Dr Alan Watkins believes it is quite possible to finish the day with as much energy as you started. He argues that energy is your top asset, superseding intellectual capability.
Watkins encouraged attendees to identify what (or who) was boosting and depleting their energy levels. “If you don’t know where your energy is coming from, it’s a disaster. Change requires awareness, so you can convert things that are withdrawing your energy into things that boost it,” he declared.
He added that there are only three things you can change: how you think, how you feel, and how you behave. If something is depleting your energy, the only way you can change it is by changing yourself.
“If someone is annoying you, you are creating the chemistry in your body in response to their behaviour. Realise that you are doing this to yourself; no one is doing it to you,” he said. “In most cases, people put themselves in ‘victim’ position and this drains their energy.”
We can all take charge of our own emotional state, we don’t have to feel an emotion we don’t want to, said Watkins. A ‘negative’ emotional state puts your biology into chaos, drains energy and affects your health, whereas a ‘positive’ emotional state drives performance. Watkins encouraged attendees to try controlling their emotional state, for example, by exercising.
“The antidote to being tired isn’t rest, it’s doing something that makes your heart sing.” Conversely, the way to deal with energy withdrawers is to let them go, he concluded.