The "Rich In Life" TikTok Trend: What It's Actually Saying
I Am 37, I Cleared My Solar Plexus,
and Now I Think TikTok Is
Onto Something With This
"Rich In Life" Thing.
TikTok has discovered that richness is the morning coffee, the friend who picks up, the walk you take when you need to think. At 37, after doing a genuinely embarrassing amount of inner work and clearing out the part of my body that was storing every unprocessed feeling I'd had since 2009, I can confirm: they are correct. Here's the list. Here's why it matters. Here's how you make yours without abandoning it in eleven days.
Let me tell you something about the "rich in life" trend that nobody is saying because it requires admitting you spent several years being unable to take a full breath without your solar plexus doing something alarming. It is not a soft trend. It is not a girlboss-adjacent gratitude journal entry. It is what happens when a person does enough inner nervous system work to actually feel their life instead of just moving through it on autopilot, and then opens TikTok and thinks: oh. Other people figured this out too. From their phones. In their pyjamas. Good for everyone.
The trend looks like this: a video. Morning light. A coffee cup. A dog. A route someone walks. Text overlay: I am rich in life. No number attached. No designer anything in frame. No carefully lit kitchen renovation or haul or collection. Just a person and their list of the things that make them feel, genuinely, like they have enough. The trend has no single audio driving it. It is spreading because people mean it. That is a different kind of viral.
I did not arrive at this gently. I arrived at this after two years of work on my vagus nerve, during which I discovered that my solar plexus — the energy centre that governs personal power, confidence, and the ability to digest both food and feelings — had apparently been moonlighting as a storage unit for every moment I'd swallowed instead of processed. Every "I'm fine." Every thing I didn't say. Every time I performed okayness so convincingly that even my nervous system believed it for a while and then very much did not.
Clearing it out felt like — and I say this as someone who considers themselves a reasonably articulate person — like putting down a bag I'd been carrying so long I'd forgotten it had a handle. And then one Thursday in my thirty-seventh year, I made coffee, sat in my usual spot, and thought: I am genuinely, specifically, embarrassingly happy right now. Not performing happiness. Not grateful-journalling happiness. The actual thing. It tasted like the coffee and the morning and the specific quality of light in my kitchen and the fact that I had nowhere to be for another forty-five minutes.
TikTok had already been making this exact video for months. I was simply late to confirming the data.
The Actual List. What "Rich In Life" Looks Like When You Mean It.
What I love about this trend — and I do love it, unironically, which is a sentence I have not always been able to say about things that originated on TikTok — is how specific the lists are. Not "I'm grateful for my health" which is what you write when you're filling out a gratitude prompt at a wellness retreat you paid £400 for and you need to justify the spend. Specific. The friend who picks up on the second ring. The corner of the desk at 6am. The walk that had no purpose. The specific quality of a Sunday that has nothing in it.
Specificity is honesty. Here is mine, and here is what I think each one actually means for you.
The one that exists before the day makes any demands. Before the phone. Before the inbox. Before anyone needs anything. The one that tastes like yours because it literally is yours, because you made it, in the quiet, before you remembered you had a to-do list.
This is available to most people every single morning and is somehow still underrated. The wellness industry has not figured out how to charge for it. This is the only time the wellness industry's failure has benefited us directly.
Not the friend you have to schedule a debrief with three weeks in advance. The one who picks up on the second ring and says "what happened" before you've said anything, because they already know from the fact that you called instead of texted. Not everyone has one. The ones who do know exactly what that means.
If you have this person: call them today. Not to say anything specific. Just to confirm they still exist and the line still works. This is maintenance. This is infrastructure.
Not a workout. Not a podcast accompaniment. Not a task that happens to involve movement. Just walking because the day had enough room in it and the outside was there. The route you take when you need to think. The one your feet know without GPS.
My solar plexus did most of its best clearing work on exactly this kind of walk. Your body processes things when you move without agenda. This is free. This is available to you right now. You don't have to hum.
Not the one you found on Pinterest with the 5am wake-up and the seventeen-step morning protocol. The one that belongs to you. The three or four things you do in the same order because they work, because they are yours, because they don't require a productivity system to maintain. The one that means the day starts before the chaos does. (One Pixel a Day is how I found mine.)
The fact that it stuck is the whole point. Not the content of it. The sticking.
Going to bed without the next day already pressing against your chest. Lying down without running the tape of everything undone. This is not a small thing. People are listing this one in the trend and meaning it in a way that is hard to read without feeling it. The absence of dread is itself a form of richness that nobody talks about because it's defined by what's not there.
If you have this: notice it tonight. Actively notice it. It took me a genuinely long time to get here and I am not taking it for granted ever again.
The distinction matters enormously. Not financial freedom. Not a number. Specifically: not checking the account at 2am with that particular flavour of quiet dread. Not having the low-grade financial anxiety humming underneath every enjoyable thing. People are listing this as a form of richness. They are right. The absence of financial terror is a kind of wealth that doesn't show up on any chart and is worth more than most people give it credit for.
This one lived in my solar plexus for years, by the way. Turns out unprocessed financial anxiety has a home in the body and it is specifically there. You're welcome for that information.
Not a holiday. Not a milestone. Not a special occasion. A regular Thursday in your regular life that tasted, for whatever combination of reasons, like yours. The ones that sneak up on you. The ones you recognise mid-way through and think: I will remember this one. These are not rare. They are just easy to scroll past. If you need a reminder that richness is not about money — this piece says it better than any trend could.
The "rich in life" trend is, at its core, about stopping the scroll long enough to notice you're already in the Thursday. The coffee is there. The morning is there. The list is yours. And if the small treat is now doing the emotional labour your therapist used to do — we already wrote about that.
"I spent a genuinely embarrassing amount of time moving through my life instead of feeling it. Then I cleared my solar plexus. Then TikTok made the video I would have made if I'd had the words sooner. Better late than stored in your torso for eleven years."
— Sara Alba · Brewtiful Living · Mindful-ish · June 4, 2026Why This Trend Is Not Soft. The Part Nobody Is Saying Out Loud.
The "rich in life" trend sounds gentle because it involves morning light and dogs and coffee. It is not gentle. It is one of the most quietly radical things the internet has collectively decided in years. Here is why: for the last decade the dominant language of social media was accumulation. The haul. The renovation. The collection. The wardrobe. The lifestyle brand. You were watching other people's edited highlight reels and your brain was quietly doing the maths — their life minus your life equals everything you don't have yet — and then shopping the gap.
The "rich in life" trend is posting a Thursday morning and saying: the gap was a lie and I'm not shopping it anymore. That is not soft. That is an entire economic model being gently, quietly rejected by people in their pyjamas with a coffee. The wellness industry is worth over six trillion dollars globally and a meaningful portion of it is built on the idea that you are not yet well enough. This trend is saying: I think I might already be well enough. I think the coffee was always the thing.
I arrived at this conclusion via the vagus nerve, the solar plexus, and approximately two years of sitting with things I'd been not-sitting-with. TikTok arrived at it via a text overlay and a good audio. We got to the same place. The destination is the same.
How To Make Your Own List. Without It Becoming a Project.
The rule is: be specific. Not "my family." Not "nature." Not "good health" which is what you write when you've run out of specific things and the journalling prompt is still staring at you. Who specifically. Doing what specifically. The walk — which route, what time, what it smells like in October. The specific thing that makes it yours and not a general category of goodness.
Four minutes. No journal required. No sound required. Not even TikTok required, though you are welcome to make the video because the trend deserves the company.
I know "I cleared my solar plexus" is a sentence that makes a certain kind of person take a long sip of their coffee and say nothing, and I respect that. I was that person. I also could not take a full breath without an odd constriction for the better part of three years and no doctor could explain it, so eventually I tried the thing and the thing worked.
The solar plexus is the energy centre that governs confidence, personal power, and — perhaps most relevantly — the ability to feel safe enough to feel good. When it's blocked, usually by stored stress, swallowed words, or the long-term practice of performing fine-ness, it tends to express itself as: anxiety, digestive issues, a tight chest, the specific feeling of being unable to fully inhabit your own life. The vagus nerve is deeply implicated in all of this. I wrote about it at length because I wish someone had told me sooner.
Clearing it is not mystical. It is breathwork, movement, saying the things out loud that you have been not-saying, and a fair amount of sitting with yourself in the uncomfortable way before the comfortable one. And then one Thursday you make coffee and sit in your spot and think: I am, genuinely and specifically, rich in life. And you mean it. Without the performance. Without the gap. Without the scroll.
The "rich in life" trend is correct. It does not require a purchase. It does not require a sound. It requires a list, four minutes of honesty, and — if you're where I was two years ago — possibly some work on the part of your body that has been holding the things you haven't said yet. The coffee is there. The morning is there. The friend who picks up is there. The Thursday is there. You are probably richer than your screen has been letting you believe. The receipts are already in your possession. You just have to stop scrolling long enough to read them.
SEO: rich in life tiktok trend 2026 · what is rich in life trend · rich in life meaning · solar plexus healing · non-monetary wealth · mindful living. Slug: /mindful-ish/rich-in-life-tiktok-trend-what-it-means · June 4, 2026.
