Issue #74 • June 20th, 2026

Hi Reader,

Here is an uncomfortable little exercise.

Think of the people who leave you better than they found you. The ones you walk away from clearer, lighter, more like yourself. The friend who makes you think harder. The mentor who says the one thing you needed to hear. The person who knows the real version of you.

Now look at how much of your actual time and attention they get.

For most of us, the honest answer is whatever is left.

We give our best hours to the people and problems that create friction, because friction demands attention. The difficult colleague, the needy acquaintance, the relationship that is always slightly on fire. They get managed, scheduled, worried about. Meanwhile the people who fuel us are easy. They are stable. They do not complain when we go quiet. So they get the leftovers: the distracted dinner, the text we keep meaning to send, the call we will make when things calm down. Things never calm down.

That is the leftovers problem. And it is the half of this conversation almost nobody works on.

For the last few weeks I have written about the other half, the subtraction. The energy audit in Not All Relationships Are Created Equal. The difference between a toleration and a boundary in The Backpack and the Door. How to actually set a line with someone who drains you. All of it matters. But clearing the drains was never the goal. It was the prerequisite.

When my marriage ended and I cleaned house on the relationships that were quietly costing me, I assumed the energy would just come back on its own. It did not, at least not at first. Because I made the same mistake I had always made. The space I cleared got swallowed by the next round of obligations, the next bit of friction, the next person who needed managing. I had subtracted, but I had not added anything on purpose. The quieter life was emptier. It was not yet better.

It only got better when I did something that felt almost transactional and turned out to be the opposite. I named the handful of people who actually fueled me, and I started giving them my real attention, deliberately, the way I gave it to everything else that mattered.

Here is the shift. You do not just become the average of the people you spend the most time with. You become the average of the people you give your best energy to. And right now, for most high performers, that is not who you think it is.

So if you have done the hard work of clearing the drains, here is how to pour into the people who fuel you instead. It is not complicated. It is just deliberate.

Name them, and name why. Pull up the positive column from your energy audit. For each person, get specific about what they give you. Do they sharpen your thinking? Make you feel seen? Tell you the truth? You cannot cultivate what you have not named.

Put them on the calendar. Good relationships do not die of conflict. They die of neglect. The standing call, the monthly dinner, the walk. Schedule the people who matter with the same seriousness you schedule the meetings that do not.

Go first. High achievers wait to be invited, then quietly wonder why no one invites them. Reach out without an agenda and without an apology for the silence. The person who initiates carries the relationship, and that is a gift, not a burden.

Skip the small talk. Frequency is not the same as depth. You can have lunch with someone every month for a year and know nothing real about their life. Ask the better question. Say the slightly more honest thing. That is what turns contact into connection.

Tell them. Almost nobody knows they are on your "fuels me" list. Say it out loud. "I always think more clearly after we talk." It deepens the bond on the spot, and it is rare enough that people remember it for years.

This is the part that makes the boundary work worth it. You did not set those limits to end up alone. You set them so there would be something left to give the people worth giving it to. The door you closed on the draining ones is what lets you open it wider for the ones who fuel you. Subtraction without addition is just isolation. The two only work together.

The relationships I invested in after the divorce are the reason the quieter life became a fuller one, and not just a smaller one. More energy than any schedule change or supplement ever gave me. But this time it did not come from who I removed. It came from who I finally started showing up for.

So this week, do one thing. Take one name from your "fuels me" list and put real time with them on your calendar, before the draining stuff claims it. Then go first. Send the message today, not when things calm down.

The people who fuel you are not a reward you earn for surviving your obligations. They are the point.

Mathias

P.S. This is just as true in business as it is in life. You become the average of the room you build around you, and most founders and business owners are stuck in rooms that cannot challenge them anymore. As part of leading the Regional Cohort for Birthing of Giants, I host workshops and dinners and sat down with eleven business owners here in Austin, more than a hundred million dollars of revenue around one table, and the moment we got honest, every single one of them named the same problem. I wrote up what happened in that room, and what I am building so founders here stop carrying the weight alone. If you are doing real revenue and tired of being the smartest person in your own company, give it five minutes: Every Business Needs a Giant. Here's What That Actually Looks Like. https://bymathias.kit.com/posts/every-business-needs-a-giant-here-s-what-that-actually-looks-like​

My next dinner for business owners in Austin is on August 13th. Send me a message if you are interested in joining

Mathias Ihlenfeld | Entrepreneur | Coach | Advisor

mathias@mathiastx.com | 737-600-6142

Reply anytime - I read everything personally.

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