The Energy Quota

This
leads me to my thought of the week-do you know your energy budget?

I was
talking with a friend whose sister has chronic fatigue and has dealt with it for
the past decade. She recently adopted a child and was as happy as ever. I
asked my friend, “how does she keep up with a young child with her chronic
fatigue?”. She replied, “she knows how to manage the limited energy that she
has”.

This is true for all of us whether we’re a teen or somebody dealing
with an illness. We all have an energy quota. The energy quota is a term I’ve
coined that relates to how much energy expenditure we can handle in a day. But
it’s a bit tricky as it can shift without us realizing it. We go to
work/school, we’re busy so we don’t really stop for lunch but just grab a bite.
We have a project with a deadline so we stay later than the standard time. This
results in us grabbing something on the way home that’s either take out food or
an easy to prepare meal at home. We’re already tired so we plop down on the
couch or head back to the laptop and as we find ourselves dozing off, we head
off to bed.

We’ve gone into debt with our own energy quota. We missed
the signs that our body was asking to stop, slow down or take a break. And, oh
yeah, could you put something of high nourishment into the tank in the
process?

I’ve been doing the energy quota dance for as long as I can
remember. It simply began with believing that I had an endless supply of energy
and that the quota was something that other people had, not people like
me who were always told “you have so much energy!”. Then it hit me.
It didn’t just sneak up and if it did, I continued to ignore the sneaking up,
but it slammed me with a full on body blow. The type of experience where your
body no longer whispers to you to slow down, but begins to scream at
you…yelling “I said S L O W D O W N!“. As a result instead of
boundless energy, I had boundless fatigue. Why was I always so tired? Why
didn’t coffee in the morning fix it?

It’s at moments like these that we
get to know our energy quota. We realize that we’ve overspent and now it’s time
to pay attention to our budget. For me, this included getting enough sleep by
going to bed around the same time every night and not burning the proverbial
candle at both ends. It also meant drinking way less alcohol and caffeine. It
meant becoming a better vegetarian and committing to practices that serve and
support my life rather than constantly testing its boundaries.

My yoga
practice has been the perfect antidote for overstepping my energy quota. It has
helped me establish ritualized practices where I connect to my higher self and
listen to my inner voice. I still tend to throw many balls into the air. I
feel life is short and an abundance of opportunities await. And I am still
constantly re-defining my quota, particularly as I age.