No one ever thinks about their energy or how they spend it, at least not really.
Everyone knows what energy is. We all know there are things in life that support good, positive energy, and there is also the opposite, which drains us or takes our energy away.
There is anabolic energy which fills us or replenishes. Then there is catabolic energy which degrades our energy, and takes this away.
We all know about this. We all know that we can think ourselves into being crazy, and yes, our thoughts can be our worst enemy.
Now is the time to address and analyze our thinking.
This is the part of our action plan where we start to look at our energy and how we use it.
We are going to look at how we conserve our energy and, of course, we are going to take notice of how we waste our energy as well.
I remember when I was beginning classes at a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu school. I was scared. I had no idea what to expect. I wanted to compete and I wanted to do well, so I held on tight.
Or at least I tried.
I tried really hard which was easier when I rolled or competed with someone smaller or equally inexperienced. However, bigger and more experienced partners led to different challenges—or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that this lead to different intimidations.
Intimidation drains energy . . .
I never knew how to relax in this type of combat, which are odd words to put together—relax and combat.
At the same time, I began to understand how I was wasting my energy by gripping with all of my strength.
I used every muscle available to me.
I would use all of my energy because I was always defending myself. In the midst of unsureness and inexperience, I wasted my energy because I was responding to assumptions and reacting to moves that I was unaware of and unable to defend.
No one wants to be weak.
No one wants to be wrong or make a mistake.
I remember one of the upper classman telling me that I need to learn how to relax. He told me that I was wasting my energy by gripping so tight and that I need to slow down and think or be more calculative with my energy.
Fear is catabolic.
While fear is an excellent motivator, fear can cause us to run in circles or waste our energy, or worse, we can lose to our fears or to our depression or we can lose to our thinking like water loses to a drain.
I learned that my fear and intimidation and my need to overcome the moves were draining me. I didn’t want to lose. I didn’t want to be tapped or submitted.
I never asked to be weak or vulnerable.
I wanted to defend myself and even more, I wanted to overcome and dominate the match so that I would come out on top.
However, responding to all sides and to all fears and gripping or holding on with all of my might only served to make me weak—and in the end, I was too tired to respond and too easy to submit.
Life is this way too. We hold on to things that no longer need our attention. We hold on to resentments. We grip our fears as if the possibility of our past returning, and in the worry that the wreckage of our past can come back and haunt us again, we start to hold on and look to defend ourselves against invisible opponents, or enemies that are not real and do not exist.
I compare this to the unknown fears and intimidations we have in our everyday lives. I think about the arguments that go on in our heads. I think about the fights that we relive in our imagination.
I think about our past failures or the old humiliations that hurt us.
I think about the assumptions that something is about to go wrong. Therefore, I think about the preparation to fail or the expectation to defend our position, and then I think about the energy we waste to keep ourselves safe.
I think about the negative or the catabolic results of intrusive or problematic thinking.
See?
I think about catastrophic thinking and how our thinking errors lead us to come to conclusions that are not real — except in our heads, of course.
This is how we waste our energy.
Our heart rate goes up. Our blood pressure goes through the roof. And our moods are out of whack because we are living in the assumption that something awful is about to happen. Remember something, the mind does not register the difference between reality and assumptions. No, the mind believes that the dangers are real, —they have to be real. Am I right?
Why else would we imagine them if they were not real?
Do you see where this is going?
Do you see how our thoughts can betray us or degrade us from reaching our best possible potential?
We act accordingly.
We act according to the preparation of the worst, which has yet to come.
But to us, rest assured, we know that the bad news is in the mail.
We know something is coming our way, and in the fray of our own, self-induced insanity, we lose our minds the same way that we lose our energy.
Again, I go to my favorite saying –
We lose the same way that water loses to a drain.
Understand?
Here are the questions we can add to our action plan:
What helps us build better habits and stronger thinking?
How do we waste our energy?
What type topics do we think about that lead us to problematic thinking?
Is it possible to think ourselves crazy?
And if so, is it just as possible to think our way back to sanity?
When it comes to overthinking, when do we lose our choice to keep calm?
When do we notice that we are draining ourselves, and when we do notice, is it too late to regain our composure?
What topics can you think of that lead to problems like this for you?
What happens to your mood when you think about past arguments?
Have you ever found yourself rehearsing old arguments that no longer exist, and when this happens, did you ever prepare yourself and rehearse what you would say, just in case?
Did you ever pretend to speak back at someone because you walked away from a fight that was unresolved or in your mind, you believed that you lost?
If you have relived old arguments or said yes to the above, who are the people that you have rehearsed your lines for and what positions do (or did) they have in your life?
Are they still in your life?
Are they important to you?
And if so, how and why?
Next –
What can we do or how can we replace thoughts with action to keep ourselves from falling back into thinking about old fights that no longer exist?
How can we keep ourselves from sinking into the old emotional quicksand?
What steps can we take to pardon our past and forgive what took place so that we can move forward?
What are the acts we take that make us feel better about ourselves?
What actions have we applied from our action plan that support better thinking, and have they worked, or can we see how this is helpful?
Remember:
Our aim is to improve on a daily basis. We might not see our growth, which happens both slowly and incrementally.
However, there comes a time when we are not at the starting gate anymore.
We find that although we might not have mastered the world (yet), at minimum, we are improving and moving forward. Because this is true, we are never sliding back to the beginning or where we started.
I have spoken to people who fell from their grace, or with people who relapsed, or went back to their old ways, and their downfall was disheartening for them.
I have listened to people punish themselves for losing their place or losing their focus.
The truth of the matter is that you do not lose your knowledge or understanding of what you have learned.
You know what to do and how to improve. You might have lost details or some of the gifts that you’ve earned in your course to improve, but you never lost your knowledge on how to be better or how to live a better life.
The challenge you find is that your catabolic thinking is weighing you down because you are holding on too tight to the things you need to let go.
Thinking that we can’t recover is an example of catabolic thinking.
Realizing that we have exactly what we need to improve is an example of anabolic thinking.
One way of thinking refills and replenishes.
The other takes away.
Which brand of thinking do you plan to use today?
Ask yourself this question and then decide how to make this so.
The Written Addiction 