Wellness Exhausts You? Start Here.
Evidence-based wellbeing, behaviour change, and habits that survive real life.
You probably do not need another morning routine. Or another tracker. Or another “science-backed” protocol from someone selling a supplement stack, a nervous system reset PDF, and a suspiciously expensive mushroom powder.
You need space.
Space to notice what is actually going on, space to stop building habits on top of a life that is already at capacity, and space to design wellbeing around your actual life instead of around the Fantasy Self who sleeps 8 hours, meal preps, strength trains, journals, stretches, replies to everyone, drinks enough water, and has apparently never once woken up in a mood.
Fabulous human. Very aspirational.
Does that person exist on a random Wednesday after 6 hours of sleep, back-to-back meetings and 100 unread emails? Unclear.
And this is not just a vibe.
Gallup’s 2024 State of the Global Workplace found that 41% of employees worldwide feel a lot of stress every single day. That is 4 in 10 of us, already at capacity, and still being told the answer is one more morning routine.
“I’m Noemie, and this is Unwritten Potential: a newsletter about behaviour change, evidence-based wellbeing, and why the wellness industry keeps making simple things weird. I write for smart, health-curious people who want to feel their best without making it a full-time job”
If that already made your shoulders drop by 3%, hello. You’re probably in the right place.
You’re in the right place if...
You know what to do when it comes to your wellbeing, but real life keeps eating the plan.
You care about your health, but you cannot bear one more person telling you to optimise your morning before you have even had coffee.
You want evidence without the academic cosplay, and practical tools without a giant system that becomes another thing to maintain. And you are so tired of treating your body like a performance review.
You have tried the apps, the books, the podcasts, the habit trackers, the clean eating phases, the accountability partners, and the beautifully organised Notion templates. Some of it helped, some of it became another chore, and some of it quietly made you feel worse.
And now you are standing there thinking: I know enough. So why does this still feel so hard??
That question is the whole reason this newsletter exists.
What is Unwritten Potential about?
Unwritten Potential is a newsletter about evidence-based wellbeing, sustainable habits, mental wellbeing, and health behaviour change, written by me, certified health coach Noemie Mooney, for smart, health-curious people who want to feel their best without making it a full-time job.
In plainer terms: every week, I write about the gap between knowing what to do and actually doing it.
And not from the “wake up at 5am and master your life” angle. No fucking way!
I write about behaviour change for real life. Stressy life, travel life, work life, bad-sleep life, too-many-tabs-open-in-the-brain life. The kind of life where your Sunday Self makes a beautiful plan and your Wednesday Self looks at it like, “absolutely NOT happening.”
The main themes:
Behaviour change for real life: habits, motivation, self-trust, follow-through, all-or-nothing thinking, tiny experiments, and why discipline works better when the design is not fighting you.
Wellbeing without the performance: movement, sleep, food, stress, mental wellbeing, social connection, and the boring basics that keep winning even when the internet tries to make them deeply unsexy.
Wellness industry critique: biohacking, optimisation culture, pseudoscience with affiliate codes, productivity theatre, cold plunge content as personality, and anything that turns health into a moral ranking system.
The overloaded modern brain: phones, attention, information overload, decision fatigue, open loops, invisible load, and the quiet exhaustion of being expected to have an opinion, a routine, a side quest, and a regulated nervous system at all times.
Personal field notes: what I am learning from coaching, travel, sobriety, marriage, corporate life, legaltech, DJing, yoga, and being a 43-year-old woman who has no interest in becoming palatable for the algorithm.
The tone around here is warm, sharp, practical, occasionally sweary, and allergic to wellness theatre. We are evidence-informed, and we are not joyless about it.
What I stand for (and against)
Modern wellness is a multi-billion-dollar machine with one business model: make you feel inadequate, then sell you the fix. The detox teas, the $100 superfood powders, and the “what I eat in a day” purity content. The 75-day discipline challenges, the 5am protocol stacks, and the longevity bro lecturing you about your mitochondria. Same scam, different packaging, and the anxiety it creates is not a side effect. It is the product.
So, for the record:
I’m against wellness as an aesthetic, and wellness as moral superiority. Optimisation as a full-time job. Marketing that manufactures anxiety so it can sell you the cure. Supplements sold as salvation. Pseudoscience with a discount code, and anti-science with a podcast. And the newest one: your health being recruited as a political identity. Your body is not a team jersey.
I’m for evidence, especially the inconvenient kind. The boring basics that keep winning: sleep, movement, real food, people you love, less noise. Behaviour change designed for your actual life instead of demanded from it. Medication when it is clinically right, with zero moralising. Subtraction before addition. Joy. And you, trusting yourself again.
Why this exists
I spent a lot of my 30s in Singapore being great at my job and terrible at looking after myself. Smoking 20 a day, drinking in a way that had stopped being fun, running on 5 hours of sleep. Very functional on the outside, a bit of a dumpster fire on the inside.
And because I had a corporate-trained, high-achieving, project-management brain, I did what people like us do: I tried to fix it with more. More systems, more trackers, more books, more rules, more fresh starts on a Monday.
Without realising it, I was basically project-managing my own collapse. Very professional. Beautifully formatted. Absolute nonsense.
This led me to SPECTACULAR burnout, The Great Debacle (yes, I branded my breakdown…)
The problem was not that I lacked information (I could have coached someone else through it). The problem was that I kept trying to add healthy habits into a life that had no space for them to live.
The thing that eventually changed everything was not a dramatic reinvention. No epiphany, no mountaintop, no 30-day glow-up montage with tasteful linen trousers.
The thing that changed everything was subtraction.
I stopped asking “What else should I add?” and started asking “What needs to go?” What is draining me? What am I pretending is fine? What am I carrying that was never mine? What would make this easier?
Over time, that changed everything. I quit drinking, stopped smoking, lost 20 kilos, and rebuilt my relationship with movement, food, sleep, stress, work, and myself.
Then I retrained as a health coach and behaviour change specialist and built the framework I now use with clients, in my writing, and in my own life.
Not because I have everything figured out. Please.
I still overthink, I still over-optimise, and I still occasionally create a plan so ambitious it should come with its own operations team.
The difference is that now I catch the pattern faster, I work with myself instead of against myself, and I have tools that actually survive contact with real life.
What is the MAKE SPACE Method™?
The MAKE SPACE Method™ is a subtraction-first approach to behaviour change, created by certified health coach Noemie Mooney, who trained in design thinking at the Stanford d.school.
It takes that human-centred design discipline and points it at personal change. Rather than piling new habits onto a life (and mind) that is already full, it works through four phases, UNCOVER, SUBTRACT, DESIGN and SUSTAIN: clear the space first, then design habits that actually survive real life.
It is built around a simple idea: your life is already full. Stop building on top of a life that was already at capacity.
Most habit advice starts with what to add. Add the workout, add the meditation, add the meal prep, add the sleep routine, add the journalling, add the app, add the system. Cool. Fabulous. No problem.
Except you already have a life. A body, a job, relationships, responsibilities, moods, travel days, bad sleep, hormones, stress, a phone full of messages, and possibly a deep ancestral urge to lie horizontally and be left alone.
This is why so many habits collapse. The design was built for your Fantasy Self, not your Actual Self.
And forget the 21-day myth. When researchers actually tracked habit formation in the real world, it took an average of 66 days for a new behaviour to become automatic, and anywhere from 18 to 254 days depending on the person and the habit. So if it has not become automatic in 3 weeks, nothing went wrong. The timeline was always longer, and it was always personal.
The method has 4 phases, and the order matters.
UNCOVER: what is actually going on? Not what you think “should” be happening, not what your planner says, and not what the productivity guy with the podcast mic thinks your morning should look like. What is actually happening in your life, body, energy, attention, environment, and schedule.
SUBTRACT: what needs to go before you add anything else? That might mean removing friction, shrinking the goal, pausing a commitment, clearing digital noise, lowering the standard, or admitting that a habit was borrowed from someone with a completely different life. Subtraction is the move almost nobody makes. It is also the one that changes everything.
DESIGN: what would make this easier? This is where the habit finally comes in. By now it is not a fantasy routine floating above your actual life, it is one small intentional thing designed around the reality you just uncovered and the space you just created.
SUSTAIN: what is the plan for when life gets loud? Because it will. Travel happens, work explodes, sleep goes weird, motivation disappears, and your schedule laughs in your face. The wobble is not a failure. It is a design requirement, and Sustain is where you plan for it without turning every disruption into a full personality crisis.
This is the method I use with 1:1 clients, the engine behind my live cohort Wellbeing by Design, and the backbone of this newsletter. Not because it is flashy. Because it works with humans: annoying, complicated, tired, hopeful, inconsistent, brilliant humans. My favourite kind.
It’s where most people start: one full lap of the method on one habit, done over a weekend, as a self-coaching course ($97).
By the end, you’ll have more than a habit plan. You’ll understand what’s getting in the way, what actually works for you, and how to create change that fits your real life instead of fighting against it.
From there, it’s Wellbeing by Design.
What is Wellbeing by Design?
Design thinking plus coaching: that combination is the whole thing. I call it Wellbeing by Design.
Wellbeing by Design is design thinking applied to wellbeing. It is a framework and a mindset. The framework: understand what’s really going on, subtract what’s draining you, design one small thing that fits your life, then keep it going when life gets loud. The mindset: treat your wellbeing like an interesting problem to solve, with curiosity instead of judgement, experiments instead of perfection, enthusiasm instead of shame, and an open mind instead of a rulebook. There’s a problem. We get to go and solve it.
It runs as a live cohort twice a year, in January and September and you can join the waitlist to get more info when it opens.
What do you get if you subscribe?
Every Tuesday morning ET, a new essay on behaviour change, wellbeing, or why the wellness industry keeps making simple things weird. Every Friday morning ET, a podcast episode (currently on a summer break, returning in September). Same energy, different format.
You’ll get evidence translated into plain English, practical experiments you can actually try, essays that help you understand your patterns without drowning you in shame, and the occasional coaching question that makes you go quiet for a minute.
You’ll finally understand why that Sunday-evening “I’m NEVER drinking/scrolling/skipping the gym again” voice keeps letting you down, and what to design instead. And when travel or work derails everything, you’ll know how to restart in minutes rather than months, without the shame spiral.
What you will not get: “become unrecognisable” energy, shame dressed up as empowerment, or wellness that makes your life worse.
The goal here is not to become a perfect person with a perfect routine. The goal is more self-trust, more energy, more clarity, and more habits that actually survive the life you have.
Want to start right now?
Subscribe and I will send you the Bullshit Audit, completely free. It is a 20-minute exercise to help you see where your energy, attention, time, and capacity are leaking. It is also Module 1 of the MAKE SPACE Method™, which makes it the obvious place to start.
The MAKE SPACE Reading List comes tucked inside: the 8 best essays behind the method, matched to each phase, so you can go deeper without disappearing into 47 tabs.
No glow-up challenge, no 12-step morning routine, no homework disguised as liberation. Just a practical place to start.
New here? These 6 podcasts will show you exactly what this place is about:
If you keep planning for a version of yourself who does not exist:
Stop Planning for a Person Who Doesn’t Exist
If being hard on yourself has not magically produced a better life: Why Being Hard on Yourself Isn’t Working
If sleep has become another thing to fail at: Sleep Anxiety: The Counterintuitive Fix That Works
If you are tired of wellness making simple things weird: 3 Books the Wellness Industry Doesn’t Want You to Read
If you know what to do, but cannot seem to do it consistently: The One Thing Nobody Tells You to Do First
If your brain is being deeply unserious: The Audacity of Your Own Brain
Who is Noemie Mooney?
I’m Noemie Mooney: ACE Certified Health Coach, ICF-trained Behaviour Change Specialist, certified yoga instructor, and creator of the MAKE SPACE Method™.
Before the coaching, I spent ~20 years in Singapore corporate, innovation and legaltech, and I still work in the industry today. I trained in design thinking at the Stanford d.school, and the MAKE SPACE Method™ is what happened when I pointed those exact tools at the hardest problem of all: getting a real, tired human to change their own behaviour on a normal Tuesday.
That part matters. I am not writing about burnout and behaviour change from a perfect little wellness bubble. I am still close enough to the machine to know exactly how the machine works.
I am French, from the Alps originally, lived in Singapore for nearly 20 years, and am currently travelling through Latin America with my husband Liam (which sounds glamorous until you realise I still have deadlines, bad WiFi, laundry, hormones, and the occasional existential crisis in an Airbnb kitchen). I have been sober since March 2023, I am an electro DJ who has played the Singapore Grand Prix, I swear, and I cry at dog videos.
Disciplined and chaotic, soft and hard, professional and wild. The contradictions are not confusion. They are what happens when you stop trying to fit your whole self into one polite little box.
The point
I do not want wellbeing to become another thing you are behind on, and I definitely do not want you outsourcing your self-trust to trends, apps, protocols, or imaginary future versions of yourself with perfect discipline and no unread messages.
I want you to have tools that help you come back to yourself, understand your patterns without turning them into proof that you are failing, and build habits that make your life feel more yours. Not smaller, not stricter, not more impressive online. More yours.
That is what we do here. We stop adding more to a life that is already full, we clear space, we design for reality, and we keep going when life gets loud. All without making wellness another performance review.
Welcome to Unwritten Potential. I’m so happy you’re here.
Noemie x
Noemie Mooney is an ACE Certified Health Coach, ICF-trained Behaviour Change Specialist, certified yoga instructor, and creator of the MAKE SPACE Method™. Trained in design thinking at the Stanford d.school, she writes Unwritten Potential, a newsletter about evidence-based wellbeing, sustainable habits, mental wellbeing, and health behaviour change for smart, health-curious people who want to feel their best without making it a full-time job.
Key Sources
Gallup. (2024). State of the Global Workplace: 2024 Report.
Lally, P., van Jaarsveld, C. H. M., Potts, H. W. W., & Wardle, J. (2010). How are habits formed: Modelling habit formation in the real world. European Journal of Social Psychology, 40(6), 998-1009. https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.674