I'm dead. I'm alive. I'm misaligned.
My power meter of real life
If you have ever played any video game, especially role playing, you are familiar with the notion of the health or power of your character. Maybe you have played a game where you could gain extra lives when you found a treasure or gained extra immunity against an enemy when you cast a spell. Perhaps you have watched the battery on your phone (or laptop or electric car) slowly dying and you did everything you could to extend it just a bit more, just until you got to a charger.
We are all aware of the drain that actions can take on our characters, our devices, even our precious natural resources. We glance at the meter, and in some games we can even share our health status with others, allowing them to see if we are in need and come to our aid.
Then there is real life. In real life, many of us walk around projecting the appearance of fully charged all the time; until we are empty and then we appear fully drained. We smile at work and home and say we are “doing great” when our internal emotional meter reads “feeling sad.” We allow our ego to rule us too often and don’t dare admit that we might be hurting, sick, or even joyous and celebratory.
Seems to me that lately, all of us staring at our cameras and screens, we are just playing a character in a video game called “work” or “life” and that character has an infinite stash of power-ups available.
I know it is not true for me. Is it true for you?
Imagine we could all have our current status projecting over our heads when we walk around, available via right click when we appear on-screen. What would they look like? What are the important components of who you are, how you are feeling, how you are being?
As a dedicated and often impatient student of psychology, learning, self-improvement, and personal growth, I have tried many systems to gauge and track my own state. Some are too complex for me, some too heavily weighted to one component or another. Over time, I have landed on my own simple system of determining where I am at a point in time.
My Power Meter
This is me, this morning:
I use a 5-point scale (higher is “better”) and the following measures:
Emotional - the most complex of the measures. It is not simply 1= sad and 5 = happy, but trying to gauge the ebb and flow of my emotional state. I read recently that memories of happiness feel more intense than the actual state of happiness because they are tinged with melancholy, and found that powerfully true. If I am spending a lot of time in one emotional state at the expense of others, that is a sign of imbalance, resulting in a lower rating.
Intellectual - my driving force. I am a creature of the mind, thinking and reading and writing endlessly. I gain satisfaction from the pursuit of new ideas and solving hard problems. When my rating is high, as it is now, I am being challenged across many different dimensions. But, as we will see in the Alignment measure, too much Intellectual can overwhelm everything else.
Physical - my health and fitness. Pretty simple to me, but can be complex for many. Am I eating healthy, getting exercise, sleeping, and doing the things necessary to help a long life? Have I been ill, worried, stressed?
Spiritual - the ineffable measure. I often ask myself (and others, to their annoyance) “why am I here?” or “what should I do?” My Spiritual measure is as much about my addressing those questions and seeking answers as it is about one other question: “am I doing good?” This is about helping myself and helping others.
Alignment - the personal balance. Simply put, do I feel like the other four measures are aligned or out of whack. Like the wheels on a car, I can feel misalignment because I drift one way or another. Alignment keeps me from allowing a 1 or 5 in the other measures from totally taking over my life. Alignment happens when I try and place myself in a broader context of time, space, and life.
I own that this is a particular and somewhat idiosyncratic way of looking at the world, co-opting the work of many other people throughout history. There is nothing special about these measures, except for the fact that they matter to me.
Think about your own power meter. Find your own way to track your state of being, and then maybe choose to share it. Sharing it leaves me feeling vulnerable, I admit, but it also leaves me feeling like my Emotional and Spiritual measures may be a little higher tomorrow.
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