I have come to realise over my four or so decades on this planet that energy is everything. And if you have listened to my podcast Things You Can’t Un-Hear for any length of time, you will know I say this a lot.
By energy, I mean the energy we bring into everything we do. It is in the way we greet someone when we walk into a room, the conversations we choose to have, the books we read, the shows we watch and even the facial expressions we make –literally. Even resting cranky face is an energy (I saw it on my teenage daughter this morning!).
Most of us want to surround ourselves with energy that supports the life we want to create. We become conscious of the people we spend time with, the environments we put ourselves in and what we allow into our minds. When something doesn’t feel good, we often have the luxury of stepping away from it. But what happens when you can’t?
I was thinking about this recently while sitting in a hair salon. My hairdresser told me she had been in the industry since she was 14. As a teenager, she spent eight hours a day listening to adult clients talk about divorces, illness, heartbreak and all sorts of personal struggles. She felt she grew up quickly because of the conversations she was exposed to. But at that age, she didn’t know how to separate herself from what she was hearing. It stayed with her.
It got me thinking about how often we do this in everyday life. We absorb other people’s moods, opinions, anxieties and problems without even realising it. And if you’re an empathetic person, it can be particularly difficult to know where their energy ends and yours begins.
The same applies to the energy we create ourselves. Sometimes we can feel when the energy in a room, a relationship or even our own home has shifted. I see it with my teenagers and sometimes I’ll simply say, “The energy in here is terrible. We need to change it” – because I genuinely believe we can.
We can’t control every person, circumstance or challenge that comes our way. But we can become more conscious of what we give our attention to and what we continue to feed.
So have a think: what energy are you feeding? Sometimes that’s all it takes to change the direction of your day.
Hear the full story by listening to the episode #278 on the Things You Can’t Un-Hear (maritzabarone/podcast).
