🔪 Part of the series: Creative Subtraction
Where Health Actually Begins—Letting Go of the Life That Drains YouThis is Post 2 of 7. If you missed Post 1, start here
This series explores the real reason so many health journeys stall:Vitality doesn’t begin with diet or discipline. It begins with subtraction.
Not the chase to do more—but the bold, tender choice to stop carrying what’s been silently breaking you.
This is where your body starts to soften.
After my meditation today I received a question: how come there is so much health frustration and disease at a time when you can find any information about health that you desire?
There is information out there to last you 100 lifetimes. And in the age of AI even, people are still feeling lost about their health.
After helping hundreds of clients from all walks of life optimize their health and after continuous tweaking of my own health, the answer that came immediately to my heart was: people don’t know what they don’t know.
People are fed a diet of longevity doctors and health gurus podcasts and their bodies get so overwhelmed by what everyone else is doing, they lose sight of the space required to create their own health foundation.
Mainstream and integrative health advocate for changing habits even in the face of a shaky health foundation.
Even the law of attraction and making yourself feel good under a shaky health foundation will backfire dramatically.
This is like going to a landfill to help make it better smelling and spray lavender essential oil all over the mounds of garbage and hoping that that will do the trick.
Well, it might work for a second there, but all of that expensive lavender oil and effort going all the way over there and preparing and spraying the oil was all for nothing because now, instead of just the garbage smell, you have fragrance mixed in with the garbage. YIKES!
What a freaking waste of time.
This is how most people do health. They grab all the information, then make sure it is evidence based, then they try to stick it in their daily lives without any thought to what they don’t know.
Frustrating.
Here is what most people don’t know that they don’t know:
A life that’s too busy and full of moving parts is NOT conducive to feeling top notch vitality well into their 90s.
If you don’t have continuous rhythmic SPACE in your daily life to first, build a health foundation and then add habits in a rhythm that will serve you, you are leaking your health effort all over the place with that perfect exercise and diet routine.
Most of us live in SURVIVAL MODE. Busy is a hallmark of success. This is what people call life. And it is a big biochemical mess. This is called ‘normal.’
A life of a thousand moving pieces—90% of which you don’t even enjoy—translates into biological traffic jams of major proportions, a mess of which no diet, no exercise, no supplement, no sexy longevity hack can outpace.
Let me say this again:
A life with barely any time out will create a barrage of harmful chemicals in your body that will become background for everything.
You will be swimming in stress chemical soup.
The Life That Looks Fine but Feels Wrong
You’re doing everything right, but it still feels wrong.
You’re going about your ‘normal’ life being a good girl or good boy and doing life perfectly…you can keep this up for a while but soon, the mask begins to crack and your body starts to let you know that this might not be exactly how you want to be living your life.
But at this point you’ve invested too much in this life, in your significant other, in your kids, in your house, in your circle of friends to have the courage to hear yourself instead of continuing to keep up with the Jonases.
People gloat about how they wake up at 5 AM to work out for 2 hours, then worked for 8 hours, then got home, made dinner, took this and that kid to soccer practice, then came back late and went to bed at midnight.
Then went to three family functions and/or playdates for the kids on the weekend even though they were exhausted from the week and didn’t want to go.
Then booked 2 vacations to Mexico for the year because that’s what you do if you are to be seen as a successful family.
Then bought a much bigger house, a much more expensive car, numerous activities for the kids to learn everything.
Then making XMAS perfect for the family, then New Years, then Valentine’s day baskets, then Easter, the bdays and PHEW!
You Can’t Heal What Keeps Hurting You
Then, on top of it all withstand dead relationships, especially marriages, who have been dead loooooong ago but because ‘til death do us part’ was promised, now they die a toxic and slow death pretending not to see that their lack of good sleep, gut issues, anxiety attacks, depression might very well be due to this environment they are living in.
Oh it was sad to see countless clients living in marriages like this. This is one of the biggest energy drains of all time: wearing masks in relationships just so that you keep in barely alive.
I had a client who after suffering with major anxiety, gut issues for YEARS was magically healed in a few weeks after she decided to leave a marriage that had been dead for years.
I would say that only maybe 1 or 2 clients of the hundreds I have worked with truly got what creative subtraction really means and actively removed moving pieces from their lives.
The Body Knows When You’re Faking
It’s gonna show up somehow as fatigue, inflammation, burnout, sleep problems, belly fat, cognitive decline, irritation, depression, anxiety, cravings, lack of motivation….and don’t go blaming these on hormones UNLESS you’ve done the creative subtraction work first.
A Powerful Health Framework
Creative subtraction is a HUGE part of my health framework for good reason - and it works — beautifully.
You MUST have no mercy in ditching ANY moving piece that is not serving your health and well-being.
To enter the bridge to ‘Health and Vitality,’ you have to become aware and accept what is making you unhappy and then have the guts to get up and say ‘I have the power to choose different.’
And slowly begin the process of dropping what does not bring you joy and what is not working in your life. Give yourself a break. Give yourself rhythmic daily SILENCE in your life.
This is the only way to begin clearing your biochemical environment to be able to give you full value for all the effort you are making in other areas of your life.
You can't green-smoothie your way out of emotional repression.
What Are You Still Holding That’s Holding You Back?
The truth is you know what and who needs to go from your life.
You are probably denying it to keep things ‘normal’ or maybe you haven’t named it yet but I can guarantee you your body already knows.
Take 30 minutes today. Can you journal—honestly—on what needs to go?