5 Energy-Boosting Tips for Showing Up as Your Best Self

Do you ever face days when you feel without energy, and the idea of going through your daily task list only adds to your frustration?

My podcast guest Dale Connelly, who is a therapeutic coach,  gives 5 tips on how to build back the energy all of us need to show up as our best selves for our work and relationships.

Dale knows that psychological tension can disrupt what is possible in a person’s life. He believes emotional relaxation is critical to helping others build a life well-lived.

The greatest gift you can give to people you interact with is to be fully alive yourself.

Showing up fully alive is a great gift for people around us, but it is also hard. Dale mentions two interesting sources on this theme: an audio piece called Launching Rockets by Rob Bell, where the author says that the greatest gift you can give your children and people you interact with is to be fully alive yourself.

Another mention is a pediatric doctor and writer, Donald Winnicott, who states that losing organic identity from early childhood is one of the key hindrances to our connection with ourselves. Dale explains:

“There are a series of events which are triggered when you were born. You rely on other people because you want to fit in and comply with families, friendship groups, and cultures, or you get praise for being a certain way that you begin to act and pretend because you know that if you do it, you get love and praise.

By the time you become an adult, you don’t even know what you need, how to feel fully alive, and how to interact authentically with others because slowly, over the years, your organic identity has been taken away. I don’t think it’s done in a way that is cruel or that people were doing it intentionally. It’s just unintentional behaviors that begin to make you lose yourself.”

How do we build the energy? 

It will be hard to build back the energy you need if you can’t deeply listen to yourself and recognize what you need. Here are five practical steps to include in our daily routine: 

1. Journal your feelings and emotions – how do you feel?
2. Reflect on your feelings by unpacking what it is you really want and need.
3. Tune into your body’s needs: water, sleep, nature,  community, etc.
4. Determine action steps.
5. Change your behavior.

How does this look practically? 

Dale shares an example:  “You start that process of putting words to feelings,  then you begin to understand what your body, spirit, and mind need. Then you start bringing attention to those needs – a real focused attention. It could be the body:  ‘I’m tired. I can’t go to sleep. It’s affecting my relationships. It’s affecting my work, it’s affecting my focus.’ You’ve become aware of a need to sleep. Now we bring our attention to sleep. What do we do? Okay, we wake up in the morning. And instead of enjoying our coffee inside, we go outside and get some of that early morning light in our eyes. We trigger our sight, our circadian rhythm, for a start. When we get into the evening, we’ve triggered a sequence of events to help us sleep. We’re bringing attention to what our body needs. Then you begin to build new habits around that. 

It could be as simple as someone’s chronically dehydrated. They can get as much therapy, but if they’re chronically dehydrated, the brain is starved of water. You need to bring your attention to drinking more water, reflecting, reinforcing, and rewarding the brain, then you become a person who drinks water, and you’re not chronically dehydrated. Lack of water is putting limitations on the possibilities – it can be as simple as the act of drinking water!”

Ready to start journaling? 

Dale: “I’m not the perfect journaler, I don’t journal every day. I know my awareness is surface level when I don’t journal. If I want to deepen an understanding of myself,  have really rich relationships around me,  and be fully alive so that I can delight in life, then journaling is the way, yeah!

By prioritizing self-care, we can become more self-aware, reduce stress and anxiety, and lead happier and healthier lives. It’s important to remember that self-care is not a one-time fix, but rather an ongoing process that requires dedication and commitment.

https://robbell.com/audio/launching-rockets/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Winnicott

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