57: Fueling Your Purpose: How to Protect Your Physical, Mental, and Emotional Energy

Show Notes:

You have your values as a compass, but if you’re constantly running on empty, you’ll never reach your destination. In this final episode of the series, we dive into the most vital component of living with intentionality: managing your energy. If you’re a busy professional or individual on the verge of burnout, this episode reveals the simple strategies for protecting your physical, mental, and emotional fuel so you can show up fully for your work, your family, and your purpose without sacrificing your health.

In This Episode, You’ll Learn:

• The three non-negotiable buckets of energy you must manage to perform at your best.

• How to protect your mental energy by embracing single-tasking and rejecting the draining trap of multitasking.

• The importance of setting intentional boundaries to guard your emotional energy (and why caring for yourself is not selfish).

• Why the most effective life isn’t about doing everything, but about having the fuel to do the few things that matter most.

• The final action step: how to perform an Energy Audit to identify what’s draining and what’s replenishing you.

Resources Mentioned:

• Intentional Choice Guide: A resource to help you clarify your core values and make better choices, available at nickmaizy.com.

• Series Recap: This episode concludes the series on intentional living:

  • Ep. 55: The Myth of Time Management (The Clock)

  • Ep. 56: Your Values as Your Compass (The Compass)

Your Action Step: The 48-Hour Energy Audit

For the next 48 hours, track all of your activities and categorize them:

1. Drains: What activities, meetings, or people consistently drain your energy (mental, emotional, or physical)?

2. Replenishes: What activities, breaks, or routines replenish your energy?

Use this self-awareness to start cutting out or adjusting what drains you and doing more of what fuels your ability to live your life of significance.

Episode Transcript

How can you protect your energy in this busy world? Well, that’s what we’re going to explore in this episode, because protecting your energy, physical, mental, emotional, is not only going to help you to avoid burnout, but it’s also going to help and allow you to live with significance. Hello, my friend, and welcome. Welcome to episode 57 of the Claim Your Day podcast. Today we’re continuing this conversation. It’s not just about time management, but it’s about how we’re spending our time, how, how we’re choosing and what we’re choosing to do.

Today we’re going to explore about, you know, how we’re managing our energy, because everything we do requires energy. So we already discovered in this, in this series is we talked about your compass. So you have your compass. Your values are your compass. Now, if you’re constantly running on empty, then no matter how well tuned you have your compass and you’re using your values filter and you’re intentional with some of your choices.

If you’re not, if you’re always running on empty and you’re not protecting your energy, you’re never going to reach your destination because you need energy to do the work. And today we’re going to talk about this final kind of piece to this puzzle of what we’ve been exploring, and that is your energy. Because you can’t be running on empty all the time. You can’t. And if you feel like that, if that’s where you’re at, then you’re definitely in the right place for this episode.

And we’re going to start to explore what you can do about it. You know, this is. This is all about making sure that you have the fuel to show up fully, that you have the energy and the capacity to be able to do the things that truly matter. You know, here we talk about, you know, living out our values, leading our lives. You know, we’re talking about, you know, living a life of significance, you know, and building that life for ourselves and our families.

And in order to do that, you have to have the energy to be able to do the work. And having that energy is going to help you to do the work without sacrificing your health. Because, you know, I know family and values, they’re the most important things. But if we’re sacrificing our health to be able to serve them, then it’s not really going to get us where we want.

So in this episode, we have a few main points and how we’re going to go about protecting our energy and how we’re going to go about really making sure that we have the fuel and the capacity to be able to do what we want is by starting off by, hey, what, what, what is this energy we’re talking about? And it’s not some, you know, new age woo woo stuff, but just, you know, the actual energy that we, we have now, definitely physical energy is one component of it, but here we’re going to talk about three different buckets of energy for, for this conversation and how we can go about making sure that we’re protecting that energy, we’re fueling it, and we have capacity in each one of these buckets.

Because when you’re trying to do something worthwhile, you know, when you’re trying to build that life that you want, you know, when you’re trying to live with significance and have that impact, you’re trying to live out your values, you know, lead yourself and others. Well, all that stuff is valuable and it’s so important and it requires energy and it’s going to require energy out of these three, three buckets.

So we have the physical energy. You already know about that. You know, a lot of times, hey, you know, by not having energy, we think physical, but the other two are extremely important as well. And that’s going to be your mental energy and your emotional energy. So you have physical, mental and emotional. I mean, just think about this. You know, if you’re a busy parent or even, you know, even busy professional, you know, you’re at work, I always bring up parenting because it’s always this balance of work, life balance.

You know, you have the job, your vocation, you know, your work that you’re doing and that’s very important. And then trying to shift gears real fast and, and jump into home life and, and family, that’s extremely important. You know, and then the other values that we have, you know, they’re all, they’re all valuable, they’re important. But when you’re, when you have these different demands and you’re shifting from one to the other, your physical energy is definitely a component of it because you have to physically do the work, whatever you’re trying to do.

And then especially when I kind of group these together in this way, you know, I’m thinking about my work. You know, it requires a lot of mental energy and being able to think through it and cognitively process what I’m doing. And then emotional energy and it’s kind of like all over the place sometimes. Where it’s in need, it’s in demand, all over the place. I should Put it like that.

Because when we have to deal with people, whether if it’s people at work or as people at home, it can be emotionally draining and taxing sometimes. What we have to do now, all these are different areas, but we have to make sure we’re protecting them. Because when we have mental energy, emotional energy, and physical energy, that’s going to allow you to really perform at your best. If you’re about living out your values, well, if you have plenty of physical energy, but you’re emotionally spent and you’re mentally drained, then it’s.

Even if you have the physical energy to live out your values, it’s going to be extremely difficult to do that because you’re not going to feel like putting forth the effort. Same thing goes for if you want to be present with your kids and make sure you have not only that physical energy, if you want to play with them or do activities, but that emotional energy so you don’t snap at them and get upset.

That mental energy to really be able to be patient and to pay attention and give them the attention they want. Same thing applies for work and everywhere else. So how can you go about doing this when you’re in the throes of the busy life and all the demands coming your way and you’re just, you’re on that verge of just complete exhaustion? What can you do? Well, I’m going to give you some, just a few little quick things for each of those buckets of energy.

And, you know, we can call it, you know, I don’t want to call it like a burnout antidote, but it can definitely help guard against that burnout piece or at least the, the energy component of burnout. So the first one, simple. Some simple little strategies for helping to protect your mental energy. Okay, there’s a lot we could talk about each one of these, but, you know, a lot definitely we could talk about around the mental energy.

But for this, a simple, simple way to help protect your mental energy is to work on single tasking. Not multitasking, single taxing, tasking. Because when, when you shift tasks mentally, it requires a lot of energy. It requires energy and time, and especially if you’re shifting from one task to the next. Back and forth, back and forth. And we call that multitasking. You’re really. Your brain is focusing on one thing and then it’s focusing on the other thing, and it’s just going back and forth really fast.

That takes a whole lot of energy. It is mentally draining. The work is not as effective. It’s not as efficient, it’s not as impactful, it’s not of the highest caliber and quality that you could do at the same time. All right, this is one that I’ll go on a little bit of a tangent here. All right. At work or a lot of jobs? Let’s put it like this.

At a lot of jobs, and I’ve worked in workforce development. I’ve worked in vocational rehabilitation. I’ve done a number of things, even recruiting a little bit over my years. And it seems like everywhere, people know that multitasking is not. Not effective. It’s not efficient. But. But jobs and positions are still created in a way that we demand it of people. It makes no sense at all. Sorry, I’ll stop myself before I go on a real rant.

But we have to find ways to force ourselves into single tasking, and. And we have to find ways to force ourselves to take short mental breaks. When you can do these two things, when you can give up this multitasking and focus on one task at a time and take those mental breaks, it helps prevent the burnout. It helps prevent or helps protect your mental energy. It helps you to be more effective.

It helps you to actually get more done and feel better about it. Now, it does go against the norm a little bit in a lot of places, so beware of that. But working on single tasking and taking short mental breaks is a great way to help protect that bucket of mental energy you have and replenish it some. So that’s your mental energy bucket. What about your emotional energy bucket?

Well, this is all about setting boundaries. So if you want to protect your emotional energy, then you have to work on setting boundaries and being intentional. You know, it’s. You set boundaries with that intentionality. It’s not just saying no to a whole lot of things and people and pushing them away. Instead, you know, you get really intentional about those emotional boundaries, about what you let in in that area, so that you can really work on, you know, filling up your cup, your emotional cup, you know, and not draining it.

This. It does take work, and it really does take a lot of work to get that right balance. And I share this not as though I’m some expert and have it all figured. I share it just because it’s true, and it’s very helpful when I do it. And I know this is not something that I’m just kind of speaking completely out of bounds about developing those boundaries with intentionality.

So the intentionality is the key piece, because what you’re doing is you’re allowing Yourself to prioritize what’s most important so that you can protect it. And you protecting your emotional energy, it will help you to serve the people you want to serve more. There’s that saying you can’t pour from an empty cup. Will you protect your cup? Protect your emotional energy cup with being intentional, setting up some boundaries around that for what makes the most sense for you, your life, where you’re at.

Because caring for yourself in this capacity is not selfish. It actually allows you to serve people more into a greater capacity by protecting what you need to protect. And one of those things is your emotional energy. So that’s the second bucket and this third bucket, you know, the physical energy. This is what we talk a lot of times when we talk about energy and fuel and stuff like that.

And so with here, you know, it’s, how can you make sure that you have the physical energy? This might be, you know, going for a short walk, you know, proper hydration. I’m not going into a health and exercise podcast, but exercising your body, the body is an amazing thing. The body’s an amazing thing. Now, if you rest it too much and you don’t exercise, it gets weaker. It’s crazy because when you strain your body some with some physical exercise, you push your body and you properly fuel your body, you know, with water and nutritious diet and some rest, it gets really strong.

It is amazing, the body that God created us with. So what I want you to think about for your physical energy is, are you doing these things that you need to do to help your physical health? And I guarantee you already know a bunch of them. You know, it’s. It’s not. It’s not what we know, but it’s what we do with what we know that really matters. So, you know, are you getting some exercise?

Are you drinking enough water? Are you fueling up with good, healthy, nutritious food? You know, these are the things that are going to help your body have that physical energy, and that’s going to be your solid, strong foundation. And it’s going to help you to live out that purpose for your life by having the physical energy to do it. Now, all these things do take some extra effort, but I would argue more than really the work that it takes to do any of these things, it just takes being intentional.

Whether if that’s setting up the boundaries, you gotta be intentional with that, whether if it’s, you know, single tasking and not multitasking and forcing yourself to take some breaks, you know, that’s intentionality. You know, Whether if it’s doing the things for your physical energy and your hydration and rest and, you know, getting some exercise and getting some sleep, all those things, it just takes being intentional. Now, the demands of life and all the things coming your way, it is hard.

I’m not saying it’s easy, but as John Maxwell says, everything worthwhile is uphill all the way. And protecting your buckets of energy is worthwhile because no matter what you want to accomplish, having the energy, the mental, emotional, physical energy to do it will help you to accomplish it. If you want to really have a life of significance and build that life that honors what’s most important to you, you need the energy to do that.

And so this is a great place for you to start to be able to protect these three buckets of energy, to be able to make that progress. Now what can you do to be able to protect your energy so that you can do what you need to do? Well, I would suggest doing an energy audit. Now, this is similar to the things that we’ve talked about in the last two episodes, but just audit what’s impacting your energy.

So just for one day, track activities that either drain your energy and which ones replenish it, which ones help build your energy, and which ones tear it down. This is all about developing a little self awareness, specifically around the area of the energy that you have in your life. If you want to build this life of significance, if you want to really fulfill your purpose and live a life of meaning, you need the energy to do it.

And this whole series has been all around. It’s not just about the time to do the things that we need to do. It’s about being intentional, honoring our values, and having the energy to really live out that best life. And it’s not just about time management, but when we manage what we do, then we can do more with the time that we have. In a life of significance, it’s not about doing everything.

It’s about doing the few things that matter most. You know, doing it with intentionality and the energy to do them. Well. It’s like that old saying, you know, you can do anything, you just can’t do everything. So let’s be intentional with the things that we do. All right here. So here’s your, your action step for. Your action step for, for this episode is perform that energy audit. So for the next 48 hours, I want you to think about, track, write down, make a note, whatever makes the most sense for you.

And become aware of the inner of the activities that Drain you and the energy and the activities that replenish you. You can go specific for each of the three buckets, or you just do it in general. Whatever makes the sense. Whatever makes sense for you, Whatever is easiest for you, just so that you do it. Do that energy audit and find out what’s. What’s draining you and what’s helping to build you up.

And then you know what to do next with it. Start to cut out, adjust, delegate, whatever you got to do for those things that are draining you and do more of the things that are helping to replenish you. That way you can have the energy that you need to live the life that you want for you, yourself, your family, and what’s most important to you. Hey, if you haven’t yet, make sure you go to nickmazy.com

and get that intentional choice guide. I still have it up there. Because the more intentional you can be with your choices and how you spend your choices, that’s what’s going to determine if you’re living that life you want to live, you know, according to your values and you’re leading yourself, well, to have that life of significance and that impact that you want. Or not. Or not. Because if you’re not intentional, you’re not going to be able to live that life you want.

It’s. You know, I was trying to think of who said it. I’m drawing a blank. My apologies for one second, but if you aim at nothing, you’ll hit it every time. That was Zig Ziglar. If you aim at nothing, you’ll hit it every time. Well, if you’re not intentional with how you aim, what you aim at and how you go about it, then you’re going to miss it.

And I don’t want that for you in your life. So be intentional. Do this energy audit for the next 48 hours. Begin to live that life of significance that you want to have, so you no longer have to let the clock rule your life. Instead, by trusting your values as your compass and by managing your energy as your fuel, you can really live a life that’s not just busy, but that’s truly meaningful.

That’s what I want for you, and you can do it. So go out there, my friend, and claim your day. Here’s to you.