Energy Tokens for the Game of Life

🎧 👉 Prefer audio? You can also listen to me share about this in podcast episode #043 here.

How do you choose where to spend your energy? 

Or, do you feel as if life dictates that for you and you don’t have a choice? The truth is that we have a choice in this more than we may want to admit.

I want you to think right now about what activities give you energy.

I know that for me listening to certain podcasts gives me energy. Some of them give me an inspired kick in the butt. Some give me healing. My mentors give me energy. And if I ever notice a mentor draining me, I check in with myself to see if it was just a rare instance or if it is time for me to move on. Recording my podcast gives me energy. Certain meditations give me energy. Listening to the birds chirp outside while I work gives me energy. Working out in the gym with my husband gives me energy. Taking a nap gives me energy.

Now let’s look at the flip side and think about what depletes your energy.

For me, having music or TV on while I’m working is an energy leak, and I find it really hard to focus when a sound like that is on. Powering through and working for too many hours in a row exhausts me. I used to do consistently 10-12 hour and even some 14-hour days. Having sound alerts on my phone and computer totally wears me down. I only have sound alerts on for text messages and phone calls. And when I really want to focus on something, I turn off all my alerts. Oh, and in general, I don’t like trying to remember things. It is exhausting and usually ineffective for me to try to remember things, so writing them down on a note or in my phone or my calendar or project management system is key to keeping me from feeling overwhelmed and drained.

One of my recent energy suckers is when strangers connect with me on Linked In or Facebook and then quickly message me to see if they can help me. I had about 20 of those in a row happen in just over a week. I ended up drafting a kind yet clear response that I’d copy and paste to set my boundaries. And then for the past few weeks, I got tired of doing that, and I’ve been letting them pile up. I’ll periodically go through them and look briefly at their profiles, trust my gut, and don’t respond to the friend request if it basically feels like a cold call.

I know what I’m about to say may sound really simple and obvious, but seriously...

Do MORE of the things that light you up and do LESS of the things that deplete you.

Have you ever heard about life being referred to as a game, or more specifically, as being like a video game? I really like the metaphor. I personally believe that we are spiritual beings who choose to have a human experience. So the human body is the avatar of our game, and we are the main character in our own game of life. Each of our avatars is totally unique, and none of us can ever play the game as another person’s avatar, although we do have choices for how what adventures we go on, what skills we acquire, if and how we choose to uplevel to another part of the game. It really is an awesome metaphor. It also encourages us to PLAY, which is something I think we don’t do enough of; at least, I know is something I have to make a conscious effort to do more of—even in the simplest sense of being more lighthearted about life.

Imagine you only have a few tokens each day to play your game...

Do you remember video arcades? Do those even exist anymore? Pretend you walk into an arcade and get to choose what game you play that day. If your tokens equal your time and energy, how would that influence your decision?

What if you started paying more attention to energy boosters and energy suckers and picture your precious pile of tokens.

“Life is a game, play it.” 

– Mother Teresa

🎧 👉 Prefer audio? You can also listen to me share about this in podcast episode #043 here.