The OTHER Energy Crisis

Besides the oil and gas price problem that plagues us, courtesy of Wall Street and politics, there is another one permeating our lives: personal energy. This one affects our very being, and it goes untended day by day.

We only have 24 hours in a day, yet we try to cram 36 hours worth of stuff into them. Whether we acknowledge it or not, anyone who has kids has a built-in second job. To add to that, many low-income workers have more than one job outside the home (sometimes two or three). Where does the energy come from to do all these tasks? Mostly from sugar and caffeine.

Granted, Wall Street has nothing to do with this one, and politics only has some influence on it—the rest comes from you. Your allocation of resources has the most dramatic effect on this problem, and the resources I speak of are time, food, money, and attention. You want too much from too little, whether it’s time, money, nutrition, or conscious thought.

To preserve something for yourself at the end of the day, try to cut back and focus on what matters. Clean out those “personal” closets, if you will. Find ways to streamline your tasks at work, alternate ways to GET to work (for relaxation on the way), streamline chores at home, and streamline your spending and eating.

Ask yourself what matters to you. Find better ways of “fueling” yourself to achieve it while finding ways to slough off the mundane. Just freeing up time to think will go a long way in determining what else is really important to you, and worth achieving.

Once you have made free time to think and act better toward yourself and your life, make a plan for maintaining it. How are you going to keep this new way of life going? How are you going to handle the mines that occasionally crop up and serve to derail you on our new path?

Feeding your brain properly fuels the most valuable organ in your body, which will in turn reward you with ideas for streamlining to gain time, money, and all the rest…okay, not ALL the rest, but the stuff that matters most.

You can’t have it all, and you shouldn’t want it all. Stop killing yourself trying to get it all!