Cultivate Compassion to Boost Your Energy

Do you know that one of the best-selling nutritional supplement categories is energy supplements? If you search for energy supplements on Amazon.com now, you will get over 20,000 items. Three years ago, I did the exact search and got 8,000, and I thought that was too many. It grew almost three times in three years. What does it tell you?

It tells me there is a shortage of physical energy, and many people have become dependent on energy supplements as a quick fix. I heard about people getting extremely rich by selling energy supplements. The market seems ever-expanding.

For example, everyone today knows Red Bull—the energy drink sold over twelve billion cans in 2023, almost two cans for every human. A can of Red Bull costs $0.9 to make but sells at $3 or more. The wholesale price is around $1.80. So they make nearly 20 times the profit.

Why do people lack energy? Can instant energy pills or drinks leave long-term damage down the line? They do, but people would rather risk their health for an instant energy boost. Some drink it for entertainment, and others for productivity.

Today, I would like to introduce a natural energy booster that doesn’t cost anything. It’s part of the Leadership Spirituality I have researched for decades.

Humans are composed of body, mind, and spirit. Our physical energy comes from healthy nutrition, mental energy from sound learning, and spiritual energy from proper devotion. When all three are well integrated, we have wholeness, which gives us the most energetic state without the Red Bull.

Conversely, three things drain our energy: eating wrong, learning wrong, or devoting wrong. Energy supplements cannot replace these mistakes. Supplements should be used as supplements but not as substitutes. Instead of reaching out for a quick fix, we should figure out what is draining our energy.

I’ve discovered that nurturing spiritual energy is crucial because no matter how well you eat or how smart you are, life without devotion is meaningless.

For example, what activity in life requires the most energy? Childbearing. Where do mothers get that amazing life-giving energy to bring a new life into the world? Love and compassion. Love is spiritual.

Some might want to say love is an emotion, but it’s part of the spirit. The Bible says the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. These are spiritual fruits, but they manifest as emotions. A healthy spirit produces healthy emotions.

If you are spiritually nourished, you will feel energetic even if you don’t have time to eat. We read in the Bible that there were times Jesus did not have time to eat because he was busy healing and helping people, yet he appeared energetic as if he had already eaten.

For example, when Jesus reached out to the Samaritan woman at the well while the disciples went into the city to buy food. The disciples returned, and the Bible says,

Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, “Rabbi, eat something.” But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” (Jn 4:31–32).

What food did Jesus eat? At the beginning of this story, Jesus was already tired after a long journey, but now he appeared nourished and satisfied without eating physical food. What did he eat that turned him from tired to triumphant? What’s his secret?

The context shows that the secret is love and compassion, but you might wonder how you can consume compassion as nutrition and how it can immediately reenergize an exhausted body. Love and compassion can make supermen and superwomen out of ordinary people.

In today’s scripture lesson, Jesus trained his disciples to become leaders and showed them how to become “energizer bunnies” because leaders on a mission sometimes may not have time to rest. We learn that even the disciples didn’t have time to eat but continued to work long hours energetically.

Today, we will explore compassion as an energy booster through today’s scripture lesson and learn how to naturally and spiritually energize your life without sugar water or Red Bull. Let’s begin.