???????? № 9 – Maze

What happens to all the new year resolutions when they turn into incertitudes? Where do they go and why do people have such a difficult time holding on to them?

I think beyond the arbitrary connotations of Earth’s orbit around the sun, druid manifestations around solstices and numerology theories about 2023 metamorphosing into “the quiet before the storm”, there’s been one concept that I’ve been pondering on – Mind Maze.

The idea of unstucking certain behaviors are correlated with escaping your own mind. What do I mean by that?

Addiction, procrastination and fear are ingrained into a cyclical structure of the mind.

– Addiction is probably the easiest one to analyze. Every step from the moment you get addicted to the 135th attempt to break it and the 136th slip is structural. Nothing unique about it, but unique to your personal structure.

– Procrastination also follows a structure. You set a goal, then subconsciously develop a reason to push it until tomorrow, and then again tomorrow – turning it into a looping pattern, nothing really random about it.?

– Fear stems from a structured mindset of inadequacy or incapability. Again, another structure that prevents you from escaping your pattern, whether that’s related to work, relationships, hobbies etc.

This is why I refer to “Mind Maze” as a structural vicious loop that keeps you from escaping. Every time you make yourself a promise for a behavioral change, then proceed to the first step, that reset button gets triggered.

How to escape it and stay true to your resolutions?

Being out of your mind takes a lifetime of practice.

From meditation to lucid dreaming to objective critical thinking and unconscious awareness, there are ways to better “communicate” with your mind. But it’s not as important as extrapolating the root causes of those Mind Maze behaviors.

Let’s get a better look into the tree.

1. Mind Maze Addiction

An addiction is by definition a repetitive pattern. Contrary to popular belief, some are also positive, but ultimately an overreliance on anything stuns other areas of your development or creates a weakness others can exploit.

Nevertheless, if you have for example an addiction for spending, then you can also develop a trait for making more money, which isn’t necessarily bad.

An addiction for overthinking leads to everything becoming a deep problem to be solved, even when the solution might be right in front of your eyes; this one is inherently bad.

Almost anything can become an addition, without taking into account the most obvious ones (alcohol, porn, drugs, food, gambling, validation).

Why can’t people break away from addictions?

Addictions are more often an inaccurate representation of a totally opposite lacking in an individual.

For example, an addiction to money could be a deep sense of insecurity where the more goods equal the more distractions from a person’s reality. An addiction to overthinking could be a call for validation that masks socializing abilities. An addiction to food could be a response mechanism to being picked last on the school’s sports team.?

Everyone assumes that the problem of addiction is what you’re addicted to, not the need for the addiction, hence the failure to escape the maze. You mind keeps you addicted because you keep on fighting the addiction rather than the cause of your need for the addiction. You think you know you’re going, but you’re moving in circles, and as you find your willpower to break through… you find yourself back in.

Why does that happen? Because you haven’t addressed the need. The needs for addictions are different for every individual, and finding out the reason behind the addiction is often the hardest part. You can quit drinking, smoking, and yet feel that the path isn’t really going anywhere, and then you’re back in the labyrinth.?

Nobody can tell you your need for addition. One reason for someone’s validation might not be the same as someone else’s. That’s what makes it a challenge. There’s no guru, no coach, no influencer that can take you out of your maze. It’s only you and you being honest with yourself.

Your subconscious mind will often trick you to preserve your sense of self-respect. Rarely someone sat down and said “I actually do a lot of drugs because I’m a loser and can’t socialize otherwise”. And not being true to yourself will often lead to not finding out the real need, thus falling back into the maze.

Once you look within yourself and manage to find out the reason for the need, then the path outside the maze becomes clearer. Then and only then, you can finally become free.

Mind Maze Addiction is the misdirection of the vice.?

2. Mind Maze Procrastination

Ah yes, the genius motto and evolutionary trait of “due tomorrow, do tomorrow”.

How does procrastination “work”? Subconsciously, the procrastinator and the action-taker have very different minds. The procrastinator believes there is always time, the action-taker believes there is no time. The subconscious of the procrastinator is unable to endure the duration of a task, so that task is pushed until tomorrow, next week/month/year. The subconscious of the action-taker is able to endure, so it starts even without any visible results at first.

The mind maze comes into play when you subconsciously believe time doesn’t matter, and there is no reason to get things done immediately. “Yesterday you said tomorrow”.?

I don’t think it’s necessary that artists or creatives have to suffer from procrastination, and procrastinating definitely doesn’t make you an artist or a creative.?

Procrastinators love comfort. Trying out new things is more often a calculated possibility that it might not go as expected, that performances might be subpar and that failure might be too big of a burden to endure. The subconscious mind of the procrastinator often avoids discomfort with the false illusion of unlimited time.

The difference between the procrastinator and the achiever is that the latter’s subconscious is more inclined to be a transmitter than a receiver.

Receiver minds are the usually the ones consuming content – binge watching Netflix, Twitch, YouTube, TikTok etc. Transmitter minds are the ones producing content.

Even when an achiever is consuming content, it’s either on the go or when combined with an activity. Feeding the mind is important, and your mind perceives the stimuli of listening to music differently if you’re in the gym than when you’re at home.

Not everyone can be placed in the two boxes of procrastinators or action-takers, but understand that the things we find ourselves unable to get rid of are rooted in the subconscious, whilst the attempt to change them happens in the conscious.

How can people fix procrastination?

Well… there’s no “fix” for it.

However, the subconscious can be reprogrammed.

It’s not an easy solution though, and this is definitely not the self-help carousel ride you’ve been looking for.

The cure for procrastination in my opinion is an openness to a variety of activities that keeps your mind busy. You’re more likely to start a project after coming home from the gym than after watching an entire Netflix season. Ideally, you should slowly turn your mind from that of an observer to that of an executor.?

At first everyone dreads the idea of going to the gym, but if you start early in the morning, then your mind already perceives it as a task or a small victory out of the way.?

The more things you engage your mind actively in, from sports to learning new hobbies, the less procrastination you will experience. And this is not even a conscious trick, but engaging in activities will reinforce the idea in your subconscious that “there is no time”, thus pushing you to complete your tasks more efficiently.

And the more tasks and activities get done, the more energy you will get out of it, thus making you take on more activities and keeping your mind more engaged.

Mind Maze Procrastination is the subconscious reinforcement of activities.

3. Mind Maze Fear

“Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.” – Frank Herbert, Dune.

Fear is by far the most dangerous self-enemy, constantly doubting you and taking away your self-confidence and mental resilience.

How does fear keep you trapped?

Fear distorts action. Every time you do something full of fear, it never counts. When you do something despite fear, that becomes courage and it counts.

Fear leads to defeat, defeat leads to doubt, doubt leads to failure.?

This all happens in your mind, listening to the insidious voice whispering all the maniacal nonsense, and then remembering that awful event that happened in 6th grade that traumatized you for life.

On a different note, the yearly turnover rate of the atoms inside a human body is estimated to be around 98%. Which means that when you remember something cringe from years ago, almost none of the atoms present during that experience are still around.

I find it oddly comforting knowing that those cringe memories happened to a version of “you” that is not even around anymore, it was an almost entirely different set of atoms.?

Another fun human physiology fact by the way is that the body’s preferred method of dealing with a viral infection is to simply destroy all infected cells. We lose several hundred billion cells per day though the normal course of events, what’s another couple of billion cells to halt the spread of an intracellular pathogen? The human body truly is a mystery.?

But not the mind though, especially when fear starts taking root in your subconscious. There is no easy mind-slasher mode to destroy fear, and the more you stay idle, the more it grows, turning fear of action into a parasite nearly impossible to remove.

It gets even more dangerous when fear become comforting. The more fear and hysteria you feel can turn into some sort of moral virtue.

How to escape fear?

Fear is surprisingly easy to conquer.

All you need is one successful attempt and the idea of fear evaporates instantly.?

Once you have evidence that making a first sale, having a first date, running a first kilometer can be achieved, everything after that is just fine-tuning to become better.?

But if you don’t try it out the first time, self-doubt and dread will always overpower you, and fear will always tell your mind to be afraid, and your body to do nothing.

Mind Maze Fear is reinforced paralysis.

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Improving your self-awareness is key to escaping the mind maze and strengthen the understanding of your own biases, patterns and insecurities.

I’m not implying that I know everything on this topic, but rather that the ultimate form of self-improvement happens when you start improving others.

Hope this helps,

-m-