Written October 2022, Zakopane, Poland
Sometimes, you’re stuck—often times without even knowing it. Not just in your routine, but in your thoughts, your emotions, your life—a loop you can’t break. The same voices, the same places, the same feelings. It’s easy to think that’s just how it is. That the patterns are set in stone. But, what if you stopped, stepped away, and shook things up a little? What if you gave yourself space to just be—without the noise, the distractions, the endless things you feel you have to do?
This October, I ended up in Zakopane, Poland, on a long hike through the Tatra Mountains. And what I learned there wasn’t just about nature. It wasn’t just about the snow or the wind or the beauty around me. It was about me. About the mess in my head and how shaking everything up—literally and figuratively—can shift your entire perspective.
These are my 3 October teachings from the Tatra Mountains.
Change the Scenery, Change the Mind
You can’t outrun your problems, right? But what if you could look at them from a different angle? What if, instead of staring at the same things every day, you gave yourself permission to step into something new? I don’t mean running away from your life, but changing the rhythm of it. Breaking the cycle.
When you’re stuck in the same environment, seeing the same things, hearing the same voices, your brain just… gets lazy. It finds comfort in the familiar. The problem is, it also gets locked into the same thoughts, the same fears, the same emotional baggage. That’s why everything can feel so suffocating and repetitive. But if you change the scenery, even just a little, you might start to see everything differently.
That’s what happened when I hiked 302 kilometers across mountains that forced me to change the way I moved, breathed, and thought. With every step, something inside me loosened up. It was like watching a dam break, the water spilling into new channels, the rush of fresh ideas and realizations flooding in.
Neuroscience tells us that novelty sparks neuroplasticity—the brain’s ability to rewire itself. And I felt it. The mountains didn’t just shift the landscape; they shifted me. If you change the input, you change the output. Simple, but powerful.
The Healing Pause
October was rough. Emotionally, mentally, I was being tested in ways I wasn’t ready for. But here’s the thing I learned: I don’t have to take every thought or insecurity at face value. Not every negative voice in my head deserves to be listened to.
It’s so easy to get caught up in the noise—especially the noise inside your own head. The doubt, the fear, the endless replays of what you should’ve said or done. But what if you stopped? What if you let yourself pause for just a second before jumping into the chaos? What if, instead of reacting to everything, you gave yourself space to breathe and think?
That’s what I started doing. Pausing. Letting the noise come and go without letting it own me. I practiced creating a gap between what happened and how I responded to it. And in that gap? I found a bit of freedom. I found space to shift my perspective.
It wasn’t magic. It didn’t erase everything, but it gave me a choice. The gap allowed me to step back from the mess in my mind and choose how I wanted to feel, how I wanted to react. This isn’t just some abstract self-help idea. It’s real. And the more I practiced it, the more I could feel my brain start to slow down. I could literally feel my body start to relax. I was breaking the old cycles, one pause at a time.
Disconnect to Reconnect
I spent a lot of my time in silence that month. Not forced silence, not the kind where you’re desperately trying to escape the world. But the kind of silence that just… happens when you let go of everything else. No music. No TV. No social media. No distractions. Just me, the mountains, and the wind whispering through the trees.
And honestly? I didn’t miss a thing. At first, there was this nagging feeling like I should be doing something, like I was missing out. But then I realized: I wasn’t missing anything. I was reconnecting with everything I’d been too distracted to notice before. The crunch of fresh snow beneath my boots. The clouds swirling above like they were dancing just for me. The quiet hum of the world happening without my constant input.
It was in that silence I found my own rhythm again. The brain loves novelty, yes, but it also craves stillness. And in that stillness, I found a kind of peace I didn’t even know I’d been searching for. Neuroscience backs this up, too—being in nature, away from screens and constant stimulation, reduces stress and allows the parasympathetic nervous system to kick in. It calms you. It heals you.
Sometimes, we’re so plugged into the noise of the world that we forget how to listen to the world around us—or to ourselves. When I disconnected from the usual distractions, I reconnected with what really mattered. And in doing so, I gave myself the chance to heal.
Healing Through Change and Stillness
The truth is, you can’t heal by doing more of the same. We all get stuck in ruts, in cycles of thought and emotion that just don’t serve us. But healing doesn’t always come from grand gestures or quick fixes. Sometimes, it comes from disrupting everything—by changing the scenery, by pausing long enough to see your thoughts for what they are, by disconnecting long enough to reconnect with the simple beauty of being.
It’s not easy. It’s uncomfortable, messy, and raw. But that’s the point. Healing isn’t clean, it isn’t pretty, and it doesn’t happen in the way you expect. But if you let it—if you let the mess be part of the process—you might just find that you’re rewiring your brain, and your heart, in ways you never thought possible.
So, hit pause. Step into the unknown. Disconnect for a while. Give yourself the space to be—because sometimes, in that uncomfortable space, you find everything you need to heal.
Leave a Reply