What does it mean that internal conflict drains energy?

Unresolved internal conflicts consume cognitive and emotional resources in the background.

Example: You spend an entire Saturday unable to relax because part of you wants to work on the side project and part of you wants to be present with your family. You do neither well. By evening you're exhausted — not from effort, but from the continuous background negotiation that never reached a resolution. The conflict consumed the energy that either activity would have used.

Try this: Identify one unresolved internal conflict you're currently carrying — a decision you keep revisiting, a value tension you haven't settled, a commitment you half-made. Write down both sides as if they were separate people making their case. Then estimate: how many times per week does this conflict resurface in your thinking? Multiply that by 10 minutes of attentional disruption per episode. That's your weekly energy tax for this single unresolved conflict.