Is this why you quit? (It's why I did)

4 minute read | We're all so much closer to health than we know, yet why does it feel so far away? I might have the answer.

Jun 18, 2024

Six years ago, I quit health.

I don't want to say it was a rock bottom moment in my life, but it was the point when I decided I couldn't hold on any longer. I waved the white flag.

I don't know if you ever had to perform the hang test in gym class, but it's a good picture of my health journey before quitting.

The hang test is the test where you were forced to see how long you could hang on a sticky, gritty metal bar that made your hands smell like old pennies. It wasn't like the pull-up bar that everyone knew was a feat. It was nothing more than hanging. But the entire time, it felt like my arms were slowly getting ripped from my shoulder sockets.

It's the same way holding on to the 'health plan' felt a little like my soul was getting ripped from my body, or maybe it was my body getting ripped from my soul.

I never could imagine what it would look like if I let go until one day, the pain of holding on felt worse than the fear of wherever I might land if I let go.

What I presumed would be falling into a slow tumble of body shame, a full-on letting go, was actually much different. I was pleasantly surprised to find life.

Don't get me wrong, quitting health wasn't a smooth fall, but it was one of the most pleasantly uncomfortable decisions I've made.

I think many of life's best things fall somewhere between pleasantness and discomfort, between holding both the good and the hard in the same space.

Health happens to be the same thing.

It's not only good, but it's also hard.
It's simple, yet it requires work.

One doesn't make the other void, but health is understanding how to live in the space of feeling both, often simultaneously.

I bring this up to address the fantastic question/ statement posted last week in the comments section.

"My challenge right now is what to do instead of the plan. When you let go of an idea or a plan, it leaves a hole, and I don't have a list of things waiting to fill that hole. While I understand that most of the time, the space created is healing and has potential for the next iteration, but the space is uncomfortable when the rest of life around you is moving forward."

It's exactly what I felt when I dangled from the impossible bar I created health to be.

There didn't seem to be any path I could win at.

The plan has become what tethers us to life.

Without it, it feels like you might float away or sink into the ground. Of course, floating is a form of healing. But other times, you need to cut the rope and let go.

Floating is not your design, and neither is nothingness. All humans were created to be grounded, and it's the grounding that makes us safe and gives us a home to come back to.

That doesn't mean you need to be tethered to something toxic. If you're fighting the plan, the plan isn't working. But you must be grounded because the grounding makes you safe, and when you are safe, it changes your biology and the outcomes you feel.

But the thing is, we often get the grounding confused with tethering.

Grounding is having a solid foundation. A safe home to go out and live life.

Tethering is a form of bondage. It is a form of chaining you to a place that feels safe but fails to allow you growth and space to live.

Grounding is a form of rhythm and routine.
Tethering can come from holding too tightly to a bad plan.

Here's the thing: humans were designed for routine, not bondage.

They can often look so similar that it is easy to miss their differences. The difference is how safe or unsafe they make you feel, how they help your life or force you to fight life.

You need rhythms and routines, and perhaps our greatest problem is not finding a better plan but recognizing that we're becoming rather rhythmless as a society.

We've lost the boundaries that create our home.

We've let go of the routines that ground us, leaving many of us feeling like we're floating away. In fear, we start grasping at 'chains' to tether us back to the ground.

As long as you lack rhythm and routine, you'll always grasp for chains because we all need something that offers a sense of safety, even if, in the long term, it makes you more unsafe.

That's why it's so difficult to break old patterns.

Because no matter how much you hate it, that pattern is safe. The only way to change is to ground yourself, which comes from establishing a new routine.

Redefining rhythms (routine) might just be what it takes to heal the hole.

That means putting less emphasis on the plan or challenge and more on the intent of those things—to help you build new patterns and rhythms in your life.

Use this as motivation:

Use the challenge not as a chain in your life but as a grounding force helping you establish new rhythms and routines. Use the Nourish30 Challenge to help you build a new home. A place you can come back to every day to fill your life with the fuel to get out and live.

Remember: If it doesn't help you build a routine, it will always feel like a fight.

Focus on building a routine.