Opinion: Wisdom Workout

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Susan Velasquez

Tapping Into Your Enthusiasm

Your personal energy is like electricity. It sits ready and waiting for you to flip the switch. Are you in the habit of using a dimmer switch, so your energy is turned down low? This is a great strategy when you want to set an inviting mood, but ineffective for accomplishing any task that requires you to generate specific outcomes.

Your energy might be like a porch light used to welcome family and friends. This setting can be useful for creating an open and receptive vibe, but you can risk being seen as too submissive and soft.

Maybe you operate at the other extreme. You use too much energy too often and blow out fuses in the process. Habitual overkill may be an unacknowledged fear that you will never turn it on again if you turn it off.

Here are some of the ways our energy can get sidetracked.

Our lives are a mixture of being, doing and having. Being is static. Doing is dynamic. Having is the result of our being and doing. The best case is that we take full responsibility and ownership of our lives. We consistently identify what we want to be, do and have and go for it.

Here comes the tricky part. Other people have influenced who we are.

Let’s step back and identify how much of our energy is held hostage, trying to live up to erroneous ideas of who we think we are supposed to be.

There are only four ways we can use our energy. We can make a list of high-minded personal goals. We do them for two weeks – max. Enter in guilt. Energy wasting, energy-sucking guilt. Feelings of unworthiness and inadequacy. This guarantees a loss of satisfaction in our lives.

The second way we can sidetrack our energy is to approach our lives from habitual dissatisfaction. We don’t want to do what we are doing. We are not happy in this job, this relationship, family, or? We invalidate what we are doing but keep doing it. Why? Because we “have to.”

  That habit creates resentment. Sticky, nasty, energy-depleting, low-level resentment. Chronic resentment sucks the energy out of everything and kills our enthusiasm. 

Those of us stuck in the “have to” syndrome often think that responsibility and blame are the same things. The true definition of responsibility is the ability to respond to what is. Blame has nothing to do with being responsible.

The habit of living out of a “have to” or “should” mentality is often passed down from one generation to another. 

The third misuse of energy happens when we have a vibrant, creative mind. We conjure up dreams and plans of the marvelous kind. The trouble is we don’t do them.  

Our life becomes filled to overflowing with unfulfilled wishes and wants. Our minds become cluttered with plans that never survive past the idea stage. We become preoccupied with dreaming and wishing for what might have been. We miss the present moment and end up living in regret.

The power to create only lives in the present. When our energy is spent longing for the past or dreaming of the future, there is plenty of electricity but no switch or outlet.

There is an important point here. If you are going to do something, fully choose it 100 percent, minus the story, the pain and the angst. If you are not going to do something, let it go. One hundred percent, minus the worry, the whining and the hand-wringing.

Guilt is the price we pay to maintain our ‘good guy’ image while violating it. Decide to vote for what is good for you and take ownership of your decisions. When we find ourselves caught in chronic guilt or resentment, examine where we say yes when we mean no. Honest self-evaluation allows us to discover where we are losing energy. Make some new choices to turn on and tap into the personal energy and enthusiasm that is rightfully yours.

Susan is a local author and Leadership Consultant. Reach her at: beyondintellect.com.

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