By Marta Manus
“When you change your energy. You change your life.”
You won’t meet a lawyer who is miserable at work but happy and fulfilled otherwise. That’s because the way you show up anywhere is the way you show up everywhere. Quality requires attention and where you place your attention is where your energy goes. Your energy determines how you lead yourself and how you show up for life, all aspects of your life. Put simply, your level of energy determines your success in work and life.
As of May 2019, burnout is included in the 11th revision of the International Classification of Diseases as an “occupational phenomenon.” Burnout is defined as “a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed. Burnout is characterized by feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion, increased mental distance from one’s job or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one’s job, and reduced professional efficacy.”
My own experience with recovering from severe burnout taught me that it wasn’t “what” I was doing that was depleting my energy but rather “how” I was doing it. I was racing from one thing to the next without being present for any of it. I was constantly doing and never being present, and never fully focused. My energy was split between a million things on my never-ending to-do list. I was spending most of my energy doing things that drained me, which led to feeling out of balance, frantic, overwhelmed, unproductive, and frustrated. I had tried every time-management tool imaginable in an effort to feel more in control and less stressed, but it wasn’t until I started paying attention to how I spent my energy that everything shifted. I like to think of energy as currency. When you “pay” attention to something, you are spending your energy on that experience – it’s an investment. The key is to spend your energy wisely on things that will make you feel alive and nourished as opposed to only the things that make you feel depleted. When you begin to treat your energy and time with as much care as your finances, you create quality in everything you do.
One of the best ways to create awareness of how you spend your energy is to do an energy audit. It takes five minutes and the insights you get from it can truly be life changing. So, let’s do one now! Grab a piece of paper and draw two columns on it. In the first column, list all the tasks, activities, people, places, personal habits, and thoughts that drain your energy and make you feel exhausted or miserable. In the second column, list all the tasks, activities, people, places, personal habits, and thoughts that fill you up and make you feel energized and happy. Once you’ve completed your energy audit, take a look at how many things are in the first column (things that drain your energy). Oftentimes what we find is that the first column is a lot longer than the second column. The purpose of the energy audit is so you can see on paper where your energy is going and recognize that you’re likely spending way too much of your energy and time doing things that drain you. When you’re drained of energy, you drop down into survival mode. When you’re living in a state of survival mode, you are not able to function optimally in any area of life. The goal is to become aware of the things, people, habits, tasks, and places in your life that are not serving you well and are holding you back from truly thriving and remove them one by one then adding in more and more of the things that fill you up with energy and make you feel alive. If there’s something you cannot fully remove from your life, perhaps you can delegate the task or at least minimize how often you are engaged in it or with a particular person. If you can’t remove or minimize, the fact that you are aware of the effect something has on your energy will be a huge step forward which will help you change the degree of impact it has on you.
Not only do I complete an energy audit once a month, but I do mini mental energy audits throughout the day. I notice when someone or something is making me feel drained and I check in with myself to rebalance my energy. Sometimes all it takes is one conscious breath to shift my energy. Before moving on to the next task or responding to a particularly irritating email, I take a conscious breath to reset and this one little habit has made a world of a difference. The next time you find yourself saying, “I don’t have the time” or “I wish I had more time”, ask yourself whether it’s really that you don’t have the energy because you’ve spent it all on draining people and tasks. Energy management works when you recognize, reset, and resolve to change your energy. Remember, how you show up anywhere is how you show up everywhere.
Beautifully written. I can’t agree more with the importance of energy management and the idea that how you show up anywhere is how you show up everywhere. Thank you!