Finding the Energy for the Day – The Lauren Edmunds Podcast

TRANSCRIPTION

Finding the energy for the day

Today, I want to talk a little bit about stress, but I’m going to take the conversation in a different direction, rather than talk about stress itself. Because, as much as we all need to speak what’s going on with us, we all need to speak it out; we all need a strong shoulder to lean on; we all need our people around us to help us manage what we’re going through.

There are things we need to think about. I’m hoping I can offer you some pearls of wisdom, ways to think about what’s going on for you. It does seem like stress is at an all-time high. There are statistics worldwide that show that this is the case. Anxiety is increasing; productivity may be decreasing.

So I’m gonna talk around this a bit, and where I’m coming from and my point of view. I’m speaking at a time now when we’re heading into winter in our country, swine flu and influenza B are hitting us, and perhaps more COVID, and we’re feeling like we’re not coping, but it’s more than that. What is the health of our nation? What is the health of our families? What is the health of our children like?

But moving away from that question, I’m going to talk a bit about ways of thinking that can give so much of that energy back to you as a parent, as an adult. I’m going to ask whether that would be something you would want. Do you want your energy back? And perhaps a question before that is, have you spoken out about your trauma enough? Have you dealt with your trauma sufficiently to be able to take a big breath and look and lean into potential solutions for yourself?

The first thing I want to talk about is something that came to me when I first started working in corporate facilitation. It was a program called Investment in Excellence. Lou Tice was the presenter; he was the owner as well, and he brought through several concepts that were so interesting because they beautifully align with what neuroscience is saying now.

The concept I want to bring to you today is what he called goal setting to and through. I see this in my own life, and I see it with the people that are around me, that our goal setting has become perhaps too big, too large, that we’re making it too academic in a way.

We’re trying to find the best way to goal-setting, and there’s fear-setting and habit-stacking, and all of that has a place for sure. But I want to hone in on something really, really specific: our brains, our bodies, our minds, our entire system are designed to work towards a goal. One that we’ve set, a vision, a mission, whatever you want to call it, work towards something that we want to achieve, give us enough energy for that, and then deplete that energy afterwards.

In my mind, the depletion is the state of rest. So, linking back to stress, I do think we are struggling to rest, and what we believe rest is actually isn’t, because our bodies are designed to reach the finish line.

And 20, 30 years ago, they did incredible experiments with, I think it was road runners, and I’m going to say that the data is not gonna be correct. It was something like a half-marathon (42 kilometres, or maybe 22), and what they were researching was when people collapse.

If you look at something like a comrades marathon, for example, and watch the finish line, can they get themselves there? Unless something massively medical happens to them. They can get themselves to the finish line, but they typically collapse or are exhausted afterwards.

In this research, they increased the race distance by 100 meters for 1 year. That was the first time they lengthened the race by 100 meters. They didn’t tell anybody; they just extended the race a bit, and still everybody collapsed straight after the finish line.

The next time they ran the race, a year later, they moved the finish line back 100 metres to the original distance. And everybody again collapsed at the finish line. The science that emerged from this research showed that we are teleological in nature. Our brains hone in on what we want and work towards that. When we get there, the energy dissipates because we’re there. So the idea of goal setting ‘to and through’ is to set a goal to the finish line, and as you get closer, you can see it.

If you can reset a second goal, you can resurge that energy. Now, the question, of course, is: would you want to do that, or do you want to rest? But every time we set a goal for ourselves, we have enough energy to achieve it. So marathons aside, let’s think about how we get through our day and how exhausted we are and at what point we become fatigued.

Then, did you set a goal to get to that point? Or are you becoming exhausted before you reach a goal? Let me give you a practical example: you’re at work, your child is at school —you know they’re going to aftercare, that’s fine. You’re gonna finish work, you’re going to leave work at five o’clock, you plan to do that, and all you’re trying to do is get to the school, pick up your child, perhaps get to the shops to pick up bread and milk that you need and get home.

You manage to get all that done, get home, and collapse on the couch. You can’t make dinner; this is too much, you can’t get it done. That is goal setting.

So we set the goal we want to reach, and then we find enough energy to get there. Let me state something that might not be obvious: mental illness plays a role in this as well. If you are fighting off clinical depression, massive levels of anxiety, that’s going to deplete you far quicker than what your system can rejuvenate you to achieve those goals.

Let’s take those things out of the picture, just for now. So we set a goal to pick up our kid, get to the shops, get bread and milk, get home, and we’re exhausted. So the idea of the science behind it is that if you change your goal, if you change your goal to go and pick up your kid, go to the shop, get bread and milk, get home, make the dinner, there’s a strong chance you get all the way to that and then can’t do the dishes because that’s on the other side of your goal.

Now, the next day, let’s say you set a goal to pick up the kid, go to the shops, get the bread and milk, get home, make dinner, and do the dishes. You’ll be exhausted after that. Now you can’t read the story to your kid because you’ve got no more energy. So what happens if you goal-set to pick up your kid, go to the shops, get the bread and milk, go home, make dinner, do the dishes, spend quality time with your child around the dinner table, do the dishes with them as a chore-based connection time, get them off to bath, get them into their pajamas, rest with them in bed at night, read them a story, allow them to go off to sleep, and then you’re exhausted.

Perhaps you’ve got a really stressful job, and what you need to do is you need to do all of that, read to them, get them off to sleep at night, and you don’t have the luxury of being exhausted at that time, and you turn back to work and you work until midnight, and then you’re exhausted.

If you’re finding that you’re not getting through your day and you don’t have enough time for people that are really important to you, like your children, your partner, or any family member, or anything, your studies might be important to you.

Getting a project done that you’re going for in terms of maybe getting an increase or a promotion at work. When things are important to you, we tend to find the energy for them because we are teleological in nature.

That’s what I want to speak to you about. Could you test this? Could you think to yourself, let me set a different goal for tonight and let’s see if I’ve got enough energy. And then the second thing, of course, is whether you are getting enough rest in between that? Because if we’re using this science around goal-setting, are we also understanding that we cannot keep going—we have to rest? And how are we resting?

Recently, I was talking to someone about resting like an otter, so I Googled it to see how otters float in water, really relax, and do nothing —lying on the grass outside, cloud-watching, getting into a hammock and just swaying, and noticing things around you and not overthinking.

How are we resting? Controversially, I’m going to say screens aren’t rest time, especially when we’re scrolling. So are we resting? And in the resting, do we collect those spoons up, those spoons of energy, so that we have enough spoons the next day to reach our goals. And if we are suffering or dealing with any mental strain or trauma in our lives, are we getting the support that we need to develop the robustness and the skills so that we can goal set and we can rest?

Of course, we need to talk about boundaries in that as well, but perhaps that’s a whole other discussion. Are we easily able to say, No, I can’t make it and leave it at that without making an excuse?

I can talk about that another time. But there are a lot of tools you can use that really give you your power back, get you out of the victim mindset, and the vicious downward cycle we put ourselves into, where it gets deeper and deeper, and start asking ourselves, what do we want for ourselves? What kind of person do we want to be?

Are we so overwhelmed that we’re getting sucked into the overriding narrative that the world is in at the moment, where life is hard and life is tough? And I think it’s a personal decision to make. I think getting help is imperative. I think getting information and trying things out for yourself is necessary. And really, sitting down and thinking, what do I want for myself? And then what do I want for my family?

Am I in a position to do all of this? And if I’m not, what do I need to do to get there? And this is kind of, for me, it’s an empowering way to think, especially for parents who are overwhelmed with children with special needs and learning difficulties, with families that are going through trauma, who do I need to put into my life? And do I want a virtuous, beautiful upcycle? Or am I going to allow this downward spiral to carry on?

I would definitely go into Alfred Adler’s work on the separation of tasks and on what is your task and not someone else’s. And can you take that on? Can you live a purposeful, intentional day, week, month, year, life, that’s going in the direction that you would really like it to go, and what help do you need to do that? I hope this is of value to you. I hope that you can listen to this a couple of times.

Think about what goal you have set for yourself today. And if you set one goal past it, just the next task, and put that I need to make it to there, do you think you can get just a little bit more energy, just one more spoon, to get yourself to the next point in your day? Get yourself to quality time around the dinner table because you want to, and because you see it as a value for your family.

That’s the challenge I want to pass along to you: what values do you have? What kind of family life do you want to have? What kind of family do you want to be part of? And can you sit in that just today? And then tomorrow, when you wake up, just tomorrow, just one day at a time. Yeah, think on that.

Think on that. It can be valuable.