People want fuller lives and more meaningful work, so they search for tactics and strategies to give them an edge. From goal setting planners to online courses and morning rituals, we’re hungry for purpose and power.
While strategies and tactics are helpful in the doing of our day to day, it’s our being that gives life to our doing. When we live from a certainty in being, we activate an energy not found in strategies and tactics alone. This is called your Power Zone.
Your Power Zone is that place where work doesn’t feel like work and results seem to come effortlessly. Peak performers in business, sports and life understand the X factor of their Power Zone and spend tons of time and money to develop it.
If you know where to look, you can quickly find your Power Zone too and unleash the X factor in your life as well. See below:
1. Passion
Passion is the first clue to finding your Power Zone. Passion is a word that is used a lot, and for good reason. Passion lights up your life, it brings with it vision and courage. With passion you will take risks you otherwise would have avoided.
Passion is more than happiness. The energy of passion is stronger and deeper than happiness. It makes us come alive and when we come alive, work doesn’t feel like work and the energy we exude is infectious, attracting all kinds of opportunities to us.
Each of us have passions in our lives, but in the busyness of life we often forget about them. They sit dormant for a future day when we have time to pursue them. To activate your passions, simply take time to journal or meditate in the presence of what inspires you. Write down the things that make your heart sing. They’re already inside you. All you need to do is remember them and feel them rise up in you.
As you head out into your day, look for how to bring your passions into your work, your goals and relationships. This is the beginning of cultivating your Power Zone.
“I have to face life with a newly found passion. I must rediscover the irresistible will to learn, to live and to love.” – Andrea Bocelli
2. Feedback
Feedback is the next place to look for clues from your Power Zone. We often miss important pieces to our Power Zone simply because we can’t see them. But you have a lifetime of feedback from friends, family and the world around you. Others often see what you’re good at and where you shine. So look back on your life for the feedback you’ve received.
What awards did you get? What compliments do people always give you? Look at your performance reviews. Even go back to highschool and remember the good things your teachers and friends said about you.
Write these clues down in your journal. Look for similarities from your passions. Feel the good feelings that come with the feedback you’ve received and know that where you’ve received positive feedback in your life is part of your X factor.
Move forward in your day looking for what the world reflects back to you about your Power Zone. Look for when you make people smile. Notice what you’re doing when people compliment you. These are all clues to your Power Zone and suggest you should be incorporating more of that in your life.
3. Complaints
Your complaints are the third clue to your Power Zone. This is not a pass for whining or being a victim, but it is an access point to what you value. Complaints and values are two sides of the same coin. The only reason we complain about something is because we value something.
Values are harder to access. When we journal about values it comes out like an impersonal mission statement. However, when we think of the things that frustrate us, we have immediate and powerful emotional access to our values.
When you access the convictions that come with your complaints, you tap into an energy that propels you further than when you work from your head. This too is an X factor in living a fuller life.
In your journal, write out your complaints, but don’t edit and judge what comes to mind. Just write them down and look for clues. We’re turning over puzzle pieces and the more pieces we turn over, the clearer the picture becomes about what our Power Zone is.
“There is no passion to be found playing small—in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.” – Nelson Mandela
4. Strengths
Marcus Buckingham said that “a strength is something you do, that when you do it, you feel strong.” There may be a lot of things in life you’re good at, but most of them don’t make you feel strong. There are only a handful of things you do, that when you do them, you feel strong.
Write these down in your journal. Don’t edit or judge what comes up. Just write it down. Imagine your life where everyday a majority of your time is spent inside of things you feel strong doing.
Begin to cut back on activities and responsibilities that aren’t your strengths. Invest your time and energy into the things that make you feel strong. In this place, you step into your power and the world gets to know you this way.
Living from what makes you feel strong, opens up opportunities you couldn’t have predicted. Life is full of joy in this place and you will experience yourself as the powerful person you’ve always known you are.
Finding your Power Zone is a process, just like a puzzle. As you turn over more pieces inside these four areas, you will see a picture of who you are, emerge. This is how you quickly step into your fullest sense of being.
It is from that full sense of being you can now do the strategies and tactics you collected along the way and use them effectively. Your Power Zone is the X factor you’ve been looking for and it is the key to unlocking your fullest life.
Which one of these 4 clues can help you most in unlocking your power zone? Let us know below!
