I have written in the past about how music has been an important aspect of this or how I work hard to manage what I feed my mind, but this spans so many areas.
Core to this is sleep. There have been periods in my life where I have tried to limit the amount of sleep that I have in order to do more. There are cases where I do this out of necessity, but to do it on a consistent basis is not something that I can maintain. I believe that different people can function on varying amounts of sleep, but the average seems to be around 7 to 8 hours. Some people can do less, but you have to know your body and know what works for you.
The other aspect of guarding my energy is the food that I eat. I follow a vegan and gluten free diet. These are quite strict dietary guidelines, but the main reason I do it is because of health. Based on the things that I have read, things I have noticed in my own body and the things that I see happening to those around me, I made a choice to change my diet. I have been vegan for over 3 years and gluten free for about 2 months.
I won’t go into detail on the particular research and arguments on why, but you can check my reading list for some books to start you off if you are interested. What you eat affects your energy and it also affects your health in the years to come. We are continuously around toxicity, but I believe we should try to manage what we can control to stay healthy. Anything can happen of course, that is a fact of life, but it shouldn’t be an excuse.
Lastly, there is people. Who do you spend the most time with? Where are they in their life? What are their habits of thinking? Do they bring positivity or negativity in your life? Too many times we keep people around us who are drainers. You have to be super careful with who you allow to impact your energy. It is a question of what will you accept, what will you let go and what will you change about yourself.
How I see it, is that we have this pot of energy each day, and this pot is affected by multiple things. If I can give myself the best starting point with good sleep, healthy food habits and mental thoughts, then that is great! Throughout the day, I then have to be selective and mindful about how I spend my time.
How we allocate our life energy in each moment, is how we choose to use the life that we have been given and that is not something that I think we should waste.