The Five Kinds of Energy You Need

Accomplishing our goals in life often requires having the right energy – but what is the right energy? In my experience, not all energy is created equal.

Some stages on your journey will call for more, or more specially focused, commitments than others. As I see it, there are five different kinds of energy you need on the path to fulfilling success:

Start-up energy. Beginning a career, starting a practice or embarking on a major project of any kind tends to bring with it its own excitement that creates early momentum. So start-up energy is fairly easy to find, abundant and fun. But eventually you find you need to dig deeper to keep the momentum going. That's when you need…

Resistance energy. Just about anything worthwhile will come up against resistance at some point fairly early on in your venture. This resistance usually takes the form of entrenched mindsets; these are ways of thinking that your patients, your team and even you, will cling to as a way of holding on to what is safe and known. It takes a special energy to push past those ways of thinking, but even when you do, you can then find yourself needing…

Roadblock energy. Getting past those mindsets is one thing, but reality often presents other limiting factors and circumstances to overcome as well. Things like not enough space in your facility or the right resources when you feel ready to expand require a special kind of energy, especially when you need to get creative about beating these obstacles. But when you do, that's when you discover you'll need…

Growth energy. This can be a lot like start-up energy because things are happening, and once again, that brings its own excitement. When you are in a rapid growth phase, resistance and roadblocks get easier to deal with as well, because nothing inspires like success. The problem is, many people never experience growth energy because they were never able to find the right energy earlier in their adventure to get to this point. Once you do, however, you are on your way to the best kind of energy…

Natural energy. This is the sweet spot and where you find yourself almost automatically doing what needs to be done, when it needs doing, because you love it. I compare it with athletes who have trained consistently and have achieved higher and higher levels of performance. Workouts for them are not a big chore that they have to get "psyched up" for—they just do it. They do what it takes to keep getting better; this is the energy of champions. The great thing about this is anyone who has the drive and focus can work their way to this point where "just doing it" comes naturally.

In conclusion, once you have figured out your big why, the purpose behind what you do, it comes down to execution. That means putting your attention on staying in the right energy zone.