Are you stuck in a rut and need a jolt of inspiration? Maybe it's poor nutrition or lack of sleep. Or maybe you need to shake things up and disrupt your routine to find that spark.
In this week's episode, I share how a change of environment gave me the jolt I needed to kickstart my creative flow.
Because sometimes, to boost your energy, you need to change what you see to change what you see.
Meditate with me on 22 November 2023
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Buy me a coffee
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Stuff to Light Up Your Life
🚀 Get my book, The Triple C Method®️
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Are you stuck in a rut and need a jolt of inspiration? Maybe it's poor nutrition or lack of sleep. Or maybe you need to shake things up and disrupt your routine to find that spark.
In this week's episode, I share how a change of environment gave me the jolt I needed to kickstart my creative flow.
Because sometimes, to boost your energy, you need to change what you see to change what you see.
Meditate with me on 22 November 2023
Support the show
Buy me a coffee
Leave a review
Stuff to Light Up Your Life
🚀 Get my book, The Triple C Method®️
🚀 Work with me
🚀 Get Triple C 101
🚀 Do yoga with me
Connect with me:
You're listening to the Triple C Project. Welcome to the Triple C Project, the podcast that helps you gain clarity, use confidence, build courage so you can live like lids. I'm your host, ryan Spence, the Big Lord, dropout life coach, author, speaker, lover of hoodies, hip-hop and big, hairy, impatient goals. If you're tired of living the life you think you should want and ready to start living the life you do want, this podcast will help you get from where you are to where you really want to be. So now, with friends, I invite you to grab a drink, take a seat and allow me to guide you towards living a life that's lit. Hey, hey, welcome to episode 88 of the Triple C Project. Before we get into this week's show, I want to let you know that next Wednesday if you're listening to this on the day of release, so next Wednesday, the 22nd of November I shall be running Legal Zen Clarity Through Stillness. Again, this is my one hour-ish meditation workshop and it's an introduction to meditation. So, whether you've meditated before, you've only done a little bit, you think it's not for you. You need to get ahead to this workshop and in the workshop, what you're going to do is I'm going to tell you a bit about my meditation journey and how that relates to, maybe, where you are. We're going to dispel some meditation myths, extol some meditation benefits and I'm going to lead you through a guided meditation so you can experience what this whole meditation thing is all about. Experience it for yourself. Don't just take my word for it. There's also going to be the opportunity to journal, share your insights with the group and see what comes up for different people, because as much as meditation for me is a solitary activity, I also found real value in meditation circles in sitting around just meditating with other people and doing that post-meditation debrief, sharing insights, seeing what came up for other people. It helps you to kind of sometimes rethink your own thoughts and help you to see things differently. So I find that that is actually a really powerful part of the session and, of course, there will be an opportunity for questions, and not only that. You will walk away. Everyone who attends will get a copy of the workbook, which is not really a workbook I hate the term workbook but really what it is. It's designed to help you start, develop and continue your own practice, so at your own pace. So it gives you tips and resources and things that I found helpful in getting your practice started. So you listen to the show. You be following me on social media. You know what I've been saying about meditation, how powerful that is and how I use it for myself, how I use it with my clients, how it can really help you to reduce stress, to quell that anxiety, to find that clarity. You need to figure out where it is you want to be where it is you want to go, what it is you want to do. So come along, it's free, it's going to be great. You can find the link to register in the show description or just head to my socials, linkedin or Instagram at. I am on Instagram and Spence. The links are there for you to register and I look forward to seeing you there for some zen and some clarity through stillness. Okay, let's get on with the show.
Speaker 1:Energy let's talk about energy. Now, what do you think of when you think of energy? Maybe you think of that person in the office who's there till all hours, day in, day out, and just think, man, they must have so much energy to be able to do that, to just be around and keep going, and keep going and keep going. It's going right here in the UK many years ago there was an ad for a famous brand of battery, a battery that you put in toys and the I guess mascot or the icon of the ad was the energiser bunny and the idea was that if you use these batteries, whatever you have will just keep going because they had such longer life. But if you've read my book and all I know about me, you know I love words. I like to go to the source of the word first and then put it apart from there. So I looked up what is the meaning of energy really, and the meaning that I found was that energy means the strength and vitality required for sustained physical or mental activity. So strength and vitality required for sustained physical or mental activity. And I emphasised that we're sustained because I think that that hopefully changes things for you.
Speaker 1:So if you go back and think about that person in the office who is in all hours, who's doing all nighters and who just seems to keep going, how often do they get sick? How often do they get burnt out? How often are they making mistakes? Do they complain about their well-being? Because it's not sustainable? Because effectively, what you're doing is you've got this energy and you're burning yourself out and then you can't continue. So that isn't real energy. That's just keeping busy, that's just keeping moving, and we can all do that for a certain period of time, but it doesn't mean that we're effective in what it is that we're doing.
Speaker 1:So for me, having good source of energy, good energy management, means that you can do the spurts when you need to, but you also recognize when you need to slow down, you need to recharge, and by doing that, by going with those ebbs and flows, by listening to your body, you can go for longer. You can sustain your mental and your physical well-being, you can maintain your level of clarity because you don't keep pushing until the point of exhaustion. And as I say that, I have a confession to make because for the last few weeks probably over a couple of months or so I haven't been following my own advice, and so I thought it would be a good opportunity to share with you what worked for me to pull me away from that. So my energy levels have been flagging.
Speaker 1:It's been a busy year. There's been a lot going on. A lot going on in life managing house renovation and currently living between two places my parents and my home. All these renovations going on and trying to keep up with all of that and managing people, the financial side of it, and there's just lots of different projects that I've been involved in, ideas that I want to fulfill, and I haven't been keeping up with my sleep and with my regular movement. I just haven't. I know I haven't.
Speaker 1:And the difference now than maybe when I was back in big law and this would happen, is that I'm fully aware of it and I'm fully aware of the reasons why. I can pinpoint them and I can know exactly what I would need to do to get back on track. I know that and that awareness is valuable but, as I said, energy-wise it's been flagging because there's a lot to juggle. Now, as I say, lack of sleep is part of it and all of these things to juggle is part of it. But also another aspect is doing the same thing, being in the same place all the time and when you are in, for example, your office, you're in the same office, at the same desk, looking at the same walls, doing the same thing day after day. That is going to drain your energy, because the brainwave craves dopamine from time to time it craves variety and even if, like me, you're a creature of habit. Sometimes you just need to mix those habit ups. Sometimes you just need to mix those habits, habits up to boost your energy, and this is what happened to me this week.
Speaker 1:So I've been feeling this for a while, this flag, and I've been still getting up and doing what I do and I mean I do lots of things that are great, but still I knew that with this sleep deprivation and with all of these things going on and then, on top of that, being in the same space day in, day out, it was really starting to drain me, to flag me. I kind of felt like I was limping towards some imaginary finishing line and it's like something's got to give. So, fortunately, the universe heard me and a colleague of my ex-colleague of mine from Singapore message said that they were going to be in town. So I was like cool day out in London. So I booked a trip to London, arranged a couple of meetings and just went down for the day. So yesterday, as I record this and so I was like cool day out in London.
Speaker 1:This really kind of shifted things for me, shifted my energy, and it sounds counterintuitive in the sense that it's a long day to get down to London. For me to get down to London for a day it's a long day because by the time I get back in the evening and get my car from the car park and drive home and that you know it's close to 11.30 midnight. It's a long, old day so it's tiring. But something about changing my physical location, changing what I see, changing what's around me, actually really energizes me. So what I found is that I've been.
Speaker 1:So let me tell you story. There's one thing I've been struggling with. So I was invited a few months ago to write a chapter for this collaborative book about coaching, which is great. I was really excited to do it and I kind of written it in a sense, but it needed it edited it, it needed refining and I just couldn't seem to really get an angle on it. I couldn't seem to get the flow on it.
Speaker 1:So I decided to set some time aside on the train journey down to London to work on it and suddenly there was this shift. I worked on it on the train. I kind of stopped in a couple of different coffee shops in between meetings and walking around, and it just started to flow and I finished the thing, which is good because it was actually the deadline day, but because my mind was seeing different things in a different place and it just affected me in a different way and suddenly all of this inspiration just appeared and this creativity started to flow out of me. I had a number of ideas for different things while I was there. So an idea for a corporate meditation workshop that the idea had been there, but I could never really kind of get the meat of it really Not meat, because it vegan me, of course but that flowed out. I got an idea for the community, another community idea that I have for the new year. I got ideas about some amendments I want to make to my website.
Speaker 1:It's not to say that these things wouldn't have come to me or what had happened anyway, but by shifting my physical space it changed my mental approach and it allowed these different parts of me to open up and to receive the different ideas and inspiration that were flowing around inside of me. And this reminds me of a phrase that I often say I've said to clients before and I've kind of said to myself, and it's that sometimes you've got to change what you see, to change what you see, and in changing what you see. You shift your energy, you change your state, and that change of state is what then gets you back to that position of feeling lit. And when you're at that point of feeling lit, that's when you can make things happen. You start to see lots of different things that you probably couldn't see before.
Speaker 1:Because, yes, there is the argument and I subscribe to this where if you want to do something, you can't necessarily wait for inspiration. You've got to make the plan and sit down and do it. You want to write a book? You've got to set your schedule for writing the book, sit down and write the book at the same time every day that you've set for yourself, and some days you'll write a ton, some days you'll write nothing. But by continuously sitting and doing it, you know that that's the time to write and effectively, you crank it out and you kind of go back and you change it later. That works. But even within all of that, there are times when you really just need that inspiration. If you are in that rut for a period of time, you're sitting, and you're sitting for two, three, four, five days, and every day is a real struggle. Sometimes you've just got to think, I've got to mix it up, I've got to change it up, I need to gain another level, I need to gain some energy because I'm flagging here and to do that. That change of environment, that changing what you see, can change what you see, and that has happened for me time and time and time again.
Speaker 1:Say I know that particularly in the world of corporate, routines are king. If you like to set these meetings that are recurring at the same time every week, then when you win at the office, it's a particular time. People generally leave at this particular time. You go to a particular place for lunch or for your coffee. Routines are kind of embedded within that lifestyle and there's something quite good about routines. It's something about routines that it means you don't have to think you want to be on autopilot, and sometimes that can be helpful, particularly when you have a lot of other things going on. If you don't have to think, well, where do I want to go for my coffee, or where do I want to go for lunch, or how do I want to get to work, because you're just doing what you always do, it can help to alleviate some of that pressure, alleviate some of that overwhelm. But when you're starting to feel stale, you're starting to feel sluggish, you're starting to just feel almost permanently exhausted, then, yes, you look at your nutrition and look at your sleep. But sometimes you also go look at do I just need to change my environment, do I just need to shift what I see? And if the answer is yes or I'm not sure, but it could be worth a try then do that.
Speaker 1:Maybe, instead of going to the office, you work from home, if you're allowed to, or you go work from your favorite coffee shop in your house, or you go to a co-working space you've never been to before, just for that different environment, for that buzz and for being around people doing different things. You know, maybe you just need to move. Maybe you go out for a walk, you go for a run, you do some yoga, you do something different to what you normally do. If you're used to hitting the gym, then yeah, maybe go to a yoga class. If you used to go into a yoga class, maybe you go for a run. But you're doing something to almost kind of shock your system, to challenge it, to make it think, hey, we haven't been here before. We need to up our game, we need to up our energy so that we can do this, we can stay alive, we can keep moving. Maybe you also need to take some time to be still Sit.
Speaker 1:When you're rushing all the time and you feel that you've got the energy to carry on, you're really just running on fumes. You're running on autopilot. There's no intention in what it is that you're doing and it's not to go back to the definition of energy. It's not sustained physical or mental activity. It's not activity that's going to burn you out and not allow you to keep it going, not allow you to make it sustainable. So taking some time to be still planning that into your day is going to help you to reflect, to recharge, to give yourself a break, to give your mind a break and to allow it to see what are the things that keep me in this low energy state, keep me in this state where I feel like I'm permanently on the edge of burnout, and then you can change those things. So energy, energy is what is going to keep you going.
Speaker 1:But energy isn't just being busy, it isn't just going for the sake of going. It's being intentional about how you move, about what you do so that it can be sustainable and when you feel it flagging, when you feel that it's all a bit too much, take a step back and change what you see. So you can change what you see. That's it for me this week. As always, drop me a line, let me know what you took away from the show or, if you see things a bit differently, hit me up at iamrinespencecom, on the email or over on LinkedIn, ryan Spence, or you can find me on Instagram at iamrinespence, and I look forward to seeing you at next week's meditation workshop, legal Zen, clarity Through Stillness and yeah, you'll see, sitting in stillness, how that can shift your mindset, shift your energy, shift how you see things and help you move from feeling like you're living a life of lethargy Towards living a life. That's it.
Speaker 1:Thanks for tuning in to the CCC project. In the spirit of the CCC, there's three things that you can do to support the show. Head to wwwratethispodcastcom, slash CCC or over to your favourite podcast app and leave a review. Reviews really help people checking out shows to see what they can expect and how the show can help them. Second thing you can do share. Share this episode, share a previous episode, with a friend, someone who you feel could benefit from what I'm throwing down on this show. And number three, head to wwwiamrinespencecom. Get on the mailing list. I'll be sharing news about the show, news about what I'm up to my new book start writing soon. So to be the first to be in the know, you need to get yourself on the list. Really appreciate you being here. And until next week, stop living a life of lethargy, start living life lit.