is made such that the corresponding energy function is minimized so the energy function is more like a theoretical consideration that you say okay here is my energy function of my hopfield network and the there will be a corresponding update rule that minimizes that energy function and if you use that update rule maybe multiple times then the energy function will be minimized and you will have retrieved your pattern or not if if you have too many patterns stored it might also fail right so they they say what the update rules are