What I’m still getting wrong as a leader: energy cannot be created or destroyed

Last week my body did a hard stop.

There were warning signs. I’m nearing the end of grad school and usually at the end of a semester I give myself a little vacation. Sometimes that means a full on trip or even a staycation will do the trick. For me, I need time where I have absolutely no responsibilities and can be 100% spontaneous for me to feel a full reset. However, I was in the middle of a launch for an upcoming offer and told myself I’d be okay because I “wasn’t burnt out”.

Mistake Number 1: Poor planning.

I also haven’t been taking care of myself very well. I haven’t been getting much sleep and have been pushing through instead of actually trying to rest and recharge. While I haven’t experienced burnout for quite some time, my tendency to go hard and push through will always be my default.

Mistake Number 2: Not listening to my body and trying to push through.

When I got little sleep last week and tried to get through the day “business as usual” my body was like “I’LL MAKE YOU REST”. So I got sick.

It started off just being tired, so I decided to take a nap. Then it turned into a fever. That night I got 12 hours of sleep and spent the next day in bed. My body didn’t want food food but I tried to nourish myself the best I could.

The day after, I was almost back to normal. No fever, some small lingering symptoms but it barely seemed like I had ever been sick.

If you don’t listen to your body, your body will find a way to make you listen. If you don’t rest, your body will make you rest when it’s least convenient.

Supporting your wellbeing is one of the most important things you can do as a leader. So much of what you do is supporting others, and as the saying goes, you can’t pour from an empty cup. You must nourish yourself first in order to show up as your best self.

Doing your best work in both your job tasks as well as the supervising and managing of people requires energy. It’s simply Einstein’s Law of Conservation: energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can only be changed from one form or another.

And here I am, going to try to prove Einstein wrong by creating energy from nothing 😂

So tell me, what energy are you drawing from to be the best leader you can be in order to see real change? What’s the quality of the energy? Is it what you had for lunch? Did you even eat lunch?

This is why wellbeing is so integral to being an effective leader. It’s not only in how you support your employees, but how you support yourself.

And while I’m getting better at stopping and resting, it will always be a work in progress. But that’s the beauty of life right? We’re always growing and evolving, the important thing is to focus on the future and be the best person that we can be.