Managing Energy & Well-being for the (Working) Catholic Woman
A joyful heart is the health of the body, but a depressed spirit dries up the bones (Proverbs 17:22).
When you see the term energy, what thoughts or images pop into your mind? Perhaps it’s the electricity to run your home or the gas to power your car. Energy is the mechanism that helps or supports a system to work or operate. Human beings need energy to live, work, and operate. I know that sounds mechanical, so let’s dig deeper.
There are four dimensions or areas of personal energy: physical, mental (cognitive), emotional and spiritual (purpose and meaning). Physical energy comprises your daily movement, exercise, nutrition, and sleep. Mental energy encompasses storytelling and multitasking. Emotional energy is for your interpersonal relationships and your ability to manage your feelings in healthy ways. Spiritual energy — purposeful living — is how you align your core values with your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Over the next several months, we will explore each dimension of energy. The purpose of this article is to introduce the concepts and discuss how personal energy affects our health and well-being.
Gap Analysis
On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate your personal energy right now? How would you rate your personal energy over the past month or two? When we take inventory of our energy, it allows us to consider what shifts we need to make. We want to maintain our current energy levels, not go backward, and as we make lifestyle changes, we want to expand our energy and make a positive impact on our well-being.
Take, for example, food. Food provides physical energy to our bodies. When we fuel our bodies with healthier foods, our body functions better, and our energy and health improve. When we fuel our bodies with less-than-healthy food, there are consequences — not only in the physical dimension but also in the mental and emotional dimensions as well (e.g., guilt, distraction, or lack of focus). It’s a simple yet relatable example of how energy affects us.
If you scored yourself 3 or below on the gap analysis, there is an exciting opportunity to begin work to narrow the gap. If you scored yourself 4 to 6, you are on your way, but there is always room for modification. If you scored yourself 7 or above, your gap is small, although you may be interested in continued improvement and refinement of existing behaviors.
Energy management, as we will call it, is not only about the day-to-day choices we make, but also how those choices are aligned to our purpose and what gives us meaning. Using the nutrition example above, if I choose unhealthy foods most of the time — maybe to cope with emotions — I know this is not good for my health. Yet, I may not know exactly how to move out of that space.
If our spiritual energy is off kilter because we are not living out what is important to us, the other three areas will be impacted. Thoughts, emotions, and behaviors are more likely to be out of alignment. Anyone who has tried to change behavior knows it does not happen overnight. It is a process and a journey in understanding how our behavior and choices play a role in our lives.
Identifying Core Values & Visioning
One of the first places to begin — after we are honest about our energy levels — is to identify what is most important to us. What are our core values, and are we living them out or not? Lent is the perfect time to (re)identify our core values, especially if we have been misaligned or not living them to the best of our ability. The goal is to align our behaviors to our values, which takes time but can be an amazing process if we allow God to work in and through us.
Next, spend time crafting a personal vision or purpose statement. Similar to organizational visions, this is your guiding light, your north star, your GPS destination. Your purpose may include values of the Lenten season, such as humility, humbleness, gratitude, compassion, patience, and forgiveness. Your purpose statement can include your faith, treasured people in your life, and your health and well-being. I recommend creating a vision/purpose statement in the present tense, “I am …” Some prefer to look forward, “I will be …” The decision is yours.
You will want to step away from your statement and look at it again later with a fresh set of eyes. It may need refinement and can be slightly adjusted over time as you mature and experience life differently through the decades. You may also read it aloud to a trusted confidant who can provide feedback to you and serve as a source of support. I find praying and talking with God through the entire process to be incredibly helpful.
“And this is my prayer: that your love may increase ever more and more in knowledge and every kind of perception, to discern what is of value, so that you may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ” (Philippians 1:9-10).
Behavior Changes
The next step will be to choose behaviors and actions that better align with your purpose. It is not about perfection; it’s about doing the best you can. You may decide to invest time and energy into a new healthy lifestyle behavior or draw a boundary around something that isn’t serving your purpose (we will discuss in a future article how this can be very difficult sometimes).
When we dive into the process of managing and expanding our energy, it involves behavior change. You set goals for yourself, monitor progress, and adjust along the way. It may sound counterintuitive, but when we align our energy with our purpose, it expands our energy capacity. For example, while exercise might physically tire us after a session, over a lifetime, it allows us to engage more in the people, places, and experiences aligned to our core values because we are taking care of our physical bodies.
As your energy expands, it will create incredible opportunities for you to live out God’s purpose for you in this world.
Megan Amaya is an associate clinical professor, director of health & wellness, board-certified health coach, and certified group fitness instructor.