Before
The gift is on the other side of the resistance
The hardest career decision Aaron ever made was to leave his job as CEO at the end of 2023. “I was 46 at the time. I had a satisfying, fulfilling career up until that point, but I felt just a lot of things shifting inside of me.” His brother had passed away in 2020, “which just started waking me up a little bit and asking some big questions about what I wanted out of my life. What does it mean to live a life with a bit more meaning?”
“Reflecting back on it, I think it was more that I needed a break. I was burnt out, and I needed some time to reconnect with myself to understand who I was and what I wanted. It was probably less about what I wanted to do and just who I wanted to be.”
The two years that followed were a rollercoaster. Aaron did deep internal work, breathwork and therapy being big ones for him, but he kept falling into a pattern. “I couldn’t really articulate what I wanted exactly, and that would always trigger doubting whether or not I made the right decision in the first place. There was some negative self-talk around whether I really should have trusted myself to leave such a great job that I worked my whole life for.”
When his business partner mentioned the Sahara journey, Aaron was hesitant. “I remember saying, you know what, I don’t need another retreat.” But two things kept pulling at him. “I did feel a call, an attraction to the desert. I can’t really explain why, but it just kept coming up for me. And this idea of spending a couple of days in isolation by myself sounded like a really good next challenge for me.”
Then my business partner backed out. “I thought, geez, maybe is that a sign I shouldn’t go? But the closer and closer I got to it, the more it felt like the right thing to do. So I said yes, and got on the plane and made my way over to the Sahara.”
In the desert
Hitting the wall
Aaron went in with a clear attitude: “If I’m going, I’m gonna give it everything I got.” Which is why the first night surprised him.
God, why do I care so much what everyone is thinking of me?
“The first night we got to camp, I really struggled mentally. There was a lot of: what am I doing here? Nothing negative was going on at the camp. Everything was going as expected. But I just really hit this wall. I felt myself trying so hard to be accepted and liked by everyone in the group, and it was exhausting. God, why do I care so much what everyone is thinking of me? Or why do I even think people are thinking of me right now?”
Looking back, he wasn’t surprised. “Almost every exploration that I’ve ever had always starts with some resistance to it. Sometimes it’s physical, sometimes it’s mental, or some combination.”
He woke up the next morning feeling really good. At the first breakfast, after the opening exercises connecting with the desert and each other, “I just started sharing. I had no plan of what I was gonna share. And it was a very emotional experience, from that first moment of really starting to open up to the moment I left. It was significantly more emotional than I was planning or expecting.”
Something else surprised him too. “From the first moment we started connecting with the desert, I felt a real strong connection. It was confusing. Am I connected to the desert, or am I actually just connected to myself, or am I connected to both? What’s the difference? But I felt a real strong connection to an inner knowing, wisdom and truth. I’ve never really had that. This was just me and nature and the container that we were all creating together.”
In the desert
Two days alone
The days in isolation brought another moment of serious resistance, a bad migraine right in the middle of it. But most of what he found out there was something else entirely.
“I just felt this call to just live. Be more wild. And I don’t mean that in an out-of-control, reckless way. It was that inner wildness inside of all of us. I just felt this need to reconnect with it and stop suppressing it, as much as I have the first 48 years of my life.”
“I had these really beautiful conversations with this tree, this tree of life, I called it. I danced around, and sang, and screamed. Where do you get a chance to just be in nature all by yourself, run around, dance, scream, and just do whatever comes up? It was a real magical, powerful experience, where I was able to get more clarity on who I was, what I wanted. And it wasn’t to do something. It was to be. Live a fuller life. Feel things more fully. Build that capacity to really live and feel much more, as opposed to think my way, and figure myself out, and control my way through life.”
In the desert
The sand dune
The doubt about quitting his job took the entire trip to confront. It came at the very end, standing on a sand dune, hours before the group was evacuated ahead of a dust storm, wind blowing, his pockets filling up with sand.
It felt like I finally really trusted myself.
“I felt a lot of gratitude for everything I had. I just felt so much love, from nature, but also from so many people in my life. I almost don’t let that love in sometimes. But I was really feeling it. And then in the end, I just felt this amazing peace come over me. It felt like I finally really trusted myself. Like, what it feels like to trust yourself. Trusting the decision that I made two years ago, trusting my intuition, that I don’t have to prove anything to anyone.”
“The second half of my life is more about being, and who I want to be, and building capacity, and just living life fully. Everything is gonna be okay. It’s gonna be quite fun, I think. That’s how I left the desert.”
After
Since coming home
“I just feel like I’m finally relaxing. Just sitting here and being okay, not doing something, not feeling this constant pull from a place of anxiety and worry. And as I’m doing that, I just feel like I’m attracting things that are right for me. It just feels like it’s unfolding in a much more natural, relaxed way, as opposed to me trying to figure it out and pushing my way, maybe in the wrong direction.”
Aaron is now walking three paths at once: guiding other men through the middle-of-life shift from doing to being, starting an investment business he’d been thinking about for years, and breathing new life into the venture work with his business partner. “I don’t know where any of those three things are going exactly. I’m more open to all of them going nowhere, maybe, and a fourth thing appearing. That doesn’t scare me as much as it did two or three years ago.”
His advice for anyone hesitating? “There’s always resistance when you’re at that threshold of some sort of breakthrough or change or transformation. And the gift is on the other side of the resistance. Trust yourself and take that next step. The gifts I have received from the Sahara on the other side of that resistance have been extraordinarily rewarding and transforming. I’m so happy I said yes, and I would encourage anyone to do the same.”
“The gift is on the other side of the resistance. Trust yourself and take that next step.”
Aaron · USA
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