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Welcome back to the Time and Energy Podcast.
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Nick Lackaduck here.
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Thank you for joining me on our next episode.
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We're talking about energy.
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And I want to start with something I've been thinking a lot about lately.
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Most people think that exhaustion comes from doing too much.
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And sure, sometimes that's true, but honestly, I think a lot of people are exhausted because they absorb too much.
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Every opinion, every problem, every email, every tense conversation, every piece of bad news, every emotional reaction from another person, it all sticks.
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And after a while, people start carrying emotional weight that was never theirs to carry in the first place.
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And so that's the detail of what I want to talk about today in the vein of energy.
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But probably not in the way most people talk about it, because when people hear energy, they usually think of one of two things.
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They think of productivity or they think of grounding their feet in the grass in their backyard.
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And hey, look, if if you're into that, by all means, you do you.
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I live up here in North Dakota, however, and six months out of the year, if I were to try to do that on a regular basis, I would either not find any grass to use, or I'd probably freeze a couple toes off, but I digress.
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And so when I talk about energy, I mean something very real.
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And I mean emotional, mental, relational, and physical force we experience, absorb, and direct every single day.
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Because whether we realize it or not, energy is constantly moving.
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Into us, out of us, between people, inside teams, inside families, inside organizations.
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You can feel it within five seconds of walking into a room.
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If you ever walked into a meeting and immediately known something is off before anybody speaks, that's energy.
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You ever spend time with somebody who makes you calmer, clear, and more grounded afterwards?
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That's energy too.
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And one of the biggest realizations I've had over the years is this is that most people don't know how to direct energy intentionally.
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I've been there many times myself, only knowing how to react to it.
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And that's a massive difference.
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So, a quick story.
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I had a leader years ago who honestly fascinated me because negative energy just didn't stick to him.
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It wasn't fake positivity.
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He wasn't ignoring problems and he wasn't pretending difficult things didn't exist.
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He was aware of them immediately.
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It was almost like he had this internal filter where he could where he could recognize emotional stimulus without absorbing it personally.
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He'd hear tension, he'd see frustration, he'd recognize the pressure, and instead of emotionally inhaling all of it, he would redirect it intentionally.
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And so just because something enters your awareness does not mean it deserves permanent access to your emotional system.
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And instead of emotionally inhaling all of it, he'd redirect it intentionally, calmly, clearly, steadily.
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It was honestly one of the best examples of leadership that I've ever seen.
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And I remember realizing most people think maturity means avoiding negative energy, and that's not it at all.
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The goal isn't to avoid negative energy.
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The goal is to become aware enough that you can direct it instead of absorbing it.
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That changed the way I think about leadership and honestly changed the way I think about life in general.
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Because a lot of people are emotionally exhausted, not from the workload, but from unmanaged stimuli.
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They absorb everything.
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Bad moods become their bad moods.
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Other people's anxiety become their anxiety.
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Frustration spreads through teams like smoke through a building.
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And eventually people lose themselves emotionally because they never learned how to separate awareness from absorption.
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That's one of the questions I've started asking myself more often.
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And it's this how do I become more intentional about the energy I allow, absorb, and direct?
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To me, that's a way better question than how do I just simply become more productive?
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Because productivity without the awareness usually just creates faster burnout, or at least it did in my personal experience.
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And so here's what I've learned not every stimulus deserves emotional residency inside of you.
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And that line matters.
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Because just because something enters your awareness does not mean it deserves permanent access to your emotional system.
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Yes, some things need action.
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Yes, some things need empathy, and
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yes, some things need accountability, but not everything deserves emotional ownership.
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And that distinction is huge.
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Because without awareness, life becomes stimulus, gap response.
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Many are familiar with that.
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But when you add in the awareness, something changes.
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It now becomes stimulus gap recognition, gap regulation, gap, then response.
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And that's where the intentionality lives, as far as I can tell.
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And honestly, I think this is one of the biggest separators between reactive leaders and grounded leaders.
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Grounded leaders don't pretend pressure doesn't exist, they just refuse to let every emotional current pull them underwater.
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That's emotional strength.
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And that's what I like to call energy intelligence.
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This matters at home too, because energy transfers.
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And if you carry unresolved stress from work into your house every single night, your family feels it.
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I've been there.
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I've been that guy.
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I've been the guy coming home from a long day at work that's compounded day after day, and for lack of a better way to put it, take taking it out on the people closest to me, my wife and my kids.
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That is not being my best when my best is required.
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And if you absorb the negativity all day and never process it intentionally, eventually that energy has to spill somewhere.
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And it's usually onto the people who didn't create it.
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And that's why awareness matters so much, not awareness so we can become robotic, awareness so we can become intentional.
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Because the truth is this you can't control every stimulus that enters your life, but you can become more intentional about what gets rooted inside of you.
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That's a skill.
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And honestly, probably one of the most important leadership skills that, as far as I can tell, isn't being taught today, especially now, because we live in a world built on emotional overload.
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People react instantly, they absorb instantly and they broadcast instantly.
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Think social media.
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Very few people pause long enough to ask: is this something I actually need to carry?
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And hey, maybe, maybe that's the work.
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You know, you don't want to become emotionless.
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You don't want to become detached, but becoming aware enough to choose what deserves your energy, prioritizing the energy.
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Because energy directed intentionally becomes extremely powerful, and energy absorbed unconsciously becomes exhausting.
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I think a lot of people walking around right now are tired.
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They're not because they're weak, but because their emotional doors never close.
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So maybe this week the goal isn't necessarily productivity.
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Maybe the goal is awareness.
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Maybe the goal is noticing what drains you, what restores you, what follows you home, what deserves action, and what does never deserve emotional residency in the first place.
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That is the work and that is a practice.
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And honestly, that might be one of the most important forms of alignment there is.
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Thanks for hanging out with me today.
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I appreciate you taking some of your extremely valuable time and energy listening to me.
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If this resonates with you, I'd love to hear from you.
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Nick at timeergy.co.
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Nick at timeergy.co.
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Love to hear your thoughts.
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I'd love to hear perspectives.
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And if you'd like more of this content or would like to spend a little bit of time together focusing on how to best direct your energy, again, please hit me up.
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Make it a great day.
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Be at your best when your best is required.
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This is the Time and Energy Podcast.
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Take care.