An excerpt from "The Role of Your Life"
Recent discussions have focused on the inside and stated that change occurs from the inside out. Many authors of self-help books have encouraged their readers to dig deeply inside themselves to accomplish change, but have failed to give them the necessary tools. Our inside does contain measureless resources that we can learn to use in much more beneficial ways. But the inside is a landscape that is very difficult to access and navigate. Searching in these deep domains can be misleading and even yet another detour. To reach the inside we can use the outside. I want to turn things upside down and cast light on the tangible tools in the world around us. I want to show you a way that offers you greater possibilities to achieve real change: By using outside stimuli, incentives, tools from the physical world around us, and from our own bodies, we can reach our inside and accomplish balance and change from the outside in. This is the theme of this book.
Does this contradict the theories that claim we can change through our minds and thoughts? Not at all. This is just another angle, and I want to invite you to look at it from this angle, because I believe you will find it easier to approach your mind and soul with tangible means. Read on and you will understand why.
There is a relation and connection between body and soul. We can use this connection. We all have an ability to communicate between body and soul. First of all we need to be aware of this connection. Then we need to learn how to use and practice this ability until it becomes a habit, a need, a way of living. When we learn to live like this we will realize that body and soul is a whole. When we touch one, the other is immediately affected. Changing from the outside in does not mean being shallow or disregarding the inner resources. On the contrary – important changes do take place on the inside. This approach simply means that we make use of some tricks to bring our shy, hidden inner resources out in the open. We all have enormous supplies of resources inside. We have unique qualities and talents, gifts that we know we could make use of much more than is the case. Changing your life means to encounter the material that is already in there, with tools from the outside, and to start using it.
A pot of clay will not become better or finer because we keep polishing the exterior. We have to lift the lid off, put our hand in the pot and find out how it looks on the inside. Step by step we can then balance the outside with the inside. Guessing what's inside and trying to see through the surface won't make any lasting changes. We have to start from the outside, practically. This is an exciting way of living.
Lynne Bernfield, psychotherapist, tells us that she has the habit of planting vegetables on the same spot in her garden every year. One year, when she had been digging and preparing the land she lost her energy and couldn't plant anything. The following spring she was surprised to find a flowerbed full of wonderful snapdragons. She says that the same way that she did not know that seeds of snapdragons were slumbering under the surface, waiting for space and nutrition enough to blossom, you could be unaware of abilities, talents, interests and pleasures that are waiting patiently within you for an opportunity to enrich your life.
We have a great treasure and energy inside of us. We have the seeds of happiness, creativity, talent, love, generosity and satisfaction. What we need is learn to use the outer stimuli that will help us entice those qualities. The stimuli are all around us in the physical world, in things, in living creatures. Some would call it a spiritual phenomenon, yet it is most concrete and tangible. Perhaps there is no contradiction between spirit and matter. Perhaps everything is matter. I prefer to think in those terms, and there may be matter that we still don't know anything about. Quantum physics is broadening our views of the universe and our whole existence. We are small parts in the material world and perhaps we need the rest of the entire universe to live in full. Every part needs the other and the entirety. Around us is energy that we can accumulate. You can choose to call this spiritual, but it is just as fantastic to imagine that everything – even our soul – is matter. However we choose to look at it there is help to get from the world around us, and it's completely free. We can use the world and it is just as simple and substantial as it is complicated and profound. Often it isn't necessary to understand or believe all the complicated connections. We basically have to try and see what happens. "At your word I will let down the nets" said Simon Peter to Jesus (Luke 5:5).
Ingela Berger has studied directing and acting, history of art, history of ideas, leadership psychology, and health education. She has been working as a director, translator, arts and culture administrator, course leader, and at a travel agency.
Since childhood Ingela has been engaged in theatre, music, art, and literature, always following her heart and peeking round the next corner to see what else there is to conquer in life.
Through some difficult times, including the loss of her 15 year-old son, she learned that life should be lived fully instead of being wasted on things that do not really matter in the long run.
Find out more about her new e-book here:The Role of Your Life