In our relentless quest for success, we often forget to prioritize one crucial aspect of our lives: self-care. With the increasing demands of personal, professional, and organizational roles, we tend to push ourselves beyond our energy limits, leading to stress, burnout, and an overall sense of dissatisfaction. However, understanding and managing your unique energy – your "Ness" – can transform your life.
I aim to dispel the myth that self-care is a sign of weakness, and instead, position it as an essential element of sustaining ourselves in today's fast-paced society. We will explore the fundamentals of energy management, the importance of setting priorities, and how to navigate the various forms of energy within us – all aimed at helping you unlock a more balanced, fulfilling life. So let's dive into the art of self-care, beginning with recognizing and harnessing your unique 'Ness'.
Manage Your Energy, Not Your Time
You must effectively manage your energy to take good care of yourself. Like many individuals, I imagine you are rolling your eyes now, saying you have no time for this!
Everything I am reading at this moment in time, in this economy and society we live in, speaks of the need to take better care of ourselves. There are many reasons for this... We play many roles in our unique lives, demanding various attitudes, mindsets, skills, actions, behaviors, and outcomes. Many of us shift gears at the drop of a dime, responsible to come up with the right plan of action at the moment and bearing the consequences of the results in real time. All of this is in the personal, professional, and organizational context.
Wow, that is a lot when we think about it. Yet, we get up every day and do it again. This affects our being, our “Ness”, over time. Our “Ness” is what I believe makes us who we uniquely are. This is what we bring to the table. The 'why you' / 'why now' part of the equation. Without self-awareness and the ability to take the appropriate actions, we can get overwhelmed and burn out. Unfortunately, many of us do. This is too bad and unnecessary with better self-regulation and self-care.
Prioritize, Prioritize, Prioritize
Priority is our friend, if everything is a priority, then nothing is a priority. This information to follow is to support your relationship with yourself and your priorities. How do you set your priorities? Are you reactive or proactive? I think the idea of boundaries you will find necessary.
The idea of self-care can in itself be overwhelming, I agree. Where do I start? There is too much to unpack! Once I unpack this mess, now what do I do with it? Terrifying for many. But there is the issue, right there. Awareness to action. Buckle up!
The trick is to break big concepts into smaller bites I can work with. I prefer to identify general concepts and dig deeper into the overarching categories. To me, self-care is no different. Here is an outline to frame self-care for you.
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Adapt to Feel Balanced
To better unpack these ideas, we must understand the requirement of adaptability. The ability to reflect, become self-aware, emotionally connect, become willing to change, unlearn to move forward, learn new, take action, harvest intended benefits, and feel good about it.
Where do you currently feel balanced in these general concepts? Think about it, where are you out of balance? How does that affect your daily quality of life?
To better wrap our brains around this idea, we first must agree we all have only so much energy to invest in what we do each day. This is all about that energy. To me, self-care is all about energy management and replenishment. Better understand that idea, and we can move forward.
Care More without Doing More
You cannot apply finite energy to infinite energy drain sources -- priority is your friend. We caring humans often try to do this. We think this shows we care. You cannot expect to drain all your energies, show up in a truly weakened state, and believe you can effectively deploy your influence, decision-making, and leadership skills. Yet many of us do this very thing because we care. Get this. Caring is not wearing yourself out to meet the needs of others.
"Caring is not wearing yourself out to meet the needs of others."
-Jeff Rogers, CPMBC
Caring is, deploying the necessary energies and resources at your disposal to serve those whom you care about with effective results. You must then prioritize for maximum effectiveness, delegate, and build teams that can get things done right. Better to build and nurture than to do it all yourself and get burnt out.
The 4 Types of Energy
There are 4 universally accepted forms of energy. At our human disposal, we manage Physical, Spiritual, Emotional, and Cognitive energy. At any given moment in our daily activity, we demand various levels of each of these energies. Some of this demand is planned, while other times it is not, most of us find ourselves in a more reactive state than we would appreciate, but this is within your control to change!
The replenishment of the energies is intentional and often overlooked. What do you intentionally do every day to forecast what energies you will need in the planned part of your day? Probably not much.
What if you did? Let us take a quick look at this tremendous but overlooked idea broken down by each of the 4 types of energy.
How to Replenish Your Energy
Physical Energy
Much like it sounds, physical energy is what your body requires for daily physical function. Better nutrition, lots of water, stretching, regular exercise, good rest, and even better sleep, all contribute to your best physical energy supply. What we put into our physical vessel is what we get out of it! We all have work to do here. Do it!
Spiritual Energy
Spiritual Energy supports our ability to connect with energies beyond ourselves. This may be supported by prayer, meditation, visiting sacred spaces, or simple time alone in nature. Whatever this means to you is what matters here. How do you intentionally replenish this energy, your belief system? How do you get recharged?
Cognitive Energy
Cognitive Energy is our intellectual energy. Have you ever geared up for that heavy number-crunching day or the significant spreadsheet development exercise? After elongated time using our brains, we often get headaches. This is our body on cognitive overload. How do you feed this requirement to your brain? Are you aware of scientifically proven supplements supporting your healthy brain function? Your brain requires these nutrients to function at a high level.
Emotional Energy
This is where many of us struggle, with Emotional Energy. As humans, we often are dragged into the trap of cognitive challenge, and deploy emotional responses, resulting in significant energy depletion. We often are unaware we are even doing this at the moment.
With appropriate priority development and understanding, we can prepare our energy levels with discipline to better serve our needs. This is a big idea few use to their advantage.
What will you do right now to better your energies to serve you at a higher level? Hint: This will not happen all by itself.
All About Your “Ness”
These energies comprise what I often refer to as our “Ness.” For each of us, these levels naturally occur at different levels. I will not pretend to understand how or why. But I do know this to be accurate, and so do you.
We all have 24 hours a day and 7 days a week to live our lives. How do some accomplish so much? How do others fall so short of their potential, ability, and goals? I maintain that they lack priority, discipline, and understanding of this breakdown.
How you care for yourself will better indicate how you can do what you want. That simple. Priority establishment, self-care, energy management, task implementation, adaptability, and goal setting are required to effectively manage your life. How you choose to intentionally replenish your various energy requirements is entirely up to you. Should you ignore your needs, you get what you get, unfortunately. This would be sad and unnecessarily falling short of your true potential.
Managing your energies proactively is a great first step for your self-care routine. Establishing boundaries, learning to simply say “No,” and establishing priorities will serve you well.
Start Effectively Managing Your Energy
To give your best, you must be at your best. In my many years and significant gray hair, wrinkles, and a few extra pounds, I have not yet learned how to cheat this energy thing. There is no workaround. The older I get, the more I embrace this concept, and wish I understood it more clearly in my youth. I wonder where I would be today.
No time like the present to begin your journey toward the best self-care and managing your precious energy. Get on it. You will find you will be better at all you do. Those around you will appreciate your self-awareness as well!
