Unlocking Wisdom: Internal and External Worlds of Knowledge

Understanding your problems is crucial to solving them.

But it's also challenging.

One way to start understanding your problems is by increasing your knowledge about them. One effective way of doing that is by gathering information in two different worlds.

The first is the external world.

It's where you go when you google something, ask other people, or read a book to learn something new.

The second is your inner world.

It's where you go to write in your journal, take a break to think, or meditate on a problem.

The Crucial Differences Between Both Worlds

It's very important to understand the differences between these two worlds because you can rarely solve a problem with information from only one.

If you only try to understand something with help from the external world, you'll gather an enormous amount of information, advice, and insights. But they rarely fit your individual situation and thus never work perfectly for you. Only by combining external knowledge with internal insights can you create that perfect fit.

Conversely, you can gather immense knowledge, wisdom, and insights from your internal world. But because you're biased, flawed, and ignorant, chances are high that you'll miss or misinterpret them. If you don't supplement your internal insights with external knowledge, you'll remain blind forever.

As you see, in most situations you need to gather information from the external and internal world to understand a problem deeply. Then you must combine the information from both worlds into a coherent understanding.

So, let's break down how to gather information from each world.

Gathering Information From the External World

Let’s start with how to find information about your problems in the external world.

For the purpose of this letter, the external world is a place of things and people. You can use things and talk to people to understand your problems better.

Let’s examine these information sources and how to use them effectively.

Gathering Information From Things

First, let's look at gathering information from things.

Common things you can use to gather information are:

• AI
• Books
• Videos
• Lectures
• Podcasts
• Experiences

Let’s look at each in more detail:

In the external world, you can find more books about your problems than you can ever read. From superficial popular science books to deep dives into scientific details, the external world is your oyster. Additionally, you can also learn a lot from newsletters, blogs, and articles like this one.

Further, YouTube has an incredible selection of deep dives from experts on various topics to wise nerds in every niche. You can also find many insightful lectures, podcasts, and videos there that you can use to learn more about your problems.

Moreover, you can use experiences to gather information about your problem. It's often through the information we gather while we do something that we understand it best. That's why should can act in the external world to gain experience and knowledge to understand your problems better.

Finally, you can use AI. It seems to be a decent first stop to gain a good overview of a new topic and you can even engage in very productive dialogue with it about anything you want. Just ask Perplexity about a topic, chat with ChatGPT, or open Claude to start learning.

As you can see, things in the external world are a treasure trove of information.

But we haven’t exhausted it yet!

You can still talk to all kinds of people!

Gaining Information From People

People are great sources of insight.

Especially because you usually have many different ones that you can talk to about your problems.

Common people you can relatively easily talk to are:

• Your family
• Your partner
• Your friends
• Professionals

One advantage of talking to people is that they can help you look at your problems in ways you haven't considered before. They have a wide variety of experiences, views, and beliefs that you don't share and can thus make you aware of new perspectives from which you can look at your problems.

I put family first because they usually know you the longest. While this can be a distinct advantage in revealing uncomfortable or deep truths about you, it can also be a disadvantage. They might still see you as the person they knew from 15 years ago, instead of the one you became in the last two. Still, however outdated their idea of you might be, they can still offer valuable information about who you are and where your problems might come from.

Your partner is different from your family. They've often lived with you every day for the last few months or years and know a lot about your past and future. The deeper your relationship and trust with them, the more vulnerable, honest, and forthcoming you can be without fear of ridicule. That makes them ideal to give you an "outsider's" look into your behavior and be a great source of insights about your problems.

Your friends are different still. First, every friend is different from every other friend you have. They have different opinions, different backgrounds, and different relationships with you. As a result, they can be another great source of insight into your problems. Even more so, if you haven't expelled all those from your life, who think differently than you. If you want to learn the most about your problems or yourself, make sure you talk to everyone who might help from your closest friends to new acquaintances. You never know who might offer a piece of advice or observation that puts your brain onto a new path of problem-solving.

Finally, there are professionals who can help you understand yourself and your problems better. A core component of our jobs as coaches is to increase your understanding. This can be plain old factual understanding or knowledge but, depending on our profession, we can also help you understand your flaws, insufficiencies, and problems in highly personalized and unique ways. The same goes for skilled and qualified therapists, consultants, and workers who have acquired highly specific knowledge they can share with you so you can understand your problems and yourself much better.

What things and people share is that they are outside sources of information.

While they can help to increase your knowledge and understanding, you'll rarely unlock your deepest insights without diving into your internal world.

So, let's look at that one next.

Understanding Your Internal World

For the purpose of this letter, your mind is the internal world.

It's what you use when you think, reflect, and write on your own.

Instead of things and people, your mind consists of experiences, insights, and ideas. Thus, gathering information from the internal world requires you to unearth information from it with a variety of methods.

Some of these methods are:

• Walks
• Talking
• Writing
• Thinking

Let's look at each one in more detail:

Walking

Walking is a great way to understand yourself.

If you want to tune into your internal world while you walk, you have to walk without distractions. Here are a few ideas on how to do that:

• Put your phone in airplane mode
• Don't listen to music
• Leave your headphones at home

Be aware.

Pay attention to your thoughts, feelings, and emotions.

Really listen to them and see what comes up.

Do you identify recurring thought patterns? Do you feel like they serve or sabotage you?

Do you remember an experience you usually avoid?

Do you feel a feeling you hate feeling?

Great! You've just tuned into your internal world and learned something from it.

If you really want to understand yourself, you can do this with an idea in mind — an objective.

For example, if you try to understand why you don't exercise, take a long walk free of distractions and tune into your internal world. Then probe it for answers. Sooner or later, I guarantee that you'll be surprised by what you find.

Talking

You might wonder what "talking" is doing under "internal world." After all, isn't talking an activity in the external world? Usually done with other people?

Yes, we generally think of it this way.

But, you can also turn it into a method of unearthing insights from your internal world.

Simply use your phone to record and transcribe your thoughts while you walk.

At the time of writing this, I use Vienna Scribe for this on iOS.

But you can use any transcription app you want.

Just turn it on, go on a walk, and start talking about whatever you want to understand more deeply.

This method works better when you guide your thinking toward a specific goal or intention, similar to walking.

Then send the transcription to your note-taking system and read it.

You'll almost certainly discover some new insights you weren't aware of before.

You can also copy and paste your transcript into a LLM model like ChatGPT and chat about it. This can be great for quickly identifying recurring patterns in your thinking or probing deeper into interesting insights hidden in your transcript.

Writing

Writing is probably one of the most common ways to explore your internal world.

I've written about this method before in one of my past letters.

Writing is amazing for understanding yourself deeply because it highlights flaws in your thinking and offloads your worries from your mind. It doesn't matter if you write on a piece of paper, in a journal, or digitally. But, writing by hand seems to make you remember more, and a journal is a great place to store your ideas and return to them later.

If you don't write regularly yet, don't focus on a method.

First, focus on establishing the habit of writing.

Once this habit is established, you can focus on improving your methodology.

You can start by asking yourself a simple question:

"What is on my mind today?"

Then, just start writing about whatever comes to mind.

Follow your thoughts where they lead and keep probing deeper when it seems like a good idea to do so. There's no magic here. Just try to relax into the writing flow and don't force it.

When I have a problem, I usually write about it in my journal. Time and time again, I assume I won't be surprised by a random insight. But, time and time again, I'm wrong and gain new insights just by writing about a problem I have.

Thinking

Thinking is often an inferior method for exploring your internal world than writing.

In comparison to writing, if you just think about a problem, you have a lot of freedom to overlook faulty logic, false memories, and wrong conclusions. You also miss out on another important benefit of writing: You can’t return to your thoughts later and see them with fresh eyes.

But, the advantage of thinking over writing is that you can do it anywhere at any time. This means that you can use it to gather information from your internal world whenever you want.

You can start with a simple idea or prompt to guide your thinking, like in the methods described before. Try: "What's on my mind right now?" or "What is worrying me?"

Then think about answers to these questions.

As always, this works best in distraction-free environments.

Just be sure not to think too much about a problem without doing anything about it. That's how you cultivate anxiety and worry that can eventually drive you insane. Instead, always couple your thinking with action as soon as you can.

Now that we’ve looked at how you can gather information in your internal world, there’s one more important question to answer:

Where do you start?

Where to Start

You should always start by gathering information from your internal world.

The reason is simple:

The ideas and thoughts you have will be as close to authentic as possible.

If you instead start by gathering information from the external world, you might not even notice how it influences your thinking and the information you gather from your internal world. Thus, you can easily undermine your conclusions before you even start forming them.

That’s how you confuse advice from someone else for your own idea and information from the external world for information from the internal world.

For this reason, when you become aware of a problem, you should first look in your internal world.

Think about the problem on your way to work.

Talk about it with your phone while you take a walk.

Write about it in your journal as part of your morning routine.

Collect your findings in your note-taking system and try to find connections, insights, and ideas. That's how you build a solid understanding before you enrich it with information and insights from the external world.

Phew, that was a lot! So, what have we learned so far?

Conclusion

When you want to understand a problem or yourself, you have to look for information that furthers your understanding.

You can look for this information in two worlds:

The external world and your internal world.

We've explored a number of methods to look for information in each, and some suggestions on how to make the best of them.

I've also suggested that you start by exploring the internal world first so you don't confuse external inputs with internal ones.

When you begin to search for new knowledge in these two worlds, you’ll be richly rewarded with insights, knowledge, and wisdom. But, all of this new knowledge can be very overwhelming.

In one of my future letters, I’ll explain how you can conquer this overwhelm and distill everything you find in your external and internal world in a way that makes it actionable.

I’ll see you then.

– Waldi