3 Reasons Why You Feel Low on Energy

We have busier lives now than ever before. We live in a world that keeps us constantly connected in various ways and it is a real struggle finding any amount of time to re-charge, re gather ourselves so we are able to wake up tomorrow and start again. Many things throughout our day drain our energy levels, and offer very little if not nothing to re-charge them. There are areas in our lives we can look at though and see where the energy is leaking out from. We can then learn and practice how to build it up again.

You think you can save time by doing more than one thing at a time. You may even think you are really good at multi-tasking. Reality check; no one is good at multi-tasking, even the ones who claim to be. It actually isn’t possible to multi-task and accomplish things properly. You aren’t focused in on one thing and therefore you are focused in on all things, stimulus overload!! You get anxious feelings and your mind becomes cluttered with stimuli from a number of sources. You begin to react to the task at hand instead of respond and your reactions cause up to 25 minutes of you being essentially offline, which is driven by the cortisol raging through your body, inhibiting any rational or logic response or action to those tasks at hand. You then have hours worth of perhaps “repairs” or “re-doing” ahead of you. If you simply focus on one thing at one time you work through each task from start to finish within the time it takes, thus giving you a sense of accomplishment….a feel good experience….then move on to the next task being all charged up and full of the hormones that make us feels really great about ourselves because we have  accomplished something. Celebrate those accomplishments, each and everyone of them, even the small ones.

In other words, be mindful. Your body knows. Your intuition knows. The struggle is lowering the volume of your mind enough to hear the real story. Studies have shown that a regular practice of mindfulness thickens the cortical layers in regions of your brain that control attention (Lazar et al. 2005) this also helps reduce negative emotions, energy draining feelings. Try being mindful about what you are doing, saying, eating, reacting to. The thing to remember in the beginning when you are becoming aware of these actions, is start out slow. Have mini episodes of mindfulness and then work your way to lengthening them.

Remember what it felt like as a kid living out those long summer days. You hit your pillow at night feeling so great about the day you had. You were probably out with friends, exploring, adventuring, not thinking about anything you “had” to do. Of course we don’t have the time we had as a kid now, but there is no reason why you can’t capture moments of those feelings throughout your week or hopefully day. Push the pause button on the “have to do’s” and draw out your sense of playfulness. Try playing with your kids, colouring or creating, turn up the music and dance a little, be curious about learning something new, the sky’s the limit with what you can be playful with.