On this beautiful spiritual, healing path I have taken, I slowly but surely saw how my entire life changed. Where I was once constantly crunching goals, and fitting time on my endless to-do checklists, always in a rush against time, today I lead a more peaceful life. Usually, when I make this statement, people assume I have taken a step back in my goals and work. However, I’ve only moved forward in my life, I have grown both on a deeply personal level and on my career path where I even developed my own business. And all of that happened when I started healing myself and paying attention to my energy.
When I switched from constantly trying to fill my time productively, and rather paying attention to how much energy I had available to accomplish tasks and goals, and simply taking the time to manage and maintain my energy levels, my life turned around! If you are well aware of how much energetical capacity you have, and you set goals and deadlines according to it, then you will have a more realistic view of what is possible to accomplish and what is not possible to accomplish. And most importantly, when you manage your energy you have to hold space for yourself to properly rest and recharge, which means that you make space for inner and outer balance, eliminating the possibility of burnout. Here are a couple of tips to help you manage your energy levels:
Self-Discovery And Understanding
I used to push myself forward, scheduling any and all free time of my day to accomplish some goal, and do some extra work - always focusing on using all of my time productively. At that time in my life, seeing some free time on my schedule only meant to me that I wasn’t doing everything possible to succeed in life. So, I’d feel enormous guilt and look for ways to fill my rarely free timeslots - even if they were my breaks! A path that has led me on the fast track to emotional, spiritual, and physical burnout.
Once I started healing, I realized that although to heal you do need some time to recover and recharge, healing isn’t a one-time fix. It’s a continuous, constant journey, a state of being where you hold peace, space, and understanding for yourself. So the question emerged - how do I continue to heal, while I also move on with my life, my goals, and my daily tasks that never seemed to end? Turns out, it was all about understanding. After all, if you don’t understand where the issue is, how can you help yourself heal?
Sleep Is Essential
Think of your energy levels as the battery of your phone - to keep your phone working, you have to recharge it on a daily basis, right? Well, you also need to recharge and maintain your energy levels. So, the first step is to make sure you get enough rest. Clocking in your 7-9 hours of sleep every night is essential! Then you’ll have a lot of energy restored to maintain.
Energy Journal
Now, the not-so-easy part - how should you manage your energy? Yet again, understanding and self-discovery are everything! During the day, keep an energy journal close by and note down when you feel the most energetic and the most tired. Keep track of those patterns to use your daily highs and lows to arrange your day according to your energy levels. This makes life so much easier! For example, I’d schedule harder tasks and more deep work during my daily highs, and I’d try to keep my schedule clean or with easier work during my daily lows.
Set Minimums & Maximums For Your Goals
When I set my weekly goals, a nice trick that has helped me to keep me, while also allowing me to manage my energy levels accordingly, was to not set hard goals, but rather minimums and maximums for my goals. Many of my weekly goals are repetitive - each week I work, exercise, and meditate.
However, I don’t always have the energy to exercise every single day, or even meditate daily. So, instead, I set the minimum and maximum of that goal, and everything in between is also a win. For example, I’d set a minimum of three days a week where I meditate, where the ideal maximum would be to meditate each day, twice a day. So, depending on how life goes and how much energy I have at my disposal, I can still meet my goal, make progress, and avoid burnout.
Listen To Your Body
While making sure you get enough sleep is essential to maintaining your energy, it’s also very important to listen to your body. If you get enough sleep but still feel tired, then maybe you need to drink some extra water to rehydrate, or maybe your diet needs tweaking to include an extra meal or to include some foods that can give you more energy and nutritional value. Your body will always be a great indicator as to where you need to adjust in your life so that you can always maintain your energy and remain healthy.
Meditation & Mindfulness
Making mediation and enhancing mindfulness a habit is a great way to always have the self-awareness needed to manage your energy levels.
To make this easier I’d also recommend making a small energy evaluation list that you can look over when you are trying to maintain a work-life balance. What I usually do when I’m setting my weekly goals is make a small checklist of types of energy I have at my disposal: mental, physical, spiritual, social, and emotional. I rate these from 1-10, where 1 is the lowest and 10 is the highest (but I do this after I meditate).
Then I take some time to meditate and be mindful of my inner state. I’d simply breathe in and out, focusing on my body, my soul, my mind, and my life energy flowing. I love doing these mindfulness meditations with a Natural Amethyst Lotus Mala because it helps me gain more focus and a deeper understanding of myself. After that, I fill out my checklist for the list while trying to be fully transparent and realistic with myself. Then, once I have my energy list, I schedule my weekly goals accordingly. If I have a ton of social energy, I’ll make sure to spend more time with my friends and colleagues, if I have more spiritual and emotional energy at my disposal, I’ll make sure to make time for inner work that week as well and so on.
I hope these tips have helped you to maintain your energy and to help you always move forward on your healing journey! Which tip has helped you most? Let me know in the comments below!
