01 Jan A Wise Investment
Happy New Year, friends! For many of us, this is an important time of year as we work on making changes and accomplishing new goals. I hope you are very successful in whatever you are choosing to work on in 2018. As you might imagine, I have some ideas of things I want to work on personally and maybe one of mine might be something you will want to consider. One of my goals is to maximize my investments and especially in terms of how I invest my energy.
As you know, the goal in any investment is to expend the resource in such as way as to have a return that is greater than the expenditure. If you invest $100 in the stock market, you want to be able to withdraw $200 someday. Well, it’s the same thing in other investments, even in the ways we “invest” our energy resources. What I often hear about in the therapy room are examples of people putting a lot of energy investment into areas from which there is little or no return.
Here are some ways I see people mismanaging and subsequently diminishing their energy accounts. Trying to control what someone else does or does not do. Allowing someone else’s bad coping or communication to control yours. Spending undue amounts of time lamenting the past. Spending undue amounts of time worrying about possible negative future outcomes. Plotting ways to even the score when someone has hurt you. Choosing not to forgive. Isolating yourself. Putting time and attention into bad habits and vices like over-consuming alcohol or unhealthy food. In all of these, the energy that you expend will not come back to you and thus, creating deficits.
Conversely, here are some investment tips that are stone cold locks! Exercise. Learn from the past, prepare for the future, and live in the present. Surround yourself with positive and loving people. Accept influence from those who really do have your best interests at heart. Control how you interact and respond even as some others will be trying to get under your skin or to reduce you to old patterns. Let go of your grief when it’s been enough. Go to bed at reasonable times and get adequate sleep. Volunteer your time to help someone or some helping organization. Spend time out doors. Love on your pets and love on those people who matter most to you. Assess yourself. Correct yourself. Forgive yourself, Consume healthily whether it is what you eat, drink, read, or watch on TV. Meditate. Participate in the practices of your chosen belief system. Apologize and make amends with someone you have wronged.
I could go on and on. You know which ones of the above apply to you and all the others that are on your special list of ways to waste energy. Like me, you’ll get it right sometimes and goof up others. But I hope you will at least take an accounting of your energy investment portfolio and will strongly reconsider pulling a few funds from one of the liability categories and drop a few more energy bucks into healthier commodities. The market is ripe! There are gains to be made! Get in on the opportunity!