How to Protect Your Energy

These days, you can take your pick of things to be anxious about. Between personal stressors, and the news about national and world events that is accessible twenty-four hours a day, there is a good chance that you’ll come across something negative. When that happens, how do you maintain your peace? When your energy starts to dissipate into worry, how do you recover it to use it to advance your goals? How do you continue to take action when your motivation sags?

Forcing yourself to only focus on the bright side in the face of negative news can be toxic. False positivity causes you to stuff your emotions rather than to feel them, and that is unhealthy behavior. A better choice is to allow yourself to feel what you feel, and to express that, perhaps through crying or journaling, or a conversation with a trusted confidant. But you don’t have to stop there. Here are four tips to help you process your negative emotions in a healthy way, and to shift your energy back toward your positive focus.

1. Build awareness of the energy you bring into a space.

Being conscious about your feelings and your energy allows you to make choices about how you want to show up. Some of the tools to help build awareness are prayer, meditation, and journaling. Taking some time each morning to get clear about what is in your own head and heart allows you the time and space to work through your emotions.  When you experience a strong emotion, acknowledge that emotion and take responsibility. Blaming is a defense mechanism that shifts your focus away from choosing your own response. Then calm your stress response by deep breathing. That old advice about taking ten deep breaths when you are angry is rooted in the fact that when your body is calm, your mind can think and you can respond rather than react. Then you can look for your action steps. Use your emotions as clues to show you areas that you may need to work on, and get curious about those areas.

2. Try to be kind and helpful in every situation.

Choosing to practice kindness and to look for ways to help solve problems brings positive energy to situations. Work on identifying the needs to be met, and cooperate to meet those needs.

3. Choose your words carefully.

Conversations can be life-giving. You can use words to show love and appreciation, problem solve and come up with plans of action, and connect to your values. While you may need to vent sometimes to someone you trust, beware of how much time you are giving to complaints. If you can do your complaining in your journal and get it out of your system, you can use conversation with others to connect and build one another up instead.

4. Practice compassion.

You never know what anyone else is going though at any given moment, and you can’t know the ripple effects of what you think, say, and do. Extending grace to the people around you creates a gracious space for you as well. 

You might notice that all of these tips have to do with perspective. There may be many things in your life that you cannot control, but by keeping things in perspective, you will be able to identify the things you can control, and take action to move yourself toward your goals. Human beings are adaptable, and you are capable of learning and growing into the next level. Join Dr. Traci Kiernan live at noon CST weekdays on Facebook and Instagram for information and encouragement, or join the TRIBE to be part of a community dedicated to working on your health.