Simplicity is Delicious.

I read a quote once that said: “To live well, one must live unseen.” The older I get, the more those words make complete sense to me.

For years, I bought into the idea that life was all about the grind. No “gap years,” no lazy Sundays staring at clouds, no weekend afternoons doing a whole lot of nothing with nobody. Always chasing. Always pushing. I was so determined that even “determined” felt like too soft a word. It worked, for a while. Years in fact. Business boomed, deadlines were smashed, and coffee became the closest thing I had to a therapist.

But running on pure adrenaline and caffeine is not sustainable forever and eventually your body and soul hit the big red shutdown button. Mine did, with spectacular flair. A “system error” message flashing across the screen of your life — the dreaded blue screen, haha! — System memory dump incoming, lol! You are not designed to operate at 200% forever.

The craziest part of it all though was that from the outside, it probably looked brilliant. Busy, buzzing, “successful.” On the inside? I constantly felt like a flat tyre rolling on a gravel road — technically moving, but absolutely finished. The city doesn’t help either. It lures you with bright lights and opportunities, but more often than not, it swallows you whole. You can live in the middle of it all and still not live at all.

So, I escaped. Properly escaped. Not a weekend away or a sabbatical with my laptop lurking in the background. I mean full blown unplugging. And somewhere in the middle of what feels like nowhere, I realised something I’d missed for decades. Simplicity is delicious.

These days, I don’t own a single “smart casual” outfit. Denim shorts, old T-shirts with holes, and slip slops that have definitely seen better days… that is pretty much my red-carpet look. My hair has given up on salon visits, my nails have long resigned from manicures, and I have made peace with the fact that mascara is about as complicated as I am willing to get with my make-up routine… And you know what? I’m happier for it. It’s lighter. Easier. Realer.

The fact is that the quality of your life does not come from the titles you chase, the labels on your clothes, or how many emails you answer before breakfast. It comes from the questions you dare to ask yourself. Questions like: Does this actually matter? Does this add joy? Does this feel like me?

I have found that slowing down doesn’t mean giving up. It means levelling up in a way that actually counts. It means replacing the constant “go go go” with a slower sort of rhythm that lets you taste your coffee instead of just injecting it into your veins. It means valuing a simple laugh with a stranger rather than another empty and pointless meeting in a boardroom.

Living well has less to do with being seen, and more to do with finally seeing yourself. So I will leave you with a thought — What if the highest form of success isn’t how much you achieve, but how little you actually need to feel full?