How do you interpret your past?
Your past is anything that’s happened up until this very moment. Be clear that all the things you’ve EVER done or not done is what you’ll use to define who you are.
So, as this year wraps up. I wanted to help you say goodbye to the past you, the parts you didn’t like, in order to get focused on what you want to create in the New Year.
It’s important to have rituals that support you when there’s a marker in time, so you can look at this last year and how you can learn from it, make adjustments, and move on. Please don’t dwell on what you aren’t happy about. That just won’t serve you and there’s no need to bring that into the New Year into the new you.
These skills I will teach you here are important because you’ll learn how to define yourself by your future, instead of your past.
The next few writings you’ll receive from me are going to get you ready to have the best year of your life so far. So keep reading and stay tuned for next week.
Did you know that your past only exists in the now, in your mind? Isn’t that wild, the past is over, but our thoughts about the past aren’t. Use can use your creativity to decide how you CHOOSE to think about the past right now.
Defining yourself by your past creates more of your past
It’s clear when someone’s defining themselves year after year from their past thoughts because they create the same feelings, take the same actions and get the same results they’ve always gotten. Basically, they’re living from recycled old thought patterns. This is when many of you’ll come to me and say, “I just feel so stuck."
Defining yourself by your future means that you have to implement new ideas and new thoughts about your life. You get to have a clean slate if you choose to anytime of the year.
People who create new ways of being in the world are always coming up with new ideas so their futures are unpredictable in really good ways because they’re thinking of themselves in a future-focused position.
It’s much more effort to think deliberately about your future and create it vs. repeating and recycling the past. You have to use more brain juice to create something new.
The brain doesn’t do this automatically. It likes to be efficient. So if it’s not challenged purposefully to create something new it’ll just stick with old patterns and do the same old thing because it’s familiar.
The problem is that we don’t realize we’re doing this. Deliberate intention is required. I love deliberate intention — it feels so good.
I start my day out with deliberate intentions.
As a result, my days are so much more productive. When my head hits the pillow at night it feels satisfying. I know I’ve used my day deliberately. I know when I’ve accomplished exactly what I’ve set out to do. That I’m in charge of creating my life, and my future. It’s so powerful. I want this for you too.
I work on this concept with my entrepreneurial clients.
We work a lot on mindset - money/career, relationship, and lifestyle mindset. It’s so much fun to see them create their futures, getting the results they most want.
My new client, let’s call her Darla just lost 9 pounds in 9 days! Yep, did you know I am a certified weight loss coach too! It’s so amazing to see her do this!
Darla and I just had a mini session 3 weeks ago, and since, she’s signed up for my 12-week, “Your Irresistible Life” coaching program and we’re about 3 sessions in. The first session we got right to business and developed a food protocol, which’s basically a protocol for eating food for fuel. She lost 9 pounds in 9 days. OMG! It’s so cool to see this transformation.
She’s no longer thinking of her past and how she could never lose the weight before, the things she’d done, hadn’t done, what she tried but never worked, or even the things she tried that worked a little just not permanently.
I told her, “Your past is no longer relevant, what you’re focused on NOW is. It’s the future. Your goal weight and what you’ll focus on each new day and how you’ll commit to and stick with your new protocol is what’ll determine your future self. No need to look to the past to understand who you are today.”
How to think new thoughts:
First, you have to become aware of what you’ve currently been thinking. The reason it takes so much effort to think a new thought is that first, you have to become aware of what you’ve been thinking.
Second, you have to deliberately think a thought you’ve never thought before.
Third, you have to practice that thought. You have to work on believing that new thought until you do. And then something seemingly magical happens. Your new thoughts become your new reality.
For example, Darla went from thinking:
“Maybe I’ll never lose this weight,”
to believing:
"It’s possible to lose this weigh, get to my goal weight and keep it off permanently."
This is no small feat. If you weigh more than you want, even if it’s 10 pounds. You should look in there and ask yourself what you’ve been thinking.
It’s probably some limiting negative thought like, “Losing the last 10 pounds is the hardest.” And so guess what happens? You don’t lose the last 10 pounds.
But if you decide after you’re aware of your thought, that it’s possible to lose that last 10 pounds and you believe it 100%, you’ll feel a new feeling, take different actions and chances are you’ll get the results you want.
Darla had to think it was possible, that’s why she hired me as her coach. If she didn’t think it was possible, she wouldn’t have lost these 9 pounds to date. She had to believe. When I told her it’s absolutely possible to lose the 100 pounds that she wants to lose to get to her goal weight, she had to decide for herself if she wanted to believe it.
The confusion is that we usually attribute our new results to our actions.
For example, as Darla starts to practice and believe these new thoughts, even if she’s not 100% convinced - she’ll get different results. So, it becomes easier and easier for her to believe losing this weight is possible. In fact, it’s easier for her to think other new thoughts as well because now she’s got some concrete evidence— the 9 pounds.
This is when I have to remind all of my clients that permanent weight loss, or being able to make and keep making 100K in their businesses is not because of the actions they take, but because when you believe something 100% — you’ll thoughts will manifest your results. Usually this happens because you KEEP believing, feeling a positive emotion that drives taking the action required to KEEP getting those results.
You can see this in yo-yo dieting, right? What happens here, is if you believe for a little while that “it’s possible to lose this weight because now I’m on this new diet.” Then as soon as you’re off the diet, or you mess up on the diet you STOP believing. You unconsciously go back to believing the old thoughts that keep you getting the old results — being 10 pounds, 100 pounds or however many pounds overweight.
So my approach to weight loss or anything else I teach my clients is that it’s the thoughts you think… that you keep thinking, that you stay committed to thinking that help you get the results you want.
Some examples of the new thoughts I’m currently working on with my clients are for any issue:
“This year I will find an amazing partner, get married and start a family soon after.”
“I'm the woman who makes 100K in my business this year as a helping professional and doubles or triples that in the next two years.”
“I love my business. I’m widely successful and I have plenty of time off to rest and do all the things I love.”
What you must realize is that you don’t need evidence to believe a new thought! But our brain wants to stay stuck here, “we’ll I’ve never been able to do it before why would I be able to do it now?”
Thoughts cause feelings, you take action from feelings, and these actions determine your results. (Learn more about this >>)
So thinking old thoughts gets you the same old results, you’re still 10 pounds overweight (or however many). It’s not until you create new thoughts that you get different results.
If you’re feeling ho-hum wrapping up the year, or it feels incomplete somehow, think about what it’s like to live from your future-self vs. your past-self.
What went down this year? I’m telling you none of it really matters. What matters is how you choose to think about your past in this present moment and if you can be future-focused.
You can create new results for yourself this year, but you gotta be willing to think new thoughts. And I want you to do this for the sheer joy and fun of it, just because you can.
I’m gonna talk about creating new thoughts more next week. Until then I want you to do this exercise that’ll help you become aware of and uncover negative thought patterns you have about your past that are keeping you stuck— in preparation for next week’s teaching on future-focused self and thinking and new thought creation for a new you.
YOUR ASSIGNMENT (click to open the PDF)
I invite you to learn how to think from your future and how to redefine your past. What if everything that happened this year, happened FOR you? How would you talk to yourself? How would you define your past in this moment. How would you think about your future in this moment to create the results you truly desire?
