You’re the problem.
Not your husband. Not your diet. Not your metabolism. Not your financial situation. And not the Halloween candy “tax” you’re going to claim from your kids.
You.
And I need to explain, because this might be the best advice you’ll get all week.
It’s honestly been a game changer for me (and I have habitually despised thinking I was the problem). And yet, it’s been the golden ticket, the life reframe that has changed my daily life.
It’s also the foundation for story work and my toxic trait! If you don’t see yourself as “the problem,” you’ll never value how important and critical your story is.
Here’s the thing: we’re really good at speaking what we “want,” but we’re really bad at living it.
Have you ever questioned the same thing? Like, why are we really bad at doing the thing we know we should do, and even want to do?
Why do you want health, a close marriage, money in the bank, a peaceful home, and a purpose in life… AND MAKE EVERY ONE SO DIFFICULT TO GET?
Why do you intend to eat a baked potato but choose the chips instead?
Why do you crave intimacy, but you choose to pick a fight with your spouse over something as small as how they load (or don’t load) the dishwasher?
Why do you promise clean eating, but you know good and well, you’re going to take some “mom” tax on your kids' Halloween haul?
You want to be wealthy, but you just spent $300 at Target and can’t name a single thing you bought.
You want a clean house, but instead you’re on the couch watching a stranger cleaning her house? (Yes, I agree it is satisfying).
You want to be close to God, but you’ll open Instagram 40 times a day and don’t even open your bible once.
AND NONE OF THIS IS OUT OF REACH. We just make it that way.
The answer is… you.
You’re the one putting your desires on a stick and dangling them just out of reach. Sure, the world supports this message by making everything so complicated you assume it’s true.
But it’s not.
Now, to be clear, you aren’t necessarily the problem. But the way you choose to go about it is. Your choices are. I say "you" because anytime you work from the problem instead of taking responsibility for it, you become the problem.
The good news (or perhaps the best news): the problem is often the solution.
Meaning you might be the problem. But you’re also the solution.
You’re the one thing you can actually change. Which means you can do something about this very situation, and it can start today.
I’ve been doing some research lately. Very unscientific research, involving lots of observation, podcasts, book reading, and simply staring at a wall. I’ve been studying “highly successful” people. And I don’t just mean success by the world’s standards. I mean people who actually live out health, who live full of joy, who are fully living life.
And I keep finding the same exact thing.
They never gave themselves another option.
It wasn’t a choice between healthy and unhealthy. It was always just health.
There was no plan B.
They lived as a walker, not to become one.
They lived rich, not as poor chasing rich.
They lived healed, not in a perpetual state of healing.
They had a choice. Just like you and I do. They just chose to live out of the good, not out of what they hated. And my friend, THIS IS THE GAME CHANGER. The life shift. The transformation you’ve been looking for in that next “fix.”
What I found when I tried it out myself…
You might remember, but years ago, I quit health.
I full-on decided the way of health was making me more unhealthy. So I hard quit. Ironically, I eventually found myself back in the space. I just called it something different.
But it was the same thing. Also known as the cycle of insanity: Doing the same thing over and over because we call it something different.
And I think many people find themselves here, attempting health in what feels different because they call it something different, but it’s the same thing. Chasing a fix for the problem.
And that problem, I think, becomes the greatest distraction to actually living out what you already have.
It wasn’t until I put this research into action that things really changed. When I stopped living for and started to live from, it became my reality, not just a good idea.
Like I actually STEPPED into what I had been chasing. I lived it, not chased it. Like I really live it.
Let me give you some examples, because I’ve put this experiment through many parts of my life: my marriage, my businesses, my health, and even my faith.
The Nourish Planner
Take the Nourished Planner for instance. We just announced that we’re not printing the 2027 dated planner. That might be a shock. And a year ago, I NEVER would have imagined this, unless we were done-done.
How could you stop printing the very center of a business in order to save it? I don’t know, but I know it is. And the reason I know it is, is exactly this process.
My old way would have limped along, struggling, complaining, and trying to attach myself to any solution I could find.
But when I stopped chasing an idea of success and asked what it would look like to live from already being there, my decisions came from a completely different place.
Now I know what I need to do and I’m doing it.
Here’s a more relatable example: my health.
A few years ago, I realized I was addicted to healing. The chase became more addictive than living it.
And I think a lot of us love the chase without realizing we’ve gotten hooked on it. The new protocol, the new plan, the supplement stack. Each gives its own hit of hope, a feeling of control, until it wears off and we’re back seeking another chase.
But I realized this was getting me nowhere, and I stopped and asked, what if I lived healed instead of for healing? What does healed mean? When I created the understanding and started living it, GAME CHANGER.
Marriage + Faith
It’s the same idea for my marriage and faith. I always needed someone or something to blame, to keep me in a perpetual state of striving. In our marriage, obviously he (Payton) was the problem.
In my faith, it was time. I never had enough of it (although somehow I always found time for Instagram).
Both of those excuses make perfect sense when you’re working for something.
Payton being the problem makes sense when you’re working for a healthy marriage. But it doesn’t when you’re living from one, because a healthy marriage takes two, and I AM ONE OF THEM.
What I’m trying to say is, living from moves you out of have to, should, and need to and into simply doing.
And when you’re doing, ACTUALLY DOING the thing that moves you into what you want, it is GUARANTEED to work, because it’s not an if/and situation. It just is.
IT IS SUCCESS… and that’s exactly what my research came back to.
People who are successful are doing the things that move them toward what they want. Every day. Even when it’s imperfect. Even when they don’t know. They’re doing it.
Which leaves me to ask, what would change if you stopped working to become and you started working as if it already were?
Pro-Tip: Live like a millionaire.
Live like a millionaire.
Live healed.
Live joy.
Live like you’ve been in a healthy marriage for 50 years.
If you lived like it, you’d…
Know where your money is and how much you have, so you know what you actually want to buy… and say no to things at Target not because you can’t have them, but because you choose something different.
Show up for your body and feed it and move it daily based on what it needs, not just what your emotions are craving.
Your cravings would be information, not a problem.
You’d show up for your husband, not to get something from him or to blame him, but to be unified with him.
You’d clean your house, not to keep it perfect, but because it’s part of living healed.
You’d stop praying like you’re trying to earn something, and you start talking to God like a daughter who already has a seat at the table.
You might even eat a piece of Halloween candy. Or maybe you’d leave it and not look back. Not out of spite, but because you’re no longer someone fighting a war within themselves.
Notice, none of these require you to arrive somewhere first.
They just require you to act like you already have!
Stop waiting to live like her. Start living like her, because that’s the only way to become her.
This isn’t new, by the way. It’s the whole Gospel.
We don’t fight for victory… we fight from it.
You move, not because you’ve arrived, but because sometimes you have to walk like healed people before you look like them.
Test it out for yourself: Live Healed
Test it out for yourself.
What is one area in your life you’re working for?
A healthier body?
A smaller number on the scale?
A better marriage?
A different story?
Ask yourself, if you already had that, how would you live? What would it look like?
I’m talking practical action.
Now, GO DO IT. And then do it again. Notice how that feels.
If you’re still struggling to do it… don’t worry. There's a gap between knowing what to do and doing it. Even knowing what you want and living it. If you’re here, I got you. On Thursday I’m going to tell you why good intentions mean nothing without the fuel to do it.
But for now, let’s just take an inventory of your life. And put to rest all the places you’re chasing a fix when you could just start living as if it is. Because living as if it is, makes it a reality.
I’d love to know which area you're testing. Share below so I can use it as my example in Thursday's email.