Balancing our lives between excessive work, sufficient rest and limited play in a very turbulent world is an intense energy drain. We are always on, always doing, always achieving and achingly exhausted from it all. Our energy levels hit the red zone and refuelling with a good night’s sleep may be all we can manage before we roll back onto the hamster wheel. We think that hamster wheel runs on pure physical energy but that’s not the case. So really that eight hours sleep we clocked up is missing a few other vital ingredients to ensure we maintain that rejuvenated energy throughout the day. Our energy, you see, does not come packaged in one singular entity, and I’m not taking about eating an energy bar at the 3pm slump! It’s a bit more diverse than that and requires a bit of nurturing if we are to truly understand, appreciate, and build on our energy stores.
As I mentioned in a recent blog on recognising how we look at our energy, “Understanding our energy and how it affects us, what drains us and what ignites us, takes some thoughtful exploration of our wants, needs, desires, and loves. Embracing that energy and working with it by eliminating the blocks which can negatively affect our energy will mean we can tap into our full potential and explore life in line with our energy levels.”
In this three-part blog series I aim to help you Awaken Your Energy Awareness, building and exploring our energy in order to cultivate and honour it. More energy, more play! Because let’s face it, when we stay on that hamster wheel we exhaust ourselves and become less productive and less happy, leading to burnout, stress and being constantly fatigued. This is not how we want to live. Low energy is of course a very natural thing in this fast-paced world but when we recognise and understand how our energy works on its varying levels, we open ourselves to aligning our energy with what matters in our lives. In essence, awakening our energy awareness ensures we have enough fuel to explore our lives.
Awakening Our Energy Awareness
Our personal batteries are charged by four different aspects – Physical Energy, Emotional Energy, Mental Energy, and Spiritual Energy. Understanding that all four of these energies work in unison with each other allows us to awaken our understanding and awareness of our energy stores. We understand how they all need cultivating, how they can become depleted and how we can actively restore, reserve, and protect those energies.
Physical Energy
Our physical energy is the one we all recognise and often the only one we consider because it’s most certainly the loudest in telling us what it needs. Our bodies have an amazing way of letting us know when we are well and truly spent. Exhaustion, fatigue, confusion, pain, and illness are all ways our body shouts at us that we need to rest, recoup, and recharge. When focusing on our physical energy we must ask ourselves, “How healthy am I?”
Protecting our physical energy means prioritising our health, taking good care of our bodies, and eating well. It means avoiding stress, exercising, and resting when we need to. Our body will tell us when it’s suffering, but it’s up to us to listen and slow down before our energy reserves are depleted.
Emotional Energy
Our emotional energy is a silent partner when it comes to building and nurturing our energy stores. Protecting our emotional wellbeing is something many of us are still learning and developing in our practice of caring for our emotional state of mind. When we ask ourselves how happy we feel, and truly listen to the feelings which are conjured up within us, we can see if our emotional energy needs some lifting, if we need support, and if there is something deeper impacting on our emotional energy levels.
Our emotional energy can become depleted a lot quicker than others because as human beings we tend to give a lot more of ourselves to others in this way. When we connect with others in a way that is negative or overbearing, it can be heavily draining with the possibility of provoking anxiety, stress, or depression. Being conscious of how those around us are affecting us will go some ways to protecting our emotional energy.
Mental Energy
Our mental energy, which is often another hidden force as we can’t physically see when our mental reserves are exceptionally low, is key in maintaining a healthy mind. It varies from our emotional energy as our feelings factor in how we manage and express our emotions, whereas our mental energy evolves around how we process information and experiences. The best way to recognise when our mental energy is drawn is to question how well we can focus on something.
Our attention, focus, concentration, and cognitive reasoning all slow down, become blurred, and suffer when we are mentally exhausted. Even deciding what to watch on Netflix becomes a monumental ask.
Spiritual Energy
Our spiritual energy is by far the energy element we tend to skip over, but there remains huge value in our spirituality and when I say spirituality I am not explicitly talking about our religion. Our spiritual energy is that which centres around our beliefs and our core values. It is in our deeds, our kindness, our interaction with others, and how we navigate our lives through our personal and particular attitudes. Essentially, it is the inner “me.”
When our spiritual energy is low we may struggle to cope and manage with stressful or negative life events. It is then we naturally look to protect our spiritual energy by connecting with those closest to us.
Connecting Our Energies
Taking one or two of these energies and focusing on them will only get us so far. By protecting, nurturing, guiding, and restoring each component of our energy source, we are wrapping each of them up a little warmer, protecting each of them a little more, and nurturing ourselves in a way in which we can build on those energy stores. Little by little, small adjustments can make a huge difference especially when we recognise exactly where our energy pours from.
In next week’s blog we will look at understanding our energy drains and how we can restore our energy.
Energy Blog Series
- Understanding Your Energy Drains (& How To Restore Yourself)
- How To Cultivate Your Energy
- Understanding Your Vibrational Energy
- How To Clear Out Old Energy
- Ten Steps To Managing Your Energy To Reach Your Potential
