If you want to get ahead in your career, stop protecting your energy.
Gasp! Clutch your pearls! But we must protect our energy! I’m going to challenge this. Stay with me, new-agey mindful peeps. Breathe.
In recent years, we have been told to protect our energy. Social media clung to this notion with fervor and sold us (women especially) all kinds of products in the name of “self-care”. Excuse me while I secretly buy another miracle face mask from the Dead Sea of Immortal Fairy Tears.
But in all seriousness, after an era of exhausted working mothers, young women entering the workforce are being careful not to fall into the traps of previous generations. We’re taught to set boundaries, learn to say “no”, and treat ourselves with conveniently curated consumerism. Enter bubble-bath products.
I get it. I’ve participated in hustle culture. There are times when I’ve had 3 jobs. I’ve chomped at the bit to return to work after having children. I’ve worked all day, then come home and worked some more. I’ve sat my children in front of the TV just to give myself a few uninterrupted minutes of household chores. I’ve driven to work nauseous and tired after chemotherapy treatments. I’ve been exhausted and carried on. I’m not proud of everything. If I’d watched myself from the outside, I would have run to the bathroom for a self-care beauty bath to protect my energy too.
Bearing witness to hustle culture, the pendulum starts to swing the other way. We’re told to protect our energy. But here’s the challenge: you won’t get what you want by protecting your energy. Here’s why (queue metaphor):
Imagine your energy in the form of marbles. You have 10 marbles that represent your energy. You might divvy up those marbles in relation to how much energy you put towards the important things in your life. Let’s say you have 4 marbles of energy for work, 3 for family, 2 for health, and 1 for hobbies/fun. That’s 10 marbles spread across the most important aspects of your life. By protecting your energy, you’re constantly assessing the distribution of the marbles. When your boss asks for more of your energy, you look at your marbles and decide where to borrow the extra marble for work. Will you borrow a marble from family? Or sacrifice going to the gym for health? Or give up time with friends? Or will you protect your marbles by turning down the request or opportunity at work, keeping each marble securely in its place? In this model, your mindset is fixed on a limited amount of energy that must be protected.
However, if we shift our mindset from protecting to directing our energy, the marble model changes. Again, imagine you have 10 marbles representing your energy. But this time you choose one category at a time for all the marbles. In one cycle of your life, you may choose to direct 10 marbles toward health, which boosts your energy and multiplies the marbles. Now you have 20 marbles instead of 10. In another cycle of your life, you may choose to direct a majority of the marbles toward work, which leads to a promotion. This again boosts your energy and multiplies the marbles. Due to your promotion, you now have extra money to take your family on vacation. Your marbles multiply again. And so on. When you direct your energy toward the most impactful things, energy multiplies and comes back to you in spades.
In directing our energy, we multiply it. And when we multiply it, we expand the possibilities. But how do you do it without burning out? Here are 3 steps to take to direct your energy to get what you really want.
- Take Inventory. This step shows up in a lot of processes, and I believe we must be honest with where we are before we know where to go. Think about where you are currently directing energy. Most times we realize that we are directing too much energy toward things that aren’t going to get us what we want. Make a promise to yourself to take that energy and direct it towards a more positive pillar in your life.
- Ask. Once you know where your energy is going, you must decide where you want it to go in the future. So let’s get a little woo-woo. Soak in your rose bubble-bath with the Dead Sea of Immortal Fairy Tears facemask, look inside, and ask your energy where it wants to go. I am not a meditation guru, but stay with me for a moment. When we get still, invoke universal knowledge, divine energy, internal wisdom, prayer…we can ask our energy where it wants to go and it will tell us. Get quiet, ask and listen.
- Line up the dominos. Once you know where you want to stop and start directing energy, it’s time to get strategic. To be clear, this is not prioritization. It’s a little different. When you look at the major pillars in your life: career, family, health, finances, community, etc., you need to decide which one will have the greatest impact on the others. Imagine lining up a row of dominos. The first domino will impact the second, which will impact the third…and so on. For example, someone struggling with health issues might decide that every other aspect of their life will get better if they take care of health first. Getting healthy will result in more quality time with family which will lead to better connections which will lead to more confidence which will lead to better career opportunities. And yet another might be in a financial bind and decide that everything else will get easier if they get their finances straight first. Again, this is NOT prioritization. Even if you choose finances, it does not mean finances are more important than family, but it may mean that directing energy towards finances will make the other pillars easier.
Once you’ve figured out where you are, dug deep, and lined up the dominos, begin purposefully directing your energy towards the most impactful action. You might be surprised that purposeful direction multiplies your energy. Don’t protect, direct. But most importantly, don’t lose your marbles. 😉
