6 Days In Solitude

Mark Twain said that the worst loneliness is to not be comfortable with yourself. And for years I was not comfortable with myself. For years I didn't like being alone. Every time that I was alone, I was distracted. I was doing something, I was watching tv, I was playing video games, I was texting women, scrolling through social media, smoking weed, having a drink, doing work, planning something out for the next week. I didn't actually like being alone in silence and in solitude. And I remember when I started to read the Stoics, I started to go through Seneca, I started to read Marcus Aurelius. I stumbled across this quote that Marcus Aurelius had that hit me. And he said, nowhere can a man find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than in his own soul. Now, that might sound a little esoteric because it's got the word soul in it, but really, for me, it was about being able to find peace and tranquility in solitude with myself while no one else was around. I remember being a kid and I hated the feeling and the experience of just being by myself. I could play outside, I could have fun, but I was always wanting to be around people. And I realized that as an adult, the thing that I was avoiding was myself. The relationship that I hadn't actually put time or effort or energy into was the relationship with myself. I actually didn't like being solitary. And so I started this practice probably about eight or nine years ago, maybe a decade ago, where every single year I would take a trip and I would take a trip by myself. And I've gone camping, I've gone to stay in different national parks. I've done a variety of different things, but always with the intention of doing a few things. Number one, letting go of any and all responsibility. So I believe that every man needs time where he is completely responsibility free, where he's not responsible for his girlfriend, for his wife, for his kids, for his business, for his work, for his colleagues, for his friends, for his family. Where you just get to go out into the world without any responsibility whatsoever. There's no task list, there's no to do list. There's nothing for you to do. So number one is responsibility free time, and number two is distraction free time. We live, and you've all heard it in the age of attention and the attention economy, that everything is constantly vying for your attention. And so because of that, we live in a very distracted manner. We are constantly distracted, right? I think the average person picks up and checks their phone like 200 times a day, you know, or something. Absurd like that. And so we're in this constant state of our mind, our thoughts, our body, our physiology being disrupted on a regular basis, constantly being outsourced into different places, different spaces. And so I started this practice of spending at least three to five days completely solo. Nothing to do, no tasks, no distractions, no tv, no wi fi, no social media, no connection to the outside world whatsoever. And I found that these trips have been incredibly empowering. They're also incredibly confronting. If you've never done something like this before, it can feel almost like from an existential, anxiety inducing perspective because you don't know what's going to happen. And you kind of start to build as you get closer and closer to this type of experience, you start to build this what's going to happen? You know, you don't really know. And so I'm coming up on my 40th birthday and I thought about how I wanted to celebrate my 40th birthday. And a lot of people were asking, what do you need to do? Oh, big 40, you know, midlife and da da da. And I was talking with my wife and I said, you know, since we had our son and since COVID happened, I actually haven't done one of these solo trips. And the more that I thought about how I wanted to bring in my 40th year, how I wanted to enter into the second half of life, the more that I kept having images of me just being on my own with no responsibility, with nothing to do, with no distractions, just me and nature and maybe a journal. No books to read, no podcasts to listen to. Literally nothing. And so I started to think about where I wanted to go. And I landed on going back to Scotland. And for me, Scotland's a very special place. It's where my ancestors are from. My grandfather's side of the family is actually from the Isle of Skye. And so I started to map out what it would look like for me to go back to where my ancestors came from and spend time sort of immersed in that culture and on the land. And so I ended up booking a six day, completely solo experience where I booked this beautiful little cottage that is literally right on the water. It's right on the ocean on the coast of the Isle of Skye. And it's got no TV and it's got no wi fi and there's no cell phone service because it's literally just off in the middle of nowhere. And I can walk out of the front door of this cottage and into the ocean in the morning and I can drive to hikes nearby. And as I started to think about this, you know, I really wanted to bring in my 40th year in a sort of a meaningful way to recap the last. Not the last 40 years, necessarily, but how much life I've actually lived. Because every time I sit down and think about, you know, if I was to die tomorrow, would I be happy if. If for whatever reason a freak accident happened or my. My heart stopped tomorrow I had a brain aneurysm or something, would I have be happy with the life that I lived, with the legacy that I'm leaving behind, with the way that I treated people, with, you know, what I've buil, who I've become in the world? And for the most part, the answer is yes. You know, I've been very fortunate to live a very interesting life in some ways. You know, I've raced motorcycles, I've stunted them, I sang classical music and traveled the world. I worked for one of the biggest tech companies in the world. I've dated some amazing people. I've developed some incredible friendships. I've spoken on stage with Gary Vaynerchuk and Lewis Howes and some, you know, some amazing folks. I've interviewed some incredible people, astrophysicists, cosmologists, and I wrote a book, which I never thought I would do. I've built a very successful company around supporting men in becoming the best version of themselves that they want to be. And so from an achievement perspective, I've checked off a lot of boxes and I've done a lot of things that I didn't think that I would ultimately do. And becoming 40, turning 40, you know, looking at all right, maybe I have 20, 25 years left to, quote, unquote, work if I wanted to do that, to pursue my purpose, to continue to expand on my vocation. I have, you know, my son's two and a half years old. I have, you know, maybe 16 good years with him in the house. I have this wonderful marriage and relationship with this beautiful home. And more and more I've sat with this notion of what do I want to build next? Who am I becoming now? What wisdom do I want to gain? Who do I want to learn from? And it's a very interesting place to find myself in this opportunity of what does the latter half of my life have to offer and what might it look like? And so I've decided to return to solitude, to venture off in a foreign country, to hike, to meditate, to be in nature, to swim in the ocean, to write and journal and reflect on everything that the last 40 years has brought me and to immerse myself back in this experience of seeing who I am and being in the conversation of the man that I have become and the man that I'm becoming and the parts of myself that I don't like. I truly believe that the majority of men that are out there crave this solitude. You know, not aloneness, not loneliness. There's lots of men that are isolated, there's lots of men that are lonely. I'm talking about curated, intentional, specific solitude where you're not distracted, where you don't have things to do. And so when my wife asked me, like, what, what are you planning on doing? I was like, well, I'm going to go to this cottage and then we'll see what happens. You know, I'm going to go hiking, I'm going to sit down in nature, I'm going to do some meditation during the day. I might write a little bit, but I'm just going to reflect and I'm going to see what comes up. And that I think for a lot of men is something that they are craving but terrified of because it's in these types of solitudes, it's in these types of curated moments where you have an opportunity to really meet yourself in a way. Not in the like 20 minute meditation or the 15 minute journaling session, or in the 10 minute breath work session, but in five, six straight days of uninterrupted contemplation and reflection and seeing what thoughts, what emotions, what experiences, what desires, what longings, what yearnings begin to bubble up from the unconscious, from the soul, right from the deeper parts. And if you don't like the word soul, then from the deeper parts of who you actually are. And it's, in my opinion.

My belief, my way of living is that we cannot grow deeper into who we want to be. We cannot have a more concrete, strong, robust sense of who we actually are. And to live that way. And that's what every man craves. Every man craves the ability to have deep clarity on who he is, what brings him joy, what he wants to build, what he wants to create. Every man craves that. I haven't met a man in my life out of the tens of thousands of men that I've worked with, who haven't had this deep inner desire to understand who they are and to live with that level of authenticity, to be connected and plugged in and rooted into who they are, and then to build a life that reflects that externally out in the world. Your values.

What you prize, what you want to embody, what you want to build and create, how you want to influence the people around you and love them. And so my belief is that it's nearly impossible, especially in today's distracted states, it is nearly impossible to have a deeper kind of listening into who you actually are if you do not curate some time in solitude. Now, this means you might go and do a half day or, you know, a day or two days, whatever works for you. But to really do it in a way where you honor the fact that your life is usually very busy, it's usually very distracted. And so I'm sharing this with you because oftentimes the work that we talk about so frequently in our modern culture involves sitting with a therapist, involves sitting with a coach or a psychologist. It involves joining a group or going off and doing ayahuasca or mushrooms or some type of psychedelic journey. And what I have found time and time again is that one of the most powerful experiences, some of the most powerful experiences that I've ever had is literally sitting by myself in the middle of nowhere in nature. And so I'm going to return to that and I will bring back some of my lessons, some of my experiences for you in the coming weeks. But my invitation for you, my challenge for you, is to plan out curated and intentional time in solitude, ideally out in nature. You know, not sitting in your apartment, not sitting in your house, you know, where there's all these distractions, where you constantly are actually moving yourself into the territory of nature. Because nature has a different quality, a different type of voice and a different version of us, a more deep rooted version of us often shows up within that space, within those places. So venture forward. I hope that you found some, some piece of insight into this. I hope that you pick up the challeng. Even if it's just a day where you venture off into the wilderness without any distractions to sit and stare at the trees and listen to the wind and see the clouds move by and to hear in an unencumbered, undistracted kind of way, your inner world, to traverse the inner territory of you in a consistent and undistracted way. So let me know what you think. Have you ever done anything like this? Comment below. If you're watching this on YouTube, if you, if you're tuning into this on the podcast, please share it with somebody. Man it Ford with somebody that you know will enjoy it. And until next week, this is Connor Beaton signing off.