Have you ever seen the clever little memes on social media or heard the gurus regurgitate this advice that we don’t need our past?

They’re essentially telling us that we need to just wake up every morning and when we go to make our breakfast stick our hand right in a hot ass frying pan like we don’t know any better. They want us to co-sign on that type of craziness. They want us to get up and walk out the door and not remember that we need to look both ways before we cross the street, or we’ll get flattened. They want us in other words to take the years, the decades of files that we have in our heads, and just a light a match to them and watch them go up and flame.

All of those hard-earned wins. All of those hard-fought losses that had lessons. They want us to take them all and dump them in the name of you don’t need your past. Well today, just like in my book, I’m calling bullshit on this piece of honestly, intellectually lazy advice. Today, we’re going to jump into the idea of biting your past in the ass before it bites you, which is a chapter from my book. So in this episode, you’re going to see why you need to roll up your sleeves and dig into your past if you truly want the fulfillment, the happiness, the joy, and to attract everything that you need, want, and deserve in your life.

You’re also going to see what happens when we neglect that valuable information, that volt that just has all these files of valuable information from our past. And lastly, I’m going to share with you my go-to mental shift tip for getting into your past, without the fear, without the embarrassment or the shame or the regrets, that heavy feeling. And don’t forget, you’re going to want to stick around until the end, because as promised at the end of every episode, I drop one to three thought-provoking questions that can also serve as journaling prompts. If you are someone who is already into journaling, or if you have been wanting to start it, but it feels a little intimidating or you don’t quite know where to start because I am a big believer in reflective journaling. I’m a big believer in reflection, and I’m a big believer in journaling. So put the two together and you have reflective journaling. So let’s dive right into episode one today. So why do we need our past as heavy as it could feel to get into it.

Why should we roll up our sleeves and dig into our past? Well, let me ask you something. Would you stumble onto an ancient archeological site and rather than getting dirty and making the life and history-changing discoveries, just kick the artifacts out of your way and continue right past them on your way to the salon or on the way to work, to your boyfriend’s house, or out to lunch with the girls? No, you wouldn’t, you’d be crazy. You’d be out of your mind to do that. You would cancel whatever you had planned for the day and you would dig. So just like those artifacts tell us how ancient cultures lived and what the world was like in those times, our past gives us all sorts of insight into the who’s what’s when’s where’s hows and whys of ourselves. Where else would we go seriously to understand why we attract, for example, men who don’t fully let us in or partners that

don’t fully let us in?

Where else would we go to find out why we attract friends who are flaky as hell and can’t be relied upon, or why perhaps we have a habit of spending outrageous amounts of money on shit that we don’t need? Shit that goes straight into our closets, never to be seen or heard from again. Our past is where we uncover the origins of false truths and self- limiting beliefs that have us holding ourselves back and operating from fear and doubt rather than empowerment and confidence?

Quick backtrack, what exactly are false truths and self-limiting beliefs? I’m actually going to add self-limiting behaviors as well. So a false truth is something that’s not an actual fact, but it’s something that we might hear repeated so often in popular culture, through the media, our closest circle of friends and family, or even experiences that we’ve had ourselves. And really, if you take the combination of all those things, it’ll have you believing something and treating it as a fact when it is not even proven, that’s a false truth.

Now, a self-limiting belief is similar to a false truth, but it’s more personalized. A self-limiting belief is something that we believe about ourselves that keeps us operating in very narrow margins and very tight space so that we’re always playing it safe. That success that we’re always told is outside of our comfort zone, those self- limiting beliefs make it really difficult to get from out of the confines of that comfort zone and achieve our goals. Now, the self-limiting behaviors are basically the results of how you react.

It could be either action or to the converse, it could be inaction, the things you do, or the things that you don’t do. The things that you hide from or run from, because of buying into those false truths and limiting beliefs. That would be a self-limiting behavior. So let’s say, for example, you are a big believer that relationships end up in cheating scandals. Perhaps in buying that false truth you enact the self-limiting behavior of closing yourself off to the idea of ever finding love. You’re just not going to put yourself out there. Let’s turn it into a limiting belief. If you believed that all you are capable of attracting are cheaters, perhaps your self-limiting behavior would be that you cheat on your partners, assuming since it’s going to happen anyway, I might as well be the one that doesn’t get played, kind of going to go ahead and beat them to the punch.

So you go ahead and cheat on a partner before you even give the relationship a chance. It all boils down to self-sabotage and we do not reach our goals. Even our most minuscule goals. We don’t reach them when we are constantly like a dog chasing our tails because we’re living in this cycle of self-sabotage. So if we hope to get to a point where we can be part of a healthy relationship or whatever goal we want to achieve in our lives the only choice that we have is to kick those false truths and self-limiting beliefs right in their ass. How do we do that? We do that by reflecting on the experiences, (our past our experiences) that brought us to that conclusion that brought us to that false truth that brought us to that self-limiting belief.

So perhaps you witnessed, (we’re still going with the cheating example here), maybe you witnessed a parent being cheated on growing up, either by another parent or partners. Perhaps you were someone that’s been cheated on in the past, or you have a group of friends that have had bad experiences in the past with cheaters. And let me tell you something. When we have people all around us that also subscribe to the same false truths, man, it becomes solidified within us. Those are the times when those false truths really take shape and, and, and carry the weight of actual facts.

Now I personally always had, my guy friends, and I would feel both cringy and a little bit fascinated with the stories, they would tell me showing the sheer balls of the fuckery that they’d pull on their partners when it came to cheating and just being, rats basically. So that, along with other things that I had witnessed growing up and with my friends, of course, and personally, I thought that cheating was just something that happens in relationships. It’s it was almost like cheating was what, what death is to life. Cheating is just a natural part of relationships. And so let me ask you with that mentality, what type of people do you think I was attracting into my life?

Yeah. I was attracting cheaters. You believe something so hard and you expect it and you create vibes and energy around it. That pool it to you. Yes. That is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Call it a self-fulfilling prophecy. I think of it as the law of attraction.The law of attraction you’re sitting there and you’re putting out certain energy just in your thoughts and you are indeed getting back that energy that you’re putting out there. So in order to identify our self-sabotaging patterns, to be able to break them, and to then be able to start replacing them, we have to look back at our past.

So, what happens exactly when we ignore our pasts when we just go with this advice that the gurus loved to throw at us? I have a name for it. I call it the Michael Myers effect. I know you’re like, ” Where is she going with this”?! So if you’re not familiar with the horror film franchise Halloween, it goes something like this. You have Laurie Strode (played by Jamie Lee Curtis), and she’s relentlessly stalked by her brother, Michael Myers, who wears this expressionless white mask, and is a psycho killer.

And every time she kills him and believe me, she kills him a different way every damn Halloween movie that comes out. Every time she thinks she’s killed him and moves on with her life, here comes Halloween part 25! Seriously, I don’t even know what number that franchise is up to, but they’ve been going forever. And she’s right back to trying to finally kill Michael for good. Our past behaves a lot like Michael Myers or any other horror movie creeper that just keeps miraculously rising from the grave to haunt us.

So think about this. How many times have you been out there feeling like you finally hit your stride? You’re walking with a little more lightness, a little bit more air in your step. You might even be like, “Oh, I’m out here living my best life”, when, out of nowhere, something, something from your past sends you stumbling, even flying headfirst into a brick wall. And it just feels like everything is tumbling down on you. Perhaps it was a self-sabotaging pattern like cheating, binge eating, or drinking until you blackout. Maybe it was a false truth, like woman cheat, money is the root of all evil, or perhaps a nasty unresolved self-limiting belief like I’m not smart enough, or nobody’s gonna want me at this size. One of those things comes along and it puts its foot out in front of you, wrecking that nice, smooth, graceful stride that you were in. No matter what it is, pick your poison. We all have our kryptonite, and that’s a fact. Not dealing with your past bites you in the ass in different ways. There’s no avoiding it.

So realizing all of this, why are we just delighted to hand over our past, as the gurus say? Well, let’s be honest. It’s just easier to deal with those stumbles, those trips, those falls sometimes. Once they’re out of sight, they’re out of mind until the next time, which is the whole damn problem. It allows us to be our own enablers. It allows us to avoid the times that we were hurt, devastated, or made someone else feel that way. It comforts us into believing that we can indulge in this laziness and somehow still get the results that we want. To think that you can be lazy and still manifest whatever, think of your most ambitious goal your most out-there dream. Do you really think that you’re going to achieve that by staying in that comfort zone and coddling yourself and allowing other people who claim to be gurus to coddle you into thinking this?

But the main reason I think that we’re happy to part with our pasts is because of this deep, underlying fear that our past somehow defines us. So here’s my quick mental shift tip to help you step away from the fear of reflecting on your past; to step away from the feeling of helplessness, about situations that you might have a deal of regret about, don’t look at your past as a definition of who you are.

It doesn’t define you. It’s not a straight jacket that when you go and revisit it, that you’re going to become entrapped him as humans we’re meant to evolve. And that is a beautiful thing. Our self-awareness evolves, our opinions evolve, our interactions, our whole damn human experience evolves. And this is actually a problem that I have with how we often hear people talking about politics, and I just hate politics and politicians period. But when we’re talking to someone about their beliefs and politics and things like that, you hear the term used, “Oh, you’re you’re flip-flopping”, or, “Oh, you’re you’re wishy-washy”. And I think that it sucks because it doesn’t take into account that we are ever-evolving. We’re allowed to evolve. We are not solid fixed objects, but we’re rather closer to water. We’re meant to move with fluidity, with ease, look at your past as that ancient archeological site, just as that site offers valuable clues, but doesn’t define mankind and totality. Your past gives valuable clues but doesn’t define you in totality.

And I think that it sucks because it doesn’t take into account that we are ever-evolving. We’re allowed to evolve. We are not solid fixed objects, but we’re rather closer to water. We’re meant to move with fluidity, with ease, look at your past as that ancient archeological site. Just as that site offers valuable clues, but doesn’t define mankind and totality, your past gives valuable clues but doesn’t define you in totality. You can say safely say that from ancient times to now, we do shit quite differently, right? Since the Aztecs and the Mayans, we do things quite differently. So you don’t have to worry about feeling like your past is going to trap you or have you devolve. So take those past experiences and use them to your future self’s advantage.

So now that we’ve discussed why we shouldn’t ditch our past, what happens when we do ditch our past, and why we are so tempted to do so, here are the questions that I have for you to reflect on. So for the first thing, I want you to reflect on grab the top three self-sabotaging patterns that you experienced, or self-limiting behaviors that you enact, at least every other month. So for example, it could be something like not finishing what you start, going back to a toxic ex, binge eating when you feel anxious. And for the second question, I want you to reflect on the false truth or the self-limiting belief that it belongs to. For example, if you’re reflecting on not finishing what you start, the self-limiting belief, maybe, well, I just don’t have the motivation as if motivation is something that’s hiding under a rock or floating in the air that you have to capture. So maybe that’s what you tell yourself.

If the self-limiting behavior is going back to a toxic ex, maybe it stems from a self-limiting belief like I can’t do any better. I’m damaged goods. No one wants me after what I’ve been through. You have to be able to find the birthplace so to speak of your self -limiting behaviors. And you can actually identify the origins of these things based on the company that you keep. God knows nothing makes a false truth feel like it has the weight of an actual fact, like having your tribe, struggling and complaining about the same exact issues that you’re struggling with.

So in addition to those two reflective questions, I also want to offer you an affirmation. I’m big on affirmations. I have affirmations for the different buckets, AKA aspects of my life, and my children do affirmations as well, especially right before school. Here’s the affirmation that I’d love for you to repeat when you feel like you want to get into that past, but your negative self talk kicks in. Repeat after me. “My past is behind me and does not define me. I use my past to my advantage. My past doesn’t use me. I am safe in the present. When I look back at my past, my past does not trap me. It liberates me. I guarantee you that once you get comfortable with saying that to yourself, you’re going to lose that fear. You’re going to feel more comfortable. I’m a huge proponent of self-awareness, so I’m not going to sit here and tell you to dive headfirst into your past. You don’t have to start thinking about 20 years ago, 15 years ago, 10 years ago even. Start with your past from last week or start with three days ago into the past.

If you have to dip your toe in it, dip away. Conversely, if you feel comfortable enough to dive headfirst, go for it. I’m kind of that in-between. Different situations call for different actions. Sometimes I’m a total dipper, and sometimes I am a headfirst jumper, but know which one will work best for you. You don’t want to be a toad zipper who dives in headfirst, hits your head, and you’re like, “Nope, I’m not doing this again”. You want to approach this as with everything in life, with self- awareness. So that’s what I’m leaving you with today. Today, we talked about why you need to call bullshit on the gurus and do me a favor.

Do the universe a favor. If you ever see one of these memes, that’s like, “Oh, your past, you don’t need it”, or, ” lighten your load, lighten your luggage, leave your past where it belongs”, go ahead and comment under that. If you hear a guru on someone’s podcast saying you don’t need your past, let them know their advice doesn’t necessarily make the best sense. It might work, but I’ll be honest with you in my own self -healing journey. And in the people that I’ve worked with, it’s been that deep dive into their past, in whatever increments they’re comfortable with, that exposed the patterns that they were able to then connect dots and say, “Oh crap. When I do this, I do a, B, C, and D”. And as I mentioned in the introduction podcast episode, when we gain valuable information into one aspect of our lives, it usually can help us in other aspects of our lives, too.

Because for example, if you find that when you’re anxious or depressed, you tend to binge eat. You may also find that financially, those are the times where you tend to go out and just go shopping till you drop, or want to drop dead after you come home and look at your credit card bill. So that’s why I preach also that self-awareness. Once you feel that self-awareness buckets to a certain level, it neatly spills over into all of the other buckets or aspects of life that you seek fulfillment in. So before you go, I want to just give you a reminder, check out my book. It’s on Amazon right now. It goes into self-awareness. It goes into the crazy shit that I’ve been through with narcissist abuse. You learn how to make yourself awareness, your most valuable asset, because you are your most valuable asset.

There is nobody else in this big world that’s able to live your life. So live it with authenticity because that is the one most unique thing that you have going for you, it’s yourself. So pick that book up. It’s priced for what everyone’s going through right now. It’s priced at $0.99 cents. So pick up the book “Who the Fu*k Are You?! Get Self-Aware to Stop Getting Your Ass Kicked and Live a Kick-Ass Life” and if you want to connect with me, you can go on my website, Lisalatimer.com.

Don’t forget to drop your best email in the subscription box. You’re not going to get spam. I don’t have time for it. I’m a solopreneur. So it would be a once a month newsletter with a round up of the best from the podcast. If you want the best from the blog, there’s a separate form for that. But if you want the best every month from the podcast, if you’re really busy and you just want one digestible bit of information delivered straight to your inbox, no fluff, no bullshit. We will not become instant BFFs through your email! ‘m Lisa Latimer. I am so happy inside of to join me today. This is Personal Growth Lifestyle, real talk, real results. I will catch you soon on episode two. Be good.