Lunch time, and I was having a bad day. The grind of work was getting me down. As I looked back at the morning's situations, I realized I could have performed much better. Thinking that made it even worse. I was on a downward spiral.

I had agreed to call a leader from an ANE event as her support. So I made the call, more for me than her.

"During the day I try to check in with my spiritual core," she shared. "I call it my ANE Barometer. I stop and get an intuitive feel of where I'm at spiritually. If I feel depleted, I do something to get spiritually engaged. Usually I call someone, read a verse, say the ANE prayer, or speak with a colleague. It gets my needle moving from cloudy back toward fair weather. Things always get better from there."

"What a great concept," I responded. "Sharing with you and hearing this has done it for me. I can't be fully present for people when I'm drifting in the cloudy side all day. I'm so glad we had this call scheduled, because jumping off the downward spiral alone is so hard for me."

"And it inspires me when I help you," she added. "So let's try calling every day. If we don't connect, let's leave a special message on each other's voicemail to pick up later."

Will there be someone helping you keep your ANE Barometer pointing to fine weather this week?

Stephen
ANE = Calm, Confident, Connected Leadership

The Fully-Present Leader is our 2012 event theme. In North America at Princeton Theological Seminary on May 6 and 7, and in Europe at Worth Abbey, UK from September 21 to 23.