Do you feel like your life is growing or shrinking?
Do you feel like the activities you do give you energy or drain it?
Dr. Jason Ong posits that it is important to keep an inventory of these activities. In an article he wrote (click here), he states that we can create a more meaningful life by tracking and comparing how our activities affect us.
Here's how we do it:
First, pick any day of the week and loosely keep track of all of the activities you did, large or small. It doesn't have to be every minute, just a good picture of what your day looks like.
Second, now that we have this list, go ahead and mark NURTURING or DEPLETING next to each activity. A nurturing activity is something that you feel more energized after you complete it. A depleting activity is something that you feel drained when you're done.
Third, once every activity has a nurturing or depleting next to it, it's time to tally up the score. Count up the number of nurturing activities you have. Then count up the number of depleting activities you have. This will help to create your ratio, Nurturing:Depleting or N:D.
What does your ratio look like? If you have more depleting activities than nurturing, we want to aim to either decrease those depleting activities, raise our nurturing activities, or both!
If you're feeling drained at the end of the day, take a few minutes to do this exercise and see what your nurturing to depleting ratio is. If it's not headed in the direction you want, simply take some mindful steps to increase your nurturing activities.
What are some of your favorite nurturing activities?
I help increase nurturing activities.