Our recent podcast and blog series on the body and soul connection recalled two books. I am reading He Leadeth Me by Father Walter Ciszek now, and one that helped spur me on during my initial efforts to change well is The Power of Full Engagement by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz. Both books discuss the importance of practicing engagement in all directions and four wellness concepts. Let’s see what that looks like.
I am going to start first with He Leadeth Me. If you have the Hallow application, which I spoke about in the previous podcast on Body and Soul routine combos, there is a 40-day Lenten discussion using excerpts from the book. The book is a memoir of Father Walter Ciszek and his survival in a Soviet prison and later a Siberian Gulag after being falsely accused of crimes. The book is a powerful spiritual testament to surviving the harshest conditions if you trust God and have a purpose beyond yourself. It also showed how the stress of the prison camp and Gulag helped Father Ciszek become more spiritually alive. It is a fantastic book for many reasons, and I recommend it to anyone, even if they are not Christian. But the point I want to focus on today is Father Ciszek’s quote on the connection between body and soul and the impact each has on the other. Also, how the stress that he previously put on his body conditioned him physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually to deal with his over twenty years in captivity. Here are two pertinent excerpts from the book that will ever remain etched in my mind and heart:
“During my early years in religious life, I had even tried to outdo the legends of the saints in fastings and penances of every sort. But I did it, not so much to punish the body or attain perfection as to prove to the world and to myself how tough I was. Yet it was only now, when each day ended with exhaustion and the body cried out for every extra minute of rest, every little respite from work, every extra crumb of food, that i really came to appreciate the marvelous gift of life god had given man in the resources of the human body. The intimacy that exists between soul and body is a marvel of creation and a mystery of human existence.”
“The mysterious interplay of body and soul is an essential characteristic of our human nature. If the body is sick or sore, tired or hungry or otherwise distressed, it affects the spirit, affects our judgment, changes our personality. So slight a thing as a headache can affect our relations with those around us. It is through the body that we express and experience love and kindness and comfort. We excuse our snappish, petty, ill-mannered conduct to one another on the grounds that the body is having a bad day. We are constantly, day in and day out, hour after hour, under the influence of these mysterious workings of soul on body and body on soul.”
He Leadeth Me by Walter J. Ciszek with Daniel L. Flaherty, 99
Father Ciszek points out that he could not have kept his soul and emotions intact if he had not trained himself physically. He also discusses in the book how his spiritual well-being and purpose helped him to drive on even when it appeared physically impossible.
The Power of Full Engagement
Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz in The Power of Full Engagement make a similar connection, albeit from a secular viewpoint. This book was instrumental in starting my wellness journey, and I have referenced some of its four wellness concepts in developing my practice. The fundamental premise is to become a fully engaged, effective person and leader, you should focus on managing energy rather than time. The second key idea is that there are four dimensions of energy, the capacity of which you need to increase and manage to be fully engaged and high-performing. These are:
- Physical energy, which focuses on the quantity of energy;
- Emotional energy, which defines the quality of energy (for example, compare the impact of negative talk to positive affirmation on your well-being);
- Mental energy, which defines the direction of energy (focused versus distracted);
- Spiritual energy, which defines the power and impact of the energy (energy and effort not aligned with spiritual being and vision is wasted)
The third of the wellness concepts is the best way to build up energy in all four quadrants is to train like an athlete with intervals of stress and rest. If there is too much stress and insufficient rest in any quadrant, you become tired and disheartened. Alternatively, too much rest without the stress of a challenge leads to complacency and, in extreme cases, sloth.
The last of these wellness concepts is that the most fundamental energy source is physical; the most significant that guides our vision and purpose is spiritual. The underlying capacity of our physical energy impacts all other quadrants. When we are tired, unhealthy, and hyped up on too many all-nighters of pizza and soda, we are often cranky and short with others. Lack of sleep impacts our ability to focus on our work, and we become distracted.
On the other hand, without stores of spiritual energy, we can dissipate our energy on the wrong things and forego the purpose for which we were put on this earth. To refer back to our initial quote from Father Ciszek, if you do not have the physical capacity, you will not have the energy to be led to your ultimate purpose. And if you do not have the spiritual backbone and purpose for living, you will be led in the wrong direction.
I highly recommend that you take the time to read both books. I cannot underestimate the impact that both have had on my life. My blogs and podcasts focus on how I used the wellness concepts of these books to change my life. If you have not had the time, check out Episode 2, which covers techniques in all four energy quadrants, Episode 4, Waking Up to Your Why about the spiritual component, and Episode 7, THINK Yourself to a New You, for ideas on Emotional and Mental Energy. The podcasts each have links to the associated blogs for a deeper dive into wellness concepts. In conclusion, let me close by paraphrasing St Francis De Sales. Within every period of desolation lies the seeds of consolation. The opposite is also true. To best build our capacity in all four quadrants of our humanity – physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual – we must learn how to harness the ebb and flow of stress and relaxation to become fully engaged, fully human, and to change well!