Why Do Some People Drain Your Energy While Others Fill You Up?
A little while ago we hosted Benyamin, a Kundalini yoga teacher based in Mallorca, in our community. He also runs his own creative agency in fashion and lifestyle, so this was not a conversation from someone floating above ordinary working life. It was from someone who has lived inside deadlines, clients, and burnout, and found his way to something steadier. He told us that a few years ago he was having panic attacks, sometimes daily, after years of a high-paced life in the fashion industry in Paris. A doctor told him to take three months off. He had no tools and no idea how to actually do that. What changed everything was far smaller than a three-month break.
▶ Watch the full conversation with Benyamin.
Why do some people drain your energy while others fill you up?
Because energy is not a metaphor, Benyamin would say. It is information. He described a simple daily practice: after spending time with someone, pause and ask, am I energised, depleted, or neutral? That single question tells you something your calendar never will.
“After spending time with someone, ask yourself, am I energised or am I depleted? That tells you whether this is something you consciously want to engage in.”
This is not about becoming suspicious of people or cutting anyone off. It is closer to what researchers call relational energy, the well-documented pattern where some interactions leave us more capable and motivated, and others leave us worn down, regardless of how the conversation looked from the outside (Owens, Baker, Sumpter, & Cameron, 2016). Benyamin's version of that research is simpler and more usable. Keep a kind of daily balance sheet. Notice what adds, notice what costs, and let that awareness guide you instead of guilt or obligation.
What is actually stored in your subconscious mind?
More than most of us realise, and almost none of it was chosen on purpose. Benyamin's explanation was the clearest I have heard. From the time we are in the womb until around age seven, we are absorbing everything in our environment, our parents, our home, the emotional tone around us, simply to learn how to survive in it. Layered on top of that is our culture, and then the wider collective we live inside.
“We come into this world, and already within our mother's womb, the subconscious starts to get programmed, absorbing all the information in the environment we grew up in until the age of seven.”
He is careful to say this is not really about assigning blame to anyone. It is simply how a young nervous system learns to stay safe. The trouble is that safety patterns formed at three or five do not always serve us at thirty five. And because they live below conscious awareness, you cannot simply think your way past them. You cannot mirror a mirror with a mirror, as he put it. You need something outside pure thought to actually shift them
How do you reprogram subconscious patterns, without spending years in therapy talking about the problem?
Benyamin's answer was not what I expected. Raise your baseline energy, and the old patterns lose their grip on their own. He draws a direct contrast with approaches built around repeatedly discussing what is wrong.
“When you talk about your problem, you also amplify it, because you give it more energy. You need to do something that raises the vibration.”
To be clear, this is his personal framework, not a replacement for therapy, and talk therapy remains genuinely valuable for many people. What I found useful was the underlying principle, which any of us can borrow regardless of practice. Insight alone rarely changes a deep pattern. Something has to shift in the body and the nervous system too, not just in the story we tell about it. That is a big part of why a short daily practice, breath work, movement, stillness, tends to outperform simply thinking harder about the problem.
If you recognise a pattern in yourself that insight alone has not been able to shift, this is exactly the kind of work we do together.Book a conversation with me whenever you are ready.
What is resistance actually trying to tell you?
Something worth listening to, not overriding. When Benyamin first tried a Kundalini class, he went in guarded and sceptical. That resistance, he says, almost always traces back to one root thought: I am not good enough. It shows up differently in each of us, as self-sabotage, as anger, as an inflated sense of self, but the seed is usually the same.
The useful reframe is that resistance is not a signal to force through, and it is not proof you are on the wrong path either. It is simply a place worth turning toward with curiosity rather than judgement.
“Get into your weirdness. Every time you feel that resistance, dive into it, face it, look at it, right here, right now.”
For a founder or a leader, I think this lands somewhere very practical. The idea you keep talking yourself out of, the boundary you keep avoiding setting, the conversation you keep postponing, these usually are not random. They tend to sit exactly where the resistance is loudest.
Does slowing down actually make life more complicated, or less?
Less, according to Benyamin, though it can feel counterintuitive at first. He was blunt about how much of his own transformation was inconvenient before it was freeing. He stopped drinking. He stopped eating meat. Not from willpower or a New Year's resolution, but because, in his words, the old pattern simply stopped having a charge. Old friendships fell away naturally as his habits changed, and new ones arrived that fit who he was becoming.
He also pushed back on a belief that quietly runs a lot of our working lives, that a full, structured eight hour day equals a serious, credible career.
“I have never worked eight hours a day. My focused work is probably two to three hours. I became a national and international champion training three hours a day, and I had forgotten that for ten years.”
This will not map onto every job or every season of life, and he would be the first to say so. But it is a useful provocation. So much of what we assume is required for success is actually inherited assumption, not evidence.
How to put this into practice this week
None of this requires an overhaul. Start smaller than feels significant.
1. After your next few meetings or calls, pause for ten seconds and ask, energised, depleted, or neutral? Do not act on it yet. Just notice.
2. Pick one three minute practice, breath work, stillness, a short walk without your phone, and do it daily for a week before judging whether it works.
3. Notice one moment of resistance this week. Instead of pushing past it or obeying it, get curious about what it might be protecting.
4. Ask where an old assumption about what a serious career or a serious life requires might be costing you more than it is giving back.
Where this might not hold
This is one person's framework, built from a specific practice, and Benyamin was clear that it should not become a new form of pressure or dogma layered on top of the old one. Some of the language here, subconscious programming, energetic fields, is drawn from Kundalini yoga philosophy rather than clinical psychology, and it will not resonate with, or be appropriate for, everyone. If you are dealing with clinical anxiety, panic attacks, or a mental health condition, please work with a licensed professional. A daily practice can be a genuine support alongside that care. It is not a substitute for it.
A few questions I hear often
Is it normal to feel drained by certain people?
Yes, and it is well documented. Research on relational energy has shown that some interactions consistently leave people more capable and motivated, and others leave them depleted, independent of how pleasant the interaction looked on the surface (Owens, Baker, Sumpter, & Cameron, 2016). Noticing the pattern is the first useful step, and it does not require labelling anyone as a bad person.
How long does it take to reprogram a subconscious pattern?
There is no fixed timeline, and be wary of anyone who promises one. Benyamin's experience, and the broader research on habit and behaviour change, both point toward consistency over intensity. A short daily practice, kept up for weeks and months, tends to matter more than a single dramatic effort.
Do I need three months off to actually reset?
Not necessarily. Benyamin was told exactly that by a doctor, and could not take it. What he found instead was that small daily resets, in his case three minutes at a time, added up to something real. If you are able to take an extended break, that is valuable too. But it is not the only route.
Is this the same as positive thinking or affirmations?
Not quite. Benyamin's approach centres on raising baseline energy and consistency of practice, rather than repeating positive statements over unresolved patterns. Affirmations can be one tool among several, but on their own they rarely shift something rooted deeply enough to be called a pattern.
What if the people closest to me do not understand this shift?
It is a common experience, and Benyamin spoke about it honestly. Some relationships change or fade as you change, and that is not something to fear or force. Finding even a small community who understands what you are working through tends to matter more than convincing everyone around you.
The pace that is actually yours
If there is one thread through everything Benyamin shared, it is this. You do not need to overhaul your life to change how it feels to live it. You need a small, honest, daily relationship with yourself, and the willingness to notice what genuinely energises you versus what only looks like it should.
This is close to the heart of what we do at The Simplified Model, with founders, executives, and investors who want their success to include themselves. If that speaks to you, book a conversation with me whenever you feel ready.
Related reading: Does slowing down mean falling behind, and how do calm people stay calm under pressure.
This piece draws on our full community conversation with Benyamin. Watch it in full above.
If that’s the work calling to you right now, take a breath, and know it’s exactly the work we hold space for at The Simplified Model. Book a mindset conversationwhenever you feel ready.
This piece draws on our full conversation with Benyamin Arno, hosted in The Simplified Model community. Watch it in full above.
