5 Things Draining Your Energy (and how to get it back)
Have you heard of energy leaks? They are things that drain your energy and subtly exhaust you over time 😅
Picture a tire with a small puncture. The air might not gush out right away like it would if you slashed the tire with a blade or something but that small hole lets out enough air to where over time, the tire becomes flat.
This is pretty much what energy leaks are — they are things that deflate you over time if you don’t plug them up.
Keep reading this post to learn:
⋒ 5 ~ sneaky ~ things that could be draining your energy and what you can do about each of them
Okay now you know what an energy leak is defined as, so what’s the big deal? Why is it important that we’re aware of the energy leaks we’ve got going on in our lives?
When you’re letting your energy leak ut all over the place, you tend to struggle with things like:
Procrastinating on doing things that matter to you or that need to be done
Feeling overwhelmed in your day-to-day life
Having an underlying feeling of exhaustion pretty much all the time
Simple tasks feel difficult...like you experience a lot of resistance when it comes to tasks
Your priorities become muddied which makes it really tough to show up well for them
Not so great, right? But hey, if you were like “oh yikes” about any of those, it may be because you have a lot of energy leaks going on, and now that you know that, you can do something about it.
Let’s get into 5 sneaky things that could be energy leaks in your life:01. Having a ton of open loops.
I feel like you might be tired of hearing me talk about open loops BUT I AM NOT GONNA STOP because they are rude little things that take up so much of your mental space if you let them linger for too long.
“An open loop is a task or conversation that is partially completed. Open loops take up space in your mind because they quietly linger, sucking up energy without you really realizing it. See… energy stealers! Closing open loops allows you to be present and productive because the fewer open loops you have, the more energy you have to focus on your true priorities.”
If you want some examples of what open loops are, listen to episode 101 of The Hustle Sanely Podcast.
How to plug the leak:
Get all of your open loops out of your head. I like to use a Catch-All Task List to keep track of all of mine. After that, prioritize them by deciding which ones need attention ASAP and which ones aren’t a top priority. I have a few hours dedicated to closing open loops every Friday. Some other ideas for closing open loops:
Close 3 every week
Dedicate an hour after work one day per week closing as many as you can in 2 hours
Spend 30 minutes on Monday morning closing some and 30 minutes on Friday afternoon closing some
02. Engaging in negative talk.
Now, this can be one of two things — both are gross and are major energy leaks:
Gossiping about others
Talking/thinking poorly about yourself
Talking/thinking poorly about yourself refers to limiting beliefs which I’ve talked a lot about on this show. How are you talking about yourself? What thoughts are you thinking about yourself? That’s your self-talk.
How to plug the leak:
When it comes to gossip - shut it down, period. You don’t have to be rude about it or shame someone who is gossiping but just redirect the conversation by subtly changing the subject or politely excuse yourself from the conversation. If you’re with someone who you’re really comfortable with, tell them you’re really working on not speaking poorly about others.
When it comes to talking or thinking poorly about yourself, I like to use affirmations to redirect and reconstruct my thought patterns about myself. I am actually planning to do an entire podcast episode about affirmations and why they might not be working for you later this month so if you feel a little lost when it comes to using them, stay tuned!
I also find that getting the thoughts out by having a constructive conversation with someone you trust helps the thoughts not to take root and grow deep into my mind. If I’m struggling with a limiting belief, I will talk through it with my husband, best friend, or therapist instead of going around and around in circles in my mind.
03. Overexerting yourself.
This can look like:
Multitasking all day and not actually completing priority tasks
Working on too many projects at once
Not honoring your mental health boundaries
Saying yes to something when you know it’s not something you have the capacity to do right now
When we overexert ourselves, we become mentally exhausted which leaves us feeling like we are living in a fog and going through the motions every day rather than being active and present for our lives.
How to plug the leak:
The obvious thing to say is to create and stick to boundaries, right? Which true, true, true. But I wanna go in a different direction here.
Last month, in the BFF Membership, our book club book was Effortless by Greg McKeown. He talked about these things called upper and lower bounds. I’m going to read something to you from his book to explain what they are. This is from page 140:
“Even when we want to make consistent, steady progress on a priority project, life often intervenes. To compensate for our perceived lack of productivity, we work all the way through the weekend, in a mad rush for progress. We know this comes at a cost: low quality work, increased guilt, and reduced confidence. There’s an easier alternative. We can establish upper and lower bounds. Simply use the following rule: Never less than X, never more than Y.”
I’ve been using upper and lower boundaries during my workdays to help hold me accountable to not taking on too many projects and once or working too many hours in a day.
So for me it sounds like: Never less than my Focus 3 tasks, never more than 7 hours of work a day.
You can apply this to just about anything — maybe you find yourself saying yes to others too often and spreading yourself too thin so it could sound like: Never less than helping 2 friends per month, never more than helping 4 friends per month.
04. Not taking care of your physical body.
I’m not going to spend a whole lot of time on this one but it needed to be on this list. I want you to think about the basics of overall wellness:
Eating nutritious food
Drinking enough water every day
Getting 7+ hours of sleep every night
Moving your body for 30 minutes every day
These are the building blocks of being an all-around healthy human, right? We know that these things are important but sometimes we can take them for granted and not give them the attention they deserve.
Plugging the energy leak here is simply making your health a priority by doing the above listed things.
If you don’t prioritize your health, you’re not going to operate optimally. And I gotta be forward with you — it’s your responsibility to prioritize your health, not anyone else’s. Sassy Jess, check!
05. Hyper focusing on the future.
This looks like:
Being upset over not knowing what you want to pursue
Obsessing over fears about the future
Living from a place of when I accomplish X then I’ll take care of my mental health
Losing track of priorities in your life
Not being mentally present for conversations with your loved ones
Hyper focusing on the future causes your energy to leak because it disables you from being present in your current season which typically makes it hard to live from a place of joy and gratitude. When you hyper focus on something, you are concentrating so hard on it, that you lose sight of everything else around you.
How to plug the leak:
Now, I’m not telling you not to dream big or work toward your goals...like hello, do you know me? I am all about dreaming and doing the work to make those dreams happen! But you can’t let the potential of your dreams cloud the beauty of your right now.
I like to practice this by carving out space in my schedule that is specifically dedicated to focusing on dreaming. A big part of my morning routines, yearly vision meetings, quarterly check-in meetings, and monthly check-in meetings is giving myself time and space to dream intentionally. When you have time built into your life to dream, you are less likely to struggle with being present when you’re with others.
Get clear on your vision, define your priorities, and create a schedule and routines that support them so that you can make your dreams happen without sacrificing your mental health and relationships!
Something that I find helpful is focusing more on plugging energy leaks rather than punishing myself for having the energy leaks in my life. It’s a mindset shift to focus on the positive over the negative. Like we acknowledge the negative, yes, but then we shift to emphasize the positive.
When we plug up energy leaks, we have a lot more energy to invest in ourselves and into our priorities. More energy leads to:
Having more creativity
Putting more effort toward what matters most to you
Uncovering passions you didn’t know you had
Showing up better for the relationships in your life
If you need a resource that helps you with building in time to close your open loops and time to dream to keep you from hyper-focusing on the future when you’re trying to be present with your loved ones, I’ve got something for you:
And hey, because I love to see y’all creating peacefully productive lives, go ahead and use the code:
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If you enjoyed this post, tune into episode 105 of The Hustle Sanely Podcast to dive deeper into this topic:
