“Slowing down allows you to speed up in other moments and actually get more done.”
I learned recently that despite my previous thinking that EVERY introvert must be managing their energy all day long like I am (because people drain introverts), for me, energy management is a much bigger issue.
You see, I discovered that I’m an Enneagram 5 and because of this, I start my days with a battery life that’s half as full as everyone else’s. I completely agree with this assessment and yet, I still manage to get a lot done per day despite this now apparent setback in my life.
It got me thinking that if I can manage my energy to make
(In case you’re new here, when I say I do “
What I share on today’s podcast as my energy boosting tips aren’t your traditional ones of getting more sleep, eating better, exercising or looking at potentially bigger health problems. Instead, today’s tips are non-conventional in that they’re ones you may have NEVER thought could help you in order to create more energy in your day-to-day life.
Be sure to listen to the BOOST YOUR ENERGY episode above to get my top tips!
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Full Transcript
Episode 14: BOOST YOUR ENERGY
This is the Become an Unstoppable Woman podcast with Lindsay Preston Episode 14, Boost Your Energy.
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Welcome to the Become an Unstoppable Woman podcast, the show for goal-getting, fear-facing women for kicking ass by creating change. I’m your host, Lindsay Preston. I’m a wife, mom of two, and a multi-certified life coach to women all over the world. I’ve lived through enough in life to know that easier doesn’t always equate to better. We can’t fear the fire, we must learn to become it. On this show, I’ll teach you how to do just that. Join me as I challenge you to become even more of the strong, resilient, and powerful woman you were meant to be. Let’s do this.
[music]
Hi there, my friend. Welcome to today’s show. Today, we are talking all about how to boost your energy. Specifically, I’m going to teach you non-conventional ways to boost your energy so that you can accomplish everything you want in this precious life of yours with more momentum and peace than ever before. Now, I have to give you a little disclosure. I have learned recently that I am an energy management pro.
How did I learn this? By studying my Enneagram? Who else out there is studying their Enneagram? It is hot right now. It is everywhere. Especially if you go on Instagram, everybody’s talking about it. I looked at my Enneagram years ago and I found it to be kind of confusing, and so I put it down and focus on other tools like the Clifton StrengthsFinder and even Myers-Briggs.
Now that there are coaches and teachers out there who are making this once complex tool very simple, it’s been eye-opening, hasn’t it? Oh, my gosh. It’s been so mind-blowing to me. It’s made me love coaching and teaching to a whole new level because I’ve really seen other people shine their light on this tool that they have understood and applied it in my life, so it’s been so fun.
How did I learn this whole energy thing with Enneagram? Well, I am an Enneagram 5. What I’ve learned about fives is that they typically start every day with a half battery life, meaning they’re waking up more tired than the rest of the population. I just thought everybody who was managing their energy as much as I was and I even thought, “Well, maybe it’s just an introvert thing that I’m tired a lot.” I’ve even done so many things.
I thought it was a biological thing for a while, but this really allowed me to understand that this is just a part of me, at least for right now. Our Enneagram can always change, but that this is something I’ve learned to do really, really well because I’m not naturally that good at it if that makes sense. I’m going to share with you today some of the things I’ve done to still be able to show up to life despite knowing that I’m likely more tired than everybody else to get what I want in the world.
Just a little bit about me is I have two kiddos. One is about to be nine and one at the time of this recording is 15 months and I have this coaching business. Now, I don’t have any kind of childcare for my kids, so I’m at home with my son all day long. When my daughter gets off school, we’re going to our activities, doing our homework, doing all that stuff. I am running my coaching business primarily right now during nap times in the evenings and on weekends.
Now, some may think that’s busy, but I have actually been busier in my life before. When I was a single mom a few years ago, I had a day job. I had my coaching business at night and on weekends and that was at a space when it was nothing. I was building out courses and taking on many, many client calls to understand how to be a coach and I was going through coach training.
I also was dating my husband and he lived 45 minutes away, and so we were trying to make time for each other that way and all this other stuff that was going on, just the normal day-to-day stuff of getting your house cleaned and doing your lawn every weekend and all that. I have been in some busy seasons. I don’t want you to think I’m just sitting back here drinking mimosas all day although I do have those days.
I am a busy gal. Again, despite me kind of showing up to life with this half battery life, which I truly believe I do have because I’m constantly, constantly managing my energy, I’m still able to get a lot done. You can be somebody who may run even more laughs around me because you don’t start your day with a half battery life like I do, okay? Just take that in, is that if I can find success from the stuff, you can probably find immense success from the stuff, all right?
Let’s get into my ways. I’m going to cover five today that are non-conventional. Before we get into those, let’s talk about more conventional ways just to make sure we’re on the same page of conventional and non-conventional. What I consider conventional are if you were to go to your doctor and say, “I’m feeling really tired,” these are the things they’re likely going to bring up first.
First of all, are you getting enough sleep? It’s been shown that by the National Sleep Foundation that most people need seven and a half to eight and a half hours of sleep per night and quality sleep. That means that they are falling asleep within 30 minutes. They’re only waking up once maybe. If they are, they’re back to sleep within 20 minutes. If you’re not getting that, that can be a huge culprit as to why you don’t have enough energy.
Coming out of a season where I just had a baby, I was obviously not getting a lot of sleep for about a year. It was rough. Even on the day I’m recording this podcast, I have been up since about 3:45 with him. I don’t know what’s going on. He’s teething or what. I’m still in that phase two where I am needing more quality sleep, so I am right there with you, but because I’ve been doing these non-conventional ways, it’s been able to boost my energy despite not getting sleep, okay?
I encounter some women sometimes that say, “Well, I’m just not getting enough sleep. Should I focus there first?” You can, but some of the things I’m going to teach you today will help you get more sleep and I’ll talk about why here in a bit, okay? Let’s go back. You’re back at your doctor. You’re talking about your sleep. Maybe you are getting enough sleep. The next thing that might come up is, well, what are you eating and drinking all day?
Are you eating a bunch of junk? Are you not drinking enough water? I know when I don’t eat as healthy, I feel really tired. I feel this a lot when we go visit family members who live in another part of the country. In that part, they tend to eat a lot of carbs. If they do have vegetables, they are just covered in butter and salt. There’s been times where we leave visiting them and I come home. My body just can’t take all the toxins anymore and I just throw up for an entire day.
My body just wants to get rid of that stuff. I will feel it if I go when I have fast food, especially if I have it back to back. Now, I do not eat super clean. I maybe have one to two clean meals a day, but it would be very rare to have three clean meals. Most days, I start my day-off with Eggo waffles. No joke. Don’t act like I’m some person over here eating totally clean, all organic, drinking these shakes.
No, when I see people drink their fitness shakes, I think, “That’s good for you, girl, but that is not for me.” I just want to reiterate that to you. I do not think you have to eat super-duper clean to have a lot of energy, but I do think you need to eat clean enough. For my body, that’s about two clean meals a day, but I can get away with one. If I don’t have any clean meals that day, I really feel it the next day, okay?
Clean to me just means veggie and rich, not a lot of grease, quality meat, things of that sort, okay? All right, so going back to your doctor, let’s say you’re eating pretty well. You’re sleeping pretty well. The next thing they’re going to bring up is, are you exercising? Are you moving? Are you getting at least 20 minutes in of, at least, just a brisk walk every day? I noticed a big difference in my energy too when this has happened.
As I’ve said, I had a baby and it was hard for me to get back into the workout routine because I wasn’t sleeping to be honest. Until I can get good sleep, that’s when I have enough energy to go work out. Now, I’m at a phase where I’ve been getting more sleep most nights, and so I’ve been walking with our son in the mornings and it’s not anything hardcore. It’s just us. I’m pushing him in his little car and we go for 20, 30 minutes.
That has made a huge difference with just that alone. I really encourage you, if you’re not getting any kind of exercise on, that’s a problem. I really encourage you to start getting at least 20 minutes on, okay? Now, the last thing your doctor may cover is, well, maybe there’s a deeper health issue here. Obviously, as a woman, you’re going to have your PMS cycles if you are trying to get pregnant.
Obviously, when you’re pregnant, you’re probably going to be more tired if you just had a child. There’s all these other health issues that can attribute to you being tired, all right? That’s the traditional kind of way. Now, let’s look at what your doctor may not be saying to you about boosting your energy. These are the ways that I help my clients boost energy so that they can start making healthier choices sometimes. Sometimes you do need those physical changes first to make these next step changes I’m about to share with you.
Sometimes, and especially in my experience with my clients, we make these changes, and then sleep gets better. They start eating better. They don’t have as many health issues. Health issues just start to go away, which is crazy. They’re more motivated to go and have exercise, all right? I don’t know what’s first. It’s like, which one’s the chicken? Which one’s the egg? I don’t know. It’s just a trial-and-error process.
I found in my life that by doing these non-traditional or non-conventional ways, it’s really helped boost the more traditional ways, all right? All right, so let’s get into my five that I’m going to talk about today. The first one is becoming more mainstream, I must admit, but I think a lot of people don’t understand it in the right way, and that is taking self-care. I see a lot on these Instagram influencers or whatever you want to call them as, “Oh, here I am at brunch” or “Here I am doing this” and “I’m at the spa and this is my self-care.”
That’s all fine and great. Those are ways that you can fill up that tank with some self-care, but it doesn’t have to be that fancy and it doesn’t have to be that Instagram-worthy. That’s what I see a lot with younger clients of mine is that they think it’s got to be this big show of an activity. It’s as simple as reading a book, putting lotion on your hands, taking a bath, getting away from the internet, setting a boundary with somebody, just taking deep breaths.
Little bitty things can attribute to self-care. When I’m working with my clients, I have them start by taking at least one hour of self-care week. We call it “do you” time, so they make a list of all the things they love to do that fill their bucket. This is really important because a lot of people don’t know what fills their bucket. They think, “Oh, when I go and watch TV or school on my phone, that’s me taking time for myself.”
A lot of times, those activities, they’re not recharging them at the end of doing it. Instead, it’s draining them more. I want you to start to notice that as you do certain activities that you think you’re taking for yourself. Are you leaving those feeling better and more charged or more drained? For example, when I get on my phone, as much as I enjoy looking at certain things on Instagram or other social networks, it drains me.
It’s not something that’s on my “do you” list. It’s not self-care for me because it’s not filling up my bucket. Things that are on my list are taking walks, listening to podcasts or very uplifting messages, taking bass, reading a book. Gosh, so many other things, or just even being alone, to be honest with you. Sleep is a self-care thing for me. Yes, really going out and getting my hair done like something I’m going to do this weekend.
It doesn’t fill my bucket because I’m sitting there and I’m talking to my hairstylist as much as I love her, but it’s not something that’s recharging me. If anything, it’s draining me, okay? Look beyond the societal norms of what they’re saying is self-care out there and figure out what works for you. Start with at least one hour a week and build up from there. Ideally, you want to get to where you’re doing a whole day’s worth of self-care throughout the week.
If you can do it in one day, great. I know that can be hard for some of you, so put it in little chunks here and there. Maybe two hours per day that you are doing recharging self-care. It’s going to make a big difference on your energy. I know for a lot of achieving women out there, they think, “Oh, well, I can’t slow down. I don’t have time. I have all these goals I want to do.” Trust me. I used to be the same way.
When I had my dance studio years ago, I was going non-stop. I came in and I had a program that only had 17 kids in August. If you know the dance world and you know the back-to-school world, having only 17 kids in August is a death sentence to a business, especially a dance studio. Because by then, you should have your kids for the year and you carry them on until May likely.
Having only 17 kids, I was like, “Oh, my gosh, I have to take this program right now and make it successful.” I was able to do that, so we closed with about 150 kids in May which, again, I don’t know how I did it other than I was working like a dog. I was working early in the morning and I would teach adult classes or fitness classes, then I would be working on admin stuff, then I would be teaching preschool classes in the morning, then I would take another break.
Maybe take a nap, then I was teaching evening classes, and then I come home and work until 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning and do it all again the next day. Trust me, I know what it’s like to be busy, my friend. I know what it’s like to work, work, work, and think that by you working and pushing and pushing and pushing, you’ll get to where you want to go and you will. When you get there, you’re going to be so burned out. You’re not even going to know what to do with yourself.
In my case, I went to go get a massage one time during the season of my life. I remember the masseuse saying, “I have never seen anybody’s muscles twitch as much as yours did just on the table.” She’s like, “I’ve been doing this for– I don’t remember how many years, but it was like decades.” That was a wake-up call for me of realizing, “Oh, my gosh, what am I doing? I am pushing myself to the extreme here.”
Again, even when I started coaching with my coach and she started to tell me about this whole self-care thing and doing it, it was really hard for me. I started to see the benefits of slowing down and how slowing down allowed me to speed up and other moments and actually get more done. There’s a lot of times I just see women or people in general who were spinning and spinning and going and going and going and you can feel it from their energy. They are scattered. They are tired.
They’re not showing up as their best selves when they’re there. They think, “Well, I’m not getting the results I want. I need to just work harder.” No, my friend, you need to slow down. You need to disconnect. You need to stop and fill up your bucket because you will show up to those events or whatever and you will be in a better place, okay? That is my first tip there. Do some self-care or what we call “do you” time.
All right, my non-conventional way number two, just start to boost your energy. I’m going to say a naughty word here, my friend, so please do not have children around. You should know that by now by this podcast, but non-conventional way number two, stop putting up with shit. Stop, okay? I meet so many women who have boundaries and tolerations issues. I know this because I give my clients an assessment and I say, “Here are all the things that, in your life, you should not be putting up with.”
I think it’s a list of 20. Nobody has ever, the first time taking that little assessment, checked all 20 off. I didn’t. I didn’t check off. I’m maybe checked off 10, maybe the first time. I said, “This needs to be eye-opening for you because this is where you’re losing your energy.” You’re allowing people to yell at you. You’re allowing people to raise their voice at you. Hopefully, you’re not allowing people to hit you, but that’s one of the things on there.
You’re allowing people to talk you out of your truth. You’re allowing people to sell you things that you really don’t want to buy. The list goes on and on. For some of them, they fight me back. I fought my coach back when she gave me this assessment. I was like, “You know what? It is totally fine if people yell at me.” I’ve grown up with it. My mom yells. She still yells. It’s really not that big of a deal.
She said, “Lindsay, I want you to just try on for a little bit. Just for 21 days, let’s just do that where nobody yells at you.” I was like, “Okay,” and you know what happens? It felt flipping fantastic. I found a boost in energy unlike ever before because I was allowing someone to, in essence, come in and take away my energy or my power however you want to look at it. That was diminishing who I was.
Not only that, but then that negative voice in my head would come in and beat me up and say, “Oh, you should’ve done this” or “You could have done this,” and all that stuff, which we’ll get to in a bit of another block that you could pay having. That’s the problem here is if you’re putting up with crap, you are going to take that in internally and just beat yourself up no matter what, so don’t do it, all right?
As I said, I give my clients that boundaries assessment. If you ever worked with me in my Becoming Unstoppable Woman program, you will get that and we will do that. We’ll work through that and it’s a very powerful exercise, but you may just want a quick, little taste now. I want you to start to ask yourself, “Where is it in my life that I’m tolerating something that I no longer want to tolerate?”
Whatever the first thing is that comes to your mind, that’s where you need to go first, my friends. Even if it’s something really small or if it’s something really big, whatever that thing is, that’s where you need to go. For a lot of women, they feel a little scared for the first thing that comes up of, “Whew, how do I get there?” I don’t know. Again, that’s where coaching can help you. That’s where we can bridge that gap of taking you from where you are.
I can coach you through that and give you the support you need to take the steps to the next level, but see if you can do it on your own. You may be able to, all right? Again, ask yourself, “What’s something that I’m tolerating that I no longer want to tolerate?” and then get to work. Start setting that boundary and you don’t have to be a boundaries bitch. You don’t have to be a mean person to do this.
You can go on and set a loving and firm boundary and say, “Hey, you’re not going to talk to me that way anymore. I need you to change your voice if you’re going to fix me.” Some people are not going to like it. I have a family member, who I believe has borderline personality disorder. That is something that comes with that of they do not respect boundaries. It’s a constant thing for me of, “No, try again. Try again.” “Okay, well, I’m going to leave now because you can’t honor the boundary.”
I’m not doing it in a mean way. I’m just saying, “Hey, you can’t talk to me that way. I love you, but I can’t stay here right now when you’re talking to me that way.” I know, again, for you, you may say, “Well, that feels really scary,” or this or that. Trust me. As somebody on the other side, it is way worse to be where you are and put up with that crap than to be on the other side. It does feel uncomfortable in the middle of setting that boundary over and over again and becoming this new version of yourself.
I will admit that. It does feel uncomfortable. When you’re on the other side, you’re like, “Oh, gosh, it’s so, so good. This feels so good and I want to keep going.” That’s where you start to build that momentum, that energy to keep going, all right? That’s my number two non-conventional way is to quit putting up with shit by setting boundaries for tolerations. Boundaries and tolerations too were basically the same thing. It’s just two different words to use it, all right?
Let’s go on to number three. Number three in non-conventional way to boost your energy is make sure you are not surrounded by energy vampires. This is a term that I recently learned from Christiane Northrup and she has a book of the title Energy Vampires. Basically, what she calls energy vampires are people with personality disorders. I just mentioned one a bit ago, borderline personality disorder. Another one is narcissistic personality disorder. The third one, I believe, is histrionic is how you pronounce it.
In my world, I have people with borderline and narcissism. These are people that I cannot cut out because they are a family or other intimate people in my life. I’ve had to learn how to manage that. If you don’t know anything about those personality disorders or about energy vampires, basically, these are people who are sucking energy out of you to feel good about themselves, okay? It doesn’t matter if it’s positive or negative energy. They just need that energy in essence to survive or that’s what they think they need.
They’re doing things like dogging on you. They’re not respecting your boundaries. Some of them, unfortunately, are abusive. In my world, as I said, I’ve been around a lot of these people in very close quarters. I’m not there anymore. In my life now, I have to set really firm boundaries with them. Two, when they were in my intimate world, I was drained a lot because it very much reminds me of the movie Hocus Pocus. Do you remember the witches in that movie if you’ve seen it?
They go and they’re trying to suck out, I believe, the soul of a little girl. They’re just like sucking it almost like a straw. That’s how it felt to me to be around those people. They were sucking my energy dry. I am somebody who is highly empathic, and so I can feel the feelings of others very easily. I’m a very good target for these people because I am so empathetic. I encountered this a lot with my clients.
A lot of women who have high empathy, they’re very, very drained. That’s because they haven’t learned, A, how to cut out energy vampires and now they’re attracting them. Two, they haven’t learned how to balance their empathy. For me, I’ve had to learn to– and this sounds so silly, but it works, to bubble up. What that means is I, in essence, have this invisible bubble around me because it’s so easy for me, as I said, to connect with other people and their feelings.
I have this bubble, so someone has a feeling that comes toward me and I just think, “Okay, it’s going to this invisible bubble. It’s not coming in and grabbing me.” Again, I know it sounds so woo-woo and weird, but it works. I was taught this from an energy person who is very skilled at this. I didn’t believe it at first either, but it really, really works to be able to just say, “Okay, have this bubble around me. I don’t have to soak up everybody’s feelings.”
That’s what has allowed me to be a powerful coach and that I can feel someone’s feelings, but I don’t have it take over my body because that wouldn’t make me a good coach. If I’m sitting there feeling the same feeling, then I’m stuck in their mindset. I need to be in my mindset to help them improve their mind. Makes sense? Start to just research that if you think you’re around somebody who may be just completely draining your energy.
That energy vampire book can really help, but also look up personality disorders or look up the term “empath” and see if you fall into that category, all right? Because if you are, you’re definitely going to need to do some specific things to boost your energy because of that. Two, work on getting those people out of your life or just managing them in your life, okay? That is way number three in which you can boost your energy in a non-conventional way.
All right, number four. This one has hit me hard recently. This one is decision fatigue and what I also want to call the invisible to-do list. Recently, I got in an argument with my husband. It was a big one. One of the biggest ones, I think, we’ve ever had. In an argument, as arguments go, sometimes we both say things that aren’t the nicest. One of the things that he said to me was, “Well, what do you do around here?”
Because I am on my second child, so I am much more relaxed than he is. I don’t get up every time the baby needs something or is wandering around. I’m just chill. My husband also is very neat and tidy to a point where some may say he has OCD tendencies. I would agree with that and so we’re working through that just to be completely transparent here. Part of that too is I don’t give into some of those tendencies with him of always wanting to clean.
He feels from his perspective that he is doing a lot. From my perspective, it’s like, “You’re doing unnecessary things,” but I regress. In that moment, he’s like, “What do you do around here?” To be honest, I couldn’t answer it right away because what I do around here, meaning my home, is so innate that I didn’t even really think about my daily to-dos. It made me think of this term called the “invisible to-do list.”
That’s getting a little bit of traction here and there. Basically, what it is, is what a woman primarily is doing where nobody knows about it, all right? It’s just typically, a lot of times, innate things. When he brought this up, you better believe I was not a happy camper. I was not happy either that I couldn’t answer that question right away other than, “Well, I’m taking care of the kids, I’m doing this,” right? I was like, “There’s so much I’m doing around here, but why can’t I think of it?”
What I started to do was take an inventory of the past few weeks. What is it that I do? There’s a lot and a lot of it is in regards to, again, just things that nobody would think of. For example, if we just look at my daughter specifically, so she’s about to be nine. She’s about to be in third grade. Now, she tests at a very high level academically. The reason why she is doing that is a large part because of me.
I don’t mean to say that in a braggy way, but I am constantly thinking about where she is academically, where to take her next, what I need to do to get her there. What are the things that she’s not doing recently? Like maybe she hasn’t been practicing her math, so let’s get on that or world examples for her to practice math. Two, you know, I’m seeing too like this past year, she really flat-lined in reading. She has been way ahead of her peers. Now, her peers have caught up to her.
Part of that was because I wasn’t reading to her at night anymore. I just thought, “Well, she’s reading on her own. I have my client calls. It will be fine.” No, it did not happen that way. I saw a direct correlation and it did allow me to see again, “Look at what I’m doing around here.” It’s constantly managing just the academic piece of her, the to-do list of, “Okay, we’re going back to school now. These are the things we need. These are the people I need to connect with. You want to do volleyball lessons? Let me go research all that for you.”
Her day-to-day, I’m thinking, “What has she eaten today?” All right, so she’s had this and this and this. Well, she needs more protein or she needs more of this. Same with my son. What is he eating today? I noticed this too, especially when I’m gone for most of the day because I haven’t really been away for days on end yet since the baby’s been born. If I’m gone for the day and I come back and I asked my husband, “What has the baby eaten today?” he’s like, “Um, well.” Whereas I could tell you, he’s had this, this, and this.
This is what needs to go next, all right? This is what I’m talking about. This is the invisible to-do list. This is the things around the house to have– These light bulbs are out. Let’s fix this, or this is coming up, we need to manage that. Again, I went back and I started saying out loud to my family as I was doing things, “Hey, everybody, just want to let you know that Izzy hasn’t really done math in a while, and so she’s going to be doing math.” These are the things I am doing because I wanted everybody to know because they were just so used to me doing all of that, right?
Again, I talk about with my family too now that I’m seeing it because before, it was invisible of, “Hey, we’re low on tissues. Just want to let you know, I’m ordering tissues.” These are the things, right? This whole decision fatigue concept that we only have so much capacity per day to make decisions and a large part as to why women may not be as successful as men in the workplace, especially making as much, is because we have all this crap at home of this invisible to-do list.
It was really starting to piss me off to be honest with you. I went to my husband and I was like, “Hey, these are all the things I’m doing. I just want to let you know.” He’s like, “Well, babe, I just said that in the moment.” I was like, “No, no, no, I never wanted to be ‘what am I doing around here’ because this is everything that I’m doing.” Yes, my husband does. He helps a lot, especially compared to the majority of men, he helps a ton around the house.
I’m not trying to demonize him in any way. He is really, really good. Even other people will say, “Man, your husband does lawn.” I think, really, he could even do even more. That to me is another societal problem for another day that we’re not asking for our partners to meet us halfway because I definitely think my partner does. I do want to make very clear of all the stuff that I’m doing and really start to analyze, is this what I want to do moving forward?
A year ago, I had the same thing. It wasn’t brought to my attention as severely as with this argument with my husband and bring up the invisible to-do list. When I went and my daughter was entering second grade, I thought, “Okay, I really want to start getting back in the groove with my business. At the rate I’m doing now with everything in my personal life, it’s just not going to happen.”
Some things have to go. Some of that was me doing every single event at her school. Even though a lot of the other parents do it, believe it or not, we go to a private school, so parents are very involved. I was like, “I’m not going to continue to do that anymore.” What I’m saying here is I want you to look at your invisible to-do list. What are the things that you’re doing that you don’t even realize that you’re doing and how can you start to pass those off or take those away?
Those are the things that are draining your energy. They’re causing decision fatigue and they’re going to make you feel tired. They’re not going to contribute to maybe some of the bigger things you want to do. Like, for example, I have a friend who was going to the grocery store every single day after work to cook for her and her boyfriend. That blew my mind. She’s like, “Lindsay, I’m just so tired and then I clean and then I do this,” and I’m like, “Oh, my gosh, you are doing way too much every single day. It’s no wonder you are tired.”
That’s just not okay anymore, my friend. It is not okay. We’ve got to start again setting some boundaries, some tolerations and saying, “Listen, this is all I’m doing. We need to start cutting this list or thinking about other ways that this can happen.” I know some of these women out there. You may be one of them, “I can’t, I can’t, Lindsay. We don’t have enough money. We don’t have this.” Listen, you can do whatever you can.
It’s your mindset a lot of times thinking you can’t do it. You can get really creative. One of the examples I gave recently in my Instagram Stories was I want to be in more podcast interviews, so somebody else’s podcast where they interview me. My first train of thought was, “Okay, we’ll go look up podcasts that may be a good fit. Start listening to each of these podcasts and then pitch to the ones that you think would be a good fit.”
After a week, I was like, “Oh, my gosh, this is exhausting. I can’t do this,” and I thought there’s got to be a better way. The next way that I found was hiring a podcast agent. Basically, like a PR agent but just for podcasts. That was going to be very expensive and I thought, “Well, there’s got to be another alternative.” I ended up finding a resource where it’s just about $20 a month, I believe. They send it out to their big list of people looking for podcast interviews.
From that, just within the past 48 hours, I’ve gotten five interview requests. That has made my life much easier. That was because I opened my mind to thinking about different possibilities, all right? That’s what I’m wanting for you is to open your mind and think about different possibilities. If you sit around and think, “I don’t have the money or I don’t have this or I don’t have that or I can’t do this,” You’re not going to create it.
If I would’ve just said, “Well, that’s the only way I can get podcast interviews is doing it this way,” I would’ve missed out on a really, really cool and easy way to get this done, all right? Think about that in your life. Now, we are going to get to number five on the ways that you can boost your energy in a non-conventional way. This one, I must admit, is my very favorite because this is what I am giving my clients day after day. I see and I feel the success stories.
I don’t want to give you a taste of it, and that is letting go of emotional baggage. All right, so what’s emotional baggage? Basically, it’s an emotional trigger. It’s an emotional trigger of a low level or what we consider in society a “negative emotion.” This is something that is coming up for you with a seven-second or more charge. Yes, seven seconds or more. Let me give you an example. This happened to me last night and my husband is going to look like a jerk again. [chuckles]
He’s been in a funky mood. I’m telling you, he’s going through some growing pains or something. I promise you, he’s not a jerk, but he’s just in a funky space right now. As I mentioned earlier on the podcast, our son got up about 3:45. Well, my husband will typically get up with our son now that I’m not nursing anymore because I spent about a year being the only one getting up, so he’s on night duty.
Well, he couldn’t do it last night because he has a big meeting today and he has to drive and he needs us up. I get up with the baby. I’m holding him, trying to get him back down. About 4:15-ish, 4:30 maybe, I get him– trying to get him back in the crib. He’s just not having it. I’m laying in our bed, hoping that he can cry it out a little and go back to sleep. It’s becoming very aware that he’s not going to go back down.
My husband turns to me and he’s like, “Thanks for letting me sleep in. Aren’t you going to get him?” Again, I said, “I have been up for 45 minutes with him. You’re about to get up in 30 minutes. I think you’re going to be fine,” was basically what I said. In that moment, I was definitely and emotionally charged. I was saying a lot of really nasty things in my head to him in that moment. As I’m spending the next few seconds walking from our bedroom to our son’s, it goes away.
By the time, I get to my son’s room and I’m rocking him, I am not emotionally charged or triggered at all. I have no negative emotion anymore toward my husband. That is where you feel the feeling and then it goes away. Now, there have been times, trust me, where he has said something like, for example, “What do you do around here?” That really made me mad for a long time. I was charged way beyond seven seconds for that.
Not only did I have to figure out, “Okay, what is it that I do around here?” because I want to be very specific and clear, but what is it that’s making this so bothersome to me? I don’t understand. He’s just having a moment. I realized that logically. Why is it that it’s really charging me and triggering me in this moment? I had to look at the deeper things there to heal in essence. Again, this is what I do with my clients.
I can’t really say, “Do this, do this, do this.” It’s an XYZ process. It’s a longer process. To be honest, this is what I’m giving my client. This is something that’s very special to become an unstoppable woman course. It takes some time to do that. What I want you to realize is see when you’re getting a seven-second or more charge because it’s likely happening all day long. When you’re getting those charges beyond the seven seconds, your body goes into fight or flight.
It triggers all those stress hormones and it is depleting your energy so bad. Oh, my goodness. When I had that argument with my husband a few weeks ago, I was drained for days trying to recoup from that. It was not enjoyable and I thought, “Oh, I remember living like this all the time.” I’ll give you an example from a client that I had last night on our group coaching call. They’re about to finish up Unstoppable and she said, “Okay, I want to share a win with y’all.”
In the past in my profession, there would be customers that got mad at me and it would really drain me. I would go and I would cry. It was just something that would make me spiral. Yesterday, I had a customer who got very, very irate with me and I was just able to calmly just sit there and respond to his questions and respond to his emotions. I didn’t get emotionally charged by it.
I was just able to hang up the phone with peace and just move about my day. I sat there and I thought, “Oh, my gosh. Look at how incredible that is. What is that opening up for you?” We talked about that and all the energy now, she’s able to gain the momentum she’s able to gain because she’s not charged by things like that. Start to notice in your world where that’s happening because that can be one of the biggest drains.
On the flip, it can be one of the biggest boosts after you learn how to release those emotions. We all have them. Some people come to me and they say, “Oh, what’s wrong with me, Lindsay? Why do I feel emotions like this? It’s just so triggering and charging. I hate that.” I think you’re human. You haven’t learned how to process them or release them yet or heal them however you want to look at it.
It’s unfortunate because they don’t teach these in our schools. This is the time that you can finally learn how to do that. Don’t ever think there’s something wrong with you. That’s just the way our human brain works. It’s just then that a few of us have been able to be fortunate enough to learn how to release those emotions and not have that emotional baggage anymore.
I’d love to help you do that in my Become an Unstoppable Woman coaching process. The way to start is just go to my website, Lindsay, L-I-N-D-S-A-Y, epreston.com. On there, you’ll see a free assessment. Go take that assessment. From there, you’ll see if we’re a good fit to work together. If we are, we’ll go do a free one-on-one call so we can just learn a bit more about each other and make sure it really is a good fit and then go from there.
I hope today’s podcast helped you and helped you boost your energy in non-conventional ways. As always, I love doing these shows for you. If you love them too, go leave a review for this show, especially if you’re listening on Apple Podcast. If you’re not, go over to my Facebook page. You can find me there at Lindsay Preston and go leave a review. I would so, so, so appreciate it.
All right, my friend, that’s all I have for this week. Next time on the show, I’m going to be bringing on a special guest and we’re going to be talking about infertility and conquering infertility. This guest is an infertility coach, so she’s going to walk you through if that’s something that you’re struggling with in your life, how to best get support through that time. It’s a very impactful interview. I’ve already recorded it and it will be out on August 15th, 2019.
I hope you come back and listen even if you’re not going through infertility because we give some great tips in there on how to support those who are. Sometimes you don’t even know who’s going through it, so just some language and understanding so that you can be a better human being, my friend. All right, that’s all I have for today. As always, you’re only as unstoppable as you believe you can be, so believe in yourself. You got this.
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