By Juliana Pires Johnson
It’s a Monday in January and I just wrapped up my virtual The Hoffman Process weekend. Throughout the years, I’d heard of it thru friends who experienced the 7 day in-person retreat, on podcasts, being spoken about by some of the leaders I most respect – Tim Ferris, Rich Roll, Blake Mycoskie, Jen Atkin – and I started following @hoffmanprocesss on IG. Following a turbulent, confusing and layered year of 2020, a slow professional start to 2021 and a discounted rate for a condensed 2 day at-home, virtual retreat, I needed zero convincing. It could be helpful to note that the previous week, I finished by 4-day virtual Transcendental Meditation training, I am in the middle of my Gabby Hoffman 21-day visualization meditation challenge and I still sneak time for a Chopra App gratitude meditation daily. Lets not mention that within the first 3 weeks into the year I’ve already devoured Jim Kwik’s Limitless, Dave Asprey’s Fast This Way (yes, in case you were wondering, I’ve also joined his 2-week fasting challenge to coincide with launch) and Jay Shetty’s Think Like A Monk while going back to by Intermittent Fasting + Keto Lifestyle while running my own company and starting a digital site.
With so much doing, am I even living?
That hit me hard over my 8-hour daily weekend intensive THP program. As I moved through exercises, I had to calm my mind and resistance to them and identify where they were coming from. I realized that I needed to try and experience everything thought the eyes of a child, as if for the first time (or so I’ve been told repeatedly from all the self-help books and podcasts I’ve digested throughout the years). We are constantly changing – us, the world, and you can always get some beauty, pick up on something new, from the so-called familiar. As we moved through these personal exercises, I committed to doing them, as if for the first time. Perhaps what made that possible was that unlike my past experiences in self-help, where I read books or listened to podcasts in solitude, a group retreat calls for shared energy and insight from others; a give and take of presence and attention. By being in the moment, it is always the first time.
Although open and connected, I was feeling something different. I was uncomfortable. The self-help dopamine hit wasn’t there. During the program I felt like a professional con-artist. When asked about my feelings, I had all the “right” lingo to impress – I am open, committed, awake, enlightened… the body remembers, energy is flowing, I feel release. I started to feel like a phony. Not because I was faking it per se, but because those were feelings I identified in my past, that were once new discoveries but no longer true in the present moment. So what was my truth right NOW? Why was I still being pulled to these self-help courses? Observing first-timers’ revelations was amazing but made me feel more of a caregiver than a student and colleague, and that definitely was not my role.
That’s when it hit me. Help! I’m a self-help junkie! Just like so many addictions, absolutely anything in excess can be poison. My addiction to self-help – reading, digesting, needing, preaching, was stopping me from living. From Doing. Taking Action. Another weekend revisiting feelings on the mend, wanting the same dopamine hit that I had the first time I discovered and healed many unresolved feelings and traumas stored in my body. During exploration, I saw my present truth, which I had been avoiding – the authentic discovery was that I was hooked on the feeling I got from an aha moment, reading a powerful quote, watching someone have a lightbulb moment but then not acting on it. Having tried every meditation, diet, mantra, visualization and retreat, why was I keeping all of that to myself? Fear of judgement and “failure”? Probably the most common shared feeling in humanity. That’s when I knew it was time to stop. I’m laying down the books, taking a break from the podcasts, living my lessons but most of all, living my life. Sharing, taking action here and now.
My resolution: more doing, more being, more living. We know all the answers and have known all along.
They really say that in self-help, you get what you need in stillness. I am so grateful that THP gave me EXACTLY what I needed, showed me exactly what I was hiding from myself. Though not the obvious, it was definitely the most important revelation.
I hope that you remember that everything in excess can be poison, that more is not better. Sometimes you have to also intermittently fast from all your addictions, even when you think they are good. More on all of that later.