Break the pattern of thinking that the solution to your problem is to rearrange things outside. The only permanent solution to your problem is to go inside and to let go of the part of you that has so many [00:01:00] problems with reality. 

This is one of my favorite quotes and one that I think should inspire deep introspection inside of all of us. The reality is many of us spend so much time trying to rearrange the external things in our lives, thinking that they'll give us more internal peace, that they'll give us more internal joy, that they'll make us happy.

This idea shows up in a lot of different places in our lives. When I just get this, I'll be happier. When I just solve this problem, things will be headed in the right direction. When I just get to here.

I'll be more satisfied and more fulfilled. I won't have these problems in my life when I rearrange my life in this way, I need to go and change all of these things in my life.

We find ourselves in places of frustration and anger around the way that things are in our lives. And so we go to rearrange them without really asking ourselves, what is the root, what is the cause of that anger, [00:02:00] that frustration and we'll rearranging the things in our lives truly free us of that suffering.

Sometimes the reality is we do need to rearrange things in our world because they are causing a suffering. If we're really at the end of the road of a relationship that no longer serves us and we're hanging on because we're afraid of letting that person go because we've been with them for so long or because we have a history or because we're fearful of how they may react.

Then we need to rearrange that part of our world. We need to let that relationship go, 

or we need to retrofit it into a dynamic that serves us. 

This is true of old friends at times and other relationships that we've had that we were once close and we want to preserve that relationship But our vision, our mission, our purpose in life has changed and our relationship needs to evolve with that.

But it's also true that we often rearrange things in our external world to avoid making the changes that we truly need to within to experience [00:03:00] life in the way that we want to, we'll move on from relationship to relationship because it doesn't feel perfect right away 

Brian: or sometimes we'll jump from job to job looking for a deeper sense of belonging. We might even indulge in all kinds of material possessions to physically change the environment around us. The mass, the pain that we're feeling inside, because we think if we buy this thing, if we eat at this restaurant, if we start to embody this other persona, then it'll free us of the suffering that we're experiencing, but that's a grave mistake that we all make it one time or another.

It doesn't bring true fulfillment. It doesn't bring us the experience that we want to have in this life. And so we have to break the pattern of thinking that the solution is to rearrange things in our external world and we have to go deeper inside and let go of the part of us. That has so much of a problem with our objective reality, we each have inside of us the ability and [00:04:00] the opportunity to live with joy and purpose and have a meaningful impact regardless of any of our outside circumstances. Now, of course, there are times where we want to rearrange things in our external world to serve our purpose at an even deeper level.

But the reality is that purpose can always exist. That deep sense of fulfillment in our human experience can always exist because that lies outside of all the variables the external world throws at us.

Finding your true purpose and living it every day is something that happens internally, not as some result of the arrangement of your external world. 

And when we realize this and we truly start to embody it, we realize that the external world has a far less significant impact on our sense of fulfillment than we are wired hard to believe. 

I'll give you three ways that that inclination to rearrange the world around us to help us deal with that bit of a void that we're feeling really show up. The [00:05:00] first one is an addiction to things. We often feel as though if we had more things, we would be happier. If we had a new car, new clothes, a purse, a pair of shoes, tickets to some event, whatever it is, 

we are predisposed to feeling like collecting things is going to make us happier. And I believe this to be an instinctual carryover from an earlier time in our species history, when being resource rich was really the only way to survive. We had to have more things.

Things In order to protect ourselves and to thrive as a species. And ultimately that mindset got us to where we are, but that's no longer true in modern society. That carry over really gives us a negative experience. At times. We think that having a nicer car should be a goal.

And then when we go and we achieve that goal, we find out that those things wear off almost immediately. We drive that car for 30 days and it just becomes our car. That purse that you bought goes out of style next year. And then you [00:06:00] find yourself in this endless hamster wheel of wanting the next thing.

Because the horror of this entire situation is they're making new things every day. If you get in the mindset that you have to rearrange your external world with new things, better things, you're setting yourself up for a very long journey with a lot of suffering Because the world is designed to put new things in front of you all the time.

The world is designed to make you feel like the things that you already have aren't good enough. And so if you feel like there's some end game out there when you have all the right things and now you can find joy and happiness and fulfillment, you're going to be wandering in that desert for a very long time.

Another example is our job, what we do for a living. If you find yourself at times leaving one place and going to another and still not feeling that sense of connection or belonging feeling antsy or just feeling like the work is not for you, where you don't get along with these people, you can't find a sense of [00:07:00] community you might ask yourself, do I need to look inside?

Brian: Do I need a career change entirely? Should I be doing something else with my life that truly speaks to my purpose? Do I even know what my purpose is just yet? And that would be a great place to start. But if you're jumping around from place of employment to place in employment, you might consider that in the right frame of mind, with the right sense of purpose, doing the right work, 

you would be enormously fulfilled in what you did for a living and you deserve that. 

Another place that this idea shows up in a big way is in our relationships. In different chapters of our life or for different people, we tend to move on from relationship to relationship because we don't really feel satisfied in our community or the people around us.

Whether you have a tendency to get at odds really easily with your friends or the people that you consider close allies or your family or your partner, or you've moved on from intimate partner to intimate partner you may ask yourself, is continuing to rearrange the relationships in my life, the [00:08:00] solution to my problem.

The problem is that I want to have more deeply meaningful and fulfilling relationships. What can I be doing? What questions am I not asking myself? What thought work do I need to be doing to make those relationships more meaningful? Am I the best partner that I can be? Am I even trying to be a better partner than I was yesterday?

How have I been a really phenomenal friend lately? How have I shown up in some of my relationships? Now that doesn't mean that everybody in my world is perfect single one of my friends is going to have flaws. They're going to fall short as a friend at times. My wife is going to fall short of being the best version of herself at times. Don't tell her I said that, but we all are. If we get in the habit of judging every one of our relationships by their worst day or judging everyone in our world by the way that they're showing up without also looking in the mirror at the way that we're showing up.

That we're setting ourselves [00:09:00] up for an endless cycle of failure and a revolving door of relationships throughout the rest of our lives because we are not looking inside and asking ourselves what we can do to be a better friend, to be a better family member, to be a better spouse, to be a better colleague, to be a better partner.

And when we start asking ourselves those questions and figuring out how to rearrange things within, we tend to realize that the right relationships will show up in our lives. Whether or not they're there right now they will either evolve or they will come into our lives. When we focus on being the best spouse, the best partner, the best friend, the best colleague that we can be.

We tend to manifest that reality in our lives. We tend to inject that energy into our relationships and the relationships that are ready for it, we'll receive it. And the relationships that are not, we'll be able to move on from, and that'll free up space for us to create more meaningful relationships in the future.

A massive opportunity that every one [00:10:00] of us has is a not fall into a victim mentality. If we don't have the things that we want, we're not victims of that. And we don't need to make acquiring those things, our ultimate goal. We need to start to understand why we're so unhappy with the way things are, even if we don't have the things in our world that we want.

Brian: And the same is true with our relationships. And we come from a victim mentality and we assure ourselves that we are the ones that are always being wronged, that we never give ourselves the opportunity to ask how we can improve. What we've learned, how we can be better.

We never introspect. If we come from a victim mentality, the answer is always that it's someone else's fault, and if we just rearrange our relationships, or if we just go buy more things, then we'll be happy, but on the off chance that that's not true, Our victim mentality starves us of the ability to become the version of ourselves that does manifest those relationships and [00:11:00] that can probably afford those things, whether or not those things are even meaningful to them anymore.

So here are a couple of exercises I want you to try to flip the mirror around and stop looking at the external world and start looking inside. Let's start with your relationships. I want you to think of a relationship in which you're really struggling right now. It might be with a family member, it might be with a friend, it might be with your spouse, but somebody who you're a little bit at odds with right now, maybe even a lot of bit at odds.

Maybe they've deeply hurt you recently. Maybe you're really considering moving on from this relationship entirely. Maybe you're considering getting divorced. I want you to ask yourself this question. Whatever you feel they've done to create so much tension in your relationship, what would need to be true for their actions to be justified?

I'm going to say that again. Whatever they have done or you felt they've done to create this much strain and [00:12:00] tension in your relationship, what would need to be true? For them to be justified in their actions. This is a very impactful question because what it's going to force you to do is put yourself in their shoes and think from their perspective.

When you default to a place of compassion and understanding, you start to allow for a greater number of possibilities to be true. The reality is in most relationships, people hurt one another unconsciously.

They don't do it selfishly, they do it as a result of all of the other things that are going on in their world, creating neglect in that relationship. So if you feel that your partner's behavior is the one that's causing strain or tension in your relationship, ask yourself what would need to be true for them to be justified in their behavior.

what I hope that does is challenges you to see things from her perspective.

Maybe see all the things that she's dealing with in [00:13:00] her world. Maybe see all the ways that you could have been an ally or a resource or a friend or a better partner to her. And I'm not saying that she's totally off the hook and you just need to take everybody's behavior, see their perspective and move on.

What I'm saying is that when we give ourselves the latitude to have a deeper understanding, we give ourselves the ability to meet people where they're at. That doesn't mean that we have to always just take what everybody throws at us. That means that normally when we're in periods of tension or stress or strain in our relationships, it's because we're missing a layer of understanding 

human beings together can weather pretty much any storm if they understand the experience that the other is having. That's why local communities become so tightly woven in times like war, because they have such a common experience.

They all understand what the other is going through, what they're experiencing, and it brings them together. When you don't have a deeper understanding of the experience [00:14:00] that your counterpart is going through. It's really difficult for you to relate and you just come from a place of anger. You feel like they're doing it to you without allowing for the possibility that they're reacting to the world around them.

And you might be a part of that world around them. The way that you're interacting with them might not be helpful to their situation.

You rob yourself of the ability to see. Where you can make a difference in that person's world, where you can make a difference in that person's life, where you can make a difference in that person's experience and ultimately improve your relationship. I'm not saying that every single relationship is worth maintaining, 

but what I am saying is that until you go inside and challenge yourself to see something from another person's perspective, you'll never know how that relationship could develop. You'll never know how strong and meaningful that relationship could be.

So I'd like you to take on that challenge. I'd like you to identify a relationship that you feel is strained and ask yourself that question. Sit with yourself for a while and [00:15:00] deliberately respond. Have a conversation with yourself and really dive deep.

And if that other example really resonated with you, there's a thought experiment I'd like you to try as well. If you feel like you're chasing things or if you need to be honest with yourself around chasing things, maybe you don't openly feel it, but you look around your world and you see a lot of things and you have a lot of goals on your list of goals that involve things and acquiring material things.

You may want to sit with yourself and ask. What is it that these things represent that I'm currently missing in my world? Am I truly fulfilled by these things or are they a substitute for something that I don't currently have?

And that is purpose. true joy, fulfillment. What is the hole that I'm trying to fill with these things? And I understand this can be a very difficult thought exercise. Might even be a little bit triggering, it can be very impactful to go inside and [00:16:00] ask yourself why you're on this endless journey of gathering more and more things.

And what outcome do you expect from being on that path? I think you'll find that after a few repetitions of this exercise, the answers will start to reveal themselves perhaps you're substituting a lack of understanding around what your purpose is, the way you can have the most positive impact in this world, which is going to give you a truly fulfilling human experience.

And rather than focus on how to acquire more things, if you're honest with yourself and that is the answer is that you feel that you're lacking those things, then let's dive deeper and let's find your true purpose and then let's align your actions with that purpose. And I guarantee you, you're going to see radically different results as far as the way that you interact with your world every single day until you bring awareness to it.

You're never going to give yourself that benefit. So these are some challenges I'd like you to undertake, whether it's relationships, whether it's things, there are [00:17:00] probably areas in your world where you realize that you're rearranging the external to avoid looking at the internal. I would love to hear how some of these thought exercises are going for you.

Drop a comment, get in touch with me. I hope this is beneficial. I truly appreciate you listening to this episode and I'll see you next time.