Day 21:       Finding The Energy

    How many times have you watched someone and thought, “Where does she get her energy?”  I think people get their energy from being excited about what they are doing.  Do I have any proof of that?  No, but someone somewhere has probably done a study on it.  But I can give you anecdotal proof. 

    What are your kids like the night before you are all set to go off on vacation?  Are they wired?  Is it hard to get them to go to bed, much less to sleep?  Are you a little keyed up too?  (You might physically be exhausted, but you have an adrenaline buzz going, too.)

    Have you ever been reading a good book and stayed up late into the night to finish it?  Normally you wouldn’t stay up that late, but you were excited about seeing how the story would end.  You were interested and engaged and you got the extra energy because you were doing something you wanted to do. 

    Now, we can’t always be excited about every activity that we need to do.  Quite frankly, I don’t care how white a detergent gets my whites, I am not going to dance around the laundry room about it.  But I can find the energy to complete a task if the completion means that I can then do something I want to do.  For instance,  I have to work on website copy for a friend.  He is not in a particularly exciting industry and I am not particularly motivated.  BUT, once I clear his work off my desk, I can go work on my novel.  THAT is exciting to me.  So I can use the energy that I get from that excitement to carry me past the lethargy of cranking out website copy for my friend.

    There are days when you feel like a slug.  My friend Lisa Marie calls them “Mashed Potato Days”.  She says the entire day feels like she is trying to walk through thigh-deep mashed potatoes.  But there are probably reasons why you are feeling like a slug.  Did you get enough sleep the night before?  Are you under a lot of stress?  Are you feeling a bit blue?  If you can isolate what is going on with yourself mentally and physically, you can probably resolve the sluggishness. 

    Have you noticed that certain foods make you drowsy?  For me, sugar causes an energy crash about half an hour after I have it.  Now sugar is one of my four basic food groups (caffeine, chocolate and breads are the other three).  But I know that if I have a lot to do in the afternoon, I will avoid eating those cookies that are RIGHT NOW CALLING TO ME and wait until later this evening when I am either doing something low-key or vegging out with the television.  Caffeine in some people creates a crash effect.  They crash and have more caffeine and keep trying to crank up energy. 

    I am not a health food/vitamin person by any means.  (Look in my kitchen.  I am a cookies/cakes/wine/chips person.)  But when I find I am in an energy slump, I will take some liquid B vitamin.  It tastes awful, but it does the trick.  My friend Bobbie likes the little powder packets of B vitamin that she throws into her water.  Same net result.  Take a look at your eating habits and see what foods give you energy and what foods cause a crash.  As an adult, you should be able to pass on or delay eating foods that make you sluggish and take advantage of the foods that give you energy.  Be smart about what you are putting in your body. 

    A lot of times you are tired because you are dehydrated.  Eight to ten glasses of water a day isn’t just for dieting.  Being hydrated makes your body work more efficiently.  If your body is working more efficiently, then you will have more energy.  Go figure. 

    And of course, one of the best ways to have energy is to exercise on a regular basis.  Kids run around all day and have a ton of energy.  When you were a kid you would run or ride your bike just for the FUN of it.  Now it is exercise and something we have to do.  That sucks!  Stop thinking of exercise as exercise and go do something fun.  Yeah, you should do forty minutes of cardio four times a week, but if you aren’t into it, you aren’t going to do it.  So I say just go have active fun.  Later on, if you want, you can add exercise in, but it will probably be something targeted to help you become better at your fun activity. 

    So, can you find a few things to help you gain energy?  I hope so.  I think the most important thing is to enjoy what you are doing.  And that is what we are working towards!