In July we are going to be talking about the past. Your past only exists in your mind, all you have is the now. When we relate to the present from the past, we are creating a moment based on who we were. Your past is over, and doesn’t effect you.
The current thoughts you think about your past do effect you. If you feel that your past causes you pain today, know that it’s only your thoughts about your past that is causing the pain. Your thoughts are optional, you can tell the story about your past in a light that describes you today.
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What You’ll Learn From this Episode:
- Understanding how your thoughts about your past effect your present
- Tips on how you can view your past in a way that creates positive results
Listen to the Full Episode:
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Announcer:
Welcome to The Alpha Male Coach podcast, the only podcast that teaches men the cognitive mastery and alpha mindset that it takes to become an influential and irresistible man of confidence. Here’s your host, certified life coach and international man of mystery, Kevin Aillaud.
Kevin Aillaud:
What’s up my brothers? Welcome back to The Alpha Male Coach podcast. I am your host, Kevin Aillaud, and we are in July. We are over halfway through 2020 already. It’s blowing my mind how quickly this year has gone by and all the things that have happened this year. It’s really amazing. And in July, we’re actually looking at the past. We’re actually looking at, well the students in the Spartan Academy, we’re looking at our past and rewriting our past so that it serves not just our present, not just who we are today, but what we will become tomorrow.
Kevin Aillaud:
So to open up with that and kind of talk about what we’re doing in the academy, I want this podcast to really be about your past. I want to talk about what the past is. Now, I’m not going to talk too much about time because I’ve done a lot of talking about time. I’ve talked to you guys about how the past no longer exists, the future is in your imagination. That doesn’t exist either. It’s there for you to create. The only thing you have is the present moment. I’m not going to get into that too much because I want to focus on what is the past, what is the past specifically? Because it doesn’t exist anywhere except in your mind. You think it exists, but only because you think. If you didn’t think, if you didn’t have thoughts, then you would not have a past.
Kevin Aillaud:
Now you might say, “Yeah, but coach, like other people were around, other people can verify that this is the past. This is where I was, this is what I was doing.” But I really want you to understand there’s a difference between the circumstances that occurred in the past, where everybody has their story of what happened and your past, what your making it mean specifically to you because your past no longer exists anywhere except in your mind. All you have is the now, the past is over. The future is in your imagination.
Kevin Aillaud:
So all you have in this moment are the thoughts that you’re thinking. And that’s really interesting. I’m going to get into that a lot deeper in the next couple episodes. The thoughts that we’re thinking is all we have to relate to the world outside of us. And when we’re relating to the world outside of us in the present, based on our past, we’re creating our moment based on who we were. So if you’re thinking about your past, that isn’t your past. You’re still here. You’re still in the moment. Your past is over. And that’s a huge distinction that I want you to know. This is the moment, this is the now, this is the present, this is all you have. Anything that you’re thinking about, anything happening in your brain is not your past. It’s your thoughts. And the only way that your past can ever exist at all ever is in your thoughts that you’re having in the present, right now. Otherwise, it doesn’t affect you in any way. It has no power over you at all.
Kevin Aillaud:
I kept saying over and over, it doesn’t exist. But when you don’t think about it, you don’t get an emotional response. Your past has nothing to do with who you are today and who you’re becoming tomorrow. Your thoughts right now about your past, those are what affect you right now in going into your future. All of your thinking affects you deeply in this moment, but what happened to you or around you in your past has no effect on you. It does not affect you in any way. Your past is over and doesn’t affect you. And at the same time, there are the current thoughts about your past that you’re having right now that do affect you.
Kevin Aillaud:
To start this entire episode, I want you to understand the concept, your past no longer exists. It’s not their, brother. It does exist in your mind, but it only exists in your mind in the present moment. And this is a huge concept. So with that concept, when I ask you about your past now, what is it? If it doesn’t exist anywhere except in your brain, what exactly is your past? Your past is a story you tell yourself about who you were or about what happened to you in the past. Now here’s the thing. If you had amnesia, right? You guys know that I’m a fan of movies. I love The Matrix. I love the Marvel Universe, but I also love the idea of the Jason Bourne trilogy. I guess there’s more than three of them now, but I love the idea of Jason Bourne. So think about that.
Kevin Aillaud:
Like if you had amnesia and you had no memory of your past, it would have no influence on you in terms of what you’re thinking today, right? Because what you’re thinking today is what’s happening to you now, or it’s a thought about your past. But if you had no memory, if you had this amnesia and I asked you what happened to you in your past, tell me about your past. You would have no idea. There would be no thinking. There would be no thoughts influencing who you are today and who you become in your future because you just don’t remember. It’s just not there.
Kevin Aillaud:
So if I asked you what happened to you when you were a kid. Right now, you might tell me a story. You might tell me a story because it’s your version of the past. But if you had amnesia, you wouldn’t even be able to tell me that, there would be nothing there. Now, I could go and ask, I could ask your mother, I could ask your father, your friends, if they’re still alive and they would have a different version of what happened. Your past exists in their mind, in their way. And your past exists in your mind, in your way. So all of that, whatever happened, whatever occurred, whatever the circumstances are, what you’re making it mean about yourself, what you make it mean about your life, what you make it mean about other people, what you made it mean about the world. That’s all what’s happening now, influencing you today and is what you are using to determine what you are capable of now and in the future.
Kevin Aillaud:
I’m just going to keep repeating over and over again that the past is dead. The past is over. It has no influence on you whatsoever. Students will say to me, I have old pain. I have old wounds. I have old thoughts. And I want you guys to know right now, there’s no such thing. You have a feeling that you experience in this moment. Your cells vibrate when they undergo that chemical reaction that occurs when a neurotransmitter’s released from the brain, neuropeptide. It’s a messenger that tells you how to feel now. It’s not an old feeling. It’s not a feeling from when you were a kid. It’s not a feeling from last year or last month or last week. It’s a feeling you’re having right now from the thoughts you’re creating right now.
Kevin Aillaud:
There’s the feeling you had when you were a kid. The feeling you had when you were developing your beta condition. And all of that is over. That’s gone. It doesn’t exist anymore. Then there’s the feeling that you have now created from the thoughts you have now when you think about what happened then, and the only way you can have a feeling now is if you think about something that causes you to have that feeling. You’re not experiencing pain from your past, you’re not even experiencing your past at all. You’re experiencing present pain. You’re experiencing the pain that you created with your mind right now, it may be similar to the pain you felt when you were a kid, three years old, 10 years old, a teenager, whatever. But it’s not the same pain. It’s not the same at all. It’s a new pain. It’s pain in this moment. It’s the pain that you are creating with your current thinking. It’s the suffering that you’re bringing to you with your brain, with your thoughts. And that’s life changing.
Kevin Aillaud:
If you really understand what I’m telling you, you cannot experience pain from your past. Your past does not exist. What happened to you in the past is over. The only pain you’re experiencing is the pain you’re creating. Now, that includes all emotional pain, that includes all emotional suffering. So you might say, and I’ve had students say this to me, “I went through this very horrific thing. I went through this very horrible thing. How can you tell me, how can you possibly say, that’s not affecting me right now?” I’m going to say to you the same thing I say to my students, this is good. This is a good news. It’s not like I’m blaming you. It’s not like I’m telling you that there’s something wrong with you. I’m telling you that this is the good news. That the person that did that thing to you, or even if it’s yourself, whatever the thoughts you’re having about your past. Those people, those things cannot affect you now.
Kevin Aillaud:
The only way they can affect you now is if you think about them now, if you think a thought that creates the suffering. If you create a situation now where you are currently a victim. If you feel shame now, brother, it’s not because of what happened you in your past. If you feel guilt now, it’s not because of what you did or didn’t do in your past. It’s because of what you’re currently thinking about what happened to you or what you did in your past. And this is great news because whatever the past is for you, whatever you’re thinking, whatever the people are, whatever you are, whatever the things that happen, they have no more power over you.
Kevin Aillaud:
I’ve worked with hundreds of students who have experienced extreme abuse when they were children. You guys know that I experienced abuse when I was a child and they, my students and what I used to, continually abusing themselves. The physical abuse is long over. It happened when I was a kid or it happened to them when they were kids, but my students are perpetuating the emotional abuse with their own minds. And a lot of times they don’t even realize they’re doing it. They just think that this is the belief, this is the facts, this is the way things are. And I’ve had people be upset with me about this methodology. I’ve had people be upset with me about this philosophy, because they’ll ask me, how can you possibly say that this person is causing their own pain. I mean, I’ve had therapists, I’ve had psychologist, I’ve had counselors ask me that question straight out. And the answer I give them is because it’s absolutely true.
Kevin Aillaud:
You are creating your own pain. You are creating your own suffering. You’re creating it with your thoughts right here, right now. Something that happened to you in your past is over. It’s over. The only pain that continues is the suffering that you are creating in your mind. When you think about it. The great news, the good news is that you can change how you think about your past. You can rewrite your past and change how you feel, if you change the way you think. The only way your past defines you now is in the way you choose to think about it now.
Kevin Aillaud:
So how do you use your past? I want you to look at it. Look at your past. How do you want to use it? It’s yours. No one can change it. No one can touch it. No one can enter that space, but you, because it’s all in your brain, it’s all in your mind. You get to decide what you’re going to make your past mean in your life. You get to decide whether you’re going to be the hero of that story or the victim. And in every story that we see, it doesn’t matter what movie we watch or what television show, the hero always has to go through trials, always has to go through tribulations. That’s how you learn. You learn … I say over and over, the discomfort is the price of suffering. And you don’t need to go into your past to heal all that. You can just observe it and change the way you think about it.
Kevin Aillaud:
Now, I know that there are therapies that will take you back into your past and have you experienced what happened there, so you could get to that level of healing. I have not had tremendous relief or tremendous positive change from therapy, but I know people that have, and there’s certainly a space for that. But most people who come to me are chained to a painful story about their past and what it means about their life. And it’s completely optional. It’s always optional. Your thoughts are optional. You can change the story. You could want to believe that your past has made you strong. You could want to believe that your past has made you capable and has made you worthy, and you can go mining for that evidence. You can go looking for that. You will find it and then retell the story in a way that ultimately serves who you are today and who you’re becoming in the future. That gives you thoughts, that build feelings of positivity and strength and wonder, and that energize you.
Kevin Aillaud:
You don’t have to take any of it into your brain if you don’t want to. If you find that you’re thinking about it, ask yourself why. This is definitely worth doing the cognitive mastery work on. You get to decide what you bring into your future. And that’s the best news. You get to leave behind anything that you don’t want to bring with you. It’s over. It has no power over you. You can release it forever and move on. You can think about the amazing stuff and you can just let all the bad stuff go behind you, or you can take the bad stuff and rewrite it to empower you, to make you capable and worthy and strong and deserving of everything that you have today and everything that you’re going to create in the future.
Kevin Aillaud:
If you notice anything from your past is causing you pain, it’s because of the story. It’s because of the sentences in your brain that you’re telling yourself about it. And brother, you have the power to change that story, to rewrite your past. Now, you may not be able to change what happened to you, you’re not going to be able to change the facts, but you get to change what it means to you now. There’s no work, no work, not relationship work, not emotional work, not cognitive mastery work, not indomitable, self-confidence work, not goal setting work. I’m telling you, there is no work that has had a bigger influence on me in my life than changing the story of my past, changing what it means and how I want to focus on it moving forward. And I’m going to give you a little bit of tips on how to do that for yourself at the end of this podcast.
Kevin Aillaud:
There are so many thoughts that you have now that are coming from thoughts that you were taught in your past, coming from the beta condition. And they’re mostly unconscious. These are not thought thoughts that you have consciously decided to think. They’re not deliberate or intentional thoughts, but they’re thoughts programmed into you at a very young age. And you’re just so used to thinking these thoughts that you don’t even realize that they’re there. Now I’ll admit that some of them probably do serve you and they don’t need to be changed.
Kevin Aillaud:
Think about all the thoughts that we have that are serving us right now. Like, it’s good to be kind. It’s good to be kind to people. It’s good to look both ways before you cross the street. Now, that’s a thought. That’s not a fact. People don’t look both ways before they cross the street. It happens to me all the time. I see people that don’t look both ways and walk right in front of my car. It’s brushing your teeth and taking a shower every day, cleanliness, it’s saving money. All of these are thoughts that we were taught as kids. But some of the thoughts that we were taught as kids, some of the things that we took from our past, they don’t serve us and we don’t have to keep them once we realize them. And a lot of us don’t even realize that what we’re thinking is a thought. We just think it’s the way they are.
Kevin Aillaud:
I’m limited in how much money I can make. If I didn’t go to college, I can’t make more money. Drinking is more fun than not drinking. People should always be respectful to me. My family should always be nice to me. I could never get that rich. I’m not good at that. And I can’t do that. There’s so many thoughts that are just running in your brain causing you suffering now. Coming from your past that you can choose whether you want to keep them or not.
Kevin Aillaud:
I want you to think about the thoughts you have adopted, you’ve taken from your past without realizing it. It might be something your parents taught you. It might be something you learned in school or a belief that you developed because of something you did repeatedly, but make a list of these thoughts, really take some time. And when you look at this list, it’s important to know that even though these thoughts feel true, even though they feel like facts to you, they are optional, completely optional. Your past doesn’t equal your future. In fact, your past successes and failures don’t predict your future successes and failures, unless you believe they do. What you were taught when you were young feels true, but that’s only because it’s familiar, not because it’s true. Familiarity is not truth. And even though we have all this power, all this control over changing how we think about our past, over rewriting our past, we spend a lot of time arguing with our past, with the circumstances, without even realizing it. We believe it should have been different.
Kevin Aillaud:
We believe that things that did happen to us shouldn’t have and things that didn’t happen to us should have, and this causes tremendous amount of anxiety. Statements like, “He shouldn’t have done that.” Or, “They should have been different.” Or, “My child should have been better.” Or, “My parents should have been more loving.” Or, “I shouldn’t have said that.” Or, “I shouldn’t have created that.” Or, “I should have been different.” All of these thoughts about what happened to us or who we were in our past, these are always lies. The past should have been exactly as the past was. And we know that, brother, we know that to be a truth, a universal truth, because it’s how it happened, because it is what happened. The circumstances, the facts, the external unfolding of perfection happens exactly as it should. It’s our thoughts that we have control over.
Kevin Aillaud:
It’s our thoughts that we get to determine what we make that perfection mean to us. Your past, all of the past, my past, everybody’s past, time as it happens, times as it moves forward, it’s all a circumstance, it’s all neutral, and it’s all out of our control. What we have control over is the way we choose to think about it. And when you state your past, when you kind of look at it in a very factual way, you will realize that it literally can’t be different than it was, number one. And number two, that the facts of what occurred have no emotional power over you whatsoever because they’re facts, because it just happened. What has the emotional power, what has the emotional response is your thoughts.
Kevin Aillaud:
Every argument with your past pretends it can win, but it never can. It won’t ever win. Your past should be what the past was. And because of that, because your past is out of your control, it’s neutral and it’s very factual, what will you decide to make it mean for you? Think about the person who you believe hurts you in the past, and now retell the entire story from their perspective, try to see if you can get into their shoes. What might they have been thinking when they did that? What is their model? What is their universal truth? How old were they? What were their struggles and frustrations that they might’ve been trying to accommodate? When it comes to abuse? Be it sexual, physical, emotional, whatever. I find it helpful to understand the suffering someone has to be in, the suffering someone has to be experiencing in order to abuse another person.
Kevin Aillaud:
Now, I want you to know it doesn’t justify it. It doesn’t make it right, but it helps me and it might help you to understand that humanness, to understand and step into compassion around other people being human. Don’t rely on your past for your identity, rely on your future. Take the knowledge you need from your past and just leave the rest behind. It’s not even there. It doesn’t even exist anymore. Just take what you want, carry it in your brain and use it in your future. Spend some time, write a letter to your past self, give your past self some advice. What would you say? I’ll tell you what I would say to my past self, “Your brain lies to you.” That’s what I would tell my past self. It’s like, look, you’re going to hear a lot of stories. You’re going to hear a lot of sentences in your brain. Your brain is lying to your, brother. That’s what it does. It loves to tell you things that aren’t true so that you can elevate your alpha state and determine what’s true for you.
Kevin Aillaud:
Tell the story of your past in two different ways. One where you had this horrible experience and this awful childhood and another, where you had the perfect childhood, where everything happened exactly the way it should have happened. Notice how you talk to yourself about your past. If you start saying something went wrong, I urge you to rewrite that story so that nothing went wrong. When you start noticing that you’re telling yourself, “I should have had,” I want you to rewrite that story to where you had everything you needed. Find a place in your life where you have regret and retell the story where you don’t have that feeling. Because that feeling is not useful. It’s not helping you now. You can change your future without feeling regret about your past. Break down stories to facts only.
Kevin Aillaud:
I said something, he did something, she did something. Now, notice that when you fill in the details, how painful they might be for no good reason, other than the sentences that are in your head. Retell the story of your life, where you are the hero and not the victim.
Kevin Aillaud:
Now, I want to give you some tools on how to do this. We are going to do this in the academy every week, and I encourage you to do this as well. Choose one significant thing from your past that you want to change and then write it down. Now, once you have that thing, once you have that event, I want you to write down the current story you’ve been telling yourself about this event and let your brain go crazy. Let your brain come up with all the terrible stuff that it’s already telling you. It’s kind of like your thought download. It’s kind of like you’re writing down all the stuff that you think about it because you really want to look at it. You really want to observe what it is in your brain about this particular thing that happened to you or happened around you in your past.
Kevin Aillaud:
But after you do that, after you write down this current story that you’ve been telling yourself, write down the facts, pull out all your thoughts and write down the facts of what occurred. Because what you’re going to see is that you have the neutral, you have the facts and you have the story above it, of all the things that you’re making these facts mean. And from there, I want you to write the story that you want to tell yourself about this event. A story that’s going to empower you to be the person that you choose to be rather than pretending to be the victim of your past and be the person that you think you just are or you have to be.
Kevin Aillaud:
I’m going to run through this very quickly with you guys, just to give you an example. This is something from my past that I worked on, that I worked through. And I think you guys probably know this because if you’ve been listening to these podcasts at all, you probably have a good idea on where I started.
Kevin Aillaud:
The significant thing that I wanted to change for my past was I thought that my mother was never around when I was a kid. Now, when I look at that and I think about the current story that I used to tell myself about it, I would tell myself that my mother was terrible. She was a horrible parent, she created distrust and insecurities for me with women because she was never around. I never felt like I was safe with women. She shouldn’t have done that. This was a poor … She neglected me, she kind of abandoned me, she put me in positions that I felt scared and helpless, and she really created sort of this broken mentality for me in terms of relating to women where I was showing up in a needy and desperate way because of feeling distrustful and insecure. All because my mom was never around as a kid.
Kevin Aillaud:
Now, the facts of the event is that my mom worked at least two jobs during my childhood. Actually, she worked between two and four jobs when I was growing up. So when I look at the facts, when I really look at that, I can choose to change how I think about what occurred. I have the facts, my mom was working several jobs. I have my thought about it, which was that she was never around as a kid. Then I have my story about what I make that mean. When I changed my story and what I started to tell myself what I wanted to tell myself, not only did my relationship with myself changed, but my relationship with my mom changed and my relationship with every single woman on the planet changed because I chose to change how I thought about my relationship with myself, my mother, and the females.
Kevin Aillaud:
And so what I did was I wrote the story that I wanted to tell myself, which was that my mom loved me, that she didn’t want me or my brother to grow up without food or shelter, because she thought that reflected on her as a parent and it caused her suffering. She basically was stuck between this rock in a hard place. I can either be with my kids all the time and not have any money to pay for rent or pay for food, or I can go out and I can work. I can work several jobs and never really see my kids, not be around them, but I can make sure that they’re sheltered, make sure that they’re fed. So she didn’t want me to suffer. She didn’t want me to be hungry. She didn’t want me to be out in the rain, in the cold. And I can understand why she did this as an adult.
Kevin Aillaud:
Now, changing the way I choose to think about my childhood, the facts of the story. I know that she did not intend to hurt me. In fact, I’ve even gone to the place where she was trying to help me. She was trying to help my brother. She was trying to help herself and she was doing her best. Even though at the time, for me, it wasn’t helpful. The way I made it mean was not helpful. And it’s taught me to accept myself. I love myself no matter what, I accept myself no matter what, but it’s also helped me be more understanding. And I know that my mom did not cause my insecurities with women, they were always there. And I’ve been able to get over those or transcend those in large respects due to this work, due to changing that story. Because that whole fear of abandonment, that whole fear of neglect, that whole fear of not having love, a woman’s love was gone when I changed the way I thought about my childhood.
Kevin Aillaud:
And I want to offer that to you guys as well. I want to offer that you guys do this assignment. Do this assignment as many times as you want to, as many times as you choose to with any significant thing that you want to change in your past. Rewriting your past is or was for me, the most powerful form of cognitive mastery, of mind management that has helped me take leaps into the future. Huge steps into who I want to be, into who I am becoming.
Kevin Aillaud:
And that’s what I got for you today, brothers. Now, over the next two weeks, we’re going to be talking about circumstance because I want to dive deeper into what is a circumstance. You can really understand that your past is gone. Your past does not exist. The only thing that exists is the here, is the now. That’s all. And so we’re going to spend the next two episodes, looking at circumstance, really understanding what a circumstance is and working to see how your past is gone, exist nowhere other than your brain. And because your brain, because your thoughts are your domain, your choices, you get to choose how you want to think about your past and rewrite your past in a way that serves your future.
Kevin Aillaud:
When you’re ready to take all this work to the next level, go to thealphamalecoach.com and check out the Elevated Alpha Society Spartan Academy. You are welcome to enroll immediately and start working towards your cognitive mastery and emotional ownership skills so that you can rewrite your past and live your life into your future the way you choose. Until next week, my brothers. Elevate your alpha.
Announcer:
Thank you for listening to this episode of The Alpha Male Coach podcast. If you enjoy what you’ve heard and want even more, sign up for Unleash Your Alpha, your guide to shifting to the alpha mindset, at thealphamalecoach.com/unleash.