Summer Energy
Summer is literally lighting a fire under your life. So there tends to be a lot more activity and motivation in the warmer months of the year. It’s a great time to focus your energy on making progress with any projects you were inspired to start in Spring and to connect and collaborate with those around you to make things happen.
It’s also a time where we can easily become out of balance and overdo things, especially if you are someone who lives in a perpetual Summer. I know I’ve totally been there, trying to fit too much in, overeating or burning the midnight oil at all the additional social events on the calendar.
Maintaining balance doesn’t have to be challenging though, it’s all about understanding what you need and what supports you and making time every day to check in with how you are going. I’ve put a few things together to help you become more aware of what you need to manage your energy throughout your day.
Your values, meaning and purpose
I’m not so much into goals by themselves as I feel like a lot of the time our goals can be influenced by who we think we should be rather than who we are. Think about your last new year’s resolution, was it really about you and creating a more meaningful life? or was it grounded in self-judgement and not feeling enough? Harsh realities I know, but that’s what we are here for, to keep it real so you can create some honest change.
Spend some time right now thinking about your intrinsic values, what makes you tick and what makes you excited for the future.
Go with the Flow
I could literally spend all day talking about energy. Energy is a funny thing, it can be a felt experience, be measured in numbers and calories, but it’s also very personal. In my experience, we have so much to learn about ourselves and how we manage our time and energy to make the most of every moment. So I’ve put together some simple tools to help you with going with the flow and understanding your energy a bit more. Learning how to tune into it and balancing our ability to give and receive energy is a skill. To create a system that works for you it helps to understand what gives you energy and depletes you of energy so you can be more aware of what side of that energy equation you should be on. There are really three ways to engage with the world, giving, receiving and neutral and they all look different depending on who you are and how you feel at the time which is why those daily essentials are always the first point of call before tuning in to how you are feeling.
So have a think about what gives you energy and what depletes you of energy. Do you feel excited when you wake up in the morning? or overwhelmed by what you have on your to-do list?
Your Summer Self-Care Plan
Self-care is important in every season, but I feel like Summer is when most people are likely to burn out and become overwhelmed by everything that is going on as it’s so easy to get wrapped up in what is happening around you and not take the time to check in. I love seasonal self-care in particular, because it recognises that things change and that what might have been helpful for us during Winter is not going to do it for us in Summer.
This is an opportunity to think about what you want this Summer and come up with some specific actions to support you with those intentions. Make a list of all the self-care practices that you know work for you. Have a look at the practices page if you need some ideas! Let’s take the time to write those things down and make a commitment that we are actually going to support ourselves and our self-care through making time to do them.
Daily Energy Planner
With the essentials check-in, those giving, receiving and understanding those energising and depleting activities you should have a little road map of how you spend your energy and some helpful tools on what works for you to bring yourself back into balance. Now you can have a go at using an energy planner to create an intention and embrace with meaning how you manage your energy throughout your day. I find this provides valuable feedback that you can continue to refine over time to give you more energy and time for the things you love.