I’ve had several people comment lately on the amount of energy I seem to have.  “How do you wake up so cheerful and energetic?” one recently asked after a late night.

If you knew me in my younger years, you probably just had a good laugh.  Me?  Cheerful and energetic in the morning?  All through high school, my poor brother had to practically drag me out of the bed and down the stairs every day.  I would say “kicking and screaming,” but that would have required too much effort.  I was more like dead weight.  And not even my best friends bothered trying to talk to me until lunchtime because I was so obnoxiously cranky.

But as an adult, and especially in the last 9 months, I’ve truly had a resurgence of energy like nothing I’ve ever experienced before.  I honestly do wake up ready.  Ready to take on the world and win.  It’s awesome and amazing and I never want to go back to that feeling I used to have.

And since I’ve been asked how I got here, I will answer.

It isn’t magic.  It’s about taking care of yourself.  Diet, exercise — you know the drill.  But rather than leave it at that annoying vagueness, I will give you some of my best tips for actually having more energy.  I don’t claim to be an expert (in anything, really), but I will share what works for me.

1. Move.  A lot.  The more you move, the more energy you will have.  Inertia is a powerful mf’er, and the energy it takes to GET going is a lot more than the energy it takes to KEEP going.  Don’t consolidate all your energy expenditure into one 30-60 minute burst, either.  Move as much as you can all day long.  Sweep the floor.  Carry out the trash, run the towels your husband took to the garage to use for who only knows what back up to the laundry room.  You will have more energy to do the next thing coming off the last thing than from a full stop.  So get up and get out.

2. Stop with the gluten and dairy.  No one that eats gluten and dairy wants to read this part.  I didn’t want to read it, either.  Heck, part of me doesn’t even want to write it.  But it’s one of the biggest contributing factors to my increase in energy.  I’m not perfect about the rest of the paleo lifestyle and indulge in well-timed treats (chips and salsa what?) but I’m incredibly strict about gluten and dairy.  I feel it every time I stray from that.  I honestly believe that if you’re eating gluten and dairy, it’s weighing you down.  So stop.

3. Feed your Passion.  And when I say passion, I don’t mean “the one single thing that you obsess about.”  I mean your passionate nature.  Feed the part of your soul that feels those niggling feelings of butterflies or sparkles out of your eyes when you think about something.  Feed it with something every day.  It can be a new project that gets your creative juices flowing, a trip you have planned, an upcoming date.  It almost doesn’t matter what, just find things regularly that make you grin like an idiot or forget where you are and purposely think about them every day.

4. Surround yourself with people who laugh. And Laugh.  Laughter is better than sleep when it comes to replenishing your energy.  Spend all night laughing – deep belly laughing – and tell me you don’t have more energy the next day than if you’d just come home, felt blah, and went to sleep.  If you don’t believe me, you’ve never spent all night laughing with abandon.  Do it.

5. Achieve and celebrate goals.  The goal itself is not the important part of this one — it’s the sense of achievement that will turn into eventually waking up knowing – knowing – that whatever you set your mind to today, you will get done.  Because you can.  Because you’re you.  That feeling of accomplishment and success is more addicting than crack (ok, speculating on that one) and before you know it, you’ll get a second wind or burst of energy when you buckle down to tackle something.  A workout. A book.  A project.  Heck, a load of laundry.  Whatever it is that before, you would have rolled over and said “eh, tomorrow” — instead, you’ll find the energy to do that one more thing.   Celebrate every victory.

and lastly…

6. Prioritize.  Taking care of yourself is not a luxury, it’s a survival skill.  You will have to choose every day between things that feed your energy or drain your energy.   If you have a choice between taking one more meeting at the end of the day or making it to the spin class you love, choose carefully.  Remember that no matter which choice you make, it IS a choice, and it WILL set a pattern.  You’re not a bad mother or employee or friend if you take care of yourself.  You’ll actually be a BETTER mother, employee and friend.  You will have more to offer and be able to do more with less.  It’s just a reality.   So make sacrifices, but not always at the expense of your health and mental state.

Again – as I said at the beginning – I’m no expert.  And I’m not perfect at even ONE of these things, either.  I can only speak from my own experiences and my own perspective.  But hopefully if you’ve been feeling weighed down and tired from life, something here will spark a chord and help put a spring back in your step.

Because life is too short to live in half-measures.  #noexcusesplaylikeachamp