How To Increase Your Energy Levels

We all lead such hectic lives that being constantly tired or lacking energy can seem almost normal for many people. Just getting by can take up most of our energy, leaving little left to use to work towards our goals or building our ideal life.

It seems that most successful people have high energy levels. There may be exceptions, but I think it's fair to say that there's probably not that many examples of people who are constantly tired or exhausted, or burned out, achieving and sustaining high levels of success.

So what can we do to increase our energy levels?

Getting enough sleep, relaxing and taking time off when you don't work at all, are the most obvious essentials to maintaining energy levels.

It will also help if we understand the different types of energy we use in our lives.

There is more than one type of energy. The main types of energy are physical, emotional and mental. Although these are distinctly different, they are closely related and interdependent.

Physical Energy

Physical energy is the most basic type of energy. This is the energy that's used in manual labour. People who are involved in this kind of work usually need to eat substantial quantities of food just to sustain themselves. In many cases, at the end of each day they will have little energy left over for anything more than relaxing and sleeping so they can rebuild their strength in preparation for the next day. This is the situation for much of the world's population, particularly in developing countries.

Fortunately, due to automation, labour saving inventions, computers etc many of us no longer have to work as hard physically as previous generations did. More people than ever are employed in knowledge based roles requiring little or no physical effort.

Emotional Energy

Emotional energy is the energy that allows us to experience happiness, joy, love, excitement and many other emotions, both good and bad. This is the energy that gives us our enthusiasm and our love of life, and allows us to have fun. Many of our actions are driven, in varying degrees, by our emotional energy.

Our emotions can have a great impact on our overall energy levels.

When you are with friends and loved ones and are happy, excited or having fun, you will usually find that you have plenty you energy and feel great. This type of interaction with others not only boosts energy levels, but is good for overall health and resistance to illness.

Unsurprisingly, negative emotions have the opposite effect. If you are feeling angry, upset, depressed, frustrated or stressed, for example, you'll find your energy levels depleted and your resistance weak. If you keep feeling this way for extended periods, you'll eventually burn out altogether.

If you can maximise positive emotions and maintain an overall optimistic outlook you'll find that you have more energy that you can put to good use in other areas of your life.

Mental Energy

The other type of energy is mental energy. As many of us now work in knowledge based roles, we use a lot of this type of energy on a daily basis. This is the energy of creativity, decision making, writing, reading, learning new information and much more. Most of us now rely on our mental energy to survive.

How effectively we use our mental energy will ultimately decide how successful we are in our lives. It is our mental energy, through our thought processes, that determines our values and goals and the actions we take, which ultimately determine what we make of our lives.

How well we maximise the use of our mental energy and powers will be a major factor determining how successful and happy our lives turn out.

Negative Energy

One common setback to success is burning up energy in destructive ways. Although most of us don't now engage in much hard physical work, many of us waste huge amounts of emotional energy. This can take many forms. It could be something a common as having a generally negative outlook on life. There are many other examples, such as being over sensitive or easily upset, or being prone to emotional outbursts of anger. or even violence.

Negative emotions can massively drain energy levels, in fact a five minute outburst of anger uses about as much energy as eight hours of mental work.

Being at your best mentally depends on being at your best emotionally. Keeping calm, not letting things bother you, and maintaining a positive mental outlook can make a huge difference to your emotional state, which will boost your mental and physical energy. So will ensuring you get enough sleep, taking time to relax and taking regular breaks where you forget your work altogether. These can be the critical difference between being always tired, highly stressed or constantly on edge, and enjoying a successful, rewarding and happy life.