One principle of this article has been that the habits you create for yourself, around food, exercise, and relationships, are the raw material from which you get your energy. Some of these habits will increase your energy, and some will do the opposite. Of course, the trick is knowing which is which.
And that’s only part of the trick. Many of us are fully aware of habits that are energy draining, if not outright self-destructive. But changing them is another thing. (I often say in workshops that I’ve yet to meet a person who smokes because he didn’t get the memo that coffin nails cause cancer. He’s not smoking because someone forgot to tell him it’s a rally bad thing!)
The point is, changing an energy-draining habit is about a lot more than just getting intellectual information, It’s about doing. One thing I’ve learned from watching dog trainers over the years is that if you want to break a bad habit, you have to substitute another one. (My pit bull puppy, Emily, thinks having a tug-of-war with expensive suede couch pillows is the most fun you can have in the world. It was a lot easier to break her of the habit when I showed her a substitute behavior that accomplished the same goal – tussling with a chew toy).
Substitution as a technique for changing a habit is actually a principle I first learned in graduate school psychology. Let’s say you’ve got a toddler who tends to have a tantrum in the middle of Wal-Mart when he can’t get you to buy his favorite toy. You’ll have a much easier time breaking him of that endearing habit if, at the same time, you can offer him a different activity, one that is actually positively rewarded.
Behavioral psychologists call this “extinguishing” and “conditioning” – you extinguish the tantrum by removing any positive reinforcement, and condition in a replacement behavior that does produce a desired reward.
So how do we extinguish” our own energy-draining habits and “condition in” new, more productive and energizing ones?
Simple, Create a plan B.
Make a List of Goals
Life is full of choices, and some of those choices lead to more energy in your life. Some…. Not so much.
There are, of course, the everyday choices shorts or pants, sushi or Italian, the 405 Freway or Sepulvada (okay, that’s a Los Angeles inside joke that only people who spend four hours a day stuck in traffic could understand). And then there are the bigger, life-altering decisions – having a child, moving to another city, going to law school.
The more mundane choices can be decided by weather, whim, or traffic reports. But to make the really important decisions – those that determine the direction your life will take – you need to know where you are heading by mapping out your future.
There is nothing more frustrating or energy draining than living a life without direction. Fortunately, help is on the way, and it comes in the simple form of a tool called a personal road map.
TAKE THE ROAD TO ENERGY
If first learned this terrific energy-boosting “exercise” from life coach Roz Van Meter, a freqeutn guest on my old New York radio show (www.coachroz.com). It’s a great way to create your own road map, and you start by checking your own internal compass.
Take two sheets of paper and on one write the heading, “What do I want more of in my life”, and on the second, “What do I want less of in my life”. If you take the time to really examine these questions, you’ll begin to recognize what’s meaningful and what’s meaningless, (Hint: The meaningless stuff drains your energy in direct proportion to how meaningless it is).
The next step is to use that information and write down three goals in each of the major areas of your life – relationships, career, health, spirituality, financial, and personal. Make them real. Make them specific, measurable, and truly meaningful to you. (Example: Don’t just say, “Lose weight” – say, “Lose 10 pounds by May 5 at 5:00 p.m. That’s specific actionable, and measurable, and has a way better chance of being achieved).
FOILING THE BRAIN
You know the old saying “I’ll believe it when I see it”? Well the first place you have to “see” your goal is in you remind. This is a cornerstone principle of everything I believe about energy, vitality, well-being, transformation, and health. Remembers, everything starts with your thoughts, everything from weight loss to good health to great relationships to success in business.
It all starts by simply visualizing yourself actually achieving your goals.
See, the interesting thin about your mind is that at a deep, other-than-conscious level, it really can’t distinguish between reality and thoughts. Your subsconscious mind is actually kind of dumb. For the subconscious, everything is black or white, on or off, yes or no. It doesn’t recognize shades of gray. That’s been demonstrated may times by brain scans. If you show someone and actual real-life object, such as an orange, for example, and then you have her close her eyes and imagine the same orange, her brain scan will show virtually identical activity in the same places of the brain, whether the object is real or just imagined. At some level, your brain doesn’t know the difference.
And you can use this fact to your advantage, in myriad ways, not the least of which is to increase your energy.
VISUALIZE SUCCESS
It’s really simple. If you set up an idea of a goal, see it in your mind’s eye as though it’s happening, and put some mental energy and focus on it, you’ve actually sent a message to your subconscious that helps make the goal more real. It’s the principle of creative visualization in action, and it works. Studies have shown, for example, that basketball players who “practice” shots in their mind without actually touching the ball score more baskets than those who don’t visualize.
By committing yourself to living a more meaningful life, and setting goals that move you in the right direction, you’ll gain the energy to tackle whatever obstacles you encounter. Many of my clients who’ve undertaken this exercise look back on the goals they wrote in their journal a few years ago and have been astonished to find that they’ve achieved a large number of them.
When that happens, it’s time to writ down some new goals.
So take a tip from the wisest and most successful people on the planet – set goals. Make lists. Imagine. Visualize. Put some mental energy into it.
And then, as you work toward accomplishing those goals, your energy will take off.
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