00:00 

Hey there, this is Intentional Living with Tanya Hale and this is episode number 84, "Creating Energy." Welcome to your place for finding greater happiness through intentional growth, because we don't just fall into the life of our dreams...we choose to create it. This is Tanya Hale and I'm your host for Intentional Living. 

00:21 

Well, hello there, my friends. So happy to be here with you today. Thanks for joining me. Hey a couple of things, if you've not signed up for my "weekend win" email, you can go to tanyahale.com, scroll down to the bottom of the homepage and you can get that. It is just a quick, meant to be read in one minute or less, email. Just some good stuff that I send out to help give you something to think about, maybe something you can make an adjustment to help your life run a little bit more smoothly. Kind of cool. 

00:50 

And I'm wondering if you can help me with a goal. For this year I have set a goal of doing 300 free consult coaching calls. Now these are a little bit shorter than my regular coaching calls, but I want to do 300. I want to help 300 different people with at least one small area in their lives. So if you would like to be a part of that and help me accomplish my goal and help you work through an issue or a situation yourself, I think that would be a match made in heaven. So you can go as well to tanyahale.com, you can send me a quick, well at this point I'm just doing emails, but I'm probably going to hook that up to a calendar pretty soon. So you'd be able to get on and either send me an email and say "hey, I'd love to take advantage of your free coaching call," or you can get on the calendar if I've got a calendar hooked up to it and send it for something there. 

01:51 

So that being said, we are going to jump into today's topic, which is creating energy. Who doesn't need more energy in their lives? It seems that the older we get, we step into this middle age, the more quickly our energy just drains so much or it just doesn't even show up at all. Now, I get all of this "my body is getting older stuff" and that does play into it, for sure. But there are some things as we get older that we can do that will affect our energy levels. And this comes in two different areas: physical and emotional. 

02:28 

The first and probably the most obvious solutions lie in our daily eating and sleeping habits, the physical things we can do to create energy. So though I'm not going to go into this really at all, it is really important to realize that very often we need to be taking care of our bodies better. A huge part of self-care has to be doing what it takes to take care of our bodies in this way. And that's all I'm really gonna say about eating and sleeping habits because that's not my forte and it's not really what I wanna focus on at this stage. We're going to spend this time together actually discussing how other choices and thoughts we make, and the way we engage in this, can be either energy-producing or energy-depleting. So now let's spend the rest of the time talking about what we can do to emotionally create more energy. 

03:21 

Have you ever noticed that there are some activities that once you get started doing them your mind forgets that you're tired and you seem to be able to engage in a pretty high energy level and you can move into this space even if you were feeling all sluggish on the sofa 10 minutes ago? And on the other side of the spectrum there are also activities that we engage in that seem to drain our energy. We just get slower and slower and by the end we feel like we're going to drop with exhaustion. This all has so much to do with our thoughts and the activity we're going to engage in. When the activity is something we love, we will think energy-producing thoughts. When it is not something we love, something we don't enjoy, we will tend to think thoughts that deplete our energy. 

04:09 

So let's talk for a bit about why this is and how it works. Each of us has our own unique talents, gifts, strengths and  weaknesses. Within our own little personal realm we have things we do that ignite our energy easily. Now, I know that I've got my own strengths but I really love to speak to groups of people. I love being up in front of a crowd, sharing information with them and when I'm finished I just want to start all over again and I have energy where I feel like I could. When I'm working within this area of my strength I am actually creating energy because my thoughts are "I love this, this is awesome, this is terrific, this is amazing to me." 

04:53 

But the opposite is also true. When I'm working within the area of my weakness, I will drain my energy a lot faster because then I'm thinking, "oh, this is exhausting, I don't like this, this isn't fun," right? Many of you, if you were put up in front of a large group of people to give a presentation, you would really struggle. It's not something you enjoy, it's not a strength of yours, so it would drain your energy. You would spend your time thinking, "I hate this, I'm terrified, what are they thinking, this is the worst experience of my life," right? It's going to drain your energy. It would have the opposite effect on you than it has on me because of how we're choosing to think about it. 

05:33 

But here's something else you may or may not want to know about me. I just really don't like little kids. My own little kids, I loved. My nieces and nephews, terrific. My friends' kids, all great. I love them. But put me in a room of strange little kids in a primary room or in an elementary classroom and I am miserable. I don't enjoy conversing with them, I don't enjoy the very simplistic discussions and when they wipe their snotty noses and their grimy hands on me, I just don't like it. It's not even a little bit cute to me. And I have friends and siblings who adore those little tykes. In fact, I have a sister who has taught kindergarten and second grade for almost 30 years and she loves it. For her, being with them every day is exciting and engaging and it's energy-producing. And for me, those little ones exhaust me. 

06:38 

But put me in a room with eighth graders and I am in my element, I love it. These kids get me going and my energy rises to engage with them, but my same sister who teaches elementary school would hate teaching middle school. It would drain her energy. So, something to learn here. Doing things you love creates energy because the thoughts we produce, we come up with while we're doing them are energy-producing thoughts while doing things you don't love can drain your energy again because of your thoughts, right? 

07:12 

So get to know yourself. What do you consider fun? What is something that you lose track of time doing? When we're doing those things that we consider play, those things will create energy for us. So if we want to have more energy, we need to be aware of the things that we love and engage in those. The energy will come easy. It's not that we can't get energy with the other ones, but the energy comes easier for these. 

07:37 

But this is the thing with middle age. Alright, okay, my middle-age friends. Oftentimes as women, we have lost track of who we are. We no longer identify with ourselves. We struggle to even know what we enjoy because we spent so many years neglecting our own wants and needs in order to take care of other people's wants and needs. And we've done it gladly. But I'll tell you what, I know that when my kids were younger, I didn't have a Saturday to myself for probably, I don't know, 18 years. There was always a soccer or a flag football game to go to or a concert or practice or something like that, right? I love to read books, but I didn't read a book for, I don't know, probably eight years or so, because I was so busy taking care of everyone else that I forgot to take care of myself. And I just put things that I loved on the back burner. 

08:36 

So now here we are in the middle of our life and we're not really sure what we love and what would create energy. So here's a suggestion: look back at different periods in your life and remember what you love to do during those stages before you started kindergarten. Do you remember back that far? What did you love to do when you were a little tiny kid? Did you love to color? Did you love to whatever? What about your elementary years? Were there things that you really enjoyed during that time? And then look at your junior high or your middle school years. What kind of things did you engage in that you really loved? High school years, college years, your newly married years and as a young mom, right? I look back at high school and I loved playing volleyball. And a few years ago I had a group that I played volleyball with on the regular and it was so much fun. It was so fun to step back into something that I loved. So if we can find something from earlier on in our life that we loved, there's a good chance that we may still love to do it and we may connect with it, right? 

09:42 

So when I was in my early twenties, I wanted to become a marriage and family therapist. And then I got married and it was just so challenging and such a difficult situation for the two of us that I just thought that if I can't figure out my own marriage, there's no way that I could help other people figure out theirs. So I didn't pursue that interest. But fast forward 30 years and here I am as a life coach. I'm still helping people to be more mentally and emotionally healthy with themselves and in their relationships. So I'm doing something very similar to marriage and family therapy. What I loved in my twenties has finally manifested itself in its fifties. And when I get working on my coaching, it is energy-producing, for sure. I love it. When I finished putting together a podcast and recording it, I'm always like, "yes, love that," right? It just creates this energy in me. 

10:42 

So another way that we can create energy in our lives is to proactively work through a tough challenge. When I have something that is difficult for me and I'm just sitting on it, procrastinating, it weighs me down a lot. It takes a lot of mental energy to avoid and resist the things that we know we need to or want to tackle. And if you're like me, you can avoid and resist till the sun comes up tomorrow, right? A very long time before you jump into tackling the challenge. But once I start proactively working towards solving a problem in my life, it starts to create momentum. This is a direct example of how the thought model works in our lives. 

11:27 

So let's take a look at it. When I have a circumstance happen in my life, I have every option about how I want to think about it. If I have the thought, "oh this is impossible, there is no way I can figure this out," then that creates feelings of frustration or anger or despair or hopelessness. Right, and let's take that feeling of hopelessness that will start to affect my actions by causing me to not try or to shut down or to give up. The end result is that I don't figure it out. And that's an energy buster, right? That's something that drains our energy. When we feed the thought that we're not capable or that we're not worthy, that is always an energy drainer. 

12:14 

And here's why: we are creating thoughts that are always creating negative feelings. And negative feelings drain energy. If we want to create energy, we need to create positive emotions. But let me be very clear about something here: positive emotions are not always happy happy and rah rah. Right, positive emotions are just those that move us in a positive direction. And as we talked about fear a few weeks ago, we talked about how fear can actually move us in a positive direction if our thoughts are moving in that direction. Emotions that are fueled by positive thoughts will move us to proactive behaviors. 

12:59 

So here's how the thought model works in our energy levels. Thoughts create our feelings. And our feelings are connected to our energy. When I think that I love working with middle school kids, that creates feelings of connection, feelings of positivity, feelings of excitement or engagement, and those feelings create energy. If I have a tough day with my middle school kids and I start thinking halfway through the day, "ugh, this is horrible. These kids are making me insane today." If I start thinking that, then my energy drains so quickly. Okay? And it's just like when I think that I don't like working with elementary school kids, that creates feelings of disengagement, of annoyance, of irritation, of negativity and those types of feelings drain my energy. 

13:51 

So does that mean that every time I work with elementary age kids I have to feel devoid of energy? Absolutely not, because I can still choose to develop thoughts or create thoughts that will create energy instead of depleting energy. So instead of thinking "these kids are driving me insane," I can think "they have so much energy, I love that about them." But I have to really believe that, and I do. When I look at little kids, I love the fact that they have so much energy. That is a perfectly normal thought for me to think. But if I think "those kids are driving me insane," that's going to deplete my energy. If I think "they have so much energy and I love that about them," it totally changes what I'm feeling, right? Or maybe I could even think it's fun to see them having so much fun. Is it easier for me to create energy with activities that I really enjoy and that are my strength? 

14:48 

But that doesn't mean that if I don't enjoy an activity that I also have to be miserable and uncomfortable and exhausted. It just means that it takes a little bit more mental energy to create more emotional or physical energy. Allowing our thoughts to create mind drama around things that we don't enjoy is a huge energy buster for sure because all of our emotional energy is created by our thoughts. Think about how this works. When we think "I'm really just too tired to do that," then our feeling is one of tired or disinterested or maybe disengagement. When we feel disinterested, our actions will be holding back both mentally and physically. Not engaging, we'll have a hard time focusing. With actions like that, we are creating a place where we don't have the energy to engage with what is going on. 

15:44 

So try this: the next time something comes up and your first thought is something along the lines of, "oh, just too tired, just too tired to do that right now," but you know that it would be a good thing to do, find another thought that you can believe and start working off of that new thought. That's called creating an intentional thought model, by the way. Choosing a thought intentionally that's going to affect our feelings and our actions. A thought could be, "it'll be fun and engaging once I get started," or "I know it will be a good experience and I'm always up for that." Maybe even just, "I know I'll be glad once I've done it, once it's done." Anything along those lines, just creating a new thought intentionally that you know is going to create better feelings for you. 

16:32 

So here's an example: just this last weekend I was at a coach's working retreat, which was awesome, by the way, where we had big chunks of time to work on business stuff. And after one 2.5 hour session, one of the other coaches suggested going for a walk. Now generally, I really enjoy going on walks, right? But after sitting for that long, working on my computer, oh, I was just tired. I just wanted to veg, right? I didn't want to have to think anymore. I didn't want to get my body up and moving. It feels like when I sit for a long time like that, everything just kind of settles where I sit. And I just didn't want to move. I felt very sluggish. And then I would have to get my shoes on because I was in my socks and it was cold outside and cold is rarely my favorite. 

17:23 

But the other five coaches were all going and I realized that more than sitting there by myself vegging, I wanted to hang and connect with the other coaches. And I wanted that more than I just wanted to sit around and be lazy. I also knew that once I got out the door and moving that I would be glad that I did. And you know what, it was only about 30 seconds into the walk that my energy completely lifted and I was so happy to be outside moving my body and engaging with my new friends. Originally I felt both physically and emotionally tired and I just wanted to be lazy but engaging a thought about really wanting to connect with the other coaches and knowing I'd feel better if I got moving changed my energy for the positive. 

18:08 

Yes, it can be so easy to play the "too tired" card but our thoughts really can affect our physical and our emotional energy more than we think they can sometimes. Now, of course there are times when we really do need some physical rest and good self-care will take those times into consideration, for sure, but very often in the middle of the day our exhaustion comes from our thoughts and the activities that we're engaging in. So learn to pay attention to your patterns and if you're not already attuned to this, practice managing your thoughts around your feelings of lethargy. You'll find you have much more control over it than you may have originally thought and you'll find you have much more energy than it originally felt like you did. 

18:56 

Okay, growing up is cool, isn't it? So amazing. I love it. Okay, if you want, as I talked about at the beginning, if you want some personal help from me, get on my website tanyahale.com. Go to the "contact me" tab, whatever's there, figure it out, and book a free consult with me. Remember you're helping me out here because I'm trying to...I want this year to do 300 free consults. I just think that's going to be super super fun to work with that many of y'all. Okay, and that is going to do it for me today. 

19:27 

If you feel this podcast is adding value to your life, if you're a regular listener and you love it, will you please go onto iTunes and leave me a review? That would be super awesome. I would love to start getting some reviews on there and share this with a friend. That is the way at this stage that this podcast is going to grow and is going to share more information with people. And I think there's so many of us in our middle ages of life that need a little bit of guidance, that need some strength and need to start figuring out how to move into our better selves. So share it, leave me a review, have an awesome day and we're going to call it one. Talk to you next time, bye. 

20:10 

Thank you so much for joining me today. If you would love to receive some weekend motivation, be sure to sign up for my free "weekend win" Friday email: a short and quick message to help you have a better weekend and position yourself for a more productive week. Go to tanyahale.com to sign up and learn more about life coaching and how it can help you get to your best self ever. See ya!