Understanding Energy, Affect, and the Five Core Human Drives

Everything Is About Energy Management

I want to talk about energy and affect, the way energy is expressed in our body, how it becomes affect, and how the mind then parses that affect into what we call emotions.

This post is meant as a big-picture overview, like putting all the tools on the table before we start building. We’ll go deeper into each part later, but for now, let’s open the box and take a look at what’s inside.

In one sense, everything about being human is about energy management. All of our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, even our personality, are shaped by how we use, conserve, and restore energy.

Think of it this way: we’ve evolved to manage energy well. We use it to get our needs met, to protect ourselves, and to stay in rhythm with a world that’s constantly in motion. I’m not talking about energy in a mystical or new-age sense here. I mean literal energy, the kind we get from food, sleep, and movement.

When you eat a good meal, your body converts that food into energy, and a surprising amount of it goes straight to your brain. In fact, about 30 percent of everything we take in is used by the brain. So when someone’s hungry and they start to get irritable (like in those Snickers commercials where people turn into Joe Pesci), it’s not just a joke. It’s the body signaling an energy shortage. Mood changes are part of the system’s way of motivating us to refuel.

Affect: The Language of Energy

This flow of energy in and out of us shows up as affect, the body-mind expression of energy. Affect is how energy feels and moves through us.

Affect can be strong or weak, pleasant or unpleasant. It’s the raw material our brain uses to guide perception, motivation, and action. The mind constantly runs a kind of calculus, taking in sensory data, mixing it with memory, expectation, and need, and what we feel as a result of that process is affect.

Affect underlies and strongly influences most of our behavior. It shapes how we see the world and is, in turn, shaped by what we believe about the world. It’s not a one-way street. It’s a reciprocal process, constantly looping between body, feeling, and meaning.

Older models of psychology tended to say, “Something happens, then you have a thought about it, and then you feel an emotion.” But cognitive neuroscience now paints a more dynamic picture. The flow of energy, and the affective tone that comes with it, are always present. They influence what we notice, how we interpret it, and which beliefs or memories we draw upon in response.

The Five Core Human Drives

As we talk about how to move from turbulence to flow, it helps to recognize that our affect is powered by five biological aims. These are the built-in drives that regulate the flow of our emotional energy. They can either give us gas or hit the brakes depending on how well they’re being met.

1. Safety – Our most basic aim. Everything in us is wired to seek safety. But for humans, safety is rarely achieved in isolation. It’s found in connection.

2. Connection – From the moment we’re born, we look to others for protection, comfort, and regulation. A baby who’s startled or frightened doesn’t think about what to do. It cries out, instinctively reaching for another human being. That drive for connection never really goes away.

3. Meaning – Over time, our experiences of safety and connection shape our sense of meaning. They teach us what the world is like and what it means to be cared for, seen, or ignored. Attachment theory is one way of understanding how this early emotional calculus develops.

4. Agency (or Autonomy) – We also need to feel that we can act on the world, that we have some influence over what happens. Too little agency can make us feel helpless, while too much can make us anxious or rigid.

5. Novelty – Finally, we need stimulation, curiosity, and growth. The drive for novelty is deeply wired, possibly as ancient as our instinct for safety itself. It keeps life interesting and helps us adapt to change.

Using the Five Drives to Read Emotional Turbulence

When you or someone you love feels emotionally turbulent, it can help to pause and ask:

• Is this about safety?

• Is it about connection?

• Is it about agency or autonomy, too much or too little?

• Is it about novelty, too much change or not enough stimulation?

• Or is it about meaning, feeling unseen, unvalidated, or disconnected from purpose?

These five drivers act like emotional coordinates. They tell us where the turbulence is coming from and where to look for calm.

In Summary

Energy becomes affect. Affect becomes feeling and action. And underneath it all are five biological aims: safety, connection, meaning, agency, and novelty. These five aims regulate the flow of that energy through our lives.

How we align our actions with these core aims is how we create flow. And it's their mis-alignment that is often behind problems such as anger, anxiety, and depression to name a few.

As we continue exploring the path from turbulence to flow, we’ll look more closely at each of these drives, the neuroscience behind them, and how mislabeling our emotions or misunderstanding our affect can keep us stuck.

For now, just remember: every emotional wave you experience is an expression of energy, and every shift toward flow begins with understanding where that energy wants to go.