Posting reminders to myself about personal growth, wellness, and lifestyle design | Helping others reconnect with their true selves to live in alignment
New York City
Joined March 2023
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It was my 22nd birthday and I couldn’t get out of bed.
Not because I was physically ill, but because my soul was suffocating.
On paper, life was great: swim team captain, scholarship, relationship, job lined up.
But inside? A void. A numbness. An emptiness that nothing external could fill.
My worth had become tethered to performance, to external validation that was slowly killing my spirit.
That breaking point became my breakthrough.
It was the beginning of a profound 6-year journey that included reconstructing my identity, healing traumas, and discovering the transformative power of presence and self-love.
Now, I'm creating the sacred space I wish I'd had —Join me for a transformative men's retreat June 20-22 in Roxbury, NY.
This gathering isn't about quick fixes, wellness hacks, or temporary inspiration.
It's about coming home to yourself in the company of fellow men who are asking the deeper questions:
Who am I beyond my achievements?
What would it feel like to be valued for my essence, not my output?
How can I reconnect with my authentic voice and intuition?
In our three days together, you'll experience:
- A nurturing environment where you can safely explore your authentic self
- Guided practices to help you reconnect with your inner wisdom
- Tools to foster self-awareness, self-acceptance, and unconditional self-love
- Community that witnesses and honors your unique journey
This intimate retreat is for men who are tired of looking for answers outside of themselves; for those ready to break free from the conditioning that keeps your gifts hidden and your spirit dampened.
You won't leave with just another self-help checklist. You'll reconnect with the wisdom that's always been within you — the authentic voice that's been waiting to guide you home.
Limited to 7 participants to ensure depth and personalized attention.
Click the link below to learn more and apply to secure your place 👇
hudsonvalleyretreat.carrd.co…
Greg Brocato retweeted
Most people dream of escaping the chaos of daily life.
But few ever truly disconnect.
I’ve spent thousands of hours off-grid across the U.S.
If you’re craving solitude, adventure, and breathtaking nature, nothing compares to these 9 destinations:
(click here & scroll) ↓
It’s important I remind myself
despite all of the work,
despite all of the growth,
there will come days when I’m not feeling my best,
when I’m not showing up the way I’d like to.
That’s ok.
That’s life.
The growth shows up in my response.
The work continues as I feel into the cause.
Greg Brocato retweeted
I find it fascinating how often I tell myself "I should do this" when what I really mean is "I want the result but dread the process."
When I catch this pattern and ask "how could I enjoy the process?" everything shifts. The same task becomes something entirely different.
Greg Brocato retweeted
Who would you be if no one was watching?
If there was no one to impress, no one to disappoint, no one to perform for… just you, raw and unfiltered.
That question haunted me. So I did something most would call extreme.
𝐈 𝐥𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐝 𝟑𝟔𝟓 𝐝𝐚𝐲𝐬 𝐢𝐧 𝐫𝐚𝐝𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐡𝐨𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐲.
No masks. No lies. No people-pleasing. Just the truth.
At first, I thought I was freeing myself from the exhaustion of pretending. I didn’t realize I was signing up for a total collapse of my identity.
I didn’t just find peace or clarity.
I found confrontation.
I found shame.
I found the harsh inner critic I had kept at bay with distraction and denial.
Once I started naming my patterns - manipulating to feel safe, people-pleasing to feel loved, overworking to avoid intimacy - my inner critic pounced:
“See? You 𝘢𝘳𝘦 broken. You 𝘢𝘳𝘦 a mess. Even in awareness, you’re failing.”
Radical honesty gave that voice a megaphone.
I knew self-compassion had to walk hand-in-hand with truth… but knowing and embodying are two very different things.
And there were days I drowned in self-judgment. Days when the very truth meant to set me free almost broke me.
But I kept going.
Because once you see yourself clearly, you can’t unsee.
And little by little, the war inside me started to shift.
I stopped asking, “𝘞𝘩𝘢𝘵’𝘴 𝘸𝘳𝘰𝘯𝘨 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘮𝘦?”
And started asking, “𝘞𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘮𝘦 𝘪𝘴 𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘩𝘶𝘳𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨?”
I stopped judging my patterns.
And started understanding their purpose.
I realized healing isn’t about removing the shadows. It’s about learning to coexist with them.
With softness.
With presence.
Without resistance.
Radical honesty wasn’t the end of the journey, it was the threshold.
Beyond it? A deeper truth I never expected:
Radical honesty is the key to radical acceptance!
That’s the real freedom: To live in full awareness of your fears, flaws, and patterns… and to love yourself anyway.
Greg Brocato retweeted
I’m 23.
I’ve traveled to Thailand, Costa Rica, Perú, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Amsterdam, the UK, Hawaii, Malaysia, Austin, and California.
Here’s what foreign travel teaches you (that no school or book ever will):
Self-kindness isn’t treating yourself as if you never get things wrong.
It’s creating the space for objectivity, so that you can view missteps for what they are, mistakes, rather than personal failures.
Self-kindness means being wrong doesn’t feel like a personal attack.
Self-improvement is an incomplete framing for a problem I’ve been trying to solve for years.
When I started this personal growth journey in earnest six years ago, I was all about improving. I felt I wasn’t good enough, which led to what seemed to be the only logical solution: get better.
As I sit here today — looking back on this journey, preparing to host my first retreat — I empathize with my 22-year-old self.
I feel his pain.
I feel the hole that he desperately wanted to fill.
I feel all of the times he let himself down because of the ways in which he had been let down.
And I feel so grateful that he chose to look up, stand up, and keep moving forward.
What my past self didn’t understand, but something his courage ultimately enabled me to grasp today, is that self-improvement will only cover that hole. It can’t fill it.
That hole can only be filled through love; in loving myself as I am.
What I used to think was a mountain to climb turned out to be a series of waves to be ridden.
And yet, it was only through attempting to climb that mountain, and realizing that it had no top, that I gave myself permission to stop climbing.
Experience is the best teacher.
This journey has taught me that I’ve been missing an important piece — the cycle of self-discovery, self-acceptance, and self-love.
I’ve resisted enough. It’s time to surrender. To be.
This piece is an iteration of an excerpt from my most recent weekly letter. You can check it out here👇
open.substack.com/pub/curiou…
Greg Brocato retweeted
My mind loves binary thinking. This or that. Good or bad. Success or failure. Stay or go.
But I'm discovering how rarely reality conforms to these neat categories. Most things exist on spectrums, in paradoxes, with multiple truths simultaneously present.
I can love someone deeply and also need boundaries with them.
A decision can be both right and painful.
An experience can be both challenging and exactly what I needed.
When I drop the binary thinking, something opens up. The world becomes more textured, more nuanced. I feel less trapped by false choices.
Today I caught myself in an either/or mentality about a project. "Either I go all in or I abandon it."
When I challenged this framing, dozens of other possibilities emerged.
Partial commitment.
Periodic involvement.
Reimagining the scope.
Collaborating differently.
The richness lives in the spaces between the extremes. The both/and rather than the either/or.
Greg Brocato retweeted
Why has modern therapy failed so many people?
In the 1950s, Dr. Alexander Lowen made a radical discovery:
The root of emotional pain isn’t in your mind—it’s in your body.
His work flipped psychology upside down and changed how we understand trauma and healing forever 🧵
Greg Brocato retweeted
People who travel to New York City tend to only explore Manhattan.
However there is one area (borough) of New York City worth exploring.
That borough is Brooklyn.
Here are 13 reasons why you need to skip Manhattan and explore Brooklyn:
(a thread) ↓
I used to think growth was about improvement and change.
Now I believe it’s a constant learning cycle of self-discovery, self-acceptance, and self-love.
It seems that no matter how hard I try to engage positively with short form content, I leave the experience feeling drained.
Some platforms are better than others, but the result is usually the same. No amount of information diet optimization seems to rid my mind of the chaos that consistent short format consumption creates internally, even if only a few minutes a day...
Is this relatable for anyone? Has anyone found a good solve?
The more I try to engage, the more I feel the answer is simply less consumption. I'm wondering if there is a sweet spot...
I tend to find solace in solitude.
Retreating into the mind, into the self, to reclaim my peace.
This retreat can be rejuvenating. But what happens when the mind turns on itself?
What happens when I can’t think my way out of a problem?
Meaning and peace aren’t found in intellectualizing.
They’re found in being,
In doing,
In feeling.
Thinking is helpful for connecting dots, for interpreting experiences and making adjustments, but my mind tends to take control a little too often. Connecting too many dots, in ways that aren’t always helpful.
When this happens, I need to create space for the other components, allowing them to be mixed like instruments in a symphony.
Anything can be overdone. Sometimes there’s a reason for that. Buts it’s always helpful to remind ourselves to return to presence, to balance when we can.
Our external experience is born from our internal experience, yes. But our external experience is still its own separate entity meant to be enjoyed, explored, pondered, and loved.
Just as we can enjoy, explore, ponder, and love within.
“Without going abroad, you can have knowledge of the world. Without gazing at the stars, you can perceive the heavenly Tao. The more you wander, the less you know. The wise explore without traveling, discern without seeing, finish without striving, and arrive at their destination without leaving home.” — Tao Te Ching