We can use our past to make sense of who we are in the present. What do I mean by this? Perhaps when you were younger, your parents didn't have time to sit with you when you were having big emotions. Or perhaps they were always telling you to hush and to not feel your big feelings.
So it totally makes sense that whenever a big feeling comes along, you mentally run and try to hide from it. In this episode, we'll talk about how we can use our past to inform our present selves of all that we have lived through and thrived through.
I hope it comes as no surprise that I am all for using your past to remind yourself what a badass you are.
Click HERE to get the full show notes.
We can use our past to make sense of who we are in the present. What do I mean by this? Perhaps when you were younger, your parents didn't have time to sit with you when you were having big emotions. Or perhaps they were always telling you to hush and to not feel your big feelings.
So it totally makes sense that whenever a big feeling comes along, you mentally run and try to hide from it. In this episode, we'll talk about how we can use our past to inform our present selves of all that we have lived through and thrived through.
I hope it comes as no surprise that I am all for using your past to remind yourself what a badass you are.
Click HERE to get the full show notes.
Hey, this is Melissa Parsons, and you are listening to the Your Favorite You Podcast. I'm a certified life coach with an advanced certification in deep dive coaching. The purpose of this podcast is to help brilliant women like you with beautiful brains create the life you've been dreaming of with intentions. My goal is to help you find your favorite version of you by teaching you how to treat yourself as your own best friend.
If this sounds incredible to you and you want practical tips on changing up how you treat yourself, then you're in the right place. Just so you know, I'm a huge fan of using all of the words available to me in the English language, so please proceed with caution if young ears are around.
Well, hi there, everyone. Welcome back to Your Favorite You. I really love what I do, and I don't want anyone to think that I don't have days that are hard. I do. For example, I just asked my sweet Owen for a do over and I got one. I just wrote a negative thought download and got all of the negative thoughts out of my head so that I could go on about my day.
And then I was coaching my beautiful client this morning and she shared how her mom has been listening to the podcast and following me on social media. She shared that her sweet mom said, I heard Melissa say that it's helpful to write a letter of forgiveness so that you can heal. So, her mom wrote a letter of forgiveness to someone very significant in their lives, a letter which she would never send and one that she said felt so good to shred.
And it's helping her and her healing. I started crying right there on the call because to know that this podcast and my social media presence is helping people who will never actually work with me brings me so much joy. So that's been my morning. Just in case you think that I don't experience all the ups and downs that life has to offer.
I totally do. I've been thinking a lot about the topic I'm going to be sharing with you today. I've been thinking about all the different ways that we can use our past against us and how we can use our past for us. I bet you can guess which use of the past I find most useful and fulfilling. We can use our past to make sense of who we are in the present.
What do I mean by this? Perhaps when you were younger, your parents didn't have time to sit with you when you were having big emotions, or perhaps they were always telling you to hush. And to not feel your big feelings, because. Actually, they got triggered to feel their big feelings when you were feeling yours, and they didn't have time for that.
So, it totally makes sense that whenever a big feeling comes along, you mentally run and try to hide from it. Or maybe both of your parents worked outside the home, and you were forced to take care of yourself at a young age, and now you're fiercely independent. Perhaps your gym teacher shamed you in front of your entire class regarding your body and now when you look in the mirror, all you see are your flaws.
Perhaps you got really good grades in elementary school, and you received lots of praise and recognition for your perfect grades. So, you place lots of importance on being perceived as perfect. These are some examples of how we use our past to make sense of how we're acting in the here and now. We can use our past to inform our present selves of all that we have lived through and thrived through.
I hope it comes as no surprise that I am all for using your past to remind yourself what a badass you are. Some examples here are the ones I shared last week, like me looking through all of my notes that I took in med school and remembering that if I can get through that, I can do anything now. It could be that you had a bad medical diagnosis that you went through treatment for, and you peeled your body through.
It could be breaking up with an ex. Grieving that loss of what you thought your life was going to be and being ready to move on and date again. It could be realizing that you were not being held in the highest regard at your old job, having the ovaries to leave that job, and then triumphing at the new one.
This is how we use our past to remind ourselves that we can and have gotten through so much in our lives. And because of that, we have achieved and unlocked badass status. Most of us, the vast majority of us, unless we are working with a coach, don't use our past in this positive manner. Most of us use our past against ourselves.
In these cases, we often use the mistakes or the missteps of our past to beat ourselves up, thinking that we can somehow save ourselves from making the same mistake again if we are harsh enough with ourselves. We also use our past selves to compare to our present selves. Mostly in a negative way.
Recently I've started doing yoga again and even ventured into a new studio near me. I noticed I had the opportunity to compare my present self with my past self and what she could do. For example, my 2019 self could do tree pose with her heel practically lodged in her vulva. My 2024 self can do tree pose most successfully with my heel on my calf.
My clients have done this too. One of them compared herself to her prior way more athletic self to her postpartum-self 20 years later. Another took a break from exercising and lifting for the past couple years and was tempted to stop after restarting because she was not able to immediately lift the heavy weights that she used to be able to do.
I want to remind you that whenever you are restarting something, your brain will attempt to remind you that you are not the you of the past. This is simply an invitation for you to meet yourself right where you are and to be gentle with yourself. This method of meeting yourself where you are and being gentle with yourself, instead of comparing yourself to your past and being harsh with yourself.
We'll make it so much easier for you to show up every day or a few times a week to your renewed exercise routine. Trust me, it is so much easier than shaming and blaming yourself for taking a break for taking time off for quote unquote, letting yourself go. I hate that phrase, by the way, what does that even mean?
It's always available to us to rewrite the story of our past in a way that serves us so that we can transcend the old stories. We all have stories we need to rewrite. No one is alone in this. You can even rewrite the story of your past regarding how you have dealt with your past. It's kind of meta, but let's say that you're listening to this podcast and thinking, Melissa is right.
I love it when you think that, Melissa is right. I have used my past self against me. I have beat myself up. I have compared my current self with my past self and not love the results. You can ask yourself, why might I have done it this way? How can I make sense of why I did it this way? How can I rewrite this chapter with me being the hero of the story instead of me being the villain or the victim?
The one thing that I for sure don't want anyone who listens to this podcast doing is using their past to determine their future. What you have or have not done in the past has little to nothing to do with what you can create for your life in the future. I promise that if you take the time to rewrite the story of your past in a way that serves you, you will be much more likely to go out and go after what it is that you say that you want.
The old narrative of quote unquote, I have never done that before, can go straight out the window as you create the new life you want. Of course, you've never done that before. If you had, your life would already be the life you want. Don't let the thought, I have never done that before, hold you back from what you want.
Your past can have as little bearing on your future as you choose for it to. One of the phrases that I love to experiment with myself and with my clients is, I am becoming a person who. So, just thinking about my current clients right now, here are some examples. You guys will recognize yourself in these.
I am becoming a person who's statements. I am becoming a person who repeatedly acts like the CEO of a multimillion-dollar company. I am becoming a person who trusts her husband to plan a trip to Germany. I am becoming a person who makes decisions from love instead of making decisions from fear. I am becoming a person who is no longer uncomfortable when she is happy.
I am becoming a person who can be a nice person without self-sacrificing. I am becoming a person who is more comfortable with conflict. I am becoming a person who feels safe admitting that she has a lot to contribute to her world because she is smart. I am becoming a person who feels comfortable with increased visibility online.
I am becoming a person who doesn't ever have to referee her kids. I am becoming a person who no longer abandons herself to stay in her marriage. I am becoming a person who loves her body after many years of not loving it. I am becoming a person who feels safe to let my significant other be in control some of the time.
You can see how with each of these statements, we use what we used to do in the past. And are becoming someone different than we were in the past. Once we practice these statements and feel the feelings associated with them and attempt to take action from that thought and feeling multiple times over with the power of coaching, we can always check in.
I know I said I wanted to become this or that, and now that I'm out in the world living it and being challenged on it, do I still want it? If so, we keep going. If maybe not, we can always pivot. We are adaptable motherfuckers with coaching. One thing that I have found with coaching, and that of course my clients find too, is that when we tell the universe that we want something, the universe often comes along and tests us, kind of like the universe wants us to be sure in our decisions.
I am becoming the person who feels comfortable with increased visibility online. Then we put it out to the test. We put out a post and someone disagrees, or the post creates a lot of traction, either good or bad traction. This is the universe's way of asking, are you sure? Then we get to decide again. So, once we practice these statements and check in and get challenged and we survive, these statements can change to I am statements.
So, instead of I am becoming, we change them to I am. I am a person who is comfortable with conflict. I am a person who makes decisions from love instead of fear. I am a person who is comfortable with being happy. And then, once we conquer this one thing, all the other changes that you want to make in your life become possible for you too.
If you guys have any questions about this, if you have any thoughts about rewriting your past or ways to use your past or how you've done things in the past and how you want to do things in the future, please feel free to reach out to me. I love hearing from you guys after I post these podcasts, I love the feedback that I get.
And I want to hear more from you, so please, and if this podcast really spoke to you, share it with somebody that you love, share it with somebody that you think would benefit from it. If you haven't already gone in and put a review on Apple podcasts, I would love to hear what you're thinking on. The Apple podcast platform, especially if you love it, especially if you want to give it five stars and you look forward to it every week.
All right, guys, more on making things possible for you next week. See you then my friends.
Hey, everybody, don't go quite yet. I want to let you know all the ways that you can work with me.
If you've been listening to this podcast and maybe especially you have listened to episodes where I interview my clients, and you are thinking like the older woman in the diner in the classic Meg Ryan, Billy Crystal film, When Harry Met Sally... In the film, Sally is proving a point to Harry by faking an orgasm while in public at a diner. Sally finishes, so to speak, and then takes a bite of her food. The older woman in the next booth says, "I'll have what she's having." If you've been thinking, "I'll have what she's having," this is your sign from the universe to schedule a consult with me.
I have a few spots available for one-on-one coaching with me. This is a space where I am laser focused on you and your brain for six months at a time. I will also be doing consults with women who want to join my next group coaching cohort, which will likely start in the spring of 2024. The way to contact me is to go to my website, Melissaparsonscoaching.com, go to the Work with Me page and click book now to schedule your consult. I will look forward to hearing from you. Let's make 2024 your year ever as you become Your Favorite You.