The Pathway To Your Results

The Pruning Process

• Derick Grant • Season 5 • Episode 229

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We explore why growth often begins with loss and how pruning is preparation, not punishment. A family conflict exposes the root of people pleasing and opens the door to sovereignty, boundaries, and a calmer kind of love.

• scripture as a lens for sustainable growth
• pruning as physics not theology
• bonsai metaphor for shaping a life
• manifestation requiring subtraction
• surrender versus resistance during change
• silent treatment and the inner child wound
• grieving the idealized parent
• separating love from emotional responsibility
• alignment over approval in family ties
• tuition of growth and the cost of new levels
• integration after the cut to sustain change


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SPEAKER_00:

Once you see what you actually are, that you're an infinite, limitless being, you'll see that nothing exists outside of you. I'm your host, Derek Grant, and this is the Pathway to Your Results Podcast.

SPEAKER_01:

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Pathway to Your Results Podcast. It is your boy DG.

SPEAKER_02:

This episode is this episode is I'm trying to think how to say this. I started to look at my life. I started to look at some things that I was going through. I had a little story time, but I started to realize kind of on a deeper level of how life actually is for us, right? We always say that, right? Life is, the universe is for us. It's always like I want to, I want to like be able to, the way my mind works, I want to be able to understand how life is for us. So I can bring it to you. Do we see? Now, last episode, you know, I got to use, I use scripture. And the reason why I'm using the Bible is not because of uh religious context. I'm using it because of in our collective conscious, Yeshua Jesus seems to be the uh most prominent figure that we usually associate with. So this episode uh uh of this this scripture that I'm I'm gonna recite, right? This is from uh John 15, too. Uh Ushers, you can go ahead and close the doors now. I feel like I feel like we're in church right now. Ushers, you can go ahead and close the doors. Uh it says that every Jesus said, every branch that bears fruit, he prunes. So it will bear even more fruit. Let me go ahead and say this real quick, okay? This isn't theology. This is physics. That's all. Anything that wants to grow must first be cut back. If you want to take the next step, you're gonna have to cut back the old bulls that you're still holding on to. You want to get your body in shape and you want to get your body right, then you're gonna have to get rid of the old body's habits. You see how this works? So every branch, meaning every person that has these habits, these attributes, these actions, you're gonna have to prune it. You're gonna have to cut it, you're gonna have to get rid of it. So, this is why I tell you new levels require a new capacity. If I'm going to be everything that I'm capable of being, I'm gonna have to get rid of the energy, the old energetic bandwidth. I'm gonna have to get rid of the old branches because what we don't realize, good God almighty, y'all stay with me, we're gonna get going. The old branches, the dead branches, the dead part of the tree, meaning the parts of you that no longer serve you, they steal the nutrients. They steal what's meant to flourish. They take away what is supposed to be for this next iteration of life. So when you start looking at your life like a plant, remember the remember the karate kid? You remember the no, the original one was Ralph Mariachi or whatever his name, Mirachi, whatever Ralph, that one, the real one, right? Not the one with Jaden Smith, the one that came back out and came out in the 80s with Mr. Miyagi, right? I didn't even see the one with Jaden Smith, but the first one. Remember he had that bonsai tree? Bonsai. Bonsai. What was he doing? He was clipping it, he was pruning it. He was shaping it up. You gotta shape it up, you gotta shape up your life. So pruning means you remove what's draining your life force. You remove what's no longer serving you. So the universe cuts away relationships, habits, environments. It's even gonna get rid of identities that are stealing your energy. It's gonna get rid of the parts of you that are creating comfort. Good God Almighty. It's gonna create, it's gonna get rid of the parts of you that create certainty. It's gonna get rid of the parts of you that create uh uh uh being able to know what's next. And it ain't because you did something wrong, folks. It's because you're being prepared. See, a lot of us in this life, we seek to manifest. I want to manifest, bro. Can you manifest? We want to manifest and do all this, and we be praying for all this and doing all this stuff. You prayed. You, you, you manifested, you wrote it down three times in the morning, six times in the afternoon, nine times at night. You got your crystals out, you prayed to the moon, you did everything that you feel like you needed to for elevation, for ascension. Understand that the universe has to prune you, it has to cut off the old branches. And the reason why it's doing that, it has to ensure that the old parts of you, the things that don't align with the elevated version of you, it has to ensure that they're gone so it can create sustainability. The universe doesn't want none of this yoking back and forth. It wants sustainable growth. So here's why I'm telling you this, because we have to understand how this actually works. Your pruning season that you're gonna go through, that's gonna come before the expansion. Every major leap, every big jump will come after a season when everything fell apart. It will come after everything has ended. It will come after everything has been stripped away. And when you understand that this is the methodology of the universe, I welcome the pruning. I welcome it. Whatever it may look like. And here's the deal you ready? You ready? Oh, you ain't gonna get to choose what gets pruned. I apologize in advance on behalf of this universe. You don't get to choose what gets pruned. You get to choose whether you surrender or you resist to it. And the more you resist, the longer the season's gonna last. The more you resist, the more painful the pruning is gonna be. The longer you resist, the more it will persist. So I we know we just had Thanksgiving a couple weeks ago, and uh, you know, I've I've told you all, I've I've intentionally embarked on a journey at the end of 2025 to uh grow, to evolve. Um, and you know, I know that if I'm going to help the world, I first have to help myself. And if I want to take the world to another level, I have to take myself to another level. So I told you all many a times I embarked on this journey with my shaman Jesus, and I said, yo, Jesus, what do we got to do? And he's like, Yes, we're gonna do 10 ceremonies. You can do 10 ceremonies over the course of you know four, three to four months. I said, okay, cool. So here I am. Uh I have two more here coming up next week. I got two more, my last two. And I haven't had a ceremony since the end of October, and my next ones are be kind of towards the end of December. So I've had like two months, and I've uh I've been really doing the integrating and making sure that everything that I've gained from it, I'm I'm I'm I'm applying it in life. And I told you all about the Black Panther, right? The black, the Black Jaguar, and that's that got let go of. And I, you know, I'm sitting here in the ceremony, and Mother Eyes said, You're gonna be the you're gonna be the golden jaguar. And I'm like, when am I gonna see it? When is it gonna happen? When is it gonna, and all these things started coming up, and I've been at home over the last two months, and I'm like, I know now, I can see the universe told me like you won't be the golden jaguar. This is just an archetype that um basically is the sovereign leader, it's this person who steps into who he truly is to help everybody else, right? So we had Thanksgiving, and uh my family came out to visit my mother and my father, and mom, I know you're gonna listen to this, and we already have this conversation, but I'm gonna tie it all together because I hadn't had a chance to talk to you about this tying it all together. So my father uh was out there, and all week, you know, he's just kind of he was doing what dads do, right? Kind of kind of little jabs here and there at me. And Derek, you still bald? You still, yeah, I'm bald. I'm bald because of you. You gave me these bald jeans. That's why I'm bald. But he was always, you know, kind of making jazz. But uh there was a couple situations where some things that were said, and you know, like uh holding me, holding things against me from like years ago, and I'm like, why are you still holding on to this? Why are you so anyway, situation happens. Uh Wednesday night, and I'm not gonna get into the details of it, but uh, if you're part of the academy or you're part of the NTG mindset community where you were, you you knew about it. But before I know it, here he is on Thanksgiving, he's not talking. He's not speaking. Not speaking to me. And I'm like, what did I do? See, that was the child inside of me. See what the child does. The child. Anybody here ever dealt with silent treatment? Anybody have ever endured that? Right? That's what we call a silent treatment. I said, Oh my goodness, I remember dealing with this when I was younger. I remember used to do the same thing, but I didn't know. I didn't have the cognitive functions to be able to know and process everything. So what did I do? I sought to please him just to get him to talk to me. How many times have we done this? And then I didn't realize that this is nothing more than a form of emotional abuse. Now, Thanksgiving, I don't, we don't say a word. Friday morning, they leave, and I'm like, I revert back to this child. I mean, I'm grieving, I'm crying, I'm weeping, I'm wailing, I'm going through all of this stuff, and I'm like, why, daddy, why? What did I do? You see the child that thinks it's his fault. And I didn't realize at that moment. Well, actually, I did realize, but it was just so difficult to get through because I was weeping. I was mourning the loss of not only the version of me from the past, but I was also mourning the loss of my father who I had held on a pedestal because for the first time in my life, I was able to see this man instead of seeing him as Superman, I was able to see him as Clark Kent. I was able to see him as a human. I was able to see him as a man who had flaws, who had wounds, who had trauma, and that was doing nothing more than projecting it and acting it out towards me. So I'm grieving the loss of this icon in my mind. I'm grieving this past version of me who's experiencing the wound or the trauma again. And then I'm experiencing the sadness of just it all. The whole thing. And, you know, my parents left on Friday. I didn't talk to my dad on Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday. I didn't talk to him. Didn't talk to him. And I had a conversation with my mother. My mother was saying, you know, we have to realize that, you know, every soul is walking its own journey. Every soul has its own stuff it needs to work through. But it ain't your responsibility to help somebody else work through their stuff, even if it's your father. And see, that's what the role that I assumed in my life. See, my dad didn't have a dad growing up. So then I felt responsible to be everything that he needed. I needed to be the perfect son. I needed to be the perfect child, I needed to be all these things to make up for his trauma. And that was an unconscious trauma response. But here's why I'm saying this: because we don't need to be responsible for somebody else's emotional well-being. You were responsible for yourself. And it was at this moment, good God Almighty, stayed with me. It was on this moment on December 1st that I realized this. December 1st of 2025 will always go down as a day of infamy. I will always remember this day because it was at this moment that I realized the boy inside of me was starting the process of healing, of not being responsible for his parents' emotional well-being. And I'm saying this to everybody here. At this point in life, when you understand this, this will be the point that you become an adult. I may have moved out of my parents' house almost 20 years ago, but I became an adult at the age of 42. Soon to be 43, meaning I don't need to be emotionally responsible. I don't need to be everything for them. They are human beings just like I am. And just like nobody else is responsible for my emotional well-being, I'm not responsible for their emotional well-being. So here's my point. December 3rd, I woke up on my birthday and I woke up and I just sat there and I stared at the ceiling, and I felt like I was in a new life. I was in a new life. And my father called me that morning. And he said, Son, I just want you to listen to what I have to say real quick. Yeah, what is it? He goes, I just want to apologize to you. I want to apologize if I've ever done anything that has made you feel less than. I want to apologize if I've ever said anything that made you feel less as a man. I want to apologize if there's anything that I've ever done that had made you question your self-worth, I apologize. I'm learning. I'm learning, he said. And this is how I know I had healed that little boy inside of me. Because instead of just saying, okay, I said to my father, I said, you know what? Thank you for expressing this, but all those times that you wouldn't talk to me because you were upset or you were mad and you gave me a silent treatment, I want you to know the effect that it's had on me, not only as a child, but also as a man, as an entrepreneur, as a husband, as a father. And then I realized what the whole point of this whole situation was. Because I got to see the root of all my people pleasing came down to trying to please my father. This was the tree trunk. This was the tree trunk for all my father, for all my fathers, my sons, my daughters out there. This was the first people we try to please. It was mommy and daddy. And at this moment I realized I don't have to please him. I don't have to please him. I don't. And I was able to walk in this sovereignty and I realized, oh my goodness, Thanksgiving, giving thanks. This hit differently because I realized the universe was pruning. That's all this was. It was a pruning, it was clipping the bonsai tree. It was preparing me for the initiation. It was preparing me for the golden jaguar. It was preparing, it was the ceremonies before the ceremonies, if you know what I'm talking about. It was removing these false attachments that the ego had created to make me think that I needed permission. I needed their acceptance. I needed their validation. And this is what the pruning process is: it's cutting all this stuff away so it can fall off. So I'm here to tell you this. Through this situation with my father, I realized why it happened. It didn't happen. And I knew it had nothing to do with him. And it wasn't about him. It had nothing to do with him. It was only about me. And the universe came to me and said, How in the world are you going to take these rotten and these rotten branches into this new season that you're walking in? How are you going to take this old paradigm, this old belief system, this old story that you tell yourself that you needed daddy's approval to walk into the sovereign leader of the golden jaguar that you are? How in the world are you going to take that into this life? We're going to have to cut this stuff off. So the reason why I'm saying this, it wasn't that I was being rejected by my father. This silent treatment wasn't that. It was nothing more than a redirection. It was a pruning process. It was the universe saying, we can't keep walking this direction. You're going to have to shape up because the level that you're going to get to, that ain't going to work because these branches, this energy that you were giving to ain't nothing but doing nothing but draining your energy right now. So I'm here to tell everybody here, all of us are the tree of life. Stop grieving them dead branches that you got hanging off you right now. Cut them motherfuckers off. Go ahead and get that. What do you want to call them? Those scissors, a scalpel. You can break the branch. You get a machete. Get whatever you need to cut them off. Cut them off. And now you'll start to see. Every great story always starts with a painful cut. Cut, cut, almighty. I don't think you hear what I'm saying. No. I know. I know. I asked. I asked. I asked Mother I said, Mother I in these next ceremony is to show me what I need. What is it? What is it I need to do to become this golden jaguar, to embody it, to embody it, these attributes. She said, I'll show you. I'll show you. See, you praying for growth. You praying for uh the next iteration. I'm gonna prune you because that was actually the answer. I'm gonna get you to let go of this. That pruning is gonna hurt your ego, but it's gonna heal your destiny. I don't think you understand what I'm saying right now. Now I know. The dynamic may be different, but now it's coming from a higher frequency. And hear me when I say this. Different doesn't mean a lower frequency. Different just means it's not what it was. And I started to see, oh my goodness, just the amount of times I would call, the dynamic of the relationship, I was always coming from this little boy who was just trying to please his father. That was it. And I don't have to do that anymore. We can have a real, sovereign relationship now. So maybe the conversations aren't as long. Because there's a lot less attachment searching and seeking for approval. So now there's just a little bit more depth. There's a little bit more authenticity. Uh there's a little bit more of a connection now. So it's different. And different isn't bad. I know that's the first thing we go to. When there's a pruning process, our relationships are going to change. They're not going to change and become different in a bad way, they're going to become more aligned. So all your patterns of approval seeking, your patterns of guilt, your patterns of fear of judgment, your patterns of scarcity, these are the things that must be pruned. And life is working its butt off to see that it can help you with it. It is doing all that it can to help you to step into this. So if we have parts of us that aren't aligned with where we want to go, you better believe life is going to prune it. You better believe them branches are going to be cut. Oh, and that discomfort that you're feeling? This is how you know the pruning has already begun.

SPEAKER_00:

This is how you know it's already got going now.

SPEAKER_02:

So please understand this, please, please, please. It's not punishment. It's not rejection. It's not abandonment. It ain't none of those things. It's just a stripping away of the old self that you didn't even realize you were living out of. It's a stripping away. I know it's going to feel like you grew up with them. They were your boys, but you've changed. You've evolved. You are not the same. You were walking now, instead of as a kitty cat, you are this lion with this golden mane, this black trim around it. You are this warrior. And it's no disrespect to them. But we know the soldiers don't occupy the same space as the general. They don't go around where the head, the big dog is. And it's not that one's better than the other, but there's just a completely different frequency. And this is why in this season of pruning, you gotta be okay with letting go. I know, I know, I know. You on a team right now, you're not getting any playing time. Maybe that season is done. Maybe this season of life is done. And this is really hard for you to deal with right now because you ain't getting off that bench. But just maybe, maybe, maybe. The universe is saying we need you to move off the field so you can focus on these things instead of you being so occupied in what's going on on the field. We need you to come off the field so you can deal and sit with these things as we're in the process of shaping you. Up, nephew. We're in the process of cutting off some branches. We're in the process of getting rid of some thorns. So we need you to come off the field so you can really see and feel what it feels like. Because if you do well on the field, you may bypass the lesson that we're trying to teach you right now. You may not actually get to the root, but we know if we touch you right here and put you on the bench, we're gonna deal with your pride. We're gonna touch these wounds. You're gonna feel like you're being rejected. And now we can get to the good stuff. And now when you do this, when you deal with this, you'll see this was nothing but the tuition that this universe had you pay. Good God Almighty. I told you on the last episode, in order to gain value, you're gonna have to give up something valuable. If I'm gonna gain the next opportunity, I'm gonna have to give up what I thought was everything at one point in life. I'm gonna have to what we call sacrifice. And you're not sacrificing really, you're just giving up one version for the old, the old version for the new version. That's all you're doing. I got a client that I work at work with. Shout out Jack Harrison. Jack, Jack plays in the Premier League over in over in England. I was telling him this, I was explaining him this. That we got to pay the tuition to learn, all of us. We got to pay. And that's when we give the value up. That's how we learn. And he's like, dang, man, I'm just I feel like I gave up, I feel like I got a full ride, though. Like this is, I feel like he's like, I feel like I got a scholarship. I said, well, hold on. This is to ensure that the next level that you get to, because you set the intention to do something that nobody in your family has ever done before, you gotta play, you gotta pay big money to get there. There has to be big value given up. So for everybody here, everybody here, please, please, please, please, please, please, please. Please know. It isn't punishment, it's preparation. That's it. That's all it is. You have to trust the cut that's taking place right now on your branch. Trust the cut. I know the universe pulled out a big old machete and you like, please don't hurt me.

unknown:

Please don't.

SPEAKER_02:

Nah, trust the cut. Trust the cut because you got to understand. You got to understand how this works. And all my gardeners out there, you know what I'm talking about. When you start to clip these branches and prune these trees and prune these bushes, what happens now? Now that energy can start to focus on the new fruit, the new blossom. And now you'll start to see the fruit that's coming after this pruning.

unknown:

Good God Almighty.

SPEAKER_02:

It's gonna be bigger and sweeter and juicier, more tasty than anything you have ever experienced in your life. So this is why we need to remind ourselves in the midst of the pruning, in the midst of the cut, in the midst of dealing with the recurring trauma, the silent treatment, whatever it may look like. I needed to remind myself in that moment. Oh, this ain't nothing but just shedding process. This ain't nothing but the pruning process. And I'm going back, I'm going in the ceremony next week. I two of them things, and I'm gonna sit, I'm gonna sit in it, and I'm gonna ask this medicine to heal it. To heal it. To heal it. Let's heal this thing. Pruning is cutting it, but then I still need to heal it so I can integrate this into life. So go. Please trust that the pruning is is clean. It's strategic. It's meant for you. It's perfect. Please. Remember this. Because you've been pruned before. You've gone through it before. And look at the look at the fruit that's blossomed from it since then. Walk in the energy, walk in the faith of knowing you're gonna be good. It's gonna be alright. It's gonna be okay. I know I'm gonna be fine. Why? Because life has always had my back. Always has, always will. Remind yourself of that, moving that energy. And as always, I wish you nothing but the best on the pathway to your results.