Energized > Rested

Hello friends and welcome back to another edition of my newsletter, where I share lessons and tips around entrepreneurship, finance, and life design.

Before we get to today's newsletter, here’s some of the content I’m consuming that you might find interesting.

What I’m consuming

One of the more common book recommendations is James Clear’s Atomic Habits. So, I finally broke down and bought it.

If you have read as many business books as I have, an entire book is rarely worth reading because you can learn the important takeaways without reading all of it. I may finish the book, but I already have loaded my Resonance Matrix with my takeaways after only 14% complete.

Here’s what I put - Small habits add up. Habits aren’t about creating guardrails around your resources or for getting you to do or not to do something. They are about reinforcing actions that lead you to become the person you want to be.

Also, what’s a Resonance Matrix?

It’s a table where I store all the summaries and key takeaways from the content I consume. If you’d like to take a look, you can view mine here.

You aren’t tired. You are lacking energy.

Over twenty years ago I moved to Japan. I had just gone through a divorce and finally felt able to pursue the things I wanted in life, instead of what I thought I should pursue.

Leading up to that trip, I was finding myself tired all the time. I was living for weekends when I could just lounge around my house and relax.

I didn’t have any hobbies I was overall attached to and my friend group at the time was made up of good people, but they weren’t “my people.”

What got me to pull the trigger on that move was the desire to experience life to its fullest.

But, the move didn’t end up being the experience I thought it would be.

Not only was it tough to move that far away from my family, but my now wife and I had started dating a few months earlier. On top of those challenges, living in Japan wasn’t what I had hoped it would be.

I had envisioned becoming fluent in Japanese and using the proximity as a chance to travel to other interesting countries. What I didn’t know is that every Japanese person I met would want to practice their English with me and that, as far as traveling, my income would be too tight to avoid a lot of trips.

So, I returned home.

At first, making the decision to return home felt like admitting defeat.

Then something changed.

I noticed that I looked at everything differently.

I noticed I wasn’t tired anymore.

I didn’t need the weekends to rest.

My tiredness had been replaced by energy.

I was energized.

Some of the credit goes to being in a new relationship, and not one where we lived thousands of miles apart.

But my energy didn’t all come from being with her.

The trip there and back had forced me to reset my priorities. I was energized by all the options in front of me. I found new hobbies and rekindled friendships.

There are lots of symptoms that get explained away as being tired.

Stress. Anxiety. Frustration. A lack of motivation.

More times than not, it isn’t that you are tired. It’s that you aren’t energized

Being energized ⚡> being rested.

If you find yourself tired a lot, first make sure you are getting enough sleep. Then, if that is the case, look for ways to do things that bring positive energy to your life.

You might think that scrolling on Instagram is giving you time to relax. It isn’t. It’s taking energy from you, not giving it to you.

That friend you have that is constantly calling you with problems. Energy drain.

Playing video games where you are constantly losing to 10-year-olds because you are too slow to compete with them anymore. Serious energy drain and real real-life example for me.

Those adult beverages you drink every night so your brain can decompress. Short-term relief, but longer-term energy drain. Stop lying to yourself.

If you are tired then get some extra sleep.

Otherwise, look for ways to get energized.

Not sure where to start? Try micro-experimenting with new or past hobbies. Look for ways to give back to others (there’s no quicker path to being energized). Consider a trip, to get a new perspective on life.

Just don’t move halfway around the world.

Especially when you’ve just met a beautiful, smart dark-haired dream.

If you’ve found this information helpful, I hope you’ll do two things for me.

1) Subscribe to this newsletter. That way, new copies are delivered directly to your inbox.

2) Share this newsletter with one other person that you think might benefit from the information I share.