How to upgrade your inner operating system

For 20 years, I’ve been drawn to one question: 

What improves the quality of your inner world?

It started below the surface. Whenever I encountered deep truths through anything from reading about Buddhism to observing someone embody an elevated way of being, something clicked. 

It was as if my body was saying, “There’s something profound here.”

From there, I stumbled into consciousness work.

I met mentors who’d spent decades expanding their inner operating systems. Their transformations inspired me to explore meditation, which has by now led to a decade and a half of structured inner work. 

As I worked through blockages, I became more patient, loving, and aware of self and others. 

And I became more effective in my work. 

I found that for improved performance, deep inner work beats any tactic, habit, or tool.

Below, I share 5 ways to raise your consciousness so you can experience the benefits too.

Before we get there, let’s meet the skeptical mind by addressing what consciousness is and why this work is essential for high performers.

Consciousness isn’t mystical. It’s simply the quality of your perception:

Your capacity to be aware of thoughts, emotions, sensations, and reality as they arise.

At a deeper level, consciousness is the field in which all experience arises.

When your consciousness expands, you stop letting instant reactions lead you.

You can observe what’s happening in your inner world, return to your centre, and make intentional decisions from there.

In my 20s, a mentor at McKinsey helped me understand consciousness work with an analogy. 

Imagine ascending the spiral staircase inside a round tower.

The staircase winds 360 degrees upward as you go from one floor to the next. 

You pass the same views again and again, but from a higher vantage point each time. 

Elevating consciousness is the same.

Instead of walking around in circles, repeating the same patterns, and encountering the same blockages, you see things from a higher and more wise perspective.

Most people try to raise performance by adding habits.

But habits only change what you do. Consciousness work changes who is doing it.

1. Practice radical presence.

Meditation isn't about feeling calm or achieving some mystical state of enlightenment.

For me, it’s about developing metacognition: the ability to observe your own thinking.

I use meditation to build my ability to return to the present moment on command, so I can observe my inner world before I react.

Here's what a consistent presence practice does:

- It strengthens the witness. You observe your thoughts instead of being lost in them.

- It weakens identification. You stop believing you are your thoughts, emotions, or sensations. You realise you're the awareness that perceives them.

- It interrupts reactive loops. The space between stimulus and response expands. You stop reacting automatically and start choosing consciously.

- It quiets mental chatter. It calms the default mode network: the brain's source of rumination, worry, and self-referential thinking.

- It increases interoception. You become more attuned to internal sensations, which improves intuition and embodiment. You learn to connect with deeper parts of your being.

Most people are stuck replaying yesterday, rehearsing tomorrow, scrolling, planning, worrying.

Add this inner work to your routine, and you build a secret advantage. Here’s how:

Practice (beginner): One-minute of full presence, several times a day, to get out of autopilot. Pause. Breathe. Notice. Return.

Practice (advanced): Micro-moments of centeredness throughout the day. Eventually you will be able to be present as a default state.

2. Purify your motive.

Most actions are contaminated by hidden agendas.

You think you're working hard because you care about the work. But underneath, you're proving something or protecting something.

Instead, you want your actions to come from a place of inner alignment.

So before doing anything important, ask which of these is motivating you:

• Proving → ego inflation, attachment to outcomes, fragile self-worth

• Protecting → fear contraction, defensive energy, scarcity mindset

• Alignment → expansion, clarity, generosity, truth, creation, service
  
  

When you try to prove yourself, you filter reality through the lens of “am I enough?”

When you protect yourself, you can't act freely. You're trapped in defensiveness.

When you're in alignment, your perception becomes clear. Your actions are congruent. Your energy becomes clean.

Practice: Before any major decision, meeting, or creative act, pause and ask: 

“What's my motive? Trying to prove myself? Protecting? Or am I in alignment?

If it's the first two, breathe. Wait. Reconnect with yourself. Then act with intention.

3. Transmute your emotions.

Emotional transmutation may sound spiritual, but it’s simply the skill of processing your emotions instead of reacting to them.

Most people do one of two things when emotions come up:

1. Suppress them (ignore, numb, distract)

2. Act them out reactively (lash out, spiral, dramatise)

Both of these reactions keep you stuck.

Transmutation is the third option: 

Feel your emotions fully, process them consciously, and let them run their course.

Follow these steps:

A. Notice the emotion as a sensation.

Where is the feeling in your body? Chest? Throat? Stomach? 

Don't label it yet. Just feel it as a physical sensation.

B. Breathe into it without adding a story.

Don't ask, “Why am I feeling this?” Don't analyse it. Don't justify it. 

Just breathe and feel.

C. Ask gently: “What is this feeling asking for?”

Sometimes it's asking to be witnessed. Sometimes it's asking you to speak up. 

Sometimes it's asking you to let go. Listen without forcing an answer.

D. Stay present until the emotion naturally subsides.

Emotions are waves. They rise, crest, and dissolve. But only if you let them. 

When you process emotions instead of suppressing them, you expand your awareness and let go of old pain.

You stop being hijacked by triggers and become emotionally free.

Practice: Next time you feel anger, fear, or sadness, don't distract yourself. 

Sit with it for 5 minutes. Follow the steps above. Breathe. Feel it. Accept it. And let it move through you.

4. Let go of control.

Human stress comes from one source: trying to control what you can't control.

Outcomes. Timelines. Other people's perceptions. The future. The past.

You grip. You force. You push. You manipulate.

Higher consciousness comes from dropping unnecessary control and accepting reality as it is, not as you wish it to be.

This doesn't mean passivity. It means discerning between:

• What you can influence (your actions, your response, your energy)

• What you can't control (outcomes, other people, circumstances)

Focus 100% of your energy on the first. Release the second.

Practice: The next time you notice yourself getting caught up in outcomes you can’t control, relax your shoulders and take a deep breath. Physical relaxation triggers a psychological release.

Notice where you're forcing. Where in your body do you feel tension? 

That's where you're gripping to control.

Internally say: “Let's see what's actually here.” This shifts you from controlling to observing.

Act from responsiveness, not tension. Do what's yours to do, then let go of the outcome.

This creates spaciousness, better decisions, and less ego-driven urgency.

What this looks like: You send a proposal. Instead of refreshing your inbox every 5 minutes, you move to the next task. You did your part. 

You still care about the outcome, but you’re no longer clinging to it.

5. Try direct self-inquiry.

Ask yourself:

“Who am I, before any thought about who I am?”

Don't answer intellectually. Sit with the question.

Most of your identity is constructed: your role, achievements, story, and beliefs.

But who are you underneath that?

The question itself loosens identification and dissolves ego narratives. 

From there, you start to realise that you are not your thoughts, emotions, or story. 

You're the observer who perceives them.

Practice: Sit in silence for 10 minutes and ask the question above. 

Don't rush to answer. Just be with it. Return to it daily.

Most people chase high-energy states like clarity, flow, or inspiration.

But states are temporary. They come and go with sleep, stress, and circumstances.

What actually changes your life is not the state you’re in, but the stage of development you’re operating from

Consciousness development is about stabilising a deeper way of seeing, deciding, and responding.

Here’s what that shift looks like when you practice consciousness work in practice:

- From self-protection to inner alignment

- From effortful discipline to intrinsic motivation

- From needing certainty to trusting 

- From fighting and controlling reality to cooperating

- From reaction to intentional action

As your consciousness expands, you become more clear, present, honest, and awake.

Your life becomes less about performance and more about truth.

Less about managing perception and more about living in alignment.

And paradoxically, that’s when you become your most impactful, fulfilled, and powerful self.

Want advanced tools to expand your consciousness? You’ll find them in my course, Inner Edge.