When it comes to evaluating how you work, people consider many factors: habits, time management, discipline, systems, workflows.
Yet there’s one thing most people don’t think about or consider:
The energy of their environment.
How Energy Impacts an Environment
In my 16 years as a residential real estate broker, I’ve learned that nothing impacts a home’s sale more than the energetics of the space. Most real estate agents don’t think about how the energy of a space impacts its sale price or the time on the market.
Many people dismiss talk of energy as a “woo” topic.
Energy is not “woo.”
Energy is real, perceptible and tangible.
Energy is Tangible
When I teach workshops to real estate agents, one scenario I often present to explain energy is this:
If you walk into a room after two people have just had an argument, do you know they were arguing?
Almost everyone says, “Yes.”
You know.
So here’s the obvious next question:
How do you know?
The common answer:
You just feel it.
Even if the people aren’t saying anything — in fact, even if they are no longer in the room — you feel it.
In the same way, if you walk into an empty room after an event, you can tell whether the event was a wedding or a memorial service.
The energy of the people who were in the space lingers even after they have left.
A home can meet every item on a client’s checklist, yet their decision whether to make an offer is based on how they felt while inside it.
That’s energy.
3 Key Principles of Energy to Apply to Your Life
Here are two key principles of energy to consider when evaluating your work, your productivity, and your life:
(1) Environment is More Potent Than Willpower
Several years ago, I heard the following quote that clearly articulated the core principle of productivity:
Environment is more powerful than willpower.
This principle applies to the spaces where we work, where we play, where we train.
The energy of an environment is one of the most crucial factors that impact our mood, our physical sensations, our thoughts, our behaviors, and how we perceive the world.
This goes for our outer environment — the physical spaces we inhabit for work and play — and the inner environment of our bodies and minds.
(2) Energy is Contagious
The principle that “energy is contagious” has three main components:
- the energy of your environment (and the people in it) impacts you
- your energy impacts your environment and the people in it
- the energy of one area of your life impacts other areas of your life
Energy is a vibration.
You might not see it, but you certainly feel it.
If you’re attuned, aware, and connected, you know you are feeling it.
Even if you do not consciously realize you’re feeling it, it doesn’t mean you aren’t receiving that energy; you just might not be aware of its impact on you.
(3) You Can Change Your Energy
The number of hours you have in a day is finite. You can learn new skills, but they take a long time to master. The area with the highest leverage is your energy.
If you are in the right energy for what you need to do, everything feels easy. You’re in flow: confident, clear, capable, connected, courageous, creative.
If you’re not in the right energy, everything feels challenging. You feel stuck, stagnant, frustrated, impotent, incapable. You’re second-guessing and in self-doubt.
The good news is: even if you can’t change your environment, you can change your energy from within. When you change your energy from within, the energy around you will change too.
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