Keeping up your energy levels

In an earlier post I wrote about living your values and for those of you who are in a situation where you are not able to live your values, perhaps through demands of work, I strongly recommended that, in order to preserve your sanity and humanity, that you adopt suitable countermeasures to help redress the balance.

In this post I’d like to share some things that have worked for me in ongoing circumstances that have placed me in conflict with my values.

It can be all to easy to get depressed about situations where you feel that you are not in control, particularly when the situation is challenging something as fundamental as your personal values.

Firstly, you need to recognise and understand that the circumstances are impacting you. I have found this to be a crucial first step as once you recognise and accept that you are in a situation, you can start to formulate choices, and often this simple recognition can bring a big sense of relief and release of negative energy. There is a great little book called “Who Moved my Cheese” which really helped me get to that point.

Once you recognise and accept the situation that you are in, the next step is to take action to manage or resolve your situation. As many people I have spoken to are ‘stuck’, I’ll focus on a simple technique I use personally and as a coach with others for managing such a situation — I call it ‘my emotional bucket’.

Start by grabbing a sheet of paper and drawing a bucket on it, with a tap or hole at the bottom. Next, think about all the things that make you smile in life and add them as waterfalls, filling your bucket from the top — this is your positive energy filling your life.

At the bottom, from the tap or hole at the base, think about the things that make you angry or frustrated in life and show these flowing out from the bottom — this is the negative energy draining your life.

Having added the positive and negative energy sources, draw in a line to indicate the level within the bucket — this is the level of your current emotional energy, taking into account the draining and filling of your emotional bucket.

If you find that your level in the bucket is low, look at what you can do do close the valve or plug the hole at the bottom, or what you can do to add more flow from the top, to increase the level of positive energy.

This takes time and focus to maintain as it is not a one-off exercise, but you will be surprised at how it can help to focus on positive energy providers within your life, as well as highlighting the big drains that you may need to address.

Should you find that your bucket is draining faster than you can fill it, then you really need to look at what you can do to maintain or increase the level — this can range from meeting and making new friends and/or taking up new hobbies to increase inflow, through to more drastic changes, such as changing your career to close the drain.

Each person will have a different bucket, with different life issues, but regardless of your issues, this simple technique can really help you. If, after adding more waterfalls you are still finding the bucket is draining faster or is not reaching a level that makes you happy, then you need to take some drastic action to completely shut off one or more of your major drains. This often leads to some serious life choices that need to be made, so if you need more support, I would recommend finding yourself a coach, as they can help you hold a mirror up to yourself so you can find the strength and courage to take on some of the issues you identified.

You only live your life once, and if you are dissatisfied with your current situation, only you can change it.

For me, I found having a clear goal in life really helped me with filling my bucket, as it gave me a bigger picture to look at and something positive to reach for. In the end though, this wasn’t enough and I took some big steps to close my bucket’s drain… I gave up my job, took a sabbatical and relocated to a different country! Is my bucket fuller?

YES!!!

I first published this article on LinkedIn on 26 September 2016.