Make Your Energy Count

One thing you have to make count is the energy you have available each day. There is only so much energy to go around. And the older you get, the less you have available. Energy is that capacity which enables work to be done, from moving to thinking. Every form of work requires some form of energy to empower it.

Science teaches that matter and energy can neither be created nor destroyed, but only transferred from one form to another. And the second law of thermodynamics holds that all things move toward entropy and chaos. Everything eventually runs down and out, until all the energy is expended and that final “equilibrium” is reached which we call death.

Our bodies need multiple injections of food daily to furnish caloric energy to live and work in the world. Our minds need the sustained stimulation of people and ideas to nourish and enrich. Our souls require the sustenance of personal meaning, purpose and love relationships to guide and sustain.

I remember a clergy conference where I had a significant insight into the interplay between belief and energy. Where there is belief, there is energy; where there is energy, there is belief. Belief unlocks human energy, and maybe something more, something beyond yet around us. Call it the energy of Life itself, the “elan vital” of the cosmos.

If belief releases available energy, unbelief locks it up. Depression is grounded on unbelief. You cease to believe in a tomorrow worth waiting for and working toward; you cease to believe in the possibilities of greener pastures of peace and plenty. Unbelief invites in hopelessness, helplessness and despair, draining your soul of its finite fuel.

As it takes more energy to frown than to smile, so it takes more energy not to believe than to believe. Unbelief saps the body of energy as intensely as belief floods energy into it. Energy drain leads to constant fatigue.

What is called “burn-out” originates in and is sustained by unbelief: unbelief in what you are doing, unbelief in the possibility of good results, unbelief in yourself and your impending success – which can be yours only through perseverance.

No good but only bad comes from unbelief. While the depth and constancy of your faith may vary from day to day, no good comes from unbelief. Quite the opposite: from unbelief comes self-defeat, sloth and cynicism. Unbelief is as self-perpetuating as belief. It is your choice whether to believe or not to belief; you hold your life satisfaction in the balance.

Dr. Robert Schuller, that great proponent of “possibility thinking,” said at this same clergy conference that if you can believe it, you can do it. Conversely, if you cannot believe it, you won’t even try to do it.

Shuller also said that he had just sent his autobiography to his publisher. He said the first sentence of the manuscript, which sets the context for all that follows, is this: “You can go anywhere from nowhere.” His own life attests to that. All it takes is belief and perseverance.

Success is follow-through. Those who succeed are those who work a little harder, a little longer, who maintain a positive attitude, who make real what they first dream, then believe, then do, with the energy belief generates.