[00:00:00] Ashley: Welcome back to the show. I'm Ashley. And on today's show, I want to talk a little about energy leaks. What I mean by an energy leak is basically a place you're sending some of your mental or psychological energy, either into the future or into a future possibility, or maybe it's into the past. It could be into a hope or even a resentment. Basically someplace where you're sending your energy that is not in the present and that's actually sort of taking away the energy that you have available to you for your everyday life.
[00:00:47] And the reason I want to talk about this is because it's something that's been coming up for me a lot lately. But I also think it's just an extremely common human experience. It comes from the fact that we have human brains that have all this capacity to invest energy in all these different threads at one given time. Right. It's possible for us to both be doing something as well as thinking about two other things, and wishing for something in the background.
[00:01:17] And unless you're someone that has a very rigorous sort of daily practice of meditation, where you're bringing your consciousness back to the center point or to the present moment over and over and over again.
[00:01:34] Unless you're doing that, I really think that this is just kind of how our brains operate and that kind of practice can be so valuable because it does sharpen our brain's capacity to stay focused in the present. which is why so many people swear by that practice.
[00:01:53] And honestly, it's something that I think I would love to do more because I'm finding that I'm having this issue where I'm holding on to these possible futures, these hopes, or these expectations for what might be coming.
[00:02:08] And it's draining energy away from what I'm doing in the moment and it's preventing me from living in the present moment.
[00:02:18] The interesting way that this has been manifesting for me lately has been around this expectation or set of thoughts I have about building my family specifically about how many children I may eventually have. I have no idea what the answer to that is. I currently have one child and she's still very young.
[00:02:40] But I have a lot of ideas and beliefs based on the way I grew up. I grew up in a family with multiple kids and multiple siblings. And I really, I loved that experience. I've always loved having siblings. And so for me, that's sort of embedded in my system as the way that a family looks and feels just because that's the way I know it to look and feel.
[00:03:04] And so I have this expectation that at some point I may end up having another child and yet. Based on where I am in this present moment where my child is still really young. And I'm, I'm still really exhausted a lot of the time. It's really hard for me to think forward to that possibility because I feel so overwhelmed by it right now.
[00:03:25] And because I'm always anticipating that possible future, it's amazing to me how much energy I am sending towards that future possibility. Even though that's something that's not yet known.
[00:03:41] But what I've noticed is that as I've been trying to draw my energy back away from that anticipation of a possible future, and I've been really letting my whole system, my mental and psychological system settle into the reality of: right now I have one child and just really letting my whole system relax into that reality.
[00:04:08] I have been amazed by how much more energy I have, by how much less distressed I feel when things are stressful or really tiring, how much less overwhelmed I feel in my day-to-day life.
[00:04:23] And it's because I'm drawing this energy back into my present. I'm feeling so much more present now than I was before when my energy was getting fractured and sent off in these other directions. I've had this place where my energy is sort of leaking away from the present.
[00:04:41] This is something where I'm really starting to question. How many other places am I doing this? Because it's really hard not to. And I know that a lot of us right now are experiencing a lot of overwhelm and exhaustion just from living in the era that we live in now. This pandemic era. It's been a time where a lot of us feel really depleted. And so the more energy that we can bring back to the present the better we'll feel.
[00:05:11] But it's not an easy thing to do. I really have been noticing how challenging it is to pinpoint these. But I think one place to start is to start paying attention to what kind of recurring cycles of thoughts you have in your daily life.
[00:05:28] Paying attention to those things, like where are there places where I'm constantly thinking about a possible future or a past that you're having trouble letting go of. Something that happened that maybe you're still feeling injured by or resentment about, and it's, it can be really hard to let go of those things.
[00:05:46] So I'm not here to tell you like, oh, just let go of it. Like, it's some easy thing because it's not, it's not simple.
[00:05:52] But sitting with it more intentionally, if you're noticing it's coming up over and over again. Letting it like really be fully in the front of your consciousness, rather than just running in the background.
[00:06:04] Where you're sitting with it and letting whatever emotion is still there and is catching in your system. Bringing it fully into your system as much as you can. And letting what emotion you're able to bring up at the time to come up. And try to process it or.
[00:06:19] You can try writing it down, journaling about it. Anything you can do to let it come out of your body and into either writing or speaking or feeling. I think is so valuable.
[00:06:32] If you don't already meditate. It can be a really powerful tool for something like this. It's just that practice of sitting down. And trying to keep your consciousness on your breath for a few minutes at a time and it won't stay there. That's just the nature of the human mind. It'll keep wandering off.
[00:06:53] But when you're meditating the difference is you're observing the thoughts that are coming up rather than just being immersed in them. And then doing your best to let go of it again and let it float past you.
[00:07:05] Bringing your consciousness and presence back to your breath, back to the present moment over and over and over again will sharpen over time the clarity and quality of your presence because you're basically de- fragmenting your daily experience. You're pulling all the threads of your consciousness back towards your center point. And so that practice is really powerful.
[00:07:32] And this can be really valuable for identifying energy leaks because you can start paying close attention to what are the thoughts that are actually coming up during meditation? Even if you're just meditating for five minutes a day. Chances are that some of the thoughts that are coming up during that time are some of the recurring thought patterns that you're having. And maybe writing those down at the end of the meditation to help shine a light on what some of those energy leaks in your life might be.
[00:08:10] Really what a lot of the stuff that we talk about on this podcast is about, is bringing what is in the unconscious and the subconscious into consciousness, because once we're aware of it, it gifts us with the power to actually take action upon it and work with it. And shift it in some way. Honestly, the biggest part, the hardest part of, of self evolution is bringing what's unconscious into the conscious.
[00:08:42] How do you see what you can't see, right? Like how do you make what's unconscious conscious? And the first set of episodes we've recorded, almost all of them have been about that.
[00:08:52] So this is in that same thread. It's like, do you have some of these patterns too, you know, asking yourself the question of are there places in my life where I'm sending my energy and it's pulling it and drawing it away from my present. To me, that's a more helpful way of thinking about it. You can totally just think about it as a set of repetitive thoughts.
[00:09:17] But to me, the reason it's so important is because it is an energy leak and I want to live with as much energy as I can because life can be so exhausting sometimes. And any energy that's being drawn away from the capacity I have to cope and live in my present is not something I want.
[00:09:40] So I hope that this exploration is serving you in some way, and that you can relate to this, or maybe this will shine some light on a way that you may be sending energy somewhere in your life that maybe you could be reclaiming. So I'm, I would love to leave you with that thought and.
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