Non Excess: How to Stop Burning Your Energy on Things That Do Not Make You Come Alive

I am an Olympic level overthinker. If there were a medal for it I would have swept the podium by now.

This Fourth of July I applied that skill to a single rib. Seven year vegetarian streak on the line. Barbecue sauce involved. The rib never got eaten. But it did teach me something about where my energy actually goes and why it matters.

Today we are talking about Brahmacharya, the fourth Yama in the ancient yogic tradition, and what non excess actually looks like in everyday life. Not just with food. With your time, your mental energy, your busyness, and the decisions you have been running laps around for no good reason.

Drawing on Deborah Adele's book The Yamas and Niyamas and a quote from Howard Thurman, this episode is an invitation to stop spending your energy on things that do not make you come alive so you actually have enough left for the things that do.

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Transcript

Non Excess: How to Stop Burning Your Energy on Things That Do Not Make You Come Alive | A Beautiful Fix

Nobody out overthinks me. Nobody. I just wanna be very clear about that. It's something I've just come to accept about myself. No one can overthink me. I once spent three days on a decision that took about four seconds to make. I have talked myself into things, out of things, and back into things again before I hop out of bed in the morning.

It is a gift. It's a terrible, exhausting, completely unproductive gift, and it turns out there's a name for what I do, and today we're talking about it. My overthinking is just one of the ways I've been practicing it wrong my whole life 

Welcome to A Beautiful Fix. I'm Tracy Hill. Each week we'll dive into the latest thought gem, recharging and reconnecting with what lights you up and makes you feel alive. Let's discover your next beautiful fix together.

Hey, real quick before we dive in, you're powerful, and sometimes you just need someone to remind you what's already in you. That's what human design does. It's the difference between guessing and knowing. So you can stop searching outside yourself and start trusting the answers within. I promise you they're there.

Grab your free chart at abeautifulfix.com, and when you're ready to go deeper, book a one-to-one session with me. All right. Let's get into the episode.

So today I wanna share the fourth yama, brahmacharya. Again, if you wanna know the three first yamas, please go check out those episodes.

But it simply translates as non-excess, and I wanna start with a story. So I have been a vegetarian for almost seven years. I can't really remember when it actually started because I didn't make a big deal out of it. I just kind of gradually slid into vegetarianism. I just slowly started to kind of crowd out meat in my diet.

And before I knew it, I was completely, um, eating a vegetarian diet, and I really haven't ever looked back. I haven't really missed it, and I knew that I made it when I could say no to bacon or to ribs, and that has held true until the Fourth of July There was so much food. I mean, we just had a spread, a little bit of everything, and I had eaten plenty.

I was full. I was comfortably, genuinely, like, just lean back and exhale kind of full. And then I saw the ribs. I wasn't even really hungry. There wasn't, like, a physical need, but something in my brain looked at those ribs and said, "You know what? Maybe, maybe just one." It had been seven years. Like, what, what is one rib?

So I pulled one out, and I put a ton of barbecue sauce on it, and I convinced myself I was doing it, and I sat down with it on my plate, and then I just sat there thinking about it, turning it over in my head, just thinking about the seven-year streak, the why now. I don't know what was making me think about this What does this even mean?

Am I actually even hungry or am I just doing this because it's right here in front of me? I sat with that rib for a while and then eventually I just put it down. I, I thought it through from every angle and I was not hungry. I was full. I don't know what had come over m- me but, I, I still don't. But man, I thought it through.

So this story, it's, it's just an example of an excess problem. You know? It's, specifically it's a mental excess problem. My brain just burning energy on something that my body already had an answer to, which is exactly what today is about. So brahmacharya is the fourth yama and it translates to non-excess.

So a lot of times when you hear non-excess you kind of think about, you know, the obvious stuff. Too much food, too much wine, too much screen time. And yes, that is a part of it, but going back to Deborah Dell's book, The Yamas and the Niyamas, she talks a- about, um, how we can sometimes find ourselves overdoing food or work or exercise or sleep and that excess, it's, it's a result of forgetting to be present with what we actually have.

She talks about how non-excess is not about non-enjoyment. It's actually about enjoyment in its fullest experience. See, when we are in the pleasure of something and not the addiction, that's when you're practicing brahmacharya. So again, it's not about doing less or wanting less, it's just an invitation to be kind of present with what you are doing, to feel it fully.

So instead of numbing out by just piling on more just because it's available, just knowing when enough is enough. So think the saying, less is more. Think about mindful eating, taking the time to really chew. I think you're supposed to chew our food like 50 times. I'd never do that. But taking the time to really appreciate what's in front of you.

Um, and then she also makes the observation about how we can just create all of this like crazy activity in our days just so that we can just feel important. Like we wear our busyness like it's a badge of honor and I have worn that badge. For years I wore it. My corporate career was basically a master class in excess for me.

I gave everything I had to work, my time, my energy, my health, my focus, all of it. Nothing was left over for anything else. And I call that dedication, but looking back, it was depletion. I was burning through far more than I was ever putting back in until eventually there was nothing left. So Ramacharya, it asks us to think of it differently, to ask a different question.

Um, not about how much you can give, but how much can you give while still having enough left to actually be alive? So you wanna eat, work, and sleep to the point of increased energy, but not to the point of collapse or to the point of being empty, to the point where you still have something left So another quick example of this is I, I need to tell you about my orange Tic Tac obsession.

So when I was a little girl, I used to love orange Tic Tacs. Like, that was kind of my thing. And I don't know, but somewhere along the line, I just kind of forgot about them. I just forgot they even existed. I didn't think they made them anymore until recently, a girlfriend reminded me that they do exist.

That was a couple of weeks ago, and, um, evil because now I'm back on that obsession. It's, it's exactly as strong as it ever was. Like, no time has passed, and as long as there are Tic Tacs rattling around in that container, there's no stopping me. There's no off switch. I do not need them. I'm not necessarily hungry.

One more never feels like a big deal until you look down and you realize you've had 47 in the span of, like, two minutes. That is excess in its purest and most ridiculous form. And I'm sharing all of this with you because I think sometimes we imagine that these ancient yogic principles are about a big, dramatic life change, but sometimes it's just the Tic Tacs.

Excess shows up everywhere: food, work, sleep, worry, mental chatter, scrolling, and it almost always starts with the same thing, just us not having a clear enough relationship with enough to know when to stop So there's a quote by Howard Thurman that I wanted to share with you. He was a theologian, a mystic, a philosopher.

He was one of the key spiritual mentors to Martin Luther King Jr. He was raised by his grandmother, who had been enslaved. He went on to become the first Black dean of chapel at a predominantly white university. And in 1944, he co-founded the first interracial interfaith church in the United States, and MLK carried his most famous book with him whenever he marched.

And Howard Thurman said this: "Don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive." That is what Brahmacharya means to me. It's not about wanting less and doing less and depriving yourself of things. It's about not spending your energy on things that do not make you come alive, so you actually have enough left for the things that do.

The rib was not gonna make me come alive. The Tic Tacs, they're honestly still under review. I do kind of come alive a little bit. But the three days I spent overthinking a decision my body already knew the answer to, definitely not. But this, these conversations, the curiosity that led you here today, that is exactly where the energy belongs.

So my invitation for you this week, I just want you to notice where your energy's actually going physically and mentally. The decisions that you are just running laps around, the busyness that you've been mistaking for purpose, the things you keep adding to your plate simply because they exist and you've not officially decided what to do about them yet.

Ask yourself one question: Is this making me come alive, or is this just excess?

So thank you for spending your time with me today, and until next time, keep getting high on life, one beautiful fix at a time.

Thanks for listening to A Beautiful Fix. If you enjoyed today's episode, be sure to subscribe and leave a quick review to help others find us. And if you'd like to share your own beautiful fix or join me as a guest, reach out any time at tracy@abeautifulfix.com. Looking forward to next time