Last week, I completed my first 3-day silent meditation retreat.

I signed up because my mind was a mess. I hadn't taken more than 5 days off in three months, and my brain had been chewing endlessly on the same problems. Work, relationships, life decisions. I was exhausted by my own thinking, and I hoped three days of silence might give me the clarity I needed.

I went with Art of Living, an organisation I joined 3 months prior (if you are interested in spirituality/meditation/breathwork, I would check to see if they are in your city: great people).

We drove 7 hours to a monastery nestled among Argentine farmland.

Saturday at 8 pm, the silence began. No phones. No reading. No writing.

Nothing but your mind for company.

The answer I found wasn't what I expected. Let me explain the journey—and the killer principle I finished with.

Stuck in overthinking loops

I think some specificity will help here, so you can see the problems I was struggling with.

I was worried about work. I'm close to finishing the second draft of my book, Magnetic Writing, and I've been obsessed with what comes next. Double down on books? Run more cohorts? Master YouTube? Is YouTube a distraction? Write essays? More emails? Change my niche?

I was worried about my relationship. I recently asked Carolina, a girl I met in Argentina, to be my girlfriend. It came with a flood of questions. I'm about to leave Argentina, so I’m asking her to leave home for 6 months—which is a lot of pressure on a new relationship. We share a lot of similarities, but I am deep into spiritual/mindset work and want her to be too. She doesn’t speak English, so that’s a challenge with friends and family. Am I loving conditionally? Am I projecting my own insecurities? How can I make this work?

I was worried about my location. After 8 months away from home, I miss my friends terribly. I miss my mum more. The nomad lifestyle that excited me in September has begun to feel like I am trading depth for superficiality. Do I really want to go through with becoming a non-resident of my country in favour of Paraguay? Is this really worth the tax savings?

Meanwhile, I'm trying to write a book, build a brand, and run a business.

I thought three days of silence would finally solve these problems.

Which is where the next problem began.

Meditating with the wrong mindset

We woke for a 7 am yoga and meditation session. Then repeated a series of meditations, finishing at 9 pm.

The first day, I was exhausted. I could barely focus on my breath and kept dozing off. Sitting on the floor all day was horrendous for my body, too.

I was frustrated that I couldn’t meditate right—I'd set this time aside for clarity, and here I was, throwing it away.

After the morning meditation, I marched around the grounds, trying to force my mind to work. But then I remembered a quote from Krishnamurti:

"If you have a motive for meditation, it is not meditation."

He explains: the moment you meditate for an outcome, you've introduced desire, which creates movement of the mind. Meditation is about ending movement. Finding stillness. Stillness leads to an unfolding you can’t force.

(Krishnamurti’s ideas have changed my life—I recorded a video explaining his best ideas here.)

When I noticed I was chasing an outcome, things clicked.

I was frustrated because I was tired. And I was tired because I had been driving at full throttle since September.

The clarity I was looking for was in the rest I was refusing to take.

The moment I saw this, the pressure lifted. In the next meditation session, I let myself feel how exhausted I was, how frazzled my mind was, and how good it felt to finally do nothing.

And in this, things began to change.

Deal with what is real

At the end of the first day, I stepped out to see the stars.

I mentally pulled up my problem list, ready to take on the task.

But something had changed.

When I was busy, my mind loved to gnaw on these problems like a dog with a bone. But now that I'd created some space, it responded differently. It felt more like picking up someone else's dirty laundry.

I didn't want to hold it. And I sure as hell didn't like how the thoughts smelled.

Instead of thinking more about them, I realised how much time, energy, and joy I'd been wasting on future decisions. I was trying to control the path of my life, and it had turned into an endless fight with existence.

…One I was slowly losing.

Trying to control the future is just a sign that you don’t trust yourself to respond well in the present. The truth is, you know nothing about the future. You won’t be the same person, you won’t have the same knowledge, and you certainly shouldn’t listen to your past self, who was ignorant of these things.

That night, a principle emerged to help when I catch myself in future thoughts:

Come back. Deal with what’s real.

Alan Watts once said that life is like a river, and most people drown because they resist it. This has shifted so much of my energy from fighting the river to flowing with it. And damn, it feels good.

Which leads me to the next realisation.

The reward for more work

As part of the retreat, we were allocated jobs.

My ego bristled at the thought that I was sweeping floors and peeling potatoes. Part of me believed I was above it, which was interesting in itself. At first, I began attacking the work as I would my business—intensely, so I could move on to the next thing.

But there was nowhere to go. If I finished, there'd just be another task.

So I slowed down.

I swept elegantly, enjoying the sound and feel of bristles on the floor, refusing to miss a speck of dust. I turned vegetable prep into a game, tapping the knife at a pleasing rhythm, playing with techniques to create the best cuts.

I found myself genuinely enjoying the simplicity of effort without expectation.

And I wondered: why can't work outside feel like this?

Immediately, my mind grasped at reasons. Business is serious, writing is my dream, and accomplishment is important.

But the more I reflected, the more I realised I was scared.

Scared of failing.

Scared of not being someone special.

Scared of not becoming a writer worth reading.

The irony?

I could see clearly that rushing would create the thing I feared. Quality and a commitment to your craft are what pay off most in the long run. Plus, I want to build things I am proud of, and for that, you must fall in love with the process—not rush through an endless to-do list.

What I realised:

The reward for work is more work.

So you might as well reward yourself by doing the best work you can. This is a killer feedback loop.

But I became aware that a flawed side of me salivated at the idea of doing things right.

The cost of perfection

After having surgery for a brain tumour and a broken neck at 18, I vowed not to live on autopilot—it is a terrible waste of life to live lukewarm.

That vow was made with good intentions.

But somewhere along the way, I'd become so obsessed with getting life 'right' that I was living it wrong.

I was chasing perfection. In my business. In my relationship. In myself.

This has led to an incredible amount of pressure.

During the second day, I slowly realised that lurking underneath my vow was a scared little boy who experienced a total lack of control. Being told you might die before you’ve lived is f**king terrifying. And since then, I have built an uncanny skill (and addiction) to predicting outcomes. I called it optimisation—running toward a good life. But really, I was running away from reliving an old pain.

During an afternoon guided meditation, I visualised child-Kieran. I reassured him that we’ve got this. That we have nothing to worry about. I appreciate it sounds weird to speak to your kid self, but damn it is powerful.

As I had this conversation, an idea slipped into my mind:

The fear of wasting your life is stopping you from truly living it.

The present moment is all that counts.

The third day was the most profound.

What I got wrong

I woke feeling more refreshed and relaxed.

After wrapping up 2 hours of yoga and meditation, I walked through the countryside and tried once again to bring up the same three problems.

Instead of my usual response—brow furrowing, hands clenching, shallow breath—I found an easy welcoming.

And within that, I noticed the truth:

The only problem I truly had was a problem of perspective.

I was looking at life as if there was something fundamentally wrong.

Like I had to improve my business. Had to improve my relationship. Had to decide the best path.

I was running on a list of ‘shoulds’. But I never signed up to this perspective.

In fact, I know it is completely wrong.

5 years ago, I would've killed for these problems.

When I was a dentist, I never believed I could change careers. Let alone be a writer. It took 13 months to get my first 1,000 followers. It took 18 months to make my first digital dollar.

And now here I was: living in South America, with a beautiful, kind, and sweet girlfriend, speaking Spanish, writing a book, learning incredible things, with an audience 30x bigger than my hometown, with readers willing to give me their trust and attention, and a calendar completely under my control.

If dentist Kieran could see me now, he'd think one thing:

What a f**king badass.

But there is nothing badass about seeing threats behind every uncertainty. It is just a reflection that you aren’t seeing the world clearly.

My body felt incredible when I decided that all I truly want is to approach my life with a smile on my face, a spring in my step.

I came back from that walk with another important principle:

Gratitude as a baseline.

Not gratitude as a thing you practice in the morning and forget. But gratitude as the default operating position. Because this is a reflection of reality. The fact that we are alive and well and born in such a great time is amazing.

When you are grateful, you stop seeing life as a field of shit and start seeing it as fertile ground where things can grow.

I came back to Buenos Aires without the list of solutions I was looking for.

Not because the retreat wasn’t effective.

But because there were no real problems after all.

The level of clarity, calm, and connection I’ve felt since have been fantastic. I have so much enthusiasm for my work, relationship, and life. Every decision feels so much simpler when you are not being your own worst enemy.

A clear mind is worth every minute of silence.

Hope this inspires you to meditate more,

Kieran

P.S.

With work, my plan is to give my book my best effort, run cohorts because I love working closer with people, and continue pursuing my curiosity. I don’t want to chase algorithms, so YouTube is just an extension of my writing.

With my relationship, Carolina and I are walking every evening and speaking English. It’s good fun, and she loves the idea of exploring more spiritual stuff. We’re reading books on the topic together.

With my location, I am going to bounce between the UK, South America, and South Africa for a few years. If I decide I want to become a UK resident again, then I will.

No problemos.