Want Energy?

As an entrepreneur, I need a lot of energy. It takes energy to manage all areas of my business, not to mention the rest of my life. In my 2+ years in business, I have discovered something else about energy. I have discovered that energy is more than just something that comes out of the wall socket. It is something that we create. That’s right, we all generate our own energy.

Energy is what drives my business. Energy is what drives all businesses. Not only is energy necessary to keep you functioning, but energy can determine the direction of your life as well. So in fact, energy drives you. It doesn’t just drive your work, but it actually drives you as a person. The important discovery I made is that there is a formula for energy and how it affects your life.

The formula is simple. You may have even heard it before in other areas. “You get what you put it”, “You get what you give” and other phrases like that are very true. The more energy you put into your life, the more results you get out of it. This is true and I have seen it firsthand with individuals, businesses and in my own life.

I see it in many businesses as they try to drive their culture toward a vibrant, high-energy environment. It works on an individual level as well. In fact, in order for it to work, each individual has to adopt it. Perhaps that is the easiest way to understand the energy formula.

Picture this:

You are tired after a day of work. You go to bed and wake up tired again. The next day feels the same. Getting up and going to be tired.

This doesn’t sound like a whole lot of fun, but it is reality for many people. Unfortunately, this may be your reality. Not only have I talked to hundreds of people living this way, but I’ve also been there myself.

How can you get out of this? How did I get out of this? Well, I’ve written about the energy cycle and how you can move upward or downward depending on how active you are. That is one way to look at it strictly from an exercise perspective. I would like to step back and look at this from a wider perspective. There is more to life than exercise. Despite my passion for health, I know that not everything revolves around exercise.

I also know that you need energy to make it through the day. Exercise can be a way to get that energy. Others use caffeine, hydration, food or other methods to push through the daily grind. But it’s the daily grind itself that we need to look at. When I step back and look at the big picture, I see many opportunities for increased energy. In fact, everything we do is a chance for energy to propel us.

Do you find yourself saying: “I don’t have the energy.” Or “I can’t do that because it will take too much out of me.” If you have said this, you are choosing not to put energy into these tasks. What do you get for results? Not good? Not a ton of results or high-energy coming back to you? I’m not surprised, are you?

It comes down to our simple formula: you get out what you put in. If you put in a little, you get a little in return. We’ve all worked with someone in school or at work that only contributed minor effort to a group project. Everyone on the team may have gotten the same grade, but how much respect did you give the person that put in minimal energy? Did you want to work with them again? Did you actually end up working with them again? Not likely.

This is why the energy formula is so important in your personal life. I’m not just talking about health either. I’m talking about every aspect of your life.
Picture this:

You have goals. You know what you need to do in order to accomplish these goals. You know that the more you put in, the more you will get out of this process. As you get started you realize that as long as you are acting toward your goals, it’s only as hard as you make it. In fact, the more you do something, the easier it becomes.

This goes for your exercise, your diet choices, work schedule and everything else in life. It is easy to think about whether we are capable of something or not. It is easy to say “No, that’s too hard.” Those are the easy choices in life. Or rather they are the easy decisions to make when faced with a challenge.

I like to look at it a little differently. I don’t think about what I can or can’t do. I think about what I want or don’t want to do. As I work with my coaching clients, we discuss goals in terms of what they want to accomplish. We don’t talk about what they should do and might try to do because they should. We talk about what they want to do. The choice really becomes: how much am I willing to do?

Once you decide you are willing to do something, you have another choice. The choice, “how much am I willing to do?” translates to how much energy I am willing to put in. Knowing the formula of getting out what you put in, the choice seems easy.

It seems easy to me. It seems easy to anyone that is reaching their goals. Anyone putting in high energy and getting good results will continue to make that choice over and over again.

Are you one of these people? If not, do you want to be one of these people? How much energy are you willing to put in?