Today marks one week of my freedom and aliveness project! This is my own personal experiment to explore what creates more happiness, freedom, and “aliveness” by focusing on a different area each month. This month’s focus is energy. I’m focusing on noticing what fuels it, what drains it, and how I can cultivate more of it. This week, I’ve noticed feeling mentally drained, and after a bit of reflection, I discovered a few “energy leaks”. That were zapping my sense of happiness, freedom, and aliveness.

Finding ways to plug these energy leaks is important. After all, energy is everything…if too many things suck energy, I won’t have enough of it to pursue things in other areas of my life that contribute to happiness, freedom, and aliveness. Energy is the foundation!

In this post, I’m going to share what is and isn’t working in my quest to improve energy. I’ll also share what I learned about my energy leaks. I invite you to get in tune with your own!

Cultivating More Energy – What’s Working and What’s Not

In my last post, I shared what I’d be focusing on this month: eating better, moving my body, hydration, sleep, self-care, and clutter (both physical and mental).

Nutrition

I’ve been able to get back on track nutrition-wise after the month of August, which was filled with routine-busters like vacation and an unexpected illness. Most days, my protein intake is where I want it to be, and I’m doing fairly well with hydration and staying present while eating food. I definitely notice when these things are not in place, and now that they are back on track, I feel more awake (usually), my body isn’t as stiff, and I am more easily able to determine if I am hungry or not. Thus, less mindless snacking. Wins!

Movement

I’ve been walking my dog more, which has significantly increased my step count and “relaxation movement” (i.e. movement that isn’t done with the intention of “working out”). I don’t know if this gives me more energy or not (I am already really consistent with a workout program), but just knowing that I moved my body instead of sitting around is mentally a little freeing.  Same with getting back on track with consistent workouts. I notice when I don’t work out, I feel a lot more sluggish and judgmental of myself, which is draining in and of itself. Being consistent just feels good.

Sleep

I’ve also been doing better at going to bed earlier. This is hard for me because I have a habit of doing my New York Times games before I turn the lights off, and sometimes it’s hard to say no to “just one more crossword”. But this is helping me wake up feeling more refreshed in the morning. I have a 5:30 am wakeup call, after all!

Noticing Mental Drain

One thing I have noticed is that while my physical energy feels pretty good so far, I’ve been feeling mentally drained. I did some reflecting to find the culprit, and I was surprised to notice one energy leak I hadn’t anticipated…

The Big A-ha — Mental Clutter as an Energy Leak

Mental clutter.

People who know me well know that I tend to dive into a project head-first, into the deep end. I’ll take in all kinds of information, set grand expectations for myself, and make the project infinitely more complicated than it needs to be. This time, I found myself falling into this trap again!

When I noticed feeling mentally depleted, I wasn’t sure why. I was overwhelmed with all of the things I was trying to track and pay attention to. If I’m being honest, I was also feeling pressure (self-inflicted) about showing up here to share the project. I noticed that I was thinking a lot about doing it “right”, even worrying a little about what people would think of me sharing this project. 

My big a-ha moment was when I realized that beneath the surface, the real energy leak wasn’t just too many to-dos – it was self-judgment about not being able to keep up, organize everything in my head, and not being enough. 

How Self-Judgment Drains Energy

Self-judgment is sneaky. It’s common to have judgmental thoughts about ourselves without realizing we have them. The thing is, judgmental thoughts create feelings like inadequacy, fear, worry, and anxiety. I don’t know about you, but while there isn’t anything wrong with having those emotions, I don’t find them very motivating or inspiring. 

Self-judgment is exhausting and drains our energy because it keeps our minds spinning and stuck in criticism and comparison. We burn mental energy without solving anything. When we’re stuck here, we can even have more judgment about being stuck! It can become a cycle that’s hard to get out of.

Self-judgment creates tension in the body, which is part of our fight-or-flight response.  When our body is full of tension, we don’t function efficiently. Tension depletes our physical energy.

Self-judgment also disconnects us from the present moment and things that really matter to us. Instead of being, we’re busy evaluating what’s wrong or what we should be doing differently. 

How Self-judgment Showed Up for Me

For example, when I kicked off this project, I did my usual gung-ho thing and dove right in. I created a special tracker in this app I use (Notion, for anyone who is into it!) and added all kinds of things to track. After a couple of days of this, I noticed that my physical energy levels were pretty good, but I felt mentally tired. I wasn’t sure about the disconnect, so I reflected on this by doing what I always do when I notice I’m feeling drained and stuck. I do a “brain cleanout”. 

Brain Cleanouts to Uncover Sneaky Self-judgment

A brain cleanout is kind of like when you carve a pumpkin and scoop out all the guts, except instead of cleaning out the pumpkin stuff, you’re cleaning out all of the thoughts in your brain. You’re putting pen to paper and listing off all of the stuff up there. To do items, of course, but also thoughts. What are you worried about? What are you afraid of? What judgments are coming up (about yourself or other people/things)? Get it ALL out. 

During my brain dump, I looked at what I had written.

I’m doing it again, I’ve made this too complicated. Ugh. When will I ever learn how to just do things the simple way?

How am I ever going to follow through? I’ll probably end up just letting this  fade away like everything else I dive into this hard.

Third day in a row I didn’t drink enough water. Damn I suck at this.

I don’t know what to write on my blog. What if people don’t think this project is interesting?

Try those thoughts on for yourself… they don’t feel super motivating, do they? 

Nope. 

It was here that I realized a lot of my drained feeling was coming from being judgmental of how I was showing up to this project. 

Sealing the Leak — Shifting from Judgment to Curiosity

I’ve been working on sealing up this energy leak, and I wanted to share some things that I think are helpful. 

Mindfulness

First, I’ve been working on mindfulness of my thoughts. This is so important. When I notice judgmental thoughts come up, I pause to name this. “I notice I’m judging myself a lot here.”  Simply noticing and naming our feelings and thoughts is really powerful because it helps us create a little distance from our thoughts. These are just thoughts I’m having… not who I actually AM. This is just what’s crossing my mind right now.

Curiosity

Curiosity is a great tool. Ask yourself, what’s really going on here? Or, what do I need right now? Sometimes, when we see the misguided logic that our brain is using to create its thoughts, it’s easier to let go of those thoughts or shift them to more helpful ones. 

Choose Better Thoughts

Reframing thoughts is also incredibly powerful. I noticed the expectations I was placing on myself were a bit unrealistic and unnecessary. My reframe is that I’m reminding myself that this project is an experiment that I am participating in on the fly. Live. In real time. This isn’t a performance I’m hoping to get applause for.

Mental Decluttering

Brain cleanouts are a way of mentally decluttering. I can choose between reacting to judgmental thoughts or following the path toward what really matters now. If I had chosen the path my thoughts wanted me to take, I might have just scrapped the project because it feels a little edgy to me! But it’s important to me to do this work for myself, as well as to share it with you. It’s important work.

Self-Compassion

Finally, it’s important to lean into self-compassion when we notice self-judgment. It’s not helpful to stay stuck in thoughts that are focused on how we’re not being or doing enough. What IS helpful is to swap out those thoughts with more compassionate thoughts. You’ll feel better, and when we feel better, we take very different action than when we feel crappy. Plus, research shows that being self-compassionate is way more effective when it comes to motivation and productivity than being self-deprecating.

Also, think about choosing gentleness over gritting it out. Sometimes, conserving energy means letting go of the push to do more. In my case, I let go of some of the things I wanted to track. I simplified. It feels good.

Final Thoughts on Energy Leaks

The things I discussed above are all helpful in sealing the energy leak of self-judgment. I am already feeling less drained. A couple of other things I noticed that boosted my mental energy are: 

1.  Following the “1-minute rule”. Basically, if a task will take 1 minute or less, I do it in that moment. No waiting. It’s so simple, but it’s been a game-changer!

2. Watching the “shoulds”. For example, instead of saying I should really be drinking more water, or I shouldn’t have drank last night, I find it to be more helpful to say I feel better when I drink more water, or I feel better when I don’t drink during the week. 

It just feels more empowering. Like I’m making a choice.

Remember, thoughts create feelings, and feelings can influence behavior. So if I feel empowered, I’m going to take actions that align with feelings of empowerment. If I feel defeated, I’ll take actions that align with feeling defeated.

So, friends, the big takeaway here is that if you’re in the market for more energy, remember it isn’t just about physical energy, and energy leaks aren’t just about physical habits. They’re often about how we treat ourselves. 

I invite you to reflect on your own experience with self-judgment. Where might self-judgment be quietly draining your energy?  I’d love to hear. Leave a comment or drop me an email! 

Want more?

You can follow along in these places:

Instagram (@kortney.a.rivard)
Facebook (/kortneyrivardwellnesscoaching)
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