Wilderness Days: Why Saying “No” to the World Helps You Say “Yes” to Yourself

by Oli Anderson, Transformational Coach for Realness

Wilderness Days Allow You to Face Yourself and Life Head-on & Make the Unconscious Conscious

There’s a peculiar irony in modern life and it looks like this:

We’re surrounded by more convenience, more stimulation, and more opportunity than at any other point in human history but – despite all this – many of us feel restless, fragmented, and burned out.

It’s almost as though the busier we become, the further away we drift from ourselves.

The world applauds productivity, hustle, and action which means that the ‘busier‘ you are, the more ‘successful‘ you’re supposed to feel but – deep down – we know that being busy for the sake of being busy is often just a clever way of running away from the truth that leads to us becoming “human doings” rather than human beings.

That’s where the idea of Wilderness Days comes in:

A Wilderness Day is not about escaping life but about re-entering it on realer terms in order to accept it unconditionally and to learn from whatever life has to show us:

It’s about saying “no” to everything external for long enough to be able wander into the inner wilderness – of solitude, silence, and the unconscious mind – so that we can face what we’ve been avoiding and restore our flow into wholeness over fragmentation.

It might sound simple, but the act of deliberately withdrawing for a day is an antidote to the distractions, noise, and ceaseless productivity that the modern world demands from us.

Let’s dig a little deeper:

Wilderness Days: What We Cover in This Article

• Wilderness Days Allow You to Face Yourself and Life Head-on & Make the Unconscious Conscious
• The Trap of Being ‘Busy’: Real Work vs. Running Away
• Yin and Yang: The Forgotten Balance
• What Actually Is a Wilderness Day?
• My Own Wilderness Practice
• The Wilderness Within: Facing the Shadow
• The Benefits of Solitude and Stillness
• How to Take Your Own Wilderness Day
• The Wilderness Sweet Spot: Once a Month (At Least)
• The Real Point: Saying “Yes” to Wholeness

The Trap of Being ‘Busy’: Real Work vs. Running Away

Let’s be clear from the get-go:

There are two kinds of ‘busy’: ‘good’ busy and ‘bad’ busy.

Good busy happens when you’re working on your purpose, expanding into your realness, or creating something meaningful and it’s the kind of work that leaves you energised rather than drained because you’re in flow with something bigger than yourself.

Bad busy, on the other hand, is a form of distraction:

It’s when your diary is full but your soul is empty, when you’re doing tasks to avoid yourself, and when you’re filling every waking moment with noise so that you don’t have to listen to the silence that’s screaming for attention from within yourself.

The modern world actively encourages this second kind of busy because it equates productivity with worth and reward us for being constantly available, constantly posting, and constantly moving without actually moving forward or getting anywhere.

This is unfortunate because when when our lives tilt too far in the direction of busyness for the sake of itself then we lose sight of the real path we’re meant to walk.

The truth is is that growth doesn’t only come from doing:

Sometimes it comes from not-doing...and that’s exactly what a Wilderness Day is designed to restore.

Yin and Yang: The Forgotten Balance

The language of energy gives us another way to frame this:

Our day-to-day lives tend to be drenched in yang energy which is active, outwardly-focused, fast-moving, and linear. This kind of energy is necessary if we want to get results in life and it’s what allows us to achieve things, make progress, and build things.

But when yang is not balanced with yin which is stillness, reflection, inwardness, and rest then our nervous system burns out and we can start living in a perpetual forward lean, chasing one task after another without ever grounding ourselves.

A Wilderness Day is about deliberately tipping the scales back toward yin by switching off the motor of endless doing and dropping into the slower, deeper rhythms of being. In practice, that means solitude, silence, and simple presence with ourselves.

And while the idea may sound counter-cultural (because it is), that’s precisely why it’s so powerful because the world is not reality.

What Actually Is a Wilderness Day?

Put simply: a Wilderness Day is a day that you dedicate to solitude, stillness, and flow.

It doesn’t require a tent, a backpack, or a trek into the actual wilderness (though you’re welcome to take it there if you wish) – instead, the wilderness in question is the inner one: the Shadow Territory of your unconscious mind, the real emotions you’ve been avoiding, and the truths about yourself, the world, and reality that you’ve been too ‘busy’ to face.

In short, a Wilderness Day is a day where you say “no” to the world – no to commitments, no to screens, no to the pressure to be ‘productive’ – so that you can say “yes” to yourself.

There is no rigid plan required to dive into this kind of ‘wilderness’ – in fact, imposing a plan on a Wilderness Day is missing the point.

The essence is to allow whatever is real to surface:

That might mean journalling, resting, meditating, walking in nature, playing music, or simply sitting quietly with your thoughts.

There’s no right or wrong – only real or unreal.

My Own Wilderness Practice

For me, Wilderness Days tend to fall on Saturdays. After a week of coaching, writing, content creation, and the inevitable bustle of modern life, I need a deliberate reset and so on those days, I let myself step out of the current of the world and into the ocean of reality instead.

I might spend the morning reading a book that’s been waiting patiently on the shelf, pick up my guitar, or bake bread. I always do some kind of yin yoga in the evening and, sometimes I just journal and allow thoughts to spill onto paper unedited.

The important point is that it doesn’t really matter what I do:

What matters is that I am not forcing anything or filling the day with noise – I’m simply letting myself be guided by whatever feels real in that moment.

The result is always the same: I end the day grounded, balanced, and reconnected and it’s a bit like returning from a personal retreat but without having to leave home.

The Wilderness Within: Facing the Shadow

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: most of us spend our lives avoiding our own shadow.

The shadow is the ‘part’ of us that holds our repressed feelings, our inconvenient truths, our shame, and the memories we’d rather not look at.

Most of the time all of this ‘stuff’ is buried out of sight in the unconscious and so we can simply pretend that it isn’t important – this is why we can become human doings: because it’s easier to distract ourselves with activity than to sit still long enough for the unconscious to surface.

But a Wilderness Day invites exactly us to face the unconscious and allow it to become conscious (so we can become more integrated):

It’s not about wallowing – it’s about allowing and so, when we create space for silence, the unconscious naturally begins to reveal itself and emotions rise, insights emerge, and what has been avoided can finally be faced.

This is where integration happens:

Instead of living fragmented lives – half in truth, half in avoidance – we start to gather ourselves back into wholeness and the foundation of our own realness.

As Blaise Pascal famously said: “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”

A Wilderness Day is one way of becoming part of the solution instead of contributing to the problem.

The Benefits of Solitude and Stillness

Why put yourself through this, though? Why not just keep grinding, stay ‘busy’, and keep distracting yourself like everyone else?

Well, basically, because the rewards of a Wilderness Day are immense:

1. Grounding: You reconnect with your body, your breath, and your real self.
   
   
2. Clarity: When the noise dies down, inspiration emerges and see your life with fresh eyes and ideas for your way forward.
   
   
3. Integration: You process the emotions and thoughts that were buried down there under all that busyness and so you become less divided within yourself and more energised.
   
   
4. Creativity: Stillness clears space for new ideas to arise and some of the best breakthroughs of your life will come after a Wilderness Day.
   
   
5. Presence. By becoming more real with yourself, you become more real with others, because relationships deepen when you’re not running away.

In short: solitude makes you more human and more real.

How to Take Your Own Wilderness Day

Here’s the good news: you don’t need to fly to Bali or book a luxury retreat to do this – you can start this Saturday if you want.

Here are some practical steps:

1. Block out the day: Treat it with reverence. Put it in your diary and say “no” to social plans, chores, and distractions. This is non-negotiable time for you.
   
   
2. Switch off the noise: Ideally, keep your phone off or on airplane mode. Disconnect from emails, social media, and news. The world can wait.
   
   
3. Create solitude: Spend the day alone if possible – if you live with others, explain what you’re doing and carve out private space.
   
   
4. Let go of agendas: Don’t plan every hour (or even really have a plan at all) – the whole point is to allow flow, not to recreate your busy schedule in quieter clothes.
   
   
5. Do what feels real: Journal. Meditate. Walk. Nap. Stretch. Read. Cook. Play music. There’s no checklist and the only guide is your intuition.
   
   
6. Face what arises: If emotions surface, don’t push them down; if boredom creeps in, sit with it. The wilderness is not always comfortable, but it is always worthwhile and you will be stronger in the long-run for facing it.
   
   
7. Reflect afterwards: At the end of the day, jot down any insights you’ve picked up in the wilderness and notice how you feel. More often than not, you’ll find a sense of peace you didn’t realise you were missing.

Check out my book Trust: A Manual in Becoming the Void, Building Flow, and Finding Peace if you’re ready to go deeper into wholeness and to build a solid foundation of realness in your life.

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The Wilderness Sweet Spot: Once a Month (At Least)

One Wilderness Day here and there will help for sure but the real magic happens when you make it a practice.

Ideally, aim for at least one a month and think of it as essential maintenance for your soul:

Just as you wouldn’t drive a car endlessly without stopping for fuel or a service, you shouldn’t drive yourself through life endlessly without pausing to refuel inwardly.

Personally, I find a weekly Wilderness Day keeps me balanced but you may find monthly is enough – the frequency matters less than the consistency and what matters most is that you honour it.

The Real Point: Saying “Yes” to Wholeness

At its core, a Wilderness Day is not about retreating from life but about returning to it more whole – it’s not about avoiding responsibility but about remembering who you are beneath the surface of everything that seems ‘familiar’ to you.

When you strip away the busyness, the distractions, and the noise, you come back to something far more valuable: your REALNESS.

And once you’ve reconnected with that, everything else – your work, your relationships, your sense of purpose – flows with more authenticity and power (because the only power we have is in being real).

So the next time you feel yourself drowning in busyness, or numbing yourself with productivity, remember this:

Sometimes, the most productive thing you can do is sit quietly in your own company and let life catch up with you.

That’s the gift of a Wilderness Day.

Stay real out there,

P.S. If you’re committed to growing more real in life and taking action that allows you to flow with life then book a free coaching call with me and I’ll get you moving. Guaranteed.

Trust: A Manual for Becoming the Void, Building Flow, and Finding Peace is a book about learning to return to your realness by cultivating trust in yourself and trust in life.

It contains practical exercises and dedicated meditations (Transformational Bridges) to take you DEEP in knowing yourself and life.

This book will answer many of the questions you have growing REAL and flowing towards wholeness. It covers everything from shame to addiction to the unconscious mind and synchronicity (and way more).

Personal Revolutions: A Short Course in Realness is a book designed to help you look at your life from the inside-out so that you can stop holding yourself back and go get what you really want. 

It contains 166 practical ‘Revolutions’ for awareness and over 8,000 Self-Guidance Questions for you to uncover new insight about yourself, the world, and reality that you can translate into action and start building your real life on the realest possible foundation.

Shadow Life is an exploration of the human shadow and the hidden side of our personalities. It looks at the masks we wear, where these masks come from, and how we can take them off.

The book explores how we can better manage our relationships with shame, guilt, and trauma in order to remove the Mask that the world has asked us to wear (and that we forgot we were wearing) so we can live an authentic life with less drama, chaos, or BS whilst we’re still around.

The Flow Builder Journal has everything you need to make the next 21-weeks of your life a turning point.

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Download EGO/SHADOW/TRUST - a free guide to transformation that will walk you through the vital stages of Awareness, Acceptance, and Action with practical strategies to implement right away.

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