Sustain Energy
I’m carrying on with yesterday’s theme of what I’ve been noticing in recent weeks. Today it is our tendency to focus on time and tasks more than energy.
“I’m running out of time…”
“There is so much to do …”
Just as we take for granted our ability to turn the lights on when we need light, we expect that we too can be switched on as needed to get our tasks done. No wonder we get to the holidays and crash and burn.
To add to the statements about time and tasks, is the one I hear over and over, “I’m just so tired … “
We know the signs of a workplace with a burnout culture. We can spot an industry and/or organisation where people are seen as another resource to use up and replace in the race to the bottom (line). We can choose to avoid these.
What about those workplaces where it’s not a systemic cultural issue, and where people are actually valued as human beings …. because there are people here who are feeling exhausted, too.
That’s where our energy focus comes in.
Sustaining physical and emotional energy, as well as the energy of our minds and spirit, is essential if we are to make it through the peaks and troughs of what our work and lives require.
Focus and awareness is where we start, realising that pre-holiday deadlines combined with an upswing in family and life commitments might limit our ability to keep to our usual sleep, exercise, eating, meditation, journalling etc routines. Combine that awareness with empathy - to ourselves and others - allows us to navigate through this high energy output, low energy input period of the year. We move through it together with kindness, grace and compassion.
And, we get to use the holidays not as a “hit the wall” time. Instead our break becomes a time to recalibrate our energy needs and swing that balance back to energy inputs.
I’m curious, how do you sustain your energy at this time of year, and if not, are you giving yourself and others some grace and kindness?