My Fountainhead
The Fountainhead is where I get refreshed.
My energy level fluctuates. The highest drains of energy for me are difficult interactions, trying to learn something, or working on a challenging problem. After even one of these I feel exhausted. After a week I am drained. I’ve on purpose filled each day and especially the weekend with activities that refill my energy. I like to call those collectively my fountainhead.
In this post I’m going to share some of them with you. If any of these resonate with you, please let me know on my LinkedIN or Facebook.
1) Meditation.
I feel so refreshed after a meditation. I’ve worked up to a 60 minutes session. Now if I need to end my session early I feel sad. Even if I go into a meditation feeling pretty good, I still come out of it feeling amazing. I do all kinds of meditation. Lately I’ve been doing HRV bio feedback using the EliteHRV app. I just finished a 4.5 hour HRV Biofeedback class that helped me so much.
2) Movement/Exercise.
Yoga is part of my day. I do movement that could be yoga in the morning, between meetings, and at night. It feels so good. Moving the body with the breath helps me reset and refresh my energy levels.
I go for several walks around my neighborhood a day. We live at the bottom of a steep hill and I try to walk up it as fast as I can to get my heart pumping.
A few times a week I do vigorous exercise such as weight lifting and HIIT. The body needs rest so I sometimes only do one weight lifting session a week. Rest allows the muscle to heal and build. Past 30 people, especially women, have a hard time putting on muscle. I worry a lot about my bones and studies show that doing resistance training helps us women keep our bones strong.
HIIT is short very extreme sets of exercise. HIIT has been shown by studies to be more effective than doing a long 40+ minute exercise.
When I combine daily yoga and walking with weekly HIIT and weightlifting, I feel high levels of energy and focus.
3) Sleep!! I should have lead with this, but reformatting is a pain! I got my Oura ring about two weeks ago. I’ve been hacking my life to get more deep and REM sleep. I’ve learned a ton about sleep. Deep sleep is when the body repairs the physical damage that we did to it during the day. If I did a big weight lifting workout or a hard HIIT I need to make sure I get over 1 hour of deep sleep. REM sleep is where my body repairs my brain. This is where it cleans up the old neurons and makes new memories. Since I am constantly learning new things, I need to make sure I get over 1.5 hours of REM sleep.
When I get good sleep my energy is awesome and I am ready for a challenging day.
4) Learning fun things. My final fountainhead is random learnings. I love audio books, podcasts, and YouTube. I try to find something that I don’t know about or follow a few favorite folks who broaden my mind. Here’s some content creators I’ve been enjoying lately:
David Asprey- I love learning about diet and science. I am a total fan girl and have read most of his books.
Seth Godin- His book Linchpin shaped my career: I realized that I give a gift to all of my customers.
The Dark Horse Podcast - This is the only politics I can handle. I like their scientific way of breaking down issues and examining them.
Personality Hacker - Antonia and Joel introduced me to Myers Briggs, Enneagram and Spiral Dynamics. They are so fun to listen to.
Tom Bilyeu - Tom is a recent addition. He has so many episodes on sleep!
I’ve spent many many years not even knowing there was a fountainhead! But now I prioritize visiting the fountainhead. It gives me the energy to keep doing what I am doing and feeling awesome. I hope you enjoyed this post. Please share your fountainhead with me on LinkedIN or Facebook.
