WHY MYSTICS NEED TO STOP PRACTICING HOW TO SUFFER

If you look at the mainstream wellness and entrepreneurship space right now, it is entirely dominated by optimization culture. It is an endless parade of 5 AM wake-up calls, intense fasting windows, AI agents, peptides, jiggling plates, and submerging your body in freezing water before the sun comes up.

The underlying mantra of the biohacking era is always the same: "Shock your system. Prove to yourself over and over that you can do hard, uncomfortable things."

look. this is true. we need to cultivate patience. we need to put in the time for things to come to fruition. We need to know how to put our head down and build shit. this is all true and i don’t deny it. increasing our capacity for discomfort also increases our capacity to hold BIG SHIT! yes! we need dopamine regulation and we need space to detox from instant gratification.

But here is the unspoken truth about that philosophy: it was built by, and for, people whose baseline existence is … incredibly comfortable.

If you are a mystic, a highly sensitive intuitive, or someone who has navigated complex trauma, that advice is not just unhelpful—it is actually actively damaging sometimes. are you the type of person who doesn’t feel it when getting tattooed? does impact play soothe you? cool, then you probably don’t need regular contrast therapy. your life has been contrast therapy, girl.

THE PHD IN RESILIENCE

If you have spent your life in a state of hyper-vigilance, you do not need to plunge yourself into an ultra marathon or a frozen lake to prove you can survive a shock to your system. You already have a PhD in surviving the hard things. You know exactly what the gross soup of survival feels like.

(did anyone else like the public discourse around that Love is blind couple, jessica and chris? chris, a mid white guy in sales with rosacea, tried to tell jessica, a 10/10 and whole doctor, what its like to persevere through something ‘difficult’ for a few minutes during his workouts. he wasn’t ‘attracted to her’ because she did not do enough pilates, lol)

For traumatized intuitives, our nervous systems are already masterfully tuned to detect and endure friction. We are experts at white-knuckling our way through life.

When we force ourselves into these aggressive, hyper-optimized routines, we aren't "building resilience." We are just recreating the familiar chemistry of trauma. We are keeping ourselves addicted to the struggle because it is what we know best. you already have resilience babe. what you need is rest!

THE ACTUAL HARD THING: TOLERATING EASE

If you want to know what the truly hard thing is for a mystic? It is stopping.

It is allowing things to be easy. it’s allowing in general, actually. it’s receiving.

For those of us who have lived in the knuckle-dragging war of survival or startup building, the most terrifying thing in the world is a quiet morning. When the friction stops, our nervous systems panic. We subconsciously create new problems, overcomplicate our businesses, and exhaust ourselves just to feel the familiar hum of productivity.

The most radical, difficult work I have ever done as a founder was not learning how to hustle harder. It was actively increasing my tolerance for rest. It was learning to sit in the discomfort of ease without rushing to fix, build, or force something into existence.

WEALTH WITHOUT EXHAUSTION

This philosophy is the exact reason I built the Soma ecosystem the way I did. I wanted to create a vehicle for wealth that did not require you to bleed yourself dry to prove you earned it.

You do not need to be the operational bottleneck in your own life. You can use brilliant technology, hold a grounded container, and generate massive financial abundance without exhausting your physical body.

We have to stop making it so hard. You have already proven you can survive the winter. Now, the real work is proving to yourself that you are safe enough to step into the warmth.