Last week I wrote about the root source of your physical energy. Mitochondria and ATP, our “Cellular Batteries”. If you keep your Mitochondria healthy, your batteries will be charged. How do you do that? Exercise. Eating nutritious food. Sunshine. Rest and sleep. All these factors keep your Mitochondria strong, your energy up, and your susceptibility to disease down.
But we aren’t upbeat and filled with positive energy all the time. Sometimes we get down. We get bored stressed out, anxious, angry, irritable, tense (physically and mentally) or depressed. Even when we wake up in the morning feeling alive and unbeatable, things happen during the day that just plain drain all that positive energy right out of us.
What are some of these energy drainers and how do we combat them? Most of them fall into the categories of people, places and things. For example:
- We get into silly arguments with spouses, friends or family members. Even simple arguments can drain the energy right out of us.
- Resentments over long ago confrontations, situations, or events.
- Clutter and mess. Many of us live surrounded by physical clutter or a messy environment. Based on all the “Marie Kondo” style books around today, we look at clutter as a major cause of stress.
- Lingering illnesses like colds or flu, or simple injuries that are painful and irritating and seem to hang on forever.
- Irritating or annoying people beyond those mentioned in the first bullet point above. Combine that with irritating situations that end up in “road rage” or similar untenable situations that can de-energize you for days.
That’s just a sampling. Everyone has their own irritating and draining situations that are challenging and stressful. Remember that stress is the impetus for a lot of major physical problems, many of which are killers, or if not killers, at least a major threat to a comfortable aging process.
Right now, a pandemic, major social and political challenges, social media abuse, overactive media outlets and other toxic de-energizers are causing an enormous amount of stress for most of us. How do we fight it off?
We must keep our cellular batteries charged to live a long and energy filled life. We keep those batteries charged through plenty of physical movement, nutritious food, lots of oxygen through deep breathing habits, plenty of rest, and sunshine and nature.
We will probably never be stress free. But if we keep our cellular batteries (Mitochondria) charged, we will have a much better chance of reducing that stress, keeping our energy levels high, and living a long, happy, energy filled, purposeful life. I will be charting a weekly path through some of the best ways to keep the batteries charged as we move through the year.
Thank you for reading.