Written by Christopher Kelly
Feb. 21, 2024
Chris:
Hello and welcome to the Nourish Balance Thrive podcast. My name is Christopher Kelly. Today I'm delighted to present to you Mike Bircic. He is an adventurer, writer, and entrepreneur with a mission to help others build connection with themselves and others. He founded Wayfinders.
A project that brings entrepreneurs together for travel, physical challenge and authentic connection going beyond networking and financial success. Mike also founded Sacred Rides, a highly successful mountain bike adventure company and sold it in 2019. He co founded Bikes Without Borders and is the former Dean of Social Enterprise at the Center For Social Innovation. On this podcast Mike reflects on his Substack's theories, restoring connection, the most vital work of our time, in which he offers practical advice for creating meaningful connections with oneself and others. Noting that human connection is a primary factor in our well-being and longevity, he discusses some of the barriers to connection we've created in modern society, and some of the tools and practices he uses to reduce loneliness and connect deeply with our true motivations and desires.
Well, Mike, thank you so much for joining me this morning. How are you doing?
Mike:
I'm good. It's great to it's great to reconnect. It's been a few moons.
Chris:
It has indeed. I was trying to remember how we met. I think it was at Mastermind Talks in 2016. Does that sound right?
Mike:
That sounds exactly right.
Chris:
May have been
Mike:
was it 2016? Yeah. Sounds about right.
Chris:
That sounds about right. And then, you know, I think at the time, you were running a mountain bike adventure holiday business called Sacred Rides. Is that right too?
Mike:
That is very correct. Yep.
Chris:
Alright. Well, and now you're doing Wayfinders, which is something a little bit different. In fact, it's probably very different from Sacred Rides. Is that correct too?
Mike:
Well, it's still very much based in the concept of adventure. Mountain bikes make an occasional appearance in what I do, but generally not mountain bike based. But the same spirit of travel and adventure and exploring, but pretty significant component of inner exploration and inner adventure. Yeah.
Chris:
We'll definitely get to that. And then did we go on the first ever? You know, I've been reading your Substack series on connection. That was what prompted me to reach out and say we gotta do podcast. And as I got towards the end of that substat series, I saw a picture and I thought, hang on a minute.
I'm in that picture with some of my friends. Right? That was that like the first event?
Mike:
That was really the pilot. That was September of 2017. And it wasn't really meant to be a business. It was just I wanna, you know, I wanna take a little bit of a different approach to getting entrepreneurs together. I can, you know, the conferences and stuff like that are great.
I got a lot of information and useful value from a lot of the conferences that I was attending, but I wanted to put connection first and foremost. And you and I both know, when a group of people is outside doing, you know, hard challenging things like a tough mountain bike ride or something like that, It tends to bring people together through that shared adversity and just being, you know, doing fun things together. And so that was really the goal of that. It's like, let's test this out. Let's Let's do some fun things and let's do some hard things, but also let's have some time to connect and share wisdom and all that kind of stuff.
So, yeah, that was the pilot. And I thought it went well. And so I decided, hey, let's do more of these.
Chris:
That's awesome. And what better place than Fernie? Fernie is one of my favorite places in the world in British Columbia in in Canada. It's fun both in the winter for skiing and snowboarding and then the mountain biking. And I'm sure other things that I don't know are phenomenal in the summer.
Mike:
Yeah. Well, and as you know, I lived there for many years, and I still remember those laps on Lazy Lizard, I think is that trail that started up around Lake Lodge.
Chris:
Yeah.
Mike:
And Ryan and Joseph Kendall Weed. Did I get his name right?
Chris:
It's Jeff Kendall Weed and Jeff.
Mike:
Yes. Jeff. Jeff.
Chris:
Do you know what, Jeff? And that's you just reminded me. So Jeff, at the time, I think, was working as a salaried employee and was wrestling with this idea of going solo, becoming an entrepreneur, and now, like, he's done all that. That's years ago. Right?
That's all ancient history now and he has Yeah.
Mike:
That was the Yeah.
Chris:
That was, like, an interesting time for him. And he makes these videos on YouTube, which I still enjoy to this day. He's really improved his craft over the years. We know the storytelling and the videography and Munis mountain bike skills have always been phenomenal, but, like, yeah. He's great.
I'd highly recommend people check out Jeff on YouTube.
Mike:
Yeah. It was quite something to watch him and Ryan kind of pushing each other, both phenomenal mountain bikers, and just so much flow. And, yeah, that was such a fantastic weekend. I and I treasure that memory. That was the first one.
Chris:
Yeah. Super good. Yeah. Thank you for making that happen. I'm very grateful.
Yeah. Well, let's say Helicopter. Oh, the helicopter at the end.
Mike:
The helicopter was a nice cherry at the I remember that as well. Yeah. But yeah. Yeah.
Chris:
I've never done that. You know, I've been to the top of a mountain in a helicopter with a snowboard, but never a mountain bike. That was definitely an interesting experience. I'm so glad I got the opportunity to reconnect to remember all that. Yeah.
I tend to forget things, you know? Yeah. Well, let's talk about restoring connection. I really enjoyed your sub series. The subtitle is the most vital work of our time.
Tell us about what inspired you to write that series.
Mike:
The condensed version of that story is that in 2004, Christmas Eve 2004, that sort of trigger or the first domino that made all of this fall was, was getting dumped by my girlfriend wasn't really about the girlfriend of the relationship. We'd only been dating a couple of months. It was really just it was another loss that, you know, triggered something a bit more ancient in me. And that sent me down a sent me down a dark spiral that lasted about 2, two and a half years. And for me, one of the reasons why I'm able to book in that sort of fairly precisely in terms of a timeline.
Because obviously, you know, when we're talking about depression and mental wellness and mental illness, it's a spectrum, right? It's not like you say you're well and one day you're ill. But one of the reasons I can put fairly precise timelines on it is that the day that happened, the day she broke up with me, I call that the day the music died. I've been a musician for, you know, ever since I was, I think probably around 9 or so when I, you know, got my first violin and became a professional musician at one point. But I've always had music running in my brain, whether it's, you know, somebody else's music or whether it's music that I'm writing.
There's always been music there as a sort of backdrop to my thoughts. And that day, that day, the start of that long dark night of the soul, that music vanished almost instantly and it became replaced by this terrible voice that just kept saying to me, life is awful. Life is shit. It's never ever going to get better again. And that voice continued for well over 2 years.
And, you know, the music just disappeared. You know, as I very gradually crawled out of out of the depths of that experience and started to get well again through various practices that I committed myself to, I remember one day hearing hearing just hear just hearing a melody come back to my thoughts. And that was literally the first time in 2 years where I'd heard that other, you know, something other than this voice coming at me over again. And that was when I knew I was back, you know, that I was on my healing journey and that I was on my way out of it. So and the reason that connects to this day is that the, you know, the insidious nature of depression is that there's at least in terms of our culture, there's a lot of shame associated with it.
And a lot of shame associated with mental illness in general, whether it's anxiety or depression or you name it. And I think we've come a long way since that time and they intervened 20 years, but there's still a lot of stigma attached to it. And being in the place that I was, I didn't want to burden other people with it. And I couldn't be any other way. I couldn't put on a cheery face.
I was just, I felt like I was getting ripped apart by the universe. And so I kept that all inside. I didn't speak to anybody about it except my therapist. And so I just isolated myself further. And it was a bit of a vicious spiral, right?
Because our brains, and we can talk about this later, our brains are hardwired for connection and have evolved that way over 100 of 1000 of years. And so I just isolated myself, which made the depression worse, which made me wanna isolate even more. And it was such a tough loop to get out of. And then if I trace the arc of my, you know, if I were to plot time on the x axis and connection, human connection on the y axis, That was the absolute that experience was the absolute, you know, bottom of my experience of human connection. And it's been a long, gradual and wonderful climb back to now where I feel I live a very deeply connected and very rich life with lots of connections to other people.
It was not, you know, the reason I wrote that series because it was not an accidental thing. It didn't just happen. I was very intentional about restoring that connection in my life and now wanting to share that with other people. But how one does that?
Chris:
So how did you get out of the loop? I'm always interested in people where, you know, they got themselves into really deep holes and somehow they're able to dig themselves out. And, you know, I put myself in this category of people that my gut was such a mess. I was sort of forced to do something pretty drastic about it. You know, you go see specialists and they say, well, you know, there's nothing we can really do, but here's some steroid anti inflammatory drugs.
And when they start working, here's surgery. Now there'll be surgery. And, you know, so at that point you're forced to, like, think, okay, so what really are all the options here? And I wonder how many people have these sort of they have issues, but they're just not that bad. And so they don't really do anything about it.
You know? This is like a big, deep hole that you've dug yourself into. And you talked about it being a vicious cycle. So how did you dig yourself out of that?
Mike:
Maybe I'll tell you about the turning point. I had, for quite some time, had these very dark thoughts. And there was, you know, whispers of self harm and suicide in the background, but never really serious. It was more just this abstract idea, like this can't go on forever. I can't manage this forever, but nothing really serious.
And then the turning point was I woke up one night, you know, middle of the night is about 2 o'clock in the morning. And I woke up into a full blown panic attack. And that voice that I talked about that was just, you know, saying these awful things over and over, that voice was a full on yell and just saying, life is terrible. It's never gonna get better again. Why don't you do something about it?
You know, this can't keep going on. And I sat in that bed just sort of, you know, hugging my arms around my knees and trembling for the better part of a couple of hours because I knew that if that voice didn't stop, that that there was only one one way out of it. And that particular night, it began to feel very real that I might not actually make it through that night. And I don't know how I you know, looking back, I don't know how I possibly got back to sleep, but I did. And I woke up the next morning, and I made a vow to myself that I would do whatever it takes to get well.
And that I couldn't handle another night like that, let alone a lifetime. And so first thing I did was I went to go see my doctor. I'd been really kind of messing around with medication up until that point. I'd take it and I'd stop and then I'd taken that stop and it was really frustrating him. And I told him, I'm going to commit.
I'm gonna I need something. I need something. And that sort of became the foundation on which I could do all the other things. But then I committed to my therapist. The biggest factor in that whole process was my therapist invited me to a group that he'd been running and it was a group with 7 other people.
And we met every Wednesday for well over a year. And it wasn't really a support group. It was more just it was a space in which you came face to face with all of the usual bullshit that you get away with in the world. All this self sabotaging behaviors, all the ways you sabotage your relationships, all that kind of stuff. And it was grueling, but it was also deeply supportive and deeply connecting to be with that group of people.
And that was really, you know, I think the most instrumental factor in turning things around for me was just having other people around who were going through the same journey. There's a lot to unpack there. I do know having both from my own experience and having worked with hundreds of people through coaching, through my events, through different things that I do is significant change. You almost always does not occur without a significant crisis or significant reckoning that precedes it. And we will allow ourselves to tolerate a fairly high level of dissatisfaction with life or a specific area of our life or whatever that may be until it becomes so unbearable that the pain of whatever intervention we take feels less than the pain of the status quo.
Because humans are so hardwired for homeostasis and they're not wired for change. We don't like change. Change for most people feel is terrifying. And so that equates to pain. And so generally, what has to happen is the status quo has to get more and more painful until it exceeds what the perceived pain of changes.
Unfortunately, that seems to be sort of a universal kind of theme. You need to get punched in the face by the universe enough times and painfully enough to affect change in your life. And that's what it was for me. You know, I bumbled along in the darkness for well over a year before I really committed to getting well.
Chris:
So restoring connection as an important part of certainly in your genesis, but I don't think you have to have depression to buy into the idea that connection is important and restoring it may be the most vital work of our time. Talk about connection to self. I find this concept kinda confusing. Can you explain connection to self for dummies like me?
Mike:
Yeah. Yeah. And I write about it, you know, quite a lot on my substat, wayfinders.substat.com. I haven't written there in quite some time. I will come back to it.
But I did have, you know, the restoring connection series which go into and I approach it from the lens that disconnection is at the heart of so much of what is wrong in our world. And that our work as a species is to restore connection. And look at this through the lens of what I call the 5 C's model. So connection to self, connection to others, connection to the natural world, connection to calling, and connection to mystery, which is my shorthand for connection to a sense of something greater. If If you wanna call that God, if you wanna call it the universe, whatever you wanna call it.
It's this idea that we are bigger than just our our narrowly defined boundaries. So the connection to self peace is really just going through a process of connecting to who you are at your core. And every single human being in in my experience, I don't know if there's anybody that escapes this, but we are conditioned, you know, through our childhood, through through our parents, through our influences, whatever. We are conditioned to believe certain things about ourselves. We're told who we are.
We are told who we should be. And so as we enter adulthood, we enter adulthood as a generally a fairly confused, unsure of who is it that I am at Macquarie. And a lot of that process through our teen years and through our adulthood, it's just a process of testing out, like, who am I? Am I this person? Should I wear these clothes?
Or should I spend my time with these friends? Or who am I? And sometimes that layering and that messaging can be so thick that we just have no idea who we are at our core. And sometimes it's less severe, so to speak. But I don't know of too many people who enter adulthood having gone through a process where every single context they entered, it was just completely okay to be whoever they want it to be.
And often that starts at home where, you know, we're not allowed to be this person. We're not allowed to be that person. We're not allowed to be angry, or maybe we're not allowed to be sad. And that can happen in very intense ways. It can happen in very innocuous ways.
Just, you know, through my own process of work and self discovery, having just realized like how an innocent offhand comment from grade 7, you know, from a girl that I had a crush on can leave an indelible mark on me throughout my adult life. And so a lot of that process of connecting to self is waiting through all those messages, all the armor we've built up, all the masks that we wear and asking who am I at my core? What's important to me? What's valuable? What am I beneath all of these messages?
For me, that's, you know, that's the essential part of my journey through life is to get closer and closer to who I am at my core. Because when I inhabit that person, I feel so much more at peace and so much more at ease. And I don't feel like I need to be anybody else. I don't feel like I need to put on a specific mask in a specific room. I can just completely be myself and love who that is.
Chris:
Yeah. I recognize some of this from, you know, there's another entrepreneur that's like one degree, if not already connected to you. His name is Jason Connell. And he talked about accelerated experiential dynamic psychotherapy. And much of what you wrote in your substat reminded me of his work where, you know, like, experiencing the somatic manifestations of emotions is super important.
And so as a child, the need to fit in chumps everything. And as a teenager, of course, like, what could be more salient than belonging when you're a teenager? And so people will do shit to fit in that's not necessarily consistent with what they believe. But when repeated often enough, that can be extremely damaging and can lead to anxiety and depression. ADP then is this experiential psychotherapy.
We go back and sort of relive these experiences, but somehow change the ending of the story like a film director would. You know?
Mike:
Well, I think it's part of that experience and, you know, I've done stuff similar to that through somatic work or through plant medicine work. A lot of that is just being able to go back to those places and forgive the other people. Because they were just doing, you know, they were doing the best they possibly could. But also to forgive yourself in those moments. Because we we can just beat ourselves up, you know, pretty hard as humans and be really hard on ourselves.
So being able to go back to those places and just forgive other people, forgive yourself is tremendously powerful work. And you sort of touched on that as a child, we come to learn in various situations in various contexts, I have a choice between being authentic here or I have a choice between being accepted. And, you know, if you're a small child, you will choose that acceptance all the time, the belonging, because you're a child, you're vulnerable, you're helpless.
Chris:
Yes. Choose otherwise is death. Right? Like, the abandonment is death at that age.
Mike:
Yeah. Exactly. And so we make that choice over and over again for acceptance and we abandon and sacrifice our authentic self in the process. And then as adults, our job is to say, hey, I need to be true to myself. I need to be authentic.
Chris:
What are your favorite ways of figuring out what is really important to you? You know, like, I know that on, subset you talked about self inquiry. So how do you go about it as an adult? Right?
Mike:
Yeah. I mean, I have so many different practices. It's hard to name a favorite, but I can just outline a few of them for you. Journaling, I have a daily journaling practice, just 10 minutes. My particular journaling practice is I pick I pick a theme for the week.
And then every day I write down that theme at the top of the page. And then I try and pick a different angle to come at that every day. And so, you know, it might be last week I was writing about friendship. And then I chose kind of whatever came up in the moment. Like, hey, what lens do I want to look at friendship from?
And then I spend 10 minutes just free journaling. I find it very useful to take one topic and just keep coming at it at different angles. And I've uncovered so much in the process. That's a really valuable process for me. A meditation Where'd
Chris:
you get your topics from? The topics, like, where'd you get from?
Mike:
I just kinda try to sense sense into, like, what's alive for me right now? Is it is it work? Is it friendship? Is it love? Is it my kids?
Is it, you know, something else? And typically, I won't start with like a big broad meta topic like work. I will start with, like, you know, something a little bit more specific around around my work and then explore that. It's just such a great way to give I find if you approach journaling from the right perspective, it's just such a great way to give voice to the subconscious that generally remains, you know, you know, under our consciousness. But if you approach journaling from the right perspective, it gives voice.
And the more you do that practice, the more is an honoring of the inner thoughts, the soul, if you will. And it's almost like speaking to your subconscious and saying, Hey, I honor you and I value you and I don't want, I don't want you to have to live in the shadows. Let's get it up. That's really valuable. I do a lot of somatic work and somatic means just, you know, feeling and feeling into the body.
And I have a coach for that, But I'll give you a very easy example. I was away last week traveling and I came back Sunday night. It's now Wednesday. And it was a pretty hard landing. A couple of very challenging things came up.
Things which were logistically challenging, but even more so emotionally challenging. And it brought up a lot of a lot of feeling around that. My typical pattern in the past would have been, oh, I don't like this feeling. I'm going to distract the hell out of myself. I'm going to work my way through it.
I'm going to drink my way through it. I'm going to mountain bike my way through it. You know, whatever that may be. And some of these waves that we use to distract ourselves from feeling are on the surface healthy. If I'm feeling lousy, and then I'm just gonna hop on my mountain bike.
And by the time that ride is done, I'm probably gonna feel great. But I've now said to that feeling that's coming up, I've now said to that feeling, you're not valid. I don't want to feel you anymore. But that feeling wants to be expressed. And if we don't allow it to express it, it's going to wreak a lot of havoc in the back rooms.
And so now when I feel that come up over the last couple of days, it's come up repeatedly. I'll just pause whatever I'm doing and I'll breathe into it and I'll sit into it. I'll lie down into it. And sometimes that will pass really quickly within a minute or less. Sometimes it'll take me an hour or more, and I still only make a dent in it.
But I allow it to express and I allow it to feel. And sometimes that means just going into the depths of it and I'm crying it and I'm shaking whatever me sometimes it's less intense than that. But I found every time I do that, I come out of the experience lighter. And often, I can go through an intense experience like that. And then the next day, I'll feel amazing all day and I'll just be full of energy.
And it's because I've allowed this energy to express itself through me. And that's been really powerful and it helps me connect. And when I do that, I also feel like I'm getting rid of blocks and I get closer. I get clear pictures of what I want in this life and what I've how I want to live this earth. And then of course, plant medicine has been really valuable.
But I don't generally advocate that because it's obviously potentially risky. And there's too many gurus out there singing the praises of plant medicine without acknowledging the risks and sort of prescribing it as a panacea. And even with a very experienced facilitator, there are risks involved. And And if you're not doing it, if you're doing it on your own, or if you're doing it with somebody whose intentions aren't in the right place, there's a lot of people in this world just like, you know, looking at as a quick way to make a buck without having done the work themselves. I urge a lot of caution with that.
Do your homework, find a really respectable guide who has done the work and brings a lot of integrity to it. But it can be an extremely valuable process for sure.
Chris:
That's interesting. You have the foresight to know to turn towards these challenging thoughts and feelings and examine them rather than move away from them as is socially acceptable and even virtuous. Right? And so, you know, exercise, obviously, is not in health and all that is, like, seen as virtuous. Like, to go for a mountain bike ride, no one's gonna say, oh, Mike, you must really stop that mountain biking that you'd be like, no one no one says that.
Right? I can't and, you know, nor should I think you should stop mountain biking. But, yeah, this this idea of using that as an escape. And then also, of course, the workaholism is also a very socially acceptable and virtuous
Mike:
It's our most acceptable form of escape. Yeah. And it's glorified in some ways for most people who are chronic over workers or workaholics. And I say this because I've worked with lots of them. It is an escape.
It is a way of not allowing themselves to feel feel difficult feelings and emotions. And it generally doesn't stop until you allow yourself to feel those difficult things.
Chris:
So what about connection to others? This is really challenging, I think, as a topic. To make friends as an adult is not trivial. And I had someone else on the podcast recently who is you maybe even know, Nick Gray, and he wrote a book called The 2 Hour Cocktail Party. And we're very much fans of his method for making friends.
I don't know if you know him. You're obviously not.
Mike:
No. I don't.
Chris:
No. It's a really good book.
Mike:
I will check that that out for sure.
Chris:
Yeah. Really good. And I've got other entrepreneur friends, Jeremy Hendon, who was also at Mastermind Talks that year that you were there, and he's been doing it in Lisbon. Really likes it. Doing it on a regular basis.
Really great formula for making friends. So how do you do it? How do you make friends as an adult? It's not trivial.
Mike:
Yeah. I guess I would start with saying it starts with intention. A lot of people tend to view friendships and their social circle as a passive thing. You know, like I have my group of friends and, you know, we get together once in a while when somebody says let's get together or whatnot. But I approach it with a great deal of intention.
And intention from the perspective of I need to be intentional about how much and how often I meet with people, but also about whom I meet with and really thinking that through. And And then how are we going to do this? So I approach it like a classic entrepreneur. You know, I've got my systems around this. I have a database Of course you too.
Yeah. I mean, I'm gonna sound like such a geek describing to you my whole system, but it really works for me. So I have a database of all the people that I wanna stay connected with. And then for each person that's in that database, I have some of those people are in Toronto and I can meet with them in person. And some of those people are are out of town.
For the people who are out of town, obviously, you know, the intention is to have a call, a Zoom call, a phone call or whatever. But for the people in town, I have I don't wanna call it a ranking system, but I guess it is kind of there's a call, there's a coffee, and there's a lunch or dinner or something like that. Dinner's a little bit trickier just because of my family. But lunches are easy because it's during the work day and my kids are at school. And it's really not a ranking of the person.
It's just a ranking of the strength of the relationship and where it's at in time. So somebody I don't know very well, I don't necessarily wanna invest, you know, 2 or 3 hours of my time into a lunch. I wanna get to know them a little better through a call. So, you know, I might put them down as phone call. And then a coffee is sort of the next level and then a lunch is the next level.
And these are my closest friends. Like, I wanna I wanna, you know, have a nice leisurely 2, 3 hour lunch with them. Really, really dig into what's going on for both of us. So then any given week, I'll go through that list and I can see when's the last time we met. What was the last meeting that we had?
Was it coffee? Was it a call? Was it lunch, Twitter? And then I'll tick some boxes in my system. And then the next part of the process is my assistant will then reach out to those people and set up, you know, a call, a coffee, a lunch or whatever.
Not that they always accept. Sometimes they're too busy. They don't wanna meet with me or whatever. But I've kind of outsourced the whole process to software and to my assistant, whatever. And it makes me sound a little bit like big for my britches.
Like, oh, you can't even email me directly or whatever. But you know, the way I explain it to people is like, I value our connection highly. And I want to put my time into spending time with you and being fully present and being able to really enjoy our connection together rather than the logistics of trying to set it up and emails back and forth later, because that compromises my time and my ability to be present with you. And so, you know, my typical week, I might have 6 or 7 of these connection calls. I might have a couple of coffees.
I might have 1 or 2 lunches. A big portion of my schedule is just connecting with people because I love it. And it's so nourishing to me. And of course, for certain people there's business value in it, But that's not the lens through which I approach it. So that's the first part.
It's just being intentional. And that's with people I already know who, you know, who are in my orbit. But in terms of reaching new people, I haven't found anything that works better than a good, well curated and well facilitated dinner. Typically, what I will do with a dinner is usually around 6 people. I find that it's a wonderful magic number that allows you to have a group conversation rather than splintering off into a 2 person conversations or whatever.
But you can have a rich and then the facilitation really is just having some good conversation starters that are gonna take things a level deeper, rather than just leaving it up to people on their own. So I have like lists and, you know, hundreds and hundreds of different questions that I can bring to dinner. One of my favorite things that I did, this is a few years back, was these elaborate multi course taco dinners. And I would pick all these recipes for gourmet tacos and could be a steak taco or Baja fish or whatever, but like elaborate tacos. And I would prep everything in advance.
It would typically take me an entire day just to do all the shopping and all the prep, but I love it. So a worthwhile investment of my time. And then when they show up, everything is prepped. And then for each course of the meal, I would invite 1 or typically 1 or 2 of the people there and say, hey, come join me and we're gonna prep these things together. And that's an opportunity for us to connect.
Chris:
Especially cooking together. That's interesting because obviously, for some people, hosting a dinner is kind of overwhelming. It's a lot of work and maybe a lot of great cooking. So you're doing it. That's interesting.
You're doing it together.
Mike:
And so the night moves in multiple stages. Each taco, the prep might take 15, 20 minutes, but then eating that taco and each taco is paired with a different conversation starter. And sometimes if it's a particularly rich question, it might take an hour to explore that question together. And so the evening has this wonderful flow to it. Another thing that I'm going to be trying out soon is just having like 3 different stations and where we can pair up.
And then instead of going sequentially, we just spend the first portion of the night. Everybody's at their different station prepping prepping the meal and or their particular, you know, recipe. And then we come together and eat it all together. So while you're working on that particular recipe, you're connecting with one other person, but then they come together and we have this rich group discussion. So I'm just, I'm always experimenting with these things.
Food is of course an amazing point of connection. It's, everybody does it, you know, all around all around the planet.
Chris:
It's all shared humanity.
Mike:
Yeah. And food food always have stories attached to it. Right? And in some cultures, those stories are very ancient, and they're very rich. And, you know, you go to Italy, for instance, and you can go to this particular village here, and there's these dishes and all the stories that are attached with them.
And then go 20 kilometers away. And there's a whole different cuisine there and a different set of stories, all of which are very tied to place and tied to the people there. And it's such a, it's such a wonderful window into how people view the world. What's important to them, you know. And I guess that's another meta principle is storytelling is such an amazing way for people to connect.
And so a lot of the questions that I ask people, you know, to start conversations are really just storytelling questions.
Chris:
Right. Prompts just for looking for a story. How much thought have you given to, you know, where you live and the town planning, shall we say? You know, I've been thinking about this a lot. I'm currently in, like, a place called La Ica Villa.
It's an intentional community in Costa Rica about an hour from San Jose. And it's definitely like, everybody has their own home. You know? It's not like a commune. And it's interesting in that they've created some shared spaces.
So there's this thing they call the Rancho where it's like a sort of dining stroke work lounging area. There's Wi Fi there. It's a really beautiful space. And then there's a pool right there and also a yoga shala, which is just like absolutely stunning space. It's really quite beautiful.
And it's amazing how far that goes just to bring people together. You know? I mean, I guess it's a lot of like minded individuals. I found I actually did read about this a long time ago. Do you know I know you know Charles Eisenstein because you cite him in one of your substats.
Right? Yeah. So he's here right now. I see him all the time at the pool. And it's amazing how far it goes.
Just like I I feel like that's one of the main things. You know, when I ask people what holds this community together, they don't always or even ever have a strong answer. Maybe if I ask Charles, he'd have a better answer. But it seems like, you know, if you just put the shared structures in place, then socializing just happens without you having to be that intentional about it, you know. But Yeah.
I think this is particularly challenging in the US. The towns are designed in such a way, like I said, going back to Jeremy, he's recently moved to Lisbon from Austin, Texas. And it's a lot. You know? Like, everything's 20 minutes away on the freeway.
And trying to get people together for a dinner is a ton of work and kind of exhausting at times. And so how are you in the world? And, you know, do you have any thoughts about town planning and how hard it makes people to come together?
Mike:
Wow. Could we just schedule a separate podcast? I have so much to say about that, and thank you for asking that question. It's not a coincidence there that there are so many of these places popping up these intentional communities all over the world. You know, Lisbon is particularly rich with these types of places.
Costa Rica is very rich with these places. And it goes back to what, you know, what I was saying about this vital work of restoring connection. There's so much disconnection in our world. And and it's a lot of it is just restoring us back to our the natural way that we evolved as humans. We've we we evolved in these small bands, tribes of people working or not working, but, you know, gathering and hunting together, eating together, sharing resources together.
Chris:
Completely dependent on one another. Right? Like it's like you can isolate from the tribe was death. Right? That you had to cooperate.
Mike:
Yeah. And so it's and the reason my, you know, the reason my newsletter is called Coming Home is this process of restoring connection. Is it coming home? It's coming back to our origins as a species. And these places are serving this vital function of restoring that connection.
And it's extremely nourishing as a human being to have those contexts, particularly if they are places and contexts in which we feel like we belong. And by belonging, it just means, can I bring my full self to this place and still be accepted? Or do I have to do I have to present a certain way of being or a mask or whatever? Then it's not really true belonging. In a place of true belonging, you should be able to show up as your full self and be accepted, which is tough.
And that, you know, there's all kinds of nuance to that. Doesn't mean you can show up and be an asshole to everybody. But and and obviously in North America, this whole concept of the nuclear family, and we live in these discrete little units with it's I know so many people. I live in Toronto. I live in a really wonderful neighborhood, but with lots of connection here.
But there's so many people I know whose experience of Toronto is extremely isolating and they don't have these contexts. And I'll give you a and and it's not even on a neighborhood level. Sometimes it's just on a street level. And you talked about planning. So we before we bought this house in 2010, we live one block over, on another street, and we were renting.
And we lived there for just under a full year, and we only ever met one neighbor. In that time, we didn't really have much of a connection with them. And then we moved one street over and bought our house, and the difference could not be more stark. And it was interesting and I sort of deconstructed, like, what are all the little things that go into this completely different experience? And they all they all point to urban planning.
And so one street over, the houses are much bigger and they're set much farther back from the street. And so you can't feasibly wave or talk to your neighbor across the street. They won't hear you unless you yell at the top of your lungs. And because the yards are much bigger, you're farther away from your neighbor. So there isn't that there isn't that sort of accidental contact of just passing someone in the in in the street or in in their yards.
A lot of these houses have big hedges, so they're kind of separated from the street. There is, it's one way south all the way up from Bloor, which is a major street down to college, which is another street. So it's one direction. There's no speed bumps. So people are often speeding down that street and it's an alternative to a busier street.
Chris:
So
Mike:
when there's cars, when there's cars speeding, you know, 40 miles an hour down the street, as a parent, you are reluctant to wanna spend time on the sidewalk or in the street. You don't want your kids to go outside because you're worried they can. Whereas my street currently is has got a bunch of confusing one ways and it's, you know, it's a pain in the ass, but it's also full of speed bumps. So nobody's really driving very fast. It's a much slower pace.
And there's kids up and down the street all the time. And I can easily talk to my neighbor across the street. And so it's a very different experience of living just one street over all because of urban design. And unfortunately our neighborhoods, you know, across North America have not been designed with human connection in mind. And so you look at that versus the intentional community you're living in, which is very much designed with these communal spaces.
And, yeah, and like we have lost our communal spaces in, in North America, right? The church used to be, you know, a very central, very important part. Church participation is declining. A lot of people turn to church, not necessarily because it gives them a visceral experience of God or religion, but because it's a place of community. And, you know, once a week for a couple hours, you have other people to connect with.
Chris:
Yeah. And, you know, like, but even if you do subscribe to religion, which I don't, I mean, once a week for 2 hours, like, how is that, you know, elsewhere in the world? You know, Jeremy was just talking about that in Lisbon that there's a someone that sells food below his apartment and, you know, you get there's an espresso machine there, a Marzocchi machine, whatever. And it's like the same people that are hanging out every day. Like, that just doesn't happen in the US generally.
And it sort of happens in the UK. Actually, it does happen in the UK with the pub. Right? The public house. It was literally a model of somebody's I mean, someone lives there.
Right? So basically, they're living room with a bar in it. So it happens there. And here at that Eco Villa, you know, my neighbor's house actually, the place we're staying was originally built was a retreat center, and there's, like, one main house and these satellite buildings. And we know the people in the main house is just like 20 feet away.
And they've got a couple of little kids. And our kids have already started, like, seeing it as one space. You know, like, they'll just wander across. And where are the kids? I don't know.
They're probably at our neighbor's house. And my my kids have already slept over there, like, once. Or we've only been here 2 weeks, you know. And there's no way that relationship would have formed if we'd been living in, like, a typical suburban American town. I know that some people have had really positive experiences in American suburbia, but it's kinda random, isn't it?
And, like, the odds are not high, I don't think.
Mike:
No. And, you know, all the data points to human connection being not one of, but the most important factor in our well-being. There's reams and reams of studies to show this. And it's not just our most intimate connection, you know, with our friends or with our family. There's a really interesting, very big study done analyzing the top five risk factors for mortality.
Or the top five biggest contributors to longevity. Not smoking, of course, was there. Exercise was there. The second most important factor was the quality and strength of your strong ties. So to your to your closest friends, to your family, that can set.
But the number one predictor was actually the strength of your, what they call, weak ties. So do you live in a community where, you know, you wave to your neighbors? Do you get your meat from the local butcher? And, you know, do you talk to them? Or do you get it from a supermarket where you don't have, you know, you're doing express checkout and you don't talk to them.
All those little interactions, those are just little micro moments of connection that sort of fill up your oxytocin levels, your serotonin, all that kind of stuff and promote well-being. And so living in places where we're exposed to that on a regular basis actually makes us live longer, makes us feel better. And, I try to be intentional about looking at life through that lens. And there's many wonderful things that come with suburbia, but it's not really designed with that in mind. There's so many suburban neighborhoods that don't even have sidewalks.
Right? And that to me is like, it's like mind boggling. Oh, I see.
Chris:
Where you can see the curvature of the earth, like, from one side to the other. Like, the crosswalk is so big. It's like you almost need a car to get to the other side.
Mike:
So to live in a community where walking is actively discouraged, there's no places to do it, is basically actively saying this is not a place to connect with your neighbors. This is just a place to go and sleep. You have your own wonderful yard and you've got your pool and all that kind of stuff. And not knocking the suburbs at all. There's lots of wonderful things about it, but the suburbs can also be designed with human connection in mind where you have these public spaces that are beyond just a park with a few swings in it.
But I think we're going to see over the coming years decades, we're going to see a lot more human centered design because people are craving it so, so desperately. Yeah. And, you know, and not, not insignificant contributor to epidemic of mental illness is this extreme isolation that we've created the context for. And we have all this freedom to live however we want to live on our own. I can live in my house and I can not leave my house for a month if I want to.
I can have all my food ordered. I can have all my needs taken care of. I don't have to interact with another human being. Wonderful convenience, terrible for my life. And so I have to not get sucked into that allure of convenience.
And yes, of course, like, I don't wanna make it sound like I never use Amazon. I really try to avoid, you know, if I can come up with an excuse to go to my local butcher instead of the supermarket or whatever, have excuses for interaction with other humans, I would take that every time because I know it's so good for me.
Chris:
Yeah. That is I think that's the starting point, isn't it? Understanding that these superficial interactions like, everybody wants deep meaningful connection. But I think you're right. I think I first read about this in John t Cachapo's book, Loneliness.
That's probably the main thing I remember from that book is that, like, frequent superficial interactions are more important than you think. And, yeah, so easy. Everybody's got their own screen now. Uber Eats is a thing. Right?
So you don't even need to agree on what food you're gonna eat tonight. Right? Like everyone just order their own food on Uber Eats. But as soon as you start seeing these interactions as good for your health, then perhaps more like, for me, that type of reframing is really helpful. This isn't a pain in the ass having to walk to the top of these stairs.
Actually, I'm getting my workout for today. Right? Like, just that kind of type of reframing is really important.
Mike:
Well, and part of my message is to try and get people to understand the cost of being isolated because we can kind of take it for granted. And I approach it the same way I approach my physical health. Like I go to the gym 6 times a week and I, you know, very intentional about what I eat. But the data shows me that is actually less important than the level of connection in my life. And so if I'm that intentional about my physical health, why wouldn't I be that intentional about my level of connection in my life?
And the data will show that if I live a very connected life and I smoke a pack of cigarettes a day, I'm actually going to live longer and be healthier than somebody who does not smoke but lives chronically isolated. It's completely wild. And that's not to shame anybody who's isolated or whatever. But just to get you to understand, there is a path out. You can be more intentional about that.
And if you are chronically lonely like I was and chronically isolated, I now have this big database of people I can reach out to and connect with. But if you're starting from a place of isolation, maybe you've moved to a new city or new town, and it could be as simple as host a few people over for dinner and start with 1 person, 1 person that you know, and maybe find a point of connection. If you're an entrepreneur, this is really common in the entrepreneur world, right? People hosting dinners. If I was to move to Lisbon and I know Jeremy's there, I would invite Jeremy to dinner and say, hey, Jeremy, do you know like another person or 2 other people you can invite to dinner?
And here's something interesting about this night that isn't like Jeremy's dinner. Maybe it's a taco night or something like that. It's a little bit of appeal. And I start from there. I start where I can, you know, 1 or 2 other people and be intentional about it.
And because the important thing here is because people are so starved for connection, when you create those contacts and those situations for other people, they will respond. Yeah. They will take you up on the offer.
Chris:
Yeah. That's one of the reasons we're going to Lisbon is because, Jeremy and his wife, Louise, are just like the best at this. You know, like, they're so good at social networking with this. And hopefully, we can just drop into that to some extent. Well, I really wanted to talk about all of the things of that series because I found them also important, the connection to the natural world and connection calling.
But perhaps I should rather direct people to the subset where they can read all that for themselves and instead have you tell us about Wayfinders and how that relates to everything that we've been talking about thus far?
Mike:
With Wayfinder, really, connection is at the core of what I do. And when I started and for several years after that, really the only thing I did was host these events, these adventures, which over time became I started hosting them in increasingly remote and wild places around the world. So, you know, you joined the first event that was in Fernie at a lovely catskin lodge. But I just came back a few months ago from hosting 27 people in one one of the remotest parts of the planet in Western Mongolia. And so those adventures are designed they're designed with connection at the core of these people to connect with each other, but also all these other aspects of connection with the natural world with self, whatever, through various exercises.
But I also, last year, also launched a new community membership model. So for people who can't travel all the way to Mongolia for 2 weeks or don't have the money to pull it off or whatever, And this community membership model, which is mainly centered around Toronto. We have a lot of ongoing events and dinners and wellness Wednesdays and all this kind of fun stuff. And, so really I'm just focusing on creating context for people to connect in all these different ways. But connection with other humans is kind of really, you know, the biggest part of that is creating places where people cannot connect authentically and it's deeply rewarding and it's, you know, is my life's work.
I will keep doing this probably until I die. There's nothing I love better than, you know, when somebody sends me a message and says, hey, I wanna thank you for the connection. Just we've developed an amazing friendship, and I'm so grateful that you connected us. And there's nothing more enriching to me than that.
Chris:
Are they all physically hard? The your guided tours. Like, I see you hiking to the top of volcanoes and, like, crazy elevation and altitude and all that. Like, is it are they all hard?
Mike:
I mean, challenge is definitely a central part of it. Some of them are, of course, harder than others. So in 2 weeks, I'm going to Ecuador. We're gonna be trying to climb a 20,000 foot volcano.
Chris:
That's what I'm talking
Mike:
about. That will be the hardest adventure that I've ever hosted.
Chris:
Okay.
Mike:
And it's not even like that. I mean, that is just it's I know you've done some rock climbing. You have, right? I'm not
Chris:
I have done a little bit, mostly indoor, a little bit of outdoor.
Mike:
So that particular event is really similar to a climb where you rate the climb according to the hardest move. This is similar to that. The rest of the event is you know, challenging, but not crazy challenging. But we happen to have to try and climb a 20,000 foot volcano. It's a full on mountaineering kind of thing.
So that's a very difficult event. I'm running an event in Laos in October, which will be much mellower. Won't be without its challenge, but it's not. This particular event in Ecuador, we've been training for 3 months. And everybody who's come to this event has to be in a certain level of fitness.
They don't have to be triathletes, but they can't be weekend, weekend warriors. So, but Laos is a much more laid back pace. And there will be some challenge, physical challenge on that one as well. But it won't be, it won't be in the nay, the order of a 20,000 foot volcano. But the challenge piece of it is when people are confronted with significant challenges, in this case, a physical challenge, it forces you to have a lot of inner dialogue with yourself.
And it forces you to come up against, you know, all the messaging that you've been fed your whole life. You're not worthy, you're not capable, whatever. If you approach it from the right perspective and you give people the opportunity to break through those self imposed limits and through this company of a supportive community of people, it sort of permanently stretches those boundaries, not just physically, but in other realms of their life. So, you know, when they push through that intense and internal resistance and make it to the summit of, you know, Mount Toubkal in Morocco, for instance, that can carry on into other aspects of their life where they can come back to that moment like, oh, I encountered this resistance and I pushed through and I got out of my comfort zone and I made that summit. Hey, maybe that's applicable in this aspect of my life, whether it's, you know, an emotional challenge or something like that.
Chris:
And how important is it? Is it a prerequisite that you you have to be an entrepreneur? I'm just thinking again about Jeff, you know, who's a salaried employee before he did your first event. And I think talking to some of the other entrepreneurs there was, like, important in his decision to take the plunge, you know. But is it I mean, you've got I mean, you you're sold out for 2024.
Right? So you can afford to be picky. Is it really just for entrepreneurs?
Mike:
About 95% of the people there are entrepreneurs and the other, you know, any given event, there might be 1 or 2 people who are, shall I say entrepreneur curious. They know that they're ripe for a change. They are not fulfilled with whatever they're doing And they have an entrepreneurial spirit. They want to try something out. And I found that having 1 or 2 of those people, as long as they're bringing the right overall spirit to the event, that having them there, there's tremendous value for them to be surrounded by all these, just like it was for Jeffrey, to be surrounded by all these people who are, you know, have been doing it for a long time.
But also value the other way around, right? If it's the right humans that I choose. But the reason I continue to serve entrepreneurs is because I found that they tend to be, most entrepreneurs tend to be very growth minded. You know, personal development, because if you're in the game long enough, you discover that your success as an entrepreneur is really dictated by the level you're willing to grow as a person and as a human. And if you don't grow, you're gonna get punched in the face and you're just going to collapse on the map.
As you know, entrepreneurship, you're constantly getting punched in the face. There's no end challenges. You don't have a nice cushy paycheck to fall back on. You are constantly having to deal with setbacks and whatever. And so you learn that you have to grow in order to be able to meet those challenges because they keep coming at you.
So I find that particular audience is very ripe for what I'm offering them, which is an opportunity and context to grow with other people at their side.
Chris:
We can find wayfinders@waydashfinders.com. I will, of course, link to that and Mike's SubStack, wayfinders.substack.com that we've been talking about in this interview. Is there anything else that you'd want people to know about, Mike?
Mike:
I will probably start writing very soon on my substack again. I took a little bit of a break to focus on other things, but I want to continue with that theme just around restoring connection. There's so much to explore on all these different things, but I think ultimately just really getting people to understand why connection is so important and all of these aspects, but particularly with other people, because of the way our minds are wired To understand that it's so important and to understand that a little bit of intention can go a long way into living a rich, connected life. And it doesn't necessarily mean you have to move to an intentional community in Costa Rica. You can you can build it for yourself wherever you are because everybody around you is so hungry for
Chris:
Well, that's a great place to end.
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