September 2002

I hope you have gotten off to an enthusiastic and energized start for the 2002/2003 school year. If you’ve been wise or are inclined to be good to yourself, you spent some time this past summer relaxing and doing the fun things you enjoy. (I have a hunch some of you are saying, ‘yeah, right.”) Whether you enjoyed your break or didn’t have one or worked all summer, I hope you will start the new school year with a commitment to yourself.  Make a commitment to monitoring, maintaining and managing your personal energy supply.  It is the crucial key to being able to enjoy your work this school year.

When energy supplies are depleted, so are enthusiasm, optimism, and even commitment.  Yet, it has been by experience that educators are notorious about shorting themselves on sleep and fun.  That adequate sleep and exercise are essential to good health and well being goes without saying, but I still talk to educators who cannot make a commitment to themselves for even those basic needs.

But it is not just our physical well being that affects our personal energy supply; it is all the people and things that impact our emotions.  Emotions and energy are tied very closely together.  That is why it is possible to be physically exhausted and emotionally exhilarated or physically fit and emotionally enervated.  Emotions have at least as much, if not more impact on personal energy than physical fitness.    So take a minute and do a personal energy audit.   Ask yourself who and what in your life leaves you feeling emotionally drained.  Then ask yourself who or what in your life gives you great pleasure or joy.  Who makes you laugh?   When is the last time you had fun?

If you find that there are many situations in your life that you are emotionally draining and little or no time spent doing things you love that give you joy and pleasure then you are in a serious energy deficit.  Think of it as leaving a window wide open while you are paying to heat or cool your house.  You need to do two things as soon as possible.  First, you need to close the window---which means look at the energy draining people and situations in your life and give yourself permission to avoid some of them.  Perhaps your work is the most energy draining activity, and of course you can’t quit your job.  

What you can do is avoid all other negative energy situations as much as possible.  Then do the second most important thing to help yourself---make time for fun and pleasure in your life.  Notice I said make time, not find time.  We make time for something when we give it top priority.  Very few hard working professionals think about fun and joyful pleasures as priorities.  Usually they are something we “squeeze in.”  However, if you want to prevent, burn-out, exhaustion and even serious illness, making time to feel happy and good is absolutely necessary.  It is the secret to good mental and physical health.  Give yourself permission to play a little.  Do it today.

Have some fun.