EP 90 Energy audit and letting go

EP 90 Energy Audits and Letting Go

Join host Amy Christensen as she discusses the importance of conducting an energy audit to identify activities and habits that drain your energy and focus. Amy offers practical tips on how to streamline your commitments, delegate tasks, and make intentional choices to reach your bigger goals. She shares her personal experiences and insights on how to effectively manage your time and responsibilities without burning out. Tune in for actionable advice on maintaining balance and achieving your personal and professional aspirations.

Chapters
00:00 Introduction and Welcome
00:32 Meet Your Hosts
01:06 The Importance of Energy Audits
02:38 Identifying Time Wasters
04:20 Decision Fatigue and Habits
05:28 Delegating and Prioritizing Tasks
06:11 Balancing Personal and Professional Life
10:21 The Cost of Achieving Goals
12:08 Conclusion and Upcoming Topics
12:57 Disclaimer and Reviews



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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Are you spending your time and being present with things
that are stealing your energy and your focus from the
bigger picture of the goal that you want to reach.
What can you let go of or at least put
down and pause?

Speaker 2 (00:20):
Hey, friends, thank you for listening to the All Things
Good for You Podcast. Join us as we explore ancient traditions,
modern tools and practices in the world of health, wellness
and personal development. I'm Amy Christensen, your host and your
curated mind coach, and.

Speaker 3 (00:37):
I'm your co host Brian Bowen, founder of Integrative Health, Inc.
And Better Human Company High Performance Coaching. Are you ready
to take control of your life and start feeling enthusiastic, empowered,
and limitless each and every day for a life well lived?
Let your curiosity flow with all.

Speaker 1 (00:55):
Things Good for You. Hey, everybody, it's Amy. I am
jumping in here on a quick little wrap up and
solo podcast. As we are wrapping up our focus on
letting go, relieving ourselves of heavy weighted things or things

(01:16):
that maybe not helping us reach our goals. And I
think when we look back at the conversations that we've
had over the last few podcasts, for me, I've had
to do an energy audit. The last two months six
weeks have been crazy busy, some really big shifts in
my business and where my time has gone. I've been

(01:39):
doing a lot more focus on doing some public speaking
and educating around coaching and health and hormones, and so
that's a new area for me, and that has required
a lot of focus and a lot of energy, and
I've had some hard deadlines with those things. I've had
to look at where am I spending my time and

(02:00):
where is the real impact? And I know it can
sound really simple and easy, and as with many things,
it sounds easy, but when you're actually trying to do it,
it's quite hard. And it seems like an obvious choice.
But when you really stop and analyze a little bit
of your day or your week, or the last six
months to a year of your time and what you're
really doing with your thinking and your thought process and

(02:23):
your energy and your commitments, you might get a better
realistic view of oh, okay, maybe I am giving too
much weight and too much time to this thing or
that thing or this person. Brian and I have talked
a lot about tracking and looking back at your day
and planning ahead for your day and doing quarterly reviews

(02:46):
and weekly reviews. I would ask how many of you
are really doing that? But look back at where you
do give your time. Where do you have these high
expectations of output. Where are you maybe using some things
that you may not need to do as much or
as often as a means of distraction, as a means

(03:10):
of procrastination and perfectionism. And that can be you know,
everything from social media, staying up to date on the
latest news thing, the conversation with valued friends and family,
co workers, and those time with your children, time with

(03:30):
your pet, time with your home, and your chores. Not
saying that any of those are not important, but sometimes
we can get into a space where we put an
emphasis on an area that maybe doesn't need the full

(03:52):
emphasis that we're giving it, and we do that in
a way to almost block ourselves from moving forward. I
certainly clearly speaking from some personal experience, but I like
to analyze my life and my choices on a fairly
regular basis. I like to look and see am I
being intentional? Am I being thoughtful? In this space? Where

(04:16):
am I giving my energy, my thought process, my decision making?
The decision Fatigue is a real thing. Getting up and
having to make even small decisions. We neuroscience does prove
that we do get decision fatigue, and it can come
from what am I eating, What am I drinking? What
am I wearing? Who am I talking to? What direction
am I going? We as human beings, we do create

(04:38):
these quote unquote mindless habits because our brain doesn't want
to think about a choice. It just wants to create
a habit and get it done. It's using less energy,
it takes less time and less focus to just have
some kind of normal response. What are we doing as
an automatic in our day that maybe when you have

(04:59):
a big goal where you are trying to make a
new change, you need to take a bank of a
little bit of a reserve and say, Okay, these are
things I might be giving my energy to that are habitual,
that they're actually using energy and thought processes and time
that I can shorten down or give up and let

(05:20):
go of for a little while so that I can
apply it to this new thing that is going to
require more energy and effort and focus. So that might
be something like just a chore around the house that
doesn't get done or doesn't get done at least to
the extent or maybe it's delegated, whether it's a family
member or an outside help source. Where can you have

(05:44):
somebody come in. Maybe you do hire a help extra cleaning,
or maybe you take all your laundry to a laundry
place to catch up with laundry. If you're really behind
on a project or really focusing deep on a project,
there are great opportunities to go and pick up some
of the like fit foods for your meals, so that
you're not trying to think about meal time at a

(06:06):
time when you're really focused on pushing through with a
certain project. I've had to have a conversation with my dog.
He's an ausy, as many of you might know, very regiment.
Once they start getting a plan or a schedule, they
want that all the time and they expect it. And
it doesn't matter if I give my dog an hour

(06:27):
and a half of time every day, whether it's that
twenty minutes in the morning and then two thirty minutes
walks and then a ten minute playtime at night. That's
the way he wants it. So if he gets an
hour and a half at the dog park early in
the morning, because I have to crank out a bunch
of project work and a meeting later in the day.
He still starts to freak out that he didn't get

(06:49):
his evening afternoon walk time in the same way that
he did. So we had to have a chat about
that because some of the things that had to happen
over the last six weeks was me saying, hey, dog,
I love you. You're not going to be neglected or
unhealthy because I need to focus here for a week
or two and you are not going to get quite
as much attention. And I know that might seem silly

(07:12):
to some people, but we do that for our friends,
We do that with our coworkers, We do that with
our children. For sure. My parenting is a sensitive subject.
I am by no means saying that your children don't
need you, But sometimes as parents, we can use our
time with our children as a way to avoid pushing

(07:33):
ourselves to do something different. Our children don't need us
one hundred percent of the time. They don't even need
us eighty percent of the time. Of course, they need
to know we're going to be there. Of course we
have to be there to support them and be present.
But so many parents that I work with or talk
to need to find that comfort and security that your

(07:54):
children need and can learn autonomy and self reliance at
a very early age, and it actually helps them. And
I'm not saying just abandon them or not be there
for them. Maybe some preparation of conversation depending on their
age and their ability to process things, to let them
know that you're going to do some shifting of something

(08:16):
that maybe some time that you gave them previously on
a regular basis is going to change. But where can
you look? Are you spending your time and being present
with things that are stealing your energy and your focus
from the bigger picture of the goal that you want
to reach.

Speaker 4 (08:34):
What can you let go of or at least put
down and pause while you are moving through a big
push for a new habit or a new focus.

Speaker 1 (08:47):
You cannot do it all or you will hit a
wall and burn out. You will find yourself super stressed.
You will find yourself slacking on sleep. You will find
yourself snapping at your friends and your family and your coworkers.
You will find yourself costing yourself the impact of your

(09:08):
health and how often are you doing it and how
long are you doing it. I've worked with some people
recently that again, it sounded so obvious, but to tell
them that, hey, you are putting so much more effort
and thinking into this new goal, in this new habit,

(09:29):
and you're beating yourself up because you're not keeping your
old habits at one hundred and ten percent. You can't
work at that level all the time. It's okay to
order a healthy dinner or triple make your dinner, or
say no to this gathering, or let your children know
that they're not going to have this involvement for a

(09:50):
little while, say no to some things, say no to
some distractions. Friends will still be there, coworkers will still
be okay, and you can catch back up at another time,
and it probably doesn't need to be to the extent
that you're at all the time. So you may even
put some things down and go back and look that

(10:13):
I actually don't need to do this. This is a
better way to spend my time. I look at what
is it costing me on a regular basis, What is
it costing me to have these goals versus this goal?
What is it costing me for me to put my
time here as opposed to putting my time over here?
And what is it costing me to not achieve the

(10:34):
goal that I want? What is it going to cost
me not to push through and achieve this project? Quite honestly,
there are some times that I look at a project
or a goal and I look at the cost of
achieving it or the cost of not achieving it, and
I go, actually, the cost of trying to achieve it
is going to be more of a risk and more

(10:55):
of a cost investment that I want to do than actually,
what the cost of achieving the pro is going to
get me or the goal is going to get for me?
And then I feel pretty relieved that, hey, this is
not something that's working for my life right now. But
at the same time, if I want the one big
goal and I'm going to look at okay, what are
these behaviors where am I spending my time? Now? What

(11:18):
is it costing me to have my time investment to
a friend or a project or just vegging out? Or
how is there a way to be more efficient at
the gym? Can I maintain or can I change my
expectation for having something like maybe and I dare say it,

(11:40):
but a health goal, a body image? How much if
you don't have that, does that shake your world? Not
that you can't go back to it, not that you
can't re engage relationships or health or choices. Where are
you maybe overly rigid that it is costing you to

(12:01):
reach a bigger goal? What does it look like if
you were to let some of that go? So that
is my talk for today. My podcast message is what
is it costing you? What can you let go temporarily
to reach the bigger goal? And when have you done
an honest energy evaluation of how you spend your day

(12:25):
and your time? Right? Thank you guys so much for
letting me jump on and do this a little quick one,
and Brian and I will be back together for the
next podcast and we are going to jump into some
ideas around winter and wrapping up this year and moving
into the new year, and we hope that you guys
will join us. Thank you to everyone who is giving

(12:47):
us reviews and giving us feedback so we can know
what's resonating with you and what works and how we
can keep diving into new helpful topics.

Speaker 2 (12:59):
Hey friends, thank you for tuning in to the All
Things Good for You podcast. Please note any information, experiences, ideas,
or opinions discussed today are for educational and thought provoking
purposes only and not.

Speaker 1 (13:11):
Intended as medical advice.

Speaker 2 (13:13):
If anything piqued your curiosity, please consult with your doctor
or personal medical professional. And if you're enjoying all things
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