Getting your energy back (Part 1)
I thought that this year, we could kick off 2025 the right way: by talking about energy.
(After running the Thanksgiving-to-New Year’s social-and-magic-making Obstacle Course, isn’t that what we all need a bit more of?)
This January and February on the blog, I’m doing a 4-part series on Energy: How to get more of it, especially when you don’t have nearly enough of it.
I want to kick off this series with the most important message of all:
The first step to getting more energy is to tell yourself the truth about what exhausts you.
(This is, of course, one of the many ways in which energy work is intertwined with compass work).
In my observation, many of us aren’t telling ourselves the truth about what exhausts us. We have good reasons, of course:
Sometimes we feel guilty about what exhausts us.
Maybe parenthood is shockingly tiring for you. (Yes, you love your kids, but also, our weekends at home with them — the noise! The chaos! — are way more draining than being at work. But what does that mean about you as a parent?)Sometimes what exhausts us brings complexity.
If we acknowledged how completely draining our job is — how we don’t like what we spend 80% of our time doing, and we also don’t particularly like relating to our colleagues, either… then what? Would we have to find a new job? Well, that sounds exhausting, too… so maybe let’s just not think about any of it…Sometimes acknowledging what exhausts us… is exhausting
If you numb yourself (just a bit!) to make it through exhausting parts of your life, you wouldn’t be the first. Sometimes feeling our own exhaustion requires more energy than we feel we have to spare. And yet, how can we get out of it if we don’t acknowledge it?
…
There’s the obvious problem with avoiding the truth of what exhausts us — when we don’t face them, we don’t make changes. So these things keep exhausting us, putting us further and further into energy debt.
(Which takes longer and longer to get out of — energy debt, like financial debt, incurs interest.)
But there’s also the deeper, more insidious problem: whenever we disconnect from what we actually feel and think, we weaken our own compasses — which ends up reducing our ability to know anything true about ourselves in the future — including how the heck to get more energy.
…
My summary of this essay is also my suggestion for this week: tell yourself the truth about what is exhausting you. In your journal, in your head on a walk — as honestly and authentically as possible — make a list of all of the people, activities, places, and things that are exhausting you, and why.
You don’t have to tell anyone else.
You don’t have to justify it.
You don’t have to change anything (yet).
But — just for this week — please at least tell yourself the truth. That’s step #1.
Stay tuned, my friends.
As always, I’m rooting for you. You’ve got this.
Katie
p.s. Here's the link to learn more about working with me 1:1, and reach out to schedule a consult.
If this essay resonated with you, you'll love my newsletter. Sign up for free + get new ideas every Sunday!
