How to Tear Down a Building

There are two major ways to tear down a building.

• take it apart brick by brick
• strike a blow to the foundation

Dismantling brick by brick is slow and methodial. As you slog through the process, you might be tempted to give up,

Blowing up the foundation is faster, although you run the risk of damaging neighboring buildings if you’re not precise.

Both methods eventually get you to the same result: a blank slate for rebuilding.

Either way, you’ve got to go through the process of rebuilding.

The Rebuilding Process

The transformation happens in the rebuilding. Rebuilding only happens brick by brick. You lay the foundation. Then you build the floor, structural support beams, and the walls. You continue upward until you reach the top.

One day you walk by a plot of land and see a gaping hole in the ground. Before you know it, a new building is there.

You pass by and wonder: when did that happen?

Unless you were the one building it. In that case it feels like it took longer than it should have.

Personal Transformation

You can spend years unpacking and unraveling stories and limiting beliefs. You start small, removing the decor, then dismantling brick by brick, unpeeling one layer at a time. Knock out a limiting belief today, a false story tomorrow, a fear the next day. Treading gently is softer on the ego; it avoids too much pain at once.

Or you can go for the jugular, taking aim at the foundation. Go in and attack a core story or belief that will bring the entire structure down at once.

Taking aim at the foundation can be more effective, when done by a skilled practioner. In the hands of an amateur it can be a disaster. It is not for the faint of heart. There’s little room for error. And no backtracking. This is the road less traveled.

The Limiting Belief About Transformational Work

Don’t buy into the limiting belief that deep soul work must be slow and methodical. There are effective ways to get to the heart of the issue without months of painstaking dismantling.

There is never just one way.

No Shortcuts

Faster doesn’t necessarily mean you took a shortcut. Sometimes its simply a matter of knowing a more effective route and being willing to take the untraveled path.

What you need is a masterful practitioner who can see beneath the surface and a client who is willing to tolerate the pain of a world crashing down around her.

If you’re willing to tolerate a little discomfort, knocking out the foundation can put you on the road to transformation sooner. It doesn’t change the path to rebuilding.

The question is how willing you are to allow everything to crash down at once.

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. — Robert Frost