About me

Two worlds

My name is Miguel Guillén. Almost everyone calls me Mike.

From Monday to Friday I manage risk. I am the third generation of Grupo Metrópoli, an insurance and surety brokerage my grandfather founded more than sixty years ago. I read policies, negotiate with insurers, and answer the phone when something is truly on fire.

Several times a year I sit in ceremony. With medicine, with guides, with years of journey behind me. I have been in intensive meditation retreats in Asia and on Ayahuasca diets in the Amazon. My circle runs from business owners to healers.

I know how it sounds. An insurance broker who walks with medicine. It made me uncomfortable for years too. I didn't resolve it: I learned to inhabit it.

By day I reduce other people's uncertainty. In ceremony I am left alone with my own.

Why a falcon

The falcon sees the smallest movement from miles away without losing the whole landscape. That is the sight I write with: the tiny and the total in the same frame.

But a falcon can also stay up there its whole life. From there you see everything and touch nothing. The mind knows how to do that very well: circling at altitude, safe and starving, confusing watching with living.

That is why the falcon descends. Not because it doubts its wings: because what it seeks was never in the air. And when it descends, it doesn't go halfway.

The origin

Moments of Stillness wasn't born as a brand. It was born as a pause I gave myself in the middle of the noise: running a company, wanting to be better, never stopping.

I began writing for my team at Metrópoli. It was internal culture, nothing more. But every text brought me closer to something I couldn't yet name.

Without looking for it, I found a bridge back to myself. Today more than three thousand people read it every Friday.

What I do and what I don't

I don't teach. I don't guide. I don't sell formulas. There are no five steps and no proven method.

I don't offer theories: I offer my life as a sample. I am learning along the way, I am not ahead of anyone.

I write to remember who I am when everything speeds up. And in case it serves someone else.

Metrópoli

At Metrópoli we insure the peace of mind that does fit inside a policy: the assets, the company, the people. Sixty-two years, three generations, and the partner at the front of every account. When something happens, we don't say “check your contract”. We say: we're on our way.

Here I write about the other peace, the one no policy covers.