One of the biggest lies midlife guys tell themselves is that they don’t have time to think. Not for an hour. Not for a day. Definitely not for a 23-hour drive across the country. But most of us don’t actually have a time problem. We have a noise problem. Every open space gets filled immediately. Phone calls. Podcasts. Emails. Group texts. Scrolling. Consuming. Reacting. We move from one obligation to the next without ever sitting still long enough to ask ourselves a simple question: 

Do I even like the direction I’m heading?

I realized that somewhere on I-10 West, driving alone from Houston to Los Angeles to bring my son Harper a car for the summer.

Harper just finished his freshman year at Loyola Marymount and has officially become a California kid and I love it for him. He got a summer job out there and wanted to stay in LA, which meant he needed a car. Because of California registration and insurance laws for a 19-year-old, it made more sense to buy the car in Texas, put him on my insurance, and drive it out myself. So that’s what I’m doing.

And somewhere between Phoenix and the Pacific, I realized this drive was giving me something I hadn’t had in a long time: space. Not productivity. Not content. Not optimization. Just good old fashioned empty time and space. No meetings. No coaching calls. No bouncing between projects. No rushing through another airport. Just me, the road, and enough quiet to actually hear my own thoughts again.

I think midlife men underestimate how badly we need that. Not necessarily a vacation or a retreat or even “alone time”. Just moments where we stop filling every available inch of our lives with noise. Stillness doesn’t happen by default or by accident. You have to choose it. It’s an intentional decision.

I forgot to get gas the night before I left, so I pulled out of a station around 4:51AM near my house and there’s something different about being on the road that early. The people out there at that hour aren’t wandering around killing time. They’re headed somewhere. There’s purpose in the air before sunrise.

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It reminded me of a Navy SEAL activation I did years ago at one of those performance weekends. We were up before dawn, freezing cold, exhausted, standing in the dark on a closed naval base near the water. One of the instructors kept saying the same thing over and over: “Just get to the sunrise.”

That became the whole mission. Don’t think about anything else. Just keep moving until the light shows up. And when it finally did, everything changed. The conditions didn’t magically improve. I was still cold and wet. But mentally, it felt different. Lighter. Safer. More hopeful.

A lot of guys reading this right now are probably in their own version of darkness. Burned out. Frustrated. Unsure if all the work is worth it anymore. The message is still the same: get to the sunrise. Keep moving. Keep stacking days. Keep heading toward something better, even if you can’t fully see it yet.

What’s important to know is that nothing about this trip is random. The drive, the rental in LA, the time with my boys, the logistics, all of it was planned months ago inside my MAP, my Midlife Action Plan. 

Family is the top priority in my life, so I treat it that way. It’s not just something I say in this column or when I’m interviewed. I build my calendar and finances around it. Last week we were in Colorado for my son Auden’s graduation. This month I’m spending several weeks in LA with Harper. Kate and I rented a place. Harper gets my car until mid-June. It’s all part of the plan.

And that’s what most guys are missing. A plan doesn’t motivate you, it helps you operate. A plan helps you to act. Because motivation follows action, not the other way around. 

Once you decide what matters most, life gets simpler because you stop negotiating with yourself every day. The hard part usually isn’t the work. It’s the constant indecision. If family matters, put it on the calendar. If your health matters, train. If you want more freedom, manage your finances accordingly. Your life gets clearer when your actions actually match your priorities.

The other thing this drive reminded me of is how obsessed midlife guys have become with efficiency (I’m guilty of this myself and you think about a lot of shit when you’re driving for hours). Fastest route. Quickest result. Highest ROI. We’re constantly trying to optimize our lives into submission. But sometimes the scenic route gives you something the direct route never could.

Years ago during COVID, I wrote about taking the back roads. About how the shortest path isn’t always the best one. This drive feels like that. Technically, I’m on I-10 the entire way, but parts of it feel almost surreal. Huge open skies. Desert mountains. Miles where there’s nothing to do except think. And that’s been the gift.

The more time I spend out here, the more convinced I become that most midlife men actually have far more control over their lives than they think they do. You control your fitness. You control what you eat. You control how you spend your time. You control the standards you live by. You control whether you stay stuck in mediocrity or start building something better.

Business has variables. Markets shift. Clients leave. Things happen. But your personal life, your habits, your standards, those are largely in your hands. That realization is empowering once you stop pretending otherwise.

Somewhere between Phoenix and Los Angeles, I could feel my energy picking back up. Not in some spiritual, woo woo “find yourself in the desert” kind of way. Just clarity. The feeling that I’m moving in the right direction personally, professionally, and as a father.

Bring your son the car. Take the extra time. Make the inconvenient choice once in a while. And more importantly, give yourself enough quiet to figure out what success actually looks like for you in this chapter of life.

Because if you don’t define it for yourself, somebody else will.

In Health, 

Greg Scheinman

Founder, Midlife Male

Husband. Father. Entrepreneur. Coach.

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