Insights from the Camino Walk 2019

Hi I am Dr. John Izzo and Greetings from Cape Fisterre in Spain on the Atlantic Coast, the traditional end of the Camino de Santiago, which I have been walking with this stick for almost a month now across the north of Spain with hundreds and hundreds of other fellow walkers and travelers from all faiths and from countries all over the world who walk for many different reasons.
This is my second time walking the Camino and ending this time Here in Cape Fisterre where the Europeans once believed this was the end of the world, when we believed the world was flat. Of course, we don't believe it's the end of the world anymore but it's still in a very enchanting and a beautiful place. And I wanted to just reflect for you about my experience over these last 25 days walking anywhere from 20 to 35 or 36 kilometers a day and two things have struck me.
The first is it has really reinforced for me the power of stepping back, slowing down. Of what happens when we simply take time to reflect. You know, we live in a society that doesn't really value reflection and slowing down. We're all about doing and acting and making sure we get a lot of things done. But what amazed me this time as it did last time was within just four days of walking and having time to myself. Within just four days I came to four powerful insights about my work and about my life, things that I'm gonna take home with me that will make a real difference for me.
And I started thinking, I wonder what would happen if we took more time for reflection. Took more time to step back. Took more time to be with ourselves and not so distracted by these devices and by all the things that distract us in our lives. The second thing of course that struck me over the last few weeks was these conversations I've had with these fellow people on this walk. Just yesterday a young traveler who I befriended, a 26 year old woman from Germany, a teacher, said to me Isn't it amazing here on the Camino how within just a few minutes with a stranger, we go deep? We have all these conversations about the frontiers of our lives and what we're struggling with and where we need to grow What's important to us and the meaning of our lives and the meaning of life? And they started thinking about how at home we often don't have those conversations. Real conversations. Conversations like, "What would make our relationship more profound?" "What would make this workplace better?" "What's the threshold that you're on in your life?" "And how can we help each other with those thresholds?" "What are we struggling with?" And I started thinking. what would happen if we had more of those conversations? in our life, in our relationships, in our workplaces.
So my challenge for you this month coming out of my walk of the Camino is first of all Spend more time with yourself. Spend more time to reflect. Get up one morning and just walk 10 miles and see what happens. Be silent. Be quiet. Turn the device off. Take time to just think, Where am I in my life? What's working? What isn't working? What do I want? What don't I want? Where do I need to go? The second thing is, let's have more deeper conversations with each other. Let's get beyond the surface What kind of society do we want to build? What kind of organization do we want to create? How could our relationship be more profound and more deep? Where does your meaning and purpose come from and how can you feed that in others? And so here on the Camino, whenever you meet someone, people traditionally say to you when they see you with this stick or, you know, walking with your backpack, and they say to you "Buen Camino". Buen, of course, means good in Spanish and Camino simply means way. And so it says good way. Have a good way and I want to wish you a good way and to me a good way means a life where we reflect, where we take time to think about where we're at and the thresholds of our lives. A good way is a time where we go deep with each other and have real conversations about our organization, about our society, about our lives and our relationships.
So I wish you a Buen Camino and I thank you for being a follower of my work. Buen Camino.

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Great video John, what an adventure it must have been.