Reclaim your energy today
Many of us wish we had more energy, more energy to thrive at work and on the projects we care about, more energy to give our very best to our families and friends. We wish we had more energy to invest in our health and passions. Diet, exercise and lifestyle certainly impact energy levels, but feeling mentally exhausted - and how to fix it - may really be all in your head!
I met with a client recently who is a role model have-it-all successful executive. This client is excelling in her career, exceeding her financial goals, and happy in her marriage and family life. However, she felt chronically exhausted and overwhelmed.
In her attempts to have-it-all and keep-it-all, she frequently mentally replayed past events to identify what she could have done better. She replayed important sales calls in her mind to see what customer cues she may have missed. She also kept a running list of future concerns so that she might implement plans to mitigate and improve outcomes on her projected scenarios.
As we started looking closely at where this client was expending her energy, one striking observation was how little energy was being intentionally invested in the here and now, the present moment.
The mental process of alternately rehashing the past and planning for the future may seem like a familiar, even reasonable, approach to optimizing professional performance, but it comes with a dramatic cost to personal energy.
Extensive reflection on past events hooks your energy in the past. Incessant projecting and planning for the future traps your energy in the future. As a result, your energy gets stuck everywhere but where you need it, which is the here and now.
Energetically living in the past or the future leaves you running on empty in the here and now because present-moment energy is the only energy that engages in the direct experience of life.
We use present-moment energy to engage fully and authentically with our families, to be fully “on” during a meeting, to show up fully to whatever is unfolding, and to truly be our best selves.
Once this client recognized that her mental habits were reducing the amount of energy available for actually living life, she was able to make specific changes that unlocked access to significantly more and better-quality personal energy. Her exhaustion and overwhelm faded, and in its place a sense of thriving and flourishing grew in the power of her present-moment energy.
These specific changes require just three simple steps that anyone can do.
STEP 1: Get Curious
The first step is to get authentically curious about your own mental habits. To do this, release any sense of self-criticism or judgement. There is no good or bad, and no evaluation, just a feeling of open curiosity. Consider how often your energy is spent outside of the present moment.
Do you rehash past events, either as stories told to others or just in your own head? Do you mentally replay a conversation or event that troubled you?
Do you indulge in this type of reflection or rumination rarely? Once or twice a day? More?
Do you envision future scenarios, and either worry or try to pre-solve them?
Do you engage in past-reflection of future-worry rarely? Once or twice a day? More?
STEP 2: Notice
The second step is to notice how much energy you have locked away from your available use by noticing the emotional intensity associated with your rehashing and/or worrying. The more emotion that is caught up in these mental processes, the more energy that is trapped.
Again, let your inner critic have a break and find a spirit of openness and curiosity. Recall a recent event, meeting, or conversation that bothered you. Replay it in your mind. Do any emotions come up? Can you feel those emotions anywhere in your body? A tightness in your chest? A sinking feeling in your stomach? Heat in your face?
Now, bring to mind an issue causing you to worry over the future outcome. Investigate your emotional landscape. What emotions are arising? Can you feel those emotions show up physically? A clenching in your stomach? A fluttering in your chest? Dryness in your mouth?
STEP 3: Unhook
In Steps 1 and 2, you assessed the energy stored outside of the present moment by bringing a mindful awareness and clear seeing to your mental habits. From that place of awareness, you can unhook your energy from the past and future and release those much-needed reserves into the here and now where it is useful.
Unhooking energy is a simple skill that with repetition gets easier.
When you cultivate an open curiosity about your mental processes and notice what is happening without judgement, you are cultivating mindful awareness. In this mindful awareness, you experience a separation between your Self and the mental processes of thinking, remembering, worrying. It is that separation that gives you the power to unhook your energy (from the past and/or future) and bring it back to the now where you can use it.
When you pull your thoughts and emotions fully into the present moment, the full power of your personal energy becomes available to you to engage in life.
Try it for yourself! The more you practice these steps: Get Curious, Notice, Unhook, the more natural and effortless it becomes. The more you practice, the more easily you recognize when you are trapping your energy, and the more quickly you can call it back.
Some amount of reflection on the past and planning for the future can be skillful and productive. It would be hard to navigate careers, relationships and life overall without doing so. However, it becomes problematic from an energy standpoint when that reflection and planning is done repetitively and on autopilot. The mental processes locking up your energy happen by habit versus by intention.
These 3 Steps (Getting Curious, Noticing & Unhooking) bring awareness to the relationship between your habituated mental processes and your available energy then activate your ability to bring your energy back to the present moment where it is most useful.
This surge can fill your depleted stores and wash away mental exhaustion. With the fresh flow of present moment energy you are fueled to engage more fully in life with the very best of who you are.
