Finding Inner Retreat

Weekly insights to turn pain, trauma, and the human experience into opportunities for growth, purpose, and meaning

Clear, actionable, & thought-provoking, delivered every week

Issue 11 // Read Time: 4 Minutes 56 Seconds

I am writing you this newsletter from sunny and humid Mexico. Much different than my home environment of Salt Lake City, UT, where it has snowed consistently the last few weeks and tops out at 31° F today.  

While my mind and nervous system have found some moments of respite, the familiar worries still plague me, and I can't say I am any happier than before I left.

This experience brought me in contact with a quote by the Stoic philosopher and emperor of Rome, Marcus Aurelius. He said,

"People look for retreats for themselves in the country, by the coast, or in the hills; There is nowhere that a person can find a more peaceful and trouble-free retreat than in his own mind…So constantly give yourself this retreat, and renew yourself."

Today, we will dive into that quote and better understand what it means to find retreat inside of ourselves.

Today, you will get:

Thoughts from other masters who understood that we must find respite internally before finding it externallyHow to engage in practices that meet this need for internal retreatWhy does this matter in a world filled with external stimuli and distraction

Why are we wired to seek pleasure respite outside of ourselves?

Unfortunately, because we are human beings, a couple of biological factors are working against us in our pursuit of peace, happiness, and contentment.

First, we have to start by looking at dopamine. If you have yet to hear, we (at least in the Western world) are a dopamine-obsessed culture.

Anna Lembke details this in her book, The Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence.

Lembke examines the impact of modern society's focus on instant gratification and pleasure-seeking behaviors on mental health and well-being.

She discusses how our dopamine-driven culture contributes to addiction, stress, and unhappiness and offers strategies for finding balance and fulfillment in a dopamine-saturated world.

It is pretty eye-opening when you get into it.

When you start looking for all your dopamine-seeking behavior, you might be astounded to find this controls a large part of your behavior.

Has it Always Been This Way?

Many of our ancient masters, philosophers, and teachers knew that this race for dopamine was ultimately hollow.

While they did not have the science or language to lay this hollowness at the feet of a fleeting neurotransmitter, they were in tune enough with their minds and bodies to recognize what was happening.

Take Buddha, for example, who taught us that inner peace comes from within through mindfulness, meditation, and detachment from worldly desires.

Or Eckhart Tolle, who teaches about the importance of living in the present moment and transcending the egoic mind to find inner peace.

Socrates argued that true happiness could only be found by living a life of moral integrity, cultivating virtue, and seeking knowledge and understanding of oneself and the world.

The point is we know this. And we have ALWAYS known this, but we still don't do it, so why is that?

How Can I Cultivate Inner Retreat?

I will not bore you with regurgitated wisdom about meditation, mindfulness, and self-reflection.

Don't get me wrong - these are foundation pieces, and ultimately, it is mandatory to develop those practices, but we all know those things by now.

I want to take a different approach and start at a more foundational level, which is dialing in your mindset.

To do that, I invite you to ask yourself and journal about the following questions.

How can I set myself apart from others in a dopamine-obsessed world?If I were better able to sit in silence and introspect, how would my life improve?What are the most established and immovable barriers keeping me from finding my life interesting?What are the most common behaviors that help me avoid being in silence?

These questions start to bring us in contact with the version of ourselves that would come from more meditation, mindfulness, and self-introspection.

Before making those changes, we must have a vision of what we want to be.

Without that vision, it is ethereal, undefined, and too distant to want to work for.

Why Does This Matter?

I am going to go ahead and answer the first question I asked above.

You set yourself apart from other people in a dopamine obsessed world by developing your ability to focus your attention.

People, places, products, and a consumer culture are constantly competing for your attention and the name of the game is to distract you.

If you do not develop the capacity for quiet and peace then you will not ever be able to maintain your attention long enough to find contentment.

When you are wired to constantly shift your attention, you are only capable of digesting bite sized chunks of information, and you are incapable of dropping deeper into introspective states.

An example of this, I experienced this week is going on vacation and feeling the familiar stressors I felt at home.

It didn't matter where my body was/is. It matters where my mind and heart are.

So I have tried to slow down. I have tried to nurture the Self. To step out of the addictive race for dopamine and to simply BE.

Take some time this week to define what this more content, quite, and peacful version of oyu would be capable of.

When you are connected to that vision, then start cultivating quiet and introspection.

You don't have to go to the countryside or a foreign country to find it. It is in you. And it has always been in you.

Thank You!

I love that you are interested in exploring yourself in the pursuit of growth and expansion. And I LOVE that you get to become the change you hope to see in the world.

Thank you for allowing me to be a small part of your journey 💕

With Love,

Christian