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Burnout + your "Energy Net Worth" (Your Engine, Part II)
I’m starting this year by sharing two core concepts that I find most helpful to my clients — our compass + our engine. We spent a few weeks on compasses (1, 2, 3), and now we’re talking about engines (here’s last week’s intro).
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One common engine problem is simply not having any fuel in the tank.
On one hand, most of us know that we need fuel when it comes to non-metaphorical engines. We’d certainly never drive a car with an empty tank on the freeway.
But a lot of us our driving ourselves on the freeway with empty tanks.
Today I want to introduce a concept I developed, that I often share with clients who are chronically driving on empty: the idea of Energy Net Worth.
The idea behind “Energy Net Worth” is that your energy level functions a lot like money — it’s not just about what you “earn” and “spend” today; it’s also about what you earnt and spent in the past.
If we have a positive Energy Net Worth, we have a build-up of extra energy reserves, for whatever life throws at us. Have you ever had something energetically “expensive” happen to you, but you emerged basically okay? You probably had plenty of energy in reserve, so it wasn’t a big deal to “spend” some.
(This happened to me, when my son first started having seizures and he had to spend a few days in the hospital. Scary, exhausting, but I had a pretty solid amount of energy in the bank. I was okay afterwards.)
By contrast, have you ever had an experience that wasn’t “objectively” tiring, but… totally exhausted you?
Maybe you had to do something at work that, on a normal day, would be okay — or even easy! — but on this day, just seemed impossible. At that point, your Energy Net Worth was probably close to zero… or you may have been already in “Energy Debt.”
The point here is not what happens to your energy in a given day. We all have days that are energetically expensive, for one reason or another. The point is overall.
*Overall,* Do you have enough reserves for what you need? Or are you perpetually exhausted?
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If you laughed at the concept of even having energy reserves – if you thought “well, that’s impossible” or “that sounds like a pipe dream, Katie” – you’re definitely not alone.
Most of my clients are, financially, quite responsible. They have 401k’s, they are thoughtful about investment strategies or budgeting. They might have debt, but it is thoughtfully chosen – a carefully-researched decision to buy a house, for example.
On the other hand, many, many of my clients are basically living paycheck-to-paycheck, with maxed out credit cards, when it comes to their energy.
And this has huge – and I mean huge — implications across their lives.
(And Energy Debt, like financial debt, can be complex to pay off. Because when you’re truly in energy debt, there is typically interest. More on that here.)
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For today, I want to invite you to reflect:
How is your Energy Net Worth? Is it positive? Neutral? Negative?
Do you give your Energy Net Worth as much attention, care, and long-term planning as you give your Financial Net Worth? Why or why not? Do you like that prioritization?
As always, I’m rooting for you in the week ahead. You’ve got this.
Katie
p.s. Would you like to work with me in 2024? Most of my clients improve their Energy Net Worth, while we simultaneously work on everything else that matters to them (improving their focus, revitalizing their marriages, re-starting their exercise habits, making that big career move, and more.)
I’m offering 4-month and 6-month coaching packages. My past client, Julie, recently said: “Working with Katie was one of the best decisions I've made in the past few years.”
Learn more about working with me 1:1 here.
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