Practical Magic | Energy Raising
If I had to recommend just one practical recipe for injecting a sense of power into your life, it's this one.
When you flip the script of treating the activities and experiences that energise you as 'rewards' and instead see them as essentials, you break the cycle of running on empty.
Time Management vs. Energy Management
We live in an output-oriented society where it's normal to organize one's time to maximize output, no matter the cost to our energy body. We're well trained to consider the things that give us energy as rewards for output; something that happens at the end of a process, rather than fuel for that output. These ‘rewards’ could be time with friends, spending time at home doing pleasurable activities, resting, dancing to music, or having a lovely meal. But these activities are seen as luxuries. These activities are seen as things we’re allowed to do once we've worked hard.
If we take a step back for a moment, we can start to actually see how illogical this is.
Let's say you're going to take a long trip in your car. Before you go, you fill up the tank. However, when we are about to begin an energy-draining endeavor, whether that is a long workday or a project that requires a lot of emotional, mental, or physical energy, we rarely make a plan for how to fuel ourselves. We may plan how to manage our time, our finances, or our projects, but we rarely plan personal or collective energy management.
This process of under-fueling and under-energising ourselves, then struggling to output in a fulfilling, meaningful way creates a vicious cycle that many of us live day in and day out. We’re running on empty all of the time.
That is a recipe for a very unmagical life.
This practice of energy raising flips our habitual pattern of immediately planning for output, and instead, puts our attention on input.
How can we create and transform energy in our bodies so that we can output the things we want?
Practical Tips for Energy Raising
This is how I practiced energy raising during my Year of Magical Living in order to heal from burnout.
Each week I took out my weekly planner, and instead of scheduling out work tasks, I filled up slots of time with well-being practices.
30 minutes for stretching in the morning
15 minutes for meditation in the afternoon
A chiropractic appointment
A trip to the ice rink
Fitness classes
Massage appointments
Before long, I had a weekly calendar that was filled 15-20 hours with energy raising practices. In the gaps in between, I planned my work.
It's worth saying that this was the absolute reverse of how I had always operated. I had always treated the things that I knew made me feel good and gave me the most energy as rewards after work. And so often, I didn't even give myself those rewards. There was always more work to do, or I would say yes to some emergency that was happening, or I was just too tired to do the things that I loved to do.
I also experienced internal mental resistance during my energy raising experiment. How dare I be so audacious as to fill up my time with things that energised me and made me feel good! Who did I think I was to put my body first in this way? I struggled with what people would think of me, and I didn’t expect to be as productive as I was before.
However, energy raising not only helped me feel amazing almost all the time, but that energy also bled into my client relationships, my personal relationships, and the attitudes that I brought to my work. I was also MORE productive because it took me less time to get things done than it had in the past because I had more energy. I experienced less resistance, wasted less time, and it took me shorter amounts of time to recover from energy-draining tasks. The quality and quantity of my work increased.
Now, having walked side by side with truly incredible clients and students who have taken the plunge to prioritize energy raising in their own lives, I can tell you that my experience was not a fluke. In fact, absolutely everyone who has had the courage to prioritise energy raising in their lives has experienced this phenomenon of being able to achieve more, feel better, in less time.
Your Energy Raising Experiment
Ready to try out this experiment for yourself?
Energy raising may look different for you than it did for me. Each of us is a unique expression of lifeforce. Each of us has our own unique experience of cyclical energy. Only you can know what energy transformation feels like for you.
I tell my clients and students to keep a running list, what I call your fuel list, where you make a menu of all kinds of activities that fuel you.
Some examples for your fuel list are:
Read a fantasy novel for 15 minutes
Make a wholesome meal from scratch with beautiful jazz music playing in the background
Spend 20 minutes on the phone with your most inspiring friend
Go for a walk
Play with your puppy
Go on a bike ride
Practice yoga
Paint something
Listen to a curated playlist of music on Spotify you haven’t listened to before
In addition to your fuel list, I encourage you to start your day with the following prompt:
What will I do to fuel and charge my body today?
Before you start tackling your to-do list, stop. Pause. Ask yourself, “What kind of energy does my body need today and where am I going to get it?”
Fueling yourself with energy is not a reward, it is an essential part of being a human being. If you want to live a productive, bountiful, and magical life, you have to commit to choosing the path of proactive energy raising of energy transformation, before you focus on output.
The Practical Magic Recipe for Energy Raising
The practical magic recipe for energy raising involves two things:
Keep a running list of your fuel. Your Fuel List.
Begin your day with this question, “What will I do to fuel myself today?”
Do not underestimate the magical potential of energy raising. Stop treating the things that fuel you as a reward, and start making them a priority.
I used this practice to heal from burnout, and now I output so much more goodness into the world than I did back then. And yet my life feels so much calmer, happier and fun because of the way that I have built energy raising into my life.
I am so happy to share this with you and I look forward to hearing about the results of your experiments.
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Episode Resources:
Read my article on 'Life after burnout' and the results of my Year of Magical Living
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