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Energy and leadership are intimately linked. According to a study by Jack Zenger and Joseph Folman, innovative leaders project optimism and are full of energy. This energy is essential to get the job done, managing teams and having the mental clarity needed for good decision-making.
When we want to manage our energy, we often turn to tried-and-tested practices such as sport, healthy eating, restful sleep or meditation.
But did you know that there are also quick and easy techniques for recovering energy throughout the day? In this article, learn more about how your brain and body work, and discover how to boost your energy in just a few minutes.
WHAT DO WE MEAN WHEN WE TALK ABOUT ENERGY?
When we talk about energy, we’re talking about a lot of things: feeling good after a good night’s sleep, feeling motivated and fully committed to a project, the little boost of energy after a sports session, or the big bout of tiredness after a Sunday lunch…
Energy accompanies us throughout our lives. It’s essential to our ability to get things done. It is the basis of everything, and above all our motivation. Motivation to go to work, to achieve our goals, to talk to our colleagues, to pay attention to a Zoom meeting right to the end, to play with our children and so on. Energy is a prerequisite for absolutely everything.
BEHIND THE SCENES OF YOUR DAY: HOW YOUR BODY MOBILIZES YOUR ENERGY
Now for a bit of science, because if you want to boost your energy, the key lies in understanding how it works.
Everything happens in the autonomic nervous system, which runs through your entire body. Imagine an autonomous car.
The gas pedal of this autonomous car is the sympathetic nervous system . sympathetic nervous system. It’s dedicated to energy expenditure. It’s what makes your heart beat, makes you breathe, without you having to think about it. On a typical day, you can imagine your autonomous car on a freeway, with the gas pedal slightly depressed, and you’re driving forward without worrying about the controls.
It’s also this sympathetic system that comes into play in times of stress. Of course, your day is not a flat, monotonous highway; it’s dotted with hills and mountains: unforeseen events to deal with, misunderstandings with colleagues due to distance, zooming fatigue, the school calling because your child has a fever, non-stop e-mail notifications… Faced with these difficulties, the sympathetic nervous system mobilizes more and presses hard on the gas pedal to enable you to cope. Your breathing and heart rate accelerate, and your energy expenditure increases tenfold. It provokes reflex reactions dedicated to survival: if you come across a bear in the forest, the information doesn’t have to be processed by your consciousness to react. Blood circulation is diverted from non-essential functions (digesting your picnic can wait) and goes directly to irrigate the muscles you’ll use to flee or fight.
When you press hard on the gas pedal, you’re also going to have to put some gas back in the tank at some point: that’s the role of the parasympathetic nervous systemThis is the role of the parasympathetic nervous system, dedicated to rest and digestion. When the situation allows, it takes over to bring the energy gauge back into balance. This state of equilibrium, which the body often seeks to bring back to a precise point, is called homeostasis.
BUT WHAT IF THE STRESS IS CONTINUOUS AND LEAVES NO ROOM FOR REST?
On a day-to-day basis, these two systems balance out well, but it’s easy to imagine that if you’re under regular stress and don’t take the time to rest, energy expenditure will exceed recovery and you’ll feel exhausted. Right now, you may be looking forward to your vacations. At your level, you’re in a position to tell yourself that you can still stretch a little, because you’ll be able to rest soon.
But your body doesn’t have this notion of temporality. The body doesn’t gauge the intensity of a situation and can’t save itself. The simple mental overload caused by the arrival of an e-mail notified by a brightly colored dot, coupled with an advertisement on your search engine while you’re concentrating on a conversation with your customer, is already a source of stress for your body.
In the event of repeated and chronic stress, the body can no longer recover, there’s not enough petrol in the tank and the gas pedal is permanently depressed. The result is burnout.
However, on an autonomous car, you can take over the steering wheel and help the system to recover energy more efficiently.
But how? We’ll show you.
BOOST YOUR ENERGY IN 5 MINUTES
The quickest and most effective way to influence your autonomic nervous system is to breathe. In addition to oxygenating your body, it also provides a salutary break for your brain, which is certainly saturated with a whole host of sensory information.
Longer exhalations than inhalations accentuate the effect of the parasympathetic nervous system, resulting in rest and calm.
Other tips :
– Take a few steps to boost your circulation and oxygenate your brain.
– Turn off your notifications for 5 minutes.
BOOST YOUR ENERGY IN 20 MINUTES
A walk in the heart of nature to soothe the senses, get some fresh air and take a clean break from the hustle and bustle of everyday life.
Do you live in a big city? Then put your imagination to work and visualize a soothing place, taking care to imagine with all your senses and as precisely as possible.
Also, a short session of physical activity allows blood to flow to the brain, particularly the prefrontal cortex, and makes you feel more alert, even after just one session. On a regular basis, the neural networks in the prefrontal cortex and hippocampus become denser, enabling concentration and memory.
BUT IN-DEPTH WORK REMAINS THE MOST EFFECTIVE METHOD
If you want to better regulate your energy to boost your performance and leadership, beyond the techniques presented above, it’s important to have some discipline. Here are 2 tips to put into practice:
Tip 1: Sort out what’s taking energy away from you and what’s giving it back? Listen to your body to identify them.
One way of thinking about what gives us energy is to start with some of our fundamental needs: the need for autonomy, to feel competent, and to have satisfying social relationships. So getting involved in an association, doing an activity we enjoy, or spending time with loved ones can help improve our energy.
Tip 2: Adapt your schedule to your condition.
Raise your hand if you’ve ever said to yourself “I’m really tired from all these meetings, I’m going to block off 2 hours in my diary so as not to be disturbed, and if my colleagues need me it’ll wait”.
In the end, very few people raise their hands. Generally speaking, we “undergo” our day and attend meeting after meeting because we “have no choice”.
However, if you’re feeling a bit low on energy, now might not be the time to go and have that big brainstorming session with your colleagues, or to make that decisive decision for the company. It could even be detrimental. On the contrary, it might be more appropriate to deal with your e-mails, or complete an administrative task, for example…
Leave your schedule as it is for the moment and observe yourself and your energy for a few days. You’ll then be able to discover a pattern in your energy levels, and adapt your schedule accordingly.
We hope this article has helped you take a fresh look at energy and given you some useful tips for boosting your energy every day.
