It is easy to get overwhelmed with everyday life. It takes a lot of energy to keep up. We struggle to get everything we must do done. We worry about what we should do and feel guilty if we don’t do it. Even the most faithful at self-care can struggle. It all leads to low energy, frustration, burnout, and even losing the joy for the things we love.
There is a way to get off the road to burnout and it takes only 3 simple steps:
- Be Yourself
- Use Your Gifts
- Shine Your Light
Be Yourself
Being yourself requires that you know yourself, know how you are wired to operate in the world, know your energy blueprint, and how it is designed to work. This energetic DNA is your rudder, your guide to living your best life. We come into the world knowing exactly who we are and what we are here to do. But, as we grow up we are conditioned by well-meaning parents, teachers and society to do certain things, act a certain way, and live our life based on someone else’s idea of what that should look like.
It takes a lot of energy to be something you are not. Being yourself is natural and puts you in the ease and flow of life. It energizes you rather than depletes you.
Try this quick exercise. Pick up a pen and put it into the hand you do not normally use to write. Now sign your name. How does that feel? Awkward? Hard? Unnatural? Tiring? Imagine if you were told that was the right way to sign your name and you had to write with that hand from now on. Now sign your name with your preferred writing hand. What a difference! It is effortless, natural, and easy. You do it naturally without even thinking about it. That is what every day should feel like as you go through life if you are being you.
Everyone’s life has challenges and it is not possible to be in the flow every minute of every day. But how you deal with your challenges and how quickly you regain your place in the flow of life makes a big difference in your levels of energy, happiness and joy. Prolonged drama and upset uses a lot of energy.
Use Your Gifts
The second step to restore your energy and joy is to use your gifts. You have certain natural skills and talents that you came into the world with. You have these energies to support you in living out your life purpose. They are your unique gifts to the world. They are such an important part of who you are that not having the chance to use them or being forced to hide them is another way your energy gets depleted.
Unfortunately, society values some gifts and talents more than others. In some settings such as the workplace or in social situations, we let some of our gifts shrink from view in order to fit in and be accepted. Your uniqueness is why you are here. It is the juicy part of life and should be valued. There is only one being wired exactly like you. We are all like puzzle pieces, each different but all needed to complete the puzzle. Somehow differences are not always seen as the gifts they are. They are often seen as something to fear, even hate.
Using your gifts and creatively expressing who you are builds your energy reserves, brings you happiness, satisfaction, fulfillment and joy.
Shine Your Light
Shining your light is the final step to restore your energy and joy. What does that mean? It means using your gifts in their highest expression. Every energy has a light side and a shadow side. If you are living in the shadow side of an energy, unable to learn how to master the light side, your natural light does not shine as bright as it should. Living in the shadow energy is exhausting.
For example, if in your energetic field you carry the energy we call Impact, in its highest expression you would be a master of your emotional energy, using your ability to make a positive difference, be of service and light the way for others. If you are living the shadow side of Impact, you might be emotionally reactive, feel unseen and unheard and do whatever it takes to selfishly satisfy your own feeling of inadequacy. Your impact on others would suffer.
How you live out your energy is a choice, a choice we all have to make multiple times a day. Understanding which energies are prominently at play in your energy field and assessing whether you are living in the shadow or shining your light brightly can help you gain insight into areas of your life where you wish things were different.
Managing your energy, trusting yourself enough to naturally be in your unique flow of life and using your energetic gifts in their highest expression is the key to keeping your energy high and staying off the road to burnout. The steps are simple but the demands society puts on us can make putting it into practice every day difficult. Getting reacquainted with yourself and trusting what you instinctively know about yourself and what’s best for you is the answer. We tend to consult others for the answers when in fact you have all the answers inside you. You need only peel back the layers of conditioning so you can listen to yourself and trust what you hear and feel to find your answers. Restoring your energy and living your joy is about BEING the Human Being that is naturally you.
