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Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this episode of the Stable Parenting Podcast. My name's Shane Jacob, your host, and I thank you for taking your time to be here with me today. I got, we got some pretty cool stuff to talk about today, something that helped me a lot and something that I see, as I teach, helps a lot of people.
So I hope you, I hope that this, if you can take it, will help a lot of you who are struggling like I have with the past. And so what today's topic is, is how to change the past.
So, you know, a lot of times in personal development you hear that you can't change the past, but you can change the future. Okay. And we all know that. We've heard that a long time. The past is something we just have to deal with, accept, move on. And it's just there and it's just history. We can't change it.
But it's not so. That is not so. Okay. Today we're to talk about exactly how to go about changing the past, because it is possible and why. The reason why it's so important because the past affects our present and our future. Okay.
And all of us have done some things, had things done to us, or had experiences in our past that we wish wouldn't have been so. You know, I certainly have things that I'd preferred that I didn't do, the things that didn't happen to me, and things that I caused to have happen. All of it, right?
And so if you really take a look at your past I think everyone, because we have such a similar experience, you can recognize things. And if you really take a close look at yourself and what your thoughts are about your past, you'll notice that your thoughts about your past are causing you to feel a certain way. And that is affecting you today, right here, right now, in the present, and it's going to affect you tomorrow, in the future.
Most of what I learned about this, about changing the past, came from one of my favorite teachers, Brooke Castillo. Who, according to me, is the number one personal development leader, thought leader that has had the most influence in development in, or excuse me, the most influence in personal development probably in like the last 15 years. And has certainly helped me change my life, big time.
Okay. And I've helped lots of people with what I've learned from Brooke, in my coaching, to change their past and to see the positive effects of changing the past. Okay. For yourself.
So what is the past? Let's talk about that. The past is, the totality of the past is your thoughts. End of story. It's your thoughts. That is what the past is. The past only exists as your current thoughts. Okay.
There's nothing more to it. Okay. The only influence that the past has on you is, is what you choose to think about the past. Okay.
This is kind of hard to get, or kind of hard to accept in the beginning, to really get a grasp on, that the past is nothing more than our current thoughts about it. Okay. Nothing from the past, nothing is out there from the past that's making us feel a certain way right now.
We don't feel a certain way because of the past. The past didn't come back and haunt us. The past isn't causing us to do a certain thing in the present or in the future. Okay. None of that is so. What's actually happening is the way that we feel right now is because of thoughts that we're thinking right now.
Not because of, now, we may be thinking thoughts about the past that are causing us to feel a certain way right now. That is what's actually happening. Okay. And then our feelings causes us to drive our actions. And so that's why we do things, because of the way we feel. Okay. And that can be because of the past.
So, you know, of course, there's circumstances in the past that may or may not be true that, we're not talking about changing provable circumstances. Okay. Because the only influence that the past has on us, okay, is coming from our current thoughts about the past. Okay.
And I can prove that to be true because I personally know a person who had, I’ll say a troubled past. Okay. A lot of struggle, a lot of emotional pain, a lot of trauma. Okay. A lot of trauma. And this person suffered a, suffered a stroke where, as a result of that stroke, almost all of their, almost all of their memory from the past was gone. Nearly all of their memory was gone. Okay. And all of that trauma, gone.
Influence totally changed. Personality totally changed. The way they see themselves now, totally changed. Their relationships that had all this complexity and ugliness to it, gone. Gone.
It's miraculous to see. But my point is is that, you know, if you could imagine having permanent amnesia about your past, you just wake up and it would just be what you have today.
And that's what happened to this person. And the reason that I'm bringing this up is so that you can see that the only influence, the only thing that the past is is what you're currently thinking about it. Okay?
In the movie The Lion King, I mean, I love The Lion King, I was watching it recently with my grandkids. And then The Lion King, Simba’s there and he's deciding what to do, if he should go back. Okay.
And he says, “If I go back, I'm going to have to face the past.” And this baboon’s like, whop! Whops him over the head with a stick. Right?
And Simba says, “What was that for?” And the baboon, or whatever this preacher is says, “It doesn't matter. It's in the past.”
And Simba says, “But it still hurts.”
And the baboon says that the past can hurt, and maybe it does maybe it doesn’t. Because here’s the thing, once Simba’s physical pain from getting whacked with the stick is gone, the question I’m asking you is, does the past still hurt?
What can actually hurt about the past is the idea that, the way that we think about it. The way that we think about it can cause feelings that are, that hurt, sad, painful feelings. Okay. That’s what’s happening.
Now, if you have experienced trauma, if you’ve experienced some of the harshness that, of what people can do to each other, different abuse and so on and so forth, or things that have, things that people have done to you, unfair or immoral or however, whatever they are. In cases of trauma, this is hard to grasp.
But the reality of it is that what happened to you or to someone who's experienced a really traumatic experience is that when we or you think about that trauma, the thought is what continues the pain, so, the pain. And so in all reality, we do continue to cause our own pain about this. Okay. And it can be, and it can be changed.
Now, I'm not saying that there's not any value in therapy and diving deep, going back into the past, and reliving and uncovering and feeling all that in extreme cases of trauma. I know that there's, I believe that there's value in reliving the past and getting into it and going from there.
But what I'm saying, okay, is in most cases of people that don't experience major trauma, we all have things that are in our past that are influencing how we live today. And if we want to, we can go and change the past so that we can have a better today and a better tomorrow. Okay.
So how does that come out? Know, come back to The Lion King here. Does that mean that every time Simba sees a stick, he gets anxiety? Or when he sees a baboon and he has a panic attack? Okay, is that in the past?
So what's happening in this with Simba in the, I'm saying if that happened, he sees a stick and he's like, he starts to get anxiety, right? Why? Not because of the past, because of what he's currently thinking about the past that happened, which is causing him to feel anxiety. So I'm saying that in my example, Simba is causing his current pain right now, and it's not coming from the past. Yes, he's causing his pain, but it has nothing to do with the past. It's coming from how he feels about, it's coming from his current thoughts about the past. Okay.
But the thing of it is, is it's kind of hard to accept if you've been attached to the idea that something or someone else caused you all the pain that you're having. In these extreme cases of trauma, it's kind of hard to accept that that current pain may be coming from yourself, from your current thoughts, rather than from the past.
But the thing about it is, regardless of who you are and what your past is, all of this is amazing news because it's, it’s empowering. It gives you the power. You don't have to be determined by your past whatsoever. Okay.
Remember my friend who had the stroke, okay. No longer bound by any of that stuff that happened. Just totally wide open the door. It's like a do-over.
I mean, it's almost like she was born. She still had functioning motor skills and all this and that and the other, but all of those experiences that were causing her so much pain and anguish and trouble in all her current relationships, boom, gone. She started all over like with a clean slate. Okay. And you and I can too.
Okay. It means that nothing, not one thing, can make anything about the past determine you. Okay. And by the way, you get to make the past mean whatever you want, okay? Whenever you want, and you can do it right now. Okay.
It doesn't have to be a long, drawn-out process. All you have to do is think different thoughts about the past. Okay. It's not quite that simple, but pretty much. Okay. Because once you begin to think new thoughts about the past, your brain automatically, on autopilot, will go to work to prove those thoughts are true. Okay.
Your brain will search out evidence subconsciously to prove your thoughts are true of your new past. Okay.
So here's an example of what I mean, if you're not following me right now. I interviewed a man some of you may be familiar with, Chad Foster, when I was doing The Horsemanship Journey show.
Chad Foster is an incredible and exceptional human being, but Chad lost his sight when he was about 20 years old. He was born fully sighted, you know, with good vision, and he could see as a young man. But he had a disease that slowly degenerated his sight until he was somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 years old. He was totally blind. Okay.
So he got to see what the world looked like for quite along time. And then he didn't. Okay. And then all he could see was nothing, black, he says.
And so what that means is, is that it meant to Chad that he has never seen with his eyes, he's never seen his wife. It also means that he's never seen his children. Now, the last time I talked to Chad, he had ones on son. But he had never seen him, okay, with his eyes because his eyes didn't work anymore.
And Chad told me, and I asked him, Chad told me that he was grateful. Okay, now hear me now. Chad Foster told me in an interview, and it's on The Horsemanship Journey show, that he was grateful that he lost his sight. Okay. And that he wouldn't change it, and he wouldn't have it any other way.
And I said, “You must be kidding.” And he said he is not. And I said, “Why?” And he said that since he lost his sight, and because he lost his sight, okay, he was able to develop himself and learn things and have opportunities and contribute to other people in ways that he would have never been able to do as a sighted person.
Okay. And that he wouldn't trade that back for his sight. This man, straight up happy, straight up thankful for his blindness. Okay. And so his past was is that he was grateful for losing his sight. Okay. And that he was happy to have that be his reality.
Okay. Now I don't know, that, that's a lot. Okay. That, I mean, and he's genuine. Okay. Genuinely. Matter of fact, he wrote a great book, and I highly recommend it. I've read it, Blind Ambition by Chad Foster. You can find it on Audible and Amazon.
And, okay, let me just give you a little bit about me in this past. What about me? I've been in prison. I've been an alcoholic. I've been divorced three times. I've been disfellowshipped from my church, and I'm just getting started. Okay. But I'm going to stop right there, but I could go on for a long time in this.
Okay, my past, what does my past mean? My past means that I'm branded with the scarlet letter. It means that I'm less than the rest of the world. Okay. It means that I've limited my life in what I'm going to be able to do and what I'm going to be able to accomplish, how much I can earn, how happy I can be, how successful I can be.
And it means that I need to suffer. I need to suffer for the things I've done, ongoing. Okay. It means that there's a lot of things that I'm not going to be able to do in my lifetime because of my past.
Or, okay. Or, my past is that I can relate to people. I can relate to people who do things that they regret. I can understand shame at a heightened level. I can understand the thinking that is behind addiction. And I have overcome so much and defied the odds so many times that my past made me strong. It made me strong. It made me resilient. It made me wiser. Okay.
So I'm just telling you right now, I used to have the past that I described to begin with. Okay. I used to have that as my past. That was my past, but that's no longer my past because I changed the past.
Now I have the second version. Okay. I changed my past, and my past doesn't limit me anymore the way it did when I had that other past. Okay.
So what about you? What about you? Just like Chad Foster, just like me, you and every other human being have done things that we're ashamed of, things that were… We've done things that we're proud of, things that we're ashamed of. We've made decisions that we regret. We've made decisions that we're ecstatic and happy about.
Some of the things that have happened to us that we thought were amazing. And some of the things that happened to us, we were awful, thought were awful. Okay. But they don't have to be awful unless we want it to be that.
Okay. Nothing in the past even matters right now unless we decide it does. Okay. So what you're thinking about your past that's stressful, what are you thinking about your past that is stressful? What are you thinking about your past that you would like to change? Does the past feel bad when you think about it? Okay. That's an indicator of something that you might want to change.
Now, I'm not saying that the goal is to feel good about everything all the time. Okay. There's some things that I want to feel bad about. Some of the things in my past, let me just tell you right now, some of the things in my past are just sad. And I don't want to feel any other way about them than I do. They're straight up sad. Okay.
But most of us have thoughts from the past that aren't helping us. They’re causing, we're thinking thoughts that are causing us to feel a certain way that aren't helping us. And if we can uncover that, if you take the time to think about it and to recognize it, they might even be causing you pain and suffering, certainly limiting and affecting your present and your future. Your past is in part determining your current results.
Okay. So this is a big deal. I was talking to a guy yesterday in a coaching call. And he said, here’s his words. Now remember, thoughts, let's define that. Thoughts are simply phrases or sentences in your mind. Okay. Sometimes we say those thoughts and sometimes they're just going through our mind and we're hearing them inside. Okay. They don't have to be spoken. So when, what he said to me was his thoughts. Okay.
So I was talking to a man yesterday in a coaching call and he said, “My mom was an alcoholic. My dad was an alcoholic and a drug addict, and they were my examples.” Okay. And he said to me, “When I relapsed, I just turned to what I had been taught and how, what the, how, I turned to what I had been taught by my examples of how to handle my emotions.”
Okay? So here's his thoughts. His parents were addicts. They were bad examples. They taught him how to handle emotions by using substances, and that's how you feel better when you're having emotional struggles, that’s how you handle emotion.
And so that was his thoughts. That’s his thoughts about his parents, that his parents didn’t teach him how to handle his emotions, and so that’s why he’s just acting out what he was taught to do.
Now I ask you, is this man's past helping him today if his goal is to be sober? Probably not. You know, if he wants to stay clean, definitely not.
Okay. So what if he changed his past to this? Okay. What if he said to himself, “I’m going to change my past. I recognize that what I’m thinking right now is not helping my current and it’s probably not going to help my future, and so I’m going to change my past.”
And what if his past became that his parents did the very best they could with what they had to work with, and they brought him into this world and he’s grateful for it? And his parents set an example for him of how he did not want to be. They set an example for him that he would have had no other way of knowing what it would feel like as a child that he did of how to not have a parent that was present, that couldn’t help him with his emotional needs, that was checked out mentally a lot of the time.
And that he is so grateful because of his parents’ example, even as limited and as non-existent as it was, that he felt and he lived the example so that he could see how he wanted to be, which was not like them, and that their behavior and his past gave him a deep desire, deep yearning, and a commitment to stay sober so that his son, and he has a son, okay, so that his son will never have to feel that way that he did as a child or the way that he did as an adult when he was following their example.
Now that is the kind of a past, what do you think that kind of a past is going to do for him today and tomorrow? That is, what if he can choose to have that past? And if he does, I think he’s going to be happier. Okay.
There are, I want to just talk a little bit about you. Okay. You may think, I had a pretty good past and I’m not even worried about that. But I would encourage you to consider looking into your past, because like I said earlier, we all have something. It doesn’t have to be as big and as egregious as some of the stories I’m telling you.
You may have your sight. You may not have been to prison, and you may not have drug addicts for parents. But nonetheless, all of us have something in our past that is affecting our current, that if we took the time to change the past would help our present and our future.
And so that is what this podcast is all about. And that is what we do a lot in Stable Living, is we work on things like this.
And I’m going to give you the steps that, if you will take the time to do, will definitely enhance your life. I’ll just give you the basic outline of it.
Okay, so here’s the steps.
Number one is to think about your past and recognize the thoughts. Okay, recognize what you’re thinking. Think back to the past and actually think. You can write them down and you say, what are my actual thoughts? Not the circumstance, not something that is, you know, can be proven by law. But what am I thinking about what happened?
When I think about that thing, when I think about that time, when I think about that event that happened to me, when I think about this person in my past, when I think about my mom, my dad, or whatever the thing is. Or that thing that I did, or that thing that somebody did to me. When I think about that thing, okay, big or small as it is, what am I actually thinking?
Just think about that for a minute. What are the thoughts? What are the phrases or sentences that I’m thinking about that thing? Okay, that’s number one, is you think about it. And notice how you feel when you think those thoughts about the thing. Okay. Really uncover the thoughts that you’re thinking, especially the thoughts that make you feel bad, that you feel sad, that you feel depressed, that you feel angry, that you feel ashamed.
Okay, think about those thoughts. What are those thoughts? Okay.
Then step two, step two is just a brainstorm. Okay, just a brainstorm. As many new thoughts, you don’t have to do a lot. Just brainstorm five or ten thoughts about this thing, about the circumstance, about the person, about the thing you did. Five or ten new ideas or new ways of thinking, new thoughts that you could think about the thing. Okay.
Just brainstorm. Just write down five to ten. It doesn’t have to be twenty, just five or ten. Out of the five to ten, pick two or three thoughts that do these two things: they feel better, and you can believe them. They feel better, and you can believe them. Okay.
So for example, part of my work was, I was thinking, when I was thinking about, you know, being in jail and being locked up and being in prison. And I thought, you know, well, you know, I was treated like a second-class citizen and I’ll always be a second-class citizen. You know, when you’re a rat in a cage, and people aren’t treating you like, they’re treating you like a rat in a cage. Okay. And so my thought was that I’ll always be, I’ll never be as good as most people because I’m, you know, because I’ve been to jail.
Okay, so that was what my thought was. And so I thought that, and I thought that. So then I thought, okay, having to endure being treated that way makes me stronger. Having to be treated that way gives me commitment, and commitment and more love and concern from other people.
Commitment, let me finish that one, gives me commitment that I will never treat other people as unequal. Okay. See, I'm just brainstorming thoughts about it, different thoughts. That's an example of how to go about this.
So now you brainstorm, and you got five to ten. Go back through the list and just pick two or three. Just pick two or three that really resonate, that really hit home.
They need to do two things. I'm going to say it again. They need to feel good. They need to feel better than what your previous thoughts were. And they need to be believable, like you can mostly accept that they could, they could, they're also true.
Okay, now here's the good news. Your brain is gonna do the rest. Okay, because the only thing in addition that you need to do, now that you pick the two to three thoughts, is that you need to continue to think those thoughts.
So what I'm saying is that every time you think about that person, every time you think about that time in your life, every time you think about that thing you did, whatever it is, okay. Think the new thoughts. Think the one, two, three thoughts, the new thoughts about the thing.
And your brain will take over and do the rest. What does your brain do? Subconsciously, because those thoughts are believable, your brain is going to look for evidence in the world to prove that they'll be true.
So if I said that I'm stronger because I was what I consider to be treated unequally, is a nice way to say it, if I believe that I'm stronger because of that, my brain is looking for evidence and I can damn sure prove it. I've been through some stuff, and I can handle some stuff.
And so my brain is proving that to be true, and that's becoming more and more part of me. And that is my past, and that is the truth of my past. And it becomes more real. And then the thoughts that I think about it currently change how I am right now, and they change my tomorrow.
And this is how it works, okay? And it's that simple. It's recognizing thoughts, brainstorming, coming up with new ones. And then every time you think about it, just think those new thoughts. Think those new thoughts, think those new thoughts, okay?
Your brain's gonna take over, and it's gonna help you out in this thing. It's gonna help you cement the fact and have your past become your new past, changed the past, okay?
Your brain wants to prove you're right. You've probably heard that before. So it's going to provide you evidence. It's going to go to work on that. It won't take long. Okay. This isn't something that takes years to develop. Okay. You can get it done depending on how much time you spend thinking about it and how much effort you put into it. Okay. It happens pretty quick.
And by the way, so does your future. Okay. Your future changes pretty quick too, once you've changed your past.
Remember, your past has no bearing on the present unless you want it that way. Okay. And your, you can have a past, you can have a past that was incredibly positive. Okay, because guess what, it was.
Okay, I mean, look at you. Look at you. You wouldn't be all of your amazing self if you didn't have such an amazing past. You see what I'm saying? Take that one. You're not as amazing as you are in spite of your past. Maybe you're amazing as you are because of your past.
Okay. Just takes a little bit of effort to change your past and have it be something that serves you and that serves your life and the people around you more.
Like I said, this is something that we, one of the things, one of the many things we work on at Stable Living Coaching. Make sure to check us out there at stablelivingcoaching.com.
We change the past, and a hundred other ways to help people's futures, present and futures.
Hey, I appreciate you taking your time to be here with me today. Remember my friends, you cannot fail as long as you Don’t Ever Stop Chasin’ It.
