Ep 14. Who Gets the Best of You?
Watch the full episode on YouTube.
There’s a version of high performance that looks great from the outside.
You’re switched on at work. You’re productive, capable and getting things done. Your team gets your attention. Your clients get your patience. You solve problems, make decisions and keep things moving.
Then you walk through the front door and there’s nothing left.
Your patience is shorter. You’re distracted when someone’s talking to you. Something small sets you off. You’re physically there with the people you love, but mentally you’re somewhere else entirely.
So here’s a question worth sitting with: who actually gets the best of you?
Because performing well in one part of your life while every other part gets the leftovers isn’t something you can sustain forever.
The problem isn’t always how much you’re doing
Years ago, I had someone on my team who was the life of the dealership. Customers loved him. His colleagues loved him. He brought an incredible energy into work every day and could light up a room.
Then I met his partner.
As I told her how highly everyone thought of him and how much energy he brought into work, I could see her expression changing. Eventually she told me that the person I was describing wasn’t the person she got at home.
That conversation stayed with me because I’d seen another version of it before.
Early in my career, I learnt from leaders who wore long hours like a badge of honour. Lunch breaks were for part-timers. Annual leave was frowned upon. You’d sleep when you were dead.
For a while, I thought that was what commitment looked like. Eventually I started seeing what it cost. And more importantly, I started recognising some of those behaviours in myself.
That forced me to rethink what success actually looked like. It also changed the way I coached the people I led. Teaching someone how to sell, make better decisions, improve their mindset or perform at work matters, but eventually all of us hit a ceiling if we don’t have the capacity to sustain the life we’re trying to build.
That’s where energy comes in.
Start by looking at your bandwidth
We tend to think of capacity like wringing water from a towel. There’s only so much in there and eventually we squeeze out the last drop.
I see it differently.
Before assuming you simply have too much going on, pay attention to the signs that your current demands are exceeding your bandwidth.
Maybe you lose it when someone cuts you off in traffic. You snap at a colleague for interrupting you or become irritated by something your partner says. You struggle to concentrate, forget details or lose your train of thought halfway through a conversation.
Maybe procrastination starts creeping in. You get to the weekend and there’s a family event you normally would have enjoyed, but you just can’t face it.
You become more reactive than responsive.
Those moments are information. Instead of writing them off as stress, busyness or just the way things are right now, get curious about what they might be telling you.
There are two questions to ask yourself:
The first is:
Who do I actually want to be in the different areas of my life?
We’re taught to think about this professionally from a young age. What do you want to be when you grow up? What career do you want? What kind of leader, business owner or professional do you want to become?
We spend years developing that version of ourselves.
But how often do you bring the same level of intention to who you want to be when you walk through your front door?
What kind of partner do you want to be? Parent? Friend? Son or daughter? What does being that person actually look like in practice?
Getting clear on those roles matters.
Then comes the second question:
Do you have the energy to sustain them?
Knowing how you want to show up and actually having the capacity to do it are two very different things.
This is where Client Zero comes in.
Take care of yourself so you can take care of everything else.
And when I talk about taking care of Client Zero, I want you to think beyond traditional ideas of self-care. From a performance perspective, this is capacity work.
There are four areas I want you to look at.
1. Physical energy: How much energy do you have?
Physical energy is the foundation. Think of it as the quantity of energy available to you.
Start with the obvious things, because obvious doesn’t mean unimportant.
How are you sleeping? Not just how many hours are you getting, but what is the quality of that sleep? Do you have any kind of sleep routine?
Look at your movement too. How much are you moving your body outside of what your job naturally requires? A physically demanding job and intentional movement or exercise aren’t necessarily the same thing.
Then look at how you’re fuelling yourself. What are you eating and drinking throughout the day? Are you actually giving your body what it needs to perform?
You don’t need to overhaul everything at once. You need an honest picture of where you are now.
Rate your physical energy from 1–10.
Then ask yourself: What is one thing affecting this score that I could actually change?
2. Emotional energy: What is influencing the quality of your energy?
Your emotional energy is about quality.
Think about how different your body feels when you’re happy, excited or genuinely enjoying your life compared with when you’re sad, disconnected or carrying something emotionally heavy.
Your relationships matter here. Your connection with yourself matters too.
Take stock of the people, environments and experiences currently taking up emotional space in your life. This isn’t about deciding that anything difficult is automatically bad. It’s about recognising the impact those things have on your ability to show up.
Ask yourself whether there’s enough joy, connection and fulfilment sitting alongside the things that demand something from you.
Rate your emotional energy from 1–10.
Then ask: What is currently adding to my emotional energy and what is consistently draining it?
3. Mental energy: Where is your attention going?
Mental energy is about focus.
Think about the difference between starting a task when you know exactly what needs to happen and trying to work when your mind is carrying ten other things at once.
Stress, anxiety, pressure, uncertainty and decision-making all require energy.
Sometimes you don’t realise how much until the thing consuming your attention disappears.
Think about waiting for important medical results. You might be at work, making dinner or sitting with your family, but part of your brain is constantly returning to the same question. Then the phone call comes, everything is clear and suddenly you feel like the weight of the world has been lifted from your shoulders.
Nothing physically changed in that moment. The mental load did.
Presence is another useful indicator.
Are you actually where your feet are?
You can be sitting in the same room as someone you love and still be somewhere completely different mentally.
Rate your mental energy from 1–10.
Then ask: What is taking up the most space in my head right now and does it deserve that much of my attention?
4. Spiritual energy: Do you know why you’re doing any of this?
This is what I call spiritual or life force energy, and you don’t need to attach anything particularly woo-woo to it.
It’s purpose.
It’s meaning.
It’s your deeper why.
Mental energy gives you clarity about what you need to do. Spiritual energy gives you clarity about why it matters.
It’s the thing that pulls you towards something. The work, mission, people or experiences that make you feel more alive.
When you’re deeply connected to why something matters to you, there is a different energy behind the way you approach it.
So rather than only asking what you need to get done this week, zoom out.
Rate your spiritual energy from 1–10.
Then ask: How connected do I feel to what I’m building and why it matters to me?
Your four scores are a starting point.
Now put the four numbers together.
Physical: ___ / 10
Emotional: ___ / 10
Mental: ___ / 10
Spiritual: ___ / 10
Don’t inflate the numbers because you think you should be doing better and don’t beat yourself up because one of them is sitting lower than you’d like.
This isn’t a judgement exercise.
It’s an awareness exercise.
Your scores might be completely different next month. They may even be different tomorrow. What matters is noticing where you are now because you can’t improve something you haven’t acknowledged.
Look at your four scores and ask yourself one more question:
Which area needs my attention most right now?
Not all four.
Awareness is only the beginning
Awareness gives you somewhere to start, but knowing your emotional energy is sitting at a four or your mental energy is completely cooked, doesn’t change anything on its own.
The next step is ownership.
What can you influence? What support might you need? What could you try? What needs to change, be processed, let go of or given more attention?
Then comes action.
Awareness → Ownership → Action
This isn’t about getting every area of your life to a ten and keeping it there.
It’s not about perfection at all.
It’s about understanding yourself well enough to recognise when you’re not showing up at your best and having the tools to find your way back.
That’s the work of Client Zero.
I used to look at a lot of this as self-care. And yes, taking care of yourself is absolutely part of it.
But now I see it through a much bigger lens.
It’s capacity.
Because if you want to build a successful career, lead a team, grow a business, be a present partner, raise a family, maintain meaningful relationships and actually enjoy the life you’re creating, you need the capacity to hold it.
So before trying to squeeze another drop out of the towel, ask a different question.
What would help me build a bigger capacity to begin with?
And perhaps more importantly, when you look at where your energy is going right now, ask yourself again:
Who gets the best of you?
Ready to put this into practice?
The 28-Day Self-Leadership Reset is a free 28-day reset designed to help you check in with Client Zero, build greater awareness of where your energy is going and take practical action to strengthen the areas that need your attention.
Download the free Self-Leadership Reset HERE.