Inner Work & the Unknown Self

Reading time: about four minutes

Introduction

Inner Work is the scientific, experimental, data-driven way we come to examine, learn about, and see how we are in the world, how others see us, and what is holding us back.

It is a way to gain objectivity about ourselves, which we often lack since we see the world through our narratives, subjective interpretations, and fixed stories.

You can think of the narrative as the inner dialogue we constantly have with ourselves. This dialogue is the distortion through which we see a misinterpreted world, and this internal dialogue is both a representation and a determiner of our fixed views. Alfred Adler, a contemporary of Freud and Jung, called these inner dialogues fictions, and he stated that they were held in place by our “mistaken beliefs.” These mistaken beliefs later came to be called “self-defeating perceptions.”

One of the greatest mistakes we make as humans is that we believe the story we are telling instead of examining whether the story is true.

Instead of using a scientific process to investigate the objectivity of our own thinking, we believe that it must be true because we are thinking something.

The reinforcement of the emotions further exacerbates the challenge. Some internal logic seems to say, “my thoughts must be true because they feel true.” This pairing of emotion and event or emotion and thought is what Pavlov illustrated in his famous experiment where he could get his dog to salivate when it hears a bell. This pairing of unrelated phenomena in a way that it appears there is a connection, Pavlov called, “Classical Conditioning.”

If we take a scientific approach to our own experience, we will eventually see that much of our interpretations of the world result from some sort of conditioning. Beliefs, such as “the world is a scary place” or “the world is a safe place,” result from early experience and early conditioning.

The Known self

Our beliefs make up our known worlds, and we have already seen that our thoughts often lack objectivity and accuracy. Our narratives are reinforced by flight-or-fight thinking, our need to defend our position, and our insecurities. Knowing and thinking have advantages; they give us predictive models about what is likely to happen, how to potentially act, and how to get the results we hope for. At the same time, like the characters in the HBO series Westworld, our known self recreate similar repetitions of experience, which we remain blind to in ourselves, but often can see in others.

When we are scientific about our own experience, we will recognize that we have a finite number of thoughts that we repeat over and over and over again. Unfortunately, this is much easier to see in our children, co-workers, parents, and partners. We recognize that Uncle Joe tells the same story repeatedly and that Aunt Elaine has a particular set of phrases she uses ad nauseam. It is a shock to see that we are like the Westworld characters or like Uncle Joe and Aunt Elaine. We are on repeat, just like everyone else.

The Unknown Self

Another reality exists underneath our conditioning. Remember, the dog in Pavlov’s experiment salivates because the bell rings, not because of food.

It is more accurate to say that “I say what I say and do what I do because I have a limited set of thoughts, emotions, and actions, and because I lack creativity at the moment to choose a behavior that is best for the circumstances.” It is more accurate to say that “I get impatient and angry because I was taught this is an appropriate way to respond, not because the situation calls for it.” It is more accurate to say that “I feel guilty and feel I could have done a better job not because this is true, but because my parents and teachers told me I should feel guilty and that I could have done a better job.”

There is a more profound truth underneath all the above limiting ways of interpreting the world. This truth is underneath our self-defeating perceptions. Seeing this more profound truth allows us to be better leaders, parents, and partners. Underneath our basic mistakes, a greater capacity and creativity exist to enact the greater good.

Getting Started

The best way to get started with inner work is to observe and keep track of your thoughts, emotions, narratives, and stories. Write them down. Track how often thoughts, emotions, and inner dialogues repeat.

When you notice you are in a repetitive “loop” of thoughts, emotions, or narratives, ask yourself, “what if this (thought/feeling/story) _____ was not true? What else could be happening other than what I think or feel is happening?”

Another effective way to start inner work is to create hypotheses and test them. A simple way to enact this is to break down the experience. For example, “the CEO said _____ to me. It made me feel_____ and think_____. What if my feelings and thoughts were not accurate? What else could be happening, and what could this mean?”

Try the above exercise several times a day, if possible.