Lessons from speaking at a conference and energy management.

Speaking at events is one of the things that I have truly come to love over the last few years.

Being able to stand on stage and deliver content that is useful to your audience, while also being something you love to talk about, is really cool.

This doesn’t suddenly happen.

(Well it didn’t for me)

It’s a combination of putting in hard work talking openly about stuff that is important to you and being given the opportunity to be on stage.

Being on stage you tend to run on adrenaline.

Which is cool for a certain amount of time, but at some point you have to recharge and refuel.

And this is where the energy management bit comes in.

Now energy management might sound like a weird term, but it’s about the best I’ve come across so far, so I’m sticking with it.

Ultimately you have a store of energy that you can use, but only up to a point.

When it has are gone, it has gone.

Measure it how you will.

Spoons.

Fucks.

Whatever takes your fancy.

Your energy level may well be different to mine, meaning that you might have a great tolerance to certain scenarios and situations.

Speaking might drain you more than me.

Social situations might drain me more than you.

The key, is being able to monitor where your energy is and then be proactive in managing it.

As an introvert (or maybe more precisely an ambivert) I’m well aware of when I need to recharge, but that has taken me a while to really understand the impact of that.

(Plus I still get it wrong)

When I first hosted a show back in 2017, I went straight back into clinic the week after and by the end of the week I was pretty usefulness.

Zero energy.

Low mood.

Minimal tolerance for anything even slightly off perfect.

I started to learn my lesson from that,

When this latest show finished, I made sure that I had time and space to collect my spoons and my fucks, ready for the next round.

And it worked.

Walking on the beach the morning after the show was one of the best things I could have done.

How you manage your energy is only truly known by you, but to do it right you’ll probably have to make a few sacrifices.

You may even have be a bit more assertive around others.

This^^ is something that does get talked about with a lot of my clients, particularly around the realms of boundaries.

How to set them.

When to use them.

Etc, etc.

Once you get it right, it makes for an existence that feels peaceful.

Maybe some of this resonates with you. If it does, maybe we need to have a conversation?