why your awareness is like a building, and your beliefs are the blueprints

I’ve definitely realized that when you're designing your life, it's less about adding layers and more about tearing down what's already there. See, I'm talking about this idea, your awareness is like a building, right? And your beliefs, they're the blueprints. We often try to construct high into the sky without ever examining the floors beneath us.

And then we wonder why everything feels shaky.

What most people don't think about is how much more important the foundational blueprints are than the fancy details we add later on. If you start with faulty plans, your entire structure is doomed from the start. It's fascinating, and honestly a little terrifying, to realize one day that you've built all these layers on top of something that never really made sense to begin with.

A few years back, I found myself in one of those moments you don't forget. I was juggling multiple projects, or actually, I was trying to be someone I thought I should be. High-rise of expectations, every floor an achievement I was supposed to complete. But then I looked closely, I had designed this structure around everyone else's input but mine.

The floors didn’t align with what I needed. Imagine building floors for offices when you wanted a penthouse to relax in. It's no wonder I felt trapped.

The turning point came when I started questioning each floor. Why did I lay this one here? What purpose does it serve? I figured out that without doing some serious demo work, all I’d have is a high-rise full of empty promises.

I dismantled the unneeded parts and focused on creating spaces for what really mattered.

And the interesting thing about that is when you clear away the clutter, the entire building feels lighter. Like, everything changes. Finally, you can breathe, and your awareness isn't just some arbitrary boundary, it's the entire structure reshaping itself around your true identity.

Think about it this way: Have you ever observed someone living life on autopilot, never questioning why they do what they do? It's like watching someone build perpetually skyward, unaware that their foundation consists of whatever society handed them at birth. I knew this guy once who was incredibly successful in his career but deeply unsatisfied. He had the corner office, the accolades, everything others might envy, yet he was living in a building designed by his parents' expectations rather than his own desires.

He had to step back, rework his blueprints, and it was painful.

It’s easy to dismiss this, saying it’s their issue, not yours. But take a moment, does your blueprint match your vision? Are you constructing each floor with purpose, or just following a garbled set of plans handed down through osmosis?

I think one of the biggest traps is mistaking decoration for architecture. People fill their lives with gadgets, experiences, and relationships that are just like fancy furnishings, they look good, but they distract you from the need to redesign the essential structure. Wooden beams painted over with wallpaper, but you never change the core. Trust me, I’ve been there.

Hopping from interest to interest, thinking each would be the missing piece.

For practitioners of reality design, the approach needs to be like that of a sculptor before a block of marble. You chip away at it, not add to it. The elegance isn't in adding more to your awareness but in streamlining it to its purest form. The less you have, the more potent each piece becomes.

" It's not complicated. Sit down with a piece of paper, or better yet, a blueprint of your current life, and mark what's yours and what’s not. Then, imagine tearing out the sections built by external influences. Have a pack of sticky notes ready.

Write down what you'd like to build for yourself. Layer them over the erased sections until the new plan aligns with who you are now. It's an exercise in clarity. Trust me, there’s nothing more satisfying than ripping out a floor you never needed.

Now, the thing about this is there's no final form. Every so often, you might need to inspect your building, ensuring it stands true to current circumstances. It's like frequent maintenance checks that ensure your structure's integrity remains intact. I mean, the last thing you want is for it to crumble when tough winds blow.

And look, this isn’t just about ripping apart foundations. It's so much more about being intentional with future constructions. Your design needs a reason, a purpose. When I realigned my structure, it's not like everything became instantly easy.

But I understood why I was building, and that clarity brought me peace.

In my own life, I started from scratch multiple times. When I was young, I decided that instead of the traditional college route, I’d just be homeless for a while, or start a business. Did both. And as wild as it sounds, those moments were less about the act of survival or entrepreneurship and more about daring enough to clear away preconceived constructs.

Reimagining what kind of building I wanted to live in.

Realigning your structural framework can be both incredibly revealing and confronting. You see your inadequacies, and in those awkward, sometimes painful adjustments, growth happens. That’s why real changes start when you stop worrying about adding shiny new things on top and start stabilizing what's already there or even tearing it down if you have to.

It's very much a process of learning. You’ve got to become the architect of your own life's building. The more you dig into it, the more you recognize that so many floors were never needed. I think a lot of people miss the fact that every room of your mental structure can be redesigned, painted anew with beliefs that are truly yours.

But here's where it gets weird, every time you reconstruct or dismantle, you notice something odd occurring. People around you react differently, almost like their buildings don’t align with yours anymore. And you'll find that's perfectly okay.

Sometimes I wonder, is our awareness, our consciousness, really more about aligning these structures than constructing them? Because once aligned, each floor centers itself, every corner perfectly fits, and fractured designs give way to coherent shapes.

What I’ve realized is that alignment may just be removing everything you don’t want and only leaving what you do. Each section of your building should resonate, like finding the right tool to chisel away the rough parts. When it comes to designing your awareness, don't forget, this isn't about just seeing new beginnings. It's making sure every etched line in your life is from a pencil you hold.

So I've been thinking a lot on this, and maybe the question isn't how high can I build my awareness, but rather, how solid is the blueprint I've got? When I was at my lowest, I wasn't staring at how far to climb, but at how stable my current room was. And that's pretty much what mattered.

----------