I want to share something personal, because it has helped me, and my clients, a lot.

For the past 6 months or so, I have started tracking ‘Internal Metrics’. Meaning, I spent a lot of time thinking about the way I want to feel, and boiling it down to just a few words, that I can measure out of 100 on a daily basis over time.

The score is more or less unimportant. The real work begins when I ask the question; “What is Preventing me from feeling 100% _____?”

At the start, the answer to this question for each metric would be over a page long – mental barriers from all over the place came flooding through. As I continued this practice, the answers became shorter, and the scores moved higher.

The personal story really begins here:

Over the past 4 weeks or so I have stopped tracking my internal metrics daily, as I got to a place where I was scoring 100% almost everyday. But I’ve noticed over the last few weeks myself getting more easily frustrated, agitated, hung up on external outcomes and events, and a more persistent lingering feeling of dissatisfaction with where I was. I think this is maybe a common feeling – not being satisfied where one is, which is why I’m sharing.

At the same time, I have also noticed that I have been avoiding my internal metrics, and today I found out why. I knew there was discomfort there, there was something I was avoiding.

This is where the good part is, this is the thing you take away from this post:

My first metric is Peace. When I asked myself “What is Preventing me from feeling 100% at Peace?” This is the answer I got: Not having what I want. Feeling like I NEED to have certain things, and have things go my way. Feeling like I’m trying to escape from where I am, no matter where I actually am. Like I’m constantly trying to escape to some place in the future, on the horizon, in a different time and space, where I do have what I want, where I do feel Peace, Freedom & Satisfaction. As if there is somewhere ‘out there’ that I am trying to get to. THAT has been preventing me from feeling Peace. Attachment to an outcome, getting hung up on external events, and the longing for that undefined time and space.

It’s why I have this saying; “If you do not have it here and now, you will NEVER have it.”

I found myself chasing, and longing, and hoping, and escaping where I am right now, as if there were some place in the future, in a different time and space, where I would feel exactly how I want to feel and have all the things I want to have. But that’s the problem. ‘Out there’ is ALWAYS out there. The Horizon is ALWAYS on the horizon.

That thing you’re chasing, that external metric, that event, that achievement, if you’re part of the vast majority of people, you are not chasing it for the thing itself.

You are chasing it for the feeling you are hoping it will give you.

Everyone that I have spoken to about Internal Metrics, and every client of mine that has established and started tracking their internal metrics, has found tremendous value in doing so. It’s bypassing all the chasing, and struggle, and suffering, and getting to what we truly want most, right now.

If you cannot have it here and now, you will never have it.

So what is that you want to feel every day for the rest of your life? And what is Preventing you from feeling 100% that way?