The truth behind a mans "Lone Wolf" mentality

The Lone Wolf journey can take you on a real discovery of who you are without other people and what you're capable of when you put yourself first. There's real value in that. However, maybe you've hit goals that a past version of you would have only dreamt of but you can't help but feel that there's this part of life that you're not accessing the way that you could... and you're starting to feel the weight of that.

In this letter, we're going to shed light on the patterns underneath the lone wolf mentality that stop you from experiencing what you truly desire.

We're looking at what's really going on under the surface when isolation has served it's purpose and avoidance gets confused with virtue.

The empty win

I remember hitting my first €10,000 a month in business years ago. I had been working towards that a long time. But in the process of doing, I had isolated myself. I was traveling around Europe but traveling by myself. I had nobody who really knew me in my life, and had nobody to celebrate wins with other than a group chat with a bunch of people who I didn't really know.

It made me ask the question, is what I'm moving towards what I really want? Is there another aspect of life that is going to make me more fulfilled?

I could keep going on the trajectory I was on, hitting targets and setting new targets, but I had the foresight to see that this is not going to change how I deeply feel about my life. Something needed to change, I wanted to be surrounded by people who knew me.

I moved across the world to Asia. I joined people in online communities first and then in person events and masterminds. This changed the trajectory of my life because it started to open up what I had been avoiding the entire time.

Business (or any creative pursuit) takes you on a journey of self-development. You learn so much about yourself along the way, but oftentimes we just play out patterns and stories that we've been telling ourselves for a long time.. that just aren't true.

That becomes our self-narrative. Who we believe ourselves to be and how we "should" be in the world. The very pursuit of something bigger starts to highlight all of the aspects that are not aligned for where we're actually aiming to go.

Before tackling the deeper things.. we'll often try to escape them first (me included)

The two escapes

I believe, what we truly want in life is to be deeply fulfilled in all aspects of life, not just to make more money.

You want to have great relationships. You want to have great community. You want to be thriving in business and be serving people in a powerful way.

We want to feel deeply fulfilled and able to feel a sense of... love.

You could tie every desire that we have back to love in some way, shape or form.

When we are living this lone wolf mentality past it's expiration date, it's often an escape masked as virtue.

It can show up in a variety of ways, but the two main ways I see for the clients that I work with are business and inner work.

• Business can become the pursuit of more and bigger to stay busy.
• Inner work can become the pursuit of fixing oneself.

Both are normal parts of the journey. I'm not here to say either are wrong in any capacity. It depends what's driving the person underneath the surface.

What we're here to be aware of is that both of them can become a "fix" to continue the same pattern of avoiding the deeper feelings that are necessary for the pattern to be let go.

Stopping you from experiencing the real fulfillment on the other side of feeling what was never felt.

The deeper question underneath is; is the building of the business or the deepening of the inner work going to lead to the transformation that you're really looking for? Or is it just another way to avoid bringing light to what you've been avoiding?

The honest answer, only you can know.

The two roots

Let's go deeper under the surface and look at two of the main roots that lead to the lone wolf isolation period stretching beyond it's purpose.

Firstly, our sense of self, stories about who we are and who we believe ourselves to be get formed early in childhood.

The first one is either that you were not unconditionally loved for who you are, just the way that you are. So you had to pretend to be somebody else in order to maintain peace or keep others happy.

Essentially, you had to form into somebody else other than yourself to be able to receive a form of love or attention. The false self.

The second one is when you had to take care of others more than you were being taken care of yourself. I mean your parents in this case.

Oftentimes the sensitive children of parents who were not aware of their patterns, trauma or pain become the caregivers for their parents. They may become emotional support when it's not their role or they begin to carry the weight of problems in their household when they were too young to do so. This weight is heavy for a child and pushes them to grow up faster.

Tied to the first one, pretending to be somebody else to keep the peace, they had to become somebody else, or they had to become the problem solver, in order to be able to stay safe and to receive love.

When you learn that love is conditional based on what you do, who you show up as or what you're able to carry for others, you learn that your needs are second to everybody else's.

Both of these threads can look different for different people depending on personal scenarios, but they carry the same essence.

The story you tell yourself that begins to form says; "It is not safe for me to be fully unconditionally loved for being myself"

The stories we tell

Let's start to connect the dots, which you may be already doing yourself.

When you believe that it is not safe to be fully unconditionally loved just as you are, that story leads to certain behaviours.

Think about how that affects the story that you bring into relationships or friendships. If you believe that you have to be someone other than who you really are, that's going to feel heavy. You have to put on a mask. You have to be someone else. That's something to manage and takes energy.

It's safer to just be by yourself. It's safer to be the lone wolf.

It's the same with taking care of the needs of others, getting into friendships, or especially a romantic relationship. If you feel like you must carry the relationship forward, manage a person's emotions, or like you have to carry all of their "baggage", you're just going to push that away.

But if you believe that you "have to" in order to receive love, from what you learned growing up, then you're going to think it's necessary.

This leaves you wanting connection while at the same time pushing it away.

The invitation for you is to look at, what stories am I telling myself about love based on my own personal experiences that may be blocking real connection with people?

The hidden cost

The fear of being seen as imperfect, or being seen as who you truly are and being loved for that, is actually scarier than you wearing the mask. It was never was something that you experienced. So that's going to feel scary.

At the same time, that very fear, that fear of being seen for who you truly are, is the exact fear that keeps you as a lone wolf, it keeps you safe, away from real connection with people.

This is why I always say that fear is a reversal. The fear that we hold actually creates the exact experience we were afraid of.

Real connection requires vulnerability, without the masks. When you've built a sense of self-identity from being the who has to be someone else to receive love, that vulnerability can be terrifying.

However, avoiding it doesn't just cost you connection, relationships and friendships. It actually affects money too.

Money is relational. Sales is relational. Building relationships with people in a way where they feel fully seen, and you feel fully seen is what creates deep trust with people.

I'm a firm believer that everything that we desire is on the other side of a conversation with somebody.

The deeper healing to let this pattern of avoiding connection go comes by engaging in relationships and being vulnerable, being seen just as you are without doing anything or being anyone.

You weren't meant to carry any of this. You can be fully loved just as you are.

Courage to be seen

If you were to go on this courageous journey of deepening your relationships, and putting that at the top of the list for your own fulfillment, well-being and business, what would that look like?

You'd have a couple of friends, maybe a big group. Maybe there's certain people who you can go deep with, who see you, support you, and that you trust on in a real way. We don't need many people in our lives to do that.

To make this practical right now; think of one person to have a conversation with. Going in with the intention to be vulnerable, to connect with this person, and to go a little bit further than you usually would.

That's the only invitation right now.

With everything that we've discussed here, there's always deeper layers to how we can transform these things on a more personal level, because everybody's scenarios are different.

To close out today, the question is, can you allow yourself to be seen, loved, and supported just as you are?

It's time for the lone wolf to find his wolf pack.