For many years you may have built your life guided by external evaluations and expectations. What will others think? Are you doing the right thing? Are you living up to what is expected of you? Are you handling things well enough?
The shift to inner authority begins with becoming aware of how strongly other people’s opinions influence your decisions and your attitude toward yourself.
Even if you are engaged in spiritual development, dependence on the external can persist for a very long time. You can know a great deal about yourself, your Soul, and the spiritual path, and yet continue to seek confirmation of your own worth from the outside.
Gaining inner authority is one of the important stages of embodiment, and it requires deep inner change. You begin to turn powerfully inward, to restore trust in yourself, and to gradually free yourself from external conditioning.
This is not an easy process, because the habit of measuring yourself against the outside world was formed over many years.
What changes when you stop looking for answers outside? Why is it so hard to give up external confirmation of your worth?
Let’s explore how this inner turn happens, what prevents you from restoring trust in yourself, and how to recognize the familiar ways of seeking support outside yourself.
What the shift to inner authority means
What does this shift from seeking external authority to a life based on inner authority mean?
For many years you may have oriented yourself toward what lies outside you: what someone thought, what someone wrote, how you should act, what you should be like.
And all of this takes priority.
It’s as if you are constantly checking yourself against the outside world, looking outward to understand whether you are living correctly. The center of decision-making is not within you.
But at a certain moment, a powerful turn inward happens. Instead of constantly searching for the answer outside, you begin to rely on inner authority.
This doesn’t happen automatically. This process requires a tremendous amount of energy and effort, because you need to weave all these “threads” together, to bring everything connected to you back to yourself. It’s not easy.
So gradually the very way you define yourself and your life changes.
This is one of the stages of connecting with the Soul: you switch over and become the center of your world. Don’t confuse this with egocentricity.
If before you were entirely and completely dependent on everything around you, now it’s important to bring the center back to yourself.
Also read Self-Worth and Inner Sovereignty: The Path from Codependency to Freedom
Inner authority is not the same as selfish wants
When you gain a certain autonomy and sovereignty, your interests become primary, they are tied at the very least to your own highest good.
Inner authority is not indulging the ego-personality’s wants, it is the ability to choose what is for your benefit.
Inner authority is connected not only with freedom of choice, but also with responsibility for that choice.
Why it is difficult to give up external authority
External authority provides a very clear coordinate system.
If there are requirements, you can understand whether you meet them or not. If there are rules, you can check yourself against them. If there is someone’s opinion, you can agree or disagree with it. If there is a certain standard, you can try to reach it.
There is certainty in this. But at the same time, dependence arises.
When a person is used to living this way, the following sequence forms: first look at what is right, then check whether you match it, wait for a reaction, get confirmation — and again turn to the external world.
As a result, to answer the question “who am I?” a person constantly turns to something outside themselves.
Turning inward means restructuring this entire chain. Not just ceasing to listen to others, but changing the very center from which you make decisions and define your life.
Also read How to Overcome Dependence on Others’ Opinions
Does the transition to inner authority mean rejecting others’ opinions
It is important not to confuse inner authority with the need to reject everything external.
This does not mean that now you don’t need to listen to anyone, read anything, or take anyone’s opinion into account.
What lies outside of you ceases to be the only center around which your life is built.
You can listen to others’ opinions, read information, get advice, but the center of decision-making gradually moves inward.
From external validation of worth to trust in yourself
The next level after external validation of your own worth and reliance on conditioning — is restoring trust in yourself.
You are already making decisions independently, but at the same time you still continue to depend on external validation of your own worth.
- “I’m a good girl if I act this way.”
- “I’m a good mother if I do such and such.”
- “I’m a worthy member of society or the community if I do this.”
In every case, worth is tied to a condition: in order to feel your worth, you need to receive confirmation.
It becomes a vicious circle: you are constantly trying to meet the conditions in order to maintain a sense of your own worth.
Read also How to Learn to Trust: 8 Recommendations for Developing Trust in Yourself
What It Means to Move Toward Unconditionality
Many want to reach the level of unconditionality, but the very act of untethering from the external and switching to the internal turns out to be very difficult.
Because external conditioning can be very deeply embedded in everyday life.
How can you discard these conditions and at the same time remain a good mother, a good girl, a good and valuable member of society—without conditions?
The question is not about moving from the state of “I am bad” to the state of “I am good.”
It is about ceasing to tie your own worth to meeting any conditions.
You can be a good mother, fulfill your duties, grow, care for others, do what you consider right. But these actions stop being proof that you are worthy of love and respect.
This is the movement toward unconditionality.
Read also The Coordinate System of Self-Worth, or How the Shift Happens from Evaluating and Criticizing Yourself to Inner Stability
How to Restore Trust in Yourself and Inner Support
The transition to inner authority requires long-term work.
Try to notice the moments when you again look outside for the answer to the question of how to act correctly, what you need to be like, and whether you are good enough.
Instead of automatically checking yourself against external requirements, turn to yourself with questions:
- What truly serves my highest good?
- What do I choose?
- What can I lean on within myself?
This is how trust in yourself is gradually restored.
This does not mean that you will always be confident in your decision or will never doubt. The point is that the answer to important questions no longer has to necessarily come from outside.
You begin to hear yourself, trust yourself, choose, interpret what comes from the level of the Soul, and bring it to life.
How to Recognize Dependence on External Validation
To see where external conditions continue to define your life, ask yourself a few questions:
1. What do I focus on when I make a decision?
On what truly serves my highest good? Or primarily on what others will say, what is written, what requirements exist, and what is considered correct?
2. What does my sense of self-worth depend on?
What do I need to do or receive in order to feel good enough, worthy, right?
Do I have inner trust in myself? Or do I still need confirmation from outside?
3. What conditions have I set for my own worth?
What rules must I comply with in order to consider myself a good mother, a good person, a worthy member of society?
What will happen to my sense of self-worth if I stop meeting these conditions?
4. What do I choose for my highest good?
Where do I already know how to make such a choice? And where do I still return to ego-personality wants or again seek permission and confirmation from outside?
The answers to these questions help you see where external reference points still remain the center of your life, and where inner support is already forming.
Also read Just Be and Stop Being Someone. The Value of Being Who You Are
Conclusion
Each of the stages outlined is work spanning many years that has been done, and now for many its finalization is taking place.
And that is why it is especially important to notice where this transition has already happened, and where you still give the external world the right to determine your worth and your choice.
So here is a question for you: where exactly in your life do you still wait for permission from the external world to be yourself, for confirmation of your own worth, or for an answer to the question of how you should rightly live?