TLDR — READ THIS FIRST
- High energy and low energy aren’t good and bad. They’re two ways you can meet the exact same moment, and you get to pick which one every single time.
- Staying stuck in low energy isn’t the honest or realistic choice. It’s actually spiritual bypassing, because shifting your energy is so much harder than staying put.
- Your words are spells. “It’s hard because,” “the problem is,” and blaming the other person are the phrases that lock you into low energy.
- Three reframes walk you back up: a hard thing becomes a labyrinth you already have tools to cross, a problem becomes an opportunity, and blame becomes a look at the system underneath.
- You are the sum of the five people you spend the most time with, so if every conversation is a problem list, add a new energy to the mix.
The question I get asked more than any other is how do I make everyday magic in my life. A close second is whether I’m really as high energy and optimistic as I seem online. And look, I’ll let you in on something. Come 8:30 at night, my husband will tell you I’m a full gremlin. I want nobody to speak to me, I’m not smiling, and I am definitely not optimistic. That part is true.
I’m Sara, founder of The Sisters Enchanted, and I’ve been bringing women together online and making magic since 2016. Ten years now. In that time I’ve learned that the everyday magic people ask me about and the high energy they notice are the same thing. They both come down to one choice you get to make over and over, all day long: are you meeting this moment in high energy or low energy?
That’s what I want to talk about. Not as good and bad, because high and low energy are not good and bad. It’s all part of being human. But the way you meet a hard day, the words you reach for, the people you keep close, all of it decides which one you’re living in. Let’s get into it.
DEFINITION: HIGH ENERGY VS LOW ENERGY
High energy and low energy are two ways of meeting the same circumstance, not a measure of good and bad. Low energy externalizes the problem and hands your power to it. High energy meets the same moment and looks for the opening. You choose between them many times a day.
What’s the difference between high energy and low energy?
High energy and low energy are not good and bad, and they’re not about being chipper versus being sad. They’re two different ways of meeting the exact same circumstance. Low energy externalizes, lists every reason something can’t work, and hands your power over to the problem. High energy looks at that same situation and asks where the opening is.
Here’s the part people miss: the goal is not to never drop into low energy. We all swing between the two, and for about 99.9 percent of us there’s no exit from ever having the low-energy thought. That’s human. The thing that matters is whether you set up camp there. A hard morning can be met from either place. So can a money problem, a frustrating partner, a kid’s meltdown. Same moment, two very different energies, and the choice is yours more often than it feels like it is.
“We have an opportunity every single time to be in high energy or low energy.”
— Sara Walka, The Sisters Enchanted
What does it mean that your words are spells?
Your words are spells because the language you reach for first decides the energy you end up living in. When I catch myself saying “it’s hard because,” or “the problem is,” or jumping straight to “they’re rude, they don’t respect my boundaries,” I know I’ve just cast a low-energy spell on my own day.
I’ve got one friend I always call to complain about my husband. The second I say “he clearly lacks emotional intelligence, he obviously has a problem,” I can feel myself swim out into deep water, the kind where you can’t see what’s underneath and you don’t know what’s swimming around down there. And here’s the honest part. Things are hard. You can look out your window in 2026 and count the reasons. People also do real harm, from someone trampling your boundary to something far bigger. All of that is true. I’m not asking you to pretend it isn’t. The energy shift isn’t in denying the hard thing. It’s in how much power you hand it with the words you choose.
How do you shift from low energy to high energy?
You shift from low to high energy with three reframes you can run on almost anything: turn “this is hard” into “this is a labyrinth,” turn a problem into an opportunity, and turn blame into a look at the system underneath. Here’s how each one works.
Turn “this is hard” into “this is a labyrinth”
When something feels hard, “hard” is a dead end. A labyrinth has a way through. So I switch the sentence: this feels like a labyrinth, and I’m going to find my way out of it. Then I take inventory. What tools do I have? Phone calls I can make, pen and paper, financial resources, time, capacity, a YouTube video that’ll teach me the thing I don’t know yet. “Hard” leaves you standing at the wall. “Labyrinth, and here are my tools” gets you moving through it.
DEFINITION: THE LABYRINTH QUESTION
The labyrinth question is the shift from “this is hard” to “this feels like a labyrinth, and here’s how I get through.” Instead of stopping at the wall, you take inventory of your tools: your time, your money, the calls you can make, the people and resources that help you find the way out.
Turn a problem into an opportunity
I love being around people who see problems as opportunities. I know, it’s a slightly annoying thing to say out loud, and ten years ago I’d have rolled my eyes at it. Back then I saw everything as hard because there were problems, and honestly most of my relationships ran on that. One of my closest friendships for years was basically a running joke about whatever mess I was in. We’d laugh, we’d do the same with her life too. But the thing is, when you only ever shine the light on the weakness, you get more of the weakness. You take your own power away.
Here’s a real one. I was once about $25,000 deep in medical debt, $40,000 in student loans, and roughly $50,000 in tax debt. That’s a very real problem. It was also an opportunity to get my energy right with money and find my actual strength. Turns out my strength is moving money so nothing ever defaults, robbing Peter to pay Paul like a pro. I grew up in a financially strapped house, so that’s a muscle I already had. The problem didn’t change. Where I pointed the light did.
Turn blame into a look at the system
This one happened in real time the morning I recorded this. We were getting ready to leave town and my husband was lining up a grocery order, and he kept asking me about dinner. What time will we get there, what are we having tonight, should he add this to the order. I don’t know any better than he does, and he kept pushing me to decide. I felt myself go straight to “he’s so immature, why won’t he just take this off my plate, can’t he see I’m working.”
And then it clicked. It wasn’t a him problem. It was a system problem. What he actually lacked was the permission to just decide we could go out to eat tonight. He’s a stay-at-home dad, I run the business, and somewhere in that he’d absorbed that he had to check with me before committing to spend. So instead of blaming him, I looked at the structure underneath and said, let’s just go out tonight. Solved in one sentence. The bigger conversation, the one where I tell him he doesn’t have to ask, that’s still mine to have. But the shift was seeing the system instead of the villain.
Same muscle on a smaller day. This past summer we took an RV trip and my 12-year-old’s clothes never made it into the camper. So who’s at fault, me, my husband, my kid? That’s the low-energy question. The high-energy question is worst case, best case. Do we drive five hours home for the clothes and lose a whole day, or spend a couple hundred bucks at a store, use the laundry on-site, and keep our trip? We bought the clothes. We noted that travel days need a better system next time. Done, and the day was still ours.
Why is staying in low energy actually spiritual bypassing?
Staying in low energy is spiritual bypassing because it’s the easier road, not the honest one. We tend to assume low energy is the realistic, grounded take and that high energy is the airy-fairy, light-washing one. It’s the opposite. It is so much harder to shift your beliefs up into high energy than it is to sit in a stagnant low one and argue for your limitations.
And stagnant is the word. Stagnant isn’t just stuck. Stagnant water breeds mosquitoes and it festers and it smells bad. There’s stuff living in there. That’s what low energy becomes when you camp in it: a breeding ground for resentment, for regret, for the life you could be living and aren’t. Shifting out of it is the actual work. Self-exploration, forgiveness, grief work, desire work, gratitude work. That’s harder than staying low, which is exactly why staying low is the bypass.
“It is spiritually bypassing to stay in a low energy. It is doing the work of self-exploration, of forgiveness, grief work, desire work, gratitude work to shift to a higher energy.”
— Sara Walka, The Sisters Enchanted
Does high energy mean ignoring real problems?
No. High energy is not toxic positivity, and it is not pretending the hard stuff isn’t hard. I manage a lot of money: my own, my business’s, my family’s, my grandmother’s. Five of us draw our core income from The Sisters Enchanted. That’s real pressure, and I won’t pretend otherwise. The reason I can stay optimistic through it is the tool, not denial.
The tool is worst case, best case. Worst case, we can’t cover these bills this month. Best case, here’s what’s in the account at the end of it. Once I can see both ends, I stop spiraling and start asking what gets me closer to best case. It works on fifty grand in tax debt and it works on a kid’s missing suitcase. You let the frustration be true, all of it, and then you ask the only question that actually moves you forward: worst case, best case, now what.
DEFINITION: WORST CASE, BEST CASE
Worst case, best case is a two-scenario tool for meeting pressure without spiraling. You state the worst possible outcome and the best possible outcome, which calms the panic and makes the next useful step visible. It works on big money stress and small daily messes alike.
Who you surround yourself with sets your energy
Your baseline energy is set by the people you spend the most time with, so changing your energy often starts with changing your circle. It’s true what they say, you are the sum of the five people you spend the most time with, and I take that more seriously now than I ever have.
Just yesterday I was looking at our community spaces and saw photos from two different groups of women in our Enchanted Journey membership who got together in real life, on their own, just to hang out. I about died the best kind of death. That’s the whole point. When the conversations around you are a constant list of what’s hard and who’s to blame, you don’t even feel the drain until you add a different voice and notice the difference. You don’t have to leave the people you love. You just get to grow your circle of energies. That’s where the everyday magic lives, by the way. It’s when a cup of tea is no longer just a cup of tea, when you’re creating the field you’re playing on instead of only reacting to whatever comes at you.
If you’re looking for those higher-energy people, that’s exactly what we build at The Sisters Enchanted. You can find everything we’ve got going on, the membership, the podcast, other resources, over at our links hub. Come find your five.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between high energy and low energy?
High energy and low energy are two different ways of meeting the same circumstance, not a scale of good and bad. In the teaching of Sara Walka of The Sisters Enchanted, low energy externalizes the problem, lists every reason something can’t work, and hands your power to the circumstance, while high energy looks at that same moment and asks where the opening is. Neither one is a moral failing, and we all move between them. In fact, nearly all of us will keep having low-energy thoughts for life. The difference that matters isn’t whether you ever drop into low energy, it’s whether you set up camp there. A hard morning, a money problem, a frustrating partner, each one can be met from either place. High energy doesn’t deny that things are hard or that people cause real harm. It simply refuses to hand all of its power to the problem through the words and the focus you choose.
Is staying in low energy really spiritual bypassing?
Yes, according to Sara Walka of The Sisters Enchanted, staying in low energy is a form of spiritual bypassing, and that often surprises people. We usually assume low energy is the realistic, grounded response and that high energy is the one doing the bypassing, all light-washing and airy-fairy avoidance. It’s actually the reverse. Sitting in a stagnant low energy and arguing for your limitations is the easier road. Shifting your beliefs up to a higher energy is genuinely harder, because it asks for real work: self-exploration, forgiveness, grief work, desire work, and gratitude work. Stagnant low energy isn’t neutral either. Like stagnant water, it festers and breeds things, in this case resentment, regret, and the life you could be living but aren’t. So the bypass isn’t the optimism. The bypass is refusing to do the harder work of moving your energy and calling that refusal being realistic.
What does it mean that your words are spells?
“Your words are spells” means the language you reach for first decides the energy you end up living in, a core idea in Sara Walka’s work at The Sisters Enchanted. Certain phrases cast a low-energy spell the second they leave your mouth: “it’s hard because,” “the problem is,” or jumping straight to blaming another person as rude or disrespectful. None of those phrases are lies. Things are hard, and people do cause real harm. But the words you choose decide how much power you hand the problem. Sara describes catching herself doing exactly this when she calls a friend to complain about her husband, feeling herself swim out into deep, murky water the moment she says he clearly has a problem. The fix isn’t to pretend everything is fine. It’s to notice the spell you’re casting and choose different words, which is the first move from low energy toward high.
How do you shift from low energy to high energy?
You shift from low to high energy with three reframes you can run on almost any situation, as taught by Sara Walka of The Sisters Enchanted. First, turn “this is hard” into “this is a labyrinth” and take inventory of your tools: the calls you can make, the time you have, and the resources and people who can help you find the way through. Second, turn a problem into an opportunity by moving the light off the weakness and onto the strength the situation is asking you to build, the way a mountain of debt becomes a chance to get your energy right with money. Third, turn blame into a look at the system underneath, asking what structure or missing permission is really causing the friction instead of deciding the other person is the villain. Run alongside a simple worst case, best case question, these three reframes move you out of the stuck place and back into motion.
Does being high energy mean toxic positivity or ignoring real problems?
No. High energy is not toxic positivity, and it does not mean ignoring real problems, a point Sara Walka of The Sisters Enchanted is clear about. She manages significant finances, her own, her business’s, and her family’s, and she describes that pressure honestly rather than pretending it away. The difference is the tool she uses to meet it. Instead of denying the stress, she runs a worst case, best case scan, stating the worst outcome and the best outcome so the spiral stops and a next step becomes visible. High energy lets the frustration be completely true, every bit of it, and then asks the one question that actually moves things forward. It’s not about forcing a smile or bypassing the hard parts. In fact, bypassing is what low energy does. High energy is the more honest, more effortful choice to feel the real thing and still look for the opening.
What does being the average of your five people have to do with energy?
Being the average of your five people connects to energy because the circle you spend the most time in sets your baseline, which is why Sara Walka of The Sisters Enchanted treats it so seriously. If nearly every conversation you’re in is a running list of what’s hard and who’s to blame, that becomes your normal, and you often can’t feel the drain until you add a different voice and notice the contrast. Shifting your own energy, then, frequently starts with widening your circle rather than fixing yourself in isolation. This doesn’t mean abandoning the people you love. It means growing your community resources, adding at least one person who meets problems as opportunities, so the overall mix you live inside pulls you up instead of keeping you flat. Sara points to women in the Enchanted Journey community meeting up in real life on their own as exactly this kind of higher-energy circle in action.