I chose less to get more.

It was a Friday morning. 15th of May.

I was at a cafe with my daughter, laptop open, coffee delicious—as always. Anahera was doing what two year olds do… existing loudly and beautifully and completely unbothered by whatever was happening on my screen.

And then, I did it:

I closed down my paid Substack subscriptions.

Just like that. A few clicks. DONE.

Substack refunded every current subscriber automatically. I lost money. Real money. From what had become my only consistent income stream outside of the breathwork sessions and retreats I have been holding while I finish my certification.

I picked up my phone and texted my husband.

What happened next is the reason I am writing this essay.

The fog lifted. Just completely lifted. Ideas started dropping in… not forced, not effortful, just arriving with ease (thankkkkkk fuck).

Clear and fast and fully formed. Future plans. Actual direction. The shape of what I actually want to build with this space, with my work, with the next chapter of what I am creating. Within an hour I had planned an entire workshop launch and a small group breathwork series from scratch.

An hour.

Four years of skills I built as a launch coordinator and content manager—skills I had been sitting on, underusing, circling around—just dropped back into my hands like they had been waiting. I felt like myself again. Actually myself. Not the version of myself that had been low-key managing and protecting and hedging on “what if’s.”

The version that knows exactly what she is doing and does it.

I sat back in my chair at that cafe with my daughter asking me for another oat milk babychino and I thought: why was I holding onto this for so long?

And, this is what I found:

The paid subscription was not just income. It was a story I was telling myself about where I am right now.

Because the reality of this season of my life that I had not yet confessed to myself is:

this is the first time in years I have not had consistent income.

And it has been painful. Genuinely, uncomfortably, frustratingly painful.

I love having financial freedom. I love being able to move through life without checking the account first. Spontaneous dates. Last minute plans. The pocket money Nathan and I would give ourselves each pay—no questions asked, just free to spend as we please—that has had to be put on hold for a little while.

We are on a budget, and something I have struggled to admit until now is that it has made my old patterns and limiting beliefs rear up loud and uninvited.

Get a job. Just go get a job. Something consistent. Something that pays every fortnight and puts the holiday fund back and makes the tightness in your chest go away. All of it, dressed up in very reasonable language about responsibility and practicality and being a good wife and mother.

And the paid Substack subscription was, I realise now, a version of answering that voice without fully surrendering to it. A compromise. A way of saying to myself: see, you are monetising. You are building something. It is not nothing. You’re not completely worthless.

Except what I was actually doing was using it to avoid the identity I was most afraid of sitting with.

The identity of someone who is not yet making the money she wants to make.

The identity of someone who is mid-build. In the gap. Not there yet.

The identity of someone who can’t move freely without counting the cost first—and suddenly I am somewhere I recognise from a long time ago. A younger version of me who knew what it felt like to want more ease than was available. Who made a silent promise to herself that one day, one day, money would not be the thing that decided what was possible for me.

That younger self does not need much of an invitation to show back up.

As long as that subscription was open, I did not have to fully face that. And because I did not have to face it, I could not fully move through it.

The subscription was not protecting my income. It was protecting me from the discomfort of my own edge.

And that protection was costing me everything.

Every time I sat down to write here, some part of me was writing toward the wrong thing. Protecting the positioning. Managing the income story. Not fully free. The creative flow that I know is in me—the flow I have spent so many years honing, building, learning—was bottlenecked behind a fear I had made look like pragmatism.

I am sitting with the most uncomfortable edge I have hit in years.

I am this close to graduating as a certified Breathwork Mastery (RBM) Practitioner.

This close to being able to legally offer and advertise my own sessions, my own groups, my own intensives.

This close to changing this money story once and for all in a way that actually means something… not by getting yet another job, but by building the thing I have been building.

And I almost talked myself into retreating right before the finish line.

Because that is what edges do. They are most uncomfortable right before they break.

I want to ask you something.

Where are you doing this?

Not the paid Substack specifically. That is just my version.

I mean: where in your life are you holding onto something that looks responsible, looks practical, looks like the sensible thing… but is actually just a very sophisticated way of not having to face the identity underneath it?

Where are you trying harder, when trying harder is not the problem?

Because here is what I know about the people who keep hitting the same limits: they are not lacking effort.

They are not lacking intelligence or self-awareness or commitment. They are some of the most capable, driven, growth-oriented people I have ever come across.

The limits are not there because they are not enough.

The limits are there because something underneath the surface has not moved or resolved yet. Something that all the trying, all the strategy, all the coaching and courses and reframes and habits… has not been able to reach.

You have done everything right and you are still here again. At the same threshold. The same edge. The same specific exhaustion of someone who has kept going and kept growing and keeps finding the same ceiling waiting anyway.

That is not a trying problem.

Trying harder will not move it.

I closed the subscription and planned a future in an hour because something that had been in the way of my intention finally got seen.

That little version of me—the one who learned a long time ago that money meant stress, that ease was something other people had, that wanting more than enough was somehow greedy or naive—she was still in the driver’s seat. Still making decisions. Still recreating the same environment, the same tightness, the same ceiling. Not because that was my truth now. But because it had been my truth once, for very real and very valid reasons, and no one had ever told her it was safe to let it go.

So I got honest with her. I found the thing she was protecting. I looked at it directly instead of calling it practicality or responsibility or patience.

And I asked: does this have to be my truth now?

The answer was no. It has never been no so clearly before.

That is the moment something moved. Not because I tried harder. Not because I found a better strategy or reframed a belief or added something new to the pile. Because I got honest about what I was actually protecting… and I stopped protecting it.

That is the whole thing.

That is always the whole thing.

There is a reason your limits keep appearing. A precise, specific reason that has nothing to do with how hard you are working. And it is not in your mindset. It is not in your strategy. It is not in any of the places you have already looked.

That is the thing worth finding.

Haven x

New here? I’m Haven Hall. Breathwork Mastery (RBM) enthusiast, event and retreat host, creatress, wife, mother, and someone who has burned through every version of herself that was playing small—based on the west coast of Australia (for now).

I write weekly essays on peak performance, personal freedom, body wisdom, and whatever else is taking up space in my head and heart rent-free.

This is not a wellness blog (though it may look like one). This is for the ones who know something is in the way and are finally ready to find out what.

The hungry. The curious. The ones who suspect they are capable of something they have not yet touched.

Pull up a chair. The coffee comes with a side of taboo.

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