Unplugged and Untethered: Colin O’Brady on The 12-Hour Walk

By Colin O'Brady / August 2, 2022 at 1:47 am

Debug Notice: No product response from API

We love the premise behind this book, that the key to unlocking your best life is through a solitary, 12-hour walk. This is clearly a different kind of personal growth book and one that ties into the hot topic of mind-body connection. Continue reading to find out about what inspired Colin O’Brady’s newest book and how one day unplugged has the potential to change your life.

The wind howled and whistled across the edges of my goggles. My hands throbbed in harmony with my elevated heart rate as I struggled to hold onto my poles. I was in the middle of Antarctica, completely alone and walking into a blizzard. And the temperature was -30 degrees Fahrenheit. The blowing ice crystals were stinging my face like a thousand needles and the cold air was burning my lungs with every breath. I was pulling a 375-pound sled toward the horizon in complete silence. For twelve hours every day for fifty-four days I continued until I reached the other side of the frozen continent. During those twelve-hour days of silence and solitude something inside of me changed. I’d never been more alone physically, and yet I’d never felt more connected to life, to my loved ones, to the world. Those twelve-hour days planted a seed in me that would change everything.

Two years later, COVID hit and initiated a lockdown across the world. I felt like many people: alone and disconnected from purpose and direction. In those quiet, isolated days at our family home on the Oregon coast, I thought back to my 2018 solo trek and the mileage I covered every day for nearly two months. Despite the harshness of the landscape and extreme solitude, I experienced many moments of deep flow, clarity, and fulfillment.

Then it hit me like the Antarctic wind I was remembering—an idea born from my eagerness to rediscover that inner strength I’d lost. I decided to go on a long walk. I put my phone on airplane mode and set out with no specific destination in mind.

Twelve hours later, I came home a different person from when I’d left. Being unplugged and untethered gave me the space to examine my limiting beliefs and reorient to living my best life. My mindset had shifted, my compass had recalibrated. On that Oregon coast day, the concept of the 12-Hour Walk was born.

But, the book I wrote, The 12-Hour Walk, isn’t about me, it’s about you. And no need to worry, you don’t have to walk 932 miles across Antarctica to experience the transformative power I did.

The 12-Hour Walk is a one-day prescription for purging yourself of limiting beliefs and proving that you do have the power to shift to a mindset of limitless possibilities.

What I’m asking you to do is simple: spend 12 hours outside, unplugged, walking alone. It’ll be a walking meditation for training your mind. No training necessary. No cost.

The best part? The 12-Hour Walk isn’t theoretical, it’s been sourced from my real-life experiences—challenges that range from walking across Antarctica solo to climbing Everest twice to rowing across the Drake Passage. The advice derives from actually having been in the arena—from failing, and falling, and getting scraped up along the way. It comes from wrestling with all of the same limiting beliefs you are dealing with but learning how to overcome them and thrive.

The reader, the person turning the page, is the hero of this story. I’m simply here to guide them as they take on a one-day journey that will change their life forever.

Join the global movement