Energy Budget
“I am spent!”
“Do you have the energy for that?”
“Ugh… that was so draining. I hate that I have to do this every week.”
What do all of these comments have in common? Emotional budgeting. I get it, that’s a weird term, and it’s probably a safe guess that you haven’t heard it mentioned until now. Well, emotional budgeting is the idea that we each have a limited amount of emotional energy that we get to spend in a given day. Think of it as having a certain amount of money in our bank account each day and the ability to determine where and when we spend it, except in this case, the amount can fluctuate a lot depending on what happened the day before, how well we slept, whether we’re sick or healthy, you get the picture (Desai, 2017).
An important part of learning to think about your own emotional budget is the wonderful fact that there are certain people and activities that will usually add to our emotional budgets instead of taking away from them. Treasure those! However, for various reasons, some people can be very draining to be around. In my own life, I’ve identified a few well meaning family members who always have this effect on me. Perhaps for you, it’s because you don’t feel like you can truly be yourself around them, or maybe they tend to make everything about themselves. Whatever the reason (it can be hard to suss out at times), trust your gut. Knowing this about others can help you decide how much time you can really afford to spend with them on certain days. On the flip side, once you’ve identified the people and activities that rejuvenate you, you can intentionally reach out to them for support when you’ve had a bad day or schedule time into your busy weekend for one thing that you know will bring you greater peace and balance.
I wish this weren’t the case, but until you’re an adult, there are things you may not have a say in that will always drain you. That was the case for me as a teenager with my parents visitation schedule after their divorce. Packing and switching homes every week was exhausting in a way that went bone deep. I got in the habit of often calling a good friend while I was at my dad’s and that seemed to help, but I definitely could have benefitted from a better understanding of emotional energy.
Although the specific things that give to our emotional budgets will be different for each of us, there are some general similarities. Laughing with someone or having them ask you thoughtful questions tends to make all of us feel more emotionally rich. Compliments are a fantastic way to invest in others! When you compliment someone and you really mean it, it’s like making an emotional deposit in their personal account. This week, try starting to make a list of the things you discover that give and take emotionally for you. You’ll be well on your way to budgeting your emotional energy wisely if you do!
Reference: Desai, A. (2017). Emotional salary...Are you budgeting well? Edelweiss Behavioral Health. Retrieved from https://www.edelweissbehavioralhealth.com/blog/2017/11/15/emotional-salaryare-you-budgeting-well.
Challenges/Points:
Emotional budgeting is the idea of keeping mental track of how much emotional energy we have at any given moment, who or what drains us emotionally, and who or what supports us emotionally.
Don’t feel guilty if you realize that some of the people closest to you are emotionally draining. It’s not your job to fix that, it’s only your job to decide how you want to respond.
We invest in others’ emotional budgets any time we give them sincere compliments or ask intentional questions about their life.
Questions:
How much emotional energy do you feel that you have on most days?
What is one of the biggest emotional drains in your life?
How can you bring more of the emotionally positive people and activities in your life into your week?
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