How to Take Charge of Your Most Valuable Resource – You’re Energy
For a moment, I would like to ask yourself honestly, without judgement or justification, whether you experience any of these symptoms on a consistent basis:
- Tired or unrested on waking up
- Short term memory loss or forgetfulness
- Low libido
- Susceptibility to infection, colds or the flu
- Overwhelmed, moody, depressed, anxious, oversensitive
- Weight gain or loss
- Increase or loss of appetite
- Sweet cravings – ice-cream, chocolate, lollies, alcohol
- A reliance on caffeine to get you through the day
- Muscle or joint pain or inflammation
One of the 10 most common reasons we visit the doctor is fatigue and lack of energy.
I’ve personally experienced all of the above symptoms at some point in time, over the past years whilst learning to manage and optimise my health and wellbeing.
My first big hurdle, was challenging the belief that time was my most valuable resource. Today, as busy Mum’s or career focused women we are all searching and reading to find the magic secret around time management and how we can do everything.
What if time management is only a small piece of the truth? What if time isn’t your most valuable resource? What if it was your energy; your physical, mental, emotional and creative energy? Would you look at making different choices, if it meant having more energy? The ability to do more in the same amount of time!
Time for me is a limited resource, it’s finite in nature, with only 24 hours in each day to manage.
My energy on the other hand, I see as infinite, a renewable resource which determines how productive, effective and efficient I am, in any given period of time.
When I shifted my focus, to learning how to manage my energy, not my time, the magic happened. Not only did my health and wellbeing improve, so did the quality and quantity of my output in any focused block of time.
So what does it look like to take charge of your energy?
I view the energy we experience daily, coming from 4 main systems or bodies of energy:
- The Physical Energy Body
- The Mental Energy Body
- The Emotional Energy Body
- The Creative or Spiritual Energy Body
We are like renewable biological batteries, with the ability to recharge our various energy bodies, simply by drawing from the right resources at the right time.
Each of these systems, rely on different ways to renew and replenish their fields of energy. We know at a very basic level, that all four systems require sleep or what I call total rest. Deep restorative sleep is the most rejuvenating, regenerating and healing resource available to the whole body (being all four energy body’s) and it’s free. In addition to sleep, the other key resources from which we replenish and renew our energy body’s are:
Nutrition (food) and water – where you source them from is vital to ensuring the energy they provide the body is optimal. They need to be minimally processed, organic where possible and wholefoods.
Movement (exercise) – not too much and not too little, is key to keeping the battery charged! If scheduled exercise is something you feel you have to do, chances are you won’t, so try and incorporate incidental exercise into your day, take the stairs instead of the lift, park your car a kilometre from the station or work and walk.
Playtime (me time) – making time to do what feeds your soul, makes your heart sing, fills your cup and ultimately feeds your creative spirit. Do you know what that is? How often do you do you take time to do it? Time at the beach, swimming in the ocean and bush walking is where my most creative ideas come from, what about you?
Time for reflection (introspection and self-enquiry) – we often forget to take time to reflect, self-enquire, process, and integrate our thoughts, feelings and experiences. This time helps to renew our mental and emotional energy. These rituals build resilience, stamina and self-understanding, whilst also providing a mechanism by which we can release or resolve mental and emotion energy no longer serving us, thereby allowing room for new vital energy to come in.
I hope this has provided a different perspective on why your energy, not your time is your most valuable resource, as well as some ideas on how to begin taking charge of your energy levels over the coming months. This month’s health tips are some of my rituals to renew my energy.
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