What If You’ve Been Looking in the Wrong Direction?

Perhaps greater happiness.

Peace of mind.

Confidence.

Security.

A quieter mind.

Less anxiety. Less stress.

Or simply the feeling that you’re okay and life is okay.

Some of the things you’ve tried may have helped.

Some perhaps didn’t.

But if you’re still searching, there might be a surprisingly simple reason.

What if you’ve been looking in the wrong direction?

Most of us grow up with a very convincing understanding of how life works.

Something happens and it makes us feel something.

Our job makes us stressed.

An uncertain future makes us anxious.

Other people make us angry.

Criticism makes us insecure.

Success makes us happy.

Money makes us secure.

A difficult past makes us unhappy today.

It certainly looks that way.

But throughout history, things have often looked one way while actually working quite differently.

For centuries it appeared obvious that the Sun travelled around the Earth.

People weren’t stupid.

They simply drew a perfectly reasonable conclusion from what they could see.

Even today, knowing what we now know, the Sun still appears to rise in the morning, move across the sky and set in the evening.

Our understanding changed.
The appearance didn’t.

What if something similar is happening with our psychological experience?

Consider something very ordinary.

You’re worried about a problem before going to bed.

It seems enormous.

You wake the following morning and somehow it doesn’t look nearly as bad.

The problem hasn’t changed.

Something in you has.

Or someone says something that really annoys you.

Another day, the same comment from the same person barely bothers you.

If circumstances directly created our feelings, wouldn’t the same circumstances have to produce the same feelings?

They don’t.

And perhaps that tells us something important.

Sydney Banks, a Scottish-born welder with little formal education, had a profound insight into the nature of human experience.

He saw that we experience life from the inside out rather than the outside in.

Our experience of life is continually being created through thought in the moment.

That’s why something can look terrifying one moment and manageable the next.

It’s why our experience of the same person can change without them changing.

It’s why we can be frightened today about something that hasn’t even happened yet.

And it’s why our feelings can change even when our circumstances haven’t.

This doesn’t mean our feelings aren’t real.

George Pransky, one of the psychologists who learned directly from Sydney Banks, once described it beautifully when a client asked whether he was saying that what they were experiencing was simply a mirage.

His answer was essentially:

“Yes — but it’s a real mirage.”

Anxiety feels real.

Stress feels real.

Insecurity feels real.

Anger feels real.

But perhaps we’ve misunderstood where those experiences are coming from.

And there’s another part of this that I find particularly hopeful.

If you cut your finger, something within you knows how to heal it.

You don’t consciously beat your heart, digest your food, regulate your temperature or repair damaged cells.

There is an extraordinary intelligence operating through the human body all the time.

What if that intelligence doesn’t suddenly stop at the neck?

Look at what happens psychologically.

Anger passes.

Moods change.

Perspective returns.

A problem that seemed impossible suddenly looks different.

An unexpected insight appears.

We forgive someone we thought we’d never forgive.

We suddenly know what to do after weeks of not knowing.

Perhaps there is more innate intelligence and psychological health within us than we’ve realised.

And perhaps we don’t need to work quite so hard at fixing ourselves.

That doesn’t mean we should never meditate, read another self-help book or have ambitions for our lives.

Do all of those things if you enjoy them.

But perhaps we can stop asking them to provide something they were never capable of giving us.

Because the peace, security and wellbeing we’re searching for may not come from getting our lives exactly right.

Perhaps we’ve been looking outside ourselves for something that was inside us all along.

There are no techniques involved in understanding this.

Nothing to practise.

No thoughts you need to eliminate.

No affirmations to repeat.

No perfect mental state you need to achieve.

It’s simply something to see.

And sometimes seeing something differently changes everything.

If any of this resonates with you, or perhaps simply makes you curious, I’m always happy to have a conversation about it.

There’s no charge and no obligation to do anything afterwards.

We can simply have a chat about what’s going on for you and perhaps look together at something you haven’t seen before.

No pressure.
No hard sell.

Just a simple one-to-one conversation.