Wisdom Wednesday | Learning from Your Past Experiences

Learning from Your Past Experiences

Happy day, happy Wisdom Wednesday and thank you for joining us. I am so pleased that you are here today, and I am so grateful that you’re here to get a bite sized piece of wisdom so that you can apply it in your life, so that you can have the life that you’re choosing to have. So thank you for being here.

Each time you show up, you’re saying yes to yourself. Each time you not only show up here, but do anything that’s a self-honoring choice to up-level your life which means to help you create the life that you imagined for yourself, you are making a self-honoring choice. So congratulations for that. It makes my heart so happy, really.

So what are we talking about today? You know, because you got the email and it’s one of my favorite things to talk about. And the reason that it’s one of my favorite thing to talk about is because we all do it. You got the email, right? We all do it.

I was just having a conversation with someone this morning who said, I have to admit, I still do that so often. And then I was having a conversation with someone last night, they were sharing with me how they were in the midst of it as we were having the conversation.

And of course, what I’m talking about is living in the past, thinking about what you can do-over from the past. And of course you can’t go back there and do anything over, right?

So in the conversation last night, they were expressing some shame and regret for former choices and so much how they wish they had done differently. What do you do about that? How do you move beyond that thinking? We all do it, right? All of us do it. Do you do it? You do.

How is it possible for you to be present to your life fully, right now, while lamenting about past mistakes, regrets or shame. It’s not possible, is it? If you were continuously thinking about what you wish you would have done, what you could have done differently, you’re going to continue to do the same thing over and over again because lamenting over it actually doesn’t make it better, it just trains you to make it the same, to make it worse and you’re going to do the same thing over and over again.

So let’s talk about having regret, lamenting in the past, and wishing we had do-overs. Since we know we can’t have any do-overs, right? You cannot have any do-overs from past to present. But what you can do is learn from your past. And something that I’ve done is something that every person I have the opportunity to speak with, to coach, it’s a way of living for me, for our family and that’s to use everything for our learning.

And what does that look like? And I’m just going to use something that I used to do and something that quite frankly, I still have to remind myself in this particular area.

So once upon a time I had acquired some things, real estate holdings, that I really, I don’t have them now. And so when the real estate market went through the roof, I got a piece of paper out, wrote down the properties, what the value was currently and thought about, Oh my gosh, what if I still had those properties? And I would go over it and over it again in my mind. And then one day, well, not one day actually.

And then while doing that, I reminded myself, what are you doing? You know the principles, you know the rule, stop, stop it right now. So then when I stopped it, I asked myself, well, what did I learn from that? What did I learn from that experience? And what I learned was, what I want to do is build a portfolio and how do I want to build the portfolio and what type of real estate assets I want to hold. I took what I once lamented about and I now use it for my learning. And so now it is part of my present and for my future, I get to use something that I used to regret, I used to feel bad about, and I used to think about constantly, I wish I could have done it over, now for my learning. Do you understand what I’m saying? Yes.

So make certain that whatever it is you are using for your learning, because imagine if everything that you wish you would’ve done before, imagine if you weren’t holding that baggage, imagine that you completely had eradicated those thoughts and feelings. What would it feel like? Can you imagine? Well, if you can imagine that, then you absolutely know that it isn’t good for you to hold on to what’s happened in the past.

So I invite you to use everything for your learning. At Real Truth, we say it over and over again, use everything for your learning. A couple of weeks ago, we talked about celebrating you. A week before that, we talked about you knowing your value, and it’s not possible to fully celebrate you or fully know your value when you have one foot in the past, wishing something would be different. Because everything that has ever happened to you, to me and to each of us, it’s really for our learning. If it didn’t go the way that we think it should, or if it did, we get to use it all for our learning. So make certain that that’s what you’re doing, using every experience for your learning. Right? Okay.

So now that we have that, that part of regret, that part of shame, that part of looking behind us and thinking that it’s going to help us in our present moment now, what are you going to do differently? The next time something comes up, what are you going to do differently so that your thinking and your future and present actions can be different? What is it going to be? You know the answer because I just told you. What is it? Tell me in the chat so that I know that you know what you’re going to do.

So the next time that thought comes up of something you should have done prior, immediately when that thought comes in, instead of allowing the energy to pull you down and think something should have been different, ask yourself, what did I learn from that? And then once you know what you learned from that experience, apply that to your now. That’s your assignment.

And the wisdom for this Wednesday is, don’t allow anything to have you living in your past. You are here in the present moment, which is a gift and use the present moment, the gift of your life for your learning and how to move forward.

That’s what I want to share with you this beautiful Wednesday, use the wisdom and apply it in our life, embody it and make certain that you use everything for your learning.

Thank you for being here. I’ll see you next week. Have a spectacular day.

[Kiss] And you know what I want you to do with that, grab it, put it in your heart, it’s wisdom, use it and move your life forward, really. Bye for now.