MIND MAZE
Everything we want in life is a step outside our comfort zone. To break free from our mind maze we must shed our limiting beliefs and build resilience.
‘The Maze Runner’ is a movie based on a post-apocalyptic world where a group of young boys are trapped in an ever-changing maze. The center is a field guarded by walls where the boys built a shelter and grew crops to eat. But none of the boys remember their past lives or how they got there. Every morning the doors that led the way into the maze opened, and a smaller group of boys called “runners” ventured in to find an escape route. The only rule was that the runners must return before it got dark. At sunset, the maze’s monsters awakened and the doors to the protected garden closed. No runner ever survived a night in the maze.
Until the hero arrives — Thomas. A young, inquisitive man who challenged the status quo. He knew it was a risk worth taking — they were as dead inside as they were out. To live within the four walls comfortably was not a viable way to live forever.
One day, as he helped an injured runner cross the doors before they closed, he ended up locking himself in the maze. That night, he did not only save a fellow runner but also killed one of the monsters.
As if to push them all on the edge, one day, the doors didn’t close at sunset. The monsters infested the garden leaving the boys with no choice but to run towards the maze because if they wouldn’t, their place of sanctity between the four walls would become their grave.
Ultimately, Thomas leads the entire clan and helps everyone escape.
‘The Maze Runner’ is not a movie about the post-apocalyptic world. The boys represent us. The Maze is our volatile, distracted mind and the four walls are our comfort zone. The night and the monsters are our fears and freedom — the goal we want to achieve.
Comfort Zone:
How many times has it happened that you played your favorite song and didn’t listen to a word? How many times do you reach your workplace from home without recollection of how your drive/commute was?
Most humans stay asleep in their daily state — no sense of awareness, running on autopilot all the time.
We know everything, and everything we don’t is either false or irrelevant. The Comfort zone is the biggest enemy of growth. We have a lot of faith in our perspectives, but most often than not, we lack critique and good old common sense. Like in the movie, the boys are convinced that the only way to live is within the four walls. Any proposition of strolling into the maze at night was suicidal.
This inherent blindness of the human perspective is depicted in the movie by the boys’ inability to see how dangerous their situation was. They believed they were safe within the walls because no monster had ever crossed those walls. But there was no guarantee that it couldn’t or wouldn’t happen in the future.
Wretched patterns and belief system:
Often, we get stuck in our comfort zone because we are trapped in our rational mind’s maze that is made of patterns and our belief system. When we are presented with an idea to change and let go of a particular belief or habit — our mind turns on the survival mode.
It is a maze with lots of doors and passages but no exits. Eventually, life becomes a race to escape our endless thinking.
The boys were tired of their wretched pattern. They ate the same food, runners followed the same disappointing routine each morning, each month a new boy was sent to the garden, and a few of them would lose their lives. Their behavior was no different than someone who hates their job of 20 years but loves the stability and learns to be happy with their low-risk, low reward situation. This could be understood by someone in a toxic relationship. They will compromise with their mental abuse over being lonely.
The irony is that millions of people nurture their prisons in this manner.
Fear:
The runners’ attempts to find a way out of the maze during the day were merely theatrical to distract them from their misery and reality. They ran in daylight because they feared facing the monsters at night. Fear is the most vicious murderer of dreams known to humankind.
Fear is a monster that comes in countless shapes and sizes. Some people fear failing while others fear starting. (Read more: ‘Everyone Starts from Zero’)
The boys were fearful of losing their lives at the monsters’ hands, which made them doubt their intellectual abilities. Fear lives within our minds, and history has shown us that you cannot win a war with doubt and fear. Great men and women not only master their craft, but they also master their minds by dismissing fear, just like Thomas in the movie.
How I escaped my Mind Maze:
For years, I longed to do more with my life. I romanticized and obsessed over the idea of setting myself apart from the crowd. Even after listening to countless talks given by self-help gurus, watching motivational videos, and years of failed attempts at New Year resolutions — I could not break free from my patterns.
“Desperate times call for desperate measures” became a reality for me in 2018. I was depressed, suffering an existential crisis, and tanked as the below-average performer at my new job out of graduate school. Standing at risk of being fired with a student loan of $50,000, I knew it was now or never.
I picked up a piece of paper and started drawing a spider web of my passions, goals, and everything I wanted to do with my life. Laziness plagued my life, so the goal for the first month was to be more disciplined. I decided to adopt a new routine that started with a workout at 4:30 AM. The second item was to do something I hated but knew it would benefit me — running. So I combined the two things I hated and turned them into the first thing I would do each morning.
Now waking up and running at 4:30 AM is tough enough as it is. I didn’t realize lying in bed, jotting my goals, that it was mid-November, and I was in New York City. For those who don’t know, mid-November in NYC is usually between 5 degrees and sub-zero. After a lot of back and forth, I decided — fuck it! No turning back now.
The first day I went for a run, it was two degrees, and in three minutes, my mind turned frantic. My lungs desperate to grasp air, snot running down my nose, ankles hurting — suffice it to say that it was like getting smacked in the face with a cake made of shit. Why the fuck am I here? My gut hurts. How much is enough for the first day? Two miles is a good goal for day one! The quitter inside me started to take over. Taking breaks after every half a mile, I managed to toughen out 3 miles the first day.
Day two, three, and four were no different than day one. On days five and six, I couldn’t wake up at 4:30. My body just shut down, so I cut myself some slack and went for a run in the evening. Running in the evening was fun. The weather was pleasant, the sun was shining, and it was easier to breathe. Day 7 is when the light bulb went off for me. I managed to wake up in the morning and left for my run. As expected, my mind was frantic in the first quarter mile. I stopped and had the most critical epiphany in my life. I realized how similar my situation was to that in the movie. I thought that I was working on achieving my goal by running in the evening — the weather was warm, it was not windy, there was daylight, and I was fully awake. But that was just my mind maze.
Running in the evening was convenient, just like the boys who had believed that they could only escape during the day. The evening run wasn’t helping my self-esteem, growth, or enhancing any discipline. I was still functioning within the four walls of my comfort zone.
4:30 AM, the monsters in my mind maze were awake and ready to hunt. The monsters were the weakest parts of my mind — the ones where my insecurities made me doubt my capabilities. The survival mechanism reminded me that my gut hurt, I was out of breath, and it’s okay to stop. The fascinating thing about our mind is that it knows us better than we do. It knows our weaknesses and fears better than we do. Therefore, when things get tough, it reminds us that we have a way out. It reminds us that we can quit now and restart tomorrow.
In these moments, we need to remind ourselves why we started. In these moments of running and outsmarting the monsters within the maze of our minds, we taste victory and take one step towards the goal of achieving greatness. At 4:30 AM, when it was freezing cold, there were no competitors, no spectators, accolades, or celebrations. It was a dog fight — a hard, sweaty fight with my weaknesses that I had nurtured all my life.
During my morning run, every step was me running in that maze in the dark from these monsters, just like Thomas. I was running through the maze in search of my goal, “Freedom.”
Freedom from sluggishness, indiscipline, a weak mentality/mind, and low self-esteem. What I learned is that breaking free from the mind maze requires resilience, patience, and perseverance.
How to build resilience
1. Create articulate goals with specificity:
This is the steppingstone of goal creation and building resilience. For me, the broader goal was to do more with my life and positively impact the world. I broke that down into my passion, what I love and what I wanted to do. I am passionate about helping people; I love business development, fitness, and men’s style. Therefore, I decided to kick off my entrepreneurial journey by first pursuing my passion for helping people and created this blog. Here, I will share my perspectives, takeaways, and learnings in life via my articles and my journey. As my goal is clear, I can continue working on the path to achieving it.
2. Visualize the task before you attempt it:
Before you begin attempting a task, spend 5–10 minutes the night before visualizing yourself performing it and all the obstacles you might face. Visualization rewires our psychology and prepares our minds for the task we aspire to accomplish. For example, if you decide to run at 4:30 AM as I did, visualize yourself running the night before. Visualize everything that will happen once your alarm goes off. Visualize yourself snoozing the alarm and sleeping in. Then picture yourself running, how awful it will feel in the first five minutes, how cold it will be and how proud you will feel after completing the run.
This exercise helps to program our minds. When the alarm goes off, you have already visualized every possible scenario where you fail and the ones in which you succeed. When Conor McGregor — an Irish mixed martial artist, was asked how he felt after becoming a champion. He said it felt normal because he visualized becoming a champion thousands of times over the years.
Visualization is a crucial step in turning a dream into a reality.
3. Don’t negotiate with yourself:
We negotiate with ourselves every day. When you are about to start a new diet plan, and you open the cupboard to see a twinkie, your eyes sparkle, and your mouth begins to water. Before devouring the twinkie, you remind yourself about that diet. You think, “Maybe I’ll eat one because then I will not eat another for a while? Fuck it! Diet starts tomorrow.”
Sadly, tomorrow never comes. If it does, there will be another temptation waiting for you and the weakened willpower.
Don’t negotiate with yourself on the actions you need to take to move closer to your goals. It is okay to enjoy twinkies or have a cheat meal. I binge on hot Cheetos like it is nobody’s business. But I try not to negotiate when it comes to writing after my workouts. I don’t negotiate when my alarm goes off in the morning. In such moments, you must not leave any scope of discussion. Some days, I ask myself if I can sleep a little more before I work out. I always oversleep and miss my workout. Decide what you want to do and when the time comes, do it. Discard any scope for a discussion, reasoning, or delay.
4. Remind yourself why you are doing what you are doing:
You set your goal; you know what to expect, get up, win the negotiations, and voila! Now you are in the grind. Yes, your mind will still become frantic. You will doubt yourself, question yourself, and this is when you must remind yourself why you are doing what you are doing.
I am a strategy consultant. In consulting, the typical workdays are from 9 AM to 8 PM. I continuously remind myself that I am suffering now, sleeping less, grinding before and after hours so tomorrow, I can quit and pursue my passion of becoming an entrepreneur and inspire people. If your goal is to lose 40 pounds and see a twinkie while eating a salad, don’t take a bite to quench your desire. Remind yourself why you are eating a salad instead of Pad Thai in the first place.
5. Remember that the suffering will end:
Nothing lasts forever. When I run a 10K, almost every time around 4 or 5K, my mind starts asking me if 6K is enough? What difference does 10K make? The mind does that to protect you. Our saving mechanism is no different than Spiderman’s spider-sense. Remember in those times that the suffering will soon end. In another 25–30 minutes, the remaining 5K will be complete, and your heart will not race anymore. You will not struggle to breathe. But the only way to run better tomorrow is to finish your run today.
It’s not easy to fight these monsters, step out of your comfort zone, shed your limiting beliefs, inhibitions and build resilience. But the only person that can defeat, outrun, outsmart these monsters is the ‘Hero’ within us, and we must be the ‘Hero of our movies!’
