Energy and Your Power…
The car took a sharp turn as if it was on the Autobahn, hugging the road at 50 miles per hour. Everyone else was breaking and going 30MPH, but not the Audi SQ5, that flew around the bend. The smaller SUV felt light, lighter than the old one. The entire test drive took all of 10 minutes, as my mind was already made up, I want the SQ5. I wanted the car that went faster, had more power and was $10,000 more than the Q5. The paperwork was processed and I was going to pick up the car in 2 days.
The night before getting the car I didn’t sleep well at all. I kept on thinking about the car, not with excitement but with some level of dread. Something felt off. Something just didn’t feel right. I couldn’t put my finger on it and knew that I was being silly. It was the emotion of the past few months catching up with me. Since September my life had turned upside down. My mom passed away, I decided to leave my career after 35 years (rather suddenly to many) and my dad had gotten sick, spent a few weeks in the hospital and had been with me for 4 months now. So I lost my mom, career and identity and independence in a few months time, it had to be all of that keeping me awake.
I went to the dealership with my older Q5 that I was trading in. This car had just done a trip to Florida and home, it had been good to me. It had kept me safe and happy for many years and it was time to let it go. We processed the trade in and I took my new keys and drove away with my brand new car. As I drove, that same feeling that hit me the night before caught up to me. I felt a bit out of sorts, and out of control. The car didn’t feel right at all.
By the time I went to bed that evening my dad and I had a long talk about the car. As I tried to explain how I felt, he looked at me and just said, “call them in the morning and see if you can return it.” The dreams I had that evening solidified that the car needed to be returned, if they would take it back. I saw myself in multiple accidents in my dreams. Each time I woke up I felt uneasy and each time I fell back to sleep I would see another accident. I knew I couldn’t keep the car.
The only way to explain it was the energy of this car. It wasn’t about how fast it could go or how light it felt, I already had a car with a 380 horsepower engine, going fast has never been my concern. No, it was much more than that, it was the actual energy of the vehicle. Even as I walked up to it I had a sick feeling, my stomach would flip, the hair on the back of my neck stood up. The energy brought with it doom, it was very negative and very destructive. I had the same feeling that I have had when a person with bad energy was near me, or when a room/building didn’t feel right. You just know that something isn’t right, even though you cannot explain it. That is energy.
Energy is in everything. What exactly is energy? In science, energy is about how much potential a physical system has to change. In physics, it is a property of matter and space, objects and fields. Energy can be exchanged between people and things but cannot be created or destroyed. Energy can be positive or anabolic and can be negative or catabolic. In people, energy is about a person’s mindset, beliefs, assumptions, behaviors and perception of the world. How often have you come in contact with someone who lifts you up, focuses on the positive and the possibilities and makes you want to be around them? On the flip side, how often do you come across someone who faces everything from the negative, who actually sucks the air right out of the room? These are two examples of how we feel other’s energy, same as I felt the car’s energy. The car I ended up with felt different. I felt secure, happy, and could see myself driving this anywhere I wanted to go. Taking this car on the road felt right, it had positive energy.
This concept is the same with people. Some people approach life much more from an anabolic or positive energy position. They focus on the possibilities and opportunities and have a growth mindset. They use their intuition, compassion, empathy and focus on a goal to help themselves and others achieve all that they want. They generally are optimistic, kind and not just compromise but cooperate. Others focus much negatively and use catabolic energy. They live in a world of duality, good and bad, right and wrong. They limit themselves because their focus is on reacting generally with their ego. They feel anger, frustration, self pity, guilt, blame, and at times see themselves as a victim to their circumstances, or situation. This is the reaction many of us generally have to stress.
When we are under stress, being positive is much harder and at times we don’t even realize that our reaction is negative. We were not built for the continual stress we tend to experience today, we were built for fight or flight when necessary and most of the time built for rest and digest. Unfortunately our world today places all sorts of stresses on us, large and small and often we react instead of consciously respond. How we react or respond comes, very often, from our energy. Our past, beliefs, thoughts, assumptions, experiences all create this energetic response that can either be negative or positive.
Once we become conscious of how we think, and see the damage it can do and what we may be missing by not using more positive energy, we can change our thought. One of the things I have learned over time is that your thoughts create your emotions or feelings which in turn effect your action or results. If we don’t like the action or result, we need to go back to the core thought and change or adjust it. This is how you can shift your energy, by changing the thought. By moving your thought from victim or conflict to concern or acceptance, the feelings you experience will change.
One simple way I have worked to shift my energy is to ask myself one question when something occurs that could naturally have me wallow in either a victim mindset or conflict. I ask myself “how can approach this from a place of compassion?” That compassion can be toward a person, toward myself or toward a situation. That shifts my reaction to a more positive one, focused on moving forward versus wallowing in the past or staying stuck.
The more you focus on what is going right versus what is going wrong, the more options you have available to you. Choosing how you respond allows you to stand fully in your power.