The key to lasting recharge is removing the internal problems that drain your energy. Egocentric reactions are the worst offenders, they may exhaust you even on weekends. Or you can use the time to refill the battery and remove the problems.
Make a weekend a mini-retreat.
1. Restore compassionate perspective
Finally, you can get the time for yourself to regain clarity. All the conducive conditions are there:
– a change of context (no usual stressors)
– contact with nature (hopefully)
– physical activity
– free time, at last
Don’t mix up restoring perspective with overthinking, and ruminating about work and problems. The monkey of your mind will keep running away in search of external solutions, fixing the world, or punishing the unfixable. No problem, patiently keep bringing the focus back to the big picture.
Regain your ground:
– Who am I? What do I want? Where do I go?
– How do I get there constructively?
A constructive, compassionate, non-egocentric outlook leaves no causes for destructive reactions (the black holes for your energy).
2. Emotional lessons learned
Last week may have offered some challenges — you can finally look into them and prevent stress, and unwanted reactions in the future.
- do the retrospective, an inventory of the situations that undermined your cool
- make sure these events and people can do it no longer (reframe the root causes of unwanted reactions to prevent them)
The result will be “the new you.” Someone who experiences the world from a new constructive, compassionate, systems perspective. And can choose to respond accordingly. The “usual stressors” will no longer be stressors.
Your battery will be full, refilling automatically, more than enough not just for you, but to share and support the people around you.