If you avoid doing the inner work on yourself, you will remain stuck at the age you were hurt the most.
This was me for all of my 20s.
As my body got older, my mind felt like it was stuck as a child.
I had dreams of becoming fully independent, building a business I love, and traveling the world.
But I could never make traction.
When I started making progress, a wave of fear and self-doubt would come up, causing me to sabotage myself and procrastinate back into my suffocating little comfort zone.
I can't tell you how painful it was to have these big ambitious goals, to know I was destined for something greater…
But deep down have absolutely zero trust in myself to make it happen.
It felt hopeless, like I was going to be one of those people stuck working a job he hates in his 50s, with nothing but regret at all the things he never did.
That was when I took a hard look at myself and got serious about searching inside for the answers.
Since I embarked on that journey a couple of years ago, my life has become everything I dreamed of.
I’ve built a successful business that aligns with my mission and allows me to travel freely making good money doing so.
And all along, it was the inner work that made it possible.
But there’s a problem.
As essential as inner work is, you can’t just sit there and "do inner work."
That’s not an action you can take.
This tripped me up many times in the beginning.
So today, I’m giving you something I wish I had at the start of my self-healing journey: a full roadmap guide to doing the inner work.
I’ve broken it down into phases that, if done in the right order, will completely change your life.
Your fear and self-doubt won’t run your life anymore, and you’ll make massive shifts internally which will show up externally in the results you get in your life.
Phase One: Slow
The first phase is undoubtedly the simplest, but don’t let that fool you. Most people will never achieve their goals because they are constantly distracted. When you’re distracted, your life becomes a repetitive cycle of habit where your next five years will pretty much look like the past five years, only worse.
If you can’t focus, you will be one of them.
That’s why the absolute first thing we need to do when it comes to doing the real inner work is to intentionally slow down.
Consistent meditation is non-negotiable.
The best app I’ve ever used is the Waking Up app by Sam Harris.
Here’s a free 30-day guest pass.
Commit to 10-20 minutes a day. This alone could change your life.
But the truth is, we’re only laying the groundwork for the next phase.
Phase Two: Awareness
Now that we’ve slowed down a little, it’s time to take an honest look at yourself.
Right now, things are going on in your mind that you aren’t aware of, like:
- Situations that trigger your defense mechanisms/coping strategies.
- Negative thoughts and beliefs that sabotage you.
- Stuck emotions you never processed.
If you don’t become conscious of these things, they will run your life in the background and you will have no control over it.
That’s why phase two is all about building the most important trait you can possess as a man: self-awareness.
The single greatest practice I have ever adopted for this purpose is free-form writing.
It’s like meditation in the form of writing where you just write what comes to mind without thinking about it.
750 words a day with your coffee is the sweet spot.
There’s even a great website called 750words.com which tracks your progress and holds you accountable.
Putting your thoughts onto paper is essential for this next phase.
Phase Three: Cognitive Rewiring
There’s only one reason why we’re doing inner work: to break out of a kind of prison in our minds built from our thinking.
Most people suffer because they believe everything they think, and what they think is automatic, repetitive, negative, and inaccurate.
Make no mistake about it, if you can’t change the way you think, you will never change your life in the ways that you want.
Changing your thinking comes down to three things:
- Becoming aware of your negative thinking by creating distance from it.
- Reality testing your thinking by learning the most common thinking errors.
- Reframing your thinking to be more accurate and useful.
The exercise I gave you in the previous phase will help you tremendously.
But the best book I’ve read on this is "Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy" by David Burns, which takes you through all the above steps.
While changing your thinking is essential, sometimes we need an approach that goes deeper than that.
This is what the next phase is all about.
Phase Four: Emotional Re-Awakening
One of the most common things people mention to me is this feeling of being emotionally numb or apathetic.
A lot of people just don’t feel much anymore.
And this is what keeps them stuck.
I believe that emotions that aren’t fully felt have the potential to get stuck in the body.
Emotions should be allowed to wash through you, but too many of us resist them.
Just as a knot in a muscle prevents its full movement and might even cause an injury, an emotion that gets stuck can have the same effect in our minds.
It’s entirely possible for a person to be emotionally stuck in the past because they didn’t fully process an emotion when it was appropriate to do so.
That’s why building emotional intelligence is essential.
Not only does that involve expanding your emotional vocabulary (instead of saying “I’m good,” say “I’m feeling grateful,” for example)…
But it also means feeling the direct experience of emotions in the body.
Instead of distracting yourself, feel the heaviness in your chest when you’re sad or the shakiness of your hands when you’re angry.
I can’t even count the number of emotional breakthroughs that have come up with clients from this practice of deep body awareness alone.
It’s like when you start paying close attention, your subconscious mind starts surfacing memories and insights to you through the body.
It’s weird but it works.
Now, this has prepared your for the most intense phase of inner work we will ever go through.
Phase Five: Shadow Integration
I like to use the metaphor of a garden for this phase.
Your mind is like a garden, with both flowers and weeds.
The flowers represent your positive qualities, while the weeds symbolize your unresolved fears, traumas, and limiting beliefs.
The weeds are what we call your shadow.
If you ignore the weeds and focus only on the flowers, the weeds will spread, eventually taking over the whole garden.
Avoiding shadow work is like allowing the weeds to overrun the garden – eventually, they'll suffocate your potential.
A good gardener deals with the weeds to maintain the garden. In the same way, you must confront your shadows through inner work.
Here are a few journaling prompts that give you the essence of shadow work:
- What parts of myself am I uncomfortable with?
- What’s a difficult experience in childhood I don’t like talking about? Why not?
- What are the self-sabotaging behaviors or patterns that hold me back the most? What unconscious payoffs or hidden fears might be driving these actions?
Now you have a system for doing the inner work, but all of it will be completely pointless if you don’t have a sense of direction in your life.
You’ll end up doing what too many people do and just mentally masturbate.
That’s why I created a free resource to help you craft a compelling and motivating vision for your life as well as a roadmap for how to get there.
Click this link to download it and commit to completing it in 7 days (if you haven’t done so already).
Take care and I’ll see you next time.
Oliver