A quick Exercise may just help you when energy is low

The Executive Training Institute of South Africa (Etisa) brings you a quick exercise for when you urgently need that boost of energy.

According to Yusuf Essack, Learning and Development Specialist for Etisa, this is a quick exercise you can perform when you suddenly find yourself feeling negative and critical about yourself, and nothing seems to be working.

He adds that if you practice this on a regular basis, it will stop the negative images immediately, and keep them from spiraling out of control into a permanent condition.

“First, begin by visualizing yourself as if you were standing or sitting outside yourself. As if you were right next to yourself, watching as you sit at the computer,” says Yusuf.

“In order for this to work, make it detailed – see the color of the shirt you’re wearing, the color of your hair, your posture and the look on your face.

“Ignore any flaws in yourself that you might normally see. Relax and feel serene as you look at yourself.”

Play with the image a bit, perhaps putting a soundtrack of a song you like in the background – in your mind, that is, maybe changing some of the colors.

“Make it a very pleasant scene. See yourself quietly smiling. Only see your perceived positive traits, and ignore the negative ones.

Then, go ahead and exaggerate your positive side.

“In daily life, you likely find flaws in yourself and magnify them out of all proportion in your head. Now do the same thing with your positive traits. Blow them out of all proportion and focus on them. Just go with the flow and play with the image until you are as good as it gets,” says Yusuf.

“Now compare your current picture of yourself with the first image you made at the beginning of this exercise. Make the final image more powerful. What are the differences in the way you are feeling now, compared to when you started?”

He adds that you should keep the new, final image as the one you would like to see yourself as.

Yusuf encourages people to practice and play around with this exercise whenever they get the chance, or whenever they are feeling especially heavy and want to lighten up a bit.

“It is a simple but useful way to make yourself feel better,” says Yusuf.

“We build up an arsenal of often-unconscious ways of reacting to certain situations in our lives, and often those reactions have become outmoded and unproductive. If we identify and become conscious of those unproductive reactions, we can choose to change them, thereby removing roadblocks to our progress in creating the lives we really want,” Yusuf concludes.

Etisa is opening a campus in Randfontein in January 2014, and will provide regular articles with regard to many different issues that everyday people face, and how to overcome these.