presentation
- Join the gym
- Send your mom flowers
- Ask a colleague to lunch
- Repair the hole in your wall
Once your list is complete, follow the same process as above.
Want more?
Check out all our resources on Commitment 6: Integrity.
