What is Going on Inside?

We now have access to everything, world-wide – all the time. Whether we are on our smart phones, laptop or watching TV, we see and hear it all. Someone posted on Facebook, “Where did we complain before we had social media?” Well, I think we didn’t do it near as much because we didn’t get attention by doing it. We most likely had a few, trusted friends we would confide in and vice versa. Otherwise, we were busy living life rather than complaining about it.

We are all guilty of looking outward and commenting on how messed up things are because it is easy to do so. We don’t have to change a thing, and we can say things we probably wouldn’t say to others in person. I want to challenge each of us to this statement of truth: “We can’t possibly face or positively influence what is going on outside of us if we do not first deal with what is going on inside of us.” So I ask: What’s going on inside of you?

I stumbled upon a foreign film made in Norway that had subtitles recently called Headhunter, and yes, the main character is a headhunter…someone who recruits and places executives into positions for a commission. In this story, he is 5’ 6” tall, and he is absolutely insecure about it and compensates by buying his 6’ wife expensive things. In order to afford it, he steals expensive art by night.

Things are going fine until they aren’t, and then they get extremely ugly. Without telling you more, suffice to say, he gets in a tight spot and could lose it all, including his life. This movie is intriguing with many plot twists and turns, but it does have violence, language and nudity if any of those bother you.

Everything could have been avoided if he simply had self-esteem. His outward world is thrown into chaos because he isn’t right inside. It is a powerful story of the importance of accepting ourselves for who we are and loving ourselves despite our imperfections.

We can’t possibly love others if we don’t first love ourselves. We can put on a good show of it, but ultimately, our actions will have ulterior motives like in the movie to make himself feel better about himself.

We have too many distractions now that take our attention away from the hard truth that we need to work on ourselves. We can scroll social media and be disgusted at the world while we stuff our faces full of comfort food that gives us a very brief calming effect. We can yell at the television political commercials and drink ourselves drunk.

Addictions have always been a way to escape the truth, but they are more in our face these days. We give significance and attention to people who have a train-wreck-of-a life, and we wonder why no one wants to improve their lives. How boring is that?

Just like the news, social media feeds off of disasters, heartaches, injustices, accidents, and catastrophes. We the people need to stop feeding the monster! We do that by turning away from these things and looking inward. No, there’s isn’t an app for that because no one can do the work for you, but there is a great resource available to help: the Bible.

We ask God to first shine the light on our hurts and expose the areas we need to heal, and then we do the hard work with God to restore and renew our hearts and spirits. While on our journey, we will see things outwardly very different because our own lenses will be changing. We will have a greater capacity to genuinely give to others, authentically care instead of virtual signaling, and will contribute to a better world while here on earth.

Tackling the tough stuff is one of the principles of my FIT Life Formula that outline in my book, Defy Your Diagnosis: Overcome Any Obstacle. I encourage you to get a copy, roll up your sleeves and do some work to answer that question of “what’s going on inside of YOU?”

I am also happy to offer life coaching to help you identify those areas needing improvement and discovering ways to improve the quality of your life. Give me a call today to discuss how this work.