Gino Wickman (00:00):
Hello and welcome back. This episode I call Sabbatical 2025. So I thought what makes sense is I'm coming out of my August sabbatical, and so as you may or may not know, I take a sabbatical every single August. Rob and I teach you and urge you in the 10 Disciplines to take a sabbatical. Discipline Number Two, take time off. And so that's what we're talking about is taking time off, but very specifically talking about the power of a sabbatical and what I got out of this particular sabbatical in the hopes that it will help you motivate you, inspire you to start taking a sabbatical. And the guidelines are very, very simple for me. And so for me it's to focus the entire month on family time, friend time, and me time. And that's going to be the majority of this message. The point in that is there's just absolutely no work for an entire month, not thinking about work, not doing any work.
(01:13):
And my secondary goal is to completely forget what it is that I do for a living by the end of the month. And I hope that at the end of that, and as I come back into the real world, I'm still motivated, inspired, driven to do what I do, and I'm always ready to make any course corrections and completely change everything if I need to. But fortunately, over 20 years running, I've come back with the same passion and purpose, but with these wonderful little tweaks that I'm going to share with you today. So with that said, what's most important is to understand that the outcome of every sabbatical for me is always different. First, it's important to note that I went into this sabbatical feeling a little spiritually stuck and feeling impatient. And so those are the two best ways to describe what I was feeling going in.
(02:18):
And I was in this kind of seeking, pushing mode with those two things going on. And so there was some discomfort. I went into it with three intentions. I'll start by sharing them at a high level and then I want to explain each one. So intention number one for the sabbatical was to remember who I am. Intention number two was to see life as it is. And intention number three was to release anything that doesn't serve me. Number one, remember who I am in its simplest form, my goal there was to go back to that perfect little soul that was born, that was me in my purest form, my innate self before the world got a hold of me.
(03:15):
Number two, seeing life as it is this profound sentence that has come up for me in multiple ways, multiple conversations from multiple people providing advisory to me. See life as it is is about seeing life as it really is. Taking off the filter and the lens that we tend to look at life through, stop the meaning-making where we're trying to make things make sense through our filter and our ego. And then another great sentence from somebody that they shared, when I would share a situation, they would say, "Do you know why that happened?" And I'd say, "Why?" And they'd say, "Because it did." And what that means is things just happen. We don't have control, and we try to make sense of it and again, make meaning. So the idea here is just to see life as it is. And then number three, releasing anything that doesn't serve me. And so again, if I can articulate this, the clarity of remembering who I am, the clarity of seeing life as it is, and then releasing anything that doesn't serve me or those two things.
(04:33):
This takes us right to Discipline Number Seven, don't do $25 an hour work. But again, it's the deeper meaning beyond just $25 an hour work. It's the deeper meaning behind releasing anything emotionally, physically, spiritually, tangibly, anything. It's like picturing the suit of armor falling away, the block of marble falling away, releasing anything that is not me and who I truly and fully am and what is truly happening. And so I will tell you, the sabbatical started out a little rough the first week with me going in feeling a little spiritually stuck and a bit impatient. And so, in previous episodes, I talked about how we expand and contract, expand and contract. Well, I started the sabbatical in that first week kind of contracting, and then the expansion came. So throughout the sabbatical, I read a few books, spent a lot of time with friends, had three full days, just a lot of fun, a lot of time with family.
(05:40):
And then like I said, a lot of time with myself, time in stillness. And so again, it was just a beautiful sabbatical of a wonderful balance of all of those things. And so now I'm going to shift to the outcome. So now we shoot forward to the end of that month, going in with that intention. The power of this is to understand it's not as if I hyper-focused on those things all throughout the sabbatical, those three intentions, I went in with those intentions. And by creating the time and space that a sabbatical does for you, whatever the intention going in is typically what will happen. And so there were three outcomes, and I'm going to keep tying them back to those intentions. But the first outcome was that I really grasped slowing down. I realized how I needed to slow down. It's so subtle, but once I calmed myself and became more patient and acknowledged that feeling of being spiritually stuck and trying to somehow speed up the process to get unstuck, there was this calm that came over me to just be, to just slow down.
(07:03):
And this takes us right back to the synchronicity pocket. So if you've not heard that episode, I would urge you to go back to that episode because what that episode talks about is the intersection of kind of a horizontal line and a vertical line, if you will, for lack of a better term. I'm not going to spend any time on the horizontal line other than just to remind you, it's about staying in the center and not going to extremes. Finding the center, the balance. It's what I'll call the vertical line, which more goes forward and backward, but it's finding that perfect speed that's not too fast, not too slow, where you're in this perfect pocket where you're literally in the flow. And so I just had that clarity around slowing down, and it was incredible as to how much clarity I received. I actually decided to cancel two trips through the rest of the year that were retreats. Again, helping me with this spiritual seeking that I was doing, and just felt this incredible sense of peace, and I've managed to stay in that place most of the time.
(08:13):
The second thing that came out is there's been this message insight, repeating set of words that have been coming to me for a few months around honesty and authenticity. And I'm a pretty honest guy, and people say that I'm a pretty authentic guy. And so I believe that to be true. But it was this deeper honesty, this deeper authenticity. And I hope I can explain this and I'm going to give a couple examples that will explain it, but I think words are almost impossible because it goes so deep into my soul and it's just this clarity about being even more honest and direct with people, certainly in a loving way. So leading into this second outcome around honesty and authenticity, going into the sabbatical, there were two business deals that were supposed to close.
(09:11):
We were bringing on an equity partner in both Entrepreneurial Leap and 10 Disciplines, and both deals died during the sabbatical. And if I were not on sabbatical, something may have gone differently, but I've lost plenty of money on sabbaticals, and it's worth every penny in the way that the clarity is worth a couple of setbacks. So long story short, coming back from the sabbatical, one of the deals we were able to save and one of them we were not. And both for good reason. And again, this clarity helped so much. But my point in this is my ability to come back from that sabbatical and be so clear and honest and direct and authentic with the people involved in those deals. In addition to that, the clarity I received around my role was so clear that I was able to release anything that doesn't serve me within those businesses and help me clearly see exactly the role that I need to play.
(10:22):
I was able to articulate that to all parties involved and everyone's clear and everyone wins as a result of it. Now, again, I'm not going into great detail on that. I don't think the specifics are necessary. It's about the clarity that I received and how honest and authentic I was able to be as a result of creating that space for a month. And it goes right back to intention number three, which was to release anything that doesn't serve me, but also number two, to see life as it is to see those two deals exactly as they were and to clearly see the one that we should have done and clearly see the one that we should not have done. And then again, intention number one, remember who I am, getting me back to my True Self, keeping me fully in my sweet spot and in my True Self.
(11:17):
In addition to the business related honesty and authenticity, I had numerous conversations with the people in my personal life that were more honest and authentic than ever, and so profound and powerful. Now onto the third outcome that I wrestled with whether I was going to share it. And as I wrestled and thought about the chain of events that led to this outcome, I just have to share it with you. And this is a buildup of probably six to nine months. And where this comes from is work around the subconscious. I have had back pain for many years, not severe, but just enough that it's annoying. And where it shows up most is when I play golf. And so this has been going on for 10, 20 years. And so when I play a round a golf, I deal with back pain for up to two weeks after, but for a few days for sure afterwards.
(12:22):
And I always thought it was normal. I actually went and got an MRI, found out I have a bulging disc, all that good stuff. Turns out most of us over 50 have a bulging disc. But nonetheless, I was then led to this book called Healing Back Pain. It led me down a rabbit hole of this Dr. Sarno and all of his work and his belief that the back pain is not physical, that it is emotional, and the root of all back pain is in the deep subconscious level where we are suppressing emotions. And the biggest emotion he believes we're suppressing is anger, and that's what causes the back pain. Now, whether you believe that or not, I'm just telling you my outcome and my experience. And so I've gone down this rabbit hole and many of his followers that teach his stuff, because some go very, very deep into it.
(13:14):
And again, it's all subconscious related. And then I've done some other work around subconscious where a woman took me through a guided meditation where you go down into your subconscious and see what's going on there. And a couple other things to release what's in my subconscious. And so the first bitter pill I had to swallow was that I may be suppressing anger. And what Dr. Sarno talks about in his book Healing Back Pain, is that we perfectionists, control freaks, driven people, just people that are highly productive, we tend to suppress anger. We tend to be people pleasers. We tend to work hard to satisfy everyone, and as a result, we're sacrificing ourselves and suppressing anger. And there's a funny line that one of his followers says is that, "All perfectionists walk around angry all day." If you think about that, if you're a perfectionist, nothing's ever perfect, so you're secretly angry at that.
(14:13):
By bringing it up, releasing it, everything Rob and I have been teaching in Shine, releasing these emotions, shedding these things. It frees up those suppressed emotions, suppressed anger, suppressed energy, and the pain subsides. So all I can tell you is in August, I also focused on healing my subconscious and what was trapped in there. And as a result, I played quite a few rounds of golf. But the first round of golf I played in August, there was no back pain after the round at all. Second round, no back pain at all. I just got back from a golf trip where I played four rounds, and the back pain only lasted about a day and a half, which is incredible because after that trip it's usually at least two weeks.
(15:11):
And then I just want to share something with you from Dr. Sarno's book in terms of how he views back pain. And he shares these 12 bullet points to review daily as reminders. And I'm just going to share two, three, four, five with you just to give you a sense of this belief just in case some of you are dealing with back pain out there or maybe are secretly harboring and suppressing some anger. So here are some examples. The pain is a harmless condition caused by my repressed emotions. The next one, the principle emotion is my repressed anger. Next one, the emotion exists only to distract my attention from the emotions. Next, I will shift my attention from the pain to emotional issues. And the last one I'll share is, I intend to be in control, not my subconscious mind. So all of that said, I will close with a couple of thoughts. While this may sound simple, to me it's quite profound.
(16:21):
So I don't know what that means to you that out of these intentions, I've got such clarity on slowing down, such clarity on being honest and authentic at a whole nother level, and I healed some back pain. I really and truly hope that helped. And as I mentioned, feel free to borrow any one or all of those intentions as you go into your sabbatical. And on that note, I urge you to please consider taking a sabbatical because creating the time and space is where the magic happens. It's where the growth happens, it's where the insights happen, it's where you happen. And so again, please consider taking a sabbatical in the next 12 months.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
Thank you for listening in today. We truly appreciate you taking the time to spend with us, and please tune in for the next episode. Until then, we wish you all the best and freeing your True Self. Stay focused and much love.
