Four Tips to Increase Your Energy

As leaders we all need to raise our energy levels in order to run effective teams – whether on site, off site or both. We need to be able to think on our feet, come up with quick answers and be able to change plays at the drop of a hat. Poor decision-making leads to increased time, increased costs and decreased safety.

This first article will give you new habits to incorporate immediately that will give you great results within a few days, and will continue to get better the more you use them. The primary advantage is it won’t have a major impact on your overall life but it will make a big difference to your day. As humans we are habitual creatures, and the more things we can automate in our lives, the more we can use our brain for other parts of life.

When it comes to your Vitality that is the substance and feeling you have entering work on a daily basis, or basically your general attitude. Do you have vim, vigour and passion for what you are going to do? When you look at things around the workplace, are you solutions driven, or do you see problems? This is not to say put on your rose-coloured glasses and think everything is going to fall into place, but where there are issues, which there will be, how do you respond?

1. Prepare everything the night before. I have heard this too often as an excuse for missing morning activities. This excuse simply doesn’t fly with high performers. 5 minutes of preparation the night before can streamline your day and save a lot of unnecessary stress searching for items in the morning.

2. Get up 10-15 minutes earlier and get your body moving. We are meant to move, and not just sit at a desk, or in a car all day long, getting up earlier every day can re-train the body to be active. By being more active there will be many benefits, some of which you may not even be aware of. Emotion is led by motion. Being active first thing in the morning sets you up and energises you for the day. For example, by moving more you may shift some excess weight, and by even shifting 5kgs you will dramatically raise your energy levels which will enable you to keep your concentration during those long meetings, and it helps your body to deal with stress in a much better way. This can be something as simple as going for a 15-minute walk, or doing body-weight exercises such as squats, push ups, lunges, crunches etc.

3. Maximise your trip to work. Listen to some upbeat music, or something inspirational, motivational or educational. Music is a great mood adjuster. It can pump you up when you feel flat, or it can calm you down when you are getting a little hot under the collar. When I was fighting, I used to use the same music as my entrance song. This song always gets me pumped up and ready. It still does to this day. So, don’t think of the trip on the way into work as wasted time, think of it as the appropriate place to get you into a peak state so you are ready to hit the ground running when you get into the office.

4. Stay hydrated throughout the day. This starts off first thing in the morning. You have been a sleep for 5-8 hours and haven’t eaten of drunk anything, so start off with a glass of water, not coffee, fruit juice, just water with maybe lemon in it. As a society we are chronically dehydrated which negatively effects our concentration and performance. People have become reliant on external stimulants such as coffee to get them through the day. Caffeine works as a diuretic which will make you more dehydrated and therefore makes the effects of dehydration even more dramatic. Try to cut down on caffeine, not cut out but simply cut down on coffee and increase the amount of water you consume. An obvious side effect is the increase and distraction of having to go to the toilet more frequently. This will all settle down after 1 or 2 weeks as your body adapts to being hydrated again.

So now we have 4 morning and daily rituals to increase vitality to help you gain the energy of an athlete.

1. Prepare the night before
2. Get up 15 minutes earlier and move
3. Listen to positive motivating music or podcasts on the way to work to get into a peak state
4. Hydrate. First thing in the morning and constantly throughout the day