The Outer Affects The Inner
I’m reading an awesome interview right now (and it looks like I’m going to have to get the guy’s book
“…if you want to become someone different, just start acting like the person you want to be. It’s like that business motto – ‘fake it till you make it’ – but it works on a spiritual and ethical level as well … Even with my wardrobe, I saw how the outer affects the inner. There’s a line in the Bible that says your “garments should always be white.” I decided to take that literally, and walked around in white clothes. It affected my mood. I felt happier, lighter.”
The Inner Affects The Outer:
Right before reading the AJ Jacobs interview I was reading some posts by fellow lifestyle artist and friend of the show, Ted Heistman on his blog, ‘Free Range Organic Human‘. In one, he was discussing personality types and his recent discovery that he’s an extrovert, not an introvert as he’d previously assumed. The main point I gleaned from that post is — the mere realization (or decision) that you are (or could be) a different personality type than you had previously been type-casting yourself as, shifts your selective-focus-majigg to emphasize a whole different set of memories, attitudes, etc., and that begins almost instantly to change your behavior, your feelings toward yourself and others (and thus theirs towards you, and thus your whole experience of life). It’s like how mood swings work, but at a deeper level.
Then, in another post, Ted made this excellent point:
“I think of these personality types as ‘cognitive strategies’ that people can jump around in a bit from type to type rather than as being immutible characteristics of people.”
Right! Personality tests are generally just (mis)used to further type-cast oneself (personality ‘types’, hello) and often end up functioning as little more than ’scientific-feeling’ means of validating what are actually personal choices not to venture outside the comfort zone of our ingrained habits, thought-patterns, personal biases and so forth.
Personality assessments can be useful as aids in self-understanding and self-acceptance, but that isn’t where you’re supposed to stop. That’s a step on the path towards a truer, and ongoing, sense of clarity about who you really are and what you really want, and where the discrepancies lie between that and the current situation. Once you’ve got that going on, you know what you need to do to start aligning your actions with your true/new intentions. And once you start doing that, the really cool shit starts to happen.
On the other hand, if you’re living under the core assumption that you can’t really change who you ‘are’ (that may be true on a deep, essential level but not on the personality level) — that the ‘type’ of person you are is the type of person you must and will always be — if you believe in that kind of predestination of personality (whether you frame it in terms of nature, nurture, astrology or whatever) then you will continue to play the same role and act out the same scenarios in the same types of ‘movies’ as long as that belief is held, instead of pushing yourself, growing as an actor on the stage of Life and becoming ever more awesome. You don’t respect actors with no range; why would you settle for it in yourself? (I’m not saying you do, I’m just asking it as a general question).
You don’t have to be a ‘radical’ lifestyle experimenter to be a lifestyle experimenter (though, it technically makes you more rad if you are). Any step in the right direction is good. Any step in any direction is creative. It’s standing still that you don’t want to do. Even just ‘tinkering around’ with your thoughts and emotional states, conducting mini-experiments with your lifestyle, changing the way you dress even a little bit (even if you like the way you dress already, it is a habit), trying a different soundtrack for a change, playing with how you talk, how you walk, etc. — any one or number of those can get the ball rolling. “Gradually Daily” is a little mantra I’ve been using that’s actually very helpful. It’s just enough to remind me to do things a little bit differently, a little bit better, to make a little bit more effort to be a little bit more awesome than I was yesterday.
Remember: You are your most important project. All your other projects depend on it! Nourish the root and you nourish everything that stems from it.
That’s my little surmon for the day. I didn’t actually mean for this to be a surmon. I meant to just tell you about the cool articles I was reading, but The Televangelist that lives in my head is a sneaky opportunist with a strong grip. Once she has the mic, there’s no getting it back till she’s done.
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There’s a caveat about the “standing still sucks” bit in the I Ching, which I’ve started to use… A friend who knows his stuff on it said to me not to be too surprised if a lot of the advice it amounts to: “Wait.” That’s often hard, too, and we’re often running fast on the spot, and only move through when we consciously still ourselves.
That said, this is good stuff. It’s always educational to shake things up and try things different for the sake of it! I used to do Diceman-influenced stuff, like throwing a dice to decide “my mood for the day”. If you ever feel really stuck in an emotional rut, it’s a good technique. I was really down once and threw “Be really depressed all day.” I ended up getting into interesting conversations all day and it was a real effort to stay “depressed” - which kind of teaches you that you’re separate from your emotions, you can detach from them.
And yeah, I always thought that the whole inner/outer thing was a loop - which can be a vicious or “virtuous” circle. If it’s vicious, it’s good to see whether the inner or the outer aspect of your life is your “access point” - a crack in the loop to derail it into another direction. And often it’s the outer: we can often physically change things quite easily to start the loop cycling differently.
There’s always the “mood organ” conundrum from PKD’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. There’s a mood organ that you can press a key on to change your mood. I think the wife is really down, and her husband says to use the mood organ to feel better. She says she doesn’t feel like it, and her husband says to press the key that make you feel like feeling different - of course, she doesn’t feel like pressing that one either. Hehehe, we all know that one, eh? Maybe such times are classic cases where you just need to accept the negative shit and let it wash through you…
Excellent points, Gyrus!
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Hard to escape the selective-focus-majigg, even when you’re writing about the selective-focus-majigg. As a friend of mine used to say, as soon as something said, it is both true and untrue. (Limitations of language and all that).
This comment from Svenson on a recent Tim post, also ties in here:
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“I practiced something called “chaos magick” for some time, whats interesting is something about it called “paradigm shifting” where you change your assumptions or “core values”, those thoughts that aren’t derived from experience but you just believe on faith, the axioms that everybody has but often denies. The effect seems incredibly magical, because your whole reality changes. But a large part of what’s happening is that you change what’s important and this changes the information you discard.”
Sarah: …
Yeah, I shouldn’t generalize standing still as purely negative. I meant it more in the sense that if you’re not busy living you’re busy dying (to quote Bob Dylan). But to everything there is a season, too. There should be a balance between growth and rest, between doing and being, etc…
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I also didn’t quite mean what I said about self-acceptance being only a step on the path. It should always be there. In fact it should deepen throughout life. But if we don’t push ourselves to improve (which comes from acknowledging the areas where we need work), then, like I said, things don’t change.
Brooke,
Cool post. I’ll have to read that Guy’s interview. What you said about memory makes sense. I feel kind of “squishy” right now. Like a dragonfly that just hatched from a nymph. I am even a little light headed. I even forgot some Dude’s name.
I am definately using my brain differently.
Btw, I just noticed your picture show feature. I really like your graphics and paintings.
Now, that I have seen your other artwoork, besides the jewelry, I guess this site does look like your artwork. Black and Red. The artwork doesn’t look as dark though. It is dark but it has kind of a strange “supernatural” Light to it.
If you’d like to hear A.J. Jacobs talk about his new book, “The Year of Living Biblically,” check out this audio interview link.
Thanks dudes!
Hey!!!! Great article, I really enjoyed reading it! I might have to try summa that “paradigm shifting” stuff too…..especially after what we talked about today, as in “my job”. You have a brilliant mind, my dear!
Luv ya!