Do you ever find yourself feeling overwhelmed? Like there are never enough hours in the day? Or that you are struggling with too much work? Well, today I’m going to talk about a completely different viewpoint that may help you become more successful in your achieving your health goals. This viewpoint suggests that instead of managing your time and chasing more hours in the day switch your focus to managing your physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual energy.
“Manage your energy, not your time.” – Tony Schwartz
Now, this is not to say that time management is a bad thing, in fact, many people find it incredibly helpful. This is only an alternative viewpoint that may be helpful for those that struggle to manage their time effectively. Let’s take a look!
As previously stated, there are four aspects to our energy: physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual. And making sure that we manage each of these aspects allows us to be more successful in achieving our health goals. First, let’s see how a lack of energy in each of these areas can impact your ability to achieve your health goals:
- Feeling tired (lack of physical energy) means a reduced ability to make healthy choices. How often had we said something like, “Eh, I’m tired. I’ll just get a pizza instead of cooking.”
- Feeling stressed (lack of emotional energy) means more cravings for unhealthy, comfort foods such as cookies, ice cream, fried chicken, and pizza.
- Being mindless (lack of mental energy) means we are more prone to making unhealthy choices. How many of us have been eating some potato chips only to look down and realize half the bag is gone?
- Feeling purposeless (lack of spiritual energy) means we will give up more easily when things get tough. When we have a purpose, we are living by our values and our values provide powerful motivation that helps to sustain new habits and pursue challenging goals.
In order to effectively manage your energy, there are few things you can do which will help you to avoid the pitfalls described above.
- Manage Your Physical Energy: Get proper nutrition, drink plenty of water, get quality sleep, and get regular exercise.
- Manage Your Emotional Energy: Spend time with loved ones, have fun, laugh, and talk out your feelings.
- Manage Your Mental Energy: Respond mindfully (instead of reacting), and make time for rest, recovery, and rejuvenation.
- Manage Your Spiritual Energy: Clarify your values, reflect on what is important in life, decide who you want to be, and choose to live by your values.
When you are able to more effectively manage your physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual energy you may find that you feel less overwhelmed, that you can accomplish any task, and that you have all the time in the world.
