For some time now, I’ve been moving through life thinking that the only way to recover the energy expended in the performance of my daily work was to take time away, be it a holiday or a personal day or whatever. Ironically, like many people, the busier I got the less likely I was to actually take time off. As a result, my own energy balance kept dropping lower and lower, negatively affecting the quality of my work and my commitment to those things I find important.
We all do things that consume energy, often times in excess of our personal stores or reserves. My wise friend told me that time off, in and of itself, may not be sufficiently reinvigorating. In fact, time off almost never provides enough of an ongoing boost to fully regenerate our emotional strength. The key is to build time into our daily work to do things that give energy back. In other words, we need to invest in those things we enjoy and that give us personal satisfaction in return.
This is a very simple concept, yet I find it profound in many ways. In my own life I need to look beyond the tasks and activities demanded of me each day and instead look to create opportunities to work on things I truly enjoy. I should devote a portion of my efforts to activities in which the sheer doing of them promotes a sense of achievement, accomplishment, or in my case, the opportunity to work with others.
For I find that completion of tasks never fully rewards me in the way that working with, through and on behalf of others does. Those occasions when I am able to engender trust, build a sense of shared purpose and truly see the world through the eyes of others are, in fact, my energy replenishment program. And over the next several months I intend to better understand how I can muster the discipline and courage needed to make this purposeful energy balance a part of my everyday life.
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