What Are You Doing With Your Energy?

We were two minutes into our session in the Oakland Redwoods when he said it.

A city inspector had come to his restaurant. He was telling me about the visit, the stress, what she had checked, and what she had flagged.

And then, almost in passing: "They sent the most difficult person."

He kept talking, but my attention shifted.

I had heard everything I needed to hear.

What I Heard in Five Words

Those five words told me exactly where we needed to work that day.

Not because the inspector wasn't difficult, maybe she was. But in that sentence, I sensed something different. He’d already placed the experience outside himself; the difficulty had been assigned to him, and his role, as he saw it, was simply to receive it.

He didn't know he had just shown me the inside of his experience.

Curious, I asked if he was open to examining his view of the inspector and possibly transforming that relationship.

He said yes.

I brought him back to what he had said. Those five words.

Coming Back to the Body

From there, I directed his attention into his body.

Not back into the story or the strategy, but into himself.

I asked him to get present: to feel his grounding, to notice what was actually true beneath the inspector, beneath the visit, beneath the noise of the day.

He found it—deep peace: quiet, solid, and his.

I asked him: What would it be like if others felt that when they walked into your restaurant?

He went still.

In that moment, something shifted in him. The question was no longer about her; it was about him—about what he brought into every room. The energy available to him had always been there—he just had to stop leaving it to match someone else.

The Cost of Matching

He recognized it: the moment she arrived, he left himself. He had matched her energy, tight, defended, braced, without realizing it. In that match, he’d lost access to what made him powerful.

That's close to what happens to all of us. We're taught to match, mirror the mood, meet difficulty with defense. We learn it early and carry it everywhere into business, relationships, and our bodies, calling it reading the room, without naming its cost.

The cost is yourself.

He couldn't see it alone. Not from lack of intelligence, he’s sharp, but because patterns run beneath ordinary awareness. We rarely notice the water we're swimming in. Recognizing this isn't failure; it's simply the nature of patterns.

What I do is go there with someone.

The Return

Once he saw this, he imagined a different day—one where he remained grounded, present, and at peace, letting her move through the room without being pulled along. People entering his restaurant would sense something steady in him before he spoke.

That is what I am always pointing toward.

Stay in your energy.

Not as a technique, but as a return to who you are underneath, matching, reaction, and what you were taught to do.

Your energy is not something you build. It is something you come home to.

And when you do, others feel it. Some of them will meet you there.

Is there a story about a difficult person you're holding onto? What could shift if you truly anchored yourself first?

Curious where you are in your own evolution? Take the free assessment at annascott.co/howfreeareyou