Inspired by the Philosophize This! podcast, the concept of voluntary exile connects to the isolating yet rewarding pursuit of personal goals. By breaking away from distractions and social expectations, individuals in fitness or entrepreneurship forge new paths, emerging transformed with skills, resilience, and purpose.
There’s a podcast called Philosophize This! hosted by Stephen West that breaks down big ideas from philosophy in a way that actually makes sense. It’s not academic or stuffy. Just a regular guy doing a ton of research and explaining things clearly so anyone can follow. One of the episodes covers Albert Camus and the idea of exile. Not the physical kind, like being taken from your homeland and sent to a remote location (like a penal colony), but the kind where you separate yourself from the world to try and figure something out. It’s not punishment. It’s not even dramatic. It’s a choice. You step back, spend time alone, and work through something because you feel like you have to.
This concept not only makes sense, but it’s also real based on my actual experience. Because you see it all the time, especially in fitness and business.
Someone decides to change how they eat, and suddenly certain things get weird. Surprisingly, even with their friends. Like the decision to eat differently is a personal judgment against everyone else. Or they start drinking less, and people start asking if something’s wrong. The same thing happens when someone finally decides to exercise. Maybe they pick up CrossFit or Jiu-Jitsu or something else that requires real commitment, and the people who don’t do anything are the first to say it’s too intense or risky or unnecessary.
Doing both at the same time is borderline intervention worthy.
There's obviously nothing wrong with eating healthy and exercising. It just happens to be counter to the way the world is these days.
It’s not just fitness either. It shows up in our work lives too. Especially when you're starting a new business or building something from the ground up like a startup. You stop doing the usual things. You start doing things you've never done and going places you've never gone. You read books no one around you is reading. You spend nights and weekends figuring out problems that don’t have obvious answers. And in many cases, you're working on something that isn’t making any money yet and maybe never will. But you feel like you have to do it anyway.
To the outside world, it can look like you're pulling away. But really, you're just trying to get somewhere new and seemingly out of reach, even to your closest friends. And to do that, sometimes you have to go off alone.
Exile means doing less of what society tells us is normal, fewer distractions, fewer easy choices. It means getting serious about your health or your work or whatever it is you're trying to change. And yeah, that usually means time away from the normal stuff. Friends might not understand. Family might ask what’s going on. But that doesn’t mean you're doing the wrong thing.
What matters is what happens on the other side of that. When someone sticks with it, they come out changed. Maybe they lose weight, reverse some medical diagnosis, or just start feeling better. Maybe the business doesn’t take off, but now they’ve got skills, a stronger network, and actual experience. And if it does work, all of that effort adds up to something most people can't even imagine.
A lot of people in the Gym Force network are in that phase. They're not trying to be impressive. They're just trying to get better. That can feel isolating at first. But you're not lost. You're just doing something most people don’t have the patience or courage to do.
That’s what exile is. You go in one person. You come out another, usually a better version, not only for you, but also for the people who care about you most.