[00:00:38] Vesna: Welcome to the Peak Revival Podcast. My name is Vesna. I'm gonna talk about what to do when work gets all of your energy and there's nothing left for you in the afternoon or the evening. I was chatting with a friend the other day and um, she was saying that, you know, she's quite senior in her role in a corporate role. She's the head of a department. And she said, you know, we're just talking about exercise and walking. And she said, you know, I'm really sedentary. I don't get that many steps in.
[00:01:06] I said, really? And she's like, yeah, like very, very little. And I said, what? 5,000? She was like, no, not even that many. And I was like, wow. Okay. And she talked about how she goes, look, my work is so busy. I get up, I go to work and she's like, my days are high cortisol days, like super stressed, super focused, like a lot happening for her.
[00:01:27] She's got a team to manage and she goes, I come home and I'm just exhausted and all I do is sit on the couch, watch Netflix, or I scroll. I just scroll on my phone for hours and hours and hours and she goes, I know it's really bad, but. I just don't have the energy for anything else, right? She goes to the gym twice a week and that's it.
[00:01:46] And I said to her, that's really quite sedentary. And I think, you know, it's gonna make you more tired, but you gotta think of bone health and health and longevity in the long term. She's like, I know, I know. I know what I need to do. I just, I don't do it. And, you know, [00:02:00] we talked about this and she also said, you know, this is her weekdays, right?
[00:02:03] So Monday to Friday she's working pretty hard. She comes home and she just wants to numb out. And then on Fridays she'll go out and she'll drink and, and kind of almost write herself off. Not quite, but you know, drink a lot. And that's her downtime, kind of social time, letting out steam. And I said, that's really
[00:02:22] un-nourishing
[00:02:23] and she's like, I know it sounds really bad when I say it. I said, look. That's not an uncommon story, right? I have heard versions of this over the years so many times. Okay? And it's, I'm not pointing a finger or anything like that because what I really wanna show you is that when you are tired, it has this ripple effect.
[00:02:41] You don't nourish yourself in the ways that you normally would like socially, relationship wise, you know, spiritually, whatever it is. You become so tired that you don't do anything else for your personal life and then you become more tired. Right? And then you need an outlet to just kind of relax, right?
[00:03:00] Because as she was saying, her cortisol levels are high all day. her nervous system is on alert mode. And so come Friday that pressure has built up. And Friday she wants to drink, she wants to chill out, she wants to relax and not have to think about anything, right? And she less off steam that way.
[00:03:15] So again, something that's. Even more draining for her and ISS gonna make her more tired. So she gets stuck in this vicious cycle and it's very hard for her to break.
[00:03:23] You know, we talked about, and I said like, there really isn't any fun in your schedule. You know, it's really sounds just either neutral or draining. And she's like, I know. I know, I know. And so I talked about what, there's some really simple things that you can do. So if you resonate with parts of this story, if you feel like, okay, maybe you're not drinking on a Friday, maybe you're not numbing out on the couch.
[00:03:42] But maybe you've only got energy for work and you don't have it for your personal life. Like you are not doing socializing, you're not doing hobbies, you're not doing other activities. Maybe you're just doing the same thing. And if you're a mom and you come home and then you've got your second job starting, maybe you are doing the numbing out after the kids go to bed.
[00:03:59] That's another [00:04:00] really common thing that I hear that women sit on the couch maybe with a glass of wine, but you know, scrolling and watching TV while the kids are in bed and not going to bed till late. So here's some simple tips that I told my friend is that number one, you're depleted, right? This is what depletion looks like, and it looks like I know what I do, but I'm not doing it.
[00:04:21] Yeah, because you are tired, right? You are depleted. There's nothing there to push you. Um, and nothing simple, right? You need simple strategies to start to. Break some of this pattern so you have energy, like I said, for your personal life, your social life, your relationship life, your spiritual life, not just your work.
[00:04:39] So when we have low energy, we don't have the motivation to live a life after work, right? The only motivation we have is to switch off and numb out. So here's the first thing I said to her. You know what, you are not getting your steps in. You're not walking, you're not getting the body moving, which the body loves to move.
[00:04:55] It doesn't like to be sitting down. So I said, the first thing that you do is, is get those steps in. Go for a walk and do it in the morning. Okay? So I explained to her that if you did a sunrise walk, so you're doing two things here. You're walking, you're getting your steps in, but you're also getting the morning sun.
[00:05:12] Now the morning sun is gonna be really important for the mitochondria. The mitochondria are the cells or the parts of our cells that produce our energy. Now we have trillions of these, so if you are tired. your mitochondria are impacted
[00:05:28] It's just end of story. They produce the energy, so fatigue means mitochondrial.
[00:05:34] Impact. Mitochondrial deficiency. Mitochondrial dysfunction. Okay. so one of the ways that we can start to reverse this and get the mitochondrial back online, get these energy producing cells, waking up out of hibernation is by walking and doing the sunrise walk. And that way the sunlight in the eyes will reset the circadian rhythm and also start to wake up the mitochondria, okay?
[00:05:57] And send safety signals throughout the body. The [00:06:00] other thing that this will do, which is also really important, it will start to regulate that morning cortisol. So I can guarantee for my friend and for many people listening, is that if you wake up in the morning and you pull out your phone, you're looking at your phone, oh gosh, I got so much to do today.
[00:06:13] Okay, grab a coffee, get your day started. Right? So you are already starting with alerting the nervous system, right? Waking it up with stress, with being fully alert, fully on cortisol. Rises more than what it needs to. It becomes too high, and therefore you feel stressed. Urgent pressure, anxious, overwhelmed, go, go, go, go, go for the rest of the day.
[00:06:38] And that's gonna be more draining for the body. So just that simple act of doing a 45 minute walk in the morning as the sun is coming up, allowing that sun to go into your eyes. No sunglasses, no glasses, preferably, um, obviously if you need to, but having some time without them because it's very hard for the sun to penetrate.
[00:06:56] That would do so much for your energy. And I was saying to her, look, if you can do this, and she said, I can do this right. And I said, do it in the morning. The reason. Why the morning is so important is because you are not gonna have willpower at the end of the day to do this. And she was like, I won't do anything at the end of the day.
[00:07:14] I can tell you that now. Great. She already knows that about us herself. That's a great start. So our willpower, we have more willpower in the morning and in the earlier parts of the day. By the end of the day, we've used all of our will not used it a lot, but it needs to replenish right replenishes when we sleep.
[00:07:32] So the best time to do any new habit. IS IN THE MORNING
[00:07:35] and you're going to need some willpower here. I'm, I told her this, you need to push yourself for the first three days to break some of your habits and to get into this routine because you're not gonna have the energy yet, right? You're gonna have to do it while feeling depleted.
[00:07:50] It's not gonna be like, you're not gonna wait for energy to come one day. Right? That's not gonna happen. You need to use the willpower, and that's why we have willpower to [00:08:00] do make these changes until. We can start to get more energy and build momentum from that. She was like, great, I can do that. And I said to her, you know, what time are you waking up?
[00:08:10] And she goes, well, that's the thing, right? I go to bed late 'cause I'm scrolling and I wake up really tired. Of course. So the other thing was getting to bed earlier. So I talk about the, the power of, uh, eight before 10, getting eight hours of sleep. Getting to bed before 10:00 PM
[00:08:27] really important so you can wake up earlier and do this.
[00:08:31] Okay. 'cause the other thing that she said, and you might phone this, your schedule is not going to change. You are busy. Right? She was like, I need to make this work because nothing changes about my life. Like, I just, it's not as if I'm gonna have, Things slow down for me. These, this is my schedule, right?
[00:08:45] So make it work. Get up earlier, which means you need to get to bed earlier. Just getting to bed earlier will also have this restorative effect, so you're waking up easier. You cannot wake up early when you go to bed late. I mean, you can. But you are going to be dragging yourself outta bed feeling frustrated.
[00:09:04] You're like, I don't wanna do this. Your willpower's already low because you didn't replenish overnight, okay? You didn't get that proper sleep to replenish. The willpower, the chemicals that produce our willpower, they didn't replenish overnight. So therefore, you find it really hard to do the early morning wake up, and therefore the walk.
[00:09:21] this is really simple. This is like 1 0 1 simple, okay. But really powerful because what it's gonna start to do, and what I explained to her is that you're gonna do this, and the first couple of days you're gonna have to, you use your willpower to do it, and then you're going to start to feel.
[00:09:36] And then you're gonna start to build on that momentum. You're gonna create more energy. The mitochondria will wake up. You'll be sleeping better, you'll have more energy during the day, and you're going to build on that. You're gonna start building a life. You're gonna start catching up with friends.
[00:09:49] You're gonna do hobbies, you're gonna do other things that nourish you on another level. You're gonna increase your joy, you're gonna increase your satisfaction, which will keep building more momentum and [00:10:00] creating more energy and more. You know, emotional energy, spiritual energy, not just physical energy, but energy on all levels, that you start to build a life that you love.
[00:10:11] And when you build a life that you love, you don't have to numb yourself out over it, right? So numbing yourself out. Again, no finger pointing here, no judgment. It just means that you're not happy. Just means that you are isolated. You are not meeting your needs, right? There are certain. Needs that are our body on a physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual level that our body needs, right?
[00:10:33] And if we're just giving it one thing, which is work and productivity and achievement, in that sense, we are starved of other things, right? And so therefore, in order to avoid feeling so bad, we numb ourselves out, distract ourselves. That's very normal. Right for when you are feeling that way. But when you start building a life and building energy or building energy and then building a life, you don't have to numb out from it anymore.
[00:10:56] You don't have to zone out in front of Netflix with wine or scroll all day. You don't have to do any of that. So let me know if that was helpful. Leave a comment below, and I mean, it's very simple, but have you noticed this about yourself? That you have energy for work, but not really for your personal life?
[00:11:13] Let me know in the comments below.
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