Before the year turned, my body forced me to slow down.
It wasn’t dramatic, but it was enough to shake me — a health scare that reminded me of something we often say but rarely live by: health is wealth. When your health pauses, everything else pauses with it. The plans, the deadlines, the responsibilities, the ambitions — all of them wait.
In that moment, I realized how easily we disregard our bodies in the name of productivity. We push through fatigue. We normalize stress. We delay rest, thinking we’ll get to it later. But health doesn’t negotiate. When it shuts down, it takes everything else with it.
What struck me most was the clarity that followed. At the end of the day, we will have to leave everything behind — titles, projects, numbers, roles. The only thing that truly carries us through each day is our ability to wake up, breathe, and function. Without that, nothing else matters.
This experience reminded me that making every day count doesn’t mean doing more. Sometimes it means listening sooner. Choosing rest without guilt. Treating check-ups, sleep, movement, and mental space not as luxuries, but as responsibilities.
If there’s one thing I’m carrying forward, it’s this: we don’t honor our goals by sacrificing our health. We honor them by protecting the one thing that allows us to pursue them at all.
Leave a Reply