The Hindu Business Line : Boost your energy

When you are single-mindedly busy at work, you spare neither thought nor time to what you are doing to yourself. You live mechanically. Then, when your energy is depleted, you're stupefied.

DIFFERENTIATE BETWEEN empty energy got from stimulation and useful energy from nourishment.

Your body aches, your mind is dull, and your spirit weak. Tiredness makes you want to snuggle deeper under the blanket. You wish it were a holiday and that you never had to work again. You yearn for those simpler childhood times of zero responsibilities and a thousand laughter-filled days.

This energy-crisis is a godsend. It reminds you that you are disconnected from your true, robust self... and from your vitalising habits. When you are single-mindedly busy at work, you spare neither thought nor time to what you are doing to yourself. You live mechanically. Then, when your energy is depleted, you're stupefied.

Become aware

Resolve to become aware, remain aware, and re-connect. See your role clearly, do stuff consciously that is good for you. Re-shape your attitude — forget quick fixes, and opt for lasting wholesomeness.

Understand the difference between empty energy got from stimulation and useful energy derived from nourishment. Energy stimulated is short-lived, purposeless and weakens the immune system. Energy from nourishment is long-term, purposeful and strengthens the immune system.

Stimulation is skipping meals due to a busy schedule and grabbing fast-food bites at odd hours. Alternately starved and spiked, your blood-sugar levels fluctuate and you feel fatigued.

Nourishment is eating regular meals and arranging your schedules around them. Eat fat-free raw vegetables and fruits, complex carbohydrates, lean proteins, enzyme-rich sprouts and fibre.

Eat wise

The more easily digestible the food, the more energy you conserve and generate.

Food that makes you feel light is the right food; food that makes you feel dense and burdened is the wrong food.

Remember, when you eat fruits and vegetables, you imbibe a bit of the sun's rays, the moon's cooling beams, the earth's matrix of nutrients and nature's wholesome spirit.

Stimulation is overloading on caffeine, sweet biscuits, and chocolate bars to get energised. Such energy does not last — that artificial high crashes to a low and makes things look blacker and bleaker than they are.

Nourishment is opting for two bananas for real and body-friendly energy. The banana contains carbohydrates, fibre, and natural sugars such as sucrose, fructose and glucose, protein tryptophan that calms you and mineral potassium that makes you alert and ready to go. No lows here, its high packs a punch enough to work out non-stop for one-and-a-half hours. As a result, things look bright and beautiful.

Stimulation is dining late every night and keeping your stoked body busy digesting into unearthly hours when it should be resting, rejuvenating, and re-building. Naturally, it's tired and sleepy when it's time to rise and shine.

Nourishment is dining by 7 p.m. It gives you the rest of the evening to do anything you like — read, watch your favourite TV show, pray, or meditate.

To whip up hunger at 7 p.m., have nothing after lunch, not even tea and definitely no snacks. Thanks to an early dinner, your whole outlook will change, as you synchronise your system with nature's rhythm.

You start living less robotically and more wisely. A

s you opt for better habits, the first rays of energy enter your being. As you become healthier, not only does your physical stamina soar, your mental interest deepens in many life-positive things.

Adieu to a robotic life

In awareness, you will choose to do certain things like an enlightened sage, not a programmed machine.

At lunchtime, instead of automatically unpacking your tiffin, you will instinctively seek the sun and spend a wonderfully restorative 20 minutes in the sunlight.

At parties, you will choose to drink water and soda and few or no soft and hard drinks.

Instead of carrying work home, you will listen to uplifting music or read an inspiring book.

Instead of catching the habitual 8 o' clock TV news, you will want to meditate and feel those healing vibrations run down your body.

You'll leap out of bed to join a friend in an early morning walk and feel so alive and vigorous that you'll wonder why you didn't do all this earlier.

Scarcity to prosperity...

One of the biggest energy-challengers is scarcity-consciousness. If you continually focus on not having enough money, friends, time and energy, you will never have them; you will feel bereft and tired.

Instead, cultivate prosperity-consciousness. Focus on the abundance in your life and you will have loads of money, friends, time and energy. When you shift your consciousness from scarcity to prosperity, you start noticing how abundance flows towards you from different fronts — unexpected bonuses, passes to a concert, and calls from old friends...

Life contains immense riches. Recognise them. From this grateful recognition flows abundant energy.

The writer is co-author of the book

`Fitness for Life'.

Picture by K.K. Mustafah

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