outside

of your head and your house

Part I: Head

Get your attention out of your head and in to the world. Dwelling in thought hinders your ability to excel at anything and lowers your well-being. The information age is pushing us further into our heads than we’ve ever been.

Insecurity stems from looking inward and being inside your head: Thinking you have to impress people and make them like you. It’s that inward direction that’s so deadly in life. You want to be outer directed.

A lot of us default to being inward directed. The transition is as simple as shifting your focus. Immerse yourself in the world, observe your surroundings, be a sponge absorbing what’s going on around you. Be a laser, observing everything around you, but not yourself. This will take you out of your head.

Getting out of your head isn’t something you do once and then you’re good to go. It’s something you practice. Once you get good at it, you’ll become more attuned to others’ feelings and reduce anxiety to near-zero levels.

Part II: House

Learn by doing. This is how the brain learns best because it’s wired that way. You want to play into how the human brain operates. The brain has a grain to it. You want to work with that grain and not against it. One of the grains is learning by doing.

Go with the grain of the brain.

Let’s take inspiration from the past, where practical learning was at the forefront of human development. Flash back 300,000 years ago, and we’re sitting there making tools out of bone and wood. The way the skill was passed down to other people (so it didn’t die with 1 generation) is you watched a person making the tool and learned and imitated them.

Flash forward to the medieval period in Europe, were they had apprenticeship schools. You’d spend 7 years where you’re learning masonry, carpentry, blacksmithing, etc. For 7 years you’re watching someone making something and imitating them. That’s how the brain operates. You learn by doing, not by thinking.

The blacksmith’s weren’t just thinking, This is how things are fitted, this is how I’ll craft the sword. NO. They’re doing it with my hands. The brain and the hands have the most connection of any part of our body because so much of our power as a species depended on our hands. We don’t have much hand stuff anymore. But learning by doing things and making things is how the brain is wired. You want to go with that grain. Learn through action. Not through talk and thought.

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Get outside of your head and outside of your house. Get into the world.