I'm Shivani Gupta, and welcome to the Ask Shivani podcast. I believe that one of the best presents that you can give yourself is time to be able to sit down and ask yourself some questions. I believe that the quality of the question that you ask yourself will determine the quality of your life.

Hi everybody, and welcome to the AskShivani podcast. Today, I'm going to be speaking a lot about energy management. I wish that this subject had been taught at school and at universities and in different ways, because in order for us to be able to manage our energy, it's so important that we understand where it gets depleted, we understand how to manage it. And we understand almost how to have some strategies around it. And I think the thing to remember is that different people lose energy in very different ways. And the best way that I think of energy leaking is I often visualize a tub of water, or a bucket of water. And you imagine that you poke holes into that particular tub, and the water starts to drip out. Depending on the size of the hole, the water will either drip out in, you know, a few drops, or a small leak, or if the hole is large enough, then that water will drip out very, very quickly. And the bucket before we know it will be empty. And I think of that bucket often as a visualization in terms of my own energy. And when my bucket is full, what are some of the things that I do to fill it? What are some of the things that you do to fill your bucket? And then what are some of the things that happens to me when my energy leaks? What are some of the things that happen to you when your energy leaks, so let's talk about how to fill out bucket. For me very simply, one of the things that I do each day is 10-10-10, 10 minutes of reading, 10 minutes of journaling, 10 minutes of meditating. Now, I wish that was an hour. And I wish I could dedicate three hours of my day into doing stuff that I love. I love reading. I love journaling. I love meditating. But often in my busy time with my businesses, with my children and a young family, I don't have that space. But I know that when I don't do my 30 minutes, my bucket starts to get empty, because I'm not doing enough to feel it. And so just that simple ritual, add stuff to me, obviously spending more quality time with my husband, my children doing work that's fulfilling, spending really quality time with girlfriends eating beautiful food, going to a great yoga or Pilates class having a really good night's sleep, there are all those little things that tend to fill up my pocket.

So, as you're listening to this podcast, I'd love for you to think about what you know, what are three things that fill your bucket? Is it quality time with loved ones? Is that when you do certain activities? Is it when you eat certain foods? Is that when you are being and you don't have an agenda? What are some of the things that you're filling your bucket with? And you're doing them on a regular basis. The main focus today that I want to speak about is when we are we happens what are some of the energy leakages so the energy leakages you know things that actually drain us, and when they drain you, when there's nothing left, there's no energy left in the bucket. That's when we get to burnout. That's where we get to, sometimes getting sick. That's when we get to feeling completely depleted. In terms of what happening and you know, through COVID, we've been spoken speaking a lot about immune systems and people that had pretty strong immune systems have still been affected, but people had relatively weak immune systems have been affected even more like more greatly.

So, for me, what are some of the things where I lose my energy? One of the things that pokes the hole, my backer is watching a lot of news, when I watch a lot of news, I feel quite down and depressed. And then some people say, well, Shivani, how do you keep abreast of what's happening? Well, one of the things that I do to keep abreast of what's happening is by going online, and looking at the latest news, which I'll probably do a couple of times away, but I would probably only scroller for between three and five minutes at a time. So, in about 10 minutes away, I won't be able to get that updated in terms of overall maybe not everything in detail. But often I find if I watch a lot of news, it's the same stuff repeated. Often, it's a lot of negativities, whether it's wars, whether its people getting hurt, children getting hurt in particular really upsets me. So, I try and minimize the things that I do around having that energy leakage in terms of what I do.

The other thing that really drains a lot of my energy is a lot of gossiping or a lot of talking about other people and other people's kids and what they're doing and you know, how dare they do this? And I just think if people are really successful, they've obviously worked very hard and perhaps they've been a bit lucky. But most of the time, people have worked really hard to get there. And every parent does their best, but every child had their own challenges. And I probably don't want to spend a lot of time looking at what other people aren't doing or doing a try and just try and stay in my lane and focus in terms of what occurs. And I find when I get into other people's lanes, as the analogy goes, when you're swimming, and you're sticking to your own lane versus going into other people's, I find that I tend to lose a lot of energy, a very practical way that I noticed that is when I spent a lot of time on social media.

So, if I spent a lot of time watching what other people are doing on social media, I started, oh, my god, Shivani you're not doing this, you could be doing this, you really could be making that better. And then I tend to find that I get very distracted, and my energy starts going and putting me down in terms of what I'm not doing, which moves me further away from what I am doing. And it gets my head spinning. And then it moves away from the strategies that are really important for me. As I'm getting older, there's certain types of foods that don't suit me, I like eating them, but they don't like me. And you know, if I have a lot of very heavy carbohydrates, particularly late into the evening, like after about 6:37, I then don't generally don't tend to sleep that well, my digestion doesn't work that well. And I find that that depletes me of my energy, my digestion and a lack of digestion or lack of sleep. And so eating very, very heavy foods really late into the evening, really takes a lot of energy out of my system, I also get very, very tired. I can also drink a couple of glasses of alcohol, but anything more than that, I tend to get very, very tired. And so, the same impact happens in terms of that as well.

So, there's some of my personal things. Some of them are mental, some of them are emotional, some of them are physical, you know, and so people have those different leakages, some people get really affected by mental, emotional, psychological, physical, whatever they may be for you, I would love for you to identify as you're listening to this, maybe one or two key things where you lose a lot of energy. The most common answer I get when I've asked that question from having mentored women for over 20 years is certain people, certain people in their family circle, certain people in their friendship circles, certain people at work certain customers, certain staff, that commonality of when I have that happening in my, in my personal stuff. When they impact me when I deal with them, I always feel a little bit drained. And sometimes those people are unavoidable unless, for example, if they're at work, or even in new family, you might not be able to completely cut them out, I have talked about this on other podcasts, but you may be able to minimize the impact that they have on you by how you strategize around it, or you could actually reduce the frequency of what happens.

And so, you can either control the input in terms of what happens around what fills your bucket, keep filling it up more and more and more and faster, or minimize the holes where the leakage is coming out off. Whether that be people or social media or news or other things that I've spoken about. The reason I wish that they had speakers, you know, speak about that is that, you know, when we're young, we're very unaware of that. And I come across a lot of people in the adults that are really unaware of the energy, but they'll often use words like I'm exhausted all the time, I'm busy, I'm burnt out, I don't feel seen, I don't feel valued. And one of the premises I have in the work that I do is that we can't control what's around us and what other people are doing what we can control is what we're doing and how we make that happen. So having that responsibility in terms of what you do, and looking at where your energy is going out. And literally drawing up a bucket. This is what I do on a regular basis and what am I doing to input it and sometimes those inputs change and what's actually draining me right now I'm becoming conscious of what's draining me literally listing some of that down and working that out.

So, this short, sharp, tight shiny podcast today is really about looking at your energy management and starting to influence more of what's in and what's out and what you can do to change it. I hope you got something out of it.

I'm Shivani Gupta. And you've been listening to the Ask Shivani podcast where I'd like to ask some questions. Thank you so much for listening. Please follow Ask Shivani on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. And if you haven't done so, please go to the Apple podcasts and subscribe rate and review this podcast. It would mean a lot. Thank you.