Manila, 17 November 2021 — What to do when energy is stuck.

Story

It happened a few days ago when I unsuccessfully tried to buy earphones. Not online, but in person. Unfortunately, a hiccup at the checkout led to my card being rejected, and I ended up leaving empty-handed and unhappy. When I got home, I found myself going over the experience in my mind again, and again. This went on for about 15 minutes, and then I realized that I was ruminating and causing precious energy to get stuck in negative emotions. 

When it comes to reflection and rumination, it’s important to know the difference. Reflection helps you learn from an experience and move forward with positive emotions. Reflecting is a foundational skill for all leaders to cultivate. Rumination, on the other hand, is where you keep thinking over and over about something that happened, with negative emotions. Ruminating gets you trapped in thoughts that hold you back from moving forward in a positive way. That’s when your energy is getting stuck.

Thank goodness that I saw where my rumination over the shopping adventure was taking me, so I decided to stop it and make energy flow again. I went to another store and the payment worked. Problem solved. My decision made my precious energy flow again, and a happy ending followed. If only there was a way to end rumination in the workplace so quickly. 

Challenge

In my experience as a coach, the number one cause of rumination in offices has to do with unhappy experiences with other people. Most of the time, it concerns a boss or ‘difficult’ colleague. And often, the negative emotions of rumination end up getting suppressed without resolution and release. This can go on for a long time. 

For as long as rumination is allowed to continue under the surface, performance in the workplace gets suppressed because energy is stuck. Instead of driving performance higher, precious energy is actually spent on keeping the shadows in place and ourselves under control. Consequently, ruminators end up withholding their best selves from doing their best work with the boss or colleague they ruminate about. The result is sub-optimal performance for everyone, or even a dysfunctional operation in the business.

On the good side, once we become aware of rumination and its effect on precious energy getting stuck, we can look at the options to make energy flow again. In some simple cases, putting a stop to rumination can be as easy as shifting your mind to something else, like going for a workout in the gym. In other cases, getting over rumination might need a conversation with the person concerned, to reconnect authentically and deeply. While that might look like a difficult conversation, calling it difficult will only make it more likely to be postponed. It’s best to take action as soon as possible.

Question

It’s not for nothing when leadership coaches say that leadership happens in relationships and conversations. As humans, we all ruminate sometimes. However, once we see the risk that it brings, we will want to put an end to it as soon as possible to get energy to flow again. Often, a quality conversation will make that happen.

Here’s my question for this week. In your relationships at work, where do you sense that precious energy is stuck in negative emotions that you hold inside as a result of rumination? Why not do something about it? There’s little benefit in waiting for the others to act, or for the situation to improve. Instead, leaders can decide to transform themselves first and to mindfully take steps to make energy flow again.

To make energy come unstuck, I often find inspiration in the philosophy of YinYang. The qualities of Yin and Yang belong together. Yet, as alternating poles of energy, YinYang allows us to proactively shift our thought and behavior from Yin to Yang and from Yang to Yin at any moment we want. For example, in having a quality conversation you might ask a question and adopt a ‘receiving’ Yin mindset with active listening, or adopt a Yang stance and ‘call out’ what you think needs to be said. Be sure to use both in good time.