Hey Everyone!

In our latest podcast episode, I take us on a transformative journey into the heart of success and well-being through energy management. It's not just about feeling good; it's about being productive, intentional, and strategic in every facet of life. Our energy is a cornerstone influencing not only our personal well-being but also positively impacting those around us.

Key Insights:

1. The Three Pillars of Energy Management

   - Body: Nourish your body with proper nutrition, adequate rest, and regular physical activity.

   - Emotions: Recognize survival emotions (fear, hate) and nurture growth emotions (excitement, connection).

2. Reframe Your Perspective on Challenges

   - Acknowledge challenges inherent in business and life.

   - Embrace difficulties as part of the journey toward higher rewards.

3. Mindful Media Consumption 

   - Be intentional about the content you consume.

   - Limit exposure to negative news triggering draining emotions.

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Key Takeaway:

Negative thoughts and survival emotions can suck the life out of me. But, guess what? Growth emotions can be energizing.

Here's a sneak peek from our conversation:

Faisal: "We all face challenges, but it's not about the challenges themselves. It's about how we respond to them. Your reactions, your thoughts – that's where your power lies."

Faisal: " It's a mindset shift. Instead of seeing obstacles as roadblocks, view them as stepping stones. Each challenge is an opportunity to grow and learn."

Tips to Help you Improve:

1. Identify your energy-draining culprits. Track frustrations, thoughts, and reactions. Awareness is the first step to reclaiming your energy.
2. Communicate effectively with loved ones to align visions for the future.
3. Address problems promptly to prevent energy drain over time.

and MUCH more in the the full Video. So be sure to check it out!

Ready to take the plunge into this transformative discussion? Dive into the full episode now! 

Transcript

Energy - what is draining you

Faisal: [00:00:00] This week's session is again on energy.

I was planning to do energy a few weeks later again. And we might actually do that again, but this is probably one of the most important topics that you're going to actually cover and managing your own energy. As you will see in today's training session, it's going to be really important as you move forward, not just for you to like, for the sake of managing energy, but for you to be productive for you to be effective, intentional, strategic for you to connect better with those around you for you to go towards your dreams for you to do the bigger things that you're dreaming of doing.

Your energy is going to be probably one of the most important things that you do. So let's cover energy more specifically. Last time we, uh, last time we talked, quite a bit about what are the, some key areas of energy to think about from physical, mental, emotional, and, and spiritual energy.

Now, within that bucket, I want to get you to think about another frame around energy, which is if you can understand this, if you can understand what's actually draining your [00:01:00] energy, that in itself, the awareness around that will help you build more energy because a lot of energy is not because you're not doing a lot of things to generate energy is because there are a lot of things happening in the background that's draining the hell out of your energy.

And just. Off the bat, if I can, if I can tell you one thing that's very common to most people, but especially high achievers, and we talked about the difference between high achievers and high performers, especially with high achievers who are more kind of ambition driven, and they're focused on that one thing, which is usually their career path.

They tend to lose sight of everything else, but, high performers tend to be more holistic in nature. That's where they learn that for them to be more effective in different parts of their life. They need to manage their energy well. High achievers, for example, can go on. They can over caffeinate themselves and they can keep pushing themselves because they have a high.

And a high level of ambition, they can continue that for a while until they crash, whether it's on a day to day, like a daily basis or a week or a [00:02:00] month, you start to see, like, they go through these highs and lows a lot, but a lot of high performers, the way they tend to look at this is what is sustainable?

What can I do consistently over a long period of time? And long periods actually generally means the longer for most high performers, which means that their timelines are much more extended, which means that they look a decade out. They look five years out. They don't look six months out or three months out and measure their timelines that way, which means that they are already looking at sustainability, but they look at their energy that way.

For example, uh, when I'm looking at my calendar, I don't like when I'm doing block times, I don't just block for time. I block for energy as well, which means that the things that I do in the morning are usually things that take a lot more energy than things that I put in the evening or afternoon. I manage for energy in my calendar as well.

And same thing, like, as my weeks go by, the most heavy, heavier days of the week are Monday and Tuesday for [00:03:00] me. Wednesday evening, it starts to die out and Thursday and Friday are not the heaviest days in terms of me doing heavy lifting in terms of a lot of my work is mental and emotional in nature. It's not physical in nature, so it's not a lot of heavy lifting on that side.

It's a lot of stuff. I already know a lot and know what to do it, but a lot of the thinking and building and creating part happens on Monday and Tuesday for me, and they're more heavier days for me than than Thursday and Friday. In fact, for even time wise, I it goes down like I do less work on Friday that I do on Mondays.

Monday I do a lot of work. Tuesdays I do a lot of work and it dies down. Same thing when I start in the morning, I do a lot more than I do in the evening just because energy tends to decline, even though you can make it a little bit more sustainable. That's been my experience and I want to talk more about around what's actually draining your energy because if you figure out what's draining your energy, you can actually, you don't have to create new energy by taking all sorts [00:04:00] of things from over caffeinating yourself to, uh, to taking all sorts of supplements and everything as well, even though they might be helpful, they can be a good supplement.

But they're not the way you're moving yourself forward. You're not. And the difference is that you can, I have caffeine, like I'll have coffee, but I don't rely on that to have energy in the day. In fact, I don't even have caffeine in the first two hours of the day. I usually have energy because of how I manage and we ran through that last week when we did a different exercise.

So I want to talk about the framework around this. What actually drains your energy? I want you to pay attention to three or three parts of your life and I'll, I'll break it down a little bit more, but basically there are three things that will drain you. One, the primary thing is the contraption that you have, like your own body.

The other two thoughts.

So that's all essentially what we're made up of, like body thoughts and emotions. Now we can go into the whole [00:05:00] spiritual realm around other levels of experience and awareness. That is not the it's a little bit outside the scope of this, and a lot of that is hard to prove as well because it's more experiential in nature.

It's more dependent on your experience. You cannot objectively prove that one way or another. You could, in some degrees, prove it. For example, monks have like monks who do a lot of meditation and other things. We've put on sensors on them to realize that that actually Affects their brain activity, what they do with meditation, other things that could take them to altered states of mind.

So a lot of spiritual practices, we can measure the, the effect of it on us, but we still can't prove whether or not the spiritual world is objectively real or not. That's why there's a whole debate around that. But to your experience, it can be real. To what you believe, it can be real. And for human beings, actually, a lot of what they believe feels more real than what actually happens around them.

But, but [00:06:00] essentially, when you're looking at what's draining you, I want you to think about, like, how, what's happening with your body, like, physically, if your body doesn't have the raw materials, if your body doesn't have movement, if your body is not rested enough, you will naturally be drained. This is just the bottom line, like, it doesn't require rocket science to understand this, but one of my favorite things is that common sense is not always common practice.

So, which means that, are you getting the right nutrition? Are you moving enough? Are you sleeping enough? Are you taking the right supplements depending on where you are? Are you eating the right foods? Like, these are very basic things. Everybody should have a basic understanding of it. You don't need to be a nutritionist.

Sometimes it feels like you need to know everything about everything to be healthy. But you actually, if you break it down to the basics, are you eating whole foods, like foods that you recognize as food? Uh, and are you not overeating? [00:07:00] Like that's as a baseline. Are you getting all the natural foods like that that are whole?

You can recognize the food, fruits, vegetables, protein, carbs like your macros. You're getting it from all sources. Are you getting some taking some supplements that substitute for the foods that you might not have or for the nutrition that you're not getting? For example, in North America, especially if you look at the East Coast, you don't get a lot of sun, especially in winter.

We don't get a lot of outside exposure, so more than likely we're deficient in vitamin D. And for that you might need to take supplements. And, and are you sleeping enough? Like you don't even need to look at studies on average show eight hours of sleep, but that's not true for everybody. But you know, in your experience, when you're over tired, like you can only sustain that for so long until it starts to affect everything in your body.

Um, Are you moving enough? Like you will start to feel especially as you get older, older, you start to feel all sorts of your body doesn't function nominally properly. If you're not moving [00:08:00] enough, even if you have a standing this, you still need to move. Human body has evolved to move. It has never been sedentary to this extent.

This is a very new world we're living. So, movement, sleep, nutrition, also the other, so these are like more individual things, but also connection with others is actually an aspect of the body. Your, your body needs connection with other human beings. You might look at that from a emotional point of view.

Part of it is, but. Actually, you need physical touch from other human beings. In fact, if babies don't get physical touch, their life could be at risk, like they could die. Babies could die if they're not touched by their parents in the first few months. Even there, even for kids who are premature, they put them in those chambers, they still allow the parents to be in touch with them.

Like they like they have some level of contact with them, but human Children are human beings are social in nature. So physical touch is a part of having more energy. [00:09:00] Now, so this is why when people are isolated, they start to go crazy inside because then just having the human beings around you, like simple things that we take for granted, simple touch from your friends, from your, uh, your spouse or your, like, like even sports, like touch in sports can be positive thing.

Even if that's an aggressive touch, in that sense, it's like it's a force that's violent. That actually works positively in some senses for human beings. It is a big part of us being a social species. I won't go too deep into it, but you, if you're not doing certain things, you know that you're probably, and the effect of it is that you feel like your body feels like it's, you're dragging your body along.

Now, Matt was sharing before that he's, he feels, He feels a little bit tired because he overworked like he needs a recovery period. So if you don't have like, there's activity, but then there's recovery as well. If you're not recovering, then you're going to feel exhausted and tired. You need to give yourself that space.[00:10:00]

The other one is thoughts and emotions, and this is why, if you really look at this from this frame, there's nothing else that should be draining your energy, and I'll tell you what most people think drains their energy. Your thoughts include a lot of things, like you, you have beliefs, and beliefs have emotions and thoughts and identity connected to them, but you have thoughts about everything, you have thoughts about the war that's happening in the world, you have thoughts about your neighbors, you have thoughts about your, your family members, you have thoughts about how you are.

When you mix thoughts with emotions, they usually become beliefs, like things that get solidified. They determined whether you are getting energy or your energy is draining. For example, if you have negative thoughts about yourself that I am not good enough or I am not a good person, or I, I should have done this, I should have done, done that, or, I feel guilty about this thing.

These, these are draining type of thoughts. That doesn't mean you avoid them. It just means you need to deal with them. Why do you believe that? Those [00:11:00] thoughts need to be questioned. Emotions, such as emotions, so I divide emotions into two places. There's survival emotions, there's growth emotions. I don't call them negative and positive emotions because their emotions are just information for you.

Negative emotions are usually emotions such as, we call them negative, but I call them survival because that's more accurate as fear, hate, resentment, uh, disgust. All these things, these kind of emotions and energies help us give us information to survive, to protect ourselves and those around us. When we are afraid of something, we understand that they could harm us, we find ways to protect ourselves.

When we have a strong reaction to somebody as hate, there's something in there that's making us feel like that, whether it's an internal thought, something that has happened. When we have resentment is because we haven't met a need in there, in that process. When we have all sorts of [00:12:00] these, when we have frustrations, that means there are things that need to be dealt with.

And a lot of it is around survival needs not met, whether it's social, personal or physical, whatever it is. They're, that's why I call them survival emotions. Those emotions, if they're at a heightened and sustained level, your energy is usually drained. And most people feel drained because of those emotions.

They take up a lot of your time. For example, if you, um, have resentment towards your spouse or towards your family members. So if you feel resentful towards the system that you live in, if you feel resentful towards somebody, Whether it doesn't matter. Part of it is that the other person, but to your experience day to day, you're carrying that resentment with you.

That's part of your energy. That's why in most spiritual texts, they will say that when you don't forgive, you're actually harming yourself more than others. Like when you don't let go and forgiveness is essentially letting go of something that you're carrying with yourself, whether it's like a forgiveness [00:13:00] towards yourself or others or some other bigger thing, you are harming yourself.

And there was a quote. Somebody said that, um, not forgiving somebody is like a poison. You're drinking yourself to punish somebody else. It's like a poison. You're drinking yourself to punish somebody else. That's how ridiculous it is because it doesn't actually harm them. And it harms you more. It drains your own energy.

So, and then there are growth emotions such as, uh, feeling excited, feeling connected, feeling, like, uh, you're, you're grounded, you're at peace. Feeling, like you're part of something which is also connection like these are kind of or feeling, uh, like you have a conviction, uh, feeling ambitious.

All these are more like growth emotions because they either help you be in the present, or they help you move forward towards a better future. I tend to consider them growth emotions because they give you more energy to move and connect and do. [00:14:00] So, if you have a lot of survival emotions and you don't know how to deal with them, you will feel drained.

If you have a lot of thoughts that keep you stuck in the past, you will feel drained. Even though you might do a lot of positive, like, this is why, like, it's a huge mystery for people. They will do a lot of things. They will go to the gym, they will do, they will take the right supplements, but they're always drained.

Like, physically, they look like they take care of themselves, but mentally and emotionally, they're always drained. Now, like I said, there is another level of spiritual that can come into it. I won't go too deeply into it, but that is still connected to your thoughts and emotions. You still have to make sense of the world around you.

Now, this is what most people think, and I want you to see the difference. Most people think they're drained by news. They're drained by other people. They're drained by the system they're in. They're drained by their business. They're drained by money, [00:15:00] or lack thereof. They're drained by, um, other things that might be happening in their life, but that falls into all this.

But, but if you look at what these are, What is news? For example, there are wars happening right now in the world is a major one in Middle East happening. Everybody has their own reaction around it based on where their allegiances one side or another that that energy when they look at it, when they see war, when they see all the people dying and when they see that their identity is affected by it and they consume that.

And then you, if you did that, like if you, and I don't think anybody's exempt from this because it's going around everywhere in social media and everywhere. When you watch that or read that, notice your energy after that for the next, like what happens with your thoughts? What happens with your emotions?

Dependent. It doesn't even matter which side of the side you are. You will feel drained. You will feel that your thoughts, you can't make sense of it. It's like a loop running and your [00:16:00] emotions are like, how could this be real? Because it is, it does affect everybody. So the news counts on that. It counts on your survival emotions.

It counts on the fact that you will think about things as a human being that affects you to some degree, so it will always leverage your fears. So news companies, they will invest thousands and thousands of dollars to grab your emotional attention. So grab your mental attention so they can take that.

Use that energy. It sounds like a conspiracy theory, but that's what it is. They, they, and they invest in your, if they can grab your attention, they can sell you anything. And how do they make money? They make money off of your attention. So it's not the news. It's your thought and emotional reaction and bodily reaction to the news.

Because you didn't manage your own attention and this is the part that's important if you're intentional, if you understand what kind of [00:17:00] content is going in your mind, you understand that everything, every thought that comes into your mind, every emotion that you're triggered that is triggered in your body that affects your energy output.

If you understand that you will actually. Stay away from a lot of the things I purposely stay away from a lot of the news and I consume it in specific forms. So, for example, I would rather not watch anything because especially why do they put graphic images? So you have a reaction to it. It's not to save somebody or to portray something specifically.

They want people's attention. People are pulled more by fear and hatred and resentment than they are by positive emotions. So they will do that. So what, for me, it's like, okay, if I'm going to be productive in my day to day life throughout the week, if I start the week with watching something draining, what will be my energy level?

I can assume that it's already dropped. It's already gone other people in your life. So there are two [00:18:00] categories. There are just people that we like. They're just in our life. You might be driving down and somebody is losing their mind in traffic or something. And you're like, people have a reaction to that.

But it's not other people. It's you chose to have a reaction to that person because that person wasn't asked. Now you might have over. You might have reacted to them based on how rude or negative or whatever they might be. But it was still a choice. Transcribed You could have still processed it in a different way, but ultimately after that incident, it doesn't actually matter to you.

What happens that that might be draining for you if you're if you deal with traffic every day. But the thing that's more draining for people are actually the people closest to them, their loved ones, their their spouse, their Children, their other other people around them were Their identity and their family and their communities tied to that.

This is why I encourage a lot of my clients to deal with your problems with other people. Don't carry resentment. Don't carry frustrations. Deal [00:19:00] with them because they don't just stay there. They get amplified over time and they take up a lot of your energy. So, but again, I want to compare it to this when we're talking about is why are other people draining your energy?

Because you have a thought, a vision of a future that you want to build and the people in your life are not aligned with that vision. So you can either communicate and understand is this a vision that they see as well and connect and understand. Do you want to create that vision together with them? Or do you not?

If you see that what you want to create is completely different than when the from the people around you, you might have to make certain decisions around that. Why are you around these people? But if a lot of it is actually in reality is that there's very little communication that happens. So people don't understand each other and they don't understand what the other side needs.

So they, they, they don't know how to support you, whether it's your spouse or other or business partner or other things, because there's not enough communication around what you're building. [00:20:00] Or you don't fully understand what they need from you. So we react because we think something is going to go wrong, which is again, the survival emotions.

We are afraid that something will go wrong in our life, whether with our kids, whether with our future or our well being, whatever it might be system. We think of bigger things like economy, government, all that stuff. They all of course affect our business, our life in one way or another. But then do you feel dis-empowered by that system? 

Do you feel like you have some level of power? For example, right now, the economy is not the best in the world, but do you feel empowered that you have the tools and skill sets to still build a business and make it grow? If you do, you will feel more energy. If you don't, you will feel drained by the system.

But again, it's your reaction to the system. It's not the system itself, why do people get into business? Because it's high risk. Very high reward. And how does business work? You solve problems and [00:21:00] people pay you money to solve those problems for them. You give value in exchange for money.

The reason why you're doing it is because that that value exchange is actually not very easy. Products and services are not easy. They take a lot of work to develop, whether it's something that's like this, like a headset. I can tell you there's so much testing and research that probably went into these headsets that I'm wearing to the point where they can sell it for 300 or 200.

And now they're selling millions of it, but they had to keep refining and they had to make the brand around it, which is in this case, it's Samsung. They had to have brand credibility. They have to do marketing campaigns. They have to have a team. They have to do so much to build up that brand to sell.

It's not easy to sell a product. So why are people drained by business? Because business owners don't realize when they jump into the business, the reason they got into it is because it has higher reward, but they don't realize that the road towards higher reward is [00:22:00] actually challenge. And it's actually their perspective.

It's how they're thinking about it. If they think about it, it's like, well, that shouldn't be there, that it's so hard. Versus, it's supposed to be hard. That's why most people are not doing it. A small percentage of the world that actually does business. So, when you reframe that, you change your thought processes, you change how you react to it emotionally.

Business is supposed to be challenging. Business is supposed to have issues pretty much every day. Until you build enough systems and put other people in place so they can solve those problems for you and you're overseeing it. And of course, that also depends on the business model, but people react to business.

For example, it's not the businesses, their own thoughts and emotions about the business money. Why are people scared of money? Like, like you, like I've met people from like having no money to multi millionaires. They're all stressed out about money. What is it about money that stresses the hell out of us?

It's not money. It's how our psychology is deeply [00:23:00] embedded into money because the whole system is run by money. Like it's the lifeblood of the system that we live in. Everything is run around money. We, we, like for example, for me growing up, I heard a lot of arguments between my parents around money. Now, I also know other people who are not drained by money.

They're very excited by money. Why is it? Because they heard a different thinking process, different reaction to money. Now, most people have a negative reaction to money because they don't know how to create money. They don't know how to build money. But as soon as somebody understands how to do it, they are actually excited by the notion of money because all it is, is resources.

You create a resource to create options for yourself and for those around you. But again, the reason why I'm kind of going through this list is that what drains you is not these things around you, not your circumstance, not news, not other people, not even though they seemingly do, it's actually How we manage our own body, our own thoughts, our own [00:24:00] attention, our own emotions.

And this week we're actually gonna, last week we talked about like how you can, we actually walked you through the experience of how you can change your states. But, but this week I want to go into what exactly is draining you and I want you to work through. Through what's happening. I want you to think about that this week is like, what are the little things that are draining?

You don't take it for granted. Like, even if it's the simple frustrations, even if it's like some thought that you have in your head, even if it's you not sleeping properly, what are the things that are draining you and start to take a measurement of that? Like, is this an actual problem? Is this actually draining me?

Is this taking, is this making me distracted? For example, a lot of people are distracted end of the day because they simply don't have the energy to focus. They cannot sit to save their life to do some work, and they turn on the TV, and we have statements like, I want to veg out. Because they feel like a vegetable.

They don't know how to, they can't use their energy for anything else because their mind is gone because they've been [00:25:00] drained all day by multiple thoughts, emotions, reactions, all sorts of things. As soon as you learn to manage it, all it is, is Directing your attention and energy one place or another and which ones are useful for you to, uh, to keep your energy on.

For example, your work might be very useful. Your family might be very useful and effective to keep your presence and energy with them. Your future, your long term investments are useful. But a lot of the reactions that happen in the world, they're unnecessary. They're not going to help you and they're not going to help other people.

So, for example, right now, going back to talking about the bigger themes, A lot of people are drained because of war in different parts of the world when you talk to them because of the economy, because of what's happening, but they don't realize that they could use that energy to actually build their business and their life.

They can make their own relationships better and then have enough resources to go actually help these people that you're worrying about to actually build better communities, better systems. [00:26:00] And I just want to leave you for that. Is that are you aware of the areas that you're being that you're being trained on physically, mentally, emotionally?

Are you aware of the little things that are draining you? Because I can bet about 70 80 percent of the energy that you don't have is because something is draining your energy, whether those are your reactions to your relationships, your lack of clarity, your lack of self care, your lack of directing your thoughts one way or another, your lack of attention on what's important versus not important.

Even if you do it in your mind, ideally journal about it, track it somewhere. Ask yourself like even if you get a simple thought that's frustrating to you because thoughts come and then they go, but sometimes they get embedded in parts of our body and we feel drained because we, the human mind needs to move on and needs to be functional and practical, but the thing that you dealt with, the thing that affected you that stays inside and you don't know how it's draining you.

So [00:27:00] consider your thoughts, consider the emotions that come and go. Are they actually staying with you or are you actually letting them go? Letting in letting them go actually has a tangible effect of you feeling lighter when they're with you. You feel drained. You feel you feel a tightness in parts of your body.

You feel sluggish. If you're physically not taking care of yourself, you know, the effect that is happening ultimately becomes your choice. The thoughts that you carry about the world about other people, the judgments that you have, the hateful thoughts that you might have, or the positive that they all have an effect on your energy.

And not just your energy, by the way, your energy is what you take in your home and with your team and your company, you're affecting and modeling to other people what your energy is. So your kids are learning from your team members are learning from you what you carry forward.

So I'll leave it at that. And I'd love to hear what would you say out of everything that I shared? What was your biggest insight around this [00:28:00] topic?

Hope you all have an incredible day.

Take care.