How to Have More Energy: Start With the Body

I was waiting for a flight when it happened. I had been travelling non-stop for weeks, sleeping little and eating whatever I could find. A dizzy spell came over me and I had to reach for a pillar to steady myself.

It was not serious. But it was enough to make me admit something I had denied until then: I could not go on running on autopilot.

If you are wondering how to have more energy, you may be expecting a list of tricks. I do not have one. What I can share is how I spent years looking for energy in the wrong place, and what changed when I started at the bottom.

What I believed at the time

For more than twenty years I worked in international B2B sales. I left home at six in the morning and got back at ten at night. Meeting, hotel, taxi, airport. I slept badly and lived on coffee and fast food in terminals.

I treated my body as if it were an all-terrain machine. If I felt tired, the answer was more coffee. If I was in pain, a painkiller. If I felt heavy, I ignored it. My only goal was to keep moving forward, as if my body were an obstacle and not an ally.

My energy seemed infinite. In reality I was running up debts I would later have to pay. Every day I got up more tired. Every meeting took more concentration. Every conversation required extra effort.

The worst part is that it seemed normal to me. I believed that being exhausted was the price of success.

My nights were part of it, although I could not see that then. Late dinners, going to bed far too late, television until the very end of the day, then simply collapsing. In the morning: the alarm, a tired body, a foggy mind, low energy. For a long time I was not even aware that a large part of the problem had begun the night before. The day was already compromised before it started.

The body always speaks

What I understand now is simple. The body always speaks.

At first it does so with small signals: a yawn, a headache, a feeling of sluggishness. If you do not listen, it speaks louder. And if you still decide to ignore it, a day comes when it forces you to stop.

My day in the airport was a mild version of that. Nothing dramatic happened. I simply saw, for a moment, that my body was not a vehicle to use and forget. It was my most loyal partner, and I was betraying it.

The real turning point was the 2020 pandemic. The world stopped and, for the first time in years, I had space to look at myself. It was uncomfortable to realise how much I had neglected my body, my mind and my soul. It was also liberating.

The Energy Pyramid

Over time I have come to see inner life as a kind of pyramid, a structure in which each level supports the next. I call it the Energy Pyramid.

• The body is the first layer: rest, movement and nutrition.

• The mind is the second: focus, learning and clarity.

• The soul is the third: the inner space where silence, gratitude, peace and meaning live.

• Direction sits above all three and steers them towards a coherent life.

If the base is weak, what sits above it wobbles. You can make an effort, you can compensate, you can pretend for a while that everything is working. The wear and tear eventually shows.

Most of us have tried to live the other way round. I certainly did. We want mental clarity without resting properly. We want patience without looking after the body. We want to make good decisions while living overloaded. When something goes wrong, we tend to blame our attitude or our discipline, but often the problem lies further down.

That is why I put energy before productivity. You can have great ideas, a brilliant mind and a clear purpose, but if your body has no energy, none of it holds up. You cannot think clearly if you have not slept well. You cannot inspire confidence if you are dragging yourself along.

I have lived the opposite just as clearly. After a truly restorative night, I feel like reading, talking to clients, chatting with my family, stepping into the day with a different presence. Life has not become perfect. The foundation is simply doing a better job of supporting what sits on top of it.

From imposing rules to working with the body

The change did not begin with a programme. It began with a question.

One ordinary night, as I went to bed, I asked myself: how does my body feel today? I had never done that before. I was not trying to analyse anything, only to feel. I was tense and tired.

That small exercise in attention became a habit. I started asking after eating, after training, on waking up. What I noticed was revealing. Some meals gave me energy and others took it away. Some workouts made me stronger and others, if I overdid them, left me exhausted for days. The body gives back the echo of what you give it.

Slowly it turned into a silent dialogue. I stopped imposing rules on my body and started working with it. I stopped seeing rest, movement and food as optional extras and began to treat them as my main strategy.

There was no need to complicate it either. Sleeping better, moving every day and eating food that serves you: three simple pillars. Within my one-hour rule, the body gets twenty minutes, alongside twenty for the mind and twenty for the soul. The body does not ask for perfection. It asks for consistency.

Today I think of it as a pact. Not with a strict routine, but with my body: to look after it, to give it rest and to listen to its signals, even the smallest ones.

One word of warning, because it matters. This is my personal experience, not medical advice, and listening to your body is no substitute for a doctor. If a signal does not go away or worries you, get it checked by a professional.

Start today

Tonight, before you go to sleep, ask yourself the question: how does my body feel today? Do not look for a perfect answer. Just notice what is there.

If you want to go one step further, write one line each night for seven days: how you felt when you woke up, and what you think the night before had to do with it. Then read the seven lines in one go and see what they tell you.

This article draws on Build From Within (complete edition).