A 6am start for a two and a half hour drive home may not be a high energy activity for a lot of people, but it was for me last weekend. I woke up with a healthy glow (that I really didn’t deserve!) the delicious cocktails and fizz the night before would normally have left me a little fragile, but not last Sunday.

I had been lucky enough to spend an evening with 7 incredible women – a lot of us hadn’t met before and certainly hadn’t spent a decent chunk of time in deep conversation.

How did this fill me with energy?

Jane brought us together and served us incredible food – first tick in the box for building up energy!

The sun was shining and the garden was perfect for a get together – tick, tick, tick.

The cocktails flowed as much as the conversation – giant tick!

But what else made me feel energised by this meeting of women who didn’t really know each other (which the thought of can be quite daunting and scary if we are all honest).

Well, every single one of the women I met radiated energy by the BUCKETLOAD. They smiled and made space for women as they arrived, they asked questions and really listened to the answers AND they were supportive and empathetic to those around them. You can’t help but drive away (at 6am!) from an evening like that and feel energised.

Having listened to all of us that evening though, there was a vast array of energy sapping things going on in each of our lives; grief, illness, careers, caring roles, raising kids, emotional challenges and mental health ‘stuff’ too.

When Jane and I speak to friends, coach women or work with organisations, we often hear people describing themselves as exhausted, fatigued and like they have lost themselves to the roles and responsibilities they have. Those roles and responsibilities sap their energy and often leave them no space, time or energy to do things for themselves – that’s if they have energy to work out what they would like to do for themselves in the first place.

The give and take of energy in life is really useful to explore and can be a great way of really understanding what you need in life and what you may actually be better off without.

There are loads of different ways to uncover what gives and takes your energy and both Jane and I firmly believe that energy management is a much more useful tool in living this life to the full than time management, which is often just a process to cram more and more and more into life. Whereas, energy management is all about stepping back and thinking about what should actually go into life and what we should definitely be avoiding, saying no to or delegating to others.

July sees Jane and I explore this more on a series of Instagram lives, so come and join us for a chat about the importance of energy and how you can begin to explore it with us.