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Frustrations and energy in our everyday life

Francisco Miraval

I am currently taking an online class and during one particular assignment an interested question was asked to the students: What gives you energy for your everyday life?

This is a deceptively simple question because it assumes, among other things, that our everyday life, our daily routine, opposes and even interrupts a bigger calling and a deeper purpose for our lives because it redirects to daily activities the energy we should be directing to answering the call and to fulfill our purpose. I agree with that.

After reading that question, I immediately thought about writing down a long list of all those things that every day fill me with small and big frustrations, thus stealing energy from me.

For example, why the computer updates always happen precisely at the same moment you really need to use the computer and you don’t have time to wait for the updates to be installed? And why there is always construction, delays, detours, traffic jams, and even accidents on the streets you need to drive?

If you add the frequent incivility you experience at businesses and at public offices, the many unfulfilled promises, the checks that never arrive, and the unavoidable minor problems you face every day (there is always something to be fixed or replaced), those frustrations reach such a level that you lose the energy that otherwise you would have directed to a higher call.

However, beyond those daily challenges (“Today has enough trouble of its own,” taught a master two millennia ago), what really takes my energy away is any interaction with people with closed minds and hearts, with no empathy, unable to accept other persons and to see themselves in others, and with no desires of helping or learning. Those persons are legion (in more than one sense).

At the same time, I don’t want and I can’t live trapped in that negativity. It will unhealthy for my mind and heart to focus only on negative energy and, if doing so, I will only contribute to spread the negativity which already affects many of us at our workplaces.

For that reason, I better stop thinking about whatever is taking my energy away to focus on what gives me energy, renewing me and inspiring me to move beyond everydayness to look beyond the horizon of the future, working for those whom I will never met and for the generations I will never see.

What gives me energy? People who offers good advice without having asked them for advice, without criticism, and expecting nothing in return. And people for whom neither their age, nor their physical or socio-economical situations are valid reasons to stop dreaming big dreams and achieving great things.

Above all, I get energy from curious, empathic, and courageous people who believe that the future is not yet written and that our possibilities are unlimited. They seem to be connected to a universal source of energy. Perhaps for that reason they gleam with energy and freely share it with others.

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