Preserving Your Energy
Updated: Sep 19
Have you ever watched one of those talent shows where the guy is spinning plates on poles and making sure none of them drop? I only get excited when they're about to fall, but I'm weird like that. It's a good example of what I'm going to cover today. This article is about dropping your "spinning plates".
When you think about the energy you have on a regular basis, I want you to think about spinning plates. Western society will have you conditioned/brainwashed to believe that the more plates you have spinning, the better it is. You'll be more balanced, more productive and more streamlined. They coined the term "multi-tasking" a long time ago to brainwash people into doing more. There are stupid little apps that you can download for work/life balance as if entering data into the app is going to revolutionize the way you live your life. Also be aware of the way they have carefully phrased the term "work/life balance". It doesn't take a genius to understand that the "powers that be" are trying to equate work and life in that phrase, but work and life are NOT equal (without life, there is no work, but without work, there is still life and a fucking happy one at that). Work is only a part of life, albeit an annoyingly large one, but still only a part. They're wanting to impart and force upon you the "importance" of working (being a slave) and hoping that you'll happily succumb to the involuntary intrusion of this anathema and integrate it into your waking hours. To be more accurate, they could have coined the phrase "work/freedom" balance because work equates to slavery and freedom is, well, fucking freedom. I understand we all have to work on this planet, so we do what we have to do to not lose our source of income, but there are still ways to reclaim your energy without ending up living in a cardboard box under the overpass.
Ok, let's get back to dropping your spinning plates. Let those fuckers come crashing down. The sound of shattering ceramic will be cathartic. So how many plates do you have spinning? Each plate you have spinning drains a bit of your life force. Have you ever thought about this? Are you ok with that? Much in the way that they've somehow guesstimated that smoking a cigarette takes 7 minutes off of your life, a lot of cigarette smokers still don't give a shit. So even if you listed all the "spinning plates" that are slowly killing you each day, do you give a shit? If so, read on.
Every person you have to interact with in your life or activity that you have to do, saps your energy. If you don't like my spinning plate analogy, you can also think of it like being in south Texas during the summer and trying to keep your house cool. Each person or activity is like an open door or window. Some are cracked open and some are wide open. You can't keep your place cool with that much cold air being sucked out. Close your doors and windows and you'll start to notice how much more energy you have.
So how do you drop your plates and close your doors and windows? This is by no means a comprehensive list, but it's a good start.
Learn to say NO. It's amazing how one little word can carry such power. People are afraid to assert themselves and say no. I used to be one of those people. People with ulterior motives who sense this will take advantage of you when they know you won't say no. They may use guilt to coerce you to help them. Keep in mind that guilt is a form of covert control. It is the yin manifestation of control (the yang manifestation is someone point blankly telling you or in some cases physically forcing you to do something). When someone asks for a favor, politely tell them no and leave it at that. You DO NOT owe them any explanation. If not giving an explanation makes you feel uncomfortable, then simply say you have too much on your plate (heh) right now and you would rather not talk about it. If they continue to push and prod, stand your ground and make it THEIR problem to deal with.
Put an end to relationships that don't serve you. Look through your list of contacts and make a note of how many you have accumulated over the years. If you had 1-3 months to live, who would you spend your last days connecting with? Using the 80/20 rule, you could probably cut out 80+ percent of them without any detrimental effects washing over into your life. If you aren't familiar with the 80/20 rule, The 80/20 Principle by Richard Koch explains it all. (I can summarize it here: You deal with 20 percent of the people in your contacts list 80 percent of the time. You spend 80 percent of your time in the same 20 percent of your house. You wear 20 percent of the clothes in your closet 80 percent of the time. You drive the same 20 percent of roads in your city 80 percent of the time. Get the gist? Sometimes it's 70/30 and other times it's closer to 90/10, but 80/20 is the average). So to continue, make a list of people that are no longer in alignment with you and your path. You'll find that the effort it takes to maintain the relationship exceeds what you get out of the interaction. Keep only those people that resonate at your frequency. When you're with those people, there is an equal exchange of energy. You appreciate each other. You value having them in your life and they should value you to the same degree. Cut out psychic vampires and narcissists. Once you have your list, the final step of this is to cut cords with those people. It's one thing to "delete" people from your life, but just because you have quit talking to them or blocked them doesn't mean that the connection has been truly severed. You have energetic cords connecting you with everyone in your life (more on cord cutting in a future post). Some of these cords are vibrant and strong and loving while others are withered, dark and drain your energy. Cutting cords can cause a tremendous shift in your life because the people you are connected to will feel it unconsciously and probably reach out to you. The energy vampires will feel disconnected because their source of energy is gone. If you've cut the wrong cords with good people, they may feel a sense of loss or worry and call to check on you. On a side note, I'm not a fan of people attempting shamanic work on themselves after reading a couple internet articles. If shamanic work was really that easy and accessible to everyone, there wouldn't be a need for shamans, but proceed at your own risk. I would advise you to find a shaman to do this for you. It can be done remotely and is just as effective as doing it in person.
Quit wasting your time with useless emails and texts. Everyone has friends that send out inane, time-wasting links regularly. I suppose you can save those for when you're "dropping off kids at the pool", but at least quit feeling the need to watch or respond to them right when they're sent. The incessant notifications that are sent out by every motherfucking device today literally demolish the harmony of your nervous system. You can't sit in peace for 15 fucking minutes or take a shit without your phone pinging you about every goddamned thing that IT feels is important. Every website you visit wants to send you notifications. FUCK. THAT. SHIT. YOU determine what is important in your life, not some piece of lifeless technology designed to control you. Unsubscribe from all the stupid companies that feel the need to spam you every goddamned day. It simply isn't necessary. And unless your work absolutely requires it, DO NOT allow emails to go to your phone or at the very minimum, turn off email notifications. You're a grown-ass man/woman. YOU determine when YOU feel like reading an email. I guarantee that most of the time, it isn't urgent anyway. If it was that fucking urgent, the person should have called you. Learn how to use the Do-Not--Disturb feature on your phone or just turn that fucker off. You can thank me later.
Stop doing things out of obligation. Obligation is guilt's twin. It's another form of covert control and those two little assholes sometimes come at you together for a ONE-TWO punch to make you do shit you don't want to and steal your power. Fuck those fucking fuckers! During my personal quest to recapture my power and preserve my energy years ago, I quit attending weddings, funerals and birthday celebrations. To this day, I still don't give a rat's ass even if it's family-oriented because I had broken that experiential loop (see the article on experiential loops) which makes it much easier. Of course, if it's important to you to go to one of those events, then go! But more often than not, it's not really that important to you. Here's a good test: If the date arrives and you aren't fucking jazzed about going, then there's your clue. Stay the fuck home. True friends will understand and still be your friend anyway. Shitty friends might start resenting you for your choices, but that just makes it easier for you to practice number 2 above. Only do things that you TRULY want to do and ignore the rest.
Learn how to set boundaries and inform others of them. Being a triple Pisces, my "boundaries" used to be nebulous and ephemeral at best. It took quite some effort on my part to learn how to set them, how to tell people about them and how to enforce them. I used to get calls and texts at all odd hours and people knew they could depend on me. Fuck that. I didn't get anything out of it except BEING USED. Now my true friends know that I enjoy my private time and unless it's a goddamned emergency, not to bother me with it. Even if it IS a goddamned emergency, I've had friends tell me that they ultimately figured it out on their own with no harsh consequences. I was left alone in peace and they learned how to put out their own fires. Win-Win.
I spent a lot of my energy writing this and it cut into my nap time, so I hope at least some of you will benefit from this.