Hi lovelies,

Deep down, we all have some idea of just what our “dream life” would look like, if we could just click our fingers and have whatever we wanted materialise front of us at once.

For some people, a dream life would mean a large house in the countryside, regular nature walks, and less involvement in the everyday rat race that seems to take up so much of the attention of society at large.

For other people, a dream life would be more or less the opposite; a life spent living in a penthouse apartment in the city, with a high-powered and energetic career, and all sorts of active nightlife activities to participate in.

One thing is for sure, though: getting the life of your dreams will always inevitably require insight, planning, goal setting, and work. In other words, getting the life of your dreams requires you to have, and expend, a good deal of energy.

Although we don’t often think about it that way, our own personal energy stores are among our most valuable resources. For someone who is chronically fatigued, exhausted, and overworked, the possibilities for exploring any ambitious goals rapidly diminish, and life becomes just a day-to-day cycle of keeping things ticking along as they are.

While chronic fatigue isn’t something that affects everyone, just about all of us could benefit from having some ways of increasing our energy levels, in the pursuit of our dream lives.

Here are a few tips for finding the energy to live the life of your dreams.

Make sure that you address any nutrient deficiencies you may be experiencing
Perhaps the first cause of major fatigue and loss of energy, is nutrient deficiencies.

In developed countries, in this day and age, it might seem strange to talk about nutrient deficiencies. After all, food is everywhere, most people aren’t starving, and on the contrary, obesity is a major and growing epidemic.

There’s a difference, though, between getting plenty of calories in, and getting all the right vitamins and minerals. In fact, deficiencies in things such as vitamin D, and magnesium, are extremely common, with some estimates suggesting that the majority of people are actually deficient in these, and other, nutrients.

The thing is, nutritional deficiencies can ruin your health, your well-being, and your energy levels to an extreme degree – and what’s more, you may not know, for years, that you actually have those deficiencies at all.

Dr Rhonda Patrick is a strong advocate for taking vitamin and mineral supplements, regardless of what your diet looks like. Doing this, in addition to eating balanced meals, might give you a major boost to your energy that you didn’t even know was possible.

Remove yourself from painful situations, and take proactive steps to alleviate chronic pain
It follows reason that, if you are dealing with chronic pain, your energy levels will tend to be dramatically lower.

Ongoing pain takes a serious toll on the body and the mind. It saps motivation, makes optimism and positivity very difficult, and also ensures that stress hormone levels are chronically elevated and that the body’s normal processes – including digestion and immune function – are unable to operate in the way they should.

Sometimes, dealing with chronic pain will mean using dry herb vaporizers and an appropriate range of supplements. At other times, it will mean undergoing a medical procedure that you’ve been putting off. Sometimes, it will mean simply removing yourself from a harmful situation, or from a set of self-destructive habits that you have fallen into.

The better able you are to remove yourself from painful situations, and to take proactive steps to alleviate chronic pain, the likelier you will be to experience a significant boost your energy levels.

Start giving sleep the respect it deserves
For one reason or another, it’s quite common for people to treat sleep as some kind of luxury that they can safely make do without when it comes to finding more time for work, or even just for evening entertainment.

Sleep, though, is actually anything but a luxury. It’s a vital necessity that your body needs in order to function properly.

Going without sleep for long enough will kill you. Meanwhile, chronic sleep deprivation – even just  in terms of getting a couple of hours less per night than you need – will ruin your health in all sorts of ways, including disrupting your blood sugar regulation, creating a chronic stress response in the body, reducing mental function, increasing the likelihood of cancers, weakening the immune system, and more.

If you want more energy in your life, it might be that what you really need to do is to start getting more sleep every night.

If getting out of bed every morning is a struggle, that’s a sign that you aren’t getting the restful sleep that you need, in the amounts that you need.

Tidy up and organise your home, and pay proper attention to your personal presentation
It’s just difficult to feel energetic and motivated to do much of anything, if your home is totally topsy-turvy, cluttered, and generally disorganised.

A messy home environment always contributes to feelings of apathy. You know that you have a lot of different chores to get done around the home, but the messier everything gets, the more reluctant you are to actually set things in order.

Among other things, this can leave a lot of your emotional and psychological energy tied up in the state of your home, and can make it difficult to even justifying doing much of anything else. “Why should I start spending time and energy on that project, if I haven’t even tidied up the house yet?”

In a similar way, the state of your personal presentation can significantly influence how you feel, and how energetic you are likely to be.

To put it simply; when you dress in a way that makes you feel good about yourself, you will just be much more likely to actually feel like getting things done, in general.

Give yourself a good reason to get out of bed each morning – set yourself goals that genuinely motivate you
Energy isn’t all physical – a good deal of it is also psychological, and is connected to your mindset about certain things.

As you can probably imagine, there aren’t very many people out there who are “energetic” about getting out of bed each morning, when they know that they will have to do all kinds of things that day that they absolutely hate.

On the other hand, people who are genuinely looking forward to what the day holds, are usually a good deal more energetic. Just think about kids on Christmas morning.

To give yourself a good reason to get out of bed each morning, set yourself goals that genuinely motivate you. Even if the day will contain unpleasant chores, you’re sure to feel a lot more driven if you know you’re working toward something meaningful.

Reward yourself for positive and productive acts
If you constantly try to bully yourself into doing things that you really don’t want to do, then, sooner or later, it stands to reason that your energy levels are going to falter pretty significantly.

Instead of doing that, try to motivate yourself to get things done, by rewarding yourself for positive and productive acts.

Next time you have a big project to get through, don’t just rely on sheer willpower and grit to get you through. Instead, motivate yourself by deciding that you will have a nice meal, or go out with friends, when it’s done.