Lessons From a Year of Low Energy

Free to read: What I’ve learned about navigating life when you’re feeling low energy.

Greetings from Bangkok where I’m currently trying to shake off jet lag after arriving yesterday. I know many of us struggle with our energy levels, and it’s also a time of year when it can feel like everything’s catching up with you, so I decided to make this essay available to all subscribers. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber if you enjoy what I share and are in a position to support.

I’ve felt various levels of low energy for most of this year. It isn’t down to any one thing, which, admittedly, is annoying. The recovering people pleaser and perfectionist in me, who love to control the uncontrollable, would prefer it if there were one fixable thing I could focus my efforts on. They’d love a straightforward solution, like a book, podcast, or magic bullet.

At the start of the year, I attributed my lack of energy to a combination of factors, some familiar, some not.

Typically, it takes until around March for me to ease into the new year. I’ve learned I need to go slower at the start because winter is a quiet, slow season for me. England’s flip-flappy weather and grey, dank days make me want to retreat into myself and potter. For instance, the last few years, I went on a hiatus from my podcast at least a week or so before Christmas and didn’t return until the end of January.

Grief, also, seems to play a major role in how I navigate the first few months. Since Dad died on 28th March, 2017, grief feelings engulf me each year as the anniversary approaches. Once the clock strikes midnight and it’s officially a new year, it’s as if somewhere in my brain goes, “It’s about three months until [dad’s] anniversary. Release the sadness hounds!”. This mimics what occurred on New Year’s Day 2017 when, despite the celebrations, inwardly I heard, “Well, it’s official. Dad’s going to die this year.”

And, you know, grief is lonely even when lots of you might be grieving the same person. The world keeps turning, everyone’s going about their lives and doing their own thing or caught up in their own feelings. Which is how life is.

While I’ve become much better at making the effort to reveal that it’s about that time again to loved ones, I’m still on my own a lot with it. You think it will get easier (it does) but it also gets harder, often at times when you’d begun to think it was getting easier. And then it gets easier again, just as you’re starting to think Feck’s sake, am I going to be like this for ages? Maybe I’m losing the plot. Until it decides to feel harder for a bit.

Anyway, I digress. This year, additional factors sapped my energy.

Due to circumstances beyond my control, the publication date of ‘The Joy of Saying No’ was moved from October 2022 to January 10th in the US and Canada, and to the 19th in the UK and Ireland.

Despite dropping lots of stuff out of my schedule and best-laid-plans to accommodate the changes but also leave some room to have a break and enjoy the season, I was anxious, stressed, overwhelmed and overloaded by the 4th of January. I felt tapped out by the 10th and was in bed at 7.30 pm unable to muster the energy to put on a show of the excitement and pride I wasn’t feeling. Side note: by the 19th,because I’d given myself that space to acknowledge my exhaustion and miserableness, I was in a much better space emotionally.

Within weeks of the book coming out, I ended The Baggage Reclaim Sessions podcast after 278 episodes and decided to step back from what were lots of self-imposed projects. And then a few days after, and unplanned I might add, I broke up with my mother.

Add in that I’m perimenopausal and was still in the early weeks of being on HRT, plus I have tinnitus, and you’re starting to get the picture of why 2023 has been the Year of Low-Energy Nat. I’ve even wondered if I’ve had low-level burnout.

Here’s the thing: When you’re not feeling too great in yourself, and so are rarely a bundle of energy, it becomes tricky to let your energy levels dictate what you do and don’t do.

• Am I feeling low energy because my body’s telling me not to do [the thing I’m about to do] or that it didn’t like [the thing I just did]?

• Or am I feeling low energy because of all the other stuff I’m grappling with anyway?

• Or, am I feeling low energy because I’m self-sabotaging?

And that, my friend, is how easy it is to start wrecking your head and tying yourself in knots!

It’s like when you’ve internalised some dodgy narratives around ‘manifestation’ and you blame the fact that you do or don’t want to do something or that your desire didn’t materialise on your not being in the “right” mood and effing up your vibration. Give me strength!

Something that complicates matters further for me is the tinnitus: If it increases in intensity, including volume and tone, it can make me second-guess myself. Is my body telling me it’s not happy with [the thing I was doing] or that I don’t have the energy? If I hit a low point with tinnitus, I wonder, ‘It’s as if tinnitus doesn’t want me to do anything at all?’

Let’s be real and honest here: We’re not used to listening to ourselves, and there are competing narratives and responsibilities at play.

Most of us are socialised and conditioned to believe we’re supposed to behave like machines. The culture also tells us that a Good Worker, Parent, Partner, Person is someone who doesn’t run out of energy and continues to meet their commitments regardless of whether they have the bandwidth and regardless of whether their (and other people’s) expectations are fair and reasonable.

Thanks to growing up during what I call the Age of Obedience, we’ve been socialised and conditioned to be compliant. It taught us to be disassociated from our bodies, from ourselves, because the way we learned to say yes meant shutting off our needs, desires, expectations, feelings and opinions. Unlearning this is part of the necessary living of our lives now.

Modern-day humans have also internalised the jacked-up notion that things shouldn’t be exhausting. This is especially so if they’re ‘fun’ or desirable or something that someone else doesn’t appear to be exhausted by. Our lack of energy, for instance, doesn’t fit our idea of what Someone Who’s Aiming to Climb the Ranks should feel like.

You know how we can be when we’re dating or in a relationship with somebody and overriding, dismissing and ignoring red flags? Well, a hell of a lot of us have a similar attitude to our commitments and expended actions and choices.

In romantic relationships, I refer to this as being in the Justifying Zone. It’s that shady place we go to where we feel compelled to continue to justify our original interest or subsequent decisions (e.g. sleeping together).

We can’t face being wrong or needing to change tack or coming face to face with the (in)authenticity of our lives even though doing so will lead to more discernment and our happiness.

It’s also crucial to acknowledge that in the current culture of people selling their success, including sometimes pontificating about how they ‘just’ put in the work or that work you love doesn’t feel like work, or even that if you’re doing something right then you shouldn’t feel tired, it’s all rather exhausting. You can wind up feeling like a failure for not feeling similarly. It can also cause you to doubt yourself against other people’s (BS) metrics.

• I mustn’t want it hard enough if I don’t get up at 5 am like those other ambitious people.

• They claim it doesn’t hurt when they exercise because they want the results, but I feel like I’ve been run down by twenty buses.

• My body’s failing me because I can’t keep up.

The fact that you feel knackered, low mojo, brain scrambled, fit for little but your favourite reruns and the bare basics isn’t a bad thing. It’s not an indictment of your laziness or your not being ambitious enough. Low energy isn’t a negative thing about you. It’s just energy, and it’s neutral.

Your energy levels represent information that forms part of the overall picture of you.

Because I haven’t been in a great place energy wise, I haven’t been able to rely on my energy levels as a determining factor for whether I need, want to or even should do something. I want to add, this isn’t a ‘bad’ thing. As a recovering people pleaser, one could say I’ve abused my energy levels over the years so it serves me well to have to go deeper.

It’s almost like, Given that my energy’s shite anyway, what other factors point to whether I have it within me to do something?

Also, and I think it scares the bejaysus out of a lot of us, but just because you want to do something doesn’t mean you should. Sometimes, acting in our own best interests means knowing when to say no to ourselves.

This is where the knowing yourself piece comes in because if you have a pretty good gauge of your patterns or you’re interested in knowing more, you’ll use or gather the data to help guide you.

Here are four questions that help me gauge what’s going on and what I need.

1 Have I used up my bandwidth completing something?

This is the super obvious place to start but the one we ignore.

Something I and so many others struggle with is acknowledging not just that we’ve completed something but that we also need rest between the Next Big Thing. Hell, we might need rest even from some of the small stuff. I’ve been guilty of sliding from one thing to the other without taking enough time to:

1. Internalise the achievement, accomplishment and reality of it, including what went into it and what it took out of me.

2. Restore and repair instead of carrying on business as usual.

3. Acknowledge my current circumstances and how these might impact my expectations of myself.

Bandwidth is your capacity to be, do or have something, and your wellbeing (emotional, mental, physical and spiritual) is the embodiment of it. How you spend your attention (time, energy, effort and emotions) affects your bandwidth. Also, how you use your time, energy and effort determines how you feel.

The more of your bandwidth spent, wait for it, saying yes when you really mean no and overriding, ignoring and dismissing yourself is the less bandwidth you have. These acts, along with using your body day in day out, drain you.

Taking care of yourself, doing things that represent your value aka being authentic, following your joy, these things energise you. They also aid restoration and repair when you realise you’re feeling drained. Keep in mind, though, you’re human so you are supposed to get tired. But ‘tiredness’ is not the only reason to rest or relax; it’s essential to being human.

You need to respect your body and give it what it needs. It doesn’t matter if Betty and Bob can ho themselves out and keep going like the Energizer Bunny; you’re not them. Their bandwidths aren’t yours.

2 Have I eaten? Am I hydrated? Did I get a decent night’s sleep?

As soon as I start feeling whacked out and like I just can’t be arsed, especially if it’s sudden, these are the first questions I ask myself. When I’m hangry and basically haven’t met basic needs, it’s best not to use Hangry or Knackered Nat to make decisions. If I’m fed and watered but I’m feeling too pooped to string a thought together, I’ll try and have a quick nap. Sometimes getting out for a quick walk reboots me.

It’s absolutely crucial to recognise that the basics—eat, sleep, hydration, rest and relaxation—affect your bandwidth, along with how your body operates (e.g. health conditions, neurodiversity) and stress, including the number of big stressors (e.g. grief, moving, wedding, fallouts, being triggered)

Ask yourself: What does my body need?

I went easy on exercise, had lots of early nights, got back on the probiotics and liquid iron, upped my water intake, to name a few. I’ve also recently returned to Five Elements Acupuncture after over four-and-a-half years.

*Rule out anything nefarious, obviously. I’ve had blood tests, a colonoscopy, and all sorts this year. I’m not playing about!

3 What’s my ‘why’?

As a recovering people pleaser and perfectionist, which includes my overthinking, overgiving and over-responsible ways, it’s no wonder I’m really frickin tired at this stage of my life. I don’t know how my younger self managed to do so much! I’m impressed with (and also envious and scared of) her energy levels and how much she created, but 46-year-old Nat can’t (and doesn’t want to) keep up. I’ve evolved.

As a result, paying attention to my ‘why’ is crucial because, sometimes, the reason I don’t have the energy to do something is that I’m pushing and striving. These always flag for me where my ‘why’, even if authentic initially, has shifted. I’m likely trying to control or prove something. Fear of getting things wrong and it not being perfect have, on some level, kicked in. My nervous system is super busy.

Here’s what I know now: My 46-year-old self struggles with inauthenticity in any guise. It drains my bandwidth, including sapping my mojo. Like sniffer dogs at the airport, my body and soul pick up on inauthentic carry-on from fifty paces—and I need to heed this. It’s my sign that head has taken over heart.

If your ‘why’ is essentially about trying to control the uncontrollable, and it’s not in service of being more of who you really are, you will overextend and possibly even exploit yourself in some way.

4 What do I need to say no to?

I delve deep into this in the Learn from Eruptions and Challenges chapter in The Joy of Saying No. It’s now routine that when I’m feeling low energy, I not only need to work out where I need to say no so I can prioritise self-care but I also need to acknowledge any contributing factors in the preceding days, weeks and months.

For instance, if you’ve experienced burnout, that’s the result of saying yes to too many things that weren’t your responsibility and that weren’t in alignment with your values—yourself. You weren’t listening to your body’s signals that it’s not a machine and that you were looking for recognition or something that was taking you away from yourself.

The reality is that sometimes life, well, lifes. A load of things come at you at once or circumstances shift and you do your best to respond and crack on. So much went on in 2022 and at the start of this year that it makes sense that I’ve been pooped. I couldn’t pull off a repeat and also handle whatever 2023 wanted to throw at me too.

Lots of good things happened in the midst of all of this. Don’t conflate low energy with, Well, that was a washout. There’s been joy, intimacy, slowness and much more as well as the other shenanigans.

We humans are supposed to listen to ourselves so that we can use the information from our bodies and lives to guide us into healthier and authentic living.

Experiencing low energy’s made me not just mindful of my commitments aka what I say yes to but also how I approach things.

In an upcoming post, I’ll share how I discern whether to push through or rest.

If you’ve felt low energy too, I’d love to hear what’s helped you.