Fuck, is this it? (long pause) I feel duped!
This was what I got back from a client ten years ago when he told me he did everything right. He followed the blueprint. He built the empire. And yet here he was. I had asked him how he felt about it.
He was in commercial real estate making millions. People loved and respected him. He was a mentor, a wealthy adventurer, introspective, persuasive, kind. A man whose presence filled the room. This wasn’t just my take. I heard it from his closest circle at his Celebration of Life eight years ago.
I was his meditation coach. Our work together took him deeper than his previous ten years of group practice ever had. He spoke to me openly about his childhood; how his father’s financial failures ruined Christmas every year, casting a shadow on the holidays that his family could never escape.
He vowed to break that cycle by doing everything right.
By the time he found me, he had been taking anti-depressants for longer than he had been meditating, of which he was a fan. But while he felt the power of the practice, there was a stopping point, at which he refused to go deeper.
I asked him why.
Because I’m afraid I’m going to stop liking money.
There, I said it.
He was afraid that going deeper into stillness would cost him his drive. He was terrified that if he found peace, he would lose the identity that made him successful. He wouldn’t trade his empire for equanimity.
He stopped working with me and joined a high-level “conscious leadership” group. It was a program for C-levels that gave members zero space to pause or integrate. I know because I belonged to that group and got out. If you wanted to “grind consciously,” to run the same high-pressure software on the same exhausted hardware, this was it.
Two years later, he killed himself.
To his friends, it came out of the blue. They didn’t know the secret he was keeping, and they wished he had felt safe enough to let his buddies in.
I knew what it was, though I never imagined he’d take it that far.
It wasn’t that he was afraid meditation wouldn’t work.
He was afraid it would.
He knew it would change him. His fear, however, imagined the wrong change.
He thought that peace meant passivity.
He didn’t realize that peace is actually the only way to sustain power good enough to live.
His surprise ending presented me with a question that turned “wellness” into a survival necessity. It forced me to ask myself, how do I present this differently?
How do I get people to stop looking at internal regulation as a “nice to have” once their life’s problems are solved?
How do I show them that this is more urgent than their contract deadline?
I still grapple with it.
I realize that most high-achievers don’t consciously choose to sacrifice their health. It’s much more subtle than that. They treat the exhaustion, the brain fog, and the wired-tired nights like a Success Tax, the unavoidable price of admission for a big life.
They don’t think they’re delaying peace.
They think they’re surviving their own success.
They assume the motherboard can handle the heat forever.
Until it doesn’t.
I still teach meditation. But I changed the entryway to lunch. In fact, looking back at the 23 years with my kids, that’s where I actually started.
I realize that for someone in the thick of the grind, meditation can feel like an invitation to a void they aren’t ready for. And lunch… is a requirement that feels like an interruption.
People nod when I say a warm lunch is important. Most go back to their desk, to the phone, to the grind. They skip the meal because they think they’re gaining 20 minutes of productivity. What they’re actually doing is refusing a hardware update.
The warm lunch is the minimum viable dose of stillness.
It creates a vital boundary that says: The grind doesn’t own 100% of me.
It proves to your nervous system that you’re allowed to stop before you’re forced to.
You can be successful and have peace.
In fact, internal regulation is the only way to ensure your success doesn’t become a prison.
It’s not the stopping that costs you. It’s the not stopping.
Eat warm, breathe slow, keep a rhythm
– Savitree
Upgrade your hardware:
Take the Day in the Life diagnostic to see where your signals are crossing, or begin your own 5-day rhythm with the Fat + Fire Framework.
See that's the curious thing right - so he was given a kind of lousy Christmas experience growing up - and he vowed to change that - and maybe he did for a few years - but then for some reason - perhaps the stress of "doing everything right" - he took Christmas away from his own kids/family - in some fashion after killing himself.
People who are doing things right - meaning not everything perfect - generally do not kill themselves. I want to know why - it may have taken away his "drive" but so what - as if he couldn't still make money - and chill out.
But that's not what he did - in essence, he didn't play around more with how to confront his resistrance to how he was going about his life.....perhaps producing too much stress at Christmas.