5 Energy-Sucking Things I Stopped Doing
The last two months prompted some unexpected, but welcomed changes in my day-to-day life. The biggest physical change is by far moving back to the east coast (we’re living in CT now!), but it’s the smaller changes that I’m noticing have shifted more of my mood and perspective on life. After letting go of some of the more energy-sucking habits I’d been holding onto, I feel less tense in the shoulders and less spiraling in my thoughts. I hadn’t realize how things like Twitter made me feel on a daily basis because I’d been on it for so long. I’d gotten used to the sense of dread that came with doom-scrolling and felt like that’s just what my day had to include.
I didn’t go into kicking the below habits intentionally. Life getting so busy, so quickly, forced me into having to prioritize moving and more immediate work needs and left me little time for anything else. Now that we’re in our new home though and I’m getting time back in droves, it turns out these are habits I don’t want to pick up again.
Before I dive into the 5 habits I’m kicking, I think that if you’re reading this and wanting to kick some of your own habits, I would use these 3 questions as a guide:
What does a typical day look like for me? (List things out without judgement, you just want to see what you’re starting with)
Put a plus or a minus next to each item. A plus if it makes you feel good/energizes you, a minus if it’s an energy/time-suck.
Go through the negatives — which ones can you scrap starting today and which ones will take longer/are just things you have to do (exercise, a job you’re not a super fan of, etc. I’ll write a different blog on these later this week)
While I didn’t go through these three questions initially, I realize it’s what I did in my head over the last few weeks once I could have potentially brought these 5 things back into my life.
I mentioned Twitter up above, but it warrants more explanation. Twitter was the first social media platform I ever really joined. Being on it since its inceptions means that I’ve never really asked myself why I’m on it or if I still want to stay on it. Since the beginning of the year, when I was looking at my presence on social from a business perspective, I knew I wanted to grow my IG and my Pinterest. Deciding this then meant that the only real reason I was still on Twitter were personal ones. On a personal level, Twitter does not serve me. The constant barrage of news makes me anxious, and has for a long time now, and I don’t really build community or interact with friends on there. In May I randomly decided to turn my account private and then our move happened. I couldn’t be on my phone much because we were knee deep in moving across the country. Turns out I didn’t miss Twitter at all. The only need it fulfilled for me was news-oriented and I just started going to actual news outlets instead, which did so much better for my anxiety because instead of feeling like it was an onslaught of information, I felt more in control of how I consumed it. I don’t see myself engaging much on Twitter moving forward because it doesn’t make me feel good and only makes me feel stressed.
Thinking through things alone
I am an introverted human. I enjoy spending time with others, but once I do, I know that I need a few days to reset and just spend time alone. My knee-jerk reaction to spend time by myself means that for a long time I’ve made a habit of either processing things alone or only with my therapist. I realized a few months ago that I was missing some depth in my friendships and I missed it quite honestly. I have a hard time needing others and this habit made it easy for me to not have to push myself out of my comfort zone. The last two months I had to lean on my boyfriend a lot more than I’m used to and it was wonderful. I had moments of feeling especially alone through the move and talking to him made me realize how much of that feeling was rooted in myself. Turns out when something is rooted in yourself, you can decide to uproot it too. I’ve been practicing reaching out to friends even when I think that the thing I’m going through or bringing up isn’t a huge deal. Course correcting whenever I see myself trying to do too many things by myself has helped bring a lot of peace into my life.
Acting on self-judgements
On the same note as the above, lately I’ve been more intentional about not acting on the bad self-talk on my head. I don’t think it’s realistic to never have bad thoughts or to come down on yourself from time to time. I think it’s human nature to not feel like your mind is full of rainbows and butterflies all the time. So, instead of trying to decide to do something that I think is impossible, I’ve been working on shifting my reaction to those negative voices in my head. I have a history of disordered eating, so over the last two years I’ve been actively working on that so that I can notice more and more where and how it comes up. (All this to say that this did not happen over night and it was mostly a result of hitting a particular rock bottom.) Some of the ways I’ve found most effective to keeping true to not acting on self-judgements is to not judge the bad talk in the first place. Instead I’ll work to breathe, calm my heart rate, and ask myself why I am telling myself bad things in the first place, then I usually try to figure out what my knee-jerk reaction would be in that situation, and then the hard part comes in — I decide not to do it. It’s not as easy as saying “I’m not going to do this”, I’ve worked in therapy to have a list in my back pocket of other healthier habits or actions I can turn to. Usually for me it’s a bath, watching a tv show I love, or talking to someone.
reading books i don’t enjoy
I’ve been working to eat more veggies and fruit lately and I realize that the mantra I’m using for that habit is really anchored in how I read books — commit to making it fun for yourself. I work a lot and have a tendency of falling asleep reading unless the book is really interesting. Lately, I’ve accepted that life is too short to push myself through sleep just to read a book I’m not even that into.
NEGATIVE WORDS
I got this from my friend who got this from her friend — for a day the challenge was to not speak in negatives. No “I can’t” or “no way” or literally anything that speaks negativity into your life. I found it such a challenge to pause, think of a positive way to reframe something, and then move on with positivity instead of negativity. But for as challenging as it was, it’s also been perspective giving. Like all of the above habits, I try to practice this one in moderation. I think sometimes negative words are the only ones available to really describe the shittiness or heartbreak of a moment, but that’s not every moment.
Letting go of the above 5 habits has made more room in my life for who I am when I’m not trying to tear myself or be the version of myself I think others want me to be. I kept landing on the word “peace-giving” because it’s exactly how I feel. Even though this season of my life was incredibly unexpected, it’s been the beginning of a more peaceful, intentional time and for that I’m grateful.