Pause To Flourish
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Audio Transcript:
If you've come to this podcast ready for someone to share with you all of these solutions and have it all figured out and articulately lay it out in the next 15 steps you need to make. Like many of the posts we see out there, I'm sorry I've let you down here. There are other folks out there that do that all day long, but if you've come here ready for a genuine sharing of the journey and an authentic reveal of me, maybe there's some wisdom, maybe there's some tips or some goodness there, and also some failures and learnings and all that in between.
Then, hey, you're at the right place.
So 30 days ago, a little over that, actually. I walked out of the emergency room with a new level of resolve, which those experiences sometimes can do. I went on I went all in on a mission to take control of my health, and I thought I was doing okay, but I had a shock, a surprise.
And we talked about that on this podcast. But I came out of there and really the last month and a half or a little less than that, I've been really improving key things, you know, diet, movement, sleep, those kind of things, looking at all kinds of, different metrics and supplements. Just, I mean, I'm throwing everything I can at it.
I'm not going to I'm not going to get there again. And, I mean, I'm happy to share some details. If you guys are interested. But along the way, I noticed something strange. And even with with all that I was doing, and it just it's a still short horizon when you talk about health, but but generally, you know, as many of us are, I'm wanting I want results, I want those things.
But I realized I was kind of missing something. I was still still felt off. And it wasn't until I paused and I mean really paused that the breakthrough came and hit. I mean, the clarity that followed Re is reshaping how I'm thinking about my health and about business, about life, everything you see, you know, I think there's this cultural obsession with doing more, optimizing every moment, grinding through it.
Maybe it's just me, but but I see that. I feel that I live that my the entire business that I founded is, is, is wrapped around optimizing workflows and improving things in every little. And I mean, it's down to the milliseconds and movements and all that. But I guess maybe, I don't know, call me contrarian, whatever, kind of class to go.
It doesn't matter. So this is not profound. Many of you get this. We've done this, but it's just a reminder to me that sometimes the smartest move that we can make in moments is to just pause, just stop. Just let that cycle dwindle down a bit and allow us to see the pattern. And so that's what we're going to do today, not not just through the personal health journey.
And I just wanted to give you an update on that. I told you guys there's going to be transparent there, but deeper into how I think discernment works in this world today and why stepping back may be the most radical, high leverage thing that you can do all year or all month or whatever it is. So anyway, as I mentioned with my health, I have been eating better, sleeping more intentionally.
I'm tracking heavy. I don't know that you guys are doing that. That's, heart rate variability, tracking that to see the trends going up. I'm pushing movement and lots of different supplements, different experimenting with all kinds of things, timing and stacking and strategies and whatnot. I've really been giving it everything. I've been disciplined, I've been data driven and also anecdotal, trying to watch how I feel on those things.
I don't want to miss that, but again, it felt a little incomplete. And once I unplugged for a bit and took some moment in in nature and stepping outside of the metrics and the pressure and had a long drive, that pause brought some clarity. And in that moment I suddenly saw, you know, the business by my energy, the family, my patterns, I saw it all differently and dots just began to connect.
It was super weird. And, you know, this sounds like, of course, but the clarity didn't come from doing more. It came from pausing. And it just it just reminded me, I mean, in this, this world today that were pushed to stay plugged in and know everything and react instantly and, and just, you know, be on top of everything.
I think maybe the most powerful thing we can do is just pause, just pause, breathe in. Because in that stillness, I sense we regain our edge and we we maybe relearn a little bit how to discern, you know, this, this notion of, of where we are in society today and everything is going on the macroeconomic moment. And I don't know where you are in your life.
Maybe that's part of it. And where I'm at, I'm in mid-forties, late 40s, and, and we're met with family and business and things. Maybe this is just how this works. Maybe, if you're in your 20s right now, you're not thinking this way. I don't know, but for most of history, I think power came from controlling access to information.
And, you know, obviously there's more power there, too. But think about it. Whether it was a a country or the churches or whatever else, you know, the more information you had, you could you could you could leverage that in ways. And I'm not I'm not trying to lambast any countries or church, but I'm just you can if you're a student history.
You see this, whether it was a translation or it was data or it was knowledge of how things worked or whatever else, controlling that information and only letting out what worked for your benefit. That was where that was, where power came from. And that's how you controlled masses. And I sense now the real skill is more about discernment because there's the information is out there.
You can find the truth, but good luck, right? I mean, in all the news and all the data, oh my gosh, we have so much more information at our fingertips today in this generation than all the generations previous to us combined had. You know, it's just it just is mind blowing what we have. And I think it's less about having the information now.
It's more about being able to discern the information, recognize the patterns. And, you know, this isn't a doomsday thing. I actually think that's awesome because what humans are, I think innately we're great at generally is pattern recognition. And that's what we've we've, you know, you look back throughout our history, it's really looking at patterns. And then reacting to those patterns is what is what allowed us to evolve and do the things we do.
So it's kind of cool. And that's the whole signal through the noise thing. But it's more than that. So I guess I'll give you some examples. And it's these maybe these are great examples, but what I'm you know, how, over the years, if you followed the Bill Cosby story and this isn't a great story, obviously doesn't end well.
But, you know, if you grew up in my generation as a kid, you saw Bill Cosby everywhere. And it was I mean, gosh, this pillar was awesome is America's father for the most part. He was on, you know, the head, you know, all all the kid's shows he did and everything, and the magic marker and all that stuff and, like, wow, this guy, the darndest things, kids say the darndest things, all that stuff.
But society throughout that time, he was also constantly on interviews and stuff, talking about putting Spanish Fly and women's drinks and stuff like that. And it's like, what? And there's a documentary and I remember the name of it, but it's on. It was on HBO Max or Max, HBO or whatever they're calling themselves now. It's it's fascinating to see how the truth was there the whole time.
And we didn't hear him as a society because we weren't looking. And it wasn't until kind of some accusations came up and more and more and and I don't, I don't know the facts. I wasn't there for any of that, obviously, but just the whole notion of that, of it was out there in plain sight. But we missed it.
That's, that's crazy. So, I mean, I think discernment it for us is being able to see the truth that's maybe there all along, but it's overlooked because maybe it's not wrapped in a headline, or it's maybe wrapped in lots of headlines and that that trend or that that push of what we think we need to do gets lost.
You know, another great example is, is where, you know, it was it was popular back when I was maybe in high school or not. They may go through cycles. Maybe they're popular now. Maybe they've been long forgotten. Where there's pictures that you you would have to almost just look like wavy lines or something, and you put it up close to your face as well.
At least it worked for me. And as I would draw it back slowly and relax my eyes and not focus on the picture, but begin to just kind of let it happen, all of a sudden you'd see like a pride of lions laying in a field or or zebras or whatever, whatever the picture was. And it was cool.
And you'd see I'd be like, wow, there it is. Then you could not see it. And it's that kind of thing I'm talking about, I guess now there's a couple of these examples where it's there, but if you're looking too hard or you're focused on the details, you might miss it. So sometimes you got to just kind of let it float back and get out of there.
I mean, in politics, media, tech trends, whatever, you know, people and me, I mean, it's all of us. So we tend to bounce from belief to belief, headline the headline kind of what's popular, what we're being told to believe in. I mean, certainly in politics, you can see that for sure. But even sports or any anything you're following, you can see you're kind of you're kind of conditioned to believe a certain thing.
And if you don't step back, you just kind of get swept up in it. You lose your inner compass. And at least I do. This happens to me, and I begin chasing urgency and and forget really what is the truth. And we all have things we do in our lives, whether it's it's church or it's social groups or it's readings you do or things you do that that help us, you know, come back to center.
So I'm not saying we're all devoid of that, but man, the amount of noise coming at us in a daily basis and whatever role you have, it is hot and it's a lot. And so I think that's a that's a big challenge. So I guess, you know, what? Or how do we build discernment? I mean, there's there's probably a lot smarter folks out there that can tell you about that.
If you're interested more. I guess for me, though, one of the things I need to do, and I've certainly embraced this as I've as I've aged as a kid, I didn't do much of this or younger young adult, I actually was was more kind of kind of pushed it aside saying like, I don't I don't want rituals, I don't want these, these patterns, and I don't want my life rolled by a schedule and all this stuff.
Right. Silly stuff, I guess the time or whatever. Hey, you're rebels. That of course, but now kind of kind of pausing and taking in some of those rituals, are important. I mean, pattern recognition only comes when you stop staring at the same wall, right? And I'm doing that through early morning solitude, walks on a nature, all the things.
And, you know, even even, again, just just stepping out of my current situation in life, whether I'm, I'm dad or I'm, I'm CEO or, or whatever, stepping out of that for bit, you know, the old statement, you can't see the forest for the trees kind of thing. You can't see the forest really until you step off the trail.
And I think that for me is is something I gonna continue to do. Now, they could be I mean, you could look at at huge long like, you know, go monk mode, go for, for a week at a time or multiple weeks, take a sabbatical. Those kind of things certainly that's that's valuable. And I would certainly encourage you to do that.
When I've done that, it's always it's always, benefited me. But, even just in the, in your cycles. Fine, fine moment. So maybe you guys are doing this and killing. I'd love to hear about it if you are. I'm sure many of you are. And I've had but times better than others. And I mean, one of those times where I'm just recognizing it, and I guess that's that's part of it too, is, is embrace the cycle.
I think it's okay. You know, we in my business a lot of times, you know, folks will say, yeah, well you read stuff or whatever. And I've said it myself many times, you know, you gotta work on the business, not in the business. Well, you know, that's true. But also there's value to working in the business because because you if you especially if you're a founder, you.
Yeah. No one's going to see that business exactly like you. And I hate to say that out loud, it sounds arrogant and it sounds like I don't trust the people I work with. I do they're they're awesome and they see it. It's unbelievable. But they still need me in my unique way, and I need them and their unique way to look at the business.
So while I'm not doing the things I used to do when I started it, I started the, you know, you're doing everything right. I think there's still a need to be in the business, but I find cycles where, okay, I'm too far in or I'm in too much, I gotta back out a bit. It allows other people to grow.
It allows you to to step aside and see strategy. And that's what happened to me this past week as I unplugged a business on, you know, long drive and had some stuff to do with with the and had a great trip was one of our suppliers, honey. Well they were really gracious. I was able to go the PGA tournament down in Charlotte.
It was cool. It was a neat experience. But in that time I had I had a bit of downtime to my mind just and I wasn't planning. I didn't see this coming and my mind just kind of opened up and all of a sudden I saw some huge strategic things we needed to do within our business. And it wasn't.
Yeah, I guess I knew those kind of, you know, it's weird in the background, but the pattern also became clear as as the picture came away from my face, it also became clear and I knew this is what we need to do. Likewise, some stuff around family kind of popped in, some stuff around community. So in my three main focuses of where I want to show up best, I got clarity and it was, it was just it's silly.
It was just on a silly pause, but it reminded me that I need that kind of stuff. So I think, all right. So that's one. I think a second thing is diversifying input without drowning in it. Like, you know, I don't how many times I've tried to reboot my inputs. Oh, I'm going to get these, these three sources and whatever else.
Yeah, it's tough stuff. But but I think one of the important things and I see this too, I think we all see this. Right? And maybe you don't see it in yourself. Maybe you should try to look at it. I don't know, it's up to you, but echo chambers are real. Especially now with social media more and more with algorithms sending us exactly what we they think we want.
The moment you read an article in the conservative side, you get all kinds of conservative stuff. You read something on the liberal side, you get all kinds of liberal stuff, and it will it will pull you down that echo chamber that, that, that, that system of that angle to the point it's almost radicalization that's happening. And if you allow yourself, you can be radicalized.
And that's why you're you're talking to somebody and you hear him talking like, really? Do you really believe what you're saying? And I'm not saying there can't be extremes and there's realistic for extremes. That's fine. But just for me, I can't afford to be, an extremist. The completely ignores other realities. So for me, in the roles I play, I got to get out the echo chamber.
I got to read from the fringe. You got to listen to opposing sides and and then again, pausing to let it marinate. So I can't do that every day I've got I'm looking at more of a weekly cycle, a try to get a kind of tap with with what's going on daily. Just a kind of a headline thing, a political kind of headline.
And then it's about getting exposure elsewhere. And, you know, this is where some folks will talk about reading fiction and different things to it. That's that all lights it up. So I guess looking outside and making sure I'm balancing my inputs, not overwhelming inputs, but balancing the inputs and then again, pausing to let that stuff marinate. So that's my second thing in the last thing, just trusting trusting my brain.
And that's tough because we want to, you know, we believe there's more out there. And this overwhelm of AI right now, it's awesome. It's a great tool. If you're not using it, but you might want to figure it out and just start using it. But wow, the amount of dependency you immediately feel you have with, it's like, oh, I'll do this, I'll do this.
And it can be a little bit of a brain numb. And you see this actually, some folks, their critical thinking skills are dipping because they're relying on AI to do some of that. You know, how we use AI will become important, and figuring out how you use it best is certainly there, but I can't I, I love I leverage it as a force multiplier for me not to replace my brain.
And I think, just like I mentioned earlier, one of the things that make humans interesting and I think, I think really magical is, is our ability to spot patterns. We're biologically wired to do it, and but you cannot. It's hard to spot patterns when there's so much noise going on. You need a little bit of silence. You need you need to pause long enough to hear what your subconscious is screaming to you.
Whether it's your body, whether it's your emotions, whether it's your business model, whether it's the political world with it's religion, with spirituality, with your family, whatever it is that your brain is seeing patterns and it's it's ready to present them to you. But if we're constantly distracted by inputs, and good, good luck. Good luck seeing them. So anyway, I, I don't know, this is, this is not, earth shattering or brand new, but it's cyclical.
And I guess that's it. I try to embrace the cycle. And if you're on this journey with me, I'm in one of those cycles. It's time for me to step back a little bit and look at how best I can serve the areas I want to serve, but in a way where I'm on it instead of in it's kind of thing to a certain degree.
So maybe it's it's less parenting honestly, which is weirdly, maybe it's less. It's less push on the kids. Let them breathe a little bit. It's it's pulling out of my business a little bit from a, from a working in the business and let others grow and flourish and, and and see it more from a, from, from working on the business or strategic direction.
You know again I it's your mileage is going to vary on all this stuff. But that's where I'm at. And for me, I think that cycle is is part of what flourishing looks like in the modern world. It's not nonstop productivity. It's rhythm. It's intention. It's depth is stepping back just long enough to hear the deeper signal.
It's out there to see that bigger picture as it goes further away from you, to let your soul catch up with your ambition. You know, flourishing, I guess, means partly, but building that discipline of discernment. And it starts with the courage to pause. So that's it for today. If this resonated with you or helps you in any way, please let us know with review.
Share it with someone you think can benefit, maybe from a pause, or does benefit from pauses. And you think they they listen to this, they write on that. You know, I just aim to impact. If one of you are listening this episode today and it's helpful to you, that's awesome. And so that was I'd love to hear from you.
So leave a quick review wherever you're listening. And thank you for taking time to step back with me. And as always, I hope wherever you are today and whatever it is you're doing or not doing, I hope you're flourishing.
Alex Reneman is the founder of Mountain Leverage and Unleash Tygart and host of Flourishing w/ Alex Reneman. For 20+ years he has worked as CEO of Mountain Leverage, honing the concept of flourishing and experimenting with it in the business. In July of 2024, he decided to begin to share this idea with others, which led to his podcast, social content, and the plans for other initiatives in the future.
