Everyone lives in an inside-out world. And everyone thinks they are living in an outside-in world.

We all experience a world of circumstances, events where action moves things and effort produces results.

Few look behind the curtain of their experience, to find that we only ever experience our thinking.

In an outside-in world, we perceive circumstantial results, and action as the source of creating the results. This is similar to the naivety of a child thinking the faucet is creating the water.

If one believes the faucet produces the water, every intervention becomes an obsession with the plumbing. The organization spends its resources replacing the valves, polishing the metal, and gripping the handle ever tighter, entirely blind to the disconnection from the reservoir of water.

This is apparent in corporate management development programs where behavioral frameworks are taught as leadership skills. These produce simulations of leadership that seem useful under classroom conditions more than in real life.

It is energy that creates. Energy when harvested through a created identity, in turn creates action as a downstream consequence, just as water when harvested and focused can eventually flow through the faucet and become useful.

Action does not create. Action is part of that which is created.

This is why tactical solutions to challenges rarely help one live a sovereign life or be a better leader. They merely refine the simulation.

The illusion only breaks when the leader stops reaching for the immediate toolkit, and finally turns their attention to the space from which all these emerge.