Is Your Compass External or Internal?

Human beings tend to create context in one of two ways. We generally understand our orientation with our world externally or internally. Neither is right or wrong, but it pays to know how you’re oriented.

Externally oriented individuals would understand whether their efforts are successful or not based on an external source. Someone, likely an expert or person of interest, would tell them they’ve succeeded. In instances of problem solving, an externally oriented person would get advice or teaching from someone as to what course to take.

Internally oriented individuals understand their world from an internal compass. They know they’ve succeeded because they believed it to be true from within, regardless of differing external views. When internally oriented individuals need to problem solve, they need education rather than external advice. With education, they, of course, will feel like the solution is their idea and their doing. Both are important feelings for internally oriented individuals.

I would imagine you’re beginning to figure which orientation you have. It’s important that while you do that investigation that you recognize that one isn’t necessarily better than the other. In fact, both can be problematic. Internally oriented individuals who seek impossible perfection can be unhappy with results in their lives that virtually everyone around them would agree are worthy of celebration, for example. Externally oriented individuals may seek the approval of individuals in their lives that simply aren’t healthy or understanding of what “good enough” really is, therefore leading them in the wrong direction. In extremes, this kind of orientation can rationalize receiving abuse.

There is power in knowing. Whether you’re internally or externally oriented, can you see where it’s serving you? Can you imagine where this may be a hang up?

 

Logan Gelbrich

@functionalcoach