admin_website Before your feet touch the floor after a restless nights sleep, your mind has rushed through a multitude of errands, to-do-lists and daily chores which need to be done. Feeling exhausted at the mere thought of them, you want to crawl back into bed but know the kids need waking, lunches need preparing, breakfast demands need to be met and the school rounds need to be done. You rush downstairs and make your usual route into the kitchen to turn the kettle on. You go to grab the milk from the fridge, only to discover that your spouse has forgotten to buy it again. ‘Aargh!’ you scream, angrily banging your hand on the kitchen counter-top. ‘How many times do I need to remind him to buy milk? How am I meant to function without my coffee? The kids won’t have milk for cereal now either!’ A hundred and one thoughts rush through your mind at great speed.
You try to compose yourself and manage to get the kids up, dressed, fed and out of the house on time with regimental precision. This puts you in a positive mood and with a few minutes to spare you check on your facebook posts. ‘Maybe it will be an okay day in the end’ you say to yourself. You turn out onto your usual path to do the school round to discover that the council are doing some emergency road works and there is a stream of traffic built as far as your eye can see. You feel your heart pounding and your head thumping out of sheer frustration. “I knew it was going to be a bad day!’ you think. ‘After all, it started on a bad foot from milk! Why can’t he do anything right? He does this all the time! He can’t seem to remember when things need to get done! Why do I have to remind him all the time?’ A barrage of thoughts begin to bombard your mind again, you feel the tension building as if your head was ready to explode. ‘BE QUIET!’ You shout at the children for bickering about who is going to sit in the front passenger seat on the way back from school.
You take a few deep breaths realising that your state is not helping the situation. You re-calibrate, look at the situation for how it is, bring yourself into the present moment and decide on what would be the best route to take to school instead. You finally make it home after the adventurous school round which took an extra half an hour and are faced with a barrage of daily chores; from the pile of dishes in the sink, beds needing to be made, vacuuming, dusting and laundry all awaiting your attention, you go into autopilot to make the tasks ahead bearable.
In the evening, you sit down with the family for dinner and enjoy the conversation of planning a trip in the half-term holidays to somewhere nice. The conversation uplifts you at the prospect that there is something nice to look forward to after a busy half-term. Surprisingly there is little fuss about who needs to help with the clearing and washing up of the dishes and you look forward to watching your favourite soap later on. Then your husband reminds you that guests will be coming on Friday evening and will be staying the night as they are passing through town. He forgot to mention it earlier but knew you would be okay with it. You start to complain to your spouse about how tiring it is for you to manage with kids, the chores and now guests. He reassures you that he will help with the guests. Instead of helping, this exasperates the situation and you remind him abruptly, ‘You can’t do a simple thing of remembering the milk and you’re expecting me to have faith that you’ll help with the guests! Fat chance!’ Annoyed and frustrated you cancel your plan of watching your soap and instead make your way to bed to have an early night. Exhausted and drained you slump your head on the pillow ‘Tomorrow is Wednesday – Ironing Day.’ A few more weeks and you can go on that much-deserved break. ‘The guests may cancel or their car may break down before travelling’, you pray before nodding off.
This example or similar other examples are common for millions of people in our society. People who are living ‘successful’ lives with families, homes, car-owners, reliable health. Despite their success, they’re in a survival mode emotionally. Their energy is depleted and they feel tired and over-loaded with the pressures of daily life. This largely unfulfilling quality of life stems from not giving enough importance on managing thoughts and feelings. If we look at the above example – how much of the inner dialogue came from the reactions of an unmanaged mind? Are we using our mental and emotional energy efficiently or inefficiently? Which thoughts and feelings are contributing positively to your quality of life and which are producing stress?
Very early on in life, we are taught to be careful about what we put into our bodies. We are taught about healthy and unhealthy foods, which ones are good for us, which should take sparingly and those which should be avoided. We learn that having a balanced diet is key to proper nutrition and important for our physiological health. What we are rarely taught is that the thoughts and emotions which we consume are equally if not more important. Our mental (thoughts) and emotional (feelings) diets determine our overall energy levels, health and well-being to a far greater extent than most people realise.
Whether we are aware of it or not there is an energy economy game which is continuously taking place inside of us. Our inner experiences throughout the day include countless thoughts and feelings which are having a positive or negative effect on our energy levels and are either depositing or debiting from our Energy Accounts. Although the type of thoughts and feelings we are having are not that easy to keep track of, when we begin to become more self-observant we realise the thoughts and feelings which are deducting from our energy account and those attitudes and perspectives which are boosting our energy accounts.
Physiologically when we put our body in a certain degree of stress, our energy reserves which are needed for maintenance, repair and regeneration of our biological systems are redirected to help us confront our stressors. Continually channelling energy into the stress pathways is depleting the vital energy needed to support the regenerative processes which replenish the resources we have lost, repair damage to our tissues and protect us against disease. ‘The synthesis of new stores of proteins, fats and carbohydrates is halted; the repair and replacement of most kind of cells are diminished, bone repair and wound healing is slowed and levels of circulating immune cells and antibodies fall. (Sterling, P., and Eyer, J. Biological basis of stress-related mortality. Social Science & Medicine. 1981; 15E3-42). Ultimately what we experience in the long run is that stress depletes our system and can be severely damaging to our health.
Although we overlook and give little importance to the power of the heart and heart-based emotions such as love, appreciation, joy, gratitude and care when we activate these emotional states within us we are allowing the electrical energy of the heart to work for us. When we consciously choose a core-heart feeling over a negative feeling we cancel out the negative effect that damages and drains our system. Instead of placing a great deal of pressure on our mental and emotional systems we allow the heart-based emotions to naturally allow the body’s natural regenerative capacity to do what it was designed to do – heal, nourish and replenish us. As our entire biological systems come into alignment with these beneficial emotions we begin to experience a powerful new level of energy efficiency. What starts off as psychological nutrition is providing physiological nutrition at the most fundamental level. This significantly impacts on the amount of wear and tear on the heart, brain and the body’s organs and increases efficiency and coherence thus leading to an optimal functioning of the processes which keep us alive and healthy.
Heartfelt positive emotions impact us far more than creating a psychological effect; they replenish and fortify our internal energy systems and nourish us down to the basic cellular level. The way in which we accumulate and use our vital energy reserves is a key factor which determines the quality of our lives. Most of us fail to make the link between emotions and our energy levels. On a subtle level we may realise that when we feel excited or enthusiastic, our energy levels go up but how often do we associate the emotions we have experienced to how drained we feel at the end of a busy day? Do we ever self-analyse when we have no energy at the end of the week to the circumstances or situations that drained us out? Do we ever say, ‘Well how many times did I allow myself to get frustrated over the mess the kids left behind after playing?’ or ‘Well I got angry three times this week on Monday, Wednesday & Thursday and I was too anxious about the dinner party that I was preparing for all day on Friday. With that type of emotional mismanagement is there any wonder why I feel so drained and exhausted?’.
It is highly important that we begin to form a habit of noticing our energy drains and gains on a regular basis. This new awareness will benefit you on many levels. We have to accept responsibility for our own energy expenditures. Every day we wake up with a certain amount of vital energy to expend. How we choose to do this is dependent upon us. It is up to us whether we choose to expend it in thoughts and feelings which will deposit positively into our energy accounts or we choose to spend it in thoughts, attitudes and perceptions which deplete our energy reserves. Allowing incoherent thoughts and feelings to pass through our bodies will dissipate our internal energy quickly while coherent thoughts, perceptions and emotions save us energy and keep our biological systems in sync. Ultimately nothing can take place without energy and when we come to a greater understanding and appreciation of the value of energy within our mental, emotional and physical systems, only then can we begin to govern our lives consciously and learn to channel and direct our energy in a way which works for us rather than against us.
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