“Cliches are cliches because they are true.” – Harsh Bhogle
Self-improvement, like all things, has many cliches. One of the longest-lasting, most prevailing self-help cliches is that everything you need is already inside you. That can come across as a slap in the face to someone who has experienced trauma and/or is currently experiencing mental-emotional suffering.
But if what we needed to live a life of fulfillment and contentment was outside of us, something that we could buy or consume, that would be the world’s most sought-after product. What’s the most valuable company in the world right now? Apple? Amazon? Are they selling a fulfilling life of purpose and contentment?
The path that we all must walk on our journey of personal development involves looking outside of ourselves initially. Just like learning to walk or ride a bike. We have to fall. This can hurt because it is often a metaphorical fall that brings us to self-help, personal development, and self-actualization knowledge in the first place.
“I already fell, I’m already hurt, I’m already broken…now you’re telling me I have to fall again?!”
No, I’m saying you’re going to fall way more than just one more time. I’m saying you’re going to fall so much your body is going to callous like if you were training for the military, martial arts, or pro wrestling.
There’s no getting around pain, no avoiding suffering, no matter how much we may initially wish it wasn’t that way. When we get to the other side, those of us who are lucky enough to live long enough to get to the other side, we always find that our pain and suffering were our greatest teachers and wisest guides. And they don’t point us out there, they point us back inside.
Now we do need external things to trigger awakening in my opinion. Trigger doesn’t have to be a dirty word regardless of what the last decade-plus of the white-privileged culture war in America may lead us all to believe.
My experience has taught me that positive external things can trigger an internal awakening, internal paradigm shift, or internal growth of one’s locus of control. Were those external things needed for me? Are they needed for you?
Well, we all have to walk our own path in this life. No two people experience life the same way. No magic pills, no cure-alls. What is external can serve as an aide or a salve or a push or a rail. But nothing external can create permanent change within us. If it was possible then that’s what Apple or Amazon or Walmart or Google would be selling.
So we have to do it alone because it has to come from within, but nothing great can be accomplished alone. So of course external factors play a role. They certainly have for me. But a personal trainer can’t make a person get into shape. A dietician can’t make someone eat healthy. A doctor or surgeon can’t give someone health or life.
So ultimately it comes back to us, over and over and over again until we pass on. We have to find and cultivate and grow abundance, grit, discipline, positivity, and all the ways we wish to see and live in the world from the inside out.
And like everything else in life, it’s not a one-time thing. We don’t sweep and mop the floor once and it stays clean forever. We don’t mow a lawn once and it stays trimmed forever. We don’t do our laundry once and we have clean clothes forever. We don’t lift weights once and stay strong and muscular forever. We don’t eat once and stay full forever. We don’t take one drink of water and stay hydrated forever.
…and the beat goes on…
It’s a lot. It really is. It never ends until our physical life ends. So if that’s how it is, and it is, then we really need to find within us that which can never be taken away, that which can never be exchanged for goods and services. We have to find it, we have to accept it, we have to cultivate it, we have to nurture it, we have to love it, we have to live it.
I never thought I’d be a walking talking writing new-age self-help stereotype but here I am. And I’d never want to go back.
I never want to go back to sleep. I do sometimes. Just because you awaken once doesn’t mean you stay awake forever. We slip, we fall backward, unconscious living and detrimental habits show up, and go on auto-pilot in the blink of an eye.
Then what? I awaken, tune in, pick myself up, dust myself off, and get back on my path. The inner path first, then the outer path of tasks, goals, etc.
But none of the external is possible without getting the internal aligned first. Don’t believe me? Take a look at the rich and famous. Take a real look, past the filters and Photoshop. Do they seem aligned? Do they seem content? Do they seem fulfilled? That’s why they need to be in public right? That’s why they need to be constantly, externally validated…because they’re so fulfilled and content…
Inside out. Internal to external. Otherwise, you’re going to find yourself perpetually upside down.
Anarchy Journal Constitutional 