Breaking our addiction to excitement to access our natural, sustainable energy.
Most people intuitively ‘get’ the concept of switching your energy source from Adrenalin to Inspiration. It’s actually quite similar to switching from oil to solar power. One form of energy creates negative consequences and is limited, and the other is sustainable and life regenerating. We can grasp this concept for our homes or cars, but what about our bodies and our being?
What I call ‘authentic’ or ‘connected’ power is the source of inspired energy. This is the place where we are in tune with ourselves, nature, and others. When we are in tune with our authentic power, we naturally source from inspiration. Disconnected, or reactive power, acts through selfish competition, survival, and without regard for others. When we are sourcing from disconnection, we tap into adrenalin. We need to rush, be busy, not be lazy, and get it done when we are in an adrenaline state. Most people mistake excitement for energy. Energy is energy, excitement is a heightened state which can burn out your natural energy reserves. This one discernment can change your life.
Luckily, we have options for our personal energy that can be practised and applied.
Let’s take a look at what it means to source from a disconnected space, where the physical energy source is limited to adrenalin.
What is living from adrenaline?
For the most part, people are using their stress response, adrenalin, to increase their productivity. We think this is the source of energy – it’s the source of the “just do it” mentality. The greater the pain, the greater the gain, so we push through and engage in a competition to determine who can work the most hours and juggle the most activities.
Cortisol was a buzzword only a few years ago, pointing to the consequences of using adrenalin as energy, such as thyroid problems, weight gain, and mental illness. “Adrenalin junkies” are people who seek high-risk activities for an adrenalin rush. As a society, we are low-level adrenalin junkies. We chase it through caffeine, reality TV, dramatic relationships, Facebook, Twitter, constant stimuli, and avoiding silence and stillness. Whether people know it or not, they tend to rely on adrenalin as their main energy source.
But this strategy is excitement masquerading as life-force. Living this way creates high periods of productivity, but they are always followed by the inevitable crash. That crash leaves us feeling low, disheartened, and guilty about doing nothing. Does this sound familiar to you? Read below for more examples in order to determine from where you are sourcing your energy.
What are the signs and symptoms YOU are using adrenalin as energy?
- You can go for HOURS with no food or breaks and be very productive, but then you reach a limit after a couple days or on Fridays when you just can’t conjure up the energy anymore.
- You feel if you stop for one second you will “get behind.”
- Fear fuels your motivation.
- You never feel like you “get there.”
- You experience analysis paralysis – an inability to make decisions.
- You’re snippy and irritable.
- Headaches/backaches that do not go away with a massage or other healing methods.
- You thrive off of extreme deadlines because you don’t have a second to think or check in with yourself.
- You procrastinate on what matters, but busy yourself with other work (my house is very clean during tax season).
- Lack of self-confidence, fraud syndrome, and FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out).
- You are never really full, content, or peaceful. (but you work hard to convince the world that you are)
There is another way! When we are stressed, we cannot access the problem-solving state of mind necessary to relieve our stress. We cannot access intuition and imagination, and yes INSPIRATION. It’s hard to see what’s missing when we’re in this adrenalin-soaked, spazzy place. But when we are able to shift to living from Inspiration—to a state of connectedness and expansiveness—suddenly what we need becomes as obvious to us as getting a glass of water when we’re thirsty.
What does living from Inspiration look like?
Here are the possible benefits of shifting from adrenalin to inspiration:
- Knowing you are enough, you matter, and your life is purposeful.
- Not requiring outside validation to feel on track in life or on a project.
- You operate from a place of “I’m worthy, deserving, and good enough now. From this place, I can create whatever I put my mind and heart to.”
- Joy is regularly accessible. When you are in the stress response, you don’t break into spontaneous laughter or sing songs for fun in the car or shower.
- You’re grounded – you have the ability to make choices, maintain focus, have a calm nervous system, the ability to be physically successful sustainably, and manifest because you are fully realized and active.
- You can access intuition as your own super cosmic CEO. Your cell phone connection to the big boss of infinite wisdom is your intuition. This can prevent many breakdowns and predict problems before they even enter your life.
- Prosperity finds you! Our worthiness is not contingent upon what we do or do not do when we connect to our truth as abundant, co-creative beings.
- You become inspired, feeling the desire from within to complete a task, you become an overflowing cup, rather than scraping from the bottom of your willpower.
- You are pulled by your visions, rather than pushed by your self-criticisms.
Simple steps to implement Inspiration energy into your life:
I highly recommend stopping the search of what to do and connect to your own inspired state to ask what you need.
You know.
I know you know.
Now love yourself enough to do it, and be it.
Living things need life-sustaining nourishment and we are living things. We need:
- water
- sleep
- rest and work, ebb and flow
- food that has nutrition for energy
- the Sun
- connection to other living things
You get the picture – doing what lights you up, nourishes you, makes you feel content and alive works your Inspiration muscles so you can apply that statement to all areas of life. You can train your connection to your Inspired state of being so you can access it when things get stressful.
Meditation Injection
Deepak, Oprah and the Dalai Lama have done the work to convince us meditation is beneficial, if not integral to living as the highest human expression possible.
Connect to your Source of Inspiration: Time 5min.
Meditation injection is meditation injected into your busy life, pretty straightforward ☺. It can take place during red lights in your car, bathroom breaks, elevators, waiting on the phone or in a line, waking up or falling asleep, commercial breaks, and so on. Giving yourself an uninterrupted 2-5 minutes is great. They key is to do what you know you will be to maintain.
- Recommended: Set a reminder on your phone to remind you that Meditation Injections exist. We always forget something new while in the midst of our normal routine; it takes many reminders to inject new habits. Do yourself little favours with phone reminders and sticky notes.
- Begin to breathe and notice how it feels. Your natural autonomic nervous system completely provides for you 24 hours a day. Acknowledge this miracle within you. This is the gift of your life in action.
- Feel your feet. Feel the sensations: warm, cold, tingly, or perhaps numb, vacant. You can’t get this wrong, just feel and notice.
- Again, feel your breath, notice and inhale and exhale. Easy peezy.
- Notice how your body keeps you alive effortlessly and impeccably.
- Notice that it’s all being done for you.
- The Earth is spinning and gravity is holding you in place. You are basically being hugged by the earth’s magnetic core.
- You might sigh or you might even tear up with relief and recognition.
Welcome back home – to being you and being connected to life itself.
Ahhhh, those meditation injections are like a tropical beach in your pocket. Now you can get back to work 😉 and be your awesome self.
Here you have two distinct places from which to source energy. What did you discover? Where are you sourcing from?
If life hasn’t been working out so hot, and you have been feeling overwhelmed, alone, overworked, and under-appreciated. On some level you knew there had to be another way, now you know. Now you can decide what works for you. Trust the wisdom that is within you – trust the wisdom that you are.
You have the tools and awareness to shift from burning out to lit up.