Over the past 10 years, I’ve done some things I’m really proud of.

I’ve built Onnit, a $70m company.

I’ve hit the New York Times Bestseller’s list.

I’ve hosted a podcast with over 30 Million downloads.

But that's all the shiny stuff that, in the end, matters very little.

The truth is that anyone can accomplish an amazing amount of success without actually reaching the deeper levels of their internal potential. And though a well-kept secret, this internal game is everything.

Of course, I'm not going to discredit the amount of energy and effort that it takes to be successful externally. But that's something that most of us understand. If you're an athlete or an entrepreneur, it’s the same. You just fucking sweat, you learn, you get your ass kicked, you get back up, you try something else, you go forward. It's an approach that usually works and gets you to accomplish these things.

But when you're talking about the internal game, it's the opposite. It's about how deeply you can surrender. How much you can let go. How good you can become at getting beyond your own delusions of success to embrace love for yourself and love for the world. 

I’ve been playing this internal game for a while now and it’s been a rocky road. I've been tested in every way. From grief and jealousy to pain and self judgment to lack of self love and deep needs for external validation.

But it’s this working in (not out) that I’m most proud of. Not to mention, as I've worked on that internal stuff, everything else externally has gotten so much easier, as well. 

Of course, I'm still learning how to navigate fully. I’m still learning to surrender with faith to the outcome that's going to happen. I’m still learning to control my internal orientation to external reality — which was never more apparent to me than when I spent…

6 Days in Total Darkness.

I recently did a silent retreat in total darkness and as you can imagine, I walked away with many “realizations” or fresh ways of seeing things. But none bigger than this.

For the first couple days of being alone with myself in a room with no light, I found myself thinking neurotically about all of the external things I could fix and all the ways I could say things better once I come out of this room.

And yet, the longer I was in this room and as my awareness of life and its meaning took on more depth, the more I realized none of this external game really matters.

I realized that if you want to change something externally, change it. But it’s not going to change anything internally. You can become a minimalist and declutter all your shit. That helps for a little while and it may be a really good thing. But if you don't declutter your internal cells, you're still fucked. You've done nothing. You just have a smaller house now.

If you want to accomplish external success, accomplish it. But it’s not going to make you successful internally. It’s not going to matter in the way you really want it to. 

I emerged from this room understanding more acutely than I ever had that our greatest invitation in this lifetime is not to build an empire of businesses & best-selling books. Our invitation is to fundamentally play the internal game.

It’s the results from this game that we get to keep far beyond this lifetime. 

This piece is part 01 of a series called UNLEARNED: Cut the BullSh*t, Unlock Your Best Self & Find Your True Path. To read all, visit here.

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