I was having blood work done this week when I noticed my nurse had a tattoo on her forearm. “Live, Laugh, Love.”
As a moderately tattooed person myself, I completely understand the impulse. (I could also tell you about my theory regarding tattoos and mental health — but that’s a story for another day.)
So while “Live, Laugh, Love.” has become shorthand for a certain kind of personality on the internet — you know the harsh bob haircut, the “speak to the manager” energy — before the internet made a joke of it, there was something genuinely wholesome about what it represented. My nurse, as she shared with me while labeling my vials, is a grandmother. And there was something so genuine about this lady, referencing her grandkids multiple times in our short visit, wanting those three words to be a guiding principle for her days. Live fully. Laugh often. Love well. I don’t think that’s anything to balk at.
But we know all too well what happens when a phrase gets repeated. Say any word or phrase even twenty times in a row and it just sort of melts into the ether. Its meaning hollows out and what was once specific and alive becomes just noise.
That’s what happened to Live, Laugh, Love. And I’d argue it’s starting to happen to another beloved, perhaps even sacred, trio:
Mind, Body, Spirit.
Gosh, we really do love a list of three, don’t we? Apparently so does AI — and when these tidy little three-word frameworks get tossed around enough, they all start to melt into each other. Into the mush. Into what some people are now calling, with increasing exasperation, the “slop.”
I really hate this for mind, body, spirit. And I’ll be honest — I blame the wellness influencers.
I’m not saying this was done maliciously. But somewhere between the crystal shops, cold plunges, and the $200 adaptogen lattes, mind-body-spirit got absorbed into an aesthetic. It became *vibes*. It’s been used as a way to signal that you’re the kind of person who prioritizes their wellbeing — without necessarily doing the real work of actually examining what that means. To sum it up, “mind, body, spirit” has become decorative. And that bothers me more than I can easily explain.
Because mind-body-spirit is not a vibe. It is not an aesthetic. It is not something that just belongs on a candle label or a wellness retreat landing page.
Mind body spirit is the actual framework through which we understand and treat alcoholism. And any other addiction for that matter.
Long before anyone had a podcast or a Substack or a morning routine to change your life, this framework was literally saving people’s lives in 12-step groups. It has been lived out in church basements and community centers by people who were trying to figure out how human beings actually recover — from what the original text of Alcoholics Anonymous describes as “a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body.”
Not as a concept. Not as a brand. As a matter of survival. And it works (ask me how I know).
So what the heck does this mean in the larger context of copy, content, and the age of AI? We need to try harder than ever to preserve meaning and find genuine points of connection with our words. For those working in addiction recovery treatment, we need to say exactly what we mean. There is a place for the slogans, for these little signals of belonging — but when someone is truly on death’s door or wishing they were, being direct and specific might be the only thing that cuts through the rapid fire bullshit going on in their brains.
On the other end of the spectrum from the overly vernacular, when you dare to step outside your professional persona — LinkedIn-ready, credential-dropping, I am smarter and wiser than thou — I think you’ll find that people are drawn to your realness much more than your certifications. No one is saying that credentials don’t matter — we have standards. What I am saying is that the stakes are too high to put egos on display before the human shows up.
Please, for the love of God, show me your street cred.
If you need help finding the right words to connect to your audience, I’d love to chat. Fill out the form here or shoot me an email.
jackie@fivefathomscreative.com
