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Properly slept.
Not nine hours in bed followed by a poor sleep score. Not waking up exhausted and wondering how it was possible to sleep for that long and still feel as though my body had spent the night fighting an invisible war.
Actual, deep, restorative sleep.
I knew before I looked at the numbers.
I could feel it in my body. Something was different. I had slept deeply. I felt alive.
I was almost nervous opening Fitbit. My body was telling me I had finally slept properly, but would the data agree?
It did.
I wanted to celebrate. Cartwheels. Fireworks. Champagne.
(I don’t drink, but you get the picture.)The sort of ridiculous joy normally reserved for reaching financial independence.
How did one night’s sleep become so important that it deserved the same level of celebration as becoming financially independent?
To explain that, I need to take you back to May in Canada.
It started with a fever
I became seriously ill in Canada.
Fever. Cold sweats. Exhaustion. Lying in bed waiting for the fever to break.
As symptoms got worse, Katie and I went to an urgent-care clinic. I was feverish, exhausted and a complete mess. I thought these were the people who would look after me.
But they were overloaded.
They did not have the capacity to see me, and they sent me away.
I remember the guy in front of us in the line arguing with the receptionist to try and get an appointment. I didn't have the energy to fight. We left after being nice to the receptionist to help her feel calm again and we stood outside crushed. I was ill, far from home and did not know what to do next.
The healthcare system I had turned to simply did not have space for me.
So we asked AI. Who else could I turn to?
It helped Katie and me think through our options. That led us to a pharmacy, which led us to an online doctor I could speak to on the phone a couple of hours later.
In that moment, standing outside an overwhelmed clinic with a fever and almost no energy, AI helped us find the next door when the first one had closed.
From there, the medical journey began.
The problem appeared to be a urinary tract infection, (UTI). I was prescribed antibiotics, rested and waited to recover.
I thought that would be the end of it.
It wasn’t. Not but a long way.
I acted like I was Wolverine
I never thought my health account could run dry.
When I was younger, I acted like I was Wolverine. I think many of us do, to a certain extent.
Push me, exhaust me, knock me down and I would heal overnight. I did not merely recover from pressure. I felt as though I became stronger because of it.
I used to run Rebel Business School workshops for two weeks at a time.
I would be on stage with 100 people from 10am until 4pm. Before the workshop, I would be coaching people. Afterwards, I would be coaching more people.
Then we would get a curry, open the laptops and work into the evening to improve the workshop for the following day.
Day after day.
When it was finally over, I would sleep for most of the weekend and pay the bill.
That was my model of health.
I could borrow from it during the week, push myself as hard as I needed to, then make the repayment with one or two enormous sleeps.
And for years, it appeared to work. I was known for having unlimited energy. My business partner Simon nick named me Buzz Lightyear on crack!
You can run the workshop, catch the flight, finish the project or push through one more week.
But borrowing does not make the energy free.
For years, I thought I was paying the balance in full. I would push myself through something enormous, sleep for one or two days and wake up ready to go again.
Whatever I withdrew today, my body replaced tomorrow. I had built my life around the belief that the account would always refill.
This time, the repayments were no longer clearing the balance.
The interest was compounding.
Like a credit-card balance, the longer you keep borrowing without fully recovering, the larger the eventual debt can become.
The bill does not merely come later.
It can come back larger.
I never seriously considered that my health account could run dry.
The infection that would not leave
The antibiotics appeared to work.
My symptoms improved. I thought I was recovering.
Rebel Finance School began and I went back to the gym. Before long, I ended up in an emergency room in Boise being given stronger antibiotics.
The symptoms eased again. Once again, I thought I was recovering. Energy seemed to come back and I started to live my life again. But..
...the infection had not gone.
The bacteria were resistant to both courses of antibiotics I had been given.
That was one of the most unsettling lessons of this whole experience.
Feeling better did not necessarily mean I was better. The infection reduced but then grew back with a vengence.
It was like I had spent the night fighting a war in my sleep. To a certain extent, my body had.
My body was in bed, but it was not recharging. No matter how long I pay there I still had no energy by 3pm in the afternoon.
I knew something was seriously wrong.
At one point in Long Beach, I thought I had finally recovered enough to return to the gym again.
I had rested for two weeks. I had slept as much as I could. I needed to move. I needed to work out.
This was, with hindsight, Wolverine Alan taking control of the recovery plan.
I went to the gym.
My body responded by wiping me out for the rest of the day.
I ended up in bed, unable to think through the brain fog. I was exhausted beyond words. There was nothing left to summon. Nothing left to push with.
My account was empty.
Eventually, I received the testing and care that showed which antibiotics the infection was susceptible to. In plain English, that meant identifying which medicines might actually work against it.
If you want to understand the science behind that process, the CDC explains how antibiotic susceptibility testing helps identify resistance.
I finally received the treatment that seemed to clear the infection.
Why did I keep going?
Through all of this, we continued running Rebel Finance School.
Why?
Because it mattered.
I wanted to help you. I wanted to give to you. I wanted to do more for you.
You are important.
But there is something else I need to explain.
Rebel Finance School was not only something that required energy from me.
It also gave me energy.
On the difficult days, I could lie on the couch thinking about the course. I endlessly generated ridiculous AI images, took silly photographs, built slides and obsessed over the flow.
I kept thinking about how to create one more moment that might change somebody’s life.
Behind the ridiculous AI images and carefully built slides, this was where much of Rebel Finance School was created.I saw your faces on Zoom.
I watched you keep turning up and asking questions. I saw those moments when something suddenly clicked and you realised:
Your messages filled me up.
Your emails. Your Facebook comments. Your stories about the changes you were making.
We received more than we could possibly answer. If you sent us something and never received a reply, I am sorry. Please know that we saw so many of them, and they mattered.
They reminded me why we were doing this. They kept me going.
Holy Moly, they are incredible.
They turned up beside us and gave their time, energy, experience and kindness to complete strangers.
They answered questions we could not reach. They helped people through the panic, confusion and uncertainty that can come with finally facing your finances.
When I did not have much energy of my own, I could look around and see all of yours.
You gave me a mission outside myself.
My world could easily have shrunk until it contained nothing but symptoms, sleep scores, urine tests and antibiotics.
Instead, I had an outward focus.
You were my reason to keep going.
Sometimes I did too much. Sometimes I gave more to the fight than my body had available.
But you matter. I got emotional typing this. You give me a reason to get up in the morning and to fight.
You are worth fighting for.
Two hundred people in a brewery
Towards the end of the course, 200 of you turned up to see us at a brewery in Auckland.
It was incredible.
All those faces. All that energy. All those people choosing to take control of their finances and build better lives.
This was what had kept me going.
When I did not have much energy of my own, I could look around and see all of yours.There are moments when we consciously spend some of our health on something that matters deeply.
I do not regret giving what I gave to Rebel Finance School. Purpose, connection and contribution helped carry me through one of the hardest physical periods of my life.
But even the most meaningful mission does not grant you unlimited energy and Wolverine healing powers.
You can occasionally borrow from tomorrow’s health. You just cannot pretend the debt will never need repaying.
The same goes for credit cards!What if my energy never comes back?
By the time we left Auckland, I was depleted.
I could not go to the gym. I was losing muscle. My body felt heavy and my thighs felt like lead.
I had spent the whole day tired, slept for more than nine hours, and woken up tired enough to do it all over again.
We arrived in Perth and I finally had space to recover.
I was no longer running the course. I was not forcing myself back into the gym.
I stopped trying to Wolverine my way out of it. I was gentle with myself. Which is not my normal way of solving a problem!
And still, the energy did not come back.
Ten days after leaving Auckland, I was still exhausted. I wasn't sleeping well, I couldn't exercise, the shingles leisons had still not left my body.
That was when a thought began to creep in.
What if my energy never comes back?
I bounced around stages. I built things at ridiculous speed. I trained. I travelled. I created adventures. I used my energy to inspire others and it was part of my identity.
Now I was doing everything I could think of to recover, and it still did not seem to be enough.
What if I no longer had the energy to live the freedom Katie and I had worked so hard to create?
What if I could no longer run around Disney with my gorgeous wife, go on another Alaska cruise, build things, help people and have extraordinary adventures?
What was the point of creating an extraordinary life if I no longer had the energy to live it?
Financial independence gives you the freedom to build an extraordinary life. Health is what allows you to live it.
I am not going to pretend that one good night’s sleep means this story is over.
My energy is still not fully back.
I still do not know exactly how much this episode has cost me.
And that scares me.
It is why I have done the blood tests. It is why I have analysed the data, researched what happened and taken my recovery so seriously.
I was not searching for the latest health hack.
I was trying to understand what my body needed from me. What I could do to help it restore balance and recover. What could I do to support it after it had supported me so tirelessly over the decades?
How much more can I get out of my body?
How can I look after it?
AI became my thinking partner
After that first experience in Canada, AI remained beside me throughout the journey.
A doctor would say something, and I would take it away and try to understand it.
At first, I resisted using AI at a deeper level.
I trusted the doctors. Surely they had the expertise, and I should simply follow their instructions?
But after two courses of antibiotics had failed, I finally gathered everything together.
The timeline. The test results. The drugs I had taken. What had happened after each one.
Then AI and I began reviewing the whole story together.
That was when I realised I should never have seen it as a choice between doctors or AI.
Katie should have been standing in the corner of the room shouting, “It’s not binary!”
I needed both.
To examine me, order tests, interpret what was happening and prescribe treatment.
To help me organise the scattered information, understand unfamiliar terms and prepare better questions.
Doctors are working inside overloaded systems. Appointments can be brief.
We were travelling through different countries. My results were scattered between different clinics and systems.
Nobody else had hours to sit with every test, every drug, every symptom and every question.
I did.
I was the one lying on the couch with both the time and the greatest motivation to understand it.
AI tirelessly helped me organise information, understand unfamiliar terms and prepare better questions. I could ask the same question five different ways until I understood the answer.
It did not replace medical professionals.
It helped me become a more informed participant in my own care.
For years, I had tracked every pound, worked to understand every investment and taken responsibility for my financial future.
Yet with my body, I had assumed somebody else would always tell me what I needed to know.
I had become the chief financial officer of my money, but not yet the custodian of my health.
Nobody will ever have more time, context or motivation to care about your health than you do.
Now I can see my blood test results over time, have AI show me the changes and explain them to me with Marvel Superhero references and make it fun. I can understand my data and what is happening with my health at a whole new level.
I wish I had understood that from the beginning.
None of us is truly independent
Being ill while travelling is frightening.
At home, you understand the system. You know who to call, where to go and what normally happens next.
Travelling through different countries, we were constantly trying to work out where to go, how to access my results and whether the next person would understand everything that had already happened.
But people cared for me.
In Boise, I met a doctor who was strong, calm and confident.
At a time when I felt physically weak and uncertain, his confidence gave me hope. He looked after me. The team cared for me.
Then he did something I have never forgotten.
He went away, Googled who Katie and I were, and came back into the room to thank us for our work helping people.
I was there because I needed help.
Yet this doctor, in the middle of caring for me, took the time to tell me that the work Katie and I had done mattered.
The American healthcare system subsequently reached me with a $2,000 bill, which was a slightly less heart-warming follow-up.
I still need to submit the insurance claim.
But the people were lovely.
When I was exhausted, some of my old weirdness around calling people came back.
Normally I can push through it, but when there was almost nothing left in my tank, even ringing a doctor felt harder.
Katie helped me make the calls. She got me to bed. She hugged me, looked after me and helped me take the next step when I did not have the energy to take it alone.
I talk a lot about financial independence, but none of us is truly independent.
When my health disappeared, I needed all of them and, most of all, my gorgeous wife beside me.
A healthy human has a thousand wishes
When you are healthy, your mind can travel everywhere.
You have plans, ideas and dreams.
A thousand improvements to a life that does not yet feel quite complete.
But when your health disappears, your world becomes very small.
All those competing priorities fall away.
For months, I had one wish.
I wanted a good night’s sleep.
I wanted to wake up feeling rested.
That was it.
A healthy human has a thousand wishes.
An unhealthy human has only one.
Financial independence gave me the freedom to build an extraordinary life.
Health is what allows me to actually live it.
Without energy, freedom became something I could see but could not fully use.
There were adventures available, but I did not have the strength to experience them. We were hanging out with our friend Rob, the organiser of Tribe FI in Perth. Rob had so many ideas and so much energy, and I kept having to say, “No, I need to rest.”
There were gyms I wanted to train in, work I wanted to create and places I wanted to explore.
There were gyms I wanted to train in, work I wanted to create and places I wanted to explore.
But all I could handle was sleep.
The first deposit
Then, last night, something changed.
Before opening Fitbit, I knew.
I had slept deeply.
My body felt different. My energy felt different.
I was buzzing to find out whether the data matched what I could feel.
It did.
One night does not make a trend.
I know that.
Huge excitement, immediately followed by Wise Commander Alan confiscating Wolverine Alan’s gym bag.
I am not celebrating with a heroic leg day.
But after months of watching the numbers move in the wrong direction, this felt like the first meaningful deposit into an account that had been empty for far too long.
I am not fully recharged.
But for the first time in a while, I feel hopeful that I am finally starting to recharge.
More sleep is on the menu for the rest of the time here in Perth, clean eating, blood tests and all the good stuff. I know I can't take this first recovery sign as an excuse to hit the gym hard again but I am excited that maybe just maybe I am on the right path now...
Please look after you
I spent years treating my health as though it were endlessly borrowable.
Another withdrawal.
My body always seemed to pay me back.
Until it couldn’t.
You can pay today’s bill with tomorrow’s health.
Sometimes, you may even decide that the thing in front of you matters enough to make that trade.
But tomorrow’s energy is not free.
Like a credit-card balance, the longer you keep borrowing without properly repaying it, the larger the debt can become.
The interest compounds. What might once have required one or two enormous sleeps can eventually demand weeks or months of recovery.
The bill does not merely arrive later. It can come back larger.
You only have one body.
It is the body that carries you into every adventure, every relationship, every moment of contribution and every extraordinary experience you hope to create.
Please do not wait until your account is empty before you begin looking after it.
Nothing heroic.
Just one small deposit.
Love you.
This is my personal experience, not medical advice. AI helped me organise information, understand test results and prepare questions, but it did not replace professional medical care, proper testing or treatment.
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Hi Alan, thank you for sharing this story and I’m sorry to hear of your health struggles but good to hear that you’re making small steps towards recovery. Also, thanks for the sacrifices you made to bring us RFS this year, none of us watching knew what it was costing you behind the scenes.
I have long covid which is what led me to Rebel Finance School last year, as there are not many things more terrifying than realising your body can’t keep up with life the way it used to, but having to push through every day to keep working to pay the bills.
Thanks to you and Katie for showing me how to get my finances in order. While I still have a long way to go, it helps to know I have a small buffer set aside in case of emergency.
After hearing the end of your podcast with Frances Cook recently, I wonder if the next course you and Katie develop will be about health and wellbeing.
Wishing you all the best for your full recovery and thanks for sharing your story. It helps the rest of us who are going through similar things not feel so alone in our own journeys back to health.
Sharon you are AMAZING. I am sorry to hear long covid got you. I hope it cuts short soon and your energy comes back to you… It can be tough at times this stuff. I wanted to share as I think we talk talk honestly enough about what is going on in our lives.
We have been thinking about Rebel Health for a while and would LOVE to run a course like that. We have so many friends, into health, doctors and more that I think we could pull together something amazing… Love the idea.
Thank you for writing and sending you healing energy
Alan