Because success was never the thing you actually needed. You weren’t born thinking about or seeking success. You come into this world seeking love and connection, yet along the way you learn something else. You built a career, maybe a family, maybe a body of work you’re proud of, and somewhere along the way you assumed the emptiness you felt would get satisfied by all the accomplishments. It didn’t. That’s not a flaw in you. That’s what happens when you spend twenty to forty years working for achievement and zero years working for connection.
Nobody warns you about this, or maybe they do and we don’t listen. But it seems like every message you got growing up was about the finish lines: get the job, get the title, get the house, get the family. Nobody mentioned that you could cross every single line and still feel like you’re standing outside your own life, watching it happen to someone who looks like you.
Here’s the part that took me a long time to understand. Purpose isn’t a prize you win by accumulating enough wins. Purpose is a byproduct, something you discover when you really know and understand yourself and choose what you want your life to be about and the kinda of man you want to be. But I’m talking about the fully known tho, not the LinkedIn version, not the “doing great, how are you” version. And most men haven’t let another man see them fully since middle school, back before we learned that vulnerability reads as weakness and weakness gets you cut from the team or ostracized from the group.
So you keep performing competence because it’s the only currency you know. You get better at the performance every year. And the gap between the man performing and the man underneath just gets wider, until one day you’re in your 40’s and successful and you can’t name a single person who actually knows how you actually feel.
That gap has a name. It’s not depression, though it can look like it from the outside. It’s not a midlife crisis, though it gets filed there. It’s just distance. Distance from yourself, distance from other men, distance from anything that isn’t a task to complete. And distance closes the same way it opened: one honest conversation at a time, with people who aren’t going to let you perform your way out of the room.
This is the exact gap Alchemy of Men exists to close. Not another achievement to add to the list, a room where the performing stops and the actual man gets to show up. If you’re the guy who’s crushing it and still feels hollow at 11pm, that feeling isn’t broken. It’s just unaddressed. Come find out what happens when it finally is.
Check out The Alchemy of Men Retreat or one of our Men’s Groups.
-Alex Terranova
This is what one of the men on retreat said about the experience:
“I chose to come to the Alchemy Men Retreat because I was looking for an opportunity to
sit with other men to strip away the BS of talking about work, women, our families, and all the things that we would talk about to keep ourselves from really looking deep within. I felt the retreat would provide this. And it was 100% all of that and more.
I walked away with a much deeper understanding of myself. The big moment for me
was… there were a couple of them. But one of the big moments for me was I thought that I
had a certain relationship with a certain thing outside myself but the reality was that enlightened view of that relationship was actually the thing that’s continuing to hold me back.
I think my favorite moments are the ones where you got to see and experience
another man, find a new possibility. And to let out raw emotion that I feel many of us have been holding inside it’s really impactful. And, of course, the love of the brothers, holding each other, standing for one another, really bringing out the best and what’s next, that was remarkable.
It has changed me in realizing that it’s really okay to just be who I am, the way that I am, that to have the trust that other men are there, can be there, and will be there for us. I was looking for men who are also looking to grow and to be vulnerable, to connect their spirituality, whatever that is, to cry in front of their wives, whatever it was for them, and I found them.
Can’t wait to go to The Alchemy of Men Retreat 2023. I’m pumped and I’m very excited for what that’s gonna create. Who’s coming along? I don’t know yet, but I know it’ll be a perfect group of men for what’s next in my world. Very, very excited.
I recommend The Alchemy of Men Retreat for the man who knows who feels it deep inside
that he’s been holding it, holding it all. He’s been busting his ass at work and rushing
home to cook supper to support his wife, the man who is in transition and just
can’t seem to find his traction. The man in a great relationship, and the man that can’t keep a relationship. We need to have these conversations.
The Alchemy of Men Retreat is for men who are willing to make jokes, have a little fun, get serious, hug it out, cry, scream, yell, be quiet, and try all things that you don’t allow yourself to do in your every day because you have to be this rock, you have to be the man, whatever that means.
The effects of the retreat will be worked on for months. I am directly taking the financial discussion and making it a daily exercise.
Don’t come to the retreat if you want to walk home the same person.
I’m super excited for the next one.”-Mike K (Mike has been on 4 Alchemy of Men Retreats in total.)