#28 Inside Out
In this episode, Arnold Beekes contrasts two fundamentally different ways of living: from the outside in, where you're constantly reacting to what other people say, what you consume, and what the world throws at you — versus from the inside out, where you start with what you notice and feel internally, and respond to the world from there. He makes the case that outside-in living means living someone else's life, always shaped by external triggers, while inside-out living means actually living your own. Arnold gets specific about how distraction functions as avoidance — the movies, the drinking, the endless scrolling we reach for precisely because we don't want to hear the inner voice quietly telling us we're unhappy at work, exhausted, or not using our potential. He uses a vivid image: trying to receive something with a closed hand that's already full — your brain works the same way, and when it's packed with other people's expectations and constant distraction, there's no space left to receive insight, intuition, or even proper sleep. His practical suggestion is disarmingly simple: when you eat, just eat. When you drink, just drink. When you walk, actually notice what you see, hear, and smell. It's a training process, not something that happens automatically. The episode closes with a genuinely lovely piece of everyday beauty: King's College Hospital in London has built a rooftop garden ICU, letting critically ill patients spend hours outdoors — fully connected to power, data, and medical gas — in a space designed by a three-time Chelsea Flower Show winner, with one patient awaiting a heart operation saying she'd want to be out there even in a thunderstorm.
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Welcome, I'm Arnold Beekes and I enable you to have a better life between the ears because your inner state creates your outer reality. Today's topic is living from the inside out instead of what most people do living from the outside in. What do I mean by that? Living from the outside in is that we are kind of continuously responding to events, other people, media, things we consume and then we react or respond to what's coming at us.
A person or your boss criticizing you and then you respond to that. You're eating some processed food and then your stomach protests. You read something about the war in the Ukraine and about people being killed and then you respond to that.
That's how most people live. They live from the outside in. So it's the outside world which determines how you feel and how you react.
But a better way is to live from the inside out. What do I notice? What do I hear? What do I feel inside of me? And then you react or respond to the world around you. So that means living from the inside out means living your own life and living from the outside in.
You live someone else's life because you're constantly responding to what other people say or do. In the beginning when we were young or when we grew up it was not a conscious decision but I the moment we get older and older it can and I suggest that you make it a conscious decision to live from the inside out. But what we are doing and sometimes we know sometimes we don't know is that we focus on distractions to ignore in our voices.
Sometimes or often you'll hear this inner voice like I really don't like my job. I'm fed up with always my wife criticizing me for doing things. I really feel that I'm not using my potential.
But you're consciously ignoring those inner voices. Sometimes we're even suppressing them. It's like why am I always feeling tired? Why don't I have more energy? Why am I so anxious about the future? And as we don't want to feel those emotions, we don't want to hear those inner voices.
We focus on distractions and those distractions can take any form like you can watch movies all the time, you can drink a lot of alcohol, you can always go to parties or events and in a lot of cases those distractions you do them because you don't want to hear what's going on inside of you. But those distractions make that there is no space in your head. It becomes full because you are full with number one what other people expect from you and with your boss and friends and family and everybody else and add to that all these distractions which want your attention.
Not in the least the social media and your endless scrolling. That means that your brain is really really occupied. Because your brain is occupied, there's no space to receive ideas, insights, intuition, science.
Well you can imagine like if you want to receive something and you do it with an open hand or a closed hand where you have something in that hand. If your hand is closed and you have something in it, you cannot receive anything. But the same is true for your head brain.
If it's full with all kinds of distractions, if it's full with all the expectations of other people, then there is no space. There's no space to receive ideas or insights. And because your brain is so busy processing everything.
Processing what you saw that day or you experienced or some people said to you. You have also difficulty sleeping. Whereas sleep is one of the most important things for your learning and for processing your experience which you had during the day.
But if you're so full like let's say you watch the thriller, a movie. You're always thinking about that. Your brain goes on processing that thriller and not what you learned this day.
Living from the inside out means you got to be present. And being present is not easy because we're flooded with these distractions and they want us to be distracted. So I suggest to start with a couple of simple things.
When you eat, just eat. Don't watch a video at the same time. Don't talk to some other people.
The same is when you drink tea or coffee or water. Just focus on that. Don't continue working.
I just drink myself and while I'm working I'm drinking some water. But I realized I was not focused on drinking the water. I was focused on my work.
So I couldn't tell whether it was two minutes ago or 20 minutes ago that I drank the water because I didn't pay attention. Even with walking, try and be present to see what you see, what you hear, what you smell. And as you're moving from living from the outside in towards living to the inside out, start training yourself.
Yes, it is training yourself because we're not used to. So train yourself to listen not only to what's going on in your head but also in your heart brain and your gut brain. And what's going on in your body.
Maybe your body gives certain signals. It's like, hey, you need to pay attention to this. So live from the inside out.
Everyday beauty. We conclude this session with some examples of everyday beauty. Because beauty and especially moral beauty, kindness, courage, compassion has a very positive influence on your inner state.
The example I want to share is a London hospital that built a fully equipped ICU. ICU is an intensive care unit on its roof. Yes, on its roof.
And patients are spending hours outside. So King's College Hospital in London has opened a rooftop garden where critical care patients can spend hours outside without being disconnected from their life supporting systems. Six weatherproof medical cabinets on the roof provide each patient with access to power, data and medical gas exactly as they would receive from the ward below.
So their ICU and their intensive care unit which consists of 60 people can now send up to six patients at a time to the garden which sits above one of the busiest intensive care units in the United Kingdom. And it's not just any garden. The garden was designed by a landscape architect, a professor and a three-time winner of the Chelsea Flower Show.
There are aromatic plants including rosemary, sage and oregano glow alongside tactile species like lambs here. And they're chosen to actively encourage engagement. They're like, hey, want to smell this? What is this? And the hospital calls it the first outdoor critical care unit of its kind in the United Kingdom.
And they're researching whether time in the garden improves long-term patient outcomes. There's a patient called Holly and she's waiting for a heart operation who spends hours at a time on the roof and said, even if there were thunderstorms, I want to be out there. So I think that's really, really beautiful that you connect with a little bit of nature around time.
Remember, we need your uniqueness. Be a better maker for yourself, for others, for the world.
