Stuck In A Loop: This Is The Reason Why Sacrifice Isn’t The Solution

I’ve always loved the concept of “going into the wilderness” or isolated training in order to make new discoveries and reach new heights.

It’s an all-or-nothing doctrine.

Essentially, it’s abandoning everything “worldly” in exchange for unrivalled focus — to free oneself from distractions in pursuit of enlightenment.

You can see traces of the concept in nearly every culture, whether that’s seen through the hermits, monks, Taoists, ascetics, or even the “mountain man" / frontiersman.

Even in the modern day, solo trips, meditation trips, or simply social media detoxes are all practices that indicate an understanding that, to some extent, to progress, you need to abandon the things holding you back.

And it doesn’t have to be as drastic as giving away all your money and becoming a hermit; that’s extreme.

Rather, it seems to be this notion of pursuing function over form—the age-old passion-purpose conflict.

To choose purpose by abandoning distraction and desire.

However, when reading a Guardian article on the hermit life, I was introduced to a new perspective.

Stuck in a loop.

Paul Willis writes in his conclusion after personally seeking out and living with hermits that:

“In other words, if you go into solitude to get away from something, your troubles will probably follow you.

This, I suspect, was Virgil’s story. It was probably my own, too, and I returned to the city unhappy that my hermit encounters had not yielded more.”

So often we change the scenery, change the environment, turn a blind eye, or even start completely afresh when we cannot overcome a situation or hurdle.

But as Mr. Willis wrote,

“your troubles will probably follow you.”

Nothing changes.

However, the issue is much simpler than most of us think.

Or rather, we know how simple it is — the issue is actually tackling it.

Take Achilles, for example.

Despite being nearly completely invulnerable, his one weakness was his heel.

And but for that weakness, he would’ve been unstoppable.

Each of us has our own Achilles heel, and much like Achilles, whether we are or aren’t aware of this weakness is irrelevant; the problem still remains.

If he had gone to an isolated island instead of the war, Achilles could’ve just as easily died from a snake bite as from an arrowhead.

Because his problem still remained.

The Achilles heel.

It’s less about where you are situationally, and more about what you need to deal with objectively.

Looking from the outside in, it’s easy to say that Achilles should’ve covered his heel, and it would’ve solved all his problems.

But are we much different?

I would argue not.

Often, you know exactly what your ‘Achilles heel’ is, yet you’re still victim to that weakness.

And unlike Achilles, whose weakness was necessary for the story, who had to have said weakness for the prophecy to remain true and meet his end.

There is no such pre-determined shackle for you, so what’s your excuse?

Why are you still stuck in the loop?

Why aren’t you facing the root of your problem?

Why are you running from it?

Address the elephant in the room.

How to break the cycle.

For the sake of clarity, self-improvement by means of abandoning distractions will be referred to as the ‘hermitic pursuit’.

We understand that the intention of the hermitic pursuit is to grow, discover, or enlighten oneself.

In whatever form it manifests itself, the hermitic pursuit starts with the understanding of two things:

Where you currently are isn’t enough.
There is a wall that needs to be surpassed to achieve ‘more’.

When facing the walls in our lives, we often think situationally: What can we change in order to surpass the wall?

But a better question might be, why are you pursuing change?

Start with the answer to that question.

That is the root of the problem.

That is your Achilles heel.

That is where we need to start.

Why?

If there is a wall that’s stopping you from becoming more, it makes sense to overcome the wall, right?

We all agree up to this point, yet some of us scale the wall and the rest onlook.

So what’s so different about the approach?

Changing the situation vs. Changing yourself

Take this scenario:

In order to grow, you must scale this wall.

However, you don’t know how to climb.

That’s your Achilles heel.

But as aforementioned, we tend to turn a blind eye to this weakness, so the only remaining routes available to us are as follows:

Abandoning our distractions.

Often, there are things in our lives which are holding us back, alongside our Achilles heel.

These tend to take us off track, but with proper moderation, they aren’t harmful.

For example, your phone.

It’s only when these distractions are left unmoderated or are allowed to work in conjunction with your fatal flaw that they become crippling, instead of negligible.

Furthermore, these distractions seem to be the most obvious, as they are comparatively the smallest and easiest to immediately deal with.

In terms of the scenario:

Abandoning all distractions is like removing all the baggage from your shoulders, allowing you to become agile and unrestrained in your ascent.

However, if you knew how to climb, these distractions wouldn’t be enough to prevent your ascent —they'd only raise the difficulty.

Changing your situation

Knowing that we are victims of our fatal flaw, we try to work around our Achilles heel and change the situation to compensate for it.

For example, motivation.

If your fatal flaw is your lack of purpose, then a common situational remedy is motivation.

Having sources of motivation or even someone to keep us accountable allows us to temporarily work around our lack of discipline or purpose.

But ultimately, this cannot work forever.

What happens when you’re unreceptive to being held accountable or motivated?

Or more commonly, when motivation and pseudo-bravado aren’t enough to bridge the gap of skill and experience.

Suddenly, the wall is impossible to climb.

In terms of the scenario:

Changing the situation is no different from finding the weakest part of a wall and breaking it or searching for the shortest route of ascent.

It’s the easy way out.

Sure, it might work once or twice, but when you reach a wall that cannot be scaled but for skill, you’ll have wished you dealt with your weakness from the start.

Holistically, nothing changes by changing your situation.

Change yourself.

That is the only answer.

It’s always the hardest route to walk.

The reality is, if there is a wall you must surpass in order to grow, you need to learn how to climb.

No ifs or buts.

That’s the only way to break the loop.

So often we try to take the wide path first, and we feel so satisfied after we give up one of our many thousands of distractions.

But little to nothing changes.

Yes, after abandoning the distraction, you might be able to scale the wall one step further.

But the problem still remains.

You haven’t conquered it, and you still cannot climb.

It’s so laughable in retrospect; the sole reason we’re changing our situation is in pursuit of growth, right?

So why don’t we deal with the root first?

Surely that would yield us the most growth?

The lengths we go to avoid hard work whilst trying to grow are unimaginable.

If you want to truly grow.

To transcend the walls that are blocking you from reaching your potential.

To become the person you’ve always wanted to be.

Start with your weakness.

Tackle that head on.

Over and over and over.

Learn how to climb.

That must be the first step.

Distractions and favourable situations always come second.

My argument, much like Paul Willis, is not that there is no merit in the hermitic pursuit.

Rather, I’d argue that abandoning all distractions is amazing once the groundwork is in place first.

Simply because there will come a time when there is a wall you cannot scale, even with the groundwork in place, whilst hauling your distractions.

That’s the moment you need to rely on hermitic pursuit, when the only thing between you and the wall are distractions.