Today I awoke before my alarm. Don’t you hate that? There wasn’t enough time to fall back to sleep, so I just laid there. I felt robbed. When my alarm did go off and I cursed the fact that it was much too soon, my eyes felt tight. Tight eyes are what my eyes feel like when my body wants more sleep. Interestingly, my body is often ready to go before my eyes. I kept them half closed as I walked the familiar path to the bathroom and then braced myself for the light that would explode the darkness.
The feelings attached to our energy
While my day hasn’t been remarkably defined by the difficulty of my eyes opening upon waking, I have been thinking about how some days I feel more energetic than others. Do you have days where you just feel more with it? Other days feel like I’m carrying a 25-pound backpack with a pebble in my shoe. What gives? As I’ve written, my days are pretty routine and I don’t deviate from the path much during the week. I try to function as a well-oiled machine, but alas my humanness does not let me forget a machine I am not. This subjective energy is one such example of how we can’t consistently operate within a well written formula, controlling one side of the equation and expecting the same product on the other side. Those hormones and nuances of walking on an uneven surface in the wrong shoes can have lasting effects.
Facing inertia
I think as much as possible we should recognize that energy will serve us better and more readily some days and there will also be days in which our body or mind will make a stubborn stand in its inertia. Try what you might, there are just some days that are less electrifying than others. This could likely be summarized as a case of the Mondays. While often the schedules of our life do not flex for our natural waxing and waning energy, I think it is important to take notice and adjust our expectations accordingly. I don’t know about you, but when I have high expectations for myself on a day when I’m just not feeling it, I set myself up for a self-worth beating.
Be your own friend
What if we recognized it was an off day and gave our self a hug and a few words of appreciation for just showing up? You know that you would do this for a friend that confides in you that they weren’t feeling their energy flow! Yet when it comes to our own self, we seem to think we should put our head down and push through. Has this worked out favorably for you? What would happen if you took a step back and shaved off a few things from your list or curbed the priorities just a bit? Isn’t that an act of self-love?
Bring on the radiance!
At it’s opposite, energy can be abundant and radiant, pushing itself out of us with little effort at all. There are also days like that. When you’ve been around long enough, you realize that there is always going to be both. If we accept this instead of fight it, might we find even more momentum and vivacity to put forth on the days when it is easy?
Finding acceptance, easing off on the days that feel hard, and riding the high wave when your vitality shines, is going to bring about a greater sense of ease and confidence that you can indeed thrive during the ebb and flow of energy.