The Lonely Chapter: The Gap Between Who You Were and Who You’re Becoming That Nobody Warns About

Speaker: [00:00:00] There’s a chapter of personal growth that nobody warns you about. It’s not because it’s rare, but it’s uncomfortable to talk about, like really, really kind of uncomfortable to talk about. It’s the chapter where you’ve outgrown your old way of life, but you haven’t quite built that new one you’re aiming for yet.

You don’t quite fit where you were, but you don’t belong where you’re going just yet. That space between feels well, awkward, lonely, quite honestly, a little miserable. And here’s the part nobody puts on Instagram. This is the chapter where most people actually quit if growth feels heavier than it should right now, this episode’s for you.

Let me give you a win right out the gate, just in case you are thinking about leaving. Loneliness during [00:01:00] growth is not a sign that you’re failing. It’s a sign that you’ve already changed. Now, if that’s all you wanted, you can take it or leave it, but I promise there’s a lot more because if the old jokes don’t land anymore, if the old habits don’t quite hit the same.

If conversation feels like you’re speaking a different language, it’s not because you’re becoming arrogant. That’s you becoming incompatible with who you used to be. You didn’t lose your way. You just kind of outgrew the container you were in. I wanna anchor this before we go any further because everything else is gonna hang on.

This growth always creates a gap, and that gap always, always feels lonely. The problem isn’t the gap. The problem is no one told you it was part of the deal, [00:02:00] and so you haven’t habit of kind of backing off when you get there. Now guys, stay with me. We’re gonna unpack this, we’re gonna break it down how you get through the gap and keep going even when it feels lonely and difficult because you are well on your way at that point, right after this word from our sponsor.

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Go to MyPillow right now. Get better sleep and it will improve every factor of your life. Now let’s get back to the show, the Driven 2 Thrive broadcast purpose, growth, and lasting impact for men, helping men go from living to thriving, purpose-filled intentional lives. Welcome to the Driven 2 Thrive broadcast where men learn to lead themselves, their families, and their world with purpose, [00:04:00] growth, and lasting impact.

I’m your host, Brent Dowlen, and this show exists to help men gain clarity, ownership, and purpose. Not through motivation, but through honest conversations about what it actually takes to build a meaningful life. Now, I missed you guys last week, but I took a week off for Christmas. I wasn’t originally planning to, but I thought, you know what?

I haven’t taken a week off in a long time and I just, I’m gonna spend the week with my family and I hope you guys gotta spend your Christmas week with loved ones as well. Thanks for that grace. This is the Season six finale, and today we’re talking about a chapter. Most men enter quietly and almost nobody stays in long enough to truly understand the lonely chapter.

Now, a lot of us have heard that frequently you’re only one or two steps off real progress, right? It feels like you’re not going anywhere, and it’s just. It’s [00:05:00] only a step or two away. You just gotta get to that next step. Well, as we dive in today, know if your growth feels quiet, misunderstood, unsupported right now.

I bet a lot of you have been there. I know I have. The truth is, you’re probably doing real work. Real change rarely feels powerful. It actually usually feels very inconvenient. The work that changes your life rarely announces itself. Let’s zoom out for a second. Look, see? See every major life change.

Quitting drinking, changing careers, deepening your faith. Getting serious about your health has a phase where that old identity dies and it hop happens before the new one is actually stable enough to stand on its own. This is a really uncomfortable place. Psychologists called this identity as limbo.

Faith calls it the wilderness. The [00:06:00] stoics called it the proving grounds, different language, same reality. The fact is it gets really, really lonely really easily because you may have outgrown some of the people you spend time with. You don’t spend your evenings with the friends the way you used to playing Xbox.

Instead, you go to the gym, so that’s what you wanna talk about while they’re still playing Xbox. Not necessarily bad friends. You are in different places. That’s just reality, and that gets really, really difficult to manage because you get to feel where you’re just out on a limb on your own. And the people who liked you the way they were, they’re trying to pull you back.

They don’t wanna see you change, but you haven’t actually connected with the new crowd that’s going to support you in this new journey yet. Now let’s zoom back in. Okay. Growth feels lonely. Because your brain is a prediction machine, what it really likes at a neurological level [00:07:00] is familiar routines, predictable report rewards, social validation.

When you change your patterns, your environment, or your identity, your brain loses that reliable feedback. There’s no dopamine hits. No good job. No certainty. Your brain loves homeostasis, guys. It likes to keep you where you are. ’cause change is scary and your brain’s job is to keep you alive. The brain starts whispering.

Are we sure this is working well? Here’s the trap most men fall into, they mistake discomfort for danger. Often it’s just novelty without the validation. Yet, growth feels lonely because, not because it’s wrong. But because your nervous system hasn’t caught up yet, it takes it longer to rewire than the idea that you’re chasing.

Lemme give you something practical here, okay? Because insight without application just turns the [00:08:00] noise, and we’re all about application here, and actually giving you real tools normalize something before you optimize it. For the next seven days, I want you to stop asking, is this working? And start asking.

Is this expected? Here’s what that looks like. Okay? When something feels awkward, don’t fix it. Label it. When doubt shows up, don’t argue with it. Don’t justify. Just notice it when loneliness creeps in. Don’t escape it. I know that’s really hard, but name it. Literally say. This is my nervous system adjusting.

I’m not a sign, I’m failing. Just adjusting awareness calms your brain faster than reassurance. This keeps you from self-sabotaging, something that just hasn’t stabilized or taken yet. [00:09:00] All right, zoom back out would be again real quick guys. If certainty was required before action, almost nobody would ever change their life.

Let that sink in for a minute. Certainty being required before action. Nothing ever changes. That’s just how that would work. Growth always begins without proof. That’s why it’s hard. Now, let’s, let’s come back in. There’s something, the Bible calls this time period, and that’s the wilderness. And guys, I’ve had.

Literally years of my life where I felt like I was in the wilderness, like I was just drifting, like I didn’t know where I was going. Completely just aimless and wondering. It was like, okay, what’s going on? What am I supposed to be doing? Am I just like it? It was hard. It was really, really difficult for me [00:10:00] during that time period.

Faith traditions have always understood this better than modern self help. Scripture doesn’t skip the lonely chapters. Moses didn’t go straight from calling to clarity. David didn’t go from anointing to the throne. Jesus didn’t skip the wilderness. Not because they were failing, but because they were being prepared.

The wilderness is one of the hardest places to be. It can feel endless. It can make you feel stuck. It can make you doubt yourself. I know all about that one. It can make you doubt the plan. The wilderness strips away false confidences, so real trust can grow. The only chapter isn’t where faith disappears, gentlemen.

It’s where faith becomes necessary. If it was easy, everybody would have it down. [00:11:00] If the refining process. It was painless. No one would fight it. So let’s make another shift. Will we? Let’s shift from asking when to asking who, right. This faith application is about isn’t about doing more, it’s about trusting differently instead of praying, when does this get easier?

Try praying. Who am I becoming? While this is hard? Then try this once a day. Write down one way This season is strengthening you. Maybe you are growing your patience or your discernment. Maybe you’re becoming more humble. Maybe you’re becoming more dependent on God, or maybe you’re growing in your self-control.

The wilderness doesn’t give answers. It gives formation. This reframes waiting as an [00:12:00] active preparation. Instead of a passive suffering, which it’s a lot harder to deal with now, faith doesn’t promise clarity on the timeline. It promises meaning in the process. Let’s be really clear. A lot of people get lost in what’s promised through faith in the Bible, but you know what’s not promised, things being easy.

Things happening fast on my time, things being really clear. Massive success as defined by society. All the answers, none of it’s promised in the Bible. None of that’s guaranteed. So understand when you’re going through the wilderness, there’s a lot in the Bible that’s gonna carry you through. If you trust in God, if you strong your faith, but it isn’t going to be.

Super simple or the way you [00:13:00] think you should go. Now let’s dive into one of the big issues you’re gonna face, and that’s resisting the urge to regress. The stoics understood something brutal and honest. The world poured pulls you towards average. I mean, say that again. The world society, your friends around you will pull you towards average.

Especially if you have the wrong friends, it will pull you towards comfort. It’ll pull you towards familiarity. Your brain really wants that, and it will pull you towards what requires the least struggle and offers the least resistance. A Israelis warned that most people don’t abandon the harder path because it’s wrong.

They abandon it because it’s lonely growth. That costs energy, discipline, uh, that costs comfort [00:14:00] being different, that cost approval, which our society’s really big into these days. When that cost isn’t repaid immediately going back is tempting. It feels familiar, it’s warm, it’s comfy. My daughter just got a new blanket for Christmas.

She already has lots of blankets on her bed, but she wanted one that she cut up with. She always steals my wife’s blanket that she keeps on the couch. So she got this new blanket for Christmas and she already is in love with the blanket from day, from from the get go. She just loves it, right? Why? It’s warm, it’s comfy, it’s soft.

She curls up in it and she doesn’t want to go anywhere that. It’s what your brain wants. That is what you want to go back to when things get difficult. That comfort regression always feels [00:15:00] like relief in the short term. The stomach cancer wasn’t motivation, guys. It was endurance. Do the work. Do the work without applause, do the work without the certainty, do the work without needing to explain yourself.

It’s really, really counterculture to what people are trying to say today. Stoicism isn’t about being tough, it’s about being deliberate. It’s about being intentional. So try this to help you this week with the no regression rule. Pick one behavior. You’re just not allowed to go back to period.in No matter what.

No matter how uncomfortable, no matter how difficult growth feels, no matter what the whiny situation that is nagging at you, you’re like, oh, this is so hard. Guys, we’re heading towards New Year’s [00:16:00] resolutions. Please don’t be one of those people. If you wanna change your life, change your life. Don’t wait for the New Year’s, don’t wait for resolution.

They all fail anyway. As a longtime avid gym goer, I get a kick out of it every year, but don’t wait for that one behavior you’re not allowed to regress on no matter what. Maybe it’s drinking to fit in. Maybe it’s late night scrolling. On that cell phone when you feel lonely. Yeah, that’s a real popular one these days.

I know. That’s one I struggle with. Maybe it’s complaining to people who don’t support your direction. Maybe this one’s hard to get away from. It’s seeking validation from old circles. Maybe it’s something totally different. Write it down. Even when this feels [00:17:00] lonely, I don’t go back to filling your blank.

Pick your thing guys. Whatever it is, draw a line in the sand plant your flag. Discipline isn’t doing what’s hard. It’s refusing what’s easy and destructive. It create. This creates a floor. It’s not a ceiling. You don’t have to win. You just don’t retreat. If you don’t retreat long enough, that floor keeps rising.

And that’s something we’ve talked about on the podcast before, raising your floor, not your Ceiling. Now real quick, this is exactly the kind of conversation we go deeper in on our Patreon podcast behind Close mics. That’s the Patreon side of this work where we talk honestly about the stuff men usually don’t say out loud, the doubts, the second guessing.

The lonely middle ground. If you want to check out those unfiltered conversations, that’s [00:18:00] where they live. patreon.com/the fallible man. Check out what we’ve got going on over there. If you’re the kind of person who likes that behind the scenes and the totally unfiltered things like can’t say on air or just don’t talk about on this show, that’s where you wanna check us out.

Now let’s wind back into this conversation. The reason we have those conversations behind closed doors is because this chapter is deeply personal. It’s internal, it’s quiet. It’s the stuff you wrestle with when nobody’s watching and you don’t really want somebody knowing about. But zoom back out for a second.

One of the most thing dangerous things about the Lonely chapter is that it feels unique. Like you’re the only one walking through it. That’s not true. It’s simply not the truth. This chapter shows up in every meaningful story we admire. We just don’t talk about that part most of the time. So let’s [00:19:00] ground this into some reality, right?

Let’s put some real names on it and let’s talk about the chapter. Nobody posts about thank Dwayne Johnson right now. I do appreciate that Dwayne Johnson has shared his story numerous times. His wife’s production book. Company is called Seven Bucks Production. We see the rock in all his glory, although not as much these days due to some health scares or whatever’s going on with them, but he’ll talk about it if you ask him.

But we don’t really focus on the years he was broke, depressed, cut from the CFL rebuilding from scratch. The story of Seven Bucks Productions is great if you haven’t heard that, guys, so you just check that out. Or maybe Matthew McConaughey right. Dude has got everything. Like he is the ladies man. I grew up in the right age group where he was the rom-com sweetheart.

Every woman was in love with him. The guys he walked away from rom-com fame [00:20:00] at the height of it, and he disappeared for almost two years. No guarantees, no applause. Just conviction. What about Michael Jordan? Any of us in Gen X or older probably know the story, but he was cut from varsity. Varsity. Let’s see if I can say that right.

Today. He was working alone. There were no cameras shooting. Shot after shot after shot. Practicing in a driveway, practicing in parks, driving himself forward. No one likes to talk about the building phase. No one likes to talk about the lonely chapter. The lonely chapter doesn’t trend on social media. It doesn’t sell.

It doesn’t look impressive because that’s what we want. Impressive, right? But it’s always there. Now, here’s where comparison usually kills mo, the momentum. So let’s use it correctly as we talk about application here. [00:21:00] Pick one person that you admire, not to imitate their success, but to respect their timeline.

Then ask this. What did they walk away from? What did they endure quietly? How long were they invisible? I’m, I’m asking you to do a good old fashioned research paper. My children are in school and so they’re familiar with research papers and utterly hate them, but I want you to study the gap, not the highlight, and say this out loud if I wanted their outcome.

I must respect their unseen years. You can’t skip the chapter that made the person you admire possible. This turns envy into patience and patience into endurance. If you’re in the lonely chapter right now, hear this clearly. Don’t rush it [00:22:00] for God’s sake. Don’t numb it. Don’t abandon it. You’re not behind, you are not broken.

You are becoming, loneliness isn’t proof. You are off track. It’s often proof that you are early. The chapter doesn’t need to be conquered. It needs to be respected.

Let me land this with something simple as we head towards New Year’s and the end of 20, 25. Guys, maybe 20, 25 hasn’t gone the way you thought it would. Maybe you haven’t checked off all those goals you set at the beginning of 2025. Maybe you got way off. Or maybe you’ve been in this lonely chapter, wandering through the wilderness for a long time in 2025, [00:23:00] I can tell you personally, I had about four years where I was just wandering in the wilderness, guys.

I was going to work, I was doing the family thing, but I felt drifting and aimless and without purpose and completely lost. It was rebuilding. I didn’t know it at the time. Some years out of the wilderness and some hindsight to recognize it because it is hard. So maybe 2025 hasn’t been great. Maybe you’re really looking forward to 2026,

but understand this, if you are in the lonely chapter right now, your job isn’t to win. Your job is to stay consistent. Stay honest. Stay sober minded and stay in the work ’cause momentum. Momentum, if I can talk [00:24:00] right, is built quietly, long before is visible. Lemme say that again and think back to the stories you heard of Michael Jordan shooting hundreds of free throws every time after practice.

Momentum is built quietly long before it’s visible. If this episode put words to something that you’ve been carrying around quietly, stay close.

Season seven is gonna be all about navigating this train with clarity without losing yourself in the process. Making real progress in your life.

Guys, thanks for hanging out through season six. I look forward to an amazing season seven even more focused to serve you guys and to bring you more help, more support, more [00:25:00] tricks, more tips, more ways to actually make real progress in your life, to live the life of purpose that you’ve always wanted to and to thrive.

Everything you do as always, be better tomorrow because of what you do today, and we’ll see you in the new year. The Driven 2 Thrive broadcast purpose, growth, and lasting impact for men, helping men go from living to thriving, purpose-filled intentional lives. I.