Performers
I Think People Misjudge High Performers
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Most assume they simply have more energy.
I used to wonder that myself, especially when I started paying close attention to my business partner.
She was leading our team, building a second successful business, raising a family, creating constantly, and somehow still seemed calm and present.
I remember asking myself, “How does she get so much done?”
She had the same twenty-four hours that everyone else has, and yet she was adding more projects and responsibilities.
Instead of trying to copy her habits, I became curious about something else. I started studying what she wasn’t spending energy on.
That question ended up changing the way I look at almost everything.
We all like to talk about time management, but lately I’ve been thinking much more about Energy ROI.
Every one of us wakes up with a certain amount of available life force, attention, emotional bandwidth, and creative capacity.
The question isn’t only how we spend our time, rather, it’s what kind of return we’re getting on the energy we invest throughout the day.
The more I paid attention, the more I realized most people aren’t running out of energy because they’re doing meaningful work. They’re running out because they’re making withdrawals all day long without even realizing it.
Worry and rumination are two of the most costly.
Trying to control things they cannot control is a massive life force leak.
Needing approval from others is painfully expensive.
Comparison-itis is an energetic hemorrhage.
Living in tomorrow drains today before it ever begins.
It’s like keeping dozens of programs running in the background while wondering why your computer feels slow. The processor isn’t broken—there just isn’t much available RAM left.
One afternoon I watched this play out right in front of me.
I had spent days editing an important two-minute video. I’d slaved over it, down to individual frames, and was excited to show my dear friend—I knew she’d appreciate it.
She never really watched it.
Her phone kept demanding attention. Every few seconds something reached out and stole it—a notification, someone speaking nearby, another distraction.
After two minutes, I realized something—it wasn’t about my video.
She was sitting right next to me, but I never felt like she was fully with me. Her nervous system had become so accustomed to constant stimulation that staying with one beautiful thing for two uninterrupted minutes seemed impossible.
I began noticing the same pattern everywhere.
People aren’t only addicted to their screens. Many have become addicted to the next stimulus, interruption, and emotional hit. Their attention is scattered across so many places that very little of it remains available for the present moment.
The image that keeps coming to mind is buckshot.
Take one ounce of lead and form it into a single slug. It carries tremendous force because everything is concentrated in one place.
Take that same ounce of lead and scatter it into hundreds of tiny pellets, and the impact changes completely.
That’s what many people’s energy feels like to me now.
Not weak. Scattered.
The same life force, sprayed in every direction.
When I meet someone who is deeply present, it feels different. There’s a density to them, a palpable groundedness. An energetic opacity that’s difficult to describe but easy to recognize. You can feel that they’re actually here.
That observation eventually forced me to stop looking at everyone else and start looking at myself.
I realized I had plenty of leaks of my own.
I was worrying about outcomes I couldn’t control, replaying old conversations, comparing myself to other people, and giving far too much of my life force to what someone else thought of me.
No wonder I felt drained! I wasn’t running out of energy, rather, I was spending it where almost nothing came back.
I became the scientist, the observer, and the guinea pig all at once. Through self-inquiry, I started asking a much better question than, “How do I get more energy?”
I started asking,
“Where is my energy already going?”
Over this past year, I began plugging the holes in the boat.
Some leaks were obvious, while others were subtle enough that I had lived with them for years without questioning them. As those holes closed, something surprising happened.
I didn’t feel like I was becoming a different person—I was recovering more of myself.
Today, people sometimes hear about my solo expeditions around the world, writing, creating, or heading off on an adventure with little to no planning or training, and they assume I must have an unusual amount of energy.
Recently, a neighbor looked at me with complete disbelief as we talked about those experiences. None of it fit his picture of what was possible.
I understood why.
From the outside, people see the adventures.
What they don’t see is the energetic accounting underneath it. Years spent closing unnecessary tabs and shutting down the background programs that had been devouring my life force.
I think that’s where so much human suffering exists. People have far more potential and talent than they have available life force. Their energy has already been spent in a hundred unseen places before they’ve ever had the chance to invest it in what matters most.
So before you ask yourself how to become more productive, try asking a different question.
What is spending your life force before you do?
Read The Next One: The Cost Of Carrying →
PLAY IN THE LIVING LAB →
ENJOY THE FULL LIBRARY:
The Dangerous Chip On My Shoulder
Why Do Smart People Stay Stuck?
I Threw Away Every Medal I Ever Earned
Instead Of A Promotion, I Got Fired
I Ran An Experiment With The Universe
People MisJudge High Performers
The Cost Of Other People’s Opinions Of You
Some books are discovered after they’re published.
This one can be experienced while it’s still unfolding.
What began with deep self-inquiry became the Courageous Heart Expedition—and now my first book. Stories, films, photographs, reflections and discoveries are coming together as the work continues to unfold. You’re invited to explore what I’m creating and find your way in.
My Latest…
The Living Lab
Life is a lab. It’s always open.
How much of your life did you actually choose?
Most of us inherit far more than we realize—beliefs, identities, fears, and subconscious programming that control how we see ourselves.
The Living Lab is an ongoing exploration of what we discover when we question what we’ve been taught, challenge the ego, examine our conditioning, and experiment with different ways of being.
Because once you see what you didn’t choose, you get to decide what comes next.
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