Hello, everyone. This week, I want to identify four signs that you are operating in extremes while managing your energy. If you read my last post, I spoke a bit about how managing your energy and your resources poorly can lead to severe burnout, and that’s what happened to me. After backtracking my steps and learning sustainable ways you can work on managing your energy, I’ve discovered that there are several different buckets—or in this case, four different buckets—where mismanagement of our energy often goes unnoticed. I wanted to bring these “buckets” to your attention so that you can check in with yourself and adjust how you’re managing your energy and resources as needed.

1. Your Relationship With Money

The first sign that you’re operating in extremes while managing your energy is when it comes to money, there is either a lot of restriction with your money management or there is a lack of self-control with your money management.

I want to start the conversation about managing your energy by saying this: I’m all about manifestation. Manifestation is my jam. I have learned a thing or two about manifestation in my day, and there is a lot of focus on the abundance mindset, which is awesome and amazing and needed. In order to call more money into your life, you’ve got to have an abundance mindset. However, if you are in this space where you are operating from an abundance mindset that is actually rooted in scarcity, you are going to have a lack of self-control with money.

I remember when I first started learning about manifestation, people would say things like, “In order to call more money into your life, spend more freely.” I do believe the energy and frequency of money is that it likes to be free. Money itself is an abundant thing. It lets you do a lot of different things, so you want to start managing your energy around money to treat it the way it wants to be treated, which is freely. However, if you’re managing your energy from a place of scarcity, you’re going to spend freely from a scarcity mindset, meaning you’re going to try to get rid of it. It’s not spending because you actually feel truly anchored and rooted in abundance, it’s spending from a place of thinking that’s what you have to do.

This is where shadow work really comes in with managing your energy around money, and what I mean by shadow work is working on examining your unconscious mind. In this case, maybe you’ve had this experience with money where you have the urge to spend. This was me for the longest time. My dad used to say, “You can’t keep your money in your pocket. You always have to let it go. If you keep it in your pocket, it’s going to bite you.” Now, to be fair, this girl has Venus conjunct Jupiter in her chart, which basically means that I love, love, love things. I love to lavish myself in things. But my dad actually had a really good point, which is, yeah, it’s good to be abundant. It’s good to spend. But you want to spend from a place of choice, right? Not from an urge to buy everything you see when you’re out shopping.

However, you might be on the other end of this spectrum with managing your energy around money, right? Money is a form of energy, by the way. That’s why I’m speaking to this. When I say operating in extremes while managing your energy, you might actually be heavily restricting your money and not allowing for pleasure or joy with your money. You might think everything has to go to savings or everything has to go to investments. Everything has to be locked away and out of sight. Or maybe you budget so that you just don’t get to spend money on yourself.

Now, you can do whatever you want to do with your money, but you want to do it with intention. “I’m choosing to spend my money this way. I’m choosing to save my money this way.” That feels better. That feels free.

2. Actually Managing Your Energy

The second sign you’re operating in extremes with your energy is actually the method you use while managing your energy.

Are you someone who piles on a lot of things at once? Maybe you arrange a schedule for yourself that you believe is reasonable, but you have that little inner nudge that says, “Actually, this is way too damn much.” But  though your gut tells you that’s too much to load your day with, your mind is like, “No, we have to do this.”

This used to happen to me all the time. I would overshoot on my ability to do something, and I would act out of this place of martyrdom, thinking I had to do all of those things, or else it meant something bad about me. I would look at my task list and see I had three more things to do near the end of my day, but instead of just moving it over to the next day because I overshot how much I could do, I believed I had to get it all done, even though I was exhausted. So are you piling on more than you can actually handle because you’re trying to prove something to yourself? This is a sign of operating in extremes.

What about asking for help when you need it? This was something I struggled with a lot. I had a whole team and a lot of support, but I would not delegate things. Asking for help is a huge part of managing energy properly. If there’s someone who can take on a task for you, someone whose job it is to take that off your plate, let them!

The last part of this is if you have a lack of boundaries. Say someone asks you, “Hey, can you help me with this? Hey, can you do this for me?” and even if you have no energy to spare, your immediate response is like, “Yes, of course.” Because if you don’t, what are they going to think about you? This goes back to that martyrdom thing: “It’s only me. I’m the savior. I’m the one that handles everything for everyone.” Are you really, or are you maybe finding a way unconsciously to deplete yourself of energy completely?

I know that was a little rough to hear.  You should have seen my face when my own brain told me this. But it could be true.

3. How You Manage Your Time

Now we’re moving on to number three. Be warned—this one’s a biggie.

Where are you leaving things until the last minute? Is it paying your bills? Is it projects that you have to get done? Are you waiting until the absolute due date to complete things?

This can feel great in the moment, because all of a sudden you have this energy to spur yourself into accomplishing your to-dos, but really, you’re doing a lot in a short amount of time. The result of this? You burn yourself out really quickly.

For me, this was always getting ready to go somewhere. I’d always wait until the last second. I used to love to rush. However, this is where I’ve really shined in getting better at being on time to things. I used to rush and rush. It was like some kind of thrill I had, and now I actually give myself more time, so I can take my time and enjoy the process. The upside of this is that when I get to the place, I’m not frazzled, you know what I mean?

To make this happen, I just started overestimating how much time things would take me. That’s my best advice for this: overestimate. Give yourself the luxury of extra time. That is what I’m applying now with getting ready.

So again, take a look at where you’re really going hard with a lot of energy on a very small timeframe and burning yourself out.

4. Feeling Out of Control With Food and Drink

Our last sign that you’re operating in extremes with your energy and resources is with food and beverages.

Disclaimer: I’m not speaking to addiction here, because that’s a totally different ballgame, and I don’t even want to touch those waters here. Rather, I want to talk about when we just feel out of control here and there. It’s not an addiction thing. I’m not speaking about eating disorders or alcoholic addiction. But there can be times still when we feel a bit out of control.

When it comes to food or drinks, non-alcoholic or alcoholic, do you heavily restrict yourself, or do you feel a lack of self-control at times?

This can happen a lot with dieting. This was me back in college; I would restrict my intake to the point where at times I would feel faint. I was tracking macros and all those kinds of things, and it was just not enjoyable. It did not feel enjoyable.

I understand if you have a weight goal or a health goal and you’re restricting from a place of choice and joy and discipline. That’s totally different than restricting from a place of, “I have to do this thing. I have to. I hate this, but I’m doing it.” Why do something that you hate doing?

Or, maybe you’re on the other end of the spectrum. This also can happen with dieting; for instance, when you see a cupcake, rather than just enjoying it, eating it, and knowing when you’ve had enough. Instead, you feel the need to eat five cupcakes in a row. You feel out of control and like you don’t have any choice. You’re just eating because you’ve restricted yourself so much previously that once you give in, you go to the complete other end of the spectrum. And it’s not that you have no self-control—it’s just that there’s no balance. Because your body’s been restricted for so long, once you remove the weight of that restriction, it’s easy to swing right to the other extreme. So the important thing to examine while managing your energy around money is, are you feeling in choice with the food that you’re eating and the beverages that you’re drinking? Or do you feel like you operate out of urges?

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Those Are The Areas to Watch While Managing Your Energy!

Just to recap, here are the four signs of operating in extremes while managing your energy and resources: Number one was a lot of restriction or a lack of self-control with money, the second one was the actual practice of managing your energy, the third one was managing your time, and then the last one was self-control with food and drink. Pay special attention to these areas while examining how you’re managing your energy, and be sure to adjust where you see a pattern of extremes!

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