360 Where Is Your Energy Going

And that is, where is your energy going? Now, I want you to think about that question for a moment because I don't want you to answer with where you hope your energy is going or where you think your energy is going.

But where is it actually going? Because one of the things I've learned with years of studying rest and burnout and well-being and how humans perform is that people are paying attention oftentimes to the wrong resources.

They focus on time.

But what they are actually running out of is energy.

Have you ever thought to yourself or said to someone, I just don't have time for whatever it is? And if you really are honest with yourself, it's not so much you don't have time.

You don't have the energy to do the thing that's being asked of you.

Have you ever had a day when you technically had time available, but you couldn't seem to make yourself do what was needed to be done? Maybe it was cleaning out the garage or doing something else around your home, and time made itself available, but it still didn't get done.

So the hours were there.

The opportunity was there, but the energy wasn't.

Have you ever found yourself sitting down to work and you can't focus? You open your computer, you stare at the screen, or you walk into the room and forget why you're there? I know sometimes I've sat down to read a book and I read the same paragraph three times and still have no clue what that paragraph just said.

When we get mentally scattered, it can be extremely frustrating and frustrating.

Often we can't explain why or what's going on that's leading to these symptoms.

Most of us respond to those moments by simply criticizing ourselves, saying things like we need more discipline or motivation or I just need to focus and try harder.

But the issue often isn't discipline.

It's depletion.

And until you understand where your energy is going, you can't fully understand why you feel exhausted.

No.

One of my favorite scriptures related to this comes from Proverbs 4, verse 23.

And it says this, above all else, guard your heart from everything you do flows from it.

I love the image.

Everything flows from it.

Your relationships flow from it, your leadership, your creativity, your decisions flow The work that you do, the people that you love, everything flows from the condition of what's happening inside of you.

Yet many of us are paying careful attention to our output while ignoring the source of what is flowing inside of us.

It's like focusing on the faucet while neglecting the well.

Eventually, the well determines what comes out of that faucet.