Using (and losing) habits to boost your energy

Neuroscientist, integrated success coach, and certified therapist Laura Ellera, aka The Neuroscience Knowledge Sharer, explains how our habits can help and hinder us

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We have a limited amount of energy each day, and it is our brain’s primary objective to ensure that we have sufficient energy in the right place, at the right time, so that it can meet our body’s demands. This is called our body budget, and certain things we do replenish this energy, and other things we do deplete this.

If we repeatedly perform habits that drain our energy, we are left without sufficient energy to meet some of our body’s most basic needs, as the brain has to decide what does and doesn’t receive the limited resources that are left. This can leave us feeling exhausted and, ultimately, lead to many illnesses.

So, if we have a tendency to drink alcohol each night, this takes additional energy for the body to break down and dispose of the waste, which is energy that cannot therefore be used on other areas, such as digestion or our immune system.

However, if we have habits that replenish our body budget, we have sufficient energy for our body to work efficiently, and we can thrive. So, if we have made it a habit to see our loved ones everyday and spend time connecting with those that feel safe to us, then we replenish our stores and our body has enough energy to perform all the tasks it needs to do to keep us alive and healthy.

Most of us know instinctively which habits replenish us (sufficient sleep, eating nutritious foods, being in nature, exercising, spending time with loved ones) and which deplete us (spending time with those that don’t feel safe, lack of sleep, unhealthy diets, a sedentary lifestyle) but there is often a gap between knowing and doing, and this is because our brain is set up to do what it has done in the past.