Never stop collecting tools
Sometimes life's problems exceed our ability to solve them and the only solution is to acquire a new tool.
Last December, I did a five-day silent retreat in the mountains just north of San Francisco. I wasn't allowed to bring my phone. Or my laptop. Or any books or any reading materials of any kind. And no journal, no paper, no pens or anything to write anything. Just me and my clothes and my spiraling thoughts for five straight days. And yes, silent. Which meant no talking for the duration of the stay.1
I didn't tell a lot of people that I did this. Mostly just close friends. But when I did tell people, their reactions centered around a similar pattern:
Five days? Oh my God. I could not have done that. Maybe one day?
No way I could be away from my phone for that long.
You can’t even read anything? I would have gone crazy.
Basically, a simultaneous blend of complimenting my boldness and expressing their confidence that they could never have done anything like that.
Truthfully, I had the same exact thoughts going into the retreat. “This is too much.” And even throughout the entire first day at the retreat. “I don’t know if I’ll finish all five days.”
But on day three, something happened.
An existential clearing in my mind:
"I can do this."
"I am, literally, doing this."
Looking back, I can confidently say that it was one of the most rewarding and healing experiences of my life. I have so much gratitude that I had the money and time to logistically pull it off. And so much pride that I had the psychological foundation to emotionally pull it off.
So, I did it. But... why?
2023 was one of the hardest years of my life. For me, COVID was finally wrapped and it was time to get back to "life as we knew it" and so, in the first half of the year, I:
Began dating my now-boyfriend exclusively.
Started going to therapy consistently for the first time.
Went to Europe for seven days.
Saw more live concerts and shows than I had in my entire life combined.
And then, somewhere around July, my mind began releasing an unrelenting stream of anxiety with no tangible source and I:
Broke a filling from unconsciously clenching my jaw too tightly. Got it repaired that day.
Broke the same filling the literal next day and got it repaired. Again.
Had my first ever migraine, which felt like I was dying. My vision was tunneled and when I tried to look at my phone, the screen looked black (like it was shut off AKA fucking terrifying).
So, life after COVID returned to normal, only to then turn into the most abnormal.
The fuck?
The latter half of 2023 felt like triage. I cleared my calendar and, without disclosing this to anyone, pulled back from many of my friendships. I told my boyfriend I needed a break to "focus on myself" and that "it's not you, it's me" and other cliche fucking lines that were the literal actual truth. I've always considered myself as someone who's beautifully resilient, yet confided to my therapist that I felt a crisis of fragility and didn't even feel the confidence that I'd be able to get back to my old self ever again.
My biggest oversight in 2023 was attempting to move at twice the pace with only half the stamina. I was propelling myself through life with this unreasonable—and futile—drive to retrieve the time I’d “lost” to the black hole of quarantine.
And it wasn't sustainable.
Combine that with the fact that therapy was excavating a laundry list of tiny, compounding, unresolved issues and energies?
mid·life cri·sis [ mid-lyfe kry-sis ] n.
a period of emotional turmoil in middle age characterized by a strong desire for change, often triggered by the realization of one's mortality and the passing of youth.
Person 1: Did you hear about Jesse?
Person 2: About how his insurance didn’t cover the second time he broke the same filling in a week?
Person 1: Yeah. It’s really giving midlife crisis.
Yikes but also I don't know any other way to describe it. It honestly feels silly to even say out loud. But I also think it's important to say it out loud.
Humans have a tendency to go through life thinking trite milestones happen, but just to "other people."
Until those other people are looking back at us in the mirror.
So why did I do a silent retreat?
Desperation.
After my disquieting midlife crisis realization, I reached into my toolbox and tried every tool I had acquired up to that point: journaling, reading, talking to friends, talking to my therapist, pulling back from hosting events, pulling back from attending events, meditation, and the classic break the situation down into component parts and attack them systematically.
Those tools helped to an extent.
But they weren't enough.
I felt a deep sense that I needed to hold down the power button on my brain and perform a HARD RESET.
I needed a NEW TOOL.
And while a week of silence for my mind to run a defrag felt extreme, at that point it also felt nonnegotiable.
And guess what? It worked.
I see a lot of people—friends, friends of friends, family, family of friends, and even fucking strangers on the phone at my coffee shop—struggling with the same issues over and over. Work stress. Relationship stress. Existential midlife crisis stress. I’m at someone else’s place and I’m trying to log in to Hulu but I forgot my password stress.
We all already have a go-to set of tools we use to confront life’s problems. Sometimes that’s enough.
But sometimes it isn’t.
Sometimes you will need a NEW TOOL:2
Hire a personal trainer to teach you strength training fundamentals.
Journal daily. I recommend looking into Morning Pages.
Take a free yoga class on YouTube.
Watch a YouTube video on reinventing your life in 4 months. Then do it.
Listen to a podcast.
Learn how to budget.
Join a community sports league.
Talk to a therapist and excavate the underlying historical causes.
Ask a psychiatrist about safe and effective medications.
Go on retreat, such as a silent retreat or look into The Hoffman Process.
Take an improv class, a cooking class, or any class that grabs your attention.
Start a new hobby: learn an instrument, do puzzles, learn how to arrange flowers.
Download a meditation app on your phone.
Take psychedelics.6
Remember the reactions when I told people I went on a silent retreat? Complete and utter disbelief and a rejection that they could ever do something like that. Now I'm not saying that a silent retreat is appropriate or even necessary for everyone. But I am saying that far more people would benefit from sitting still and honestly asking themselves:
Of all of the available resources that are known to humankind, what's the best one within reach for me for my specific situation?
Humans have a tendency to go through life thinking trite tools work, but just for "other people."
Maybe it’s time to look in the mirror and ask that "other person" what tool they know they need, but they just aren't it up picking up for some reason.
There were two 10-minute sessions with the Buddhist instructors where you could speak and ask questions or ask for advice, but otherwise… silent. Unsurprisingly, they were some of the most insightful 20 minutes of my life.
And unlike literal tools in a toolbox, the more "tools of life" you experiment with, the more you'll realize what actually works FOR YOU. And not everything will, so it's essential test things for yourself.
Yes, an entire book and not just a headline or Instagram quote.
Want to read but not sure where to start? Difficult Conversations is one of my favorite books and is applicable to literally everyone on planet Earth. Thanks Michael T. for this recommendation, as it changed my life.
Hey, Noah :)
Sorry, no link for that one.
Loved the read-along exactly the way you read it! Read the footnotes you want to, leave the rest to the reader.