A (3:20)
And you feel either one of two extremes anywhere on a spectrum. You either feel on one end, joy, love, trust, peace, safe. Or on the other end of the spectrum, you might feel empty, you might feel pain, you might feel unfulfilled, uncomfortable, sad, scared, lost, lonely. This is about you coming to meet you, the real you, your true self. Now, obviously, you should feel unconditional love. And complete self trust. But wherever you are, you are. When you feel love and trust and peace, everything is better in your life. If you feel empty or pain, it just simply means you're not 100%, you're going through life a little off balance and it's affecting everything. You're kind of on a shaky foundation and there's hope. And so now I would ask you to please bring it all back. Bring everything back, bring it all back in. And once it's all back, I want you to open your eyes. And with eyes open, I want you to think about so whether you felt pain or whether you felt peace, what's important to understand is whatever it was, it's showing up in a thousand little ways in your life with everything and everyone. And the idea is to obviously shift the toward more peace. And a way to think about what happened there is if you picture a spectrum, on one end is peace and on the other end is pain. Just put a little hash mark on that range where you were. And so we never know what's going to happen when we do that exercise with someone or with an audience and it's all over the place. It's just incredible. Everything from people feeling incredible pain or incredible peace. One particular woman, she said she felt, felt absolute peace. And then when she brought everything back in, she's. She started to feel stress and pain, which just tells her there's some things in her life that are causing her stress that she needs to deal with. And in other situations, people feel pain and so there's just something going on at their core. Whatever came up for you is exactly what needed to come up for you, for you to learn more about yourself and maybe something to work on or something to do more of. And so that's part one of our conversation here in this episode. And like I said, we're going to do an exercise and I'm going to share an experience. And I'm feeling compelled to do these two things. And so now I want to share this experience with you. This experience I call my four day personal retreat. And it was really interesting what led up to it because I was actually scheduled on this same date to actually go do a guided retreat with someone. And something was just telling me that it's time for me to be my own guru, to listen to myself, to go inside. So I actually canceled that and decided to just go spend four days with myself. And it was absolutely incredible. And so I went to an island off of Jacksonville called Amelia island, stayed in a hotel on a beautiful beach. It's an incredible beach on the ocean and so just a great atmosphere and certainly view. So I've done lots of retreats. Again, whether it was guided or working with some guru or going with friends or family or whatever it was. But I've never done anything like this where it was just all me, no agenda, being with me, no distractions, nothing tugging at me. I turned off the world, I prepared everyone. All my wife and I did was texted good morning and good night at the end of the day, just so that I could stay disconnected completely. And in that, you know, I had no identity. I was not a husband, I was not a father, I was not a son, I was not a businessman, a teacher, a friend. I was just me being with me. And so here's what I did again. I'm just feeling compelled to share what I did and then certainly some outcomes. But the first thing that I did is I wrote my life story. So when I got to the airport, I pulled out the journal and I wrote my life story. Took about four hours in the airport on the flight. By the time I landed, I was done. And I was just compelled to do this from a book I just read called Primal Intelligence. You don't have to run out and read it, but it talked about the power of just clearly knowing your story and in the way of it just kind of anchors and grounds you. And so it was just a really profound exercise. And so it's, it's, it's just this beautiful roller coaster ride of looking back at all the highs and lows and things like that. So it was very, very profound. Another thing that I did is I journaled a lot. So up and over, just my story, I journaled a lot. I did a lot of writing. And there was this kind of cool thing that came to the surface. I'm calling Authentic Entrepreneurial Leaders. And so I think that's going to be an episode sometime very soon. So more on that in a bit. Another thing that I did is I went to bed early. I was in bed by like seven o'. Clock. That's just what my body wanted for some reason. I was in bed and I'd meditate sometimes a little bit, but I was out pretty darn early. And then I was up really early. And so I would get up probably 4am, I would do an hour long meditation. And I was actually down in the lobby by 5 or 6am every day and I was journaling or doing some of the other things that I'll share with you in just a second. So that was just, again, what my body wanted. It was just really cool energetically. Another thing was when I would be in the lobby early, I was reading through. I have a file of some of my biggest AHAs, lessons, things learned, teachings, et cetera. And I was able to go through that file. And it takes a good four hours to fully get through that. And so I was able to do that. It took me two mornings to do that. That was very profound to just kind of bring me back to all those wonderful teachings and ground me in some things and kind of re remember some things, which was really incredible as well. The other thing I did is I went to the spa twice and probably spent four hours in the spa. So it was an hour and a half massage. It was doing all the amen, steam, sauna, Jacuzzi, and then the relaxation room. So just an awesome experience that was its own experience in itself. In addition to that, I walked on the beach, I swam in the ocean, spent lots of time kind of pondering, but then I did something really cool that is. It's been on my bucket list for years. And so again, I was in the Jacksonville area, you may or may not recall, but I'm a huge fan of Michael Singer. And Michael Singer does a talk on his compound in the middle of nowhere in Florida. And I've always wanted to go see him do one of his talks. He does two a week. And so one of the days in an 18 hour period, I drove to Alachua, Florida to Michael Singer's compound. It's incredible how only about 50 people show up for this. I did his yoga, his meditation, and then listened to him talk for an hour, which was just kind of a dream come true. I just really wanted to experience his whole vibe. And as always, every one of his lessons are incredible. Every one of his talks are also on his podcast, so you can actually hear all of his talks that he does twice a week on his podcast. But I was able to do that and just finally check that box on my bucket list. And it was everything I hoped it would be. I then drove back home the next morning. And in addition to everything I've shared, I'm working on a new project that I'll unveil in 2026. And I spent about a half day just working on a creative project. Another interesting thing that happened is I got a little bored twice and felt despair. So there was time. This was Tuesday to Saturday, so on Wednesday night and on Thursday morning, I experienced boredom and despair. Where it was, I think it was all part of the process where it's like I just started to get bored and I started to get a little depressed, it was really fascinating. And then that, as it always does, processed whatever needed to be processed there. So that was quite profound. And up and over all of that, I just rested a lot. I got a lot of rest. And I probably said 100 words in four days total. So I did very little interacting with people, talking. You know, I dined alone. And so I think that was also very powerful because I was almost on my own, silent retreat per se. Although it obviously was not a silent retreat. So there it is. As I reflect back on it, I have no doubt there was a shift toward freeing and being my true self. A shift, I don't know how much, I don't know if it was monumental, but a shift toward me knowing myself a little bit better, me coming to meet myself a little bit better, me shifting again toward being my true self. I know that I came back a little bit better of a human being. I know that I shed a little bit. I don't know how much. But it's all gradual. So again, it wasn't this monumental thing. It's all gradual as we grow and ascend and shed and become ourselves. So all that said, I have a question for you. What would you do with yourself for four days? What would you do for one day? What would you do for a week? I don't know what your formula is. For me, four days was like perfect. I was ready to come home on that fourth day. And what might you discover about yourself if you take a personal retreat again? An hour a day, two days, four days a week? I urge you to consider that.
