Developing Your Inner Man Part 1a: Reference Experiences

The sleep thing went well. I am not yet an early riser, but been getting up around 9:00 or 10:00... I will now just keep it up.
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I mentioned in my "Four Steps" Post that I one thing I was working on recently was having a lot of reference experiences, to truly develop my inner man. This post is going to be a two part post. In the first part, I am going to explain what type reference experiences will really help you develop yourself, and, give you examples of such reference experiences that have really helped to define me from my own life.

In the second part, I'm going to then use these guidelines to develop a list of reference experiences that I would like to have to develop my own inner man, which I plan to experience in the coming days, weeks, months, and years, as I continue to realize my OWN inner man.

Real quickly, I just want to give you guys a list of experiences which have been instrumental in my OWN development, and afterwords I'll break these down, showing you guys why the were so instrumental.



Example List
Experiences which have help me developed my own inner man include:

• Joining the Wrestling team
• Being Captain of the Wrestling team

• Going to summer camp
• Performing a magic show in front of an audience
• Teaching magic classes to young kids
• Running my own business
• Living in a college dorm
• Being in a relationship
• Having sex for the first time
  
• Working out regularly
• Starting my wrestling workout
  
• Reading
• Seven Habits of Highly Effective People
• Brave New World
• Power of Now
• Leadership and Self Deception:Getting out of the Box

• School
• Personal Values Class
• Inspirational Teachers
  

That should really be enough to use for examples. Now, this is obviously a very diverse group of experiences, and you may be asking yourself what they could possibly have in common. There is something they have in common tho... they are all outside of my comfort zone.

The Comfort Zone
The comfort zone is something that is a product of the inner bitch. The things which are inside your comfort zone are things which you do not fear, and are therefore easy. The things outside your comfort zones are things that scare you. Things that you are not familiar with, and therefore SCARED OF. The Inner Bitch, in addition to only being willing to do those things which are not scary to it, will also do the easiest thing at any given time... the path of least resistance.

Henceforth on this blog this path shall be known as the "Way of the Bitch". The Way of the Bitch (doing that which is easiest) will cause you to yield to things such as inaction, escapism, and social pressure.

Let's contrast this with the inner man form of the "Comfort Zone"... the Code of Conduct.

The Code of Conduct

The Code of Conduct no longer has the wishy washy arbitrary "fear threshold' at which something becomes too scary to do. No, the inner man knows that there are only two things which will stop him from doing something.

1. What he is ABLE to do (Boundaries)
2. What he is WILLING to do (Values)

The inner man knows that those are the only two things that should determine whether or not he will do something... not how scared he is of it. There is a tiny bit of give at the very edges of the Boundaries threshold... this has to do with reference experiences and we'll get to that ;).

The Inner Man also has a different method of prioritization than the inner bitch. When following the Way of the Bitch, one will take the path of least resistance, and that is how they determine what they will do. The Inner Man, however, uses Life Alignment to determine what he is most likely to do... he chooses those things which will most further his purpose and values.

So the question is... how do we get from one to two. the answer is simple, if we want to move from basing our decisions on fear, to basing our decisions on boundaries and values... we have to discover our boundaries and values. This means we should choose reference experiences that push our boundaries (so that we can figure out what they are), or reference experiences that help us discover something new about ourselves (so we can develop a set of values). Let's look back at our original list, and see if this hypothesis matches up. So we're looking to see if all these experiences either push my boundaries, or help me discover something new about myself.

Testing the Theory

• Joining the Wrestling team(One of the most physically challenging things I had ever done... definitely pushed physical boundaries)
  
• Being Captain of the Wrestling team(helped me discover how I deal with being in a position of leadership)
  

• Going to summer camp(Helped me discover a great number of things about myself, how I act away from home, as well as pushing my boundaries emotionally)
  
• Performing a magic show in front of an audience(Pushed boundaries and helped me discover how much I enjoy making others happy)
  
• Teaching magic classes to young kids(helped me discover my love of helping others grow)
  
• Running my own business(Helped me discover values of discipline)
  
• Living in a college dorm(Pushed many different boundaries)
  
• Being in a relationship(Pushed my emotional boundaries to the MAX)
  
• Having sex for the first time(Helped me discover my love of the physical and emotional connection of sex)
  
• Working out regularly(helped me discover my physical discipline and love of exercise)
  
• Starting my wrestling workout(Pushed physical boundaries)
  
• Reading
• Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (helped me to learn about myself and began developing a mental picture of how all this inner man stuff works)
  
• Brave New World (pushed my boundaries mentally, basically screwing with my mind :) )
  
• Power of Now (Learned many things about myself spiritually)
  
• Leadership and Self Deception:Getting out of the Box(same as above)
  

• School
• Personal Values Class (helped me develop myself spiritually, learning to question my own values)
  
• Inspirational Teachers (pushed my boundaries mentally and saw things in me that I could not see myself)

As you can see, the most pivotal moments in my life, that really help me developed my inner man, were all things that either pushed my boundaries or helped me discover something new about myself. You guys may also have noticed that all of the experiences fell into one of four categories, the four facets of the inner man... but that's for part B of this post.

Homework
For now, I just want you guys to focus on those two things, things which can help you learn about yourself, and things which push your boundaries. So during the next seven days, be on the lookout for opportunites. If you see an opportunity which challenges you (thus pushing your boundaries), TAKE IT. Really find out what your boundaries are this week. Also, if the opportunity presents itself to try something new, DO IT. Use it to find out something about yourself you didn't know. That's it. One week. Try new things, Challenge yourself. I guarantee that if you try this for one week, you will have a more solid sense of who you are, and feel more fulfilled.

Try it for one week, and let me know how it goes. I'll take some of the best responses and put them in part B of this article.