Man cannot remake himself without suffering, for he is both the marble and the sculptor.
-Alexis Carrel
What Is Deadwood?
Deadwood is all the bloat you’ve accumulated in life.
- Old fears.
- Weakness.
- Addictions.
- Dead weight.
- Fake friends.
- Your old narrative.
- Mainstream programming.
- Beliefs that don’t serve you.
- Emotional connection to the past.
Your mind is like any other garden.
If you’ve never cleaned it out, it will be overgrown with all sorts of nasty things.
The good news is, you only have to do a major overhaul once.
(Take out the trash).
From there, all you have to do is trim the weeds.
Here’s how to do it.
How Do You Start Burning Your Deadwood?
Burning deadwood = throwing away your safety net of cope.
It starts with accepting reality / truth no matter how dark, bleak, or crushing it might be.
And yes, this includes the truth about yourself.
When you first wake up to your deadwood, it will look like you’ve been walking around in a soiled diaper for years.
(Which is pretty much exactly what you’ve been doing).
In a world where most are “walking around in soiled diapers”, you have an extreme edge when you’re one of the few who aren’t.
When you meet someone who has burned their deadwood, you feel it instantly because of how pure and rare it is.
Where to start?
Forget everything “they” ever said you were.
Destroy the pre-designed mold society said you were supposed to be and reclaim the authentic YOU from childhood.
This can be scary for many because there’s no way to tell how far the burning goes.
If you’re 95% deadwood (like many), you’re pretty much getting rid of everything you’ve ever known yourself to be.
Many are scared to be naked and directionless even if their clothes are counterfeit.
They’re addicted to leaning on comforting ideas because they want to sustain what comes with them.
- Habits
- Groups
- Experiences, etc.
This leaning can be hard to break, but you aren’t fully free until you do it.
Standing In The Abyss
Going another way tears apart a large segment of brain pathways.
Shedding the layer of protection that ignorance grants you, allows the abyss to enter, changing you permanently.
When you first throw away your safety net, you will be adrift within this abyss.
You will stagger and stumble, but with time, you will construct a new mind of steel.
A mind built out of your own iron principles.
Why principles?
Principles = value structure.
Principles keep you centered. Without them, you’re exposed to the chaotic stream of infinite noise and possibility.
Your internal perspective is your anchor in a storm of:
- Conflicting
- Contrasting
- And complementary external perspectives.
It lights the way along the dark and confusing pathways of reality.
It’s your own set of anti-virus software that drives out malicious code as it attempts to infect your system.
This is the foundation of your mind.
Out Of The Chaos, You Create New Anchors
What are anchors?
Anchors = frames of reference.
These “reference points” are what we use to make decisions.
The reason why people have trouble taking new action or getting results is because it’s incongruent with their existing anchors.
When you control anchors, you control experience and perception.
Designing reality = creating your own physical, spiritual, financial, mental, and emotional anchors.
- Physical anchor: workout routine + diet
- Spiritual anchor: infinite plane of mysticism + relationship with the most high
- Frame anchor: your mission + personal code
- Financial anchor: skills + network + reputation
- Mental anchor: internal locus of control
- Emotional anchor: what you can control
As you can see, rituals, habits, groups, and beliefs anchor you.
(With beliefs being the deepest anchors).
Every belief is an anchor that has many other habits, “friendships”, and choices revolving around it.
Anchors also attract 2nd and 3rd+ order consequences.
Your framework of beliefs is made of many anchors. To explain inconsistencies, you may have to re-evaluate deeper anchors that seemed firmer.
Changing a few heavyweight anchors forces the others to re-arrange themselves.
When you make new connections, you add anchors to your beliefs.
You can:
- use anchors to rebuild your story
- add new anchors to imply things
- or discard anchors entirely.
You destroy anchors by replacing them.
Growth = shedding layers.
Old anchors are pacifiers. And letting go of them reveals a hidden menu of options.
What you refuse to let go / burn to the ground will be the thing that kills you later on.
When an anchor goes, so does large aspects of your reality.
If your anchor beliefs are flawed, so is your life.
If your anchors are strong, they create positive self-esteem.
How to create new anchors?
Give Yourself A Task List That Creates
The Reference Points You Need.
Experiences create anchors.
This is your gauntlet.
This is your quest.
Think about the man you need to be and what he went through to get there.
- What skills does he have?
- What traits does he have?
- How did he build himself up?
- How does he live his life?
Now do it.
How To Tell The Process Has Worked
Regardless of:
- $
- Muscles
- “Success”
- Etc
if people can “trigger” old subconscious insecurities, you haven’t grown.
Real growth is where you have built a more powerful structure of self that doesn’t fold when tested.
At first, the structure will be weak in its conviction, but enough repetition makes it strong.
The closer the old self gets to dying the more vicious it gets. It will do everything it can to stay alive.
However the stronger the resistance the weaker it gets once you win.
You suffocate your old weaker self with growth oriented pain.
Even though the old self has a million psychological weapons, momentum of work always wins.
So how do you win?
It starts with altering your paradigm (perception).
If you can change your view of the:
- Pain
- Resistance
- Etc
it changes how you act and the old self stands no chance.
You can tell things have changed when you’re presented with an old situation and you respond differently.
Conclusion
You don’t really become a man until you burn your deadwood.
(Integrate your shadow via trial by fire).
Most… never do this.
Most… are also 95% deadwood.
Yes it hurts.
Yes other things fall away with it.
But the alternative?
100000000x worse.
Think of how the mystical phoenix regenerates itself by bursting into flames.
Without fire, it can’t rise anew from the ashes.
To step into the new, you must first destroy the old.
The trial by fire creates he who can withstand + defeat it.
Need help burning your deadwood?
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My name is Mister Infinite. I've written 500+ articles for people who want more out of life. Within this website you will find the motivation and action steps to live a better lifestyle.
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