When our phone battery is low, and we’re nowhere near a charger, we’ve got strategies to conserve power. Maybe we become more frugal in how we use the phone, choose lower power apps, or switch on low power mode.
But when our own body battery is low, we often to the opposite. Push through, push harder, push ourselves to exhaustion. And in the helping sector, the work is never done. It’s a recipe for unsustainable effort.
It helps to know what our low power mode looks like so it’s easier to activate when we’re too tired to think straight. We can prioritise using the skills that take less effort, the strengths we can fall back on, the clarity of must do vs could do.
We need to know how and where we can recharge and what tops up us along the way. And when we are more refreshed again, we can reflect on what was chewing up our energy so fast in the first place and find ways to reduce the drain.
Helen Mentha 