How To Do An Energy Audit

How can you do an energy audit with me,

Dr.

Diana Hill?

Welcome back.

I'm Dr.

Diana Hill.

This show is all about wise effort,

How you are using your energy.

Are you feeling a bit like your energy is scattered,

Dispersed all over the place?

Or maybe it's super low,

You're depleted.

You are kind of going through the motions of your life,

But aren't feeling a lot of vitality physically,

Mentally,

Emotionally,

Spiritually.

Maybe you feel like your energy is going outward into all sorts of things,

But not coming back to you.

It doesn't feel like a regenerative type of energy.

And wise effort is an exchange.

I want you to be putting your genius energy out into the world,

Offering your talent strengths,

Your unique offering out there,

And at the same time,

Feeling recharged.

So one of the things about this podcast is my pain is your reward here.

When I go through something that is challenging for me,

Or when I figure something out in terms of my own life,

It often gets reflected on this podcast.

When you are trying to teach something,

Whether it's a book or a podcast,

Or even just offering that you're giving some advice to a friend,

If you are not fully in alignment,

If you are not the living embodiment of the thing that you are teaching,

Your soul will sabotage you.

Your soul will take you down.

So I have this book coming out,

And all of the ways in which I am feeling out of alignment are like,

Boom,

Right in my face.

And one of those ways is in my own energy use.

I need an energy audit,

Folks.

I am working on saucha,

Cleaning things up.

Saucha is one of the yamas and niyamas of yoga.

I'm cleaning things up so that my offering is clean and clear and a true representation of what we're doing here with wise effort.

So my energy audit that I'm doing with my life,

I hope that you will join me today in doing an energy audit of your life,

Too.

Here's what we're going to do.

We're going to look at you,

Your unique self.

You are designed in a way that only you are designed,

And we're going to look at your design in terms of these main dimensions that make up you and how your energy is used in each.

So we're going to be looking at your physical energy,

Like in terms of your body.

We're going to look at your psychological energy.

We're going to look at your relational energy,

That exchange of energy you have with others.

And you're going to do an audit on your environmental energy,

How the environment is impacting you.

And then finally,

Your spiritual energy.

So we're going to audit each one of those categories and have a very specific way in which you are going to audit them.

You're going to audit them on four things,

And it's going to help you get more aligned.

This is sort of like Marie Kondo style,

Where you pull everything out of your closet and you look at each every one of them and you say,

Does this bring me joy?

We're going to pull them out of the closet,

Your energy out of the closet of each of these dimensions,

And we're going to ask about four specific things in terms of your energy.

Now,

I just got back from a conference I was presenting at in New Orleans.

I was on a panel,

Folks,

With Steve Hayes and four other researchers,

A researcher from Germany,

From Australia,

From Chile,

From Kentucky,

And then little old me from private practice Santa Barbara,

California.

And this panel was titled,

Ideonomics and Process-Based Empirical Practice.

Where are we now?

Say that 10 times fast.

What is ideonomics?

First of all,

Ideonomics made me feel like an idiot the first time I heard the words.

I'm like,

What is ideonomics?

But actually,

What ideonomics is,

Is a new word.

It's a new study.

It's the study of the individual unit.

So just like economics is the study of economy,

Ideonomics is a study of the individual.

Because what we're finding in the field of psychology is that we've kind of messed things up by trying to group people into categories for all these years.

The whole diagnostic system is a show,

Folks.

It is.

It's so problematic on so many levels.

One is that its roots are in eugenics.

So that's a problem to start with.

But also,

It gives you very little information about the individual,

Right?

So you have a diagnosis slapped on you,

But you don't really know what that means individually for you.

So I'm part of this revolution or part of this move in the field of psychology that's really got Stephen Hayes and all the ACT people at the helm of how do we individualize care.

And my job there on this panel was to be the translator,

To be able to take what all these researchers and these heady folks are saying and actually apply it at the real-life level.

So we're applying a little ideonomics here.

We're also applying a little what's called process-based therapy,

Which is the next wave sort of big umbrella of evidence-based approaches.

But we're going to do it in a way that completely makes sense,

Which is the way that I like to do it.

All right.

Let's do your energy audit.

So when you look at the Chinese symbol for energy,

The Chinese character chi,

QI,

We've seen it,

It's composed of two parts.

One part of the symbol is rice,

And the other part of the symbol is steam.

If you think about it,

Rice is nourishing,

But it's the steam that's essential.

It's this invisible force that transforms it into something that's digestible and alive and usable.

Without steam,

The rice stays raw.

You can't eat it.

Okay?

So energy is like that.

It's not always visible,

But it's the agent of transformation.

Your energy,

Your chi,

Whether it's chi in the body or chi in your motivation or chi in terms of your genius energy,

Is what you can use to transform all sorts of things.

When you put your energy into work,

When you put your energy into your relationships,

When you put your energy into a creative project.

But that chi,

When it gets scattered,

Not aligned with your values,

It can get dispersed,

It can go underground,

And it can get completely depleted.

Also,

External factors like stress and trauma can influence your chi.

So what I want to do is first for us to look at your energy in each of these areas.

We're going to look at,

Again,

Your body,

Your psychology,

Your relationships,

Your environment,

And your spirituality.

But we're going to look at it through this lens of four things.

And these four things are going to be the things that I want you to sort of have a little inner checkmark on when you're making decisions around where you're going to put your energy.

It needs to get a check at least on three of the four for you to say yes.

When I was at this conference,

I actually got,

I had breakfast with a publisher,

Actually two people from this publishing company in New York,

And they sat down with me to try and convince me to write a book with them.

And I went through this list of these four things,

And only one got the checkmark.

So I said,

No,

Flat out,

Nope,

Not going to do it,

Doesn't meet my criteria.

So here's the criteria that I'm going to have you deal with each of these dimensions.

And I think it's pretty good.

It's pretty clear.

It's pretty clean.

This is your saucha,

Your cleaning up of your life force.

So the first question you're going to ask yourself is,

Is this a drain or gain for my body physically,

But also you can just,

It's a body check-in.

Does my body drain energy when I think about doing this thing?

Or does my body have an uplifting of energy when I think about this thing?

Your body has such wisdom to it.

You can just do a little body check-in.

What does my body say?

This example of being asked to write this book,

My body was like,

Whole body no.

Whole body no to that one.

And that's actually one of the tools that I teach in the Why Separate book is the whole body yes versus the whole body no.

Get to know it.

Get to know your whole body.

Yes.

And your whole body.

No.

That's the first question for you.

Is this an energy drain or gain?

Is it a body?

Yes.

Or a body?

No.

The second question that you're going to ask yourself,

Is this an alignment with my values?

Right.

Does this line up with type of person I want to be in the world?

Is this something that I care about?

Is this something that I want to stand for?

Does this bring meaning and purpose to my life or align with my life's meaning and purpose?

Okay,

Then the third question I'm going to have you ask yourself is,

Is this using my unique genius?

And remember,

Your unique genius is the things that come easily to you,

Your talents,

Your strengths,

Your personality pattern,

Your interests,

What you're drawn to,

What people say sort of is just uniquely you.

I want you to be asking yourself,

Does this align with my genius energy?

Does it support that?

Is it an avenue for that?

Because when it does,

Hard things will be easier for you.

And then the last question you're going to ask yourself in terms of your energy use is,

Is this a drain or gain for other people,

For my second bodies?

It's not just about you folks.

So you first check in with yourself.

What does my body say?

This is the whole body.

Yes.

The whole body.

No.

Then you're checking with your values.

Then you're checking in with your genius,

Your strengths.

And then how is it impacting the people around me?

When you are deciding where to put your energy,

If you put your energy in places that are gains for others,

It will feed back to you.

But only if it's not a drain on your body,

If it's aligned with your values and it's using your genius,

Right?

So you have to make sure at least I would say three of these four are checkboxed.

If you can get three of those four as a,

This is good for the three of those four questions,

Then you can go ahead with it.

And I would keep it as an energy gain in your energy audit.

Okay.

So we're going to go through these different dimensions that make up you.

You can kind of think of yourself as like one of those stacking dolls,

You know,

Those little wooden stacking dolls where they stacked upon each other.

You have inside of you,

Your biology,

You have your psychology,

You have your social relationships,

You have your environment and you have your spirituality.

We're going to go into each and every one of those dimensions.

They're all interrelated.

They all impact each other.

You really aren't a stacking doll.

You're sort of a flow of energy,

Right?

But we're going to look at each one of those separately,

Kind of pulling them apart to look at your energy in each asking those four questions in your energy audit so that you can get super dialed in terms of how you are using your energy in your life.

And when you get dialed up,

You'll feel more energized for one,

But you'll have a bigger impact in whatever way you uniquely you idiomatically you have an impact in this world.

Okay.

So the first dimension I want you to look at is your body,

Your physical dimension and your physical dimension is made up of how you are eating,

How you are moving,

How you are resting,

Any kind of physical health conditions you may have,

And also your pleasure,

Your physical pleasure.

We all know about sexual genius,

Right?

So I want you to think about this for your physical body and you can go through in your audit.

Each of these areas,

Food,

Movement,

Rest,

And sex,

Pleasure.

I guess there's other forms of pleasure besides sex,

Right?

There's sensuality,

There's all sorts of ways you can work with pleasing your body,

Right?

So for example,

With movement,

Going back to this conference that I was at,

I woke up pretty early on the morning of my presentation,

Knowing that I wanted to move and that I was going to be back to back that day.

So I got myself up,

Took myself down to the gym,

The hotel gym,

And I climbed onto this rickety treadmill.

It was one of those life fitness treadmills,

But not like a good one.

It was like when I got onto it,

The whole thing moved back and forth every single time I stepped.

And then it had this cord that was hanging down,

So that kept on getting tangled in the cord.

And I'd pull on the cord and then the whole thing would stop and then I'd have to wait forever for it to start again.

And there was these screens in this place.

It was just like all of it.

It was a whole body drain.

Whole body drain.

I want you to look at your movement.

What is draining you?

Is this alignment with your values?

Is it using your genius?

What about other people?

How is this impacting others,

Right?

So actually what I did is I got off.

I was like,

I hate this.

I'm not doing this anymore.

And I texted Jason Lillis,

Who I was doing this workshop with him.

I know he loves movement.

He researches movement,

Researches exercise at Brown.

And we were going to do this workshop together.

And then we're planning on debriefing for coffee.

And I said,

Can we just go for a walk instead of doing coffee?

Can we walk by the river?

Genius move,

Right?

Genius energy move.

Because now it's in alignment with my values.

It's a gain for my body.

It uses my genius,

Which is sort of this emotional connection.

And persistence actually is one of my geniuses.

I'm still going to move today.

I just have to do it differently.

And it was beneficial for a second body.

It was a gain for him.

So that's an example of getting all those check marks met in the physical movement realm.

Think about that for yourself.

How could you shift things with your movement?

And if you want some resources around that,

I highly recommend checking out my book.

I know I should exercise.

But anything by Katie Bowman is anything that I love in the movement realm.

I did an interview with her a while back on alignment and the movement pyramid,

Which is super cool,

Like a food pyramid,

The macronutrients around movement that you need.

Walking being one of them.

So then do the same thing with food and eating,

Right?

What is a drain or gain for your body?

What is an alignment with your values with your food and eating?

How could you use your genius with your food and eating?

And then what about second bodies?

When I'm particularly drained,

I like to go back to making this green smoothie that I have an association with,

With Blue Spirit Costa Rica.

I love their longevity smoothies that they have there.

I associate it with health and feeling that good feeling of being in Costa Rica and the sun and the water and all the good people that are there.

And this green smoothie,

Whenever I make it,

Connects me with that,

That energy source,

Right?

You have foods that are aligned with your values.

They use your genius.

I'll tell you what's in my smoothie.

I've actually modified it.

It's not exactly what they do at Blue Spirit.

It's got spinach and coconut water and lemon and a chunk of ginger and turmeric and black pepper,

Has some mushroom stuff.

And then I put in some protein powder,

Which is not Blue Spirit,

But I need more protein as I age.

So I put protein powder in.

You could do a pea protein or you could do a collagen protein,

Whichever side of the fence you stand on that.

And then I also put in,

Sometimes I put a little blueberry in it or a little bit honey in it.

Sometimes I don't.

It just depends on how I'm feeling,

How hardcore I want to go.

A little bit of mint I put in there and blend it all up.

And it's super good.

And it connects me with Blue Spirit,

Right?

Blue Spirit energy.

But here's the clincher.

I make double and I give half either to my son or I give it to a friend.

And when you are making food and you are giving it to others,

And all of a sudden it's a gain for second bodies and it's a motivational force for you too,

Right?

So that's a great use of your energy.

So go through,

Do a little energy audit.

Some other resources around food.

I really like the book,

Good Energy by Casey Means.

And then I also had Sharon Berquist on the show to talk about the stress paradox,

Which is great in terms of thinking about food and exercise,

How we can stress our body a little bit on purpose to strengthen our body.

If you're feeling depleted,

Your energy of your body is stored in your mitochondria.

And it used to be that this mitochondria was considered the powerhouse of your cell.

But newer work by Martin Picard,

He's at Columbia University,

Actually thinks of mitochondria not just as the energy source,

Like the powerhouse,

But also it's the cell communicates information throughout your body.

And your mitochondria is impacted by what you eat.

It's impacted by stress.

It's also impacted by daily joy and motivation.

We'll talk a little bit about that when we talk about your psychology,

But thinking about your mitochondria is actually a great way to think about your energy because you want strong,

Healthy mitochondria.

They're actually now looking at mitochondria as a predictor of longevity and also predictor of disease.

So let's get your body in a better spot in terms of your energy.

And that includes rest,

Looking at how you may be engaging in junk food rest.

Some of your rest activities may actually be a drain on your body.

When you think about sitting and scrolling on your phone,

You think you're resting.

But really what you're doing is you're kind of draining your energy.

Is your rest in alignment with your values?

Is your rest using your genius?

And is your rest a drain or gain for second bodies?

If you're running away,

Sometimes I do this,

Running away to yoga class all the time,

And you're not hanging with your family,

Right?

Could you find a family rest,

A way for you all to hang together?

That's always the family bed for me,

Hanging out with my kids in the family bed,

Reading together.

It's much more nourishing rest for me than maybe watching a show together.

So look at your rest and then look at your pleasure.

You got to get my book,

Wise Effort,

To read the chapter on pleasure and your sexual genius.

How much pleasure do you have in your day?

Are you bringing pleasure into your activities?

I want you to do a body energy audit here,

Asking those four questions and get really clear for yourself.

What are your energy drains and what are your gains?

And you can focus on maybe just one or two shifts to do with your body to shift to a point where you get all four of those questions or at least three out of the four of the questions answering.

Yes,

This is a whole body.

Yes.

For my body.

This is a values-based move.

This uses my genius with my body,

And it's good for other people around me.

We can get three out of four.

You're doing great.

And that will be an energy shift for you.

A great audit to make.

Okay,

Let's move on to the next one,

Which is your psychology.

Your psychology includes things like your thoughts,

How you're relating to your emotions,

Your motivation.

And when you think about how much energy goes into and is dispersed by your thinking patterns,

The ruminations you're stuck in,

The projections that you are stuck in,

The stories that you are stuck in,

It is an energy drain.

It is a full body drain.

Being jealous,

Like jealousy.

I want you to pull that projection right off of whoever it is you're jealous of.

You're jealous of them because they are succeeding in an area that you want for yourself.

Pull that energy off,

Put it back on you,

And start working on that area that you want to be successful in,

That they're successful in.

Right?

So it's like reclaiming your energy,

Stepping out of being a victim,

Stepping out of being a rescuer,

Stepping out of being a persecutor,

You know,

The drama triangle,

Stepping off those roles and reclaiming your energy back.

This is about saying values-based yeses and saying values-based nos.

So again,

With your psychology,

You're asking yourself,

Is this thought process a drain or gain for me physically in my body?

Is the way that I'm relating to this emotion a drain or gain for me?

You know,

If you are suppressing your emotions and you're not allowing a good cry to flow through you,

That suppression is an energy drain.

If you are suppressing your anger,

It is an energy drain.

You need to go figure out what you're angry about,

What are the values that it's connected to,

Express those values,

Get clear,

Right?

And then it becomes an energy gain.

So when I was at this conference,

Oh,

My psychology,

It is fascinating to see what happens to Diana Hill at one of these academic conferences,

Because I am all of a sudden back in grad school again,

Feeling the competition,

The comparison,

That I'm better than,

And I'm not good enough.

All of that shows up and showed up for me.

The Voldemorts from my grad school experience,

Right?

I had to do a real energy audit while I was there.

I had to check in what is draining me,

What thoughts are draining me,

What comparisons are draining me,

And how do I actually want to show up and be here?

What do I want to represent at this conference?

So I ended up doing this thing where I did a Friendsgiving dinner,

Where one of the things that really drains me is this feeling of being left out.

And so I did a Friendsgiving dinner where I invited whoever wanted to come and didn't have a place to have dinner to come with us.

And it was such an energy gain.

So look at your psychology.

How are you relating to your thoughts?

Are you believing every thought to be true?

How are you relating to your emotions?

Are you suppressing or avoiding them?

What's your true motivation?

What are your values here?

And turn your energy around,

Reclaim your energy in relationship to your psychology.

Going back to this mitochondria,

Martin Picard at Columbia,

He looked at super highly stressed moms,

So 90 mothers who were caring for a child with autism.

And he had these folks monitor their morning and evening moods daily for a week.

And then he drew their blood on day four to look at their mitochondria health index.

So this is sort of a composite score that looks at not just how many mitochondria you have,

But how well they're performing.

What he found was that the mothers who felt happier before bed had cells with significantly better mitochondrial function the next morning.

So the top third in terms of happiness had mitochondria functioning that was about 16 to 18% higher than the lowest mood group.

Your psychology impacts your biology folks.

Now,

This is not to say you have to be happy to be healthy.

But what I would suggest is that before bed,

Do some things that bring you joy.

That's not the time for you to be ruminating.

That's not the time for you to be going through your day and rehashing all the places that you went wrong and being self-critical.

It's a great time to do things like expressing appreciation for the reality that is here,

The goodness that is already available to you.

It's a great time for poetry reading.

It's a great time to practice your self-compassion practice.

Get out your journal,

Your self-compassion daily journal.

That's the time to do it first thing in the morning,

Right before bed.

And you will also be shifting your mitochondria at the cellular level.

Your joy,

Having something to look forward to at the end of the day is helpful,

Especially if you are in a super stressful situation.

So just to point that out,

That your psychology impacts your biology and everything impacts everything.

So I want you to energy audit how you are relating to your inner world.

And the key here is to increase joy,

Increase compassion,

Increase values-based motivation and action,

And let go of your thoughts,

Folks.

Just do not trust your mind.

It's not always the most helpful thing to follow.

Okay.

The third area that I want you to do an energy audit around is your relationships.

In the Wise Effort book,

I have you do an energy map where you actually plot specific relationships on an energy spiral in terms of how close or far away they are from you energetically,

And then if they're positive energizers in your life,

Depleters,

Or if they're mixed bags.

And we do all this work with the Wise Effort method to shift some of these relationships.

But for you right now,

I just want you to think about in terms of your relationships,

Again,

These four categories,

Start to think about the relationships in your life.

Are they drain or gains for your physical body?

Can you feel it in your body?

Some people,

When you're in the presence of them,

Or you're just general relationship with them,

Are energizing to you.

You want to call them.

You want to be around them.

And maybe you haven't been feeding those relationships enough,

Right?

You need to put more energy into them.

Some people are total drains on you.

And it may be that they're drains because you're in a conflict that you haven't repaired.

You need to do some work and take some responsibility.

You need to set some boundaries,

Or you just need to let that relationship go.

We talked a little bit about that in the big love episode.

I also want you to look at,

Again,

Is this relationship in alignment with my values?

How are you showing up?

Are you using your genius in this relationship?

Is it the way that you're relating to this person or this group?

Is it a drain or gain for other people?

When I did this audit,

There was two things that I audited.

One,

I was waking up in the morning.

I've been waking up in the morning for the past few weeks.

And I have a growing teenager boy.

Let me tell you about a growing teenager boy.

These kids,

They eat a lot and they stay up really late.

And they also just are kind of unaware of their environment.

They're kind of like giants in these bodies that knock things over and don't always have a consciousness to their impact.

So I wake up in the morning.

My husband cleans the whole kitchen at night.

But we go to bed with a clean kitchen.

And I wake up in the morning,

And I really cherish my noble silence in the morning.

It's time for my relationship with me.

Where I do my coffee and my meditation and all the things.

And I would walk into my kitchen and there would be,

Oh my,

Like honey all over the counter,

Open jar of peanut butter,

Banana peel,

Like half of a smoothie in a blender from his middle of the night thing.

And I would go into this like anger,

Rumination.

I'm so mad,

Right?

It's a relationship energy drain.

I know you have some of those things that people are doing that you don't like.

And then you circle around them over and over again.

And you add story and you ruminate.

And then you do things that kind of make you either a martyr or that victim,

Or make you the persecutor,

You attack,

Or you become the rescuer,

Right?

So I was doing all three with this smoothie experience.

The energy drain.

And I wanted to figure out how to make this not be an energy drain.

So I asked myself,

Okay,

So this is like not good for my body,

Right?

I don't really want to just clean it up for him.

But I also don't want to get mad at him every single day.

And I was like reminding him every single day,

You need to clean up the smoothie thing.

And he'd be like,

Yeah,

Okay,

Yeah,

Sorry,

Mom.

But I actually want to act in alignment with my values here,

Right?

My values of connecting around my teenager.

And I want to use my genius,

My emotional sensitivity,

As well as sort of my persistence,

A little bit of creativity.

And I want it to be a gain for my second body.

I want to be a gain for him.

So how could I do that?

What I ended up doing is I leaned on this sort of yes brain approach,

Which is positive reinforcement and highlighting strengths and opening people's brains up.

And what I did is I put these post-it notes.

I put a little post-it note on the milk that said,

Thank you for putting me back in the fridge.

I like to stay cold.

I put a post-it note on the honey.

Thank you for wiping me down.

I don't like ants in me.

I put a post-it note on the compost.

And it said,

Thank you for filling me with compost.

I take care of the garden.

OK?

So I started with that,

Just these little post-it notes.

And then whenever he would do a put away,

Like put something away,

I would just do a big thank you.

Oh,

Thank you for putting that away.

It really helps out the blah,

Blah,

Blah,

Blah.

Highlighting strengths.

And it felt good for me energetically in my body,

But also was aligned with my values,

Aligned with my genius,

And good for him,

Right?

This is a win-win in relationships.

So how can you shift in your relationships to that type of approach,

Where it doesn't feel like a drain on your body,

Where you feel in alignment with your values,

Where you're using your genius in a relationship,

And where it becomes a gain for that other person,

Too?

I want you to look at your relationships in your immediate environment.

I want you to do a little energy audit there.

I want you to look at your family relationships.

I want you to look at your work relationships.

And then I want you to look at those mental relationships that you have with people that aren't even in your life anymore,

But you still are engaging in mental relationships with them that maybe you need to make some wise effort shifts around.

You need to do a little audit.

I said two areas.

So that was one was with my son.

But then another area in terms of my relationships that I wanted to do a little energy audit around was the mental relationships that I was doing at this conference.

Like,

I didn't know I was still carrying and harboring so many resentments and angsty stuff.

And it was like a teenager kind of feel to it.

And so what I really needed to do there in terms of reclaiming my energy was seeing how it was just outsourced onto these ideas of people that aren't real people,

Right?

That's just the idea of a relationship.

And I need to reclaim that,

Bring it back inside,

And get engaged with real people.

And part of that is identifying who are the people in your life that are those positive energizers and investing in them.

And then the energy drains.

Sometimes it's just stopping putting energy into them.

You know,

They do this with a narcissism.

They call it gray rocking.

You just basically pretend like they're a gray rock.

You no longer engage.

You no longer put your energy into that.

The next dimension that I want you to think about is your environment.

So we've done your body.

We've done your psychology.

We've done your relationships.

And now we're going to do your physical environment.

I guess that whole smoothie example is giving you a little clue into how my physical environment impacts me.

But when we think about sautya,

Which is one of the yamas and niyamas of yoga,

The ethical principles,

The cleaning up principle around yoga is cleaning up the inner energy,

Inner world,

But also cleaning up the outer world,

Your environment,

How your environment impacts you.

And there are environments that when you are in them,

You feel a drain on your body.

It may be a cluttered environment.

It may be a closed in an environment.

It may be an environment that doesn't have enough light.

It may be a toxic workplace environment.

But you know how that feels for me.

Like rooms that have no windows are over air conditioned and devoid of nature are really hard and fluorescent lighting are really hard on me.

So I want you to think about your environment,

Your home environment,

Your work environment and what drains you at that physical level.

Thinking about your environment in terms of alignment with your values,

Using your genius to help support your environments and the drain or gain on second bodies.

Decluttering is a great example of this.

So when you have a pile of papers,

I know you have one somewhere,

You have a pile and that pile of papers could be a digital pile,

Could be your digital environment,

Needs a cleanup,

Or it could be your physical.

And that pile is on your desk or your kitchen table.

And you look at it and you feel the physical drain of looking at it like,

Oh,

I got to go through that.

Maybe you're also a lot of alignment with your values.

You haven't paid a bill.

You haven't written somebody back.

You haven't emailed somebody back that,

You know,

You need to email.

Maybe you're not using your genius,

Which would be like,

How can I make this easier for me?

How can I make this using my talents and strengths to approach this pile?

Other people are impacted by that pile as well.

Is there a way that you could approach that to clean up your environment?

And let me tell you,

The approach is not putting that pile in a folder on your computer,

And it's not putting that pile in a drawer somewhere because every time you look at that folder,

You'll be reminded,

Ooh,

That's the pile I haven't dealt with.

And every time you look at that drawer,

You're going to be reminded,

Ooh,

That's the drawer I haven't dealt with.

Minimalism and this cleaning up of the piles and the clutter is so good for us.

Like if we can not have our energy weighed down by our million pairs of jeans or shoes or face products or papers,

And we have a clearing of that space,

Then we can use our energy for other things,

Right?

If you are feeling drained energetically,

Getting much more minimalist in your life across all things is super helpful.

We tend to add on the brain likes to add,

Add,

Add,

Add and overcomplicate things.

There you go.

Do an audit of your environment.

What are the drains and what types of environments are best for your energy?

And it may be something as simple as I need more plants in my space.

I need a clean window.

Like every time I look at that window,

There's a spiderweb on it.

I just need to go clean it.

I need to have natural lighting and turn the lights off or I need to borrow somebody else's environment from time to time.

You know,

I go down to work at my office building and I go down to work in another building that is like when I walk in my whole nervous system shifts so we can borrow other people's environments.

We can think about coffee shops,

Yoga studios,

Other people's houses.

You can borrow environments if you need to get a little energy boost.

All right.

The last area that I want you to do a energy audit in is your spirituality.

Sometimes with our spirituality,

It actually can become like a to do.

Like I have to pray every day or I have to meditate every morning.

Sometimes we actually can feel an energy drain in terms of what we're doing with our spiritual practice.

And spirituality is a deep source of chi for us,

Right?

Like energy flows literally through your body when you are doing your spiritual practice.

And I want you to do an audit on that.

I want you to do an audit and take a look at what aspects of your spiritual practice are energy drains or gains on your body.

Are there whole body knows to what you're doing?

And maybe you want to make a shift around in terms of your spiritual practice.

And it may be like you want to practice with other people.

Maybe you want to do a different type of practice.

Maybe you want to add a ritual.

Maybe you want to change your ritual.

Something as small as like for me,

I went out and harvested some old called old man sage from the hills here in Santa Barbara.

And I just started burning that with my morning practice.

And it just brought a little bit of new energy into the experience,

Right?

Or going on a retreat can be a great way to revive your spirituality or making your own day long retreat.

And then is your spirituality in alignment with your values?

Checking in with that.

Are you using your genius in terms of your spiritual practice?

And again,

Your genius is your talents and strengths.

And you may be surprised that there's ways in which you can bring things like bringing art to your spiritual practice or movement to your spiritual practice.

And then how is your spiritual practice drain or gain for second bodies for other people?

This is why I really recommend having a sangha,

A community of people that you practice with online or in person.

We started a little small sangha here in Santa Barbara,

And it's just had such a beautiful impact on me of feeling like I'm practicing with other people and having a space where we have a shared practice.

But there's lots of ways you could do this.

You could do this in song circle.

You could do it in a drumming circle.

You could just bring a little bit more spirituality to your dinner table,

Right?

Have a little prayer before dinner if that's something that you do or hold hands before dinner,

A little bit of silence before dinner.

These are all ways to bring more of the sacred into your daily life.

I like to just even have little sayings,

Little gathas that we put up around our house,

A little tea practice with my family.

All these things that are the sacred and spiritual that we need to bring into our daily life to feel energized and recharged by.

So take a look Marie Kondo style at your spiritual practice.

Maybe you've gotten a little bit distant from it,

Or you've gotten sort of a little bit into a routine that has lost some of that mojo and some of that good energy to it.

Okay,

So here we go.

This is a full energy audit and the things that you are going to look at in your energy audit,

You're going to ask four things with each of these domains.

You're asking,

Is this a drain or gain for my body?

Is this in alignment with my values?

Is it using my genius and is it a drain or gain for my second bodies?

And you're going to audit each of these areas for yourself.

So I want you physically to feel like there's a gain,

An energetic gain for the way that you're engaging with your physical body,

That you're engaging with your physical body in alignment with your values.

It's using your genius and it's beneficial to others.

So physically,

All those physical things,

Movement,

Exercise,

Rest,

Sex,

Same thing.

You're going to do it again.

You're going to do an energy audit with your psychology.

What's going on with your mind?

What's going on with your motivation?

What's going on with your emotions?

You need to do an audit there.

You're going to do an audit with your relationships.

You're going to do an audit with your physical environment,

Your context that you're in,

And then you're going to do an audit with your spiritual practice.

Let me know how it goes.

I think it should be pretty rad to do this audit and you could just choose one at a time,

You know,

Just focus on one chunk because this is a big audit.

It's a big audit.

Choose one at a time or you could just choose one thing from each area to work on.

So maybe you're going to work on,

I'm going to like start sitting down for lunch every day for your body.

And then maybe for your psychology,

You're like,

Okay,

I'm going to start really actually practicing self-compassion here.

I'm going to get self-compassion journal.

I'm actually going to start doing it.

I'm going to work on that in terms of my psychology and maybe your relationships.

You're going to clean something up.

You're going to apologize to someone.

You're going to set some limit.

And then maybe with your environment,

You're going to buy yourself some fresh flowers.

Keep in your kitchen or plant a little pot of basil for your front porch.

And then maybe for your spirituality,

You're going to go find a song in your community to practice with,

Or go listen to me on Insight Timer.

I got some practices there for you too.

Let me know how this energy audit goes for you.

I'm excited.

I'm doing my own and I hope that you experience more vitality,

More energy,

Reclaiming your life force,

Your chi,

So you can steam some rice and offer whatever it is that you have to offer.

But you've got to work on your own energy first.

You cannot send it out unless you've done this work of clarifying your energy,

Drawing it back in,

Transforming it inside.

And when you do that,

You will have a lot to offer.

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Wise Effort Podcast.

Wise Effort is about you taking your energy and putting it in the places that matter most to you.

And when you do so,

You'll get to savor the good of your life along the way.

I would like to thank my team,

My partner in all things,

Including the producer of this podcast,

Craig.

And thank you to Bangold at Bell and Branch for our music.

This podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only,

And it's not meant to be a substitute for mental health treatments.