This is the list of energy-draining behaviours that we sometimes think are healthy, but are not. I\’d like you to go down the list and either place a tick or across where you think you can improve yourself. This will become a critical part of your ongoing coaching. But let\’s set out right now to stop the loss and the waste of the greatest gift you have in your life: your energy. Far more important than time itself.
- Unsupervised meditation.
- Talking to friends and family about your problems.
- Blaming other people for your stress.
- Feeling like a victim.
- Saying the word got to too frequently.
- Feeling like you have to do things.
- Saying the word should frequently.
- Sitting at your desk working for more than 50 minutes without standing up.
- Back-to-back meetings with no space in between for a cup of tea or a break.
- Coming home from work but still worried about work. (not inspired or grateful for the day)
- Talking to your spouse about your work problems.
- Seeking random opinions about your health.
- Not having a Plan B for your job or your income.
- Living off fumes rather than having a reserve in the bank.
- Running through nature rather than smelling the roses on the way.
- Solving all family problems through talk.
- Exercising indoors.
- Following some spiritual tradition that does not include wealth creation.
- Learning about how to live through the Internet or books.
- Criticising and judging other people.
- Resentment or remorse about the past.
- Continually talking about how good it will be when…..
- Lacking discipline around food and alcohol.
- Over-exercising.
- Exercising on top of tiredness.
- Sleep deprivation and having no measure of the quality of your sleep other than tiredness.
- Saying things like it\’s just for a short period of time.
- Feeling like you are a loser.
- Staying in a marriage or a business where you are bored.
- Turning your exercise routine into a competition in order to motivate you.
- Comparing yourself to another person.
- Lost hope of a vision manifesting.
- The satisfaction that you have created what you dreamt.
- Not having the time to kiss or hug a tree.
- Resentment carried from the home to the office or from the office to the home.
- Running away from trouble.
- Exercising to lose weight.
- More than 90 minutes of television a day.
- Untidy clothes and workspace, home and family space.
- Trying to live vicariously through children and, therefore, being very strict with them.
- Being proud.
- Feeling uncertain and insecure either at work, in health or in relationships.
- Replacing true happiness with gratification.
- Guilt.
- Fear of the future.
- Body pain, emotional pain, financial pain, family pain, and career pain.
- In gratitude for what you\’ve got the way it is.
- Grief.
- Eating nightshades and eating too late at night.
- Eating large meals at night.
- Overweight.
- Lost Mojo and lost sensual appetite.
- Typing
- Staring at a computer screen for more than three hours a day.
- Working under fluorescent lights and in Open Plan offices.
- Being dictated to by family and or spouse about what you do on the weekend.
- Too many priorities including the priorities of others.
- Working on low-priority tasks and thinking this is positive.
- Anxiety that causes insomnia.
- Feeling superior to others because of success.
- Feeling inferior to others because of a failure.
- Trying to please people who do not determine the success of your highest value.
- Not getting your feet wet or dirty daily on the earth or the sand.
- Looking down.
- Lost sense of humour.
- Sitting or walking or standing with a hunched chest, hunched back.
- Wearing clothes that are way below your station in life.
- Worrying about what other people think about you and your family and your wealth.
- Trying to fix a friend. Trying to fix a family member.
- Nothing exciting to look forward to.
- Holidays that you plan and are excited to look forward to.
- Working for the money.
- Wishing you were somebody else.
- Trying to fix your kids instead of the problem, which is you.
- No sense of purpose in life other than your own personal happiness./The happiness of others.
- Oversleeping
- Listening to advice you didn\’t ask for or pay for.
- Getting angry or frustrated and not doing anything about it.
- Trying to change other people.
- Waiting for Sunday or the end of the day to recover from a weeks work.
- Not exercising during work time.
- Taking things personally in a business setting.
- Negativity.
- Self or other criticism.
- Too much dairy.
- Eating too much sugar and fast foods. This includes white bread.
- Being codependent on another person for goalsetting and vision creating.
- Anger
- Being continually interrupted while you are trying to concentrate.
- Not seeing beauty in the world any more, focused on the news and the bad news.
- False hope.
- Lost hope.
- Self-critical and negative self-talk when things go wrong.
There are another 3000 more boxes to tick but I think these other ones we can handle relatively easily in your coaching journey. You can see from this that all seven areas of life can drain at energy from a body. It is interesting to note that sometimes a person who has enough body fat to fuel six people running a marathon can feel exhausted and tired. What does demonstrate is how much our energy is dependent, not on food or fuel, but on thoughts, words and actions in thedirection of our vision inspiration and purpose. It is also important to note that in the list above every single human being on earth fluctuates in and out of all of those things. Nobody is immune from those states. This might surprise you.
However, what we want to prevent is any of those things becoming habitual. What is okay for 20 minutes or even 10 minutes is not okay for 10 days or 20 days. And this is the key. Prevention is better than cure. There is no such thing as a free lunch, and so if we don\’t monitor these energy-sucking behaviours, we will become exhausted and then realise something is wrong. But if we want to prevent them and stay young and vital and energised it\’s wise to do as much as we can to prevent any of those things becoming habits, and accidentally sabotaging our life and work.