My Energy Project

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Last week, in preparation for our Manager's Retreat, the facilitator asked each of us to take The Energy Audit from The Energy Project. Having no clue what it was, I clicked on the link, and proceeded to take a short quiz. The first few questions were easy--do I regularly get 7-8 hours per week? Check. Do I frequently skip breakfast? Nope. Do I exercise multiple times per week? Check. But as I went along, I came across more and more questions that I couldn't answer so easily--do I regularly spend time with my loved ones, and when I'm with them, am I always really with them? Nope. Do I spend enough time doing the activities that I most deeply enjoy? Nope. Am I easily distracted during the day, especially by email? Yep. And they just got harder... 

Moral of the story? I finished the audit, received my score via email, and was given the following results: physically and spiritually, I'm fully energized (yay!). But mentally, I have a "significant energy deficit," and emotionally? I'm in a "full out energy crisis." 

Um, what? A "full out energy crisis?" How have I let this happen? I'm a yoga teacher & studio director--I  LOVE my job, am able to make my own schedule--and all day long I talk to people about taking care of themselves, emotionally, physically, spiritually, and mentally. So where have I gone wrong? How am I not practicing what I preach to my students? 

Without going into a pour-my-heart-out therapy session with you here on my blog, I will say that I have a *few* ideas on why I'm in an "emotional energy crisis," and from what I learned at our manager's retreat, people often know why they're deficient in one category, as that's typically the area that they always neglect when they get busy. Or as one manager put it, "obviously you're in an emotional energy crisis, you're planning a wedding." So is that my excuse? Sadly, I don't think so.  

And I think that this is definitely a bigger issue. If there's the need for a company called The Energy Project that comes in and works with companies like Google, Coca Cola, and Target on how to manage so that their employees are "regularly renewed" in all 4 energy categories, then this is obviously a cultural issue for us. 
So what do we do about it? Begin to make changes. Maybe small ones at first, but we have to make changes. 

Thus, here's my challenge to you: take the energy audit. It takes like 5 minutes. And then truly reflect on your results. Why are you deficient in certain areas? What can you do to make some small changes to your score, and therefore, some big changes to your overall energy levels?

In the meantime, I'll also be reflecting and trying to make changes, and hopefully, we can all take the audit again in a few months and see a drastic  change in our scores. 

Hope you have an energized Monday!

Namaste,
Mary Catherine