Six years ago, I walked away from my day job and went all in on my business.
I thought I knew what I was giving up. Security. A predictable pay cheque. The comfort of knowing exactly what each week would look like.
What I didn’t know, and what was quite a mind-blower, is that the real things you give up aren’t on any list you can prepare for. They’re invisible, buried so deep inside you that you don’t even know they’re there until the business, the growth, the journey pulls them out of you.
And the most important work I have done in all this time is learning to close my energy loops.
What Does It Mean to Close Your Energy Loops?
An energy loop is any pattern, belief, habit, or dynamic that is quietly draining your energy without you realising it. It’s the background noise running beneath everything you do; the reason you feel exhausted even when nothing particularly hard has happened; the reason you can be doing all the right things and still feel stuck.
When you close your energy loops, you reclaim that energy. You stop leaking power into the past, into fear, into patterns that no longer serve you. And everything – your results, your relationships, your capacity – shifts.
I spent six years discovering mine. One by one. Layer by layer.
The first one that surfaced was the belief that I wasn’t good enough. I launched my business with absolute certainty and everything flew – until it didn’t. A launch for a course that I’d worked hard to put together didn’t land. Someone I thought was definitely going to work with me didn’t sign up. And suddenly, a tiny thread I didn’t even know existed started to pull. Research I later found suggested that 87% of female entrepreneurs carry this same pattern. Not good enough. It doesn’t always show up on day one. But it shows up.
When I finally closed that loop – truly closed it, not just papered over it with affirmations – things started changing.
The Energy Loops Hidden in Your Relationships
When you start growing and evolving at pace, something unexpected happens to the people around you. They don’t always grow at the same speed. Or they just decide they don’t work to work on themselves at all. And when you start talking about mindset, about energetics, about possibilities – some people simply can’t meet you there.
I lost relationships I thought were permanent. I watched friendships quietly dissolve. For so long these experiences felt like loss and nothing else. Over time though, what I came to understand was that it was actually a loop closing. Those dynamics had been costing me energy I didn’t know I was spending – energy spent shrinking myself, moderating my excitement, toning down my vision so that others felt comfortable.
To close your energy loops in relationships doesn’t mean walking away with coldness. It means leading with love while being honest about what you need to protect: your energy, your growth, your path.
The Loop That Looks Like a Strength
Here’s the one that surprised me most. I used to pride myself on being high energy. Always on, always doing, always fuelled by adrenaline and momentum.
What I didn’t know was that this wasn’t strength. It was dysregulation.
A nervous system running on fight or flight doesn’t feel like a problem when you’re in it – it feels like drive. It feels like passion, like you’re simply someone who works harder and cares more. It wasn’t until I trained in breathwork and went deeper into my own health that I understood what was actually happening. I was running on proving. On seeking external validation. On needing to do more to feel worthy.
That was one of the most important energy loops I ever closed. Not because I slowed down – I didn’t – but because the energy I now operate from is completely different. Regulated. Sustainable. Real.
Shrinking Yourself Is an Energy Loop Too
This one is subtle, and I almost missed it entirely.
People pleasing is obvious – you know when you’re putting others first. But shrinking yourself to fit in is much, much harder to see. I would soften my presence in rooms and make myself smaller so others could feel comfortable with my energy.
I didn’t know I was doing it until I was in spaces that showed me the contrast. When I finally stopped, when I let myself take up the full space I was entitled to, everything shifted. Opportunities, connections, confidence, results.
You cannot close your energy loops while simultaneously shrinking yourself to fit into rooms you deserve to fill. The two cannot coexist.
The Final Loop – The One That Brings It All Full Circle
The most recent loop I closed, and in many ways the most important, was the energy of waiting.
Waiting to be ready, for the right time, for more confidence, more money, more support, more certainty. Analysing everything. Hesitating. Holding back.
This is the loop I see most in the people I work with. They are ready. They have everything they need. But they are waiting for a version of themselves that feels prepared. And that version is never coming. Readiness isn’t something that arrives. It’s something you unlock, and you unlock it when you close your energy loops.
Six Years. Six Loops Closed.
Not good enough. Released.
Relationships that no longer served my growth. Released.
Self-worth tied to output and appearance. Released.
A dysregulated nervous system fuelled by proving. Released.
Shrinking myself to fit into rooms I deserved to fill. Released.
The energy of waiting for a perfect moment that was never coming. Released.
I never knew these were what I was carrying. I never knew they were the thing standing between me and the life and business I have now – one that has reached listeners in 70 countries, taken me into rooms with millionaires and billionaires, and allowed me to work with extraordinary people all over the world.
None of it was possible until I learned to close my energy loops.
If you feel like you’re doing everything right and something is still holding you back – it’s not your strategy. It’s not your offer or the market.
It’s an energy loop. And it’s ready to be closed.
Charlotte Carter is a Mindset and Energetics Mentor and the founder and CEO of I Dare To Leap. She hosts the global The Energy Of Success podcast, runs Youtube channel Millionaire Energy Game, and has written for many publications including Grazia, Hello!, The Daily Telegraph, Metro and Marie Claire.
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