Similar to how we have a total of 24 hours to live each day, we also have a finite amount of energy to use each day. In fact, you might think of our human energy as sand in an hourglass, with sand leaving the hourglass with our every thought and behavior. Choose wisely and efficiently, and you experience improved mental health by means of optimism and happiness, and even feel better physically. Conversely, when we allow irrelevant things to direct our attention and behaviors, we experience fatigue, pessimism, and even depression. So the question is not how much energy we have to use each day, but instead how we direct our energy by means of our focus and physical behaviors.
Where do your days go?
Staying with the hourglass metaphor, you might lose a lot of sand each day if you allow minor, irrelevant things to consume your thinking — and even worse, if those thoughts make you vulnerable to poor coping (i.e. you drink because you think too much about things in life beyond your control). For example, lets say someone accidentally cut you off in traffic today. You could think rationally that the person did not mean to cut you off, and was probably racing like many people do in the morning on their way to work. Sure, you might have been upset in the moment, but if you haven’t let go of those feelings by lunch, you might be wasting energy (sand in the hourglass) on something you should have moved on from hours ago. Playing this out further, by not letting go of the car cutoff, you probably carried that frustration into countless more conversations with friends and co-workers throughout the day, throwing off bad vibes and bringing down others as a result. As you can see an otherwise good day can be wasted by putting too much attention on things that really should not wreck your entire day.
While the previous example may not be something you deal with regularly (i.e. a car cutting you off in traffic), you might be a victim to daily negative thinking about things that are irrelevant and/or out of your control. Here again, do you lose sand in the hourglass each day experiencing unnecessary frustration about things like the weather, what a politician said, or how poorly your fantasy football team is playing? And what would be the payout if you did not let those things bog you down, and if you instead learned to more quickly move past things that do not add in healthy ways to the quality of your life?
Re-directed focus and behaviors = positive results!
When we re-direct our focus and energy away from things that don’t matter a lot, and instead invest in the things that do contribute to our health and happiness, the result is a completely different life experience using the same 24 hours in a day. For example, the next time a friend of yours talks about their favorite politician (that is not a politician you like), rather than become angry and frustrated, why not instead learn better ways to move your focus onto better things for your mental health? Just think, how much different would your life be if you improved at being able to let irrelevant things go by, while at the same time ramping up energy toward the things you want in life (i.e. better physical health, more quality time with loved ones, etc.).
Goofing around each day and toiling away small parts of the day on trivial activities is one thing, but how many times have you allowed your day to go in a negative direction simply because you allowed one bad moment steal the day? The point is that you do not need to be perfect with how you go about your day, but that you should be prudent when it comes to steering your thoughts and behaviors away from things that make you feel bad, and toward things that make you feel good.
Final thoughts
While we all have the same amount of time each day, how we use that time is what determines our happiness, overall health, and level of human productivity we experience. If you audit a typical day in your life you might be surprised at how much energy you devote to things that really don’t matter, and how much different your life might be if you re-directed your focus onto healthier things each day. Invest in the things that matter while quickly moving past the daily static, and before you know it you will experience better emotions and increased productivity.
drstankovich.com
