The Bridge Between Inner and Outer Development [#35]

Over the course of my life, I have been lucky to develop pretty solid personal productivity habits: Based on a vision I am developing for my life, I define half-yearly missions that let me live that vision. These missions translate into monthly planning for the roles that I play in them, which then become weekly plans. Designing my daily routine with my cardiac rhythm in mind and using techniques like time blocking or the Pomodoro timer, I have gotten fairly consistent.

This is one example of how inner change, such as developing integrity, discipline, and consistency, listening to myself and my energy, and developing compassion for myself, has led to outer manifestations. This inner change has allowed me to journal almost every day, to write these articles, move my body every day, and work on various projects: nurturing a network of bioregions at Bioregional Weaving Labs, co-creating a village project, and engaging in local bioregional weaving in A Mariña.

But what I have realized over the course of the last 8 years. It’s pretty limited what you can do with personal productivity compared to what you can achieve in a group or network.

Working in a genuine group or network (not a hierarchy) requires much more inner work than simply upgrading your personal productivity. No matter how much “inner work” you do on the surface, engaging in relationships shows you how ready you are really. It does not always translate. Engaging in relationships often is the work itself.

If you meditate for 10 years in a monastery, and afterwards you go back to the “real world” like your family Christmas dinner, where some relationship might trigger you. That’s where you learn how much your inner work has translated to reality. Can you stay calm and loving when your mom makes a comment that might be inappropriate in your view?

How much of that inner work translates to actual outer change?

The regenerative movement talks a lot about systems change. It also talks a lot about inner work.

What it rarely does is explain the connection.

This is a more personal reflection on how inner development translates to outer transformations.

Two worlds that seem seperate but aren't

Just to make sure we are talking about the same things. When I refer to “inner work,” I am referring to engaging in meditation or therapy, carrying out shadow work, learning to regulate your nervous system, and developing purpose and emotional intelligence. The assumption here is that changing how you relate to yourself and your emotions changes how you relate to others and, therefore, what you’re capable of and what you do in the world.

For example, if you constantly criticize yourself, you won’t start a project you have dreamed of. But if you start to listen more consciously to that inner critic and start to take small steps to disprove this critic, you are doing the inner work that will eventually change the outer world.

When I am referring to the “outer work,” I am referring to the policy that is made, the organisation that is built, the economies that are running, and how the ecology around us is affected. Basically, the structures you can touch and see.

Many of us believe that it is the structural change that actually moves systems. But I believe that if we develop new institutions within the regenerative movement without inner work, they will reproduce the old system in a different way.

The tricky part is to bridge the personal development to the interpersonal development.

An “enlightened” person who sits meditating in a monastery all day is as useful as a hippie who seeks to exit the system by living in an ecovillage. I don’t believe that you can even exit the system, because we are all connected to each other and the environment around us. (In that way of thinking, the meditating monk might as well have a ripple effect on quantum-level changes in consciousness.)

For me, the work of developing compassion for myself and others has significantly translated to outer change:

When I first came to the village, and it got quiet around me, a lot of thoughts arose. When there was conflict, often blaming and judging thoughts arose. A lot of interpretation of what was happening. With some meditation training, I could observe the thoughts that were coming and going. With time, they did not consume me anymore.

Reading the “Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet,” I learned more about cultivating compassion and started practicing it more. Before, I believed it was a passive thing and that you would just endure whatever would come at you. Then I learned that compassion is active: You choose to assume the best in people, you relate their reaction to some trauma that they might have suffered from, and you do the same for yourself: you care for yourself and give yourself what you need because you feel compassion for yourself as well.

Now, when I feel like I am acting or thinking from a place of hate or fear, I do a 10-minute compassion meditation and feel changed afterwards, which then translates into the relationships I have and then the actions that arise from them. (I totally fail at this at times as well.)

Enlightened individuals inside broken systems still reproduce the system

I see this pattern in my work for regeneration. While the work is changing the inspirational, social, ecological, and economic fabric in bioregions, it is often not “regenerative”. Lack of capacity, often related to funding (traditional capital doesn’t like to fund work that doesn’t have a clear, timely cause-and-effect relationship that generates return on financial capital) translates to long hours, intense sprints, and burnout at times.

Even me having beautiful nature around to ground myself, working part-time and having a balance with garden work need to remind myself daily to slow down, to become present, and to go from there.

You can do amazing personal work, but without structural changes, you will probably relapse.

From this experience, I am further developing the vision of Universal Basic Services. Everyone working for the regeneration of the planet should have free access to food, shelter, community, mental health professionals, old-growth forests, and other things that meet their needs. And that’s what we are trying to get to with the village project - bringing these structural changes that sustain the personal transformation.

Having that safety and abundance will lead to healthier systems that we are building down the line. A relaxed nervous system that is not fearful can see and feel more, it can sense better what is right.

Inner development and the context around you are in close relationship.

It’s easier to feel calm and centered when the people around you feel that, too.

It is easier not to eat sweets or snacks when they are not sitting at the kitchen counter.

It is easier to take a grounded stroll through nature when it’s a stone's throw away.

And it is definitely easier to build a more beautiful world when you don’t feel scarcity.

Structural change without personal transformation will not be effective

Now, imagine it the other way around. A perfect village with an abundance of food, lively ecosystems, and good structures. But with people who are fearful, competitive, egoistic, greedy, and extractive. How long will the village be perfect?

It’s a pattern that I see in the impact world.

“The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

Many people want to be good, but it comes from a place of fear. Fear for the future, fear for death, fear of loneliness. Fear is a natural response to the state the world is in, but ​we can transform that fear into moving forward with love and meaning.​

Fear has you reside in the left brain hemisphere. To focus. To execute. To fight.

Love gives you access to the right brain hemisphere. To feel spaciousness. To see the big picture. To trust others.

Let me base that on a concrete example: direct air capture technology. It is a fearful response to the climate crisis. It’s a limited perspective. It doesn’t question the underlying logic. It misses the big picture: we need to degrow harmful economic activities, lower emissions, and use nature-based solutions. (e.g., reforesting, rewilding, and regenerating degraded land to not just capture CO2 but to restore biodiversity, and heal local and planetary water cycles. Water vapor is a more potent greenhouse gas; it accounts for roughly 50% of Earth’s greenhouse effect, compared to CO₂’s ~20%.)

If we were to scale this technology without personal transformation, we would just use a lot of materials for little gain.

I come to the conclusion: we need grounded individuals, with calm nervous systems, to build systems that help others develop there.

Structural changes that do not come from genuine inner work will be futile.

How both connect

Inner work changes what you can tolerate. And your tolerance threshold shapes what you build.

Someone who hasn’t done the work on their own, out of fear of scarcity, will build hoarding into whatever they create, even unintentionally. They won’t act in the best interest of the group.

This has been a journey for me in the last year, full of uncertainty. Taking time after my last impact gig, I jumped into a sea of uncertainty. Unemployment, unknown terrain, then self-employment.

What I am learning is that the more I lean into fear, the less life flows. Resistance, anger, sadness.

The more I trust and consciously act out of love, the more it starts to happen. New connections, opportunities, joy.

The intricate dance

What I am also feeling is that the outer work, done seriously, also produces inner change. Living on a piece of land, being accountable to a community, growing food together — these are teachers.

Living in community is the ultimate personal development gateway. Being with sweet souls, I am being gently reminded of my individualistic tendencies and the grind and achievement orientation.

“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”

Being with intuitive, introverted non-academic people, I am reminded of the limitation of the intellect and how I am just now relearning creativity and intuition that school trained out of me.

I am reminded that it is okay to ask for help, to feel what I need, and to communicate it gently.

If you want to work on inner development, join a community (but not a guru-based one that preaches convictions that you can’t question)

Closing

A sick system produces sick people.

But it’s also true that healthier people create healthier systems.

Somehow it starts. You start a practice that helps you be more grounded. Something as simple as regular walks in the forest. Then this ripples outwards, you are calmer and can hold space for others' development. You work on past traumas and develop emotional intelligence. Then you are at a place where you can care better and build healthier systems that help others heal.

It’s a responsibility, too. I feel very privileged in my position to be able to carve myself a way out of there. To use my newfound groundedness, clarity, trust, and (self-)love to nurture me, my relationships, and then places and bioregions that help stabilize others' nervous systems, which then allows actual inner work to happen, which then ripples into building the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible.

The bridge runs both ways. That’s the whole point.

Happy regeneration,
Jonas