Latest / YINWorldWide / Is Success Worth Your Health
Transcript
- YIN: There are people right now building incredible lives, building careers, building families, building something they've spent years trying to reach. And some of them are doing it all while quietly destroying the one thing they need to experience any of it. Their health. I know it sounds boring. Eat better, exercise, get some sleep. Shit, we've all heard it before. But that's not what I want to talk to you about. Because I've watched people track everything except themselves. They know their credit score. They know when the car needs an oil change. They know exactly how much is in their bank account. They know their kids' schedule down to the hour. but asked them the last time that they went to the gym, last time they went to go see their doctor. Shit. Last time they went to go see their dentist, and suddenly they don't know. And then sometimes you get the phone call. They're in the hospital and everything stops. The work, the plans, the money, the thing that felt so urgent that morning. None of it matters by that afternoon. And that's why I can't stop thinking about this. Because we spend an enormous amount of times trying to build better lives, but none of that matters if you're not healthy enough to experience it. So maybe health isn't another priority competing with space in your life. Maybe we've been looking at it completely wrong. Maybe health is the thing underneath all of it. This is yin, and these are conversations about discipline, direction, and identity. And they quietly shape who you become. Almost everybody will tell you that their health is important to them. However, look at their calendar and you'll see otherwise. Their flights are scheduled, the dinners are scheduled, everything important gets its place, and then health gets whatever is left over. I'll start after this trip. I'll deal with it when things calm down. What's interesting is that we don't usually make one enormous decision to neglect ourselves. It happens in increments. A missed workout, a terrible meal, four hours of sleep, a postponed appointment, Individually, maybe none of it matters, but eventually temporary decisions become permanent patterns, and because the consequences aren't immediate, we convince ourselves the trade works. That's the part worth sitting with. because if every unhealthy decision immediately produced its consequences, we'd behave very differently. imagine sleeping four hours tonight and waking up tomorrow having aged five years. You probably rethink the decision, but that's not how the body works. The decision happens today. the consequence arrives later. and that delay is what fools us. Look at how we carefully protect the things that are important. We insure the car, we lock the doors, we back up the phone so we don't lose 10 years worth of photographs. We think about exposure. We think about downside. but there's one thing almost nobody evaluates with the same seriousness, and that's ourselves. Think about how strange that is. You'll pay every single month to protect a car you drive to work. Meanwhile, you haven't seen a doctor in over three years. You'll replace a roof before it leaks. You'll set aside money for a disaster that may never come. then run the person all of it exists for into the ground and somehow call that responsibility. I see the extreme version of this in business. Founders will ensure the equipment, protect their intellectual property, back up the servers, build the cash reserves, And the single largest asset in the company, hasn't had their blood work done in years. But it isn't just founders. The parent whose family runs on their paycheck. The person taking care of their mother. The one everybody calls when something breaks. Almost everybody is load-bearing for someone. And yet we celebrate the behavior that slowly degrades exactly what makes us useful to them. we call getting four hours of sleep grinding. We say working through being sick means you're dedicated. We say never taking time off means you're committed, and that ignoring the stress makes you strong. We've somehow created a culture where neglecting your responsibilities is irresponsibility, but neglecting yourself is Can look like devotion. I don't think that's devotion. I think sometimes it's just neglect wearing a more respectful outfit. Here's what makes this difficult. You can get away with it. That's the trap. You can sleep too little and still do the job. You can eat terribly and still build the thing. You can live under enormous stress and still make money. You can ignore something happening in your body and And still wake up tomorrow. So you begin believing you're handling it. But there's a difference between something not costing you yet and something being free. Everybody understands debt. You can carry a balance for years before it becomes a problem. The spending already happened. The bill just hasn't arrived yet. your body isn't that different. Maybe the invoice comes next month. Maybe it comes in 10 years. maybe it never comes in the way that you feared. And I want to be clear about something once so it doesn't hang over the rest of this. Health isn't a morality system. You can do everything right and still get sick. You can do everything wrong and live a very long time. Illness is not proof that somebody failed. That is not the argument. The argument is much simpler. If something is carrying every part of your life, why would you knowingly increase the risk of losing it? Especially for the things you claim you're doing it for so you can eventually have a better life. That is the contradiction. We sacrifice our health today to build a life we hope to enjoy tomorrow. without ever asking whether the sacrifice might interfere with our ability to enjoy it. I've watched this happen. Someone is buried, everything is urgent, work is. Need something. Money is tight. somebody is waiting on an answer. The phone won't stop ringing. And then something happens. Chest pain. A diagnosis. An accident. A hospital room. And suddenly, silence. Not literally. The phone is probably still ringing. The messages are still arriving. Life Still has the same problems it had yesterday. But something strange did happen. Everything that felt unbelievably important becomes almost irrelevant. nobody sitting in that room is thinking about what's due on Friday. They're thinking about getting home. They're thinking about their family. They're thinking about whether they're going to be okay. And notice what happened. Nothing outside that room changed. Their hierarchy did. That's what I find fascinating. because if health can instantly become the most important thing in your life when something goes wrong. Why wasn't it treated like the most important thing when everything was going right? Why does something have to be threatened before we understand what it was worth? The things constantly available to us become almost invisible until they're not available anymore. Then we trade almost everything to get them back. I want you to imagine something with me. You spend 20 years working for it and it works. The career paid off. The house is paid for. The kids made it through. You have options. You finally have the thing that you've been chasing. Freedom. Except now your body dictates where you can go. Medication dictates the schedule. Pain dictates what you can do. Energy dictates how long you can stay. The money bought freedom, and your health built a different set of walls. Because the cruelest version of success isn't failing. It's winning and realizing you spent the thing you needed to enjoy the prize. And here's what makes that person worth thinking about. That person is you. Twenty years from now, there's another person involved in every decision you're making today, and they don't get a vote. They don't get to tell you to go to sleep. they don't get to make you schedule the appointment. They don't get to tell you that the thing you're ignoring deserves your attention. But they're going to inherit all of it. We talk constantly about leaving our future selves money, save, invest, build something, don't retire with nothing. But what kind of body are you trying to hand that person? What kind of mobility? What kind of energy? What kind of independence? because getting there with money and no ability to experience your life Isn't what anybody was imagining. maybe investing in your future isn't only about what's waiting in the account. Maybe it's also about the person who arrives to spend it. This is where I've changed how I see it. Health isn't another item on the priority list. Family. Work, money, relationships, health. You see, that's already wrong. Health is underneath the list. It's the infrastructure. Everything else runs on top of it. Your ability to work, your ability to think, your ability to raise your children, your ability to help your parents, Even your ability to experience something as ordinary as a Tuesday. We don't think about that enough. A day without pain is valuable. walking up the stairs without thinking about it is valuable. Sleeping through the night is valuable. Having enough energy to spend the day with the people you love is valuable. But those things don't photograph well. Nobody posts about walking around without pain. Nobody celebrates blood work coming back normal. there's no trophy for waking up and feeling fine. So we overlook it. When you feel good every day, feeling good doesn't feel extraordinary. It feels normal until normal changes. Success announces itself. Health is quiet. And maybe that's exactly why it's so easy to undervalue. we spend enormous amounts of our lives protecting our futures, working, making money, creating security, trying to give our families better lives. And all of that can be meaningful. But underneath every one of those ambitions is an assumption we rarely say out loud, that we'll be healthy enough to experience what we're building. We treat that assumption like a guarantee, Because we spend our lives acting like we're indispensable. The work, the family, the problem only we can solve. But the world has an incredible ability to continue without us. Somebody else can do the job. Someone else can answer the email. But nobody else can live your life for you. Maybe that's what we forget. So I want to leave you with this question. What are you working so hard to build that could possibly be worth sacrificing your ability to experience it? This is Yin. If this resonated, share it with someone who needs to hear it. Not everyone, just someone who's ready. You can find Yin Worldwide Podcast on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. If you want to go deeper, visit our website at liveyin.com. Subscribe if you're committed to the work. If not, that's fine too. This isn't for everyone. Remember, move with intention.