What If It’s Really All Inside Out
This week I’m at Fair Oak Farm in East Sussex on one of Ankush Jain’s Powerful Men’s Immersions. The photo above is of me with my amazing coach Ankush Jain and the equally amazing Erik Thureson.
Twelve men from the UK, USA, Canada, India, Germany, and Slovakia have stepped out of their lives for a week to be here. Eleven of them have been before. All of us are here to connect, grow, live better, and be better.
We’re four days in. It has been deep. It has been amazing. My mind has been blown again and again.
I’ve done a lot of personal development over the last twenty years, but these Immersions have been the most impactful experiences I’ve had … which is why this is my eighth.
One part of the week I always look forward to is our time with Dr Keith Blevens, a world-class psychologist and one of the leading teachers of the 3 Principles … a simple but profound understanding of how the mind works, first articulated by Sydney Banks over 50 years ago.
Keith has joined us on Zoom twice, answering questions about how our lives intersect with these principles.
Again and again, he’s pointed us back to this core idea:
Our experience is created from the inside out.
The feelings we have about our circumstances are not caused by the circumstances … they’re caused by our thinking about the circumstances.
As Michael Neill once said: “We are only ever living in the feeling of our thinking, not the feeling of our circumstances.”
I didn’t believe that when I first heard it. It sounded crazy.
But as I sat with it, something started to shift.
If our circumstances really created our experience, then everyone in the same situation would feel the same way. But that’s not how life works.
We don’t feel what happens to us. We feel the story we tell ourselves about what happens.
I started to see it more clearly. There are the events of life … and then there’s my thinking about those events.
That’s where the feeling comes from.
This understanding has become foundational for me. It has changed how I lead, how I coach, and how I live.
That doesn’t mean I never forget. I still fall for the illusion that my circumstances are calling the shots.
Like the time I experienced a betrayal by a close friend, and someone I love got hurt. I was angry. I couldn’t see past what had happened.
So I called Keith.
He reminded me that what had happened was no longer happening … it only existed in my thinking. And as I saw that more clearly, the anger began to fall away. With a clearer mind, I was able to be present for the person who really mattered.
If we believe our circumstances create our experience, we’re in for a lot of suffering.
But if we’re living in the feeling of our thinking, we’re only ever one new thought away from a completely new experience of life.
And for me that is good news.
So how does this look to you? Where is your moment-by-moment experience of life coming from? Is it thought-created? Circumstance-created? Or a bit of both?
If you’re curious to explore more, start with The Missing Link by Sydney Banks. Or listen to Syd speak about A Quiet Mind here.
Much love,
Peter