Spiritual Health

The Gold Ring — Purpose. Connection. The Halo.

This leg is rarely discussed in the health industry. It gets tangled up in arguments about organized religion and the separation of church and state. Let me be direct: I do not care what you believe or what religion you practice. But I am absolutely convinced that without a strong Spiritual Leg, the three-legged stool will not hold, and that imbalance will eventually cost you your health.

My Own Spiritual Journey

I grew up Catholic, then left the church in my twenties after losing several friends too young and experiencing a family tragedy that still hurts to this day. I became an atheist and stayed that way for a long time. It was not until the past few years — watching my wife fight for her life, watching my parents fade away in separate memory care facilities, watching friends and colleagues lose their battles with cancer — that I started looking at things differently.

I could not accept that all of this suffering was simply random and beyond our control. That refusal to accept it led me back to something — not to organized religion, but to a different kind of understanding. I began to see spirituality as a connection with the earth we all come from, the sun that powers every living thing, and the human bonds that give life its meaning.

Do I have an unbreakable Spiritual Leg? No. I am constantly working on it. But I believe in it more deeply every year — and I believe it is the quiet force that makes everything else sustainable.

What Is This Energy We All Feel?

An old boss of mine once told me he thought God was the energy you feel when people walk into a room. Think about it — have you ever felt the positive charge when someone remarkable enters? The warmth, the pull toward them? And the opposite — the heaviness, the dread, when a deeply negative person walks in? What is that, exactly?

I believe we are all connected — because we all come from the same earth, powered by the same sun. The energy that bonds the atoms and electrons of every cell in your body comes from the same source as the person sitting across from you. That is why you feel butterflies on a first date. That is why seeing someone you love after time apart produces something almost physical. That is why the loss of someone close feels like a part of you disappears. We are not separate beings moving through the world independently. We are connected — and that connection is not mystical. It is energy. It is science. And I believe it is what many people call God.

To support this idea, I want you to listen to a single line from the final piece of the Broadway musical Les Misérables — the Epilogue Finale. Jump to the 5:50 mark. The line is: To love another person is to see the face of God. It produces an emotional response in me every single time. Because it captures something true about what it means to be human — and why human connection is not optional when it comes to living a long and healthy life.

Les Misérables — Epilogue Finale (jump to 5:50) →

Connection Is Health

The research is unambiguous: people who live the longest have numerous close, meaningful relationships with others. This is not a soft finding — it is one of the strongest predictors of longevity we have. And yet we are moving in the opposite direction at an alarming speed.

As smartphone addiction algorithms pull us further from physical human connection, anxiety is rising — especially among younger generations. Prescriptions for depression and anxiety medications are at historic highs. This is not complicated. Less genuine human connection leads to worse health outcomes. The Spiritual Leg is not a nice-to-have. It is a biological necessity.

The Spiritual Leg and Your Health Choices

Here is the practical power of a strong Spiritual Leg: once you truly appreciate the remarkable machine your body is — what it can do when you stop interfering with it, how it was designed to heal itself when given the space to do so — you will think twice before putting harmful things into it. You will hesitate before grabbing that bag of processed food someone brought into the office. You will feel the cost of skipping a workout differently than someone who sees their body as just a vehicle to get through the day.

The Spiritual Leg is what gets you out of bed earlier than you want to. It is what keeps you on course when the peer pressure to eat badly, skip the gym, or pour another drink becomes overwhelming. It is the inner conviction that your body is a gift — and that you owe it your best effort. That conviction has to come from somewhere deeper than willpower. Willpower runs out. Spiritual grounding does not.

In my experience, people who have sustained the 7% over the long term almost certainly have a strong Spiritual Leg, even if they would never use that word to describe it. You simply cannot maintain that level of discipline year after year, through life’s curveballs, peer pressure, and the constant temptation to take the easy road, without something deeper driving you. That inner conviction is the Spiritual Leg. And here is where the 7% Community becomes critical — those who have found that conviction need to share it. Their stories, their journeys, their spiritual turning points are exactly what will help others find their own footing and join us. Growing from 7% to 8%, 9%, and beyond requires the 7% to teach not just what they eat or how they train — but why they keep going.