THE WORLD YOU MEET. How Your Inner State Shapes What You See, Feel, and Do

Сергей Забияко

THE WORLD YOU MEET. How Your Inner State Shapes What You See, Feel, and Do

THE WORLD YOU MEET

How Your Inner State Shapes What You See, Feel, and Do

Sergey Zabiyako

You live not only in a world of events.

You also live in the inner state through which those events become your reality.

Dedicated to Kate, my beloved wife.

She had the wisdom, inner maturity, and courage to step with me into a new life in which the past was not forgotten, but had ceased to be the only place where I existed.

She became part of my present, of the home we share, and of the living reality in which this book was able to come into being.

Her love, trust, acceptance, and the path we have walked together filled this book not only with ideas, but with real events, lived experience, human warmth, and a meaning that could never have been invented at a writing desk.

In many ways, this book was born out of the inner state that came with a new life.

And she is part of that state.

INTRODUCTION

You have probably had moments when you suddenly stopped recognizing your own life.

Yesterday, almost everything was the same: the same people, the same home, the same tasks, money, messages, obligations, and plans that once again refused to fit into a single day. Yet somehow, yesterday you were still holding on. Not perfectly, not easily, and not with a cheerful smile, but what was happening did not feel unbearable. You could open a work file, answer a message, deal with something at home, withstand another person’s dissatisfaction, postpone what would not fit into the day, and continue living.

Today, an ordinary request sounds like pressure. A loved one’s silence begins to feel like rejection. A small task turns into one more piece of evidence that you are not coping. Your phone brings not messages but demands; the disorder around you irritates you more than usual; and your body seems to be saying: I cannot keep living on the same terms.

You open a document and simply stare at it for several minutes. You check your phone even though you have only just put it down. You try to begin with something simple, but even the simple now seems to require too much inner effort. The person beside you says an ordinary sentence, and you hear reproach in it. Someone does not reply in time, and the silence quickly fills with meanings that may not yet be there.

On days like these, exhaustion rarely admits that it is only exhaustion. It speaks far more convincingly: “Everything is too difficult. You have failed again. Nothing ever changes. It will probably only get worse from here.”

And in that moment, it sounds like the truth.

What changed?

Sometimes life really has changed. Illness happens. Betrayal. A financial blow. The loss of a job. Moving to another country. The death of someone close. There are events after which the former reality does not return, and no psychological theory has the right to explain them solely through a person’s attitude toward what has happened. The world exists independently of our wishes. The body is real. Money matters. Other people are free. Time moves forward. Love, violence, loss, and chance are not products of our imagination.

But sometimes it is different. Almost everything outside remains where it was, yet you enter the same world differently.

Yesterday, there was enough strength inside you to withstand uncertainty. Today, every uncertainty feels like a threat. Yesterday, you could see several possible paths. Today, you notice only obstacles. Yesterday, another person’s silence could have meant that they were busy, tired, or simply wanted a little quiet. Today, it immediately becomes a story about not being heard, not being valued, or being about to be left.

Life has not necessarily become different. What has changed is the inner configuration from which you entered it.

I call that configuration your state.

For now, there is no need to force this word into a final definition. It is enough to notice something simple: your state is connected not only with what you feel. It also affects how you hear other people, how you read messages, how you look toward the future, how you judge yourself, and which actions seem possible at all.

In one state, a difficult conversation remains a difficult conversation. In another, it is experienced in advance as the beginning of the end. In one state, a mistake calls for correction. In another, it becomes an indictment of your entire personality. Sometimes a person truly cannot solve a problem. At other times, they are in an inner configuration from which they cannot see where to begin.

The difference between these situations is enormous, even though from the inside they may feel almost identical.

I did not arrive at the idea of state through any single school of psychology, nor from a desire to invent an elegant theory. It gradually took shape from different parts of my life that, for a long time, seemed unrelated.

I once worked in programming, information technology, and systems design. That work taught me not to stop at the visible error, but to look for the mechanism that keeps producing it. If a program returns the same wrong result again and again, there is no point in blaming the last line on the screen. You have to examine what data entered the system, which condition was triggered, and which algorithm continues to run even though it stopped serving the task long ago.

Photography taught me something different. Even a camera does not show the world without making a selection. An entire shoreline, a person, a city, or a room may stand before the lens, yet only part of what is happening enters the frame. There is light, focus, distance, angle, the moment the shutter is released, and everything left outside the image. The photographer does not invent reality, but the same world can appear calm, anxious, lonely, warm, or almost unfamiliar in different photographs.

Working with people showed me how much more complex the human lens is. I watched loving people become harsh when they were afraid. I saw anxiety call itself care, control call itself responsibility, and exhaustion pass itself off as indifference. I saw people understand everything in the right words, then act under pressure as though no other response had ever been available to them.

Moving to another country forced me to rebuild my sense of where I belonged in the world. Loss showed me that when someone close dies, we may lose not only part of the present but also the version of ourselves that existed beside them. Returning to my body through weight loss, exercise, and movement helped me see that the future sometimes returns first not as a thought, but as a change in your walk, your breathing, your physical strength, and your desire to leave the house again.

I also noticed state in much simpler things: in expecting philosophical clarity from an exhausted body after several hours of work, coffee, and almost no food; in opening my phone for a few minutes and losing not only time but the inner structure of the text I had been writing; in the way a single new booking could restore my energy before the work had even begun, because people, light, angles, and a sense of movement had already appeared in my imagination.

There were periods when the central problem could not be changed quickly. No single decision can undo a loss, finish a large book, rebuild a relationship, transform a financial reality, or restore strength to a body that needs time. But sometimes I could put one square meter of the space around me in order: clear the desk, close unnecessary tabs, prepare a proper meal, or go for a short walk.

The main problem did not disappear. It simply stopped occupying all available space. And then it became possible to take at least one next step.

Gradually, I began to see the same question behind very different stories: From what state is this person living right now?

From what state do they open a work file, answer someone they love, look at their body, remember the past, think about money, and imagine the future? From what state do they decide that a relationship is over, their work has lost its meaning, life has reached a dead end, and they themselves have finally stopped coping?

This book begins with that question.

It does not promise mastery over life. Other people will not become more convenient, the past will not disappear, the body will not stop growing tired, and chance will not begin asking our permission. Yet between complete helplessness and the fantasy of total control lies a space for human agency.

Sometimes it begins with something very small: not replying in the first second, not mistaking evening exhaustion for a final conclusion, not turning an anxious prediction into established fact, and not demanding that another person immediately relieve the tension inside you.

At first, you do not need to fix yourself. It is more important to see what is actually happening. Perhaps you truly are at a dead end. Or perhaps you are in a state from which the turns in the road are not yet visible.

Perhaps the relationship requires a serious decision. Or perhaps today’s conversation is really between two exhausted selves, each convinced it is the one speaking the truth.

Perhaps you have lost interest in your work. Or perhaps you have demanded inspiration, clarity, and high performance from an overloaded system for too long.

These distinctions do not solve the problem automatically. But they restore its true proportions and create a small space between what is happening inside a person and what they do next.

That is where observation begins.

And sometimes an entire life begins to change there.

PART I. HOW THE INNER STATE SHAPES REALITY

CHAPTER 1. YOUR STATE SHAPES REALITY

The introduction has already brought one central observation into view: life on the outside may remain almost unchanged while a person’s access to it changes. The same people, tasks, obligations, and circumstances remain on a human scale in one state; in another, they are experienced as pressure, a dead end, or a threat.

People rarely notice their state while it remains familiar. The inner lens does not feel like a lens, a prediction does not seem like a prediction, and a way of interpreting the world is experienced as the world itself. Only when the state changes does it become visible how deeply it had shaped what, only yesterday, seemed like ordinary reality.

What appeared in one inner mode as a difficult but solvable task becomes, in another, proof that there is no way forward. A loved one’s pause changes from uncertainty into rejection, a comment from information into humiliation, while exhaustion no longer speaks of the need to recover but of the futility of continuing.

Yet a person rarely feels that the system processing what is happening has changed inside them. It seems instead that they have finally seen the situation, other people, their own capacities, and the future clearly. A state is especially convincing because it does not stand beside perception and announce its presence. It becomes the medium in which perception arises.

The first task, therefore, is not to correct the thought immediately, suppress the emotion, or force yourself to behave differently. It is to understand the inner configuration from which you are now looking at what is happening, and why this particular version of the world feels like the only possible one.

I call this configuration your state.

STATE IS NOT THE SAME AS MOOD

A mood can be described in a few words: calm, anxious, sad, irritable, at ease, joyful. Mood matters, but state runs deeper. It includes not only emotion, but the body, the degree of fatigue, the direction of attention, memory, the internal prediction, the sense of safety, the relationship to oneself, and the capacity to remain with uncertainty.

Put simply, your state is the inner mode from which you are living at this moment.

More precisely, a state is a person’s current inner configuration, including the body, emotions, attention, memory, internal prediction, and sense of safety, from which they perceive the world, give it meaning, and act within it.

The body, attention, past experience, expectations of the future, and habitual defenses come together in a particular configuration, and it is from there that a person looks at the situation. State therefore affects not only what you feel, but which part of what is happening you notice, which version of the future seems probable, and which actions you can see as possible.

Your state is not what you think about the world. It is the inner ground on which those thoughts take shape.

The distinction may seem almost linguistic, but it changes how we understand a person. We usually try to work with the content of thought. If we are afraid, we tell ourselves that things are not as dangerous as they seem. If it is difficult to begin, we remind ourselves that every journey starts with a first step. If we feel ashamed, we say that everyone makes mistakes. If conflict arises, we explain that adults need to talk.

All of these thoughts may be correct. But a correct thought does not mean that the system is able to use it.

In acute anxiety, the sentence “Nothing terrible has happened” can sound like a failure to recognize an obvious threat. In exhaustion, the advice to “just begin” can feel almost insulting, because the first movement is precisely what the person cannot make. In shame, the idea that mistakes are part of experience does not reach the place where a verdict has already been passed on the entire self.

One person can remember the right thought in the middle of a difficult conversation. Another remembers it twenty minutes later, after the message has been sent, the voice has been raised, and the consequences must be dealt with separately. They were no less intelligent and knew no less. In that moment, they simply had no access to what they knew.

A state can be understood as an inner configuration in which some paths are open while others are temporarily unavailable. In one state, a person can tolerate a pause, think, clarify, ask for help, or admit a mistake. In another, the same actions feel dangerous, humiliating, or pointless. The person is not necessarily rejecting them consciously. Sometimes they simply cannot see them among the available options.

This is why the words “I can’t” sometimes need to be examined more closely. Real limitations exist, and they cannot be overcome by the right thought or an effort of will. But sometimes it would be more accurate to say: “In this state, I cannot yet see how.”

THE WORLD IS REAL, BUT WE DO NOT MEET IT IN A VACUUM

It is easy here to slip into a convenient extreme and decide that everything that happens is only an internal interpretation. That illness, poverty, violence, betrayal, loss, and other people’s freedom exist only because a person is looking at them the wrong way.

That would be not only simplistic, but cruel.

The world does not disappear because we have begun to observe our state. Another person’s words can indeed be humiliating. A partner may be pulling away. Money may genuinely be short. A diagnosis may be serious. Rejection remains rejection, loss remains loss, and violence must never be turned into a lesson about the victim’s faulty perception.

External reality exists and acts upon us. It supports, limits, wounds, nourishes, disrupts plans, opens possibilities, and sometimes leaves no good choice. Any psychology that fails to take this into account eventually becomes a way of blaming people for not experiencing real pain correctly enough.

But it would be an equally serious mistake to imagine a person as a neutral instrument that simply records the world as it is. An event enters a system that already contains a body, memory, expectations, old wounds, hopes, fears, and a current level of available resources.

Even a camera shows nothing without the conditions under which the image is made. A whole landscape may stand before the lens, but only part of that space enters the photograph. There is light, focus, exposure, distance, the photographer’s position, the moment the shutter is released, and the edges of the frame. One detail comes into sharp focus, another recedes into blur; something is illuminated, while something else remains in shadow.

I have worked with photography for many years, and I know how different the same person can appear depending on the light, distance, angle, and moment. They may look strong, vulnerable, tired, closed off, gentle, alive, or almost absent, although the same person has been standing before the lens all along. The camera has not invented them anew. It has made one side visible and nearly concealed another.

Something similar happens in human perception, except our inner lens is incomparably more complex than any camera lens. It is made of the body, experience, expectations, fears, hopes, attachments, cultural norms, and the state in which we entered the event.

We do not create the world from nothing, but we select what will matter most in it, sometimes before we even realize that a selection has already been made.

Not everything lies within us, but everything that becomes part of our lived reality passes through us.

It is this “through us” that concerns this book. Not the external world in itself, and not an inner life detached from events, but the living boundary where a fact becomes a threat, an opportunity, a humiliation, a task, a loss, a hope, or an almost unnoticed episode.

THE EVENT AND ITS INNER VERSION

We are used to thinking that an event causes a response directly. You are criticized, and you become upset. Someone does not reply, and you grow anxious. You are praised, and you feel better. You make a mistake, and shame appears. A task arises, and you tense up.

But between the event and the response, some form of internal processing almost always takes place, so quickly that a person does not have time to notice it. The event has not yet become a conscious thought, but the system has already begun to read it through past experience, the state of the body, the expectation of threat, the need for recognition, the fear of rejection, or accumulated fatigue.

An event does not enter an empty space. It enters a state that is already selecting certain cues, connecting them with past experience, and giving what is happening a preliminary meaning. A person therefore responds not only to the fact itself, but also to the inner version of that fact, formed before a conscious conclusion has been reached.

Someone says to you, “Could you take a look at this text?” In a sufficiently collected state, you hear a straightforward task: open it, read it, make corrections. When you are overloaded, the same sentence sounds like one more burden someone has decided to place on top of everything else. In shame, it may mean: they are about to find a mistake and see that I am not good enough. An old resentment produces another version: once again, they are giving me more work and failing to notice that I am already exhausted.

The sentence has not changed. What changed was where it landed and the meaning that formed around it.

Perception is not a transparent window through which reality enters us unchanged. It is a complex process of selection, comparison, prediction, and completion, in which the present is constantly measured against what has happened before.

You may enter a room and immediately sense tension. Sometimes you are right: something really is wrong there. At other times, you bring the tension with you, and the room becomes a screen onto which the system projects an expectation that was already prepared.

You may hear coldness in your partner’s voice. Perhaps they truly have become distant. Or perhaps they are simply tired, while your anxiety has already turned that fatigue into evidence that you are no longer loved.

You may see a weak response to something you published and decide that no one cares about the subject. But what you are looking at may be only one post, one algorithmic fluctuation, an ineffective headline, or an audience that has not yet encountered the material.

The first act of honesty is not to declare your reaction mistaken, but to ask: What am I actually seeing right now, and what has my state already added?

Sometimes, after checking, it will turn out that the anxiety was justified, the partner really is pulling away, the message contains a threat, or the weak response to the work means that something needs to change. But now the decision rests not only on the first wave, but also on an attempt to distinguish the fact from its inner version.

Until that distinction appears, the system operates on Autopilot. The first assembled version of reality is experienced as the only possible one, and the response feels natural and inevitable.

I am afraid, so the danger must already be here. I feel ashamed, so something must be wrong with me. I am angry, so the other person must be at fault. It is difficult for me to begin, so I must be lazy. I cannot see a solution, so no solution exists.

Autopilot does not mean primitiveness or the absence of intelligence. In this mode, a person may be intelligent, educated, experienced, and fluent in psychological language. Its defining feature is different: it does not distinguish between the event and its version of the event, between state and reality, or between a feeling and a ready-made instruction for action.

Autopilot is necessary for much of life. A person cannot analyze every movement, every thought, and every breath. But where Autopilot keeps producing pain, conflict, and destruction again and again, its invisibility becomes costly.

WHY UNDERSTANDING ALONE IS NOT ENOUGH

An adult often understands a great deal. They know that it is unwise to respond sharply out of irritation, that using a phone before sleep worsens their state, that the body needs movement, and that resentment does not resolve a conversation. They understand that major conclusions should not be drawn from nighttime exhaustion, that fear of loss can intensify control, and that one failure does not erase the entire path.

But understanding often lives above the level at which the state is operating.

You may know that you need rest and still keep pressuring yourself because an old rule is active inside: rest must be earned. You may understand that your partner is not required to guess your feelings, yet remain silent and wait because making a direct request feels humiliating. You may read dozens of books about boundaries and, when real pressure appears, yield again because the body remembers that conflict is dangerous.

You may know that a book has to be written gradually, yet demand perfect form from the very first attempt. You may understand that one weak response says nothing about the value of the work as a whole, and still feel as though a number on the screen has delivered a final verdict.

Knowledge matters, but it has to enter the state rather than merely take up residence in the mind. As long as it remains a separate thought, it is easily overpowered by the rest of the inner configuration. A person may know the right route, yet in a moment of tension climb into the old car that carries them down the familiar road on its own.

Then they become angry with themselves: Why am I reacting this way again if I understand all of it?

The answer may be unpleasant, but it is precise: because one part of the system understands, while another is the part acting.

A state does not always listen to lectures. It changes not only through explanation, but through the body, the environment, repetition, lived experiences of safety, new ways of responding, and small actions that gradually become evidence from within.