and hello to you and welcome to the Richard Nichols podcast, the Personal Development

podcast series that's here to help inspire, educate and motivate you to be the best you can be.

I'm psychotherapist Richard Nichols, and this is episode 189. It's titled Energy Levels.

And if you're ready, we'll start the show.

Hey, pod fans, it's a new month, and so with it, a new podcast episode plops into your ears one way or another. Do remember, though, if you like what I do and you'd like it, a new podcast episode plops into your ears one way or another. Do remember, though,

if you like what I do and you'd like to hear more from me, why not become a patron at patreon.com?

It's about a five for a month and you get new episodes every single Monday morning, which reminds me,

hello, new patrons. It's shout out time. Who joined last

month? Let's have a look at the list. We have. Seth, Venetia, Crystal, Nick, Veronica, Katie, Becker, Sarah, Rachel, Gary, and someone who mysteriously called themselves Mrs. P.

Hello to you. And thank you all very much indeed.

We are well on our way to achieving our next financial goal,

which will enable us to fund counselling for somebody else for another person, which is amazing.

So thank you all for showing the love.

It felt like a big risk back in January last year to start making patron-only content,

paid-for-only content. But each episode is a lot of hard work and so many to take time off to

do this. And I've got bills to pay and all the enthusiasm in the world doesn't pay bills.

And if there's one thing to sap enthusiasm, it's making content that no one cares about or listens

to, which is always, though, how these things start, isn't it? It has to start there. And our enthusiasm,

our energy, it needs to be controlled a little bit. Like I said the other month in the How to Feel Alive episode, with some enthusiasm,

we can go from dragging our feet and saying how tired we are to suddenly being up, up and away.

But whether it's about scripting a podcast episode or going for a run, whatever it is,

it's really easy to say to ourselves, I don't feel

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