I Knew a Guy Who Was Full of Energy
I once worked with a guy who was so eccentric he flew a plane to work. I don’t mean he took a plane to work; I mean he piloted it. He would get up early each morning when he wanted to take his plane in and fly from about three hours away to just a few minutes from where we worked.
But he was eccentric in other ways. His home was powered by solar power. I know that seems like no big deal, butt his was about fifteen years ago when solar power was not as common. That’s not even the craziest part; he actually built his own solar panels. He would go online or through mail order and find super cheap parts and put the panels together by himself. He was really into saving the money.
He realized something that a lot of people have realized before him and since: solar power can save a lot of money. It’s free power. The expense is in the equipment, but even that is changing. Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla motors has been involved in a few efforts like Solar City and the Tesla Powerball battery that help store solar power.
How Do You Keep It?
In fact, that storage is one of the keys to solar power. The power may be free, but it’s only there when the sun’s out. If you don’t have batteries, solar power is kind of useless.
People that install solar panels also install batteries. When the sun is out, the batteries are charged up. When the sun is gone, the batteries keep the power flowing. In fact, if there is a surplus of power, the homeowner can even sell the power to the utility company. It’s a great way to make the most of the sun’s energy.
Still, at the end of the day, no matter how many batteries you have, if they’ve never been charged up, you have no energy. You have to have the energy to charge the batteries before they become useful.
The Energy Meter
Just this last week I made a chart for my son. We have had a real challenge working well together. He doesn’t always see things from the perspective of the other person and I am working with him on that. So, to help him, I made him a chart similar to this:
I explained to him that this was like me. “I only have so much energy. Imagine that this was all my energy and every day I only have 100 units of energy. I want to play with you and do fun things with you. All of that requires energy. When I do something nice for you and you don’t appreciate it, that zaps 5 units of energy. When you yell at me, that zaps 5 units of energy and it zaps your energy when you have to have a timeout. When you fight with your brother and I have to break it up, that’s 10 units of energy.”
“Also, when you help me out with my chores, that adds 10 units of energy. When you do your chores without being asked, that adds 5 units of energy.” I wrote down several examples so he could see how the way we interact with people has a huge impact on how much both we and they are able to interact with us.
We Store Emotional Energy
This isn’t just true for me and my son. This is true for everyone. We have batteries that only hold so much energy and they need to be recharged. In order to do the most mundane tasks we need energy to fuel our creativity and charisma.
We need to find people to hang around that feed our energy. We need to get close to people that help us grow and make us better people. We need to connect with people that fill up our batteries.
And we need to limit our time with those that drain our batteries. Sometimes there are people we need to interact with that drain us. In that case, when we do have to interact with them, we need to find ways to fill our batteries in other ways while we interact with them.
We also need to find activities that juice us up. We need to do things that feed our creative juices and lead us toward exciting things that make us feel energized and feed our passions.
We Aren’t Doing it for Us
In the end, we need to make the world a better place. There is pain out there. There is suffering out there. There is disorder and chaos.
We need to make sure that we find the right way to top off our batteries and limit the things that drain it so we can use that energy to make the world a better place.
When we spend time in ways that drain our batteries without any positive benefit, we are only keeping blessings from others that could use that energy. We need to find ways to make the most of the energy we have, enabling us to add energy where we can make the best impact.
Make sure you are finding ways to recharge your batteries and limiting your time with people who drain you with negativity. Instead, find people that encourage you and fill you with energy. The more positivity we have, the more we can shine into others lives.
