Internal vs External Decision-Making

Momentum generates movement, motion, all required to take action. Action can be interwoven with analysis and understanding. You run experiments for something new, and then you analyze and course correct.

Importantly, don’t mix action and analysis. Don’t analyze when you do, and vice versa. Doing and analysing are two distinct activities that must be carried out at separate times. Like writing and editing. Two different states of being which, when mixed up, create self-consciousness, restriction, unclarity.

There is the tendency to want to analyze while taking action, especially when you do something new, because all the novel inputs can feel overwhelming to process without thinking. Yet thinking stymies action and momentum at that stage. Action must be embodied, present, detached from the thinking mind and the old mindset patterns.

Analysis and understanding is primarily an internal state of curiosity, reflection, openness, noticing. You don’t want to force yourself to course-correct your actions solely based on external feedback from others. You need to inquire within first, and incorporate both internal and external feedback into your course-corrections and decisions. When we are directly involved in making decisions, this gives us a desirable sense of agency and skin in the game to foster transformation.

There is an interesting billboard I often see when passing by a street near my house: “If you want to make the wrong decision, ask everyone.”

If you overrely on external feedback, you get easily swayed in many directions without a unifying purpose and without real understanding. You follow others’ interests instead of your own calling, which easily makes you resentful and bitter in the medium to long term, because you repress “you” with “them”, in search of fame, money, pleasure, safety or a feeling of being accepted and in harmony with others.

These inherently human desires can coexist with living a life that’s aligned with your true wishes. When you are aligned with your interests and calling at any given time, you are in a position of leverage and generative drive that benefits you, the people around you, and the whole society.