Oh yes I was scared alright..........

So this is the first edition of The Journey - if you’ve just signed up, subscribed or whatever it is they call it then welcome.

The idea behind The Journey is a bit of a departure from the usual newsletter type things you read online which can get………….well a bit boring to be honest.

The same old regurgitated tips on how to build a million dollar business, crush it in the dating market or some other load of tosh from an influencer online who probably isn’t who they claim to be, or leading the life they espouse others do.

What I wanted to do is actually put you on my shoulder as I go through this journey they call life, and share with you what I learn along the way.

It’s not going to be super long but what it will do is allow me to pass backwards a map of sorts for others about to embark upon navigating the forest.

What a cool metaphor that is.

So let’s get into it.

I was super scared this weekend.

And I am going to tell you the reason why.

At the beginning of the year I started a hike on the Ashdown Forest near me called The Guild of Dads Hike which was meant to be a monthly hike for two hours on the last Saturday of each month, set against a beautiful backdrop. I filled my WhatsApp group up with men I knew, husbands of my wife’s friends and a few other people I thought might be a good fit and guess what?

Crickets.

Every month I struggled to get men to show up. It seemed that every month there was some excuse as to why guys couldn’t take time out for themselves for two hours. (I’m going to delve into the reasons for this in my upcoming writings).

I promoted it, told everyone about it, but it was just so slow, to the point at which I almost threw in the towel.

Then last month I thought to myself “right lets try something completely different”. I’m not a big fan of Facebook to be honest but I decided to join the Facebook Groups of all the major towns around the Forest, then post about the hike in them.

And it went crazy, with posts being shared, husbands and partners being tagged left right and centre, and the WhatsApp group growing like crazy. Not to mention the BBC contacting me wanting to join a hike with a reporter and camera crew, and a local paper wanting to feature the hike too.

What really touched me? Organisations working with men asking if they could signpost men to the hike.

So last Saturday with a weather forecast like armageddon, I went to host the first of two November hikes and guess what?

Ten awesome dads showed up in the wind and rain.

Here is the thing…….it was the first time I’d met nine of them and I was super nervous. I’d class myself as an extrovert and reasonably outgoing but meeting nine guys I’ve never met in my life before, and delivering a great experience to them in what promised to be awful weather, I was bricking it let me tell you!!!

But it went brilliantly……… and right now the WhatsApp group goes from strength to strength daily with fifty nine members at last count.

There is a couple of lessons here.

The first one is when you are on the verge of giving up on something, just try something completely different. Even if it’s totally off the wall, a shot in the dark and completely unconventional. Even if you can’t stand the social media platform or other medium you might need to use to reach your people. But it doesn’t need to be about marketing, this could be in any area of life, relationships, fitness, business, you name it. Throw caution to the wind and try something different - you have nothing to lose.

The second one is that we all get super nervous and scared. We worry about if something will go wrong, whether we’ll get judged, if we are going to fuck up or say something we shouldn’t. But some truly awesome things are on the other side of that fear, so as the book by Susan Jeffers says - feel the fear and do it anyway. Yes I was scared on Saturday but I did it anyway, and I’m glad I did.

Learned Wisdom

It struck me recently how in general we’ve lost the ability to pass wisdom seamlessly up and down the generations, that would have probably existed in small scale societies over millennia. A lot of wisdom from 100’s even 1000s of years back is being discounted on the basis of “we know better” right now.

It’s like a progressive hubris of modernity, trumping everything we’ve intuitively known and have learned already.

I’ve been reading quite a bit of stoic stuff recently and the first impression I get is “shit they had so much of this worked out years ago, so why do we ignore it”?

I’ve also been reading about how the tradition of young men going through a ‘rights of passage’ has all but died off, apart from in some remote tribes in the world.

And I can’t help thinking that this is leaving a vacuum, for bad faith role models and generational knowledge and wisdom to be marginalised, in place of the latest bright idea to grace society.

Yep I hate shopping

Well as much as the next bloke I guess, but I learned a valuable parenting lesson this weekend which I have to put my hands up too. It’s confession time.

My youngest (11) was desperate for me to do a mini shopping spree with her around town and me, fixated on where I had parked the car, skipped out Superdrug and Boots which were on her ‘to shop’ list.

Suffice to say she was upset about it and I was accused of never listening when we got home.

Want to know something?

She was right.

I wasn’t listening, I’d ignored her pleas to go to those two other shops, and she had me bang to rights, because I was so keen to get to the next thing instead of being present, right there, right now.

Which I can sometimes do from time to time.

So I was dished out a lesson in being present from my daughter, and I had to take it like a man!!

What I’m reading

Right now I’m on Deep Work by Cal Newport , which is a book about productivity and unplugging. I’ve had it on audiobook for a while and skim listened very quickly a couple of years back, but my chronic distraction recently has forced me back to it………………..and it’s just what the doctor ordered.

Newport makes a brilliant case for how we have become super distracted in the modern world, what the worst culprits are, and how we can restructure our lives to do our best deep work and live a deep (present) life.

Handy when you have kids!!!

BUT a must read if you are sliding down the slippery slope of dopamine addiction which I’d wager most of us are to a lesser………or great degree.

What I’m listening to

I don’t share my listening tastes that much apart from the occasional share on Twitter (X). Anyway my rich musical initiation includes reggae, soul, rnb, hip hop, house, and these days a lot of other stuff on Spotify. My heart is always on the soulful tip though.

Recently I heard this awesome new track by NeYo - remember him? Anyhow it’s got a great uptempo 90’s vibe to it, a sick (as the kids say) rap remix in it, and I’ve had it on repeat a lot recently.

So enjoy:

That’s all folks

So there you have it my hard learned lessons in giving something one last chance, facing down fear, being present with my kids, learning to become undistracted and dancing around the kitchen to sick new RnB beats.

It’s all in The Journey so if you like it then share widely using the links at the top and drop me a message to let me know if anything resonates or floats your boat.

And if you want to join the Guild of Dads Hike click here.