• Do you ever find yourself wanting to do one thing, and then doing another?
• Do you ever make a promise to yourself… and then break it?
• Do you ever decide something and go ahead with it, even though you know you’ll regret it?
• Or avoid doing things you know are in your best interest?

What’s that? Often? All the time?
Great. That means you’re human!

What’s the biggest energy drainer of all?

It’s that constant inner tug-of-war, the feeling that there’s some force inside you pulling you in the wrong direction—sabotaging your attempts to improve yourself and, worse, making you feel like you have no control over it.

It’s nothing new. Socrates spoke of his “inner demon,” Saint Paul in his letter to the Romans wonders why he “does not do the good he wants, but the evil he does not want,” and Faust famously complained that “two souls dwell within my breast.”
And those are just the first few names that come to mind.

Most of the time, fighting this “force” leaves us so frustrated and exhausted that we can’t help but ask: What is going on here? No surprise then that nearly all religions have developed the concept of a “devil”—a figure that tempts us, lures us away from the good path.

Psychoanalysis replaced “the devil” with “the subconscious,” which may sound more scientific, but doesn’t explain things much better.
Evolutionary psychology goes a bit deeper and shows us how the mind, despite appearing unified, is actually made up of countless subsystems—each with its own goals and logic—often in direct conflict with one another.

“System”: that’s the key word when we talk about energy.
A system is a group of resources—human, technological, financial—aligned toward a shared goal: a company that wants to make a profit, a sports team pushing for victory, an army defending its people, a country aiming to improve its citizens’ quality of life. These are all systems.

And energy? It’s the system’s capacity to reach its goal.
(Side note: a lot of people confuse energy with fuel, which is a huge mistake. Gasoline or electricity, on their own, are useless unless they’re channeled into the right system and used properly.)

When all a system’s resources are aligned and pulling in the same direction, it performs at its peak. But when one part acts out of sync with the goal, it doesn’t just become useless—it can slow the system down or even block it entirely.

And that’s regardless of how much effort is being made. Imagine you’re on a rowboat with a team: if you all row in the same direction, you move quickly and easily toward your destination. But if everyone rows in different directions, effort goes through the roof, exhaustion sets in, and you get… nowhere.

Actually this is the heart of leadership: to take a group of people and resources—each one looking out for its own interest—and inspire them with a shared vision that gets everyone moving in the same direction.
Whether it’s a politician, a CEO, or a team coach, a real leader is someone who shares a vision so compelling that people are willing to set aside their egos, conflicts, jealousies, and personal issues to contribute to something bigger—something no one could achieve alone.

And guess what? You, too, are a system. Inside you—both physically and psychologically—live countless subsystems, each with different jobs, different goals, often at odds with each other.

So that feeling of being “pulled” in opposite directions? It’s not a metaphor. It’s real. It’s the result of internal battles between different “departments” of your mind—departments that, paradoxically, are both trying to help you.
(That’s why, in therapy, the first step is often to stop fighting yourself—to accept your “bad” behavior and try to understand the positive intention behind it.)

But you don’t have to go into therapy to deal with this. One of the simplest ways to stop feeling divided, conflicted, and drained by indecision (the biggest energy vampires out there!) is this: give your internal subsystems a vision and a goal so big, so clear, and so inspiring that the little tensions and worries fall away—and everything aligns.

If you’ve ever attended a personal development seminar, you’ve probably done the goal-setting exercise. You learned how to define your goals, make them SMART, break them down into steps, and so on.

All good. It works. But I believe there’s a more ambitious approach—which I talk about in another article: SMART goals or GENIUS goals?

Let me repeat: energy is the system’s capacity to reach its goal. When all your inner parts are aligned, you enter the flow state, a concept we’ve talked about many times.
We complain a lot about being “low energy” and search for all sorts of ways to boost ourselves, but the truth is this: you already have more than enough energy—you’re just wasting it fighting yourself.

If you don’t resolve your internal conflicts, all you’re doing is standing up… and punching yourself in the face. It’s like having a car with misaligned wheels, the parking brake on… and thinking the solution is a more powerful engine: maximum effort, minimal results.

The topic of energy, of course, is huge. And we’ll dive deeper into its unexpected consequences—on personal energy, goals, money, relationships and more.
Trust me, it’ll change the way you see it all.

But first? Start by checking whether all parts of you are aligned toward the same objective.
That’s the first step to unleashing your highest potential.

We will talk about the rest in an upcoming article devoted to energy and vitality.
See you soon.

Warmly,
Bruno