I am often sceptical when people say "I don't have the energy for..." because it seems to rarely be the case. I mean, we have probably all been very tired from to time to time, but I think that many are conflating physical, psychological and emotional tiredness, because they can "feel" the same as the body tends to use the same systems to indicate them. This means when people say "I'm too tired to go to the gym" even though they have been sitting around all day at a desk doing nothing, I call bullshit.
I also think that a lot of people have issues with things like sleeping, when they are not tired enough, and their mental energy is high, because they haven't been using it adequately. They lay down, and their mind races, because finally there is "dead space" to think. I reckon this affects a lot of people who would naturally be thinkers, but they are habitually consumers of digital content. Sure, the content consumed might make them think a little, but it is generally designed to give the impression of though, rather then elicit depth of thought. It directs the consumer and gives the answers, rather than evoking true curiosity to find out and grow.
At any given moment, we each have an amount of energy in us to think or feel or do something with, and it is our attention that gives us the ability to act with intention. However, if we are conflating low emotional energy with low physical energy, what are we going to do? Or if we are mentally tired, are we going to mindlessly spend our physical energy reserves doing something useful, or are we going to sit down to recover? When we are truly physically tired, our mental and emotional reserves get depleted also, but for most of us in the modern world, this isn't the case. So why are we so many of us so tired all the time?
I called a friend today who I haven't spoken with since before the summer just for a chat, and she spent a fair bit of time talking about how the weekends just go and work is busy, and there is always something, but nothing seems to get done or happen. And it just made me think about how little we seem to actually do, but how much we feel we do a lot. What I think the main reason for this is that much of what we do is on default, on autopilot, without intention. And because we aren't paying attention to what we do, time slips away, feels like we have done more than we have, and we feel tired.
It would be interesting to have a battery level indicator for our personal energy resources, so we could know when our emotional energy is depleted, we still have some mental and physical to spend before the day is out. We can feel tired, but still know that we can spend 45 minutes at the gym, or out for a jog through the park. At least, it would give us clarity on our true levels and that if we decide not to apply the energy we have to something useful, we are clear that we are actively choosing it - no excuses.
There are so many excuses people have for why they aren't doing this or doing that, but I reckon that under examination, very few of them would turn out to be valid. Everyone states how well they know themselves, but I predict that most people have very little understanding about where there actual limits are, because they have never had to push themselves to that point. And this means that we also have very little understanding of what our potential could be, because we limit ourselves on how we feel in the moment, not by what is actually possible for us to do in that same moment.
Similar to how most people consider money, a lot of our existence seems to be about saving energy, not maximising the way we invest it. And as such, a lot of the energy resources we have get left on the table, unused, wasted. Our batteries do not store our energy for very long, and they can't be overfilled. However, what we can do is increase the storage capacity of our energy cells so that we are able to have a larger reserve. And, we are able to more effectively and efficiently process and use our resources so they do not deplete as fast. Emotional resilience means being able to continue on longer through increased amounts of stress for instance, in the same way a body conditioned to run distance, can complete a marathon easily, in a good time.
So the question is;
What are we saving our energy for?
Taraz
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