#PositiveVibes - Internal Over External

By John R. Nocero

The VIBE: Internal voice over external choice. All day. Every day.

 For those who have not read this piece yet from Trent Hamm over at the Simple Dollar, I encourage you to check it out.  Where he starts is with financial problems, but where he finishes is with some life changing advice that you can implement almost immediately. Everyone reading this or regularly posting on LinkedIn, have a central theme in common: all of us want to improve our professional lives. When a problem presents itself in life, we tend to attack it in a number of different ways, depending on our personality. Some of us turn it over and over in our minds, trying to decipher the specifics of the problem as clearly as possible. Some of us simply try to work around the problem. Others want to quickly face it head on and dive immediately into a search for solutions.

 For me, one thing I have adopted is trying to think the problem all the way through and come up with a solution, then implement it to see if it works. I am an action guy and like to take action and I personally don’t mind taking action and then changing a variable or two that do not work, in order to find the magic elixir. But I also realize that not everyone is like that, so if my plans are going to affect others, I am taking a step back, making a plan, and then seeing that plan through. If it doesn’t work, I will not change the plan, but I will change a specific variable at a very low cost to measure its impact.

This is the difference between an external versus an internal solution.

External solutions are solutions that come from an external source that we have no control over like buying a lottery ticket and winning a significant amount of cash, or your boss coming to you with a 10% raise because they noticed your hard work. While there are steps to take to increase the chances of this happening, you can’t really rely on these solutions as they are more a stroke of luck. Internal solutions are ways in which you can solve a problem via personal action, but you have to make the decision to take that action. These usually involve some sort of personal effort and typically a significant amount of it.

A couple examples in my own life – I hurt my back earlier this month doing chin-ups, and rather than going back daily to the dog that bit me, I have decided to incorporate yoga into my daily exercise regime; I have begun a daily writing practice, which not only centers my thoughts, but also adds to a professional skillset that has helped me develop more effective standard operating procedures; you get the idea. The thing is, they are solutions that I can do every day. I don’t burn out. I don’t feel they are impossible. I simply incorporate them into the daily practice. They are very low-intensity, meaning they have big-bang results at an extremely low cost. I love these practices.

So if you are looking at doing these yourself, here are a couple tips: first, notice and identify the problem, then identify all of the choices that you have made recently that have lead you to this problem. From there, you should see some patterns in those choices. When you find them, you will see the decision points that you can tweak very slowly at a low-intensity to produce this better outcome. And now all you have to do is maintain this over time and you’re good.

Find the smaller changes that over time become your norm. then you will see you life trajectory changes for the better.

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