voluntary.constraint
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“Enough is a feast” - Buddhist Proverb
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The end of the year is a time for reflection and gratitude.
When I started sharing my journey openly, talking about my experiences and writing about my learnings I didn’t know if anyone would care.
I was ‘the venture capital guy’, ‘the tech guy’ or ‘the sales guy’ and I figured people would want me to stay in my lane: “go back to talking about go-to-market strategy, AI in sales or how to fundraise.”
But that’s not where my head (or heart) is right now…and I’ve learned, through all of you, that I’m not alone in wanting to explore the inner and outer world more deeply.
The idea behind this project remains the same:
Is it possible to help people wake-up before their wake-up call?
I think we’re all just in varying forms of waking up to our highest potential.
It’s not a linear process, there’s no scoreboard, there’s no winner and there’s no end.
Just a series of learning, remembering, forgetting and remembering again.
We can feel on top of the world or we can be suffering deeply, in both cases, sometimes we need a little help remembering.
Of course you cannot eliminate suffering from someone’s life, nor should you want to, suffering is a necessary tool for growth and change.
But perhaps by sharing more openly/honestly, we can shorten how long someone suffers (or ‘forgets’) before they decide to make a positive change in their life.
And through sharing ideas/practices that have worked for me/others who are on the other side of their wake-up call, we can give people the hope and tools to get through theirs.
We’re all on our own journey, I do my best to not give advice, I’ll never claim to have the answers but I will continue to share what’s working for me and the new ideas that I’m wrestling with.
Thank you all for supporting me in that mission this year.
Anyway, let’s get into it.
for.and.from.the.mind. 🧠
I was always in a rush to add things into my life.
More felt like progress.
Start a new venture. Learn a new skill. Build a new side hustle. Record more episodes. Add something to my morning routine. Spend more time in the gym. More responsibilities. More activities.
I just kept stacking and stacking until the load inevitably became unmanageable.
It took me stepping away from everything to finally comprehend what people actually meant by “addition by subtraction”.
You can gain more (time, focus, clarity, better results) by removing clutter, obligations or inefficiencies rather than adding more things.
Have you heard of The Ewing Theory?
The term was coined by sportswriter Bill Simmons who observed that the New York Knicks often played better when their star player, Patrick Ewing, was injured or sidelined.
Without Ewing, the rest of the team was forced to take on greater responsibility, come together and rise to the occasion.
This same idea can take place in our individual lives. Just as teams can flourish when their star player steps away, the human system can organize into a higher order when excess is removed.
Recently I wrote about my experience of practicing silence while I was in an Ashram in India (full piece here). By removing something as mission critical as speech, after a few days, I found that my critical thinking, connection to self and creativity exploded.
Which led me to analyze other areas of my life. What else could I remove?
Not analyzing in a way where I’m simply auditing my responsibilities/activities and removing the negative things or vices from my life. That’s just common sense.
But what happens if I remove (or limit) even perceived positive things in my life?
I never viewed talking, reading or writing as negative in any way and yet I saw a tremendous amount of positive benefit from giving them up for a short period of time while I was in silence.
When you stop distracting yourself through consuming new information, the act of just sitting on a park bench in the sun by yourself can feel like a holy experience.
Like many of the ideas that are finally hitting home for me, this concept is not new.
Voluntary constraint as a path to increased clarity, strength and aliveness has a long cross-cultural lineage of traditions across stoicism, buddhism, christianity, hinduism, judaism, islam, yoga/tantra, daoism, minimalism, etc.
You can find many examples throughout history of:
Restraint of Speech (Silence)
Sexual Restraint
Solitude & Withdrawal
Material Simplicity (voluntary poverty)
Sensory Deprivation/Reduction
Thought and Attention Discipline
Restraint of Food (Fasting)
For many of us, I believe more of our problems are caused by abundance than scarcity. When just about everything you need for survival is a click away, there aren’t many constraints in our life.
But we need constraints because constraints create contrast in our lives. That contrast is what allows appreciation to grow. And appreciation breeds meaning.
I think this is part of the reason we experience so much joy as children. There are built-in constraints in our lives that are unavoidable.
I remember being a kid, it’s Friday night, my dad has just picked me up from a friend’s house and we’re about to go to Blockbuster to pick out a movie to watch as a family accompanied by my mom’s famous homemade pizza. I am in absolute bliss. Why?
Yes, I enjoy a good movie. Yes, I like a good pizza. Yes, it feels good to be surrounded by family. But I don’t think that it’s just the set of circumstances that made it feel so special.
I can re-create the exact same set of circumstances with the same people now and it will not feel even close to the same. Is it that adults just naturally feel less joy? I don’t think so.
But as adults, we have much less constraints in our life. We can watch a new movie every day if we want. We can order a pizza any day of the week. We can bring our family together (or at least call/Facetime them) anytime.
As a kid you cannot do those things on command, so through constraint you feel the contrast between having those things and not having those things much more intensely. That contrast makes us appreciate those things a lot more. And when we fully appreciate something we create deeper meaning behind it.
Constraint can lead to deeper meaning.
Where in your life can you experiment with voluntary constraint?
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Due to coaching bandwidth this will be done on a first come, first serve basis. This will only take place in be available Jan/Feb, you can organize your free team session here.
for.and.from.the.soul. 🧘
for.and.from.the.body. 🫂
The final session of my three part Wellness Series is taking place next week. In my eyes, it’s the perfect way to kick off the new year with increased focus and clarity.
You can register for free here.
Attendee feedback:
“I honestly didn’t expect to feel that much from it but the way it was guided made it feel safe but still intense in a good way. I actually felt my whole body let go when we hit the deeper rounds. Came out feeling lighter”
“I feel so calm and focused.”
“That was so sick, such a great way to start the day.”
“That breathing session yesterday was amazing.”
Join us for our final visualization and breathwork session.
latest.podcast.episode 🎙
I’ve started dropping a few guided visualizations and meditations directly on the Wake Up Call podcast feed. These are meant to be interactive sessions that you can come back to and revisit anytime you need to increase your energy, clarity or focus.
Take twenty minutes out of your day to put your inner game first.
That’s all from me.
Enjoy the last forty eight hours of 2025 . Whether you’re new here or you’ve been rocking with me since the beginning, thank you.
It’s been a heck of a year…
Scott Barker
“Simplicity is the consequence of inner clarity”
— Eckhart Tolle
*To try to keep the integrity of this project, I don’t use AI for any copy-writing or proof-reading (only some research). I am a human, I write like a human and humans make grammar/spelling mistakes. Writing mistakes might not be around for much longer so I hope you enjoy them while you can :)