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So it happened again didn’t it? Despite all of the lessons you’ve learned, hundreds of hours of YouTube videos, Podcasts, and self-help books, you still let someone through your front door that sucked the life out of you and now that that person has found your magical teat to suckle off of, you can’t get rid of them.
You’re left drained, your eyes feel heavy, and you need to do a reset to get your energy back. If you don’t properly recharge or cleanse, you’ll end up becoming what you hate by being a jerk to your loved ones in an attempt to steal their energy to replenish your own. It becomes this vicious cycle – someone has taken your energy and now you’re subconsciously trying to take someone else’s. No wonder people like lawyers end up getting divorced so much – they probably do emotional drive by’s on their spouses on a daily basis. if you wonder why you need so much alone time, then this is why – because you are trying to protect yourself from further emotional turbulence and you need this time to heal.
In any event I want to use this episode to talk about ways in which to recharge your batteries and reset your mood and essentially cleanse the toxic energies that you have absorbed. What will be different though, is that as the modern-day hippy that I am, I don’t really believe in all of these gem-Stones that you have to rub all over your balls. I also don’t believe in planets aligning in order to dictate your life such as I don’t think you have to wait for Mercury to be in line with your anus before you can help yourself. I also don’t think you need to risk burning your house down by burning incense and sage thereby setting off the fire alarms sprinklers and making things smell funky for your neighbors – something especially true if you live in an apartment complex. The reason I do not believe in all those things is because those are all externalities and I truly do not believe that you need external material objects in order to heal yourself. Because once you start relying on these external things then what happens when you don’t have access to them? For example I live in Los Angeles and I’m pretty sure if I go to Trader Joe’s or Ralph’s or Walmart I can’t just find Sage so I can burn it. Does this mean I have to run around town looking for sage or perhaps some sort of particular Quartz stone before I can begin the healing? And what if there is a worldwide shortage of Sage – does this mean I can’t heal myself? Nope, of course not. The power to heal and cleanse oneself is within our self.
So here are some ways that I have found effective to help myself recharge my batteries. Hopefully you find some use in them.
2. Make sure to give yourself some alone time everyday especially on a day when someone has taken your energy from you.
If you live with a roommate or you live with your parents or are married or whatever, then you may not have your own little cave to spend some time outside of the house where you can be alone. Especially in a big city like Los Angeles, it can sometimes be difficult because no matter where you go there are people around. But despite the crowds and big cities there are usually some places you can go to find some space. A good place to do this might be a city park where you can sit on a bench and have at least a little bit of room with no one that knows you around. Another place to get some alone time could be a public library. While people may be there, at least they’re quietly doing their own thing which creates a very pleasant and healing environment. I always love the smell of libraries.
While it is important for you to be alone, I think it’s even more important that you’re at least away from people that you know including friends and family. At least when you’re alone in a park or library then you’re not around people that can try to use you as a conduit for them to use you to dump their dark energy. The more you can put yourself in an anonymous place, the better. When I’ve had a tough day with emotional terrorists giving me their junk it never ceases to amaze me how I can literally feel my body relaxing and detoxifying when I finally get to be alone in my man cave with no one to talk to me. It’s amazing how tense the body can get without realizing because it happens so gradually.
For me, after feeling the anxiety and stress in my chest, when I go to my man-cave or dungeon and lie down, I can feel the negativity evaporating. The pressure and weight I feel on my chest literally starts evaporating….I can breath easier, my mind stops racing with negative thoughts or dwelling on nonsense. Find your special place in your house, or even buried away in the corner of some coffee shop. And oh yeah – turn off the ringer to your cell phone so no incoming calls or text messages disturb you.
2. Listen to music
Start playing your favorite songs. I love pop duet ballads and top 40 pop. I’ve especially found Coldplay songs quite relaxing and recently Alan Walker’s songs lift me up. From Coldplay, I love Everglow, Hypnotized, and Fly On as all of those songs bring me back down and bring me memories and energies which help push out the negative stuff. Alan Walker’s songs like Alone, On My WAy, and Darkside always lift me up because they make me feel like I’m on one of my travel adventures in some remote part of the world where I’m anonymous and untouchable. Another one that is not pop-music but very soothing is by Deva Premal called Aat Guray Namay. Check out the website for some of these songs as perhaps they’ll strike a chord with you as well. Regardless, music is subject so play music that you know will sooth your soul and bring back good memories, no matter how old. Doing this will help distract your mind from whatever toxic shit you’ve been ruminating about and put some good vibrations into your mind and body.
3. Read a novel.
READ?! No one reads anymore, right? Of course they do and if you don’t, then try it. I stopped reading fiction novels for years, but after a trip to Bali last year, I stumbled upon a novel called “The Hard Way”, by Lee Child. It’s about a character named Jack Reacher, which you may have heard about since they made a couple of movies based off of the character with Tom Cruise playing Jack Reacher. Anyway, amazing books and a year later I think I’ve read almost 15 of them. They suck you in. The point of reading these fiction books is they stimulate your imagination which is important because that means they distract you and make you use other parts of your brain instead of dwelling on whatever it is that is making you feel low-energy.
It takes some getting used to if you haven’t read in awhile since a lot of us have turned to peering at our cell phones for an instant fix of reading and maybe have ADD when it comes to having to read an entire story. Try it though. And seriously if it’s that much of a struggle, get one of these audio books and listen to the story at night before going to bed.
Hell for that matter, turn on a podcast which is a mystery or a story – there are plenty of them. I’m not going to go so far as to start binge watching Netflix series because frankly I don’t think they’re as good for mental stimulation as reading a book or listening to a story since you’re not triggering your imagination as much since the visuals are already provided for you. Listening to a story on a podcast or audio book is a great way to have your brain think about other things and cleanse the crap your mind has accumulated. You start thinking about other things and if you’re listening to a mystery, it starts making your brain begin to try and figure out the mystery. Try it!
Although not necessarily a mystery, a podcast I highly recommend is called Serial which is a real story about a high school kid that got thrown in jail for the murder of his ex-girlfriend. It became the most-listened to podcast in history and the story within garnered national headlines and prompted the legal system to reconsider the case and potentially get the accused out of jail. To date, it was the most addictive thing I have ever listened to. Give it a shot.
4. Go for a walk
You may have heard this as one of the most common things to do to cleanse you of bad energy, but take a walk. Many pundits talk about taking a walk in nature, like taking a hike. Here in Los Angeles there are surprisingly tonnes of hiking trails in the hills and mountains. I say surprisingly because this is such a dense city, you wouldn’t think that there was anywhere where you would find nature in what’s otherwise a concrete jungle, but you would be very wrong. Regardless of where you live, there are usually options and if you have to drive a bit to get there, so be it. Walking in a forest is more special because you absorb better air and good energy from the plants and trees around you. It may sound hokey but it’s real. I always remember secluding myself in a beautiful villa in an unpopulated part of Ubud, Bali a little over a year ago. My place was at the back of a rice field, at the edge of a small cliff facing a jungle. There was literally nothing around. I swear I had my psychic superpowers return to me in just a couple of days of being there. My memory sharpened and I was able to perceive things that I had stopped perceiving. For example, one day I had a feeling my Mom had fallen down and no one was there at the house. My Mom had NEVER fallen down before and had no health issues. Sure enough the next day I called her and she told me she had fallen.
I’m not telling everyone to fly to Bali. But if you can’t find a forest, then go to a local park. If you’re not able to even go to a local park, I’ve even found just taking a walk outside of your house or office can make a huge difference. I’m always amazed at the things I notice when I take a walk that I don’t notice when I’m in my car driving by the same places. Just get outside. Even take a walk around the block for 10 minutes. A friend of mine was always stressed at work. She would work long hours in a pressured environment for weeks and months on end. I found out that she didn’t even get up from her desk for lunch – she would literally eat lunch at her desk, meaning she would be sitting down for hours and hours in the same place. I urged her to get up and go somewhere for lunch. Take a 15 minute break and go to across the street to Dunkin Donuts for a French honey cruller. Just break up your day and get outside! She started doing it and immediately within the first few days her stress levels went from 100 down to about 60. Cleansing is about distracting the mind and finding energy from the outside.
5. Steal it from someone else.
Yup, you heard that right. If you need a cleanse, that means someone in your day stole it from you at some point. I guess this isn’t really cleansing so much as it is taking back what’s rightfully yours, but I thought I would throw it in this podcast since as empaths we tend to run away, hide, and curl up into the fetal position if someone attacks us.
Why not steal the energy back? One caveat though: AVOID doing an emotional drive-by on a loved one or innocent bystander because then you become just as bad as the emotional terrorist or ET as I like to call them. Instead, why not be a dick right back to the person that stole your energy? Avoid getting into a back-and-forth fight – it’s more about standing up to that person and letting them know that you won’t tolerate their behavior. It does wonders. I’m still working on how to do this and it won’t work every time, but I’ll give you a recent example.
I had a client come in for a consultation for a bankruptcy. Right away I could tell his energy was one that was very stressed. Unlike most people, surprisingly, those needing to file bankruptcy feel like crap, but generally are pleasant. This guy however was really taking it badly even though in reality the portrait of his situation was not that bad compared to most. I requested some very simple document from him that I would need in order to do his case. Not long after, he began calling multiple times a day and emailing, as though the voicemails he was leaving weren’t enough. He wasn’t even calling with any questions, but instead just to give me useless updates on his own status of collecting documents. For those of you out there that have never used a lawyer – you don’t need to call us to tell us what you had for breakfast. This kind of behavior is why many lawyers charge hourly fees – not so much because of the money but to mitigate clients from abusing our time.
I’ll fast forward a bit, but when it came time for him to come in again, actually sign the retainer and pay me to actually start his case and represent him, he began throwing a fit when I asked him for documents that he did not bring (even though I had told him various times that I needed them). He did an emotional drive-by on me, complaining about how ridiculous this process is and wondering why I hadn’t finished his case yet. Hey dumb-ass, you haven’t even paid me, nor have you given me your documents, so how the F am I supposed to do your case? By psychically knowing your personal information?
Anyway, I could feel the tension. He slammed the folder I gave him closed and began walking out of my office saying he would have to come back to get all of these ridiculous documents. The old me would have ate his energy and been agitated. And trust me, with his energy and behavior, I did eat some. But I did something different. First, I made it clear that I can’t keep meeting him for free – sign the retainer, pay me, and you can bring back the deficient documents later. He didn’t have any issue with that, but I still felt unsettled and I started to stew internally about what a dick this guy was and my mind started going down a bad path.
So here’s what I did: a couple of hours later I called him. I said John, I didn’t like my meeting with you earlier today. I’m the guy helping you, and you’re attacking me as though I’m the one that put you in this situation. I can put up with a difficult situation as I realize that’s part of the job, but in reality if you’re going to be borderline accusatory with me, and spew such negative energy, then I’m not the lawyer for you. You made it seem like I gave you bad instructions when in fact I didn’t. I used to put up with bad behavior from clients but I don’t anymore because I’ve grown up a lot over the years and I’m an empath so I have no interest in absorbing negative energy because it’s just going to make me resent you and not want to help you, which is the opposite of the type of relationship I need to have with my clients. So if it’s going to be like pulling teeth and arm-wrestling you for very simple documents and information requests, then you should come back to my office and pick up your check and find someone else.
BAM. THERE. I gave him his energy back. And guess what happened? He spent the next five minutes apologizing, wondering how he became this way and became the client from hell, attacking the very guy he needed help from. He promised he would behave better and said he would show it through his actions. It got better: the next day he went to my office and even though my paralegal hadn’t even interacted with him, he personally approached her when I wasn’t even there and apologized to her for being such an asshole.
That day when I made the call to him to tell him all of this, I immediately felt 100% better. I was starting to stew a little bit since I had absorbed his negative energy, and was starting to feel negative. Instead of letting it perpetuate and going to bed with it, I called him and gave it right back to him. And you know what? IT FELT GREAT and I didn’t think about him for the rest of the day. I wonder how many fewer gray hairs I would have had I started practicing this earlier on in life. Better late than never. I suggest when someone does this to you, try it. Be completely honest and just tell them to F off in the nicest of ways, setting limits.
Be really careful here. I think a lot of people in high pressure jobs like medicine and law end up getting divorces and have terrible familial relationships because they unleash the bad energy they’ve absorbed upon their loved ones when they get home – whether that’s upon their husbands, wives, or even children. This can be the start of how abusive relationships form. People need an outlet so try to give that negative energy somewhere and to someone else, whoever is around that they know won’t push back. We often do it to our loved-ones because they don’t push back. Monitor yourself to make sure you’re not doing drive-bys on your loved ones and messing up the relationships that matter meanwhile preserving the toxic ones at work or wherever, where the negative energy is emanating.
6. Meditate
You’ll hear this over and over and over. I am still struggling to meditate although I’ve been trying for the last couple of years. I think just the act of trying is a good enough start. There are plenty of apps you can download on your phone such as Simple Habit and Headspace which will give you a guided meditation and perhaps make the process easier since it puts you on a schedule. While I haven’t used Headspace much, I do use Simple Habit and what I like about that one is that you can choose the guided meditation based on the kind of issue you’re experiencing, such as stress, anxiety, depression, or if you just had a hard day at the office.
I think the problem I have had with meditating is that when things are going well, I stop doing it. I can find the time to check Facebook twenty times a day, or browse the internet for nonsense for 20 minutes, but I find an excuse not to invest 5 minutes of time in a guided meditation. There’s a quote I once read that stuck with me: if you’re so busy that you don’t have even 20 minutes to meditate, then meditate for an hour.
Try it!
CONCLUSION
There are lots of other things you can do to cleanse and replenish your energy. If you have your own technique that you’d like to share, send me a message and I’ll be happy to include it in a future episode. I suggest finding something that works for you as everything doesn’t work for everybody. What is even more important though is that you do this regularly, even daily so that you keep your cup full. Often we get so caught up in life that we don’t realize that have anything left unless it’s too late. We end up lashing out at everyone around us, and getting sick very easily because we’re under so much stress.
If you start cleansing and make it part of a daily routine, it will help you to keep shining. While I don’t believe that you need to stick Mars in your anus to feel good or burn your house down with sage, at the end of the day, do what works. Everything is worth a shot, but just like you should protect your time, so should you also protect your energy. At the end of every day, think about how you feel, and take action to regenerate so that your cup is brimming at the start of every day and hopefully even by the end of each day.