Why It’s Important to Protect Your Energy

Something I’ve learned throughout the years, and especially these past few months, is how important my energy really is. By energy, I mean the effort it takes to do things and spend time with people, or otherwise, the effort it takes to be present in situations.

For most of my life, I’ve found that it was easy to get caught up in words that people use to define you. Especially in the world we live in, people really want to label you and put you into the box of a word that is easily consumable. It’s natural for people to want to label you, but that can be dangerous when you finally understand that you are a wonderful, powerful being and you can’t be reduced to a simple word. For example, I’ve considered myself outgoing for most of my life, which lead to me doing some things that I didn’t necessarily want to do, but I felt like I had to. But in the end, it really hurt my energy to do things I didn’t want to do all the time … and it left me really drained. It’s hard to remember, but you owe yourself some energy too.

By energy, I mean the essence of your presence and you being not only physically, but mentally there as well. I’ve always tried to respect others’ energies, but I didn’t really allow myself to have my own boundaries (or care to respect the boundaries if I did create them). The reality is that you are valuable and you are allowed to protect every ounce of energy that you possess.

I never realized how important it was to protect it until I realized there were so many consequences from not protecting it. When I don’t protect my energy, I feel drained, unacknowledged, and somber in a lot of areas in my life. When you are wasting your energy on people that don’t deserve it, or even don’t give you any back, it’s natural to feel disappointed and isolated. I have spent so much time investing my energy into other people or things, and it shows when these people don’t even care about my energy. Energy that you waste exerting on people that don’t deserve your energy can make it hard to break the cycle because it feels like you have no energy, but you have to learn from mistakes and grow enough to protect yourself.

No matter who you are, and what energy you want to give to people, they always have to earn it. Your energy shouldn’t be a given, it should be something that you decide to share with someone when they deserve it. Some people learn to abuse your energy when you give it too freely. It may not even be in a malicious way, but you’re the only one who knows how much energy you have to give. So, make sure to listen to that and stop giving things to people when you have nothing to give (it comes off as ingenuine and I’m sure it’s not doing you any favors either).

I first realized that I had a problem when there were people who deserved my energy, but I honestly had nothing left to give them. And it made me feel so bad, but it’s easy to lose sight of who you are and how you should be feeling when people are unappreciative of all the energy you give. So, if you need to hear this, I hope you listen. People need to work for your energy, and you can’t just give it to them freely. You deserve to feel like your energy is valued and appreciated, and you are the same person that needs to make sure that’s how you give out your energy.

• energy
• self worth
• self-care
• value