Stress management tip: Manage your energy

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If you want to show up for the long haul, if you want to be as effective as possible and maximize your potential to make the world a better place, it’s vital to take a conscious approach to staying energized.

It’s just common sense. The more energized you feel, the more energy you have to put into both the action you take and navigating the inevitable bumps and bruises along the way.

The more drained and depleted you feel, the less effective you are in whatever action you take, and the less of an emotional buffer you have when things go sideways.

The basic pillars

Energy management has many facets to it, but a simple place to start is by looking at some of the basic pillars of well-being, like:

• Eating a healthy diet.
• Staying hydrated (you’d be surprised at how much of an impact this has).
• Getting enough sleep.

Taken together, those three things alone can have a massive impact on your energy.

Maximize your Gain-to-Drain Ratio

Beyond that, you can take an intentional approach to managing the things in your life that both give you energy and drain your energy. This post shares an energy management approach I call maximizing the Gain-to-Drain Ratio. It gives a step-by-step approach to doing an “energy audit” in your life and using the resulting insights to start making changes.

In a nutshell, it’s about:

1. a) Taking stock of what gives you energy and what drains your energy.
2. b) Exploring how to bring more of what gives you energy into the picture.
3. c) Exploring how to reduce or even eliminate what drains your energy.

This post on how to energize your life with the Gain-to-Drain Ratio

Energize your work

Finally, let’s talk about work. I’m calling this out separately because for most of us, our time on the job represents the single biggest block of time we spend in our days.

You can also take an energy management approach to your work. You don’t need to make a wholesale career change to feel more energized at work. You can sculpt your job (and how you do your job) to bring more of what energizes you into the picture.

One good way to approach this is by identifying your energizers. Take a look, not just at what you love doing, but why. What are the underlying themes that tend to be there when you feel energized and engaged?

When you have a good picture of those energizers, you can use them to help you make changes in your current situation, as well as explore future possibilities that are even more in alignment with what energizes you.

This post on how to find your career energizers takes a step-by-step look at how to identify your energizers and then use them to guide your career in a more energizing direction.

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