Are You Doing Enough of What Vitalizes You?
What vitalizes you?
And, are you doing enough of it?
Look out across your work and life. What are the things that energize you, bring you joy, or make you feel most like yourself?
Do you know what those things are in this season of life? How frequently are you able to engage with them?
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Here's an exercise that helps me check in on this:
(Thank you to Kathryn Hofer of Modern Planner for first introducing me to the concept of 'energy audits')
Draw a horizontal line across a page. On the left side, write "draining," on the right side, "energizing”, and in the middle, “neutral”. Then plot all your business (or life!) activities somewhere on that continuum.
No need to be exact. An instinctual brain dump is good enough.
Then, look over the page.
Where have most of your days been spent lately? How have you been feeling overall?
When I did this exercise recently, I found I was doing a lot of what drained me and not much of what energized me. Surprise, surprise—I’d been feeling a bit heavy and disconnected in my business.
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For a business to be sustainable, you have to be sustained within it.
Your needs will shift over time. What energized you two years ago might drain you now. What feels heavy this season might feel exciting in another.
That's why it's worth checking in on this regularly—I'd say once or twice a year—or anytime you're feeling flat, overwhelmed, or disconnected.
What vitalizes you? Are you doing enough of it?
Sometimes, it is that simple.
