YOUR ENERGY BANK

Have you ever noticed how your energy levels vary significantly from day to day, week to week? I think of it as being like a bank account: sometimes there’s quite a healthy balance and then a big bill comes in and you’re back in the red again! I find this a useful analogy because it reminds us that we need to monitor our energy bank balance, just as we do our financial affairs.

We need the basic regular incoming of energy: the ways in which we give ourselves energy to fulfil our daily requirements. There are the straightforward physical needs: sleep, food, drink, and physical movement. Then there are the metal stimuli to keep our minds active and alert, which may be our work, reading, or crosswords and Sudoku! And the third category is those things that give us emotional energy: good conversation, activities we really enjoy, giving and receiving love and affection.

These categories of energy supply are like three different sources of income, and we need input from all three to ensure we have a good energy balance. It is not enough to keep one of these topped up, and neglect the others, because it is the combination of them that forms our energy levels. So to maintain our regular ‘income’ of energy, we need to ensure that we actively build our energy physically, mentally and emotionally.

As we become aware of how we can actively fulfil our energy requirements, we begin to accumulate a repertoire of ways of enhancing our energy levels, should we need to, or want to. And the good thing about energy income is that we can easily increase our income: it is not dependent on outside sources, it is within our control to enhance those levels through things we choose to do or not do.

Then we need to assess what drains our energy, empties the account. You do know this: there are certain activities and interactions that leave us feeling drained or use up a lot of our energy. The first question is, can we limit those or even eliminate them? Usually these energy-drainers are linked to things we do out of duty or obligation. Now I’m not suggesting that we don’t do them any more – unless we really don’t need to and only do it from force of habit – but we can certainly reduce their impact.

If you want to maintain your good relationship with your aunt/brother/old friend, but find them draining, arrange to see them in a way that allows you to limit the time you spend with them. If you need to sort your emails regularly, but it’s an activity you don’t like, then allocate specific times to it. What we can also do, having reduced the impact of our energy-drainers, is make sure we have some energy boosters in place for either before or after, or both!

And as we become more aware of what empties our energy account fast for us, we can be more careful about how many of those drainers we allow into our lives. Many of us have too many energy expenditures and it is hard to keep that balance topped up.

I want to make a final point about our energy banks. The sources of energy for us, and the things that drain us, may not be consistent. Sometimes going for a walk is just what we need, and sometimes that would be just a step too far, so to speak! Sometimes a friend’s company re-energises us, and sometimes we just want to be quiet and on our own to recover our energy levels. So keeping your energy bank balance healthy requires staying aware of your own wisdom and intuition.

When our energy levels are down, we don’t think straight, or feel good, and everything can become draining, causing enormous overdraughts on the account very quickly. The good news is that there are always sources of energy within our control, no matter what’s going on in our world, so when we are feeling drained it is always possible to do something about it.

Identify your sources of energy, use them, keep topping up your balance, and life gets easier. Go on, find an energy topper now, and allow yourself to use it!!

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