How Much Time Do You Spend “Inside” vs “Outside”

Hello Full Potential beings living their best life. How are you doing today?

I’m great. It’s been a gorgeous morning and I’ve been on track with my routine since 7. Just got out of the river, showered and feeling marvelous. So let’s dive right into it.

One of the things I have observed about myself over the last few days is that as I have a more optimized routine, timing each sequence with stop watch and all. I tend to DO A LOT that I have planned. And I as of late, I haven’t planned a lot of downtime.

All this doing, made me feel like I was burning out yesterday. So I took a break from everything and realized how much I was being outwardly focused in trying to control and manage everything in my external environment.

Ironically I was doing this so that I could ALLOW myself the spaciousness to fully relax and not need to RESPOND to everything!

I have ‘needed’ to clear all my messages, my inbox, my appointments, and have my mind map up to date in order to feel like I’m on top of things. I also need to know where everything is and be fully informed about the world (social media / news) to really know what’s going on ‘out there’. Perhaps also looking for any threats or anything I need to be concerned about and respond to.

All this before giving myself permission to relax. But funny enough, when I have gone through being aware of everything in order to relax, I feel so over-stimulated that I can’t relax! Could you relate?

Plus the moment I think I’ve reached a point where I can relax.. things keep changing so much that new stimuli enters my awareness. New messages pop up, new concerns need to be addressed. New meetings, new tasks, there’s no end in sight. But I keep telling myself there will be and THEN I can relax.

I get tempted by this ‘0 state’ vision where I’m not only at inbox 0 but I become aware of everything in the world in its entirety and I’m at stimuli 0 in the external world where I can finally be at peace to go within. Everything is perfectly controlled, balanced and taken care of.

So what I’m practicing now is just giving myself to relax first. To let go and realize I will never be in control of everything. To let the chaos wash over me like a wave. I am becoming disciplined about BREAKING OFF from the Stimuli to go within.. and timing myself to go for longer periods of time within.. a kind of trick that helps my brain feel like its being productive in something important.

Even if the world isn’t perfect on the outside (my belief), even if concerns need to be addressed. Even if there’s things calling for my attention and people will be upset that I didn’t respond to them instantly, I let go.

Letting go again and again.. I make it my mission to cultivate the peace on the inside first. I harness that curiosity that wants to know everything that’s going on ‘out there’ to go within and explore what’s ‘in here’.

I find that simply by closing my eyes and turning my awareness within for longer periods of time, things automatically start to happen. My mind automatically starts to relax.. I automatically start becoming more aware of my thoughts or tension in my body. And with a little more letting go, and a little more.. I get more settled. It becomes easier to let go. As time goes on I’m able to go even deeper.

It’s the initial convincing myself that it’s okay to let go, that’s the hardest part. That i can let go of the need for everything on the outside to be perfect.

Can you feel your own perfection in the chaos and handle any important things that need to be done and THEN go back into yourself? To cultivate being centered and at peace. You can return to this center frequently throughout the day to make it easier. Returning HOME as often as you remember, when you’re done with whatever you just needed to do. The ideal is being able to spend the maximum time you can going inwards.

In fact I believe one day when we recognize the true gift this is, we will spend an equal amount of time going inwards as we will exploring our outer world. This means 8 to 12 hours a day of going within, exploring our inner realm, exploring our dreams. Not just going to ‘sleep’ but with greater awareness of the subtle layers of ourselves, even in a waking state. Yes a kind of meditation, but also a rest, a relaxation and wakeful restfulness. And from this place the typical 8 hours of sleep wouldn’t even be necessary.

I’m curious to see how much sleep I actually require when I cultivate more of this restful inwardness, in my daily practice.

So that’s it for today. Break off from the external stimuli, spend less time on screens and more time going within. And I’ll see you on the other side *wink*