How to Sustain Your Energy

We exist in a noisy world filled with so many people, products, companies, projects, ideas, etc. competing for our attention and generating noise all the time.

Add to that the political climate and pandemic challenges, and it’s no wonder we may feel a bit like our life is not ours.

I’m noticing more than ever the critical importance of energy management as a tool for ensuring I’m living my life, and not a life determined by cultural/societal dictates.

What exactly is energy management?

For me, it’s about tuning in and tending to my energy. This isn’t just about my level of fatigue versus vitality.  It’s about noticing my energy field and what impacts it.

Regardless of your spiritual or healing preferences, I think all of us can agree that energy is a real thing. We feel it when we walk into a room. In a moment of presence, we can notice it shifting depending upon the circumstance we’re in or the person we’re with.

In the last year in particular, I’ve noticed so many examples of how my or my children’s energy gets impacted, or impacts others.

Our energy is key to aligning with our intentions as well as experiencing happiness in our lives.

I’d like to share a few specific areas that impact and/or are impacted significantly by our energy.

THOUGHT

The realm of thought is probably the biggest area that impacts or gets impacted by energy.

Imagine walking into a meeting room. The mood is heavy. People aren’t talking to each other. Their heads are looking down. 

The energy in the room is palpable and immediately impacts you. Your thoughts start going to stories, questions, assumptions, etc. about what’s going on, without anyone saying a word.

We do this all the time, even in less intense examples. We make assumptions and judgements based on the energy we feel. More specifically, we do this in relation to the the energy we let into our own energy field.  In this way, energy impacts our thoughts.

However, our thoughts impact our energy too.

Another scenario…

Someone you really wanted to talk to doesn’t call you back in a timely manner. You start making all kinds of assumptions about why they haven’t called.

They don’t care about you. They’re inconsiderate. Something’s happened to them. You’re too needy. Etc. Pretty soon all of these thoughts permeate your energy field with energy that is dragging you down, encouraging you to doubt yourself, doubt the person who didn’t call back, doubt your relationships, feel anxious, etc.

There’s no energy in the simple fact that someone hasn’t called you back yet, but your thoughts rolling around in your head about that fact start to attract all kinds of energy.

The good news is, the kind of energy we attract or experience is a choice.

Thought is ultimately our highest capacity as human beings because it comes with the power to choose our reactions.

Choice is what gives us the opportunity to be a creator or a victim of our circumstances and experiences.

No matter how clear or pure our intentions may be, if our thoughts (i.e. our choices) are not aligned to give our attention to that which supports our intentions, our energy will be impacted.

For instance, maybe our intention is to stay centered and grounded today. When we walk into the meeting room full of heavy, down-turned energy, we have a choice to take it in without taking it on.

We can notice the energy. Approach it with curiosity and interest, and perhaps even compassion. We can learn the details before making assumptions, catching ourselves before allowing the energy to impact our thoughts.

This is “higher thinking.” This is what it looks like to be the ultimate observer in your life, approaching it from a place of deep Inner Wisdom that guides you within your own energy, discerning what to allow and not to allow into your energy field.

Similarly, your Inner Wisdom will remain neutral to energy around a phone call that doesn’t come when you want it to. You’ll be able to step back and simply notice. You’ll have the neutrality to allow it to be what it is, and determine next steps based on the situation.

Perhaps you choose to call them again, or try contacting them in a different way. Perhaps you just let it go because it’s not really as important as you originally thought. Perhaps you choose to give it more time, remembering that this person tends to take a bit to respond. 

What’s powerful about these “higher thinking” scenarios is that they’re all coming from the power of choice, which is strengthened by our capacity to be tapped into our Inner Wisdom. 

We can succumb to the heavy energy in the meeting room, or not. We can let our thoughts run amuck and take us into a tailspin, or not.

EMOTION

This brings me to the next realm that can heavily impact our energy. 

Sometimes it’s not so much about thoughts, but more about emotion. 

Perhaps in that meeting room, we learn that a beloved colleague has just been in a terrible accident and isn’t expected to survive. Perhaps the phone call we long to receive has to do with needing some immediate guidance about our sick child as we’re deeply concerned for them and their well-being.

This is where the emotional realm comes in.

We’re human. We naturally and regularly experience emotions in response to our experiences.

I think of E-motions as energy in motion. They are a language of the Soul, helping us to interpret, integrate and digest our experiences.

If a loved one dies, we will feel a sense of loss, and with loss comes the emotion of sadness.

If we are mistreated, we will feel a sense of injustice, and with a sense of injustice comes the emotion of anger.

I don’t believe in the idea of “good” or “bad” emotions. Emotions are simply our natural response to our experience. 

The handling of our emotions is what determines how our energy is impacted. 

If we let the emotion, and I mean ANY emotion…be it sadness, anger, excitement, enthusiasm, etc….take over to such a degree that it de-neutralizes our energy field, and the energy connected with the emotion is all that is there, then we can become consumed by the emotional energy. 

At the same time, if we don’t allow the emotion, giving it attention to allow it to move through us, acknowledging it and what it might be communicating, then we block the flow of energy. We may not be consumed by the emotional energy in the moment, but you can be assured that the energy is somewhere within us waiting to be met.

When we ignore or “stuff” our emotions, they fester within, blocking our Inner Wisdom and hijacking our connection to it.

Unmet emotions also can generate all kinds of stories or thoughts that in turn impact our energy as well.

ACTIONS

Energy is about flow.

According to science, energy is not created or destroyed. It simply moves and changes, in and out of it’s potential and manifest states.

I sometimes wonder about this, questioning whether the Great Creator within us actually can create and destroy energy, but that’s a contemplation for another time.

For now, let’s consider how our actions are impacted and impact our energy.

You can probably already see how our actions can be significantly impacted by our thoughts and emotions. Our actions can also impact our thoughts and emotions. 

But can our actions alone impact our energy? 

Certainly the actions we take, which are physical, will indeed impact the physical energy and vitality we have, i.e. the life force flowing through us.

If we run a marathon, we’re probably going to be a bit fatigued afterward. If we get a good night’s rest, we’ll likely feel energized the next day.

What about our energy field…can our actions impact that?

I believe the power of choice in our thoughts connected with the level of awareness of our emotions guides our actions. When our actions are coherent with our thoughts and emotions, our entire being is in coherence, and energy is able to flow.

Yet we can also take actions blindly, without giving any attention or intention to them. Actions have consequences, and those consequences impact our energy field depending on how we meet them.

The action in itself is just an action. The consequences of the action will usually bring thoughts and/or emotions that in turn can affect our energy.

Actions taken in attunement with the Inner Wisdom of our conscious thoughts and emotions will likely have consequences that keep us aligned in good energy flow, while blind actions are more likely to have consequences that have a greater potential to block our energy flow.

If we keep deciding to say yes when we mean no, doing things we don’t feel aligned with, we’ll likely generate feelings of resentment or anger. If we sneak out of work early, we may have all kinds of thoughts generating feelings of anxiety and ultimately bringing our energy down instead of enjoying the reason we left work early in the first place. If we work really hard to finish a project for our business, even while we might feel great that we got it done, we might have so much fatigue that we start getting down on ourselves for all of the other things we neglected in order to get that project done. 

Every action has a consequence, and our reaction to that consequence is what can impact our energy.

SUSTANANCE

This article is about sustaining yourself well. I hope you’re beginning to see the significant impact that energy management can have on how we sustain both our energy and our sense of peace and well-being.

We want to stay connected to our own true energy field, choosing consciously what we let into it and keep out of it. 

Take care to remember that it’s not about “protecting” your field, but instead is about allowing flow.

We will absolutely be exposed to energy that feels disturbing or misaligned with ours. We’ll also be exposed to energy that feels resonant, but perhaps not completely accessible to us yet, no matter how much we long to experience it. 

As we learn to manage our energy, we allow our being to slowly, steadily and sustainably expand into the world without getting lost in it.

When I trained in energy healing work, the name of the game was neutrality. I spoke a bit earlier about neutrality, but ultimately we might think of it like shifting gears in a manual shift car.

In order to move from one gear to another, we always have to shift through neutral. Yet to move forward, we must be “in gear.”

Neutrality is always in the background. Only energy that is charged is moving. Yet we have this incredible freedom to choose what “gear” or potential energy we want to shift into or activate in order to move forward in our lives. 

It might seem like we have no choice but to feel charged emotions.

After all Kim, you said “we’re human and we’re going to feel emotions…energy in motion.”

I hear you, and yes, we’ll experience emotions. But remember, it’s in our response to those emotions that our true freedom lies. The neutrality is ALWAYS there, even if in the background.

When we can allow the emotions from a conscious space of neutrality, and tap into thoughts from a conscious “higher thinking” place of neutrality, we can then tap into the depth of our Inner Wisdom.

Our Inner Wisdom will always guide us in alignment with our true path in life.

Energy follows and is activated by our attention, so give your full focused attention to what it is you’re intending.

Choose to leave work early, but choose with your entire being in neutrality and alignment with your intentions. If you’re leaving early to meet a friend you haven’t seen in years and you want to be there for them, give your attention to your friend, and the energy will follow. If you give your attention to the stories or anxiety you might have about leaving early, that’s the energy you’ll bring to your friend.

With this new year, we’re all setting intentions. Intentions are great, but if we’re not also managing our energy to stay attentive to and in alignment with those intentions, we’re giving our power away, and staying true to our path of intention becomes less and less sustainable.

May we all manage our energy well, and sustainably stay in alignment with our highest intentions.

Sharing is caring

Leave a Reply