#014: The Charging Pad

Prioritizing the REAL you in the new year and beyond.

intro

I’m not usually one for small talk.

If you throw an innocuous "what have you been up to?" in my direction, you might wanna get comfortable.

A family friend recently asked me this crazy question as they stood at the fridge, rearranging leftovers and putting away a tub of yogurt. They paused, one hand still on the fridge door, perhaps expecting a glib "not much!"

I started telling them about my full-time job. That I had a very promising feeling about the team, but I also had the sense I was about to be put to work, which was weirdly thrilling. Yes, I was still coaching fitness classes and still writing this newsletter, but there was this new personal project I'm having crazy feelings about, and I really, really needed to act on it. Also, staying engaged in an entrepreneurial community that’s been fueling my sense of purpose felt non-negotiable.

With each thing I rattled off, the vibe felt foreign, like I was play-acting someone bordering mania.

I’ve never been one to "juggle" life or do a bunch of stuff for the sake of it. The idea of stretching myself thin (still) is my personal hell.

Yet here I am, balancing more than I'd ever, ever intentionally want, and I feel...okay. Not perfect, not without moments of doubt, but far more calm about it than I’d imagined. Even kind of excited.

It made me wonder how this shift happened – why a reality that would’ve totally rocked me a year ago feels significantly more manageable.

As I sat with this question, an image started to take shape.

the plate

A plate, with you standing right at the center.

At the center, you are in your full power. You feel alive, energized, and connected.

The center is your charging pad.

Outside the center are the different areas and activities in your life: work, family, friends, hobbies, projects, health, self-care, etc.

There's only so much space in this plate – only so many hours in a day. This time available to you is the real limit to your capacity.

Most of us never reach the real limit though. There's an obstacle that stops us well before that – our energy.

What drains our energy isn’t just the number of tasks on the plate. It’s stepping off that charging pad to tend to them. The decision to step off disconnects us from ourselves, our intrinsic power source.

Why do we step off? The common belief that we need to be something different than who we naturally are in order to belong, be accepted, loved, praised, etc. Deep down we believe we're not enough or we're too much of something that is "bad." (Opposite sides of the same coin.)

On a physiological level, it's fear-driven.

We step off because our head says, "Your baseline is not good enough. You gotta be something different to be okay." Our body, full of tension, nods and agrees.

So we run laps around our plate, putting on personas and performances to pursue and maintain each little area of our life. We compensate, fix, prove, overextend, overthink, reshape ourselves to fit the mold our minds told us will keep us good and safe.

Battery drain.

We become more and more estranged from our power source.

the mindset shift

What if we never left the charging pad?

Our power, this amorphous electrical energy that runs through us, is the only real thing that we're capable of experiencing. What if we honored it by prioritizing it?

Prioritizing the REAL self means:

• Consistently prioritizing your inner peace over external outcomes (unconditional inner peace can be trained, while chasing external outcomes is a losing game)

• Choosing the present moment over mental chatter (recognizing that things like overthinking, self-doubt, shame are a total waste of energy)

• Setting boundaries with people and situations that simply don't align

• Practicing self-compassion at every bump and turn of your growth (especially when you think you don't "deserve" it)

• Delighting in your authentic expression as if you were a child

This business of stepping back on the charging pad and staying there is both electrifying and terrifying.

You'll notice that tasks, relationships, and mundane stuff will begin energizing you instead of depleting you.

The funny irony here is you end up being able to have a greater impact by staying on the charging pad rather than contorting your nature to manage the things on your plate. By anchoring yourself at the center, everything flows outward with ease, love, and coherence.

Yes, there’s a risk that some things won’t fit anymore. But what’s left—and what replaces what's gone—will align so profoundly with who you are that you'll be grateful for how it unfolds.

Everything on your plate eventually fades anyway.

When our authentic self becomes the organizing force of our life, the stuff we're doing, the "content" so to speak, becomes way less important.

The reason most of us have this pleading need to be in the "right" place, surrounded by the "right" people, do and have the "right" things is to feel present and alive.

Now we just are.

What makes anyone the master of their universe isn't the color and size of the random objects around them—it’s the choice to remain in the seat, the center of one's orbit.

From there, everything flows.

Trust in yourself above everything else,

Silvi