The BOLD (The Most Personal Account)
Yesterday, I found myself walking two and a half miles in Rockwood Park with my husband, doing intervals, and getting my heart rate elevated. He has offered to train me for endurance so that we can undertake longer and more challenging hikes in the future.
Exercise exacts a high fee. The three workouts I do with friends each week in the park, the hiking with Andrew—each of those costs me energy. Sometimes I have to invest in being uncomfortable as I walk through a cramp or wake up with achy muscles.
If I don’t invest, I pay the price later. I don’t get to go and do the things I want to do. My health will suffer. My mood will be much harder to regulate.
Imagine if I decided to just sit in a chair instead of engaging in the workout (you don’t have to imagine too hard—I have been known to make this decision as well). I’m saving energy now but I’m not going to reap the benefits that I would gain by investing that energy in training.
As I make decisions about where I will invest my energy, attention, effort, and discomfort, I want to come down on the side of investment over conservation. Energy invested reaps real dividends and I want to make those investments. It seems like the better use of my energy account.
Life begets life. Energy creates energy. It is by spending oneself that one becomes rich.
Sarah Bernhardt
The Whisper (Conserve, Deposit, Invest & Spend)
Once upon a time, we took my then six-year-old son to the National Zoo in Washington D.C. The day was a pleasing combination of early Fall warm and cool, and that had enticed many of the animals out into their outside enclosures where they could be more easily observed. It was a perfect day for a trip to the zoo.
Less than an hour into our circumnavigation of the park, Max turned to me and said, in a very serious tone, “I think we should go home now.”
I was surprised because he seemed to be really enjoying our trip up to that point.
“Why?” I inquired, “Are you not having fun?”
“No. It’s fun. I just think this might make me tired and I want to save my energy.”
I was dumbfounded and I blurted back, “This is what energy is for—walking and learning and playing and spending time with your family. For having fun. You can rest after you spend your energy on this trip. If not for this, then what are you saving for?”
What are you saving it for? Indeed.
We have an energy account that is there for us to spend when we need to make an effort. We can perform four transactions.
- Conservation: We can keep our account steady, for a while, by conserving our energy and not spending it.
- Withdrawal: We can spend our energy and deplete our reserves.
- Deposit: We make deposits and grow or energy with rest and refreshment.
- Investment: We can take the risk and invest it. We invest our energy and it pays dividends so that our account is bigger when we really need it to be.
Conservation of energy has its moments. If you are competing in a triathlon and you have done the swim and are transitioning from the bike to the run, by all means, figure out how to conserve energy so that you can portion it out as you need to complete the race.
The thing is, most days aren’t the race—they are the training.
We are naturally inclined to preserve our energy. For all our brains know, this is all the energy we will have. Who knows if we will gather enough berries or find game to hunt? Any minute, a cave bear could come charging out of the bushes and we’d be toast if we already used up all our energy. Rest, relax, take it easy. We might have to run for our lives.
Remember, those muscles, the ones on which we will need to rely, respond to too much rest, relaxation, and taking it easy with a biological process known as atrophy.
We need challenges to grow stronger.
That leads us right back to the question. What are you saving it for?
If you work backward from the goals that you would like to achieve, you can easily see where you need to be making investments now. Fitness requires exercise. Mastery requires practice and learning. Success requires effort.
You have to spend energy to make energy.
You have to invest energy to achieve growth.
Of course, the sofa is enticing. Of course, it would be easier not to take the action, not to go on the journey, not to make the effort. And when you don’t make the effort now, it will always be just as hard, just as daunting and just as impossible as it is right this instant.
The secret, too, that’s hiding in plain sight, is that the effort itself might just prove to be a walk in the park.
What, I repeat, are you saving it for?
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