Thing One: Protect Your Emotional Energy!

I reconnected with an old friend yesterday and we were talking about life, the ups and downs. They asked me what advice I would give someone who was trying to rebuild their life and had some emotional challenges. I wasn’t sure right away but then I thought “what really important, life changing things do I wish I had known sooner” and then I was well away with a whole bunch of stuff that I wish people had told me or that I had managed to learn somehow a long time ago. This got me to thinking that this might be a good series to write about. Perhaps a lot of people already know this stuff but if there are one or two that don’t, then it will be well worth it.

Thing One: Protect Your Emotional Energy!

Protect your Emotional Energy! It is your life line. It is what keeps you going on the toughest days. When you need to have a difficult conversation with your ex, a teacher, your boss or in my case a social worker (ugh.) When you have to attend a meeting or event that you really don’t want to! or listen to your child tell you one more awful joke. Your emotional energy gives us the get up and go to take care of our health, to eat right, to exercise, to take care of our appearance, to make interesting conversation and to be creative.

We all know what it feels like to be emotionally drained and once we run out of energy we risk burn out. Yes it is wonderful and good to help other people (some of the time) but when we do so at our own expense then we end up no longer being able to help anyone or even ourselves. We might even end up needing to be helped rather than being able to give help. This is why I say protect your emotional energy like the precious commodity that it is. Emotional Energy is not something we can buy or replace on a monthly standing order, it is something we have to work to replace and therefore needs protecting.

Also nobody ever taught me that it was okay to take care of myself. It was okay to be a little bit selfish and put my needs first. The examples I saw and read about encouraged me to help others no matter what the personal sacrifice to me. I also believed that I wouldn’t be acceptable or likeable if I wasn’t always helping others. That people only keep me around because they needed me but this is a story for another day.

I want you to imagine that you have a cup (I know this isn’t an original idea, but it works for me, you could imagine a vase, jug, bowl whatever takes your fancy) full of Emotional Energy, every time we do anything it takes energy. Some activities also give energy often more than they take and these activities are great for refilling your cup (we will look at these soon) but many activities take energy. Imagine that every time you do one of these activities you are pouring out of your cup and it becomes a little emptier.

Eventually if you keep pouring from that cup with out refilling it you will become empty and emotionally exhausted. Lets face it none of us look pretty when we are emotionally exhausted! I would like you (if you want, I am not really bossy) to close your eyes for a moment, imagine your cup and take stock of how much emotional energy you have left in there? If you are anything like me when I first tried this exercise then your cup will be pretty empty! I want you to take a moment to remind yourself that this is your emotional energy, that you need this for you to survive and that it is yours to protect! Yes we all have a certain amount of responsibilities which we cant get out of but it is okay and necessary for you to protect your energy!

In our next article we will look at how to put emotional back into our cups but for now I just advise taking stock of your energy levels and seeing if there is anything taking emotional energy from you which you cannot afford to give. Is there anything you can cut out, or pause for a while to give you time to rebuild your energy levels? What can you do to Protect your Emotional Energy.

Please comment if you have any of your own advice or ideas which you would like to share!