One of my biggest life annoyances is stopping everything I’m doing to pull into a gas station and fill up my gas tank. It just seems like a waste of time. I can be having a great day – running all kinds of errands, checking off lots of the little boxes on my to-do list, heading out to have fun with friends – but then I have to stop everything just to fill up the gas tank. It’s smelly, and dirty, and boring. It just cuts into my day and interrupts the flow of everything that was going so well.
Yes, I know I have to do it, and I know how to do it, and I will stop if I absolutely have to so that I don’t end up stranded on the side of the road, but I complain the whole time. Surely somebody can come up with a better, more efficient system!
Same with car maintenance. Honestly, it’s not even on my radar, which is probably why I ran my first car into the ground. I was so busy living my life that I didn’t even realize that there were problems until the poor thing died a sad and sorry death.
Fortunately for the past several years though, my husband has been understanding of my little idiosyncrasies, and handles all of the car stuff around the house. He makes it a regular practice to fill up my gas tank on Sundays when he’s out, and he keeps an eye on any maintenance and repair issues. It’s actually become a source of humor in our relationship. Yep, I feel pretty spoiled!
Interestingly enough though, it occurred to me today how easy it is to run my life in exactly the same way. I can get busy with so many things. Some of them are fun – like hiking with a friend, reading a good book, taking a really interesting class. But most of them are just the necessary things of life – like cooking, cleaning, paying bills, or sleeping. It’s so easy to get so busy that we’re not even aware of how the stressors of day-to-day living just keep piling up.
And actually, none of those things are bad in and of themselves. But I’m realizing how easy it is to just keep going and overflowing my day/week/month/life with all of the things to do, without stopping to fill up my personal “gas tank” or to do “routine maintenance”. We all live a busy hectic lifestyle. There’s always so much to do that it never seems to all get done. We run ourselves to the ground until we run out of emotional and physical energy, and become completely stranded.
For me, “stranded” was exhaustion, then migraines and chronic fatigue syndrome, then several other health issues. Not that my busyness caused the health issues, but they certainly didn’t help. Life became a chore and everything came to a grinding halt.
What does stranded look like for you? Maybe it’s
*No time to stop and enjoy relationships. Time with friends becomes something on an already overwhelming to-do list. Friends are ok, but just hard to find the time. It’s just too overwhelming to organize or plan because you’re just too worn out.
*Unable to really let down and be yourself. The need to be positive, encouraging and attentive to other people all the time is exhausting, because it’s just not realistic. There’s the fear that by being yourself, they may not want to be your friend. Honesty about what’s really going on may mean people think less of us. Having those unrealistic expectations of ourselves can drain the energy tank really fast.
*Over focusing on work in order to avoid difficult things at home. Or to avoid facing the hard thoughts, feelings, emotions. Or in order to build up lagging self confidence and self esteem because of feeling like a failure in other areas of life.
*No time for laughter, happiness, or play. Life can get pretty meaningless without joy, but if we’re too busy doing all the “things”, there’s just no time or energy left over.
*Focused on the “destination” (the better job, the great guy, creating the perfect family) that you don’t have time or energy to enjoy the now. It looks different for each of us.
It takes some time to sit with the question and honestly define what it looks like for you. But it doesn’t have to be that way. I figured out what an “empty tank” looks like for me, and what it means for me to “fill my tank”. Surprisingly enough, I don’t need a two week vacation to Cabo, or for the people in my life to get their act together, or having to wait for a time when all the areas of my life are going perfectly as planned.
Here are my ways to slow down and “fill my tank”:
1. Mindfulness throughout the day. Just taking some time several times during the day to stop, take a few deep breaths, and be aware – notice what I’m feeling, what I’m thinking, what’s going on around me. I need to take the time to intentionally notice what’s going right, because it’s just not natural. It just takes a few minutes, but it allows me to find the joy during my day, which gives me the emotional boost to keep going.
2. Meditation. I take 20-30 minutes every morning to meditate. Nothing weird or psychic. Just time to sit quietly and listen to my thoughts and worries. Then I can objectively evaluate if they’re worthy of all that emotional energy (spoiler alert – they’re not!) and choose to let them go, or to decide what action I may need to take to deal with them. This allows me to objectively choose how I want to spend my energy rather than wasting all that energy on things that I can’t control anyway.
3. A walk in nature. Nothing like time in nature to make me feel refreshed and re-energized. When I’m in nature I realize how much energy I waste on unnecessary things. The world is so big and there’s so much peace and enjoyment out there – I just need to connect with it more often. There’s also the realization that I can be out of cell phone range and the world continues to turn and my family can do fine without me for a bit.
4. Time with friends. Not so much the formal planned time, but the “just because…” time. Usually this is a quick phone call to connect when I know a close friend has had a tough day, or a short walk in the park. It’s time to be honest and authentic, and to really let down. For me, it’s not the big events, but the little small thoughtful times that have the most impact for me to feel refreshed and relaxed.
I encourage you to set aside some time today to evaluate where you’re at with your personal “gas tank”. If you’re about to run out of gas, make a plan about how you can get some time to fill up. We can have a really full, busy life, and still be able to have a full gas tank. It’s not the outside world that determines how much joy we have; it’s how we deal with our day-to-day life that makes the difference.
What are the ways you fill your emotional tank? I’d love to hear your ideas!
Need some tools to help you get there? I have some coaching openings starting in May. I’d love to chat and see what I can do to to help you evaluate and come up with some tools that can help you to find joy, meaning, and peace in your life, no matter what circumstances are going on around you!
