Improve your life with a $2 multi-color pen
This simple 15 minute exercise can put you on track to a successful life
Did last week suck? In 15 minutes with a multi-color pen you can transform your life to have more great weeks and fewer sucky weeks. This idea is from a great self-help book titled “The 5 Types of Wealth: A Transformative Guide to Design Your Dream Life” by author Sahil Bloom. Its called the Energy Calendar and its a simple exercise to figure out what exactly made last week sucky when you had other weeks which were great.
The Energy Calendar
Print out your calendar for last week then get out your multi-color pen. In red circle the things you did that sucked the life blood out of you and left you drained. In green circle the things you did that left you excited and invigorated. What are the patterns? Think about how you can do one less red item next week and one more green item, its that simple. For bonus points, think about what life changes you need to make in the next 5 years to would get rid of all the red items on your calendar. It might be as major as quitting your job and starting your own company or it might be as simple as changing jobs in your company to one that is more/less people focused.
The Energy Contact List
You can also apply this to your contact list and sort out which people are worth dedicating time to and who needs to be avoided. Make a list of the people outside of work you spent time with in the last week. Again, with the red pen circle the ones who drained your energy and left you feeling like your time was wasted. With the green pen, circle the people who were supportive, gave you great ideas, and left you invigorated with energy. Next week, spend more time with the green people and less time with the red people.
This was a really tough one for me to do and it took me until I was 64 years old to figure out. I realized my life was 3/4 over and I sure as hell don’t want to waste what time I have left on people who suck my energy dry. Its worth coming up with a list of things that suck your energy to sort people. If you are a professional gamer on twitch making six figures then your list will be totally different than mine but here are things that will get people thrown off my island:
They are always talking about themselves or telling stories.
They are not interested nor supportive of my passions and my goals.
Talking endlessly about what they want but never, ever making a plan to achieve those goals.
They look at their phone more than once every 15min when they are with you.
Their principles are in stark contrast to their actions.
They are not direct and honest, telling half-truths to make themselves look better.
They are always complaining about the same thing but doing anything about it.
They blame others for their problems rather than accepting responsibility
They lack compassion and empathy.
They don’t try to make the world better in some way.
In the last year I cut three people out of my life who I had known a very long time but were toxic and sucked my energy dry. I cant tell you how much better I feel with that space freed up in my brain.
Lessons from the Blue Zones: The Vital Role of Community
About this time in my friend cutting frenzy, someone is going to say how important it is to have a big circle of friends and point to research done on the general population which is 75% extroverts. I am not an extrovert and what is healthy for an extrovert is not healthy for me. The blue zone’s finding on “The vital role of community” is not true for introverts like me. I just did a count and I have 10 people I consider good friends and of those, only one (my husband) do I see on a daily basis. Two I see on a weekly basis and the others might be once every month or two. This lack of contact might kill an extrovert but its optimal for my mental health. If you are an introvert don’t let the extrovert-controlled media convince you that you need to go friend-collecting to be happy and live longer.
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