Go A.L.O.N.E.: The Separation Season Guide for Finishing the Year on Purpose

A five-part framework for awareness, self-love, and real change when everyone else is coasting.

Separation Season is the time of year when the world seems to slow down. The days are shorter, the temperatures drop, and the holidays are in full swing.

None of that is necessarily bad—until it starts to impact your personal and professional goals in negative ways:

• Salespeople walk into the office and explain every deal with, “It’s slow,” and therefore behave slow.

• The lack of sunlight and pleasant temperatures makes exercise and time outdoors just uncomfortable enough to skip.

• A calendar filled with holiday parties and get-togethers provides ample opportunities to turn cheat meals into cheat weeks.

• Not to mention the emotional ups and downs that family can be, and the things we humans do to just cope and “get through it.”

We all deserve a bit of rest and relaxation.

But winter creates an environment where that R&R can become habit—habits that cause us to lose momentum and go on autopilot.

And unfortunately, autopilot is usually reactionary. It pulls us back into behaviors that don’t serve us or lead us toward being and becoming the person we want to be.

And so, Separation Season is for the people who refuse to let their environment dictate their life.

While everyone else lets the holidays and the winter lull them into a soft slumber, the Separators keep their edge, continue to push toward their goals, and stack massive gains over their competition and their old selves.

I have been the couch-surfing, binge-watching, slow-biz-accepting guy before.

That is not who I am today.

Because I know that the 2026 I’m looking to have—one that’s impactful and life-changing—is not going to be accomplished by waiting for the clock to strike midnight in 30-something days.

It starts today. It starts now.

And so it is time to separate.

From the person I’ve been. From the behaviors that don’t align with me at my best.

How?

I decided to answer this question in two parts—in two acronyms.

The first is an internal exploration. An introspection. A discovery and understanding of what must change.

To effectively separate, we must strategically and thoughtfully go A.L.O.N.E.

Power Acronym 206: A.L.O.N.E.

A — Awareness

If you’re ready to separate—from your competition, from environments that no longer serve you, and from the old version of yourself who’s ready for change—it begins with Awareness.

Imagine this: You’re blindfolded and taken deep into a massive theme park you’ve never visited. Before the blindfold comes off, every exit sign and every “You Are Here” map is removed.

How would you get out?

You’d feel lost. You’d feel overwhelmed.

And that’s exactly what it’s like when we move through life without an accurate assessment of where we are.

Without Awareness you’re the blind leading the blind—and the person you’re leading is yourself.

Humans have a unique ability: we can step outside ourselves and see our life from a second-person perspective. That’s power. But only if we use it.

So this is where Separation Season starts:

Step away from your regular rhythm.

Silence your phone.

Get out of the house if you need to.

Give yourself space to be with yourself long enough for the truth to rise.

What comes up?

Write it down.

Awareness forces you to see three things:

• Who you are

• Who you pretend to be

• and Who you’re becoming

And once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

Now take inventory. Honestly. Without judgment.

How are your energy levels?

(Physically. Mentally. Emotionally.)

How is your work?

(Financially. Purposefully. Fulfillment-wise.)

How are your relationships?

(Romantic. Family. Friends.)

This time of year is the perfect time to stop, look around, and say:

“This is where I am. And now I can decide where I’m going.”

L — Love

From the moment I heard this quote, it stuck with me:

“To say ‘I love you’ one must know first how to say the ‘I’. - Ayn Rand

If we don’t love ourselves, it’s much harder to give love to others. Going A.L.O.N.E. doesn’t mean you’re by yourself all the time. Yes, it’s important to do the introspective work on ourselves, but we humans thrive in community with others.

Love, in the context of A.L.O.N.E., is about how you treat yourself while you’re doing that work. It’s the tone of voice you use with yourself when you notice you’ve missed the mark.

One frame I’ve heard from a Heroic +1 is to “use data as a flashlight, not a hammer.”

That means when we become aware of something we need to work on, we don’t beat ourselves up over it. We don’t turn Awareness into another weapon against ourselves.

Instead, we shine the flashlight on it long enough to accept and understand it, and then we make a plan of action to course-correct.

That’s Love here: not letting yourself off the hook, and not putting your head on the chopping block either.

Think about it this way: If you talked to a friend the way you talk to yourself after a mistake, would they stick around?

O — Origin

The work of Awareness and Love is all in service of reframing your Origin story.

The act of Separation is just that: a story where you choose to stand alone, so you can eventually come back with something new to share. Joseph Campbell described it this way:

“A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: The hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.” ― Joseph Campbell, The Hero With a Thousand Faces

Like Frodo in The Lord of the Rings, you can be perfectly comfortable in your own Shire. But once you understand the stakes of staying, you have to decide whether you’ll leave.

So, how do you go about crafting your Origin story?

If Campbell gives us the mythic pattern, Brian and Gabrielle Bosche give us a practical way to name our story. In their book, The Purpose Factor, they list five types of Origin stories that you may find helpful when writing yours:

• The Loss Overcomer has experienced personal loss in life.

• The Betrayal Overcomer knows what it means to be used.

• The Failure Overcomer has experienced a self-inflicted failure.

• The Trauma Overcomer has experienced a deeply impactful trauma.

• The Rejection Overcomer has been pushed away by people they care about.

Now is the time to step into the role of the Overcomer and begin telling the sstory of how and why you are making the change.

What part of your Origin are you finally ready to own?

N — No

I’ve taken a handful of DiSC assessments in professional environments over the years, and they all typically peg me as high I/S—which essentially means I’m a connector in the context of a group. The “let’s connect, let’s get along, let’s find the win-win.” A mutual yes-machine.

I’ve found that wiring is great for relationships.

Terrible for boundaries.

My experience is that I will Yes myself into multiple competing commitments, which not only stresses me out, but also my wife and others—because my calendar, or my mind, is too full.

I’ve also found that Separation Season is less about implementing new habits and behaviors and more about saying “no” to the people, places, and things that don’t contribute to the vision you have for yourself.

I admit it: saying no is hard for me.

Thankfully, author and investor Tim Ferriss (with co-author Neil Strauss) is working on his first book in seven years called The No Book, and he’s been sharing several of the “chapters” on his blog. Tim hasn’t announced a release date for a physical book yet, but each “Step” for saying no is available for free.

If you struggle with how to say no, I highly recommend you check them out. They’re full of insight and practical exercises.

Here are three Steps to start with:

Step 1 - The Wilson Letter and Beyond

Step 2 - Big Rocks and The Nothing

Step 3 - Finding Big Rocks - The Past Year Review

“The only people offended by your boundaries are the ones who benefited from you not having any.” - Tim Ferriss

In Separation Season, No is how ALONE protects what Awareness, Love, and Origin have already started.

E — Emerge

Emerge is the moment your shoulders drop and you realize you’re no longer holding yourself back.

I recently heard a coach say, “Performance = Knowledge minus Leashes.”

You can have all the knowledge in the world, but if you’re still leashing yourself, it won’t help you. Think of the elephant in the zoo with a leash tied around its leg attached to a small post in the ground. The elephant is massive and powerful, but stuck because it believes it can’t break free.

Emerge isn’t a victory lap, however. It’s more like a kid who just took the training wheels off - still a little wobbly, but with a long road of uninhibited free riding ahead. If Awareness is seeing and Love is accepting, Emerge is walking with the quiet confidence of a new direction and new decisions.

The latin root of ‘decision’ literally means ‘to cut off.’ Decision is not just choosing; it’s cutting away what you’re not longer willing to be. But new decisions can be difficult to make, especially in stressful situations.

For me, stress feels like it rises up to my ears. That’s when the old escape hatches call the loudest: scrolling, smoking, snacks, drinking…anything to make the feeling go away. I’ve tried them all. They don’t work. They just mute the feeling for a while and tax your performance later. Emergence is choosing to feel it all instead of numbing out. It’s the moment you notice what the old you would have done…and you take one step beyond that person.

When you go A.L.O.N.E., you begin to own a new routine. Not a total life overhaul - just one meaningful change that shifts how you see everything else. For me, it was getting up early to journal, stopping nicotine, and swapping entertainment podcasts for music or focused education. You’ll know you’re starting to emerge when you catch yourself not doing something you used to do automatically - and you don’t miss it.

Important reminder: There’s no glory or fanfare here.

Your internal transformation is for your own development, not external applause. It might feel small, repetitive, even pointless at times. That’s okay. The old me was more frantic than focused, more dependent than disciplined, more reactive than responsible. Emerge is the steady shift away from that old self toward someone who can carry the weight of who they’re becoming.

Go A.L.O.N.E.

If you fully commit to a personal Separation Season, you’re starting to become the type of person who accepts and takes ownership of all you are and all you are not - and is ready to start doing something about it.

You’ve done the inner work; now you’re ready to live it out.

Start experimenting. What’s one thing you can stop doing? One thing you can say no to just for today?

In Part Two, APART, we’ll implement new actions and start new habits. ALONE is about who you are when no one’s watching. APART is about how you show up when they are.

Abraham Maslow said, “What one can be, one must be.” If that’s true, who must you be?

Know this: while you separate and practice A.L.O.N.E., you are not by yourself. At the very least, be encouraged that I’m rooting for you. And remember, there are family and friends who are looking forward to your emergence—they just don’t know it yet.

Power Acronym 207: A.P.A.R.T. will publish December 17.