Ordering your Energy - Josiah Diaso
In recent history, the number of relatively young people dying suddenly from cardiovascular complications are on the increase. In many instances, stress has been fingered as the major culprit for these deaths. True, modern societies differ a lot from traditional society chiefly for the complexities of everyday living that has now come to characterize our lives. People are now wont to cope with multiple tasks to do, decisions to make and responsibilities to attend to. This seeming confusion has immense potential to drain ones energy and ramp up our stress hormones.
People’s lives are now more crowded than ever with conflicting needs necessitated by advances and progress in life and technology. Almost like an irony, technology that is meant to make people’s lives easier by providing faster means of getting things done have inadvertently made life more complex by providing myriads of impulses that beseech on our senses unendingly. Besides technology, the way modern societies and life generally in this present age is structured, people must now be better able to manage their energy in line with the current rush on them by many deadlines and needs to meet. At first impulse, the reaction to the need for a better mechanism to help deal with more activity would be to desire more time in our hands. Often we hear people say that 24 hours is hardly enough to go through all that a day throws at them. This apparently is a response to a quest for a better stress coping mechanism. Truth is, more time does not always amount to less stressful lives, to better able deal with stress, time actually has to be freed up.
It is important to do a quick clarification that stress is not necessarily what happens to us, but how we deal with what happens to us. That is why 2 different people would be subjected to similar circumstances; what is often referred to as stressors, but would respond differently to those stressors. The ability to adequately order (manage) our energy bequeaths us with the ability to manage our lives and keep our stress hormones down. As much as it is important to aim towards a flourishing career and optimum work performance, it is also as important to maintain a healthy work/life balance. American Journalist and business writer Tony Schwartz posits that for optimum productivity coupled with a proper balance in other aspects of our lives, our different energy levels must be properly managed. According to him we have 4 levels of energy that interplay to give us fulfilling lives;
- Physical Energy: How healthy are you
- Emotional Energy: How happy are you
- Mental Energy: How well can you focus on something
- Spiritual Energy: Why do you do all that you do, what is your purpose
All of these energy levels needs to be in proper poise and requires proper management to produce a balanced life, when one of these energies suffers, it affects the overall well-being of the person. For the sake of this write-up however we will focus on the management of Physical energy as we go through our work day in a bid to impose order into our lives.
The question that physical energy attempts to answer is, how healthy are you? Physical energy is required to power through your day. Without optimum health it is near impossible to accomplish any meaningful task, and the stress level quickly mounts. Agreeably, working under ill health requires more exertion to get meaningful work done, but also one can be without any disease and still be at a level of low physical energy as a result of a lack in certain factors that are required to get one working optimally.
The factors that interplay to provide us with the right amount and kind of energy required to power through the day optimally are Nutrition, Rest & Sleep, Exercise & Fitness
Nutrition
Food plays an important role in our everyday life. Many of us have heard the old adage “You are what you eat”. Our productivity and our health are in direct correlations to the quality of food we eat. Eating well means a balanced diet matched to the energy needs of our body at the different times of the day. According to Healthline online bulletin, Nutrition does not only affect your mood and your energy, it also impacts your creativity. Certain types of nutrition are important for brain health. According to Tony Schwartz, our morning meals should comprise largely of carbohydrates to provide us with the right glucose levels in our blood to get us going for the day and in line with our daily anabolic and catabolic cycles.
Rest and sleep
In the apparent frenzy of today’s world, people now work long hours sometime stretching into very late in the night and giving less time for rest and sleep. According to the American National Health, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI), sleep is involved in healing and repair of your heart and blood vessels. Ongoing sleep deficiency is linked to an increased risk of heart disease, kidney disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, and stroke. It is little wonder that there is a preponderance of young people coming down with heart diseases, diabetes and kidney diseases in recent times. Importantly, during sleep, our bodies regenerate and dead cells are replaced. This regeneration is quite important for the maintenance of an optimal state of health and wellbeing. There has been an ongoing debate about the right amount of sleep that is needed by the average individual for optimum health, some say 8 hours of sleep is needed for proper rest, while some posit that 5 hours is enough sleep to get us going. Much as the quantity of sleep that one gets is important, it is the quality of sleep that we must pay attention to. Some people sleep up to 9 hours some night and do not feel well rested, while some sleep for less and feel refreshed by the time they wake up.
A good sleep serves as energy refuel for you to cope with the busy-ness that we are sure going to face and cope with. Before your body breaks you down and make you pay the debt of sleep, do well to give it all the sleep it requires to keep your energy level high.
Exercise & Fitness
There exist a direct correlation between exercise and energy level. People who exercise a lot tend to be more energetic, primarily because they have a high rate of metabolism (break down of food to produce glucose for energy). It is important that time be spared and planned for physical exercise in our daily routine. One of the major benefits of regular exercise is that it enhances blood flow in the body and hence aids in the continuous movement of oxygen to areas in the body that requires it. Of course oxygen is primary for the oxidization of our foods and hence the release of the necessary energy contained in our food. The crux of the matter is that without oxygen your cells cannot make energy and their metabolism is less effective. This makes exercise key for the energizing of our cells. Yet again exercise is important because it helps in the strengthening of our muscles and thus encourages fitness and endurance. We generally have the capacity to go for longer and not get fatigued if we exercise regularly. As a matter of fact, exercise has been recommended as a cure for fatigue. According to Patrick O’ Connor, Professor of anatomy and neuroscience and co-director of the University of Georgia Exercise Psychology, in one of his studies conducted on 6800 people who are fatigued, he found that 90% sedentary people who completed a regular exercise program reported improved fatigue, compared to groups that did not exercise.
On the next edition of our bulletin, we will explore Emotional Energy and Mental Energy as means to actively cope with the rush of today’s world.