If you’re feeling drained despite all your efforts to manage your time and boundaries, you’re probably making these three critical mistakes that are actually robbing you of the very energy you’re trying to preserve. This episode reveals why your current strategies are backwards and what to focus on instead.
You want abundant energy to do what you love and give more to the people you care about while prioritizing yourself. But here’s what’s happening: the strategies you think are protecting your energy are actually draining it. Lisa breaks down the three biggest mistakes that keep high-performers stuck in overwhelm and frustration instead of feeling grounded and fulfilled.
Mistake #1: Waiting for Others to Change
The biggest energy drain is believing that other people or circumstances changing is the solution to feeling better. You’re living in “when then” mode. When your partner changes, when you have more time, when your kids are older, when you get a new job, THEN you’ll have energy for yourself.
This is giving away your power entirely.
Lisa uses the pandemic as a reality check. We collectively got what we said we wanted more time. But did most people use that time to rest and take better care of themselves? No. They stayed up later watching Netflix and let their health deteriorate. The lesson? External circumstances changing doesn’t automatically give you more energy or make you prioritize yourself better.
If you believe your husband, kids, or schedule needs to change before you can feel better, you’re putting yourself in a powerless position where forces outside of you control your wellbeing. That costs you massive amounts of energy because you’re fighting what you can’t control.
Mistake #2: Thinking It’s a Time Management Problem
This is like slapping lipstick on a pig. You’re looking for a solution to the wrong problem.
Time management is easy when you know how you’re prioritizing your time and what needs to get done. No system or strategy is going to give you more energy. The people Lisa works with are some of the most productive people she’s ever met. They’re so productive they don’t even realize they’re over-functioning way beyond what they need to do in a day.
Here’s what’s really happening: you create organized systems and free up space, then immediately fill that space back up because you’re uncomfortable with calm. You say you want more time and energy, but you’re actually more committed to filling that time because you feel calm in the chaos.
It takes serious nervous system regulation to get comfortable being calm in the calm. Most people feel more comfortable in chaos than in peace, so they’ll always create things to bring them back to busyness.
Mistake #3: Using Worry as a Problem-Solving Strategy
This is where Lisa gets really honest about her own patterns. Worrying and focusing on the problem as a way to fix the problem. Many of Lisa’s clients have unraveled the belief that there’s even a problem when often what they find is they’ve created a problem where none existed.
Consider what worry is giving you. Many of us learned that the more we worry, the more responsible we’re being about handling things. But where did you learn that worry was the way to solve problems? You get more of what you focus on.
Lisa shares her personal example with money worry. She didn’t have a money problem she had a worry-about-money problem. She spent tremendous energy worrying about debt, asking herself how she’d pay it off, if she’d be okay. Then she developed a strategy to break the worry cycle.
Lisa’s Worry-Breaking Strategy
She started asking herself: “Is anything different today from yesterday?” The answer was always no. “Did you spend all day yesterday worrying?” Yes. “Did that change anything?” No. “Is anything different today?” No. “Did anything bad happen yesterday?” No.
Day after day after day, she had evidence that worrying wasn’t changing anything and nothing bad was actually happening. No bill collectors showed up. Nobody took her car. Nothing bad was happening. In that moment, she’d tell herself to stop spending energy worrying and put that energy into being responsible for doing things that would support the outcome she wanted.
If something had changed when she asked those questions, it still came back to: what do I need to take responsibility for in this moment? Then she’d do that thing and move on.
Lisa’s work stands on personal responsibility. If you draw a circle around your feet, everything inside that circle you are responsible for. You’re responsible for creating the life you want. This is the serenity prayer in action: accepting what you can’t change, having courage to change what you can, and developing the wisdom to know the difference.
Many people feel more calm in chaos than in actual calm. When you try to stop worrying, you worry that you’re not worrying.
These mistakes keep you living in overwhelm and frustration instead of feeling grounded and fulfilled. They keep you crashing into vacation after practically burning yourself out instead of running at great energy levels regardless of what’s happening in your life.
Stop waiting for external circumstances to change. Stop looking for the perfect productivity system. Stop using worry as a strategy. Instead, ask yourself: what can I take responsibility for right now that will actually support the outcome I want? Then do that thing and let the rest go.
The solution isn’t outside yourself. It’s taking radical responsibility for what you can control and releasing what you can’t.
Ready to break these energy-draining patterns and create sustainable energy that supports your extraordinary life? Connect with Lisa at LisaCarpenter.ca/wwm to explore what’s possible.
TRANSCRIPT
00:00:00:00 - 00:00:27:13
Lisa
Welcome to the Full Frontal Living Podcast. I'm Lisa Carpenter, a master life coach to driven, ambitious humans who want more out of life without having to sacrifice themselves to achieve it. I'll share how it's possible to slow down, take better care of yourself, find more peace and ease, create sustainable energy, stop procrastination and overwhelm and fall in love with your life, your business, and your body.
00:00:27:15 - 00:00:45:25
Lisa
This podcast is for you. If you're ready to learn what it takes to thrive as a high performer, do less but achieve more. Make you and your well-being a top priority and create your extraordinary life. I'm so glad you're here.
00:00:46:07 - 00:01:10:18
Lisa
Well, hey, thanks for tuning into another episode of the Full Frontal Living podcast. Maybe you're watching this on YouTube and seeing me in video. Regardless, I'm happy that you're here. I'm happy that you are joining me for another episode. And today we're going to be talking about are we? I am going to be talking about the three biggest mistakes that people make in trying to protect their energy.
00:01:10:21 - 00:01:23:28
Lisa
because I want you to feel like you've got abundant, abundant energy to do the things that you love and to have more to give to the things in the people that you love while making sure that you're prioritizing yourself.
00:01:23:29 - 00:01:46:17
Lisa
So in order to kind of lead you into this, I thought it was really, really important to talk about some of the mistakes that you are probably making in trying to protect your energy. That is absolutely backwards because it's going to cost you more energy. So let's dive in. I got some notes here. If you've been a longtime listener to the podcast, you know, I usually just like riff off the cuff.
00:01:46:20 - 00:02:07:28
Lisa
But I really wanted to make sure that I got these three points across the plate. So I do have some notes in front of me, which is very organized of me. Who knows? I might even start batching again. If you've been listening to for me for a while, you know, I often record these podcasts in real time. And batching has been a whole it's been a journey for me.
00:02:07:29 - 00:02:41:22
Lisa
We'll just we'll just leave it at that. Okay. So let's dive in. So number one, the number one biggest mistake people make in trying to protect their energy is believing that other people or circumstances changing is the solution to feeling better. So what this means is you're basically living in this place of when then when this person changes, when these circumstances change, when I have a new job, when I have more time, when my kids are older, then I will have more time and energy for me.
00:02:41:24 - 00:03:07:03
Lisa
And that is really giving away your power. So I want you to think about for a moment how well you made use of your time and energy when we were all sheltering in place. I truly believe that as a collective we probably manifested that because everybody's like, I don't have enough time. I don't have enough energy. So during that time, did you give yourself permission to just chill out and rest?
00:03:07:03 - 00:03:30:22
Lisa
Did you give yourself permission to do the things that you've always wanted to do within the confines of your house? Most people, the answer is no. They didn't take better care of themselves because they had more time. They took worse care of themselves. They didn't get more rest. They stayed up later watching Netflix. In fact, many people really let their health deteriorate during the time of the pandemic.
00:03:30:24 - 00:03:55:05
Lisa
So if you believe that your husband needs to change, your kids need to change, the schedule needs to change, you are doing yourself a disservice because that's actually going to cost you energy and you're really putting yourself in a place of like, I have no personal power because my life is ruled by forces outside of me. And unless those forces change, I'm never going to feel better.
00:03:55:08 - 00:04:17:16
Lisa
And the way that I like to work is if you've been hanging out with me for any amount of time, Full frontal living is all about your physical relationship with yourself, your emotional relationship with yourself, and the relationship that you have with your environment. And when I say environment, that's other people, places and things. And it all stands on top of the pillar of personal responsibility.
00:04:17:16 - 00:04:42:29
Lisa
So what is personal responsibility? Well, if you draw a circle outside your feet, everything inside the circle you are responsible for. You are responsible for creating the life that you want. So for all the things that you can't control and you can't change, you do have responsibility for changing the things you can. This is the whole serenity prayer that so many people live by.
00:04:42:29 - 00:05:08:12
Lisa
A great God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can. And the what is it? The wisdom to know the difference? So what can you change? What can you take responsibility for that will support you feeling better and having more energy? So if you want better physical health, it's making yourself a priority.
00:05:08:12 - 00:05:28:20
Lisa
It's making eating healthy food a priority. It's making going to the gym a priority. Instead of saying, I don't have time because all these other people are taking my time from me. What does it look like to take back some responsibility if you weren't trying to meet everybody else's needs, if you weren't trying to make everybody else happy?
00:05:28:23 - 00:05:55:13
Lisa
This is what taking personal responsibility means. So the solution that you're looking for is not outside yourself. It's not in anything out there changing. It's taking radical responsibility for what you can do. And I know many people will push back on that with the. But but, but and listen, I've been there. I have been there. I was in that perpetual state of victimhood where I believed life was happening to me, not for me.
00:05:55:20 - 00:06:18:15
Lisa
I wanted everybody else to change. And really, you know, when my husband went into rehab, it was a real wake up call around what do I want my life to be? Because if my happiness was dependent on him being clean and sober, when was I ever going to be happy? So I had to take responsibility for how I was showing up in the world and doing the work on me so I could get better.
00:06:18:19 - 00:06:53:09
Lisa
Okay, so number two, the second mistake people make in trying to protect their energy is thinking that it's a time management problem or being more productive or having the right system or strategy is going to give you more energy. So this is like slapping lipstick on a pig. You're looking for a solution to the wrong problem. So it is pretty easy to manage your time when you know how you're prioritizing your time, when you know the things that you need to get done.
00:06:53:12 - 00:07:11:28
Lisa
No system or strategy is going to give you more energy. It's looking at how you are showing up in the world again. What are you not being responsible, responsible for? Is it a productivity problem? Because I can tell you that all the women and men that I have worked with, these are some of the most productive people I've ever met in my life.
00:07:12:05 - 00:07:31:05
Lisa
In fact, they are so productive, they don't even understand that they are so over functioning well beyond what they need to be doing in a day. So it's often not about how can I cram more things in my day? It's looking at what do you need to strip out of your day? What do you need to let go of?
00:07:31:05 - 00:07:58:07
Lisa
What do you need to do or delete or delegate to somebody else? Not How do you manage more things so you can juggle more balls? That's not going to give you more energy. And what's interesting is, is when people go down this route of time management or systems, they just they create the space, okay, I'm all organized. I created all this space and they just fill it up because they haven't looked at what is the actual problem.
00:07:58:10 - 00:08:18:01
Lisa
Oh, I'm uncomfortable having space. So I say I want more time and I say I want more energy. But are you really more committed to filling that time? Because most of the people that I work with, that's the way that they're hardwired. I need to fill my time. They are so uncomfortable in the calm. They are so uncomfortable in the space.
00:08:18:03 - 00:08:42:06
Lisa
So they're saying they want it, but they're always going to create things that bring them back to more chaos and being busy. It takes a lot of nervous system regulation to get to a place of being calm in the calm. And for many people, they feel calm in the chaos. Which brings me to number three, which I think is a really a really big mistake.
00:08:42:06 - 00:09:15:19
Lisa
A lot of people make. And I spent a long time here, so I'm not there on shade. There's no judgment. It's worrying and focusing on the problem as being the solution to fix the problem. So I'm going to say that again, worrying and focusing on the problem as a way to fix the problem. So if you've listened to the podcast for any amount of time, you know, I've had many clients that we've unraveled this belief that there's a problem when an often what we find is there is no problem, but they've created a problem.
00:09:15:21 - 00:09:47:11
Lisa
So I want you to consider what worry is giving you, because worry is often how we have been taught. Like the more we worry, the more we're being responsible about handling things. But where did you learn that worry was the way to solve a problem because you get more of what you focus on. So there's a proverb that I love, which is worry is praying for the shit you don't want.
00:09:47:13 - 00:10:12:07
Lisa
So how do you expect to have different in your life if you are constantly holding your energy and attention on worrying about the things that you don't like, you don't want, and that you want to be different. So that actually isn't the solution. So worry cost you a tremendous amount of energy, whereas when you look at, okay, this is the thing I'm worried about what is actually going to happen?
00:10:12:07 - 00:10:32:26
Lisa
What can I be responsible for? So again, circling back to that personal responsibility, if I'm worried about this thing, what is it that I can take responsibility for that will remove the worry and will support me creating the outcome I want. So I'll use my self as an example. I spent a tremendous amount of time and energy worrying and focusing on my problems with money.
00:10:32:29 - 00:10:58:01
Lisa
I didn't have a problem with money. My problem was that I focused on worrying about money, so I worried about my dad. How was I going to pay off my dad? How is it going to make more money? How was I going to do this? How was I going to be okay? Am I going to be okay? And what I ended up doing was realizing, okay, this is the strategy that I need to do to be responsible for taking care of paying off my debt and handling my money.
00:10:58:01 - 00:11:22:02
Lisa
And this is probably a podcast episode that I'll do in the future because I have a very long and twisted journey with how I healed my relationship with money. But a big part of it was letting go of worrying about it because the strategy that I used and I will share this with you is I started to ask myself, Lisa, is anything different today from yesterday?
00:11:22:04 - 00:11:46:08
Lisa
And the answer was always no. Okay. Did you spend all day yesterday worrying? Yes, I did. Did that change anything? No, it didn't. Is anything different today? No, it's not. So then I would ask myself, did anything bad happen yesterday? And the answer was always no. So time after time after time after time, it was like there was days and days and days of evidence that me worrying wasn't changing anything.
00:11:46:13 - 00:12:12:25
Lisa
And nothing bad happened. No bill collectors showed up at my door. Nobody, you know, said I had to hand over my car. Nothing bad was happening. So in that moment, I would tell myself, Lisa, stop it. Like, stop spending time worrying and focusing on the problem and put the energy and effort into being responsible for doing the things that will support the outcome you want, right?
00:12:12:26 - 00:12:30:29
Lisa
Automating my bills. You know, using the snowball method to pay off my credit cards. All of these fancy things, but simple. But once I tick the box on that, what was the point? Worrying. Nothing was going to change and if something had changed. So if I asked myself that question, is anything different today from yesterday? And the answer was yes.
00:12:30:29 - 00:12:59:05
Lisa
Then it still came back to, okay, well, what do I need to take responsibility for in this moment? And then I would do that thing and then I would move on. Okay. So I want you to check out. You can go back and listen to episode 159, because a lot of the reason we get stuck in worry is because we feel more calm in the chaos, which I just mentioned in point number two.
00:12:59:06 - 00:13:25:24
Lisa
Right. We're focusing on the wrong problem. So it's looking at where all are you creating chaos in your life because that actually is your normal state of being and how we can start to shift it around so that calm becomes your new normal. But right now, calm and not worrying is probably going to make you feel anxious. So the irony, right, when you try and stop worrying, it's like you worry that you're not worrying.
00:13:25:27 - 00:13:36:14
Lisa
But these are some of the biggest mistakes you make might be making while trying to protect your energy. They're actually robbing you of energy, draining your energy.
00:13:36:14 - 00:13:59:27
Lisa
So at the end of the day, I want to get you out of overwhelm, out of frustration and living a life that you feel more grounded in and fulfilled and peaceful so that you can do more of what you love instead of living by the story of when, then right or crashing into vacation after you're practically have burnt yourself out.
00:13:59:29 - 00:14:17:11
Lisa
We don't want to do that anymore. I want you to just be running it great energy levels all the time, regardless of what is happening in your life. So thank you for tuning in to another episode. I appreciate you being here. If you haven't left, if you haven't yet left a rating and review, I would love for you to do so.
00:14:17:11 - 00:14:40:22
Lisa
If you're watching this on YouTube, make sure you leave a comment below. Let me know what your takeaways from this or simply drop into my DMS and Instagram and you can leave me a comment there about the episode. I love interacting with my community, so please don't hesitate to reach out and pretty accessible. And thank you so much for being here and I will catch you on the next episode.
