Coming back from a trip in Mongolia, I was telling a friend how easy it was there to connect with myself because the land is so vast and there are no distractions, at all. In fact, living without internet, which means no social media, no email, no news, has been experienced like a treat. This friend told me she finds the same in her home country in Finland, whereas in Hong Kong people are so busy and the rhythm is so fast that there is a constant mental chatter going on and stopping us to really listening to ourselves.
What is your purpose?
What does your heart want to do?
What kind of man do you want to be?
These kinds of meaningful questions and their answers cannot be answered when we are only listening to our minds that operate for most of us on automatic mode: going to work, providing to our family, entertaining or even numbing ourselves with sport, sex, movies, food or any other addiction, preparing our next trip to a new exotic place, those might not be what your soul is here to live.
In fact, according to David Deida, the only way for men to find their mission and deepest truth is quite simple: build a tent in your backyard, and stay in there doing nothing but listening to yourself till it’s clear!
No distraction at all, no mobile phone, nothing. Just you being with yourself.
At first, your mind might resist to such a plan:
- “why do you do this?
- Your life was not so bad.
- It’s uncomfortable here.
- It’s irresponsible, imagine something happens to your family.
- You could be in holidays instead!
- What if you don’t find anything? You would have waste your time for nothing.
- And all this money that you could have make meanwhile…”
Then, after a while, as you achieve to calm down your mind, another voice, a whispering and always quiet one, is going to start giving you the answers that you seek. Patience and courage are required as the message might not be as clear as you wish, your mind still resisting from times to times.
Ultimately, you find it, your truth is clear and you are determine to follow your direction: it’s now time to get out from your silence retreat and rearrange your life according to what makes your heart sing. And being a man with purpose.