Ep #34: Leaving the Past Behind

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.

What’s up, my brothers. Welcome back to The Alpha Male Coach Podcast. I am your host, Kevin Aillaud. Today, we’re going to continue talking about future-focused thinking. Future-focused thinking is kind of that big move. It’s really the big move. It is that alpha male trait that is measurable, observable, repeatable, and you know what, it’s the benefit.

The reason why I love future-focused thinking is because it’s the benefit. It’s the benefit of elevating your alpha state and manifesting as an alpha male. And it’s really a gift, we all have this gift. We’re all capable of this. But it’s a skill set. It’s something that we have never really been taught. It’s something that we desire to learn because, number one, it attempts to fulfill our full potential.

Our potential is limitless, but it allows us to really determine our future. It’s the mastery of the beta condition. It’s the mastery of the ego, it’s the master of that self.  So we say it’s mastery of the self but really, it’s the self that is the alpha state. So the self is really the master. And what it’s mastering is the beta condition. And that’s the tool. Those are the sentences in your brain and when the alpha state is dormant, when it’s not elevated and the beta condition is running unsupervised, that is where we are not utilizing our future-focused thinking.

When we’re in that alpha state, we know, we know because we know that it has happened. We can watch it. We watch this measurable observable repeatable process of cognition into result where we determine, with deliberate intent, our results, our future. And there’s a skill set that comes before beliefs.

We talked about beliefs in the last episode, and there’s a skill set that comes before that and in the process of future-focused thinking which is used to break the habit of past-focus thinking. So I want to talk a little bit about that past-focused thinking. What is the opposite of future-focused thinking?

Past-focused thinking is that territory of the beta condition. It is living in the conditioning we were taught and learned in the past. So we’ve been conditioned in our past and we’re living in that belief system. And many of us have pasts that were full of negative circumstances. A lot of us remember negative things about our past, we feel we’ve had many failures or we’ve been through challenging experience. And when we define ourselves and our future abilities by these past attempts, we become discouraged and filled with regret.

So I want you to consider, even just here, even just now for a moment, if you can bring yourself into this state of mind, that your past was perfect, that it was flawless, it happened exactly as it was supposed to, there were no mistakes. Everything was just lessons. Say everything was just preparation for this moment here and now.

So nothing bad ever happened, nothing ever went wrong, it was just to get you right here and you couldn’t have taken any other path to get here because that was the only path that brought you here and now. So everything was just a lesson. Everything was just to prepare you for here and now. Just consider that.

There is no reason to argue that the past – with the past, there’s no reason to argue with this or wish that it happened differently. It’s a waste of cognitive energy, brother. It’s a waste of emotional energy, which is ultimately more draining on how we feel, on how our bodies feel. So instead of thinking about the past and what should or shouldn’t have happened, you can take that energy and focus on your future, which is something that you can have an effect on. You cannot have an effect on the past. You cannot go back in time. That is a fact. The past is over.

Now, for some people, that’s a blessing. Some people look at their past and they say that’s a blessing, it’s over, it’s done with. For other people, their thoughts are, my best years are behind me, they love their past, they think their past was awesome and amazing.

But here’s the thing; the best news for everyone is that the future is yours to create. You can make it anything you want. Human beings, we have figured out how to learn how to be creators of our own destiny. It’s a skill set and we’ve learned how to do it. Humans now possess this skill set of laying down our own future, our own path in time right in front of us. And this is the skill set of the new alpha male, the result of what happens when you have cognitive mastery and emotional ownership.

If you ask a past-focused person what their plans for the future are, they usually don’t know. So this past focus is they’re not really looking at the future. They’ve probably never even really thought about the future. They are being defined by who they used to be without taking control of who they want to be. So, listen to yourself when you are in a relationship.

Check this out, brother, try this on; past-focused thinking, brains in the beta condition are going to say things like this – and tell me, think about whether you’ve said anything like this before. Have you ever said anything like, that’s just how I’ve always done it? Or that doesn’t work for me, I have tried that? Or I’ve had this issue my entire life? This is just how I am?  I’m not the kind of person who can do that?

Listen to how past-focused that is. How about this; I’ve never been good with women, I’ve never been good with money, I’ve never been good with exercise. All of that beta condition thinking in the past; I’ve never been. I look at my past and I never can think of a time. It’s all defining who you are and who you’re becoming based on who you’ve been.

These sentences come from a brain that is being defined by evidence of the past, evidence that you have been subconsciously looking for in order to prove these limiting belief systems. And you know who you are. You know who you are with those limiting belief systems. You know I’m talking to you. It’s important to learn from our past and grow from our mistakes, and I’m going to tell you, brother, I’m going to tell you right now, it’s never ever a good idea to define yourself by what you haven’t accomplished yet.

Think about that, you have so much potential in front of you and you’re defining yourself by your past, by what you haven’t done yet. So what do you really want? Go back two podcast episodes for this one and start here – we’re going to make a list; 50 things you really want. Make that list, do that, 50 things you really want.

But then also, make a list of 20 things you wanted at one point and you now have, 20 things you went out and created as a result for you. Maybe it was to buy a house, maybe it was to lease a car, maybe it was to buy a cup of coffee, something as simple as that. You wanted it, you went to the coffee shop, and you got it.

You created that. You wanted it and you created it. It’s not easy because you know how to do it. It’s not easy because you know how to go in and get coffee. It’s not the knowledge of the process. It’s easy because you believe you can get the coffee. It’s emotionally effortless. There is no uncertainty in your ability. There’s no fear of failure. You know you can do it.

It’s not the process of doing it, you just know you can. You aren’t prevented from having what you want due to circumstance or ability. You’re prevented from having what you want due to your belief that you can have it, which is your ability, or should have it, which means do you believe you deserve it?

So, look at your list of 50 things that you want and when you believe you can, when you believe you should have these things and when you can transcend that fear of failure, you will, when you make it as easy as getting a cup of coffee. Getting what you want in life is not tiring. It’s not exhausting.

I’ve had people tell me it’s like, oh I don’t have the energy. It’s just the opposite. It’s energizing.  People think they can’t go after what they want because they don’t have the energy, they don’t have any energy left after doing whatever else it is they’re doing. But the truth is, you’re exhausted from swimming against the current of your own life.

Brother, here’s the thing; we are tired of fighting ourselves. That’s the thing. We’re tired of ignoring our dreams and we’re tired of participating in a life that doesn’t feed our soul, or not participating in life at all. Going after what you want won’t deplete you, it will add more energy to your life than you ever knew you had.

Here, check this out, bro, I’ll prove it to you. Here’s what you can do. This is another exercise I do with my clients. Make a list of the top five outcomes you want in your life, the top five things, the big things, the impossible things that you want in your life. What are these major outcomes that you want to have? What are the five things that are most important to you? Make a list of the top five outcomes.

Then make a list of everything you did yesterday. And what I want you to do is compare those two lists. How much time did you spend yesterday on working towards having those top five outcomes in your life become a result? How much time?

Ideally, it’s 80% of your time, right, that’s the idea, 80% of your time, we’re going with the 80-20. Ideally, it’s around that 80%. You could even say all of your time, shoot and just go for it. But if it’s not, if it’s 50% or less, which a lot of times it is, a lot of times, it’s hardly any time, that’s why there’s no energy, because all that energy is going against cognition.

Your wants, your desires, your thoughts, your dreams, your goals in your mind are not the same as your actions. Your actions are not leading towards your top five desires.

Okay, here’s the thing; for you to live into your future, you have to be the person now that you want to become later. I’m going to tell you a story. Maybe you guys have seen this movie, maybe you haven’t. There’s a movie, it’s called the Princess Bride. It’s a great movie, an old movie, I used to watch it a long time ago.

But there was a part in this movie where the main guy becomes the Dread Pirate Roberts. His ship gets taken over by this other ship, this Dread Pirate Roberts. And he tells this story about how he becomes the Dread Pirate Roberts. And basically, the story is like this; he is this guy who is kind of like the slave on the ship and the Dread Pirate Roberts comes to him every day, tells him he’s going to kill him every day, but he gets close to him, he brings him in, he starts teaching him the ways of sailing and pirating.

And as the crew kind of noticed they’re getting closer, then one day he switches masks. He basically takes his mask off, he says you wear this, you’re the Dread Pirate Roberts. I’m going to take your place. The crew is bewildered. They’re baffled. They’re like, what’s happening, I can’t believe this, I’m not really sure if you’re believing that you’re telling me that this guy is now the Dread Pirate Roberts.

But as some of the crew starts to go off and new crew starts to come on, eventually all of the crew now believes that the new guy who was originally the slave is now the Dread Pirate Roberts. And the old guy who became that first mate role was now free to leave the ship and pursue his own life.

And it’s the same thing, what we’re talking about here, in future-focused thinking But instead of two people becoming one identity, what we’re talking about is you taking two identities and merging them into one, taking the person who you are, the person who you’re becoming, and merging them into now. You’re becoming the same person.

And eventually, you just become that future person where now everybody who knows you, everybody who’s met you since this time that you become your future self, now knows who you are as that person. It’s like taking this role in a Hollywood film and you are this lead character. Your current self is the actor and your future self is this role.

And you practice for this role and you become this role in everything, the way you speak and the way you move and the way you act and the way you interact with people and relationships. And eventually you just become this person. That way, you can play this role so seamlessly and people watch you on screen and they’re like, oh my gosh you’re this person.

And if they didn’t know that you were an actor, they would say, yeah you’re this person. They believe you are the person that you are playing. You are the role.

So that is the move into future-focused thinking and there’s a process for it, but ask yourself this; where am I going? This is a terrific question to consider. Where will I be in five years if I keep living this way? Where will I be in 10 years? 20, 30 years? What exactly is it that you want to have this many years down the road? And are you on the path that you need to be on?

What can you change to put yourself on the path to achieving what you want in your life? Check this out, brother, imagine a boat.  And I want you to imagine like a boat with a rudder on it. So your alpha state is the guy on the boat because that’s you, you’re driving the boat. And the beta condition is the rudder. That’s the thoughts.

Right now, the alpha is asleep.  Past-focused thinking means that the guy on the boat is asleep and the rudder is being pushed entirely to one direction. So the boat is going in circles. It’s getting the same results all the time. It’s allowing that beta condition to just basically run the same thoughts over and over and over again. That’s the rudder going in circles.

So all the alpha state really needs to do is wake up, right? You wake up and if you move that rudder just slightly, you will end up in a completely different location. Even after one cycle – it’s not even going to get around one circle, the result will put you in a completely different location and five years, 10 years, 20 years down the road, now compared to where you would have been if you had just left it alone and let that past-focused thinking continue.

Even if you move it just a tiny bit, one inch, one inch is all it takes. You don’t always have to create massive change in your life to get the future you desire; little tiny bits is sometimes all you need.  If you are on your way to where you want to go, congratulations and hold steady. But if you want to be somewhere different in 10 years, the time to change is now.

Now, how much money do you want to have? Where do you want to be living? What kind of work do you want to be doing? How fit do you want to be? What kind of relationship do you want to have? Lay the foundation now. Go and get what you want.

Alright, so listen, brother, even if we ran focused at full speed, high-speed our entire lives, courageously seeking and fulfilling our dreams, we couldn’t come close to fulfilling our potential. That’s a fact. With belief in this truth, with belief in this, we can always be growing or becoming, no matter how old or how busy we are. We have the potential to tap and dreams to consider. We always have that.

At the end of our lives, we still won’t have fulfilled our full potential. But it would be nice to know we died as alpha men, which means we were trying every day to fulfill as much potential as possible.

So check this out, here’s some questions. How do you represent yourself on this planet? What are you representing? Are you a follower living by someone else’s rules or desires? Are you an example of what happens when you choose to live as a victim? Or are you an example of someone who’s living the best life you know how, playing it to the max every day.

Are you someone who never quits, someone who is always making something happen? What do you want your life to be? That’s huge. What do you want your life to be? What example do you want to be to your children? What example do you want to be to your friends? If you don’t have kids, what example do you want to be to the people around you?

How about making your life an example of someone who overcame a struggle and took that energy to create the life that you love, like a life that you really love? How about an example of someone who takes responsibility for yourself and doesn’t blame circumstances or anyone else for your current life? That is an alpha mind and a manifestation that is an alpha male.

How can you be an example of what’s possible? How could you be an example of what’s possible, brother? How can you help other people do the same?  How can you help other people be an example of what’s possible? Let your life show that when you set a goal with your alpha state, you stick to it with courageous belief and indomitable self-confidence and love yourself through the process, you will achieve it.

Allow other people to believe they can be free of their relationship, health, or wealth struggle because they see you as a proof it can be done. You are the example. Allow other men to elevate their alpha because they watched you and saw the powerful shift in confidence. They saw joy. They saw fun. They saw how you are able to determine your next move. They saw how you are able to live your dreams, your desires.

Show how much energy you free up when you drop the limiting beliefs and how much power you have to use in contributing to the good in this world. Check this out – ask yourself this question; I love this question. Wouldn’t it be amazing if someone looked at you and was inspired? If someone looked at you and was inspired, that is an amazing feeling.

That feels like pride. That feels proud, right? Not impressed by what you do – it’s not about what you do, but inspired by who you are, brother, by your alpha cognition, who you truly are. And maybe somebody, someone, someday will look at you and say, if he can do it, maybe I can do it too.

So this is more than just a choice, it’s a responsibility we have to represent ourselves, to be ourselves, to elevate our alpha state. And that’s what I’ve got for you today, guys. That is it on future-focused thinking. That is the benefit of being an alpha male, of living in alpha state, but is also our gift and our responsibility to live our best selves, for ourselves and for the world.

I love you guys. As always, I will see you next week. And until then, elevate your alpha.

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.