These emails, delivered Sunday late afternoon, weave personal story, inspiration from our programs, and tangible invitations to support you in being the man you want to be in the week ahead.
The etymology of the word saunter is interestingly, unknown. There’s an old story John Muir used to tell that the word means those walking towards the holy land and has thus come to mean “to be in reverie as we move.” Anyhow, let us saunter…
It’s early Wednesday, and I’m sitting down for my morning practice. I try following the breath. 10 minutes in, and there haven’t been more than 4 continuous breaths without thought. I try connecting through prayer. I cannot find the authentic words. I try accessing the vitality in my body. Fuck, I’m just agitated. There’s nothing here.
My 20 minute timer goes off, and I honestly feel worse than when I started. This is normally the moment in the day where I orient to what’s most important and set my compass. Today, I can feel only distraction. Voices of unworthiness. Frustration. Subtle Despair.
I don’t let myself get up from my seat until there’s some sliver of an authentic thread of connection. I stay sitting until I hear the words: there are a million ways out; there is only one way through.
This is not a day where inspiration will lead me into action. This is not a day where I feel a residing trust in a clear vision for my life. And yet, this is still a day where I have to show up.
And I know enough of myself now: I will get to the end of this day, 16 hours from now, and I can feel bitter about all I had to take care of. Or, I can be fulfilled.
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There’s something nobody told me about what happens when you start getting what you want. Perhaps it was best I didn’t know because maybe I would have dreamed smaller.
It’s an architecture that I see as one of the core operating principles of Life. Desire (if you remember, desire comes from the latin root desidre meaning from the stars) is the currency of our soul. It’s the breadcrumbs we follow to become the fullest expression of who we are. To get something we really want, we have to become the person worthy of that thing.
Here’s what no one told me: as you grow into a person worthy of living that life you most deeply long for, your capacity as a human grows proportionally. If you don’t shortcut the process, you end up growing into someone who can actually both take care of and fully enjoy this thing you’ve wanted.
Seems awesome, yeah? Well, as your capacity grows so does your responsibility to take good care. The stakes have been raised. The excuses and avoidances of the past no longer get the job done.
Run this cycle of earnestly moving towards what you want over a decade, how much you’re responsible to will grow to something you couldn’t have imagined at the very start.
I see these responsibilities as contracts. Something that we live out and through to know who we really are. Once the contract is present and alive, we’re responsible to it. There’s an exchange wanting to happen. There’s a giving and a taking.
And ultimately the choice in how we meet these contracts becomes the bedrock for how we experience our life.
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I have almost everything I envisioned for my life seven years ago. Every prayer I made on empty and longing-filled days in these Appalachian forests is here.
My job is to live it.
If I’m honest, I am coming to see that living it may actually be more difficult than getting it. Because living it requires the choice—the re-cognition—100+ times a day that this is the very thing I came here for. Living it requires me to engage the one way through when the million exit doors of dopamine and greener pastures seduce my tired body and my weary mind.
I feel those million exit doors on most days as my life continues to distill into an expression of what’s actually most important.
I’m repairing a cow fence at 8:30pm after a long day, I cannot remember why for the life of me why we decided to raise our own meat, and the bitterness that no one is helping me begins to bubble.
I’m hearing another “I want to do this next year” during a Heart of Men enrollment cycle, it’s the 10th “no” of the week, and I fantasize about a livelihood that would pay me 3x as much and ask 25% of my soul.
I’m sitting down for the 6th time to write this very Sunday Saunter, it just has not been flowing, and I starting finding 15 other things to do with my time that will provide more immediate gratification.
I don’t think it’s that hard these days to have the big experience. To get high on the peak. To have the moment of pristine vision and clarity. To leave behind the daily drudge of relationship and commitment to go someplace else where you feel again that anything is possible for your life.
I do think it’s really fucking hard to find the way through within the ecosystem of all you’re responsible to. To keep showing up to live everything you know you wanted a decade ago. To live what’s most important on a day where the good juice just ain’t flowing from the perfectly ripe oranges. This to me is the big work.
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True North Leadership is centered around your Why. Your Why is not a mission statement. Nor a mantra. Nor a diagram you have on your office wall after coming back from a Tony Robbins retreat. At least not in how we work with it.
Your Why is the place inside where you know unequivocally that you are being wholly and utterly yourself. Most of us cannot articulate it but we can feel it. It has a warmth, assuredness, and vitality that can bring some brothers to tears simply connecting with it.
I always get worked when I’m bringing the work in Heart of Men. This cohort has been no different.
The focus for me became very evident in our first call: recognize the agency you have in everything you’re doing.
I don’t have a hard time accessing my why. The felt clarity of my purpose on this Earth is readily available for me almost anytime. The channel to receive instructions and guidance is normally open, and I’ve come to both trust and follow it.
Where I struggle—as I’ve been sharing in this saunter—is that I lose the connection between what I’m doing and the deeper current that has me doing the thing in the first place. My actions become monotonous. I feel burdened. I get bitter. I lose the joy of this one wild and precious life under the grip of daily necessity.
So, this was my work over the past 6 weeks. Bringing an impeccable awareness to this pattern. Knowing that when the disconnection and bitterness present themselves, I have a choice to slow down and see what’s happening (as one of the brothers in TNL said: the wound is the signal where when recognized for what it is, we then have a choice).
The words I received at the end of that weary Wednesday morning practice: there are a million ways out; there is one way through: my one way through right now is the recognition that I am choosing this.
In that, there was some patterns I noticed that feel quite helpful in making that choice.
There are moments where there is a spark of inspiration. This is when my why feels abundantly present, the next action to take is clear, and I have the courage to move towards it. These are the moments where I catch the inspiration for a Sunday Saunter and get down 2,500 well-crafted words in 60 minutes. There isn’t a perceived gap between the inspiration and the action. But, this is only 20% of the time.
What’s more common is I find myself doing—or needing to do something—and not feeling its connection to the deeper current of my life. This is when the million ways out get their grip on me. This is where I often fall into bitterness. This Sunday Saunter is an example. I haven’t had a flow in writing this through six different attempts until today. Because the flow hasn’t been here, I find myself distracted in my attempts and thus unfulfilled.
I’ve found one of two things happens when I slow down to notice the disconnection and come back to: I have a choice in this. Sometimes, I’ll realize that what I’m in fact doing is out of alignment or integrity with the deeper current of who I am. I’m showing up to something out of a story of what I should do or who I think I am, and there is not authentic connection to the act.
What happens more often—and this is the predominant experience across most situations in my life—is that I can cast a line back into the waters of my why. By simply noticing there’s resistance or disconnection, slowing down, and finding the place where I can say “I am choosing this,” suddenly the chasm between why and the action closes.
What happens next is both simple and profound. Where I was disembodied, disassociated, on autopilot, suddenly I’m living what I’m doing. It gets real. I feel it more in my hands. I’m actually able to receive from what’s happening.
I am back living the exchange of the contract I prayed for but then forgot how much I wanted.
The reality is, if we want a fulfilled life, we’re going to have to get really good and casting this line, day-after-day, back into what’s most important. When the spark of inspiration strikes, it’s brilliant. But life just isn’t like this on most days.
We have to show up to the thing we’ve done 1,500 times before that honestly feels easier to do if we take the million ways out. We have to show up to it, choose the one way through, and infuse whatever we’re doing with that deeper knowing of who we are and why we’re doing what we do.
In doing so—especially on our most stuck and disorienting days—we come to more fully know our why. We close the chasm between that deep call of who we really are and the actions we take on a given day.
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On our morning walk that Wednesday, I shared that line from the end of my meditation with my wife.
She said, “Those million ways out are a gift because they give us the opportunity to recognize them and ultimately choose the one way through. Isn’t everything about forgetting and then returning to what’s actually most true?”
I want to make a simple invitation for this week. When you’re in the drudge of daily life and the doing has lost its vitality, can you pause? Can you locate why—if it’s there—you’re choosing to do what you’re doing? Can you connect to the you three, five, or ten years ago that dreamed this moment may one day be here? Then, notice what’s accessible. Is there something flowing back into you as you live out what you’ve chosen?
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We just concluded our very first True North Leadership cohort. Here’s a few of the fellas from our feedback form:
This is unlike anything I’ve ever done. Thomas has made a game out of men doing their best every day and being seen in it. I couldn’t express enough how meaningful this course was.
I am taking steps to actualizing and carrying through with goals of mine that I had previously avoided—for years–out of the fear of facing the wounds attached to those goals.
The biggest impact has been on my family—my wife and son now have a more present, patient, and intentional version of me because I’m no longer drifting through life.
True North Leadership has nourished a part of me that has been parched my whole life, and which I couldn’t have put words to before I participated. It’s a part that has yearned for soulful collaboration with other men around the things that matter most.
The stuff works, and we’re going to run it again this fall. I want to offer you something today: if you’re ready for TNL2, join the waitlist (hint: readiness isn’t a feeling; it’s a choice). The price of Round 2 is going to increase $400. If you join the waitlist today, we’ll let you into Round 2 for price of Round 1 when it opens.
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Thank you for being here. Keep showing up. The fruits will come.
Walking at your side,
Thomas
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This email has been written by a real human, me. I don’t believe in using LLMS to write or more broadly, to make art. This stuff comes from the human soul.
