Looking inward.

I’m sitting at home with my feet up watching the cricket. Perth’s had a great first innings, the sun’s rays are threading their way through the blinds of my living room window, and the steam from my tea slowly dances over the rim of the mug.

It’s Christmas in a couple of days. Life feels somewhat serene – time to reflect.

When people talk about what it means to be successful, you may hear the concept of happiness trailing not far behind, which is often closely linked with success.

You might find other commonalities when talking about success. Examples might include money, a decent and passion-enabling job, a healthy and balanced lifestyle, variety and excitement, the act of giving and doing things for others, and maybe the chase of personal dreams and aspirations.

These associated acts and pursuits are all valid in their own ways, and I myself strive to follow some of these to varying degrees. But they also relate to and rely heavily on the external.

I’m beginning to see increasingly the value of living more inside myself, in the sense that there is potential happiness and even success to be found from within as much as there may be from without. Focusing not necessarily so much on what you do, but on how you do it; in this, maybe we can avoid some of the pitfalls of modern life.

Adapting to a changing environment is today more important than ever, as the world around us changes at a dizzying pace. The speed of technological development and the scale of globalisation leaves little time for reflection, and I think it may be too easy to lose sight of the why and how in favour of the what and when.

If we concentrate on being the most truthful, honest and just that we can, we might find that we move too slowly to keep step with the rapid and temporal nature of modernity – but that should be seen more as a problem of modernity than as a personal flaw. I for one believe quite strongly that if we are forced to compromise on what we know to be true for the expediency of an action, then we are taking an erroneous course.

This is not an excuse or an argument in favour of inaction. It’s just that actions that neglect our internal selves in pursuit of success and happiness may end up being ironically the actions that ultimately deny us the only things we’re looking for.