If you want to increase your energy, improving your mental capacity is as important as improving your physical capacity for increasing your energy.
Do you sometimes feel like you lack focus? Do you find yourself being pulled down by thoughts of worry or self-criticism?
This month’s Focus video is for you. You’ll find it in this quarter’s Success Choice Planner.
Create Mental Energy
What you focus on, and what you say to yourself can build or drain your energy. For example: believing in your dreams, creating a plan, noticing the good, and focusing on the positive, all give you energy.
Let’s look at each of these:
First: What you focus on
I like a quote by Tony Robbins that says “Where focus goes, energy flows”
If your attention is centered around the problems in your life and the world, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed and discouraged, and often these problems grow when fueled. I believe there is the potential for good to come from even very trying circumstances if you choose to look for it.
A few years ago, when my daughter was in elementary school, she had Early Out days on Fridays. One Friday we decided to get in a half day skiing. My husband was at work, and since the ski resort we were going to go to was closer to his work, we decided to drive up and meet him. We met in a parking lot of a closed Home Improvement Store at the base of the mountain. There were a number of cars parked there, so we decided to leave my husband’s car there and drive up to the ski resort together.
We had a great day skiing. On the way back to our car, we met a guy who had flown in from California to ski. Driving back to pick up my husband’s car, we talked about how fortunate we were to have ski resorts within driving distance instead of having to buy airline tickets just to ski. We got down the mountain and pulled into the parking lot, no car. The lot was completely empty. We drove around and found a small sign that said that cars would be towed if parked in that lot.
At first we were very frustrated because the sign was in to way obvious and not visible when we parked there, and it ended up costing us around $300 to get the car back. We started to get angry, but we stopped ourselves and said, “we would have had to have spent more than that if we had flown here to ski. Let’s imagine we paid $300 to fly here and that we were here on vacation.” We decided to go out to eat and to visit a couple of touristy things in the area and ended up having a fun evening - instead of brooding all the way home that we had to spend so much money getting our car back.
Next: What you say to yourself:
Have you noticed that if a friend makes a mistake or is going through a hard time, you offer words of encouragement and understanding, but if YOU make a mistake, you tell yourself you are a failure? Try catching yourself when thinking toxic thoughts and be kind to yourself. Again, look for the lessons learned and the good that can come even from the failures in your life.
Believing in your dreams and creating a plan.
I like this quote by Eleanor Roosevelt in The Success Choice Planner this month. It says: “It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan.”
Take the time to dream and think about what you really want, but don’t leave it at that, take the time to create a plan to achieve your dreams and take consistent action.
To increase your Mental Energy:
- Keep focused on your passion by rewriting your “Major Purpose.”
- Don’t use energy remembering tasks, write them in “To Do List.”
I gave my mom a planner a while back, and she told me how much better she slept as a result. She said that at night her mind would run through everything she had coming up that she didn’t want to forget, but once she had them written down in a place she would refer back to, she could relax and sleep. If you know when something needs to get done, go ahead and write it on your calendar and/or on your weekly layout on that day. The ongoing todo list at the beginning of each month is a great place to dump all those things you think of that need to get done, but you DON’T know exactly when. Then when planning your days and weeks, you can refer to this list and pull in the to-dos you want.
- Write any injustices that you are draining your energy under “Emotional Fitness” above (or in Areas of Balance Planner). Resolve them if possible, then let them go.
Sometimes just being aware of what’s draining your energy is helpful in resolving it.
It is okay to feel justified pain and anger, it’s just important to not get stuck in these emotions. For very difficult issues, it may be helpful to seek out professional help.
- Let go of what you can’t control.
This simple practice of recognizing when we are obsessing about something we can’t control and letting it go frees up so much mental energy. Just like the example of our car getting towed. It had already happened, there was nothing we could do to change that, but we had the option of whether it would ruin our day or not.
- Each week, write down your “Insights, Fortunate Events, Thanksgivings.”
The other day I had a lot of running around to do around town. After when I drove into my driveway, a coolant connector broke, and coolant leaked all over the driveway, and immediately the car overheated. You might look at that as a negative situation, but I immediately thought, “this could have happened when I was dropping my daughter off at an event miles from home, instead of when I was safely in my driveway.”
I wrote this event in my planner’s weekly review, then in my index in the back of the planner, I have the category I labeled “miracles” and I wrote down the page number. Throughout the quarter, as I notice these miraculous events, I can write them down and refer back to them when I am feeling alone or discouraged.
- Continually learn. Have dreams and goals you are passionate about.
- When obstacles arise, quickly adjust your plans.
This month I challenge you to increase your mental energy by paying attention to what you are focusing on. Notice when your thoughts are dragging down your energy, and intentionally choose to put your focus where you have control or influence. Strive to let go of things you can’t control. Be kind to yourself and choose to focus on the good in your life and the potential benefits of difficult situations.