Do you ever feel tired of feeling tired? It’s like you get up in the morning and instead of feeling rejuvenated like the people from the TV commercials, you drudge the sound of your alarm and hit it like Ted Williams hits a baseball.
The worst thing is that you have work that needs to be done and you literally can’t afford to slog throughout the day. But there are ways how you can fix that.
So let’s start to make these changes if you feel a lack of energy and motivation:
Physical
1. Daily walks
Most of us do work which requires us to sit for a long time in uncomfortable chairs. The human body isn’t designed for that. So take 10-30 minutes every single day and just go for a walk. It will help your body stay healthy.
There are no excuses which would prevent you from doing this activity – it’s light, easy, and short. But at the same time, provides the much-needed boost to energy for your body.
2. Take a nap
If you think that the kids in the pre-school are foolish to take afternoon naps, you are missing out on a great energy boost. A mere nap of 20-30 minutes boosts your focus, lets your “smart” brain refocus and prepare you for more work that you need to do.
All the biggest performers in history took naps because their work required immense amounts of cognitive focus which drains you of energy. That’s why naps are important.
3. Stretch
Sometimes, all you need is to stretch your body for two minutes. When you’re stiff, especially if you don’t exercise in the morning, your body still didn’t wake up. So it’s important to let loose all the body parts and allow a non-disrupted flow of energy throughout it.
This will make the blood flow better, especially coming to your head which needs to focus on demanding cognitive tasks. So stand up from your chair and stretch yourself out because it will make you more energized.
Emotional
4. Eat what fills the head and the stomach
I didn’t put food in the physical part because for most of us, the relationship with our food is emotional and there is a big reason for that. The sugar-heavy saturated food makes us high at the moment but then comes the low and you lose all energy to do anything at 11 am which is absurd.
When you start thinking about food, start thinking about usability and pick the one which you can use the most. High fibre, protein food will fill your stomach but your brain as well and you won’t be tired after it.
5. Call a friend
Relationships play a major part in our lives. They are the main source of our happiness and our entire species is called a social animal. So when you get down and low, one of the best energy boosters is actually going into a social environment and just having a good time.
Social circles tend to pump the energy back into us even when we think we have no energy left for anything.
If you are at work and there are no “water cooler” talks around, simply call a friend on the phone and talk with him for a minute. Don’t message him, simply give a call and talk over the phone.
Intellectual
6. Play some music in the background
It doesn’t matter if it’s only white noise in the background or classical music or pop songs, music does wonders to us regarding energy and motivation.
You know what works best for you and during which time and this only serves as a reminder that sometimes you need some music in life to make magic happen.
7. Books
The stimulus provided by books helps you regain focus for a longer period of time. So you should start reading some (if you already don’t).
In the beginning, people can’t read more than a couple of pages of a book without falling asleep. That’s perfectly fine because your brain is readjusting to the focus necessary to read through tens of pages of a book.
After a month of reading books daily, it will be way easier for you to stay focused and energized at work because you will have trained your brain to stay sharp and focused for a longer period of time.
8. The power of now
Whenever we’re doing something, we are always thinking about the next thing that we have to. This makes us constantly chasing something which is in the future and is never quite here.
You are working on a task for a client at the moment, but you’re constantly thinking about the meeting that you have in three hours.
When you come to the meeting, you are constantly thinking about having to go to the gym in two hours.
When you come to the gym, you are constantly thinking about dinner with your wife and kids.
When you start dinner with your family and kids, you constantly think about the report that you need to send before you go to bed.
When you get in bed, you think about the things that you need to do in the morning as soon as you wake up.
And this perpetual cycle keeps going and going until you are out of breath, energy, motivation to do anything.
The point is to stop and be in the moment — enjoy the power of now.
It provides so much rejuvenation to simply look at a tree and think about nothing except that tree. When you live in the moment, it not only brings energy but conserves the one which you would spend thinking and worrying about the future things that you need to do.
