Life is a dance of energy

I save mine for appropriate use.

This morning I’m thinking about energy, how I’ve given it in the past and how I hoard it now.

There is a fine-line that I am tip-toeing of energy balance. Personal relationships are center stage. Knowing when to disassociate from getting sucked into someone else’s energy is a practice.

I think about how my energy used to be more accessible.

There are endless people that you could be friends with and spend time with, you’ll never get around to it all so you need to choose wisely.

I am fortunate to have little interest in people pleasing or not as much as a majority of people that I know and meet. We are all too concerned with making other people comfortable at our own expense.

Guarding your energy is not selfish once you know that the real way to show up for people requires your full presence, one that you cannot give if left on E.

I like to operate at 100%, I mean…who doesn’t? In order for me to operate at the level that I want it requires a lot of energy that I have to cultivate in my alone time.

Cleaning and clearing things out of my mind and energy so that when I am with people, I am really with them and not somewhere lost on my to-do list.

I am fortunate that I have the freedom to do this. Freedom that I have had to fight for by ending relationships and moving on from things that were wrong for me. Oh and my conscious decision to forego having children.

Anytime a woman mentions having made this decision, there is a shame that we haven’t had to endure the lifestyle of a mother. I am thankful everyday that I’ve had clarity and comfort about dreaming bigger for myself. I have friends that have children and they always wanted to have kids, both are fine. It doesn’t make either of us less capable, I’m just thankful that at this ripe age of America I have been lucky enough to choose the option that fits me for now.

The option that allows me to expand in many other ways and have a sense of peace and enjoyment with my life. Both roads can lead you to this but I am relieved at the one I took.

I protect my energy now so that later it can expand and become more boundless and I can give it to people more freely.

If you don’t feel like you are properly tuned into your own energetic needs, just listen. Listen to your body, notice how you feel when you’re with other people or situations. Are you feeling drained? Are you feeling more energized? Your body knows what is good for you but you have to learn to listen.

Meditation is one way to tune into the nuances of your energy balance.

In 2020 I was attending a coding bootcamp as an effort to have a career that had endless learning opportunities. One thing I learned very quickly was coding is hard! My brain is thinking about philosophy, not linked lists! Having thrust myself into a whole new way of thinking, I got stressed out early on.

At the time that I was feeling this stress I had a realization that actually I was stressed a lot either way. This challenge or a past challenge, relationships, work, and sometimes nothing. I would let nothing stress me out, nothing! It’s not even a thing that I could point to but here I was stressed out about it.

One day during the coding camp (right before Covid hit) I started to have a lil breakdown. I went to my car and I cried. I cried because it had been a lifetime of stress and at this point I had researched enough to know that stress causes disease. I was stressed about being stressed! I had enough and created a new non-negotiable for myself:

I wouldn’t leave my house without meditating.

It was a requirement for me to leave, for me to return to the coding program. It was the only way that I was going to get through it.

I knew that if I didn’t get a handle on my stress that it would never stop. I was tired of living life in a constant state of fight or flight.

And so I started meditating and guess what?

My life changed.

Do I currently meditate regularly? Not in the way that you would assume.

The funny thing about meditation is, once you learn to bring yourself back to the moment and the sensations in your body, it becomes easier to do. You can even find new ways to do it and for me, dancing is one of those ways.

Do I slip? YES, can I please make sure that everyone knows this:

Meditation does not make everything perfect in your life but through meditation you can see the perfect nature of life even when it seems otherwise.

I’m sure that you’ve read "Man’s Search for Meaning” by Viktor Frankl, but if you haven’t I highly recommend this book. Even in the most depraved of situations, we have the ability to see joy and beauty in life.

Life has always been both, it’ll never just be highs. It is always the wave, it is always changing. Through a meditative practice we can happily bob along wherever on the wave we are.

Meditation is not “pretending that everything is great”, it’s just seeing things as they are and how they come and go, regularly.

You can count on that, you can count on things changing so why not just get comfortable with that? You can’t control it either way, might as well enjoy it, no?

🫡