Episode 71: The Truth About Your Past

What I'm sharing in this episode, most people resist at first. It might even sound wrong when you hear it. But if you're willing to open your mind to it, this idea can be INCREDIBLY freeing once it clicks. If you long to let go of frustrations about things that have happened in your past, this epsiode is for you.  

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Full Transcript:

You're listening to the Think New Thoughts podcast with Emily Ricks, episode number 71, The Truth About Your Past.

I'm Emily Ricks, and this is Think New Thoughts, a life coaching podcast to help you find more joy in your relationships. In each episode, I'll share a simple idea that will help you see things in a new way. So you can love God, your neighbor and yourself more deeply than you ever have before. If you're ready to literally change your mind, I think you'll like it here.

Hey, how's it going? So I actually just got off of a one-on-one coaching call, and I'm feeling really grateful today.

I'm grateful that I get to be a coach and that I get to serve you and learn from you. And I'm grateful for the tools that I have discovered that have helped me live with more peace and purpose and intention, and have helped me connect with God in deeper ways than I knew how to before. I love learning new things and also being able to share what I learned through podcast episodes and workshops and in one-on-one sessions.

And I love the things that I learn from you. So thanks for being on this journey with me. One way that I have learned a lot about coaching is by being in programs and hearing other people get coached.

I'm in a program right now, and I heard a call that was done last week, and that conversation highlighted a principle that I really believe in that I find helpful to remember. And it was illustrated really well during that call. So this idea can help you understand the truth about your past so that you can let go of anger or frustration that might be weighing you down.

So here's the idea in a nutshell, when you think something shouldn't have happened, you're arguing with reality and it's an argument you can never win. So the call that I listened to last week, there was a woman who was being coached and she said that her husband passed away about a year ago. And she's been feeling a lot of frustration about how her in-laws showed up in a way with her kids.

Um, and so from her own perspective, she felt like her in-laws had not been kind and she just didn't like the way that her in-laws treated her kids over the last year. And that's totally understandable. She didn't explain all the details, but how her in-laws treated her kids didn't align with what she thinks is right.

So she came into the call saying that she wanted to let go of the anger. She wanted to be at peace. She wanted to move forward and not be hanging onto this.

She was tired of having it weigh her down and she was ready to let it go. And so in the process of the conversation, some of the thoughts came up that she is feeling like, well, they shouldn't have handled it this way. It shouldn't have happened this way.

They should have done it differently. It shouldn't have been like this. And all of those thoughts, even though they're very real for us and we feel them and we think them, those are all an argument with reality.

I love what Byron Katie said. When I argue with reality, I lose, but only a hundred percent of the time. And so here, here is the truth.

When you argue with reality, when you believe that anything in the past, whether it was yesterday or last week or a year ago, or 20 years ago, or 50 years ago, when you believe that something in the past shouldn't have happened, you will feel frustrated and powerless because you do not have the power to change something that happened in the past. So in the course of the call, the coach pointed out, okay, you think you're frustrated and angry because of what your in-laws did because of what they said, because of how they showed up. But really the real reason that you feel frustration is because of your thought that you believe that they shouldn't have done it.

And this is an incredibly important distinction. It's why we have the CTFAR model, because usually as human beings, we tend to believe if we're not really paying attention, that our circumstances are what create our feelings. So in this woman's case, the things that her in-laws did created her feeling of frustration, but actually the frustration comes from the thought that says they shouldn't have done it this way.

That's what creates frustration because then you're trying to change something that's in the past and therefore cannot be changed. And this concept actually took me a while to understand. So if you're hearing it for the first time or the second time or the third time, and you're like, this sounds ridiculous.

Or I don't know if I agree with this, or I don't, I don't understand why this is like even important. That's okay. I'm just going to keep talking about it from time to time because my experience was hearing it over and over and over.

I finally started to understand. So this concept becomes very empowering. When you take the first step, instead of arguing with reality, instead of believing that shouldn't have happened, I shouldn't have done that.

He shouldn't have said that anything that we're talking about this in the past, instead of believing that it shouldn't have happened. The first step is to accept reality instead of argue with it. This is what happened.

This is the reality. I accept the reality. It doesn't mean that I agree with what this person chose to do.

It doesn't mean that their actions align with my values. It doesn't mean that I'm letting go of all ideas of what's right and what's wrong, but it does mean that I'm choosing to acknowledge. This is something that took place that I'm not powerful enough to go back in time and reverse it.

I accept that this happened. And then you have clarity of mind to be able to decide, how do I want to respond to this thing that happened? What do I want to make it mean? So think about the thoughts you might have about the past. I shouldn't have said that I shouldn't have eaten that he shouldn't have lied to me.

I should have woken up earlier. These are all an argument with reality and arguments with reality, take up emotional and mental energy. I like to think of it as like pushing a boulder, this giant, giant, huge rock.

That's never going to move, but I am grunting and pushing and struggling and straining to try to move that boulder. And that's energy that's being taken away from another place that I could spend it. That would be much more productive.

I just got off of a call with a client where we built a model to look at the thought I should have gotten up earlier, which is a thought that she sometimes has in the morning. And in the process of making a model, she realized that that thought was creating a feeling of inadequacy, which she was then layering frustration and anger and blame and all sorts of other emotions on top of that inadequacy to try to escape from feeling it. And ultimately using up a ton of mental and emotional and physical energy, arguing with reality, and then having this pile of layered emotions to deal with that was coming from thinking things should be different than they are.

So I find it incredibly useful and helpful to look at when I'm arguing with reality, what emotions does that create for me? What actions do those emotions drive? And ultimately, what do I create? I drive myself crazy. I make myself tired. I lose all my power.

And then I take energy away from things that I do have control over, and then I can influence, which is the present and the future, but not ever the past. So here's how I like to think of it. The truth about your past is that whatever happened, and again, this is yesterday, last week, last year, 50 years ago, whatever happened should have happened because it did.

Brooke Castillo says, it was always meant to go down this way. How do I know? Because it did. That's how it went down.

Now you might resist this and you might say, well, I didn't want it to happen. Or you might say, what do you mean? He should have lied. No, it was wrong of him to lie.

He shouldn't have done that. Or she shouldn't have made that reckless decision that injured another person. Like, how can you say that that should have happened? Or people really get frustrated with this.

They're like, okay, you're saying that she should have been abused. He should have cheated on his wife. Like, no, he shouldn't have done that.

Right. And that's where we get into this thinking of this never should have happened. So I want to invite you to think about shoulds and shouldn'ts as if you have a moral imperative of something that you believe in, like, I believe it's wrong to kill.

I believe it's wrong to steal, to cheat on your spouse. So I can say like, he shouldn't cheat on his wife. That's a moral imperative.

That's something that I believe about what is right and wrong, but it's a little bit different semantically. When we're talking about something that has actually happened in the past, I want you to be aware of the word should, when it's an argument with reality, because arguments with reality, zap your energy and they zap your mental clarity and they create all sorts of negative emotion, unnecessary, negative emotion for you in your life. So when you believe something like he shouldn't have lied to me.

Okay. We can come back to, I do believe that lying is not a good thing to do. I don't want to be a person who lies.

I believe that God has asked me to be honest. And that's something that I want to try to live up to, but he shouldn't have lied to me. Like what's the reality of it.

He did. He did lie to me. So, so if you want to stop using up all your energy, trying to move a big, heavy boulder, that's never going to budge, then you can accept the reality.

You can say, I accept that this is what happened. I accept that. I can't change it because it's something that happened in the past.

And I want to remind you, you're not angry because he lied or because of anything that any person did or that you did in the past. That's not why you're angry. You're angry because of your thought that they shouldn't have, or that you shouldn't have.

And every time you think that thought that something in the past shouldn't have happened the way that it did, you're going to feel powerless because you cannot change something that already happened. And so instead of saying things like, Oh, I can't believe she did that. She shouldn't have done that.

You can say, well, of course she did that. That's usually how she chooses to respond in situations like this. So that's what should have happened based on who she is and how she responds.

And in that, you don't have to let go of what you believe is right and wrong and who you want to be as a person, but you can also actually say and mean like, yeah, that's what she should have done given the thoughts and experiences that she's had given the things that she values. If it sounds like I'm abandoning all morality, please hear me that I'm not. You can still believe in right and wrong and have values and also choose not to argue with reality, which is hopeless.

And that's where you can get to. It should have happened. It should have happened because this is God's plan for every single person to have agency, to do the things that they choose to do.

And so even though I might not agree with it or the decision that was made, maybe the action that I took or the action that someone else took was not in alignment with what I believe to be right and true and good. I can still believe that it should have happened just that way. And also that it's all for our experience because God could take anything and use it for our good and for our growth.

So when you think something shouldn't have happened, you will feel powerless and frustrated. You're not frustrated because of what happened. You're frustrated because you're believing that it shouldn't have.

You're standing there trying to make a Boulder move that is never going anywhere. When you accept reality, you stop wasting all of that energy, trying to move the Boulder and you free up energy to make choices of how you want to respond to the reality. I really did not like this idea.

The first several times I heard it, but I believe it now. And I have seen how this idea alleviates unnecessary suffering and it frees people from anger and frustration and hopelessness about the past, which allows them to create something in the present and the future. That's so much better.

So the next time you find yourself believing that something shouldn't have happened, I want to invite you to pause and tell yourself the truth. This did happen. And no amount of arguing or throwing tantrums on my part is going to change that reality.

Also, I believe that God can use this for my good. And from that place, then you can decide what you want to do next. I wish you clarity, relief, and forward progress in your life as you choose to think in this way.