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The Two Essential Zones of Life By Terry Orlick

The greatest tragedy in life is to die without having fully lived.

I have touched the face of death both in light and in darkness.
A darkened room, a familiar voice. "Soon I will die. . . . It's not the dying that hurts so much; it's the knowing that I never fully lived. My life was a turmoil in relationships, loneliness, and escape in my work. So much time wasted pursuing goals without meaning, abandoning joy, intimacy, even my health. If only I could begin again, I would live more fully, love more completely, and leave with more joy in my heart."

Another room, another friend's voice, sunlight streaming through the window. "Soon I will leave this life, which was filled with so much love and so many wonderful moments . . . with family, friends, work that I loved, exciting adventures, sports, and the pure blessings of nature. I did all the things I ever hoped to do-and more. I would love to have more time to live, but I know I have lived fully and my heart is forever singing because of this. I go with no regrets."

Both these friends were highly accomplished in their careers, but only the man in the lighted room embraced life. He cherished his times for performing as well as the times for relaxing and playing with life. He brought more quality and creativity to his work because of the joyful times away from it. He found more meaning in his life because he lived with a sense of harmony, balance, and joy in all parts of his life.

My friend in the darkened room, on the other hand, had worked long hours with less quality and an absence of joy. Love faded in his work, and joyfulness disappeared outside of it. In the end he lost his sense of mission and meaning in life and felt empty.

Excelling at living is possible when you embrace different parts of your life; otherwise, success is like an empty balloon. If you were to die today, would you feel that you have fully lived? If you live many more years, what will have to happen during that time for you to feel that you have truly embraced life and your potential?

The secrets to embracing our potential and excelling at living come from simple wisdom, as you will discover. This simple wisdom will be of value only if you choose to embrace it and act upon it.

Life in the Green and Gold Zones

Life consists of two zones, the green zone and the gold zone. The gold zone is our life at work and in performance domains, whereas the green zone is the rest of life. The secret to excelling in the green and gold zones of life is to free our mind, body, and spirit to enter the right zone at the right time. Green without gold doesn't let us reach our individual performance potentials. Gold without green doesn't let us reach our human potential. We need both.

Why Green and Gold?

The vision of life as consisting of two separate zones surfaced while I was meeting over breakfast with Cynthia Johnston, a member of the l996 Olympic basketball team. Cynthia is a delightful person-thoughtful and creative-and a great athlete. That morning I met her at a small coffee shop around the corner from where the team was staying. When I arrived she was sitting at a corner table, sipping herbal tea and reading her notes. I sat down, and we began to talk. Our conversation soon became centered on how important it is to be mentally and physically tough to rise to the challenges of the highest levels of international sport.

I admired the human qualities that Cynthia lives off the court, which will be of great value for her whole life, but at the same time I knew she needed to become mentally tougher and more relentless on the court to excel at the highest levels in her sport. She needed to become a bit like a warrior-full of resolve and focused on a mission; not out to kill or hurt but to make it to her destination in spite of every obstacle. She had to be able to step over that line with total resolve, knowing that she would not let anything get in the way of her goal.

As we talked during breakfast, I glanced down and noticed that the center of the table top was a yellow circle and the rest of the table was green. I pointed at the table and said, "It's a bit like this table top. When you step over the line into this gold part, you must become absolutely resolute in your focus and relentless in your pursuit. Then when you step over this line back into the green part, you can be the warm human being that you are in the rest of your life. That way you will be the best performer you can be in the gold zone-on the court-and the best human being you can be in the green zone-off the court."

The colors green and gold in themselves are great symbols for me. Gold represents the pursuit of excellence and the highest quality performance. Green represents harmony, simplicity, purity, nature, and balance, all of which are linked to joyfulness and the highest quality of living.

I've been working the mental skills and the mental training for the past six or seven years. It's an ongoing process. It's constantly changing, and it's really a journey. I think the greatest lesson I've learned is that it's not just for hockey. I can apply this anywhere in life. In raising a family, you talk about belief, commitment, discipline, and respect. That's the type of person I want to be, no matter what I am doing, because I always want to get the best out of me. We only go through this life once, and I want to get the best out of Craig Billington every day. Whether it's at the hockey rink, the gym, with my friends or family, that's the way I want to be. --Craig Billington, NHL goalie

Free-Flowing States
This morning I went for a run along Meech Lake and up a trail through the woods. I had been running for about half an hour when I entered a beautiful section of the trail. The earth was smooth and cushioned, and the trees had turned into a lovely canopy high over my head. I moved effortlessly, feeling free and easy, strong and connected, and filled by a great sense of joy within. I felt a wonderful sense of harmony, connection, and well-being. Time passed unnoticed until my attention drifted to a lovely stream on my right, flowing gently down the mountainside. "That is how I feel," I thought, "like a crystal clear, free-flowing stream winding its way down the side of a mountain, unobstructed."

This is what I call a free-flowing state. I experience such states often in different parts of my life. These special moments make me feel joyful and fully alive. They give me positive energy that I carry with me through my whole day.

When we are totally connected to what we are doing and are performing to our capacity in the gold zone, we enter a free-flowing state and become inseparable from our performance. In the same way, when we are truly living in the green zone, we also enter a free-flowing state that captures us and at the same time frees us, releasing us totally to the experience. Embracing such a state is necessary for higher levels of living in both the green and gold zones of life, but this state serves a different purpose in the two zones. In the gold, we are freed to excel in our performance, whereas in the green, we are freed to excel at living the rest of our life.

A worthwhile human goal is to become inseparably connected with one's experiences, both in the green and the gold zones of life, and to stay connected there-every day, every opportunity, and in every performance. This is the essence of quality living and pure excellence. This is the heart of embracing your life and your potential.

Are Both Green and Gold Zones Necessary?
Balance and joy bring special qualities to people and pursuits. When I am feeling good about myself and my situation, everything I do is more joyful and done with a higher quality. This is why taking care of the green zone is so important to performing in the gold zone. What we do with our time away from our work or performance domain directly affects the quality of our work and the level of our performance.

Several years ago I served as a consultant on performance enhancement with mission-control personnel for satellite launches. I had worked with astronauts, but this was the first time I worked with a team of rocket scientists. During the launch and in the weeks immediately following it, these scientists work 12-hour shifts and must maintain high levels of concentration to perform critical maneuvers precisely, sometimes under pressing time demands. If they don't make the right decision within a set time limit, they may lose the satellite. Mission control requires 24-hour, high quality surveillance, so as one team leaves after its 12-hour shift, another team replaces it.

The most critical factor influencing a team's performance on-site at mission control, I discovered, was what the scientists did with their time off-site. To remain mentally sharp and continue to perform to capacity over those critical days and weeks, they had to leave their work behind when they left mission control-at least long enough to rest, exercise, nourish their bodies, and rejuvenate their minds. They also needed to take short breaks at appropriate times on-site, to stretch, walk, eat, and drink, again to reenergize their bodies and refresh their minds. If they did not take care of these simple needs at home and during breaks on-site, they put their performance and the mission at risk.

What you do away from your job affects your work, but the opposite is also true. What you do in the working or performing part of life can affect other parts of your life. For example, if the working hours of life become so negative or consuming that you cannot relax, enjoy your family or friends, or find pleasure in recreational pursuits, this will eventually sour your life. Clearly what you do with one part of your life affects how you feel and what you do in other parts of your life. The pursuit of balance and harmony between the green and gold zones is critical to the quality of performance and the overall quality of life.

In the green zone we all are free to be who we really are, without pretense, embracing our pure, human qualities and connecting totally with simple, joyful experiences. Compassion, playfulness, and an openness to positive, joyful connections are essential for truly living the green zones of life. In the gold zone we enter a different dimension and embrace a golden focus. High levels of excellence in performance require us to be focused, clear-minded, resilient, and at times immune to distractions, fatigue, or pain. The only way to surmount the challenges in the gold zone is to become mentally tough, determined, and relentless in our pursuit. To excel here, we must embrace our golden focus and live it for the duration of each performance.

Whenever we step out of our workplace or performance domain, we are free to reembrace the loving human qualities that live deep within our hearts. This is a choice. The green zone beckons us to mellow out and unwind, to become more gentle, relaxed, and playful. And this joyful time in the green zone helps us excel in the gold zone by ensuring that we are well rested, well nourished spiritually and emotionally, and well prepared mentally and physically. We focus on the good things in life and are reminded to fully embrace the opportunities that come our way. In the green zone we gain a sense of integrity and purity, with which we can fully experience the simple joys of the day and the pure joy of our accomplishments.

When we step into the gold zone, we must leave behind whatever concerns we may have. In the gold zone we cannot dwell on doubts or anything negative. To excel in the gold zone we must let those doubts go and embrace our golden focus, which rivets us totally to what we are engaged in and nothing else. The key that opens the door to great performances is freeing the mind and body to enter the gold zone and stay there for the whole performance-every performing second.

The balance of green and gold allows us to become the best we can be in our work or performance domain while continuing to bring purity, joyfulness, and harmony to the rest of life. If we focus only on gold, at the very best we are living only half a life. To live fully we must respect and embrace both halves of life.

Living Is Now

The moment we are living is the only moment we will ever be able to live right now. So we might as well live it fully. A moment we fail to live is gone forever. Embracing life is choosing to embrace each moment, absorbing ourselves in it and finding something positive in it. It is a perspective we can choose or ignore. The advantage of choosing to live each moment is that we free ourselves to truly live our experiences, find joy in the different parts of life, and embrace ongoing growth. The implications of choosing to live with a positive and absorbing perspective reach far beyond any particular experience or performance domain. The choice touches the core itself of life.

We are responsible for finding a sense of joy and balance in our lives. We are the only ones who can embrace situations and perspectives that free us to feel good about ourselves and our pursuits. Without taking this responsibility we cannot live or perform to our true potentials. We must accept responsibility for ourselves. The quality of our lives and performances depends upon it.

The purest path to quality living and performance lies in a spirit of balance. Balance is finding beauty, passion, and meaning in the different loves of our lives. It is living those loves every day-in our relationships, workplace or performance domain, nature, sport, dance, and with the unfolding of simple daily experiences. Balance is respecting our twin needs for achievement and relaxation, work and play, giving and receiving, intimacy and personal space.

Balance is not a question of spending equal time with the different loves in our lives, but rather what we do with our time and how we focus in different domains. Balance is a question of carrying a spirit of joy and connection into the various pursuits, experiences, and relationships we live. When we are with someone we are entirely with them, even if the time is short. When we are doing something, we are doing it fully. This frees us to get the most out of life.

If you just relax and say, "There is a reason why I am here," then there will be a lesson. I am really enjoying getting into a state where I am expecting something good to happen. When you do that, something good happens. I spend a lot of time with the special Olympians. Those athletes really take pleasure in simply running around the track, and that humbles me. I have to take pleasure in simply skiing down the hill. I have to look for simple pleasures and try to enjoy them. Those are the things that fuel you from day to day. --Kate Pace, world champion, downhill skiing

Lessons From Childhood

Quality living and quality performances are nurtured by following a path that many of us followed as young children-but may have abandoned somewhere along the way. This is a path of vision, absorption, persistence, joyfulness, and purity.

Vision. The first great quality of childhood. Learning to walk or talk as a child, you had a vision of where you wanted to go. You saw others walking and talking with fluency and ease, and these visions led you. As an adult, you still need a vision of what you can be as you set out to embrace life and pursue your dreams. Be free with your imagination. Unhinge the door to possibilities. You can be whatever or whoever you want to be-in your play, your mind, and your reality. Positive visions lead positive realities in the green and gold zones of life.

Absorption. The second great quality of childhood. As a young child at play you were absorbed in your activity to the exclusion of everything else in the world. Your focus was simple and uncomplicated. Your mind was free distractions and worry. You were totally connected and unconcerned by the thoughts or evaluations of others. When you regain that childhood focus your mind will be in the right place. Absorption is the most powerful ingredient for joyful living, quality learning, and free-flowing performance.

Persistence. The third great quality of childhood. As a child you learned to talk, stand, and walk, probably falling thousands of times along the way. You persisted through countless obstacles because you had a vision of where you wanted to go and you decided to get there. Be prepared to fall ten thousand times along the path to living your visions and dreams. Keep going, learning, and growing. All worthy accomplishments are charted with persistence.

Joyfulness. The fourth great quality of childhood. Children at play are joyful, hopeful, and optimistic. They love doing what they are doing. Every day and every experience is a new challenge, a special opportunity, an occasion for magical moments. Resolve to rediscover and keep the pure joy in your pursuits. Joy, passion, and simplicity drove your childhood in positive ways. These attributes are still alive within you today. Rekindle them. Free them to come out .

Purity. The fifth great quality of childhood. Young children have a natural spirit of purity and simplicity. As a child you were free and spontaneous in play, true to yourself, and genuine with others. You lived without pretense, having no need to be anything other than what you were at the moment. Within your core you still carry the potential for a natural ease in being yourself in and outside of play. This gift of sincerity and simplicity can free you to be who you are. You will become much more free-flowing when you rekindle a pure and natural connection to the moment, and let go of the fear of evaluation.

These are the five great qualities of childhood that bring meaning, quality, and joy to life. Embrace your positive visions, absorb yourself completely in the experience of the moment, persist through the obstacles, keep the joy in your pursuits, and strive to maintain a natural sense of purity in your life.

The mental links to personal excellence discussed in the remainder of this book depend on these very childlike qualities just described. Vision is a prerequisite for: pursuing excellence, being positive, embracing health and healing, charting your own path, and achieving meaningful goals. Absorption is essential for quality performance, relaxation, and quality living. Persistence is necessary for self-directed learning, staying focused, and strengthened confidence. Joyfulness is the foundation for passion, love, and a positive state of mind. Purity and simplicity are keys to reduced stress, open communication, and healthy relationships.

The pure and natural voyage of a young child is one of ongoing self-discovery and self-directed learning. This is also the lifetime voyage of the world's best and most balanced performers. We have all lived these five qualities of childhood that are essential for excelling in the green zones and gold zones of life.

The challenge is to rediscover these simple foundations within ourselves and to put them into practice to add meaning, joy, and excellence to our daily lives.

Excerpted from Embracing Your Potential, 1998, by Terry Orlick.