What’s Inner Work?

Inner work is different from gathering tools and knowledge.

Inner work changes you. 

When you grow and refine who you are, that stays with you. When your being changes, it manifests wherever you go. 

When you cultivate inner capacities, such as emotional intelligence, they stay with you. 

Throughout every situation, from now until the day you die, you will be with yourself – and your relationship with yourself determines your experience of the world, which changes everything. 

Inner work is the process of coming into presence and of seeing clearly. 

Inner work is about growth and transformation. It’s about welcoming who you are becoming. It’s not about strategizing and efforting. 

I’ll give you an example. Suppose you notice that you’re repeating patterns with people: you’re always attracted to the same type of person or always end up in the same type of situation, perhaps in your work life or your romantic life.

So, you try to become more conscious of this and create a list of things to watch out for in relationships. There’s nothing wrong with this. It is often an essential part of the process.

However, when you transform who you are, you simply won’t be attracted to those people and won’t find yourself in those situations and relationships anymore. You don’t need to refer to your list, you don’t need to think so hard, you don’t need to watch out for anything. Naturally, you will begin to show up differently. Your entire perspective changes, so that the world appears differently, too. 

So, inner work is not about becoming defensive toward the outside world and strategizing accordingly. It’s more intimate than that. 

Inner work is about opening up, welcoming yourself. Because the more of yourself you welcome in, the more you change. The more of yourself you see. And revelation is change. The patterns of your personality are keeping you away from the world as much as they are keeping you away from yourself. They’re defending you from some truth that wants to be known. 

Even though change may feel challenging or frightening, your engagement with yourself is evidence that you are longing for something different, something new. 

Inner work is about inquiring into how you’re getting in your own way and allowing those obstacles to dissolve or germinate new capacities inside you.

Inner work is about opening up to your desire, which leads down a new path.

Inner work is about entering into a creative alliance with yourself. 

Inner work is about becoming your own friend. 

Inner work is about recognizing what is already there and not shying away from it.

Inner work is about affirming your vision for how you want to be.

How do you “do” inner work? That’s a mysterious question. 

In my own life, conscious relationships for self-inquiry and reflection – both somatic and psychological – have proven to be the golden path.

Perhaps you’re doing inner work right now, as you reflect on your life and allow yourself to engage with material that is important to you.  

There are various forms of meditation. There are various forms of spirituality. There are indigenous wisdom traditions from all over the earth. There is clinical psychotherapy. There’s attachment research. There’s a wide range of trademarked coaching modalities. There is somatic work. There are embodiment practices. There are psychoanalysis, depth-psychology and dream work. There are all the forms of creative expression in the arts. There is conscious engagement with your life at every moment.

Inner work begins with seeking. The process deepens with self-inquiry. 

It is a passionate path because without that inner desire for something new, nothing happens. 

Nobody but you can determine what inner work means for you. 

Nobody but you can follow your path. A conscious relationship created for your inner growth and transformation can help you.