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Over the last few months, my energy has been low in a way that felt unfamiliar. If you know me, you know I’m usually moving: training, running, paddling, and building my days around momentum. Last year I ran a speedy half-marathon and was paddling multiple times a week; this season has felt like the opposite. Lately, getting out of bed has felt like an achievement, and that shift has been both physically frustrating and mentally disorienting.

After more testing, I found out I’m anemic, which means my iron is low. The good news is that it’s treatable. The less-fun part is figuring out the best path back to full energy. Supplements helped some, but they were hard on my tummy and felt slow, so my doctor suggested an iron infusion to speed things up. I agreed, and last week I went in for a consultation.

What I didn’t expect was the setting: a cancer center.

I sat in the waiting room surrounded by people receiving chemo, and the atmosphere had a kind of quiet gravity to it. There were scarves, soft voices, long pauses, and that unmistakable stillness you feel in places where people are carrying something serious. I remember feeling grateful that my situation was manageable, but I also felt anxious almost immediately. I started to spiral into the familiar what-ifs: What if they missed something? What if this is more than low iron? What if I’m not as “fine” as I’ve been telling myself?

Nothing about my diagnosis had changed in that moment. The only thing that changed was the room I was in, and yet my mindset shifted fast.

That experience clarified something I’ve been thinking about all week: the environments we place ourselves in shape the stories we tell ourselves.

Behavior science backs that up. A 2022 review in Frontiers in Psychiatry found that built environments often place higher attentional demands on the brain and can activate stress-related processing, while more natural environments are linked to restoration and positive affect.

Healthcare design research adds an important layer here: in hospitals, wayfinding confusion can become a stressor. Environmental psychology shows that when people are unsure where they are, stress rises; when spaces are easier to read – clearer signage, more legible layouts, distinctive landmarks – people feel more oriented and supported.

Exploring AI works the same way. When we jump into too many tools, models, and workflows at once, uncertainty spikes and confidence drops. But when we create simple landmarks – one use case, one model, one prompt framework, and clear checkpoints – we regain control. Uncertainty drains us; orientation helps us learn faster.

And this is where the idea of luxury kept surfacing for me in a new way.

We usually define luxury as comfort, convenience, aesthetics, or ease. But in that waiting room, luxury felt deeper than that. Luxury looked like access to care. It looked like options. It looked like being able to choose a faster path to healing instead of waiting months and hoping for the best.

So for me, luxury was not the absence of discomfort. Luxury was the presence of choice.

There was another moment in that room that shifted me. An older man sitting near me asked his wife, “What are you thinking about?” She smiled and asked him the same. It was a small exchange, almost easy to miss, but it changed the emotional texture of the space for me. In a room filled with uncertainty, they created a pocket of tenderness. They didn’t deny reality, they brought warmth into it.

That reminded me of a line I come back to often: be a thermostat, not a thermometer. Don’t just absorb the temperature of the room, set it when you can.

So this is what I’m reflecting on this week:

For me, this wasn’t only a health lesson. It was a mindset lesson. I wasn’t in that room because something terrible had happened to me. I was in that room because I was advocating for a better quality of life. I was there because I’m trying to get better.

That is a very different story.

Growth usually doesn’t look like certainty. It looks like choosing the harder room on purpose, staying grounded in truth, and bringing your best energy with you anyway. Fear may show up, but it doesn’t have to lead. Purpose can.

And maybe that’s the real luxury: not a life without hard rooms, but the capacity to walk into them with intention, support, and the courage to keep becoming.