Session 17 – 4 Critical Gauges for Your Life and Work

Action Steps

1. Evaluate each gauge in your life, work, and leadership. How are you doing:
   1. Physical Gauge
   2. Mental Gauge
   3. Spiritual Gauge
   4. Emotional Gauge
2. What one step can you take to improve in one of these areas?
3. Take that step today.

Session Transcript

In this Module, I am going to show you how you can Measure, Track, and Celebrate progress to consistently maximize your influence and your impact.

Take a moment right now to download the Worksheet for this session so can follow along as we move forward.

Have you ever found yourself in a funk? You love your work, you’ve got a great team, you’re even making progress – but you’re just in a funk.

In fact, you might even notice it and think that you’ll be over it in a day or two and it continues for several days. And then for several weeks and you just can’t seem how to figure a way out of it.

Years ago, I noticed that I periodically struggle with getting motivated and staying motivated.

Often as leaders, we don’t like to admit it, but these low times are occasionally accompanied by mild depression or even frustrations or overwhelm. Many associate these times with weakness – convincing themselves, “I’m not a good leader or I’m in over my head. I should never have taken this position. I should never have taken on this project.”

Obviously, this depressive state is not healthy for us. And if we are not healthy, we simply cannot live and cannot lead effectively. We cannot respond to challenges and opportunities calmly and decisively.

In 2011, I began journaling when these low times would occur for me. I was looking for patterns – anything that would help me to know when they were coming, prepare for them, prevent them, and use them as opportunities to grow.

I even tried to fix the problem using various methods of diet and exercise. But nothing was sustainable until I identified 4 critical gauges for my life and for my work.

When I began to review the gauges periodically, I learned something that was life-changing for me.

To help me review the 4 gauges, I developed a guide and template which includes specific questions and action items which can be completed in just a few minutes.

You can download a copy of the template and worksheet using the link on this page. So, go ahead and do that right now while we walk through the 4 gauges.

Here are the 4 gauges:

1. Physical

A healthy diet, rest, and regular exercise are key components to physical health. When I neglect these areas, I do not have the energy required to live and lead effectively. So I work out at least 3 days a week and I get at least 7 hours of sleep a night, and I work to maintain a healthy diet.

I’ve also learned that if I push my body, or I push my mind too hard, that I began to experience a physical breakdown or psychosomatic symptoms or complications associated with high stress.

In the worksheet there are a number of questions to help you evaluate your Physical gauge. Take just a moment to review those questions and answer the questions on the worksheet.

2. Mental

It’s easy to get stuck in a rut – doing the same things and thinking the same way. Occasionally, we do this while we expect different results. To mentally prepare for the day, effective leaders continually test their thinking, opinions, and conclusions.

In the worksheet, we’ve provided a number of questions to help you evaluate your mental gauge. Take a moment to review those questions and answer them on the worksheet.

3. Spiritual

The pace of my work has dramatically increased over the past few years. Since my spiritual gauge is important for me, I regularly check my life’s dashboard. And I can tell when I am spiritually empty, half full, three-quarters full or occasionally full in this area

If the Spiritual Gauge isn’t quite your style, you may want to spend time reflecting or meditating.

For me, it’s important to keep my faith gauge where I want it to be. I have committed myself to solitude, study, and attending church regularly with my family. I discovered that these spiritual disciplines help me to clarify life’s challenges. They bring intensity and passion to my life and to my work.

In the worksheet, there are a number of questions to evaluate your Spiritual gauge. Take a moment to review those questions and answer them on the worksheet.

4. Emotional

Our problems often signal a state of emotional emptiness. When crisis hits, we become more reactionary, testy, and short with people. We see people as interruptions to our “real work”.

You know there’s a problem when you’re on your way home from work and you consciously hope that your spouse has everything under control or that the kids don’t need much from you. You simply don’t have any more to give to these most valued people in your life.

In the worksheet there are a number of questions to help you evaluate your Emotional gauge. Take a moment to review them and answer the questions on the worksheet.

The one discipline that has helped me to control my emotional gauge is finding an outlet – a recreational activity that takes my mind away from the pressures of work. Running and writing have become recreational hobbies for me.

Now those might not seem like much fun for you but it’s possible that your hobbies don’t seem fun to me either.

What’s important is how you find something that helps you to unwind, that allows you to let go of the challenges that you face both at home and at work.

You’ll have to intentionally schedule time into your calendar for unwinding. Otherwise, life happens and crowds out emotional health.

Here’s what is interesting and this is the most important part of all the 4 gauges – the emotional gauge is the only gauge you can’t directly control. You can’t tell yourself to feel better and make yourself feel better. The emotional gauge is a byproduct (or indicator) of the health of the other three gauges. Trouble in one or more of the other three gauges, directly impacts or directly affects the emotional gauge.

The gauges need to be measured objectively, not subjectively. How you feel about how you are doing does not matter nearly as much as how you’re really doing. So, using the questions helps you to provide a measurable outcome to evaluate each one of the gauges.

I have made a conscious decision to live healthy, so I have more to offer to others, to my family, to my team, to my organization than just a handful of years of frenzied activity.

The 4 gauges have helped me to identify where I might be off track so I can resolve the challenge and get back on track more quickly.

You may find, after you review the 4 Gauges, you still need help identifying your best opportunities for growth. And that’s fine. We can help with that, too.

We’ve developed a couple of assessments we use with leaders and teams…

Guidestone 360 Leader Assessment

Guidestone 360 Team Assessment

If you’d like to go deeper or make progress faster, shoot me an email and I’ll help you get started with this.

If you haven’t already, take a moment right now. Be sure to download the Worksheet on this page and take the time to complete the action steps for this session.

It’s such a critical session and I think it’ll be really an encouraging time for you to walk through the Action Steps with this session.

Remember, you don’t need to get it perfect. You just need to take the next step. And I want to help you to do that today.

Next Session

In this Module, we are looking at Review. How you can Measure, Track, and Celebrate your progress to consistently maximize your influence and impact. And in the next session, we will look at the first of 3 regular reviews that need to be a part of your schedule.

I’ll see you in the next session![/text_block]