I am the Master of my calendar. I sit down weekly with my family and schedule out the week – who needs to be where, when, etc. I schedule in meditation, work, commuting, coaching sessions, workshops, personal growth and development… I make sure I schedule in time with my parents, kids, and friends, as well as volunteering…but just because I make sure everything on my calendar gets done, doesn’t mean I really SHOW UP. Sometimes I am just sleepwalking from one task to another.
I’ll go to meditation, but I am so scattered that after like 30 minutes I wonder why I even came, but I stay for the hour because I scheduled an hour. I sit down to talk to my son, but half way through his sentence I realize I’m not even listening because my mind is a mile away and I must ask him to repeat what he just said, or I call my best friend, but I’m so distracted by other things I keep putting her on hold or answering someone else. I decided I wanted to do more than manage my time and cross things off a to-do list, I wanted to learn to manage my energy, so I can SHOW UP in my life.
I called my friend Christina and we set out on the task of working with my energy. I took some time to look at the four major sources of energy: physical, mental, emotional and spiritual and see what they meant to me. I decided to tackle my hardest issue first – Physical.
I don’t know about you, but I struggle to get enough sleep. One way I know I am not getting enough sleep is that my body doesn’t wake up in the morning except to the sound of my pesky alarm, which I have gotten in the bad habit of snoozing at least three times before rising. To focus on other physical things like exercise and eating, I needed to make sure I got enough sleep first. I also though it would be the easiest to start with… nope!
What I found was that to get enough sleep, I needed to go to bed earlier – A LOT earlier. I committed to go to bed at 10:00 each evening, which sounded reasonable and totally doable. It sounded that way until I realized that some nights I didn’t get home until 9:00pm and I had a lot to do BEFORE I went to bed. I was going to have to make some real changes to make that a reality.
I’ve started, but it definitely isn’t a habit yet. Hopefully it will become second nature as I continue to focus my attention to it. I have noticed a difference in how I feel and how I show up already, so I’m excited to add to the Physical energy source. My next area of concentration will be nutrition.
