When your energy is depleted, it takes much less to send you over the edge into chaos-land. To help keep chaos at bay, this article gives you two ways to deliberately create energy margins in each of five areas emotional, spiritual, intellectual/mental, spiritual, and creative.
1. Emotional: Keep your "I love you's" up to date. You never know. What else do I need to say?
2. Emotional: Recognize anger and hostility for what they are. Anger is fresh and can be avoided (sometimes) and managed (always, albeit with help at times). Hostility is old anger--and needs more attention, sometimes from a professional. If you have hostility that is eating you up inside, it's subtracting your emotional energy. To get your margin back, forgive, forget, address it, get help. A person with hostility can't create an emotional energy margin.
3. Physical: Eat and drink what is right for you. Don't eat and drink what isn't right for you. If you are reading this and are at least 12 years old, you know the difference.
4. Physical: Get enough sleep. If you are reading this and are at least 5 years old, you probably aren't getting enough right now.
5. Intellectual/Mental: Keep learning. Our brains need to be fed and learning is what feeds them. I am convinced that part of why my mother, at 76, is at least as sharp as she was at 36 is because she is a learning machine. She lives in an assisted living facility and her physical health isn't what it was, to say the least, but her mental energy hasn't abated. She is curious about everything. She reads, she watches the History Channel and then checks out books about what she learned, she talks about what she's learned, she surfs the 'net, she does word games, etc. It's amazing. Do whatever you need to do to feed your brain and give yourself some margins there.
6. Intellectual/Mental: Learn new words. We feel smarter (and we are smarter) when we can find the right word to express what we are trying to express. I love getting the word of the day. I also like talking to people who use interesting and new words. It makes me stretch (and gives me a little bit of margin).
7. Spiritual: Be thankful for what you have and marvel at life's miracles. Einstein said, "There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle." The second one gives you more spiritual margins.
8. Spiritual: Spend time with the Universe. It might be in prayer, in the outdoors, or with people who need your help (my sister-in-law and two nieces went to China this past summer to work in an orphanage, but you can go to a school, hospital, neighborhood, or family near you where there are people who need your help).
9. Creative: What makes us human is our creativity and problem-solving capabilities, but if our margins in other areas are gone, so is our creativity. And let's face it, the majority of you reading this email weren't hired for your bodies (sorry to insult you), but you were hired for your ability to be creative--to think and generate ideas and solutions. So, first of all, acknowledge your creativity and the contribution it makes to your workplace and your personal life.
10. Creative: Have the tools that allow you to be creative: time, space, special paper, unique writing implements, inspiring books, people who encourage you. It's different for each of you reading this, but whatever it is, obtain, treasure, and protect those tools.
These aren't tips-lite; it's kind of heavy-duty, isn't it? If you don't have energy margins, then you will have a heck of a time getting any of the other "margins" in place that you need and want to.
Keep in mind Richard Swenson's definition of margins: "the space that once existed between ourselves and our limits. It's something held in reserve for contingencies or unanticipated situations."
Margins are "the difference between calm and crazed." To receive weekly tips about margins, just go to Pumpernickel Publishing where you can sign up to receive one tip per week in one or more of the following series:
**Tips: Creating Margins in Your Personal Life
**Tips: Creating Margins in Your Professional Life
**Tips: Creating Time, Energy, & Life Margins: Tips for Teachers
Tip: If you are interested in more than one, it's better to sign up for one at a time...or at least only sign up for one today and then a different one tomorrow. That way, you really will only get one tip on a given day and you'll have a chance to implement that before you get the next one.
(c) 2008 by Meggin McIntosh, Ph.D., "The Ph. D. of Productivity"(tm)
Through her company, Emphasis on Excellence, Inc., Meggin McIntosh changes what people know, feel, dream, and do via seminars, workshops, writing, coaching, & consulting.
