It was the spring of 2023, and calling it an interesting year is an understatement. I was starting to discover what I really wanted to do with Change Coaches, switching some things up, and consumed with what that would even look like. Which is maybe why having a full pipeline in the middle of all that felt so good. I remember being ecstatic.
I still remember that day vividly. It was the first time in the history of the business that this had happened to me. One day, that very pipeline just… vanished. The entire thing. Several contracts, gone into thin air. Just like that.
I was flummoxed, devastated. How do I get through this?
That summer, I remember sharing this tragedy, I call it the pipeline burst, with peers, colleagues, anyone who would listen, while constantly seeking out more advice. But I didn’t get the support that I anticipated. It was quite the opposite. Many took my situation and centered it back on them. Maybe it made them feel better.
“Oh well my situation is worse. It’s hard out there.”
“I just got a full-time job. You have the skills. Maybe you should consider it.”
“The economy is bad. Good luck with that. I hope you have reserves.”
Instead of me metaphorically buying an umbrella for the next rainy day, people implied that severe thunderstorms were imminent. What use is an umbrella in a severe thunderstorm?
Before I knew it, I started believing them. I found myself seeking out evidence to confirm what my friends said. I stopped questioning it. Maybe I was doomed. I found myself uncontrollably doomscrolling.
I was stuck, and I knew it. I had to do something to snap out of this funk.
So, I hired a coach and committed to a year. After a few months of working with him, I realized what had happened. Those conversations had taken over my energy, and I didn’t even know it. The only reference point I had at the time was mindset. That’s when I realized this needed its own explanation. So let’s talk about energy.
This article is all about energy. I’m going to get into how I discovered that energy is different from mindset, the implications, and what I did to secure my energy systems and recover from the pipeline burst.
Energy vs. mindset
Remember when everyone was reading Mindset? For a while it felt like the answer to everything. Reframe your thoughts and the rest follows, so they said. Oh, and grit also fixed everything.
But, here’s what I learned the hard way. Mindset is what you believe. Energy is a physical capacity that depletes whether you believe the right things or not. You can have the mindset piece figured out, but if your body isn’t aligned, then having the mindset doesn’t do much for you.
I do a lot of energy work in my own life, and there’s a whole metaphysical layer to this I won’t get into here. For the folks out there who want to geek out on this more, please DM me 🙂 For this article, I want to keep the definition simple.
Energy is defined by your nervous system, your fatigue, your reactivity. Mindset is defined by your thoughts.
There are many ways to bring mindset and energy into alignment. I’ll walk through one example later in this article.
Energy only moves
Energy cannot be created or destroyed. I remember referencing this quote often with one of my college friends who was a physics major.
It means the total amount of energy available in your body doesn’t change. It only moves, is transferred, or changes into a new form.
I think of it like a container, one with a slow leak. Our energy is stored in that container. Sometimes we want to share energy, so we do. A good conversation, a moment of connection — that’s the whole point of being close to people.
But sometimes we pick up energy we didn’t ask for. Someone’s stress. Someone’s fear. Someone’s urgency about a problem that was never ours to solve. We can’t destroy that energy once it’s in us. We also can’t will it away just by deciding not to feel it. It sits in the container and starts to take a new form, showing up as our own anxiety, our own doubt, our own scarcity.
And, sometimes, we don’t intentionally do anything at all. We’re just moving through the world, absorbing more and more of that energy without realizing it. It’s like breathing in carbon monoxide and not knowing it. Energy won’t kill you as carbon monoxide can, but before we know it, it takes over. The only thing we can do is edit or rechannel it.
It’s Not in Your Head
There’s a real concept for taking on others’ stuff, and it’s called emotional contagion. It turns out people unconsciously mimic the emotional states of those around them, and it shows up physically, not just mentally. Being near someone else’s distress can shift your own nervous system without your permission.
That’s half the story. The other half is what happens once that energy is already in you.
One study I came across surveyed thousands of everyday people across three separate research efforts, measuring how threatened they felt about their finances. What they found was that, contrary to what many of us believe, it’s not financial threat itself that erodes wellbeing. It’s our perceived sense of control over that very threat. When people felt financially threatened, their perceived control over their work and their finances dropped. That drop, not the threat itself, predicted the decline in life satisfaction and the rise in psychological distress.
This is exactly what happened to me. I picked up everyone else’s fear through the conversations I had, the way emotional contagion works. And once that fear was in me, it didn’t just sit there. It ate away at my perceived sense of control. Instead of believing in the plan that I had, I started thinking that I lacked control over what was next.
My mindset was fine. I had a plan. But my body’s sense of control eroded little by little after each conversation. That erosion doesn’t happen in your thoughts. It happens somewhere your thoughts can’t always reach, which is why telling yourself not to worry rarely works.
Symptoms you’re not protecting your energy
Remember, I said you might not even know you aren’t protecting your energy. That was true for me. We tend to try to name the cause first. But sometimes it doesn’t happen that way. Sometimes you feel the symptoms before you can even name what’s causing them. Here’s what that looked like for me, and what I now watch for in myself and in the leaders I coach:
- Doomscrolling or information seeking that only confirms your fear
- Absorbing someone else’s crisis as if it were your own, even when you already have a way forward
- Questioning a path your body knows is right, just because your mind got talked out of it
- Making decisions from urgency that you wouldn’t normally make
- Feeling depleted after a conversation where you gave good advice and helped someone
That last one caught me off guard the most. Helping people is supposed to feel good. It can still cost you something.
An everyday energy exercise
I can’t fit everything I know about protecting your energy into one article, but I didn’t want to leave you without something real to try. So here’s one exercise, straight from what I actually do.
Give yourself about fifteen minutes.
Start by imagining you’re in a bubble. There’s light around you, and the energy inside just feels… good. Sit in that for a few minutes. Really let your body feel it, not just the idea of it.
Then bring someone into the bubble with you. Maybe it’s an ancestor who always cheered you on. A mentor. Someone who supported you without needing anything back. Bring them your problem the way I brought mine, my pipeline bursting, to the people I imagined with me.
Don’t just imagine what they’d say. Soak up how they’d make you feel. What would they do? Would they tell you it’s going to work out?
Sit in that feeling for the rest of your time.
When you’re done, jot down a note about how it felt. If you could really picture it, if you could really feel it, that’s you getting back in touch with your own energy.
Energy came through
So you’ll notice I didn’t finish the story. Was I able to turn things around? The answer, luckily, is yes. Here’s how it went down.
A year after I started working with my coach, I launched Coaching Below the Surface, which is now a flagship Change Coaches experience. I couldn’t have done it if I hadn’t learned how to manage my energy first, and that exercise I shared? I did it many times before I was able to turn things around. The pipeline burst wasn’t really what almost broke me. What almost broke me was letting everyone else’s fear become mine. I lost my perceived sense of control, the very thing the research above points to.
I saw that same slow leak, and the same kind of pipeline burst, show up in a recent Coaching Below the Surface participant. She came in not feeling great about her coaching business. She lacked confidence, and all of her clients stayed at the surface. What was interesting is that she had amazing credentials. But although her mind knew the information, her body wasn’t aligned. Among other challenges, she wasn’t protecting her energy.
After Coaching Below the Surface, her business is thriving. She’s doing more outbounds, they’re successful, and she exceeded her revenue goal. I exceeded mine too, through protecting my energy.
If your mind is resisting but your body is resonating, this is for you
Three of ten seats are filled for the next Coaching Below the Surface cohort, kicking off September 15th. Every person who’s enrolled so far is a leader who knows what it feels like to have the right mindset and still feel out of control.
If you register by August 14th, you get a discount and a free visioning session with me before the cohort even starts.
Coaching Below the Surface is a 38-hour ICF-approved program, and we’re a Registered Credential Training Provider for the Board Certified Coach credential.
Fill out our interest form to grab your spot before August 14th.
LaTonya Wilkins is the award-winning founder and CEO of Change Coaches and author of Leading Below the Surface. A LinkedIn Top Voice who has taught at top business schools, she helps leaders and organizations build trust, psychological safety, and real human connection, especially during change, expansion, and high-pressure environments. She is also the creator of Coaching Below the Surface (CBTS), a credentialed, ICF-approved development experience for coaches and leaders ready to deepen their presence and impact. She hosts the Leading Below the Surface podcast.