When Your "Best Laid Plans" Go Awry, Your Emotional Energy Often Follows
Have you ever had one of those days where you felt like you were living out the adage, “the best laid plans”? That’s me today, and it zapped me of the high energy that started my day.
First, I woke up still riding a high from how well yesterday’s Pricing Made Human® Clinic experience went — it was awesome!
Second, I had a lovely 4-mile walk-n-talk with a dear friend — the kind where our far-ranging conversation kept us moving at a quick pace, despite the humidity.
Third, I’m going to see one of my favorite musicians perform at the Blue Note Jazz Club tonight: MeShell Ndegeocello. Yay!!
I didn’t have a lot of tasks on my to-do list for today, but enough that the unexpected disruption really threw my calendar into a tizzy.
Here’s what happened: I went to get my 2026 COVID and Flu shots and the lady said, “That’ll be $400.”
At first, I wasn’t sure I heard her correctly, so she repeated it. Now I’m confused because I have insurance (for which I pay a pretty premium for) — plus, these vaccinations fall under “preventative” care and have always been free. After an hour spent on the phone with my health insurer at the pharmacy, I head back home for a work call and then have two more calls with my insurer and two more with the pharmacy. Not the Friday I intended.
The issue is now resolved and once their systems “talk” to each other, I’ll be good to go. But guess who’s focus was shot to pieces? Yep, mine.
That’s the thing with focus and emotional energy. It’s pretty darn hard to have the former with the latter at the low end of the gauge.
You see, unlike mental energy — where you can name the tabs, prioritize them, close them one by one — emotional energy doesn’t really work that way. It’s not a to-do list. It’s more like a gauge that moves whether you asked it to or not.
You can have an empty calendar and still be running on fumes.
You can clear every task on your list and still feel depleted, because the thing that drained you wasn’t a task at all — it was how much of yourself the day required.
And when the gauge runs low, everything downstream feels it.
Decisions that should take five minutes take thirty.
Patience you’d normally have for a slow-moving pharmacy hold takes on the tone of “not today, universe.”
Focus — the thing we talked about wanting to protect this month — becomes almost impossible to summon on command, because focus needs fuel, and the gauge is what’s supposed to be supplying it.
So what actually moves that gauge? I think about it through the same lens I asked you to consider back in week one of this series — what’s feeding your emotional energy versus what’s depleting and draining it.
Feeding looks like: a win that gets to actually land, instead of being immediately swallowed by the next thing on the list. A conversation with someone who doesn’t require you to perform — where you can be unedited. A problem that gets resolved and released, not just technically closed while it keeps running in the background.
Draining looks like: an issue “fixed” on paper that’s still costing you hours later, because your nervous system didn’t get the memo that it’s over. Other people’s urgency becoming yours — a hold-music emergency that was never actually an emergency, until it ate your afternoon. Carrying the emotional weight of a decision long after the decision itself has been made.
Here’s what makes emotional energy sneaky: you can be managing it fine, and one thing — one $400 surprise, one comment, one delay — can drop the gauge for the rest of the day. Not because you’re fragile. Because emotional energy doesn’t ask permission before it spends itself.
So what do you do with a gauge that runs on its own schedule?
Not push through it. That’s usually my first instinct — and maybe yours too — to treat the low gauge like an inconvenience to power past. But pushing through a low gauge doesn’t refill it. It just spends what little is left, and you pay for it later, usually in a form you didn’t choose (snapping at someone who didn’t deserve it, losing the thread on a call, forgetting the thing you swore you wouldn’t forget).
Instead, try this: the next time you notice the gauge drop — really notice it, don’t just try to push past it — name it. Out loud, or just to yourself: “My emotional energy just took a hit.” That’s it. Don’t try to fix it, or analyze it, or schedule a self-care hour for it. Just name it, the way you’d name a tab you’re finally ready to close.
Because here’s what today reminded me of: unnamed drains compound. They don’t just cost you the moment they happen in — they quietly tax everything you do for the rest of the day. Named ones, at a minimum, stop pretending to be something else. And more often than not, that’s enough to let you get back to the gauge you actually want to be running on.
And honestly, I think the only reason I was able to get started on this is my weekly deadline for writing Sunday’s missives.
Next week, we close out this series with the energy many of us think about the most, but understand the least — financial energy. Because everything we’ve covered — the tabs, the gauge — eventually shows up there too.
About Jacquette
I love to ask questions and spark aha moments. I love to talk about why success with money is about more than just the numbers, and how the cultural impact on the intersection of money, business, and life matters–A LOT! And, I really hope I help people feel seen, heard, and not judged—especially since money is emotional and personal.
