Take the Next Step in Your Life, from the Inside-Out
We live in an inside-out world. Most people are living from the outside-in, which means they believe a certain outcome or circumstance outside of them is needed in order to rearrange or manipulate the thoughts and feelings that they have inside of them. This is just playing victim, and refusing to take control of what's happening in your mind and body.
Yes, you can feel wealthy without money. Yes, you can feel successful without accomplishing huge things. Yes, you can feel healthy while living inside of a diseased body. You can feel happiness while life is crumbling around you. But these will not remain in conflict for long. The truth is the lower level circumstances cannot sustain themselves when you maintain higher level feelings.
When you feel wealthy, successful, healthy, or happy with circumstances which are in direct conflict with the feeling, the feeling will eventually win. The internal feelings of wealth, success and happiness will most certainly bring forth circumstances which mirror the feeling.
In other words, when a human being feels wealthy while mired in financial poverty, it's just a matter of time before financial and material prosperity will begin to show up. We live in an inside-out world. But a majority of humans live as victims of their circumstances, instead of the masters of their inner world.
This is my first blog article of 2023, and in this article I want to provide a difference perspective, and some extremely useful tools which will help you take the next step from the inside-out.
Psychological Distance
When you are goal setting for the new year, you are creating an arbitrary distance between where you are and where you want to be in your life. You are the chooser of this distance. In essence, you are deciding to create a distance before you'll be satisfied.
There are two parts to the distance between here and your goals: the psychological distance and the tactical distance. The psychological distance creates an immediate sense of lack. In some cases goal setting creates a sense of worry, doubt, fear, insecurity, inadequacy, insignificance, or other internal conflict. In the absence of internal conflict there is clarity, confidence, courage, certainty, and commitment. Anything that disrupts these powerful conditions is the psychological distance to your goals.
I bet you often believe the major distance to your goals is in the tactical actions to achievement. But I have found that when the psychological distance is closed, the tactical part of achievement is easy and many times effortless and enjoyable.
In the exercises below, I have given you the tools you need to close the psychological distance to your goals. When you go all-in and do this work, you'll see that you'll crush your 2023 goals earlier in the year than you thought possible.
Exercise #1 is designed to help you understand what you want, #2 is designed to help you see who you need to become now in order to create what you want, and #3 is designed to help you close the psychological distance through the work of reprogramming your mind and body to a new reality.
This is the work of embodying the new you before the evidence appears. And trust me, when you do the work, your circumstances will change over time.
Exercise #1
What Do You Want to Create?
In your journal, answer these questions:
What do I want my physical, mental, and emotional health to look and feel like?
What do I want my business to look and feel like?
What do I want my financial circumstances to look and feel like?
What do I want my closest relationships to look and feel like?
What else do I want in my life not reflected above?
Exercise #2
Who Am I Becoming?
In your journal, answer these questions:
Imagine you are already the person who has created everything in exercise #1. What useful thoughts are predominantly in the mind of that version of you? (Make these thoughts empowering and only about you.)
Imagine you are already the person who has created everything in exercise #1. What useful emotions do you predominantly feel in that version of you? (Make these emotions empowering and only about you.)
Imagine you are already the person who has created everything in exercise #1. What useful words do you predominantly speak as that version of you? (Make these words empowering about yourself and others.)
Imagine you are already the person who has created everything in exercise #1. What courageous actions do you routinely take as that version of you? (Make these actions empowering, joyful, inspirational, and impactful to society.)
Exercises #1 and #2 are linked. The person you are becoming through your answers in exercises #2 naturally creates the outcomes in exercise #1. These exercises are designed to help you identify the version of you capable of creating the outcomes you desire.
Exercise #3
Shifting into Creation Mode
Review your answers to exercises #1 and #2, re-familiarizing yourself with who you are becoming, and the outcomes the new you naturally create.
With your eyes closed, slowly inhale through your nose and exhale through your mouth, allowing your body to relax and release any stress and tension in your body. The deeper you relax, the more effective this work.
After 2-3 minutes of relaxed breathing, bring the image of the person you are becoming to mind. Visualize your new levels of health, wealth, success, and relationships of your new life. Run a mental image of the new you operating in the new outcomes and circumstances noted in exercise #1.
After you settle into visualizing new outcomes, think the thoughts, feel the emotions, say the words (either out loud or in your mind), and continue to visualize yourself acting as you noted in exercise #2. See yourself as the new you with the new outcomes. The more real you make this new experience real now, the more impactful the effects of the work.
Spend 30-45 minutes engaged in visualizing the new you and the new outcomes. Repeat this work at least daily, and as many times a day as possible. The most impactful times per day are first thing in the morning after waking, and right before bed because those periods are when your subconscious is most accessible.
As you grow and attain higher levels of outcomes, refresh exercises #1 and #2, and then carry that work forth in exercise #3.
Steps #3 and #4 might feel awkward or like a lie at first, but that shows you the psychological distance to your new life and circumstances. The more you practice this work, the psychological distance will close, and the more your mind will accept the new you as already true.
Putting it all Together
This is the same work that helped me lose 100 lbs, put my marriage and family back together from chaos, and launch and grow a viable, profitable, impactful personal development business. When you do this work every day over a sustained period of time (months, not days or weeks), you will see circumstances begin to shift in your life.
By doing this work you will become more internally self-assured and self-empowered. Then as you take action toward your goals, you'll witness greater results than ever before. I'm excited to see you implement these tools, and I'm even more excited to see your entire life transform in a powerful way.
Just do the work, and let the results create themselves.