Do you charge your cellphone every day? Or at least every other day? Regardless of a daily practice, I’m betting there are multiple times a week where you make the effort to bring that device back up to a full, 100% charge level.
For me, I start getting nervous when my battery level on the phone gets to about 60%. I’m not actively worried about my phone running out of battery, but it’s more like an awareness that it’s time for me to start thinking about where and when I’m going to recharge it. I don’t take my battery level for granted because I know how important it is for me to have my phone ready when I need it.
Think of all the things you use your cellphone for. If you’re anything like me, it’s the primary way you navigate from one place to another, and you’d be pretty much screwed if it died and you couldn’t access your maps and navigation functions. (This is seriously one of my worst nightmares – I’m shuddering just thinking about it! Pre-GPS, I used to have a glovebox full of printed Mapquest maps to help me get around, so I’m worthless without my phone!) It’s also how you stay on top of changing plans, remain plugged in to pertinent news, entertain yourself when you’ve got downtime, and track all sorts of important information. You wouldn’t put any of that at risk without something truly significant happening. It’s clear to you that you need your device, and you’ll maximize what you can get out of it if it’s fully charged.
Why don’t you do the same for yourself?
There were long periods of my life – decades even – where I operated from my own personal energy standpoint with a “battery life” that was well below 100%. Heck, it was often well below 60%, and maybe even on average a fluctuation from about 30 or 40% to maybe 80% at best. There were all sorts of good reasons for this, of course: life, grad school, vacations, dating, parenting, career progression… I’m not saying it wasn’t justified. But when I compare how I treat myself now to how I treated myself for so many years, there’s a clear distinction: I’m finally treating myself as good as I treat my cellphone when it comes to managing my energy.
It’s created a critical difference in my wellbeing, capacity, and focus. I was always worried that if I took time out to recharge myself I’d miss something important or something would fall by the wayside. Aside from the initial kind of reset that was required from being depleted for so long, I now find that I recharge faster and get back up to 100% much quicker. It’s expanded my capacity for navigating challenges, and I feel like my clarity and decisive action is activated much easier.
The barrier for me was that I always valued all of the other things, competing priorities, to-do items, and often other people higher than myself. I believe in being service-oriented, but I took the perceived nobility of that too far and often drained myself and overbooked my calendar in the name of being of service or being “productive.” I’d consistently operate in low-battery mode and regularly run myself down to the point of exhaustion, burnout, or illness.
I may not be able to plug myself in every single day and get back up to 100% energy charge, but I make sure I’m watching my personal percentage and maintaining it. I’m cognizant of not conflating “battery-saver mode” activities with actually getting recharged. I used to take days off to do medical appointments, get the oil changed, get caught up on laundry, and get the grocery shopping done, and I somehow expected that to actually recharge me. It felt great to have all that done, and I felt good about the use of time, but it didn’t build my energy back up. It was more like battery-saver mode where at least I didn’t deplete further!
Only you know what feels best for you and what recharges you. And only you can make sure you’re plugging yourself back in as often as you need to get back up to a full charge. Regularly incorporating a practice of recharging your energy is one of the fastest accelerants to helping you live a life and lead a career you love. Give it a shot, and watch your clarity, confidence, and capacity skyrocket.
