Your Energy Isn’t Broken — It’s Just Trying to Tell You Something

Have you ever noticed how your energy feels magnetic one day and completely flat the next — even when nothing obvious has changed?

In this episode, I explore energy in all its forms — physical, emotional, and spiritual — and how it quietly shapes how we feel, think, and show up in the world. This is a gentle meander into noticing your energy, understanding why it dips, and learning how to protect and replenish it without guilt.

I share personal stories, everyday examples, and simple practices to help you work with your energy rather than constantly fighting it.

In this episode, I explore:

• What energy really is (beyond just feeling tired)
• How emotional energy spreads between people
• Why overwhelm is simply energy spread too thin
• How to notice energy dips before they spiral
• Gentle ways to recenter your energy
• How to protect your energy without being selfish

This episode is for you if you’ve been feeling scattered, depleted, or overly affected by the energy around you.

Reflection question:
What gave you energy today — and what quietly drained it?

Follow the podcast for more thoughtful meanders on energy, awareness, and living with greater ease.

Transcript

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Have you ever had one of those days where your energy feels magnetic? You walk into a room and something about you, your presence, your mood, your whole vibe just feels alive. People might not even notice consciously, but somehow everything just flows differently for you. Everything tastes better, conversations flow. Even when you walk down the road, it feels like you've got a little bounce in your step. And then there are other days, days when you feel flat or fragmented, like there are little bits of you all over the place and it doesn't matter how much you try to ground or center yourself, your energy just feels off. It's heavy. It's sluggish. It's fuzzy, rather than fizzing and it's scattered. You might notice your patience running thin or your mind looping on every tiny little worry, or there's that little gnawing exhaustion that doesn't make sense because you've slept enough. So why are you tired? Today we're going to wander through different types of energy, not just am I tired energy, but physical energy, emotional energy, spiritual energy. The energy we pick up from others and the energy we carry into a room without even saying a word. This is a meander, but a purposeful meander through all the ways. Energy shapes our lives because energy is the invisible river running through everything we do. Emotional, spiritual, physical. It is the compass and the fuel behind every thought, every feeling, every move we make. And without it, even the most brilliant ideas and deepest passions can't come to life. Welcome back to the podcast. I'm Beth, and I am so delighted that you are here today. I cannot tell you how grateful I am that we are spending this time together. I hope that these little interludes, these podcast episodes become something that you look forward to, that they offer a little respite in your busy week, and they see you on your way to work, or that they give you something to listen to whilst walking the dog. Or that they make a workout easier for you. I have a classic example of this happening with me the other day. The Taylor Swift six part documentary. I did a workout to, I don't know, episode five. Oh my goodness, that 30 minutes went in the flash of an eye. And I am hoping that my podcast can do even a fraction of that for you if so, that would be amazing. So today we're going to explore five things relating to energy, because energy is something that is so fascinating. First of all, what energy is from a physical, emotional, and spiritual perspective? The second thing we're going to look at is how energy shows up in our lives and how even tiny interactions with the world can shift it. The third thing we're going to look at is how some people radiate positivity whilst others. Hmm, not so much. And why? Noticing this is more about awareness than judgment. The fourth thing we're going to look at is how to notice when your energy dips through overwhelm. Anyone being there, distraction or just being human, and how to gently recenter it. And the final thing we're going to look at is how to protect your energy without being selfish and how to create space to feel more like yourself again. So let's start with the basics. What energy actually is. I like to think of it in three broad, but overlapping ways. Physical, emotional, and spiritual. So taking physical energy first. Physical energy is what keeps us moving through the day. It's sleep, it's food, it's movement. It's the small little boosts that we are looking for that make life feel lighter. I'll admit, I'm so fascinated by the subtle shifts here insofar as one morning. I can wake up groggy, the world can feel a bit gray, and then doing something like a workout or a brisk walk or listening to a podcast or an amazing piece of music can just turn me into something unrecognizable to how I was before. Suddenly, I've got ideas that are sparking, creativity is flowing, and even the basic mundane tasks of life feel easier. So physical energy is the most obvious, but it is also the most nuanced as well. Emotional energy is the more invisible layer. It's our moods, our resilience, the way we show up for ourselves and for others. And emotional energy is the one that is contagious. Just think about this. Have you ever been in a room where everyone else is slightly tense and suddenly your chest tightens before anyone has spoken or you feel the tension in your jaw? Or if you're anything like me, you feel the weight in your head and equally. Have you been around someone who's so joyful, that you can't help but smile too? Those people who've got that fizzy kind of energy that you just gravitate towards in the hope that some of it will rub off on you and you'll becoming like a little fizzy sherbert bomb as well. That's emotional energy at work. And here's the part that I find really interesting, noticing. It doesn't mean judging it. It's not that it's good or it's bad. It literally just means noticing. And then you can become curious about the ebbs and the flows and what makes the difference and why are some people cut half empty, and how are other people kept totally overflowing. And then spiritual energy is just so fabulous, and to see this in motion as well, for me, this is that flow energy. When you're doing something that feels like it resonates with your purpose or with your soul, it lights you up. It doesn't have to be anything grandiose. It can be something really small, just where time passes without you even noticing. It can be writing, it can be creating, it can be knitting. It can be sewing. It can be working out. It can be bread making, it can be helping a friend, or just noticing the sunlight through the kitchen window or in our house, I can always tell when there's about to be a rainbow just because of the way that the light changes. And I love that kind of energy. It feels expansive and effortless, but strangely grounding all at the same time. It's like a magical kind of energy. So they're the three basic different kinds of energy, the physical, the emotional, and the spiritual. Now I'm going to look at the second and third elements that I discussed, which is how energy shows up in our lives and how some people radiate positivity whilst others don't. It's really interesting because humans are energy machines and we each have our own energy, but we're also constantly interacting with other people's energy. Sometimes we pick up their tension, their excitement, or anxiety. Without even realizing it. And equally, they're picking up as, so we have our own individual energy, but then there's this other fizz bomb going on around everybody of the interaction of their different kinds of energy. Some people are like walking little suns. They lift the whole room just by being themselves and. I'm pretty sure that as I say this, you have someone in your mind that you are thinking of who is exactly that person, and then others not so much. There will be people who will feel very draining for you. And again, I'm sure you've got an example in your mind of somebody who fits the bill. I once had a boyfriend called Pete and bless his soul, he was the most miserable person I had ever met. I think he could take anything that was positive and turn it into a negative to the point where everyone kind of really loved him for it because he was just known for being so miserable long-term. Not so healthy, but that was just him. And he is the person that I always think of when we're talking about somebody whose glass is half empty. And that's okay. It doesn't make them bad. It's just the way their energy flows and noticing. This is key because it can explain why a simple conversation can feel like a lift and something that's really positive and rewarding and exciting, or like a total drain. This is where awareness becomes. A superpower, the more observant we are about our own energy, when it rises, when it dips, when it gets pulled in a direction we didn't choose, the more choice we have, we don't have to take on someone else's stress or their enthusiasm or. Or their positive energy. Or their negative energy, although I like to think that if there's some positivity around, I'm gonna absorb that, but we can notice it, we can acknowledge it, and we can either let it pass or gently protect our own energy as if we're wearing a suit of armor so nothing can, so that if there is something negative around us, it doesn't have to penetrate us and our energy and we don't have to absorb it and become like them. And protection doesn't mean shutting the world out or being selfish. It can be small, playful things. I often find the visualizations helpful, so it can be like wearing a suit of armor, even if it's made of something lightweight. It could be imagining a little bubble of light around you. It could be taking a breath before entering a room, or it can be having an awareness of how your shoulders tighten when you are in someone's company or how your jaw titans, and taking steps to counteract that by getting them to relax and these tiny rituals can be really powerful because our days are long and we only have so much energy to give to the world and to ourselves, and it is important that we can go with the ebb and flows of the day, but also interact, but also have control over how we are going to use our energy and expend that energy in the best way possible. Moving on now to energy dips, which I think is something we are all familiar with. They are fascinating, and they can sneak up on us sometimes it's obvious we are tired or stressed. Other times it's subtle. Maybe we notice irritability over small things. I think this can happen quite a lot in our lives. We may get a blank mind. We may get a kind of mental fuzziness and that can be overwhelm creeping in, which can have a huge impact on our energy and our energy dips. A good way to think about this is as if your energy is being spread too thinly across too many plates, which you are probably trying to spin at the same time. So there's a lot of metaphors in there. You are giving, you are doing, you're noticing, you're planning, you are worrying you. Suddenly you realize you are nowhere near centered, and that's why observation is so powerful and it's definitely something that I've been working on over the last few years and have got better with it. So I know for me, not so much now but historically. Monday mornings were a classic time for overwhelm, and so I started putting a practice into place of making sure I was doing a morning ritual. I was doing a little bit of journaling. I was pulling some cards. I was doing a bit of meditation. I was setting my day up. I was taking myself outta the house and going and working somewhere else. There was just something about a Monday morning. I think it often coincided with not only a lot of work tasks that needed to be done, but also a lot of. Admin tasks to do with the home and my mom and the children, and actually part of it is just going Monday mornings are. A bit rough or can be a bit rough, or if you're someone who's got the flexibility in your life to say, actually, you know what, instead of taking a Friday morning off, I'm going to take a Monday morning off and I'm not going to work on a Monday, or I'm going to devote Monday mornings to the admin tasks and I'll start work. Later in the day, there's different things that we can do, but I think the most important thing is if you know that you're going to be hitting a spot of overwhelm, it's getting ahead of it before it gets ahead of you and figuring out how you're going to deal with it so that it doesn't become that overwhelming place.'cause that's such a horrible, horrible place to be. I had another classic example of this the other day. So we were in Wales and we were having a fabulous time. The sun was shining. It was very cold. Middle of winter, the sun was shining. We'd been in some seaweed baths, which is where water is heated to about 40 degrees and it's put into whiskey barrels, and you climb in them and you sit in them. Seaweed is put in and you sit there and all the lovely minerals are being absorbed by your body and the oils and your skin feels soft. So we were doing that. Uh, we'd been for a nice walk. Everything was calm, and then we went back. Lit fire, and because the way the wind was blowing down the chimney, it set the smoke alarm off and then that triggered something else in me and I started to think, oh golly, I need to do the taxes for my American business. Then I started to think about there were some returns that needed to be done after Christmas then I had to do some filming for something, and all of a sudden what had started out as this lovely, relaxed, beautiful, let's go and sit in a warm seaweed bath kind of day, turned into this absolute chaos, and suddenly I've got an elephant sitting on my chest. But I had the awareness to go, okay. It was that smoke alarm that started things off and you actually managed then to flip yourself into a little bit of a downward spiral. What are we going to do to get outta this? And for me, it's always the low hanging fruits. Let's knock off the easiest things first, because what that will do is to raise my energy levels a little bit, make me feel more positive. Then I'm more likely to be able to deal with the things that I find slightly more stressful and overwhelming. But we're all different. We all need our own practices for recognizing what's going on and deciding how we can remedy it. So some gentle ways to recenter yourself. Just think of these as little practices, like little nudges rather than anything that's prescriptive. So it can be taking a pause and putting your feet on the floor and noticing your breathing. That very sort of grounding. Practice. Even better, if you can take your shoes and socks off and go outside and touch the earth or lie on the earth, you can wiggle your fingers, shake out tension. With shoulder rolls, you can stretch and yawn and be as dramatic as you like. You can put on some music and dance around. You can turn your attention to something small and grounding, just looking at the sunlight out of the window or smelling what's in front of you. Tapping into your five different senses is a great way to distract yourself and ground yourself, and then sometimes you just have to go, do you know what? I'm in a really rubbish place at the moment. That's what I've started to do. You know what? I'm in a really rubbish place. I feel really overwhelmed. It's not gonna last forever. I just need to tick off a few things on my list. Or today is not the day to do any of this. If you've got that kind of spaciousness built into your life where you say, I'm not doing any of it today, I'm gonna come back to it tomorrow because I'll feel refreshed, I'll feel energized, and I'll whiz through all these things as if they're as easy as anything.'cause most of the time they are. It's just that they build up in our own minds and turn into something that we don't want them to. Have you also noticed that your energy can really vary even if you're doing a very similar task? So for me. Running 13 miles will leave me energized and I can keep going till the end of the day and beyond with really high energy. If you make me walk 13 miles, I'm completely depleted. It's the same distance. It's an opposite kind of energy. Why is that? I'm not really sure, but it might be because running aligns with me. It feels quick, it feels like I'm moving, it feels like I'm making progress, whereas walking feels slow and frustrating, and I know a lot of people will listen to that and say, you've got that completely wrong, because when you are walking, you can take in your surroundings more. I understand that absolutely completely, but just objectively at the end of a 13 mile walk, I'm really, really worn out. Whereas at the end of a 13 mile run, I'm like, yay. Bring on what's happening for the rest of the day? We're all different, but you may have your own examples of that. The same goes for me with clothing. If I love what I'm wearing, I feel really positive and really energized, and if I hate what I'm wearing. I just want to disappear. I had a brilliant example of this when I was about nine years old and I went to school and my mum put me in a dress that my sister had had before me because she's 16 months older than me and I hated that dress. I dunno why I hated it. I can't remember whether it's because I hadn't chosen it. I don't think I liked the fabric. It was scratchy. I was maybe a bit cold that whole day. I felt so out of sorts and I was desperate to get home and get that dress off. And I remember. Running through the front door and our dad had come to pick us up and take us out for the evening, and there wasn't time to get changed, and I wore that dress until I went to bed, and I hated that day. Clearly hated it because I'm now well into my fifties and I can still remember it. I also remember my mum buying me a blouse from what was then called a jumble sale, and what would now be called something much more elegant than that. The day that I wore that blouse to school, I got into trouble and I was given lines. I think I might have been a bit cheeky as well. I never wore that blouse again. I hated it and it really affected my energy. Even just thinking about that blouse now makes my energy dip. So there's all sorts of things that can have a massive. Impact on our energy and create these energy dips, but we just need to be aware of them. So one thing might be for you to go through your entire wardrobe and sort out what makes your energy dip, and if it, makes your energy dip just part with it, there's no point in wearing it. And I dunno about you, but I feel the same about that when I look around the house and see the piles of things. And there aren't actually that many, but they are massive energy dips and energy drains for me. So after I finished recording this podcast episode, I know of at least three piles that I, I'm going to sort, Moving on to the next thing that I want to talk about, which is protecting your energy without feeling selfish. I dunno about you, but this is something I really struggle with. The whole self care. Anything involving the word self. In a positive way. The flip side can be, oh, but is that selfish? And that's something that I struggle with and come back to time and again. But I think this is one of my favorite things to talk about, protecting your energy without guilt. Because there is this misconception that protecting your energy is selfish, but really it's about being responsible for ourselves so we can show up fully. For what we need to do in our lives, for the work we need to do for the people who are around us and so on. And when you protect your energy, you're not shutting people out. You're just noticing your limits in giving yourself the space to feel, to think, and to act from a place of fullness rather than from a place of depletion. This kind of links back to being able to observe what our energy dips are and our energy levels are. So if, for example, we know that after seven o'clock in the evening we are not really that much good for anything, that's fine. We can protect that time to do other things that are good for us and do everything else during the course of the day. But just noticing how we respond means that we can then plan accordingly. A few examples are things like saying no to one extra task that will tip you over the edge so you can say yes to something else that actually energizes you. Maybe taking a five minute pause before responding to an email or a message that could drain your energy so you respond calmly rather than reactively. Or noticing when someone's energy is pulling you off center and using a little visualization or some breath work to reclaim your own space. One of my friends who's a coach talks about visualizing yourself with an umbrella over you as you're walking into a room. If you're going to see somebody who you know drains your energy, and it's almost as if their energy patters down on it and then slides off the edge, and you, you sit there and you listen to what they're saying and you, you agree with'em and say, Ah-huh mm. Yes. Oh, right, okay. Yes. And all the while it is just pattering off the edge of the umbrella, and then it's when you've left the room, you can think about whether there was anything that they said that you do need to absorb or whether actually maybe they were just venting. Maybe that's just their mindset at the moment. Maybe that's just their personality, and you don't have to absorb their energy. They probably didn't want you to absorb their energy, but they just needed to download. So it's, which part of the download do I actually need to? Absorb or act upon or do anything about, and which part of the download can I just let trickle off me as if it was a, you know, a lovely spring rainy day and now I've left that situation. I don't need to think about it anymore. And what I love about this approach is that it's about awareness and choice, not rules. You are curating your energy, like somebody might paint a picture or tend to a garden or cook a beautiful meal. Some days it's messy and some days it's flourishing and that's okay. All of that is okay. So what does it look like to integrate this into your everyday life? Because what I always like to come back to is, okay, so that's the theory. What are the practical steps? What steps can I take to integrate these things that make sense? But how am I going to go about living it? So notice the dips. Don't fight them. Observe them with curiosity. Overwhelm is just energy spread thin, and knowing when you are likely to be overwhelmed or knowing what kind of things overwhelm you. Really helps you to put practices in place to deal with that, whether that's removing yourself from the situation like I do and go somewhere else to work because I know if I stay in the house, I'm going to be overwhelmed. Because not only is there the work to do on my laptop, but there's a lot of other things around me that need to be done on a Monday morning. I just know can be overwhelming. And there's also sitting in it and not particularly reacting to it and just going, okay, so it's Monday morning. This is how the occasional Monday morning goes. Monday afternoon will be better. The rest of the week will be better. It's just one of those things i've almost come to find it quite amusing now because it's always at the point in time when you are most overwhelmed that somebody rings with an emergency. There's something kicking off somewhere else, either at a school or with an elderly relative or with another member of the family or somewhere. So it's almost quite funny thinking, oh, I wonder what it's going to be today and just. Almost throwing your hands up in submission and saying, okay, I know it's going to be rough, but I'm gonna come out the other side. You can take time to recenter yourself. So whether that is by a bit of journaling, whether it's by switching the radio on and having a dance around by now, you've probably all got your own ways of recentering yourself, and if not, then I'd invite you over the next few months to try and figure out what those things might be. Recentering can be distraction. Some people would probably say that it isn't, but finding something that gets you into a flow state because it just comes naturally to you and it really lifts your energy and you really enjoy it. And that is, I know I come back to bread making a lot, but that's quite often why I'll have some sourdough going on during the course of my day because it just means. Every so often I have to get it from my chair and I have to go and stretch and fold it and I have to look after it and check on it, make sure it's okay. It is almost like having a little child in the background who's quiet, but you can just go and check in on every so often, and it just shifts the energy. I dunno if it's the physical nature of getting up to go and tend to something, whether it's watching it grow and you can see something develop and you're thinking, oh, I've made that look. It's starting to do what it's meant to do. Or whether it's just the mindful action of stretching and folding the bread. Or whether it's just the mindfulness of stretching and folding the dough, and it's also quite meditative at the same time. Who knows, but that's what works for me and I'm sure there's plenty of things you can figure out that help you recenter yourself too. Then coming on to protecting your energy, not through selfishness, but out of respect for your own boundaries, which, can feel a little bit unsettling for some of us. But we are not an endless supply of energy that can keep on going and going and giving out and supporting Without rest and without boundaries and without knowing when to say, I would love to be able to do that, but today isn't the day that I can do it. I will revisit it unless it is an absolute emergency. And then something else that we can do is play with energy. We can experiment with what lifts us, whether it's music, whether it's light, whether it's connection, whether it's creativity, and notice how the same activity can feel different depending on your energy that day, and just your makeup as well. As you probably know, if you've listened to the podcast episodes for a while, I'm a big proponent of cold water dipping and also saunas. And what I say to people when they say, oh, I feel the cold. I, I hate the cold. It's not for me. Or, I don't like the thought of a sauna getting hot and sweaty. It's not the activity itself, it's what you get on the other side, which makes it worth doing. Of course, everybody finds getting into cold water. Uncomfortable is true. The more you do it. The less challenging it becomes, but the feelings that you get on the other side are unbelievable. And I come back to the an acronym of dose, which is dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphins. These chemicals are what our body produces by going through the cold water experience or the contrast therapy experience, or through the sauna experience, and they are nature's natural high. And however you can get those naturally, that is amazing. It might be walking in nature. It might be bike riding, it might be cold plunging, it might be a sauna. It could be through yoga, it could be through weightlifting. It generally tends to involve some kind of movement or something that is perceived as being a little bit extreme, but the benefit that you get on the other side is so absolutely worth it. I like to think of our energy as fluid, playful, and alive. It's not a rigid rule book. Sometimes there's more of it. Sometimes there's less of it. It's more like a dance. You notice the rhythm, you move with it. Sometimes you stumble, and that's part of the fun and also part of life. And the amazing thing about energy is that like the air, it is invisible, but it's everywhere. It flows through us, it flows around us. It sometimes spills over between us and others. It shapes how we feel. It shapes how we show up and even how we experience the world. And that is totally magical. I hope this episode has given you some small, delightful ways to notice your energy, to observe dips without judgment, to protect yourself without guilt, and to gently bring yourself back to where you want to be. If this episode sparked a thought, a smile, or a, Hmm, I've never noticed that before, I'd love to hear about it. Please feel free to share this podcast episode with a friend who you think might benefit from it, and if you'd like to come on future meanders with me, please just follow the podcast as you move through your day, I'd love you to check in with yourself and ask yourself, what gave me energy today? What drained me and what small choice can I make tomorrow that lifts me just a little bit more. Thank you so much for being here and for sharing your energy with me today. If you'd like to come and chat further, you can find me on Instagram at Beth Good. And in the meantime, I'm wishing you the brightest, strongest, most aligned energy for your day ahead. Until next time, keep observing, keep flowing, and treat your energy like the precious, invisible sparkling river that it is. You take care. Lots of love and bye for now.