The Girl Behind Plus Minus

Megan Karp, the girl behind Plus Minus Living

Growing up, I would say “I love you,” to my grandparents before hanging up the phone. My grandparents never said it in return; instead, they would say “plus-minus.” After many years, I finally asked my dad, “what does plus minus even mean?”

“It means I love you more today than yesterday,” he replied.

As I’ve gone through my different phases in life—the lows, the highs, the dark, the light—I’ve adopted this concept to mean something more general. Now, Plus Minus means this: to have more beauty, more health, and more love every day.

My idea of self-love has changed throughout the years. I was raised in a pretty chaotic household—I am the middle of five children to divorced parents. We had little boundaries, if any. I did much of my experimentation with drugs, alcohol, and sex in my early years without disciplinary action. As I blossomed into my college era, I found myself over-compensating for my lack of structure growing up and committed to a militant lifestyle: over-exercising, under-eating, sleepless studying, working the 4am shift before class started at noon. After that, I entered law school (an academic route I took to please my father), and interviewed for top tier firms in Milwaukee, WI. I got married, bought a home—a beautiful home—and had everything a girl could ever want. Yet, I still felt incomplete.

My lack of self-worth manifested as a chronic habit of people-pleasing. I was more concerned with what others wanted than what I wanted. After fighting through what seemed like unbearable darkness, I came to a light that told me I needed to redefine what it means to have beauty, health, and love in my life.

That is Plus Minus at its core: to find habits and practices that bring your spirit peace, not to satisfy others’ ideas of what beauty, health, and love mean. In reality, you cannot achieve true healthy, beauty, and love if your spirit is lost, empty, or misaligned. The internal chaos in your spirit will manifest in ways that diminish true beauty, health, and love in your life.

So we are spirits first and foremost—but we are housed in human bodies. For that reason, we must be aware and intentional with how we treat our bodies and react with the physical world so that we can protect our spirit. So, in a more literal sense, Plus Minus also means to add things to your life that bring peace and joy, and subtract the things from your life that no longer serve you.

For example, I’ve subtracted the time I used to stay out past my bedtime to please my friends, and now go to sleep earlier to ensure I am well-rested. Similarly, I have added an extra hour to my mornings to make sure I have time to meditate, drink my coffee, and journal. This simple subtraction and addition helps me stay aligned and centered.

In this blog, I share the many pluses and minuses that help me maintain a life that is more beautiful, healthy, and loving.

Thank you for following along and joining me in this journey as we become more and more every day.

Plus Minus,

Megan