Dear Friend, (6 min read)

October was the biggest month my business has ever had.

So why did I spend last weekend doing… nothing?

I'll get to that. But first, I don't mean to toot my own horn but… beep beep.

I detailed my first aircraft. Baarns Detailing is now officially an aircraft AND car detailing business. That brings me to over 1,000 aircraft and vehicles detailed in the last four years.

I also detailed my first Lambo. And the best part wasn't the car. It was that the owner trusted me enough to leave it parked at my house for multiple days. A Lambo. In my front yard.

That was sick. I touched over 2 million dollars worth of vehicles. In one month. Wild.

Here's the problem.

Big months don't come free.

Between the growth, a summer full of travel, I was enjoying just being home. but I was running on a lot of motion and not much margin.

Then I went to a men's retreat.

I signed up for a men's retreat at my church. I didn't know the theme until I got there.

Silence and solitude.

One of the speakers said a healthy inner life stands on three legs:

So I took inventory.

Friendships and Community? I'm rich there. Lunches and dinners with men who inspire me and push me to be better.

Coaches, mentors, a therapist? Got those too.

Silence and solitude? Nothing consistent.

Then one line landed that framed the whole weekend:

We retreat from the world for the world.

(That's the whole newsletter in one sentence. But keep reading.)

They gave us one full hour to practice. Four steps:

Step three is where something cracked open.

Surrender is not resignation.

Resignation throws its hands up and says, "Oh well, I can't control it anyway."

That's a disempowering story. (which I hate)

Surrender is a declaration of trust.

Some things are in my hands. My effort. My choices. My responsibility. I want to own those all the way.

But some things I can do completely right and still not control the outcome. (think poker)

Those I hand to God.

Not resignation... Trust.

One speaker called solitude "the furnace of transformation."

Here's the thing. Silence and solitude are two things at once.

First, a battleground. When it gets quiet, everything you've been outrunning shows up. Lies. Past regret. Future anxiety. Pain you never processed.

But it's also an untapped place to encounter the truth.

The same quiet that surfaces the lies is where you finally hear what's true. And on the other side of that battle? Peace.

(If you read Just Start, you know I first learned this sitting in a little hobbit hole in Ecuador. What's in your mind comes up when it's quiet. Turns out I needed the reminder.)

So I left my phone in my room. Saturday morning until 1pm Sunday.

36 hours. No notifications. No scrolling. Just space.

In the second session, the speaker said the false self is rooted in three things:

I felt that one.

Go back and read my October recap. The aircraft. The Lambo. 1,000 vehicles. the 2M. I’m always quantifying.

What I have. What I do. What others think.

None of that is bad. I'm genuinely proud of it. But in the quiet, there's nobody to impress. No one is clapping. It's just you and God.

And then this line:

You can't be loved through a mask.

If the people in your life only know the version of you that's winning, they're not loving you. They're loving the mask.

Solitude is where the mask comes off. Not so you can hide. So you can come back and actually be known.

Another speaker said silence is God's first language.

That took me back to a summer when I prayed through the PRAY acronym every single day.

PRAY Is an simple way to connect with God through prayer.

Praise: Thank God for anything and everything you can think of. Who he is, what you have, the ways you’ve seen him move in your life.

Repent: Turn away from any sin or anything that is separating you from God. (by doing this daily you catch small things faster)

Ask: Ask for what you need and want.

Yield: Sit and listen. Sometimes I’d say: “Speak lord for your servant is listening.”

Nothing dramatic happened most days. I just kept showing up.

Then one ordinary Tuesday at 8:10 am, I’m sitting on my bed. back against the wall in the Yield section… and I felt God's presence. it was like a heavy hand pressing down on me and moving me. It was heavy like a weighted blanket of peace.

Not on a mountaintop. Not at a conference or retreat. On a Tuesday.

That moment didn't come out of nowhere. The daily action made room for it.

During the weekend the speaker also mentioned Elijah in 1 Kings 19.

He just won the biggest battle of his life. Then he runs, collapses under a tree, and cries out to God.

And God doesn't lecture him.

He lets him sleep. He feeds him.

Then comes a great wind. An earthquake. A fire. And the Lord isn't in any of them.

He's in a low whisper. (Some translations call it "a sound of thin silence.")

Then God sends him back out.

Rest. Then return.

That was my weekend. The rest was the silence. The food was the friendships. Guys I went to Kyrgyzstan with. Brothers from my Sons of Abraham Bible study.

Being alone helps you when you come back together.

I've said yes to more than I can reasonably do.

I'm hiring a third person. The aircraft side needs a website and a Google Business page. There's a second book being outlined in the background. Family in LA and Florida. Friends I want to see every week.

And I'm taking a Russian class.

I currently have an F.

(Yes, an F. Homeschool Daniel is horrified.)

But here's the truth. When it came down to hanging out with people or doing Russian homework, I chose people. Every time. The grade just made it visible.

I've felt torn apart. Not because any one thing is bad. But because I can't do all of them every day.

In one of my quiet hours I wrote down a question:

What's forming me?

Outside of God, the honest answer was three men. Erwin McManus. Alex Hormozi. Sharran Srivatsaa.

I've learned so much from all three. But here's the harder question:

When I think about who I am, whose voice do I hear?

I don't have the full answer yet.

But I do know this. Rest can't be a one-time retreat. It has to be a rhythm.

Here's what I'm building.

Daily: Rest in pockets. A couple weeks ago I started sitting in the hot tub first thing. Cold air. Hot water. Stars overhead. Quiet. I'd built a silence practice without even realizing it. And I'm adding small pockets through the day. Like plugging my phone in when I get home and leaving it there.

Weekly: Rest from the noise. The last few weekends I haven't opened Instagram on Saturday or Sunday. And Sunday is self-organization day (shoutout Frank Bettger). I clean the van, restock microfibers, and choose each day's focus for the week ahead.

Seasonally: Rest deeply. A retreat. A weekend with the phone off. Time to let the furnace do its work.

And every rest has a return.

Here's what I return to each day:

I won't do everything.

But I'll do what matters most. And I can be at peace with that.

Being alone makes me a better friend.

Your brothers don't need the noisy, overcommitted, masked-up version of you.

They need the man who's been through the furnace.

Rest doesn't pull you away from your people.

It sends you back to them whole.

We retreat from the world for the world.

People > Everything. Even when that means stepping away for a minute.

Take one hour with no phone.

Walk through the four steps. Settle in. Name what you want. Surrender what you can't control. Close in prayer.

Then return. Call one friend and tell him what came up. No mask.

Rest. Then return.

Well, that's all for now.

-Daniel

P.S. Want to see the aircraft and the Lambo that lived in my front yard? Here's the post