Moving past your past could be difficult but why get stuck into something that can block you from your future progress?
In this episode, Megan talks about the why and the how you can move past your past.
1:56 how to move past your past
6:16 Unlock the why
8:00 work backwards
Transcript:
Hello. Did you ever have just the worst song ever stuck in your head? I have Mmm Bop stuck in my head for some reason from Hanson and I don’t know why. I don’t know what person I’ve pissed off to make this part of my life, but so be it. It is what it is. Hi Megan here. I am super happy to talk to you today.
This is just going to be an episode about you and me talking about the things that suck from our past and how we can move past our past. I thought about this topic honestly.
I thought about this topic a couple of months ago and it’s a difficult topic to address because some people really don’t think about the past as a, uh, a block for your future progress or even your present progress.
And I think that a lot of us will get in this mindset of, well, it happened. There’s nothing I can do about it. I’m just going to move on and we don’t actually move on instead of moving on. We have this festering in and it’s a pain that is so detrimental. And, you know, it can be personal. It can be business related. I had a pain point, if I want to call it that, about, yeah.
Getting fired and not even the act of firing because I stand by like that was the best moment I had at that company the day I got fired. And it was March. But if it had been a summer month, I would have been able to skip out the parking lot. I was so happy, but it was icy. So I couldn’t do that.
And but I still had some resentment about it. And I still had these feelings of.
I don’t like just a whole mix of feelings, and I can’t even adequately describe them, I guess just, um, resentment and I guess anger, I wasn’t angry.
Again, I wasn’t angry about getting fired. I guess I was angry that I was angry that they felt they had one over on me. And I don’t even know if that’s true, but it felt that’s how it felt in my brain, you know?
And so I had some resentment towards that for a while until I realized that I was carrying on this weight on my shoulders of something that I just needed to move past and let go of. And for the record, I know letting go is easier said than done, especially if you feel that you’ve been slighted in some way.
So I want to talk about the things that I have found to be helpful for getting through something that you might be dragging with you, some sort of baggage that might be dragging with you, even if you feel like you haven’t gotten or that you have moved on. But maybe if you think about it for a little bit, you know, deep down, it’s still kind of festering in there. And so here are the things that I have found to be really helpful for something like that.
One is to acknowledge it and to acknowledge that you have these feelings. You know, for a long time I was ignoring those feelings. I wasn’t afraid to admit I had been fired. You know, firing getting fired is from a job that you hate is a beautiful, cathartic moment, but it still has stigmas attached to it, you know, and I was letting those stigmas dictate the way I talked about it and the feelings that I had acknowledging it, acknowledging that, yes, I had been fired.
And it was so much better for myself and for them, I’m sure. But it still felt like a failure in a way. And I was dragging that failure around like this suitcase of shit behind me, you know?
And so when I figured out that I need to acknowledge that I have some feelings about this and that I’m letting it still bother me, I feel like that was just a moment of not clarity.
But do you know what I’m trying to say? Just it was a moment of, OK, I understand that I have these feelings. It’s OK to have these feelings now. What the hell am I going to do about it? And the next part is unlock the why. Now, it’s not only why do I have these feelings about it, but why do I want to move on from it?
So when I’m talking about me getting fired, why do I have these feelings about it?
Well, I feel like they got one over on me and I don’t want to be that person. And for some reason, that really affects me. And I don’t know why, even though I know pragmatically that it was the best thing for me, it was probably the best thing for them. It all worked out for the better. But why am I having those feelings and why do I want to move on from those feelings?
Well, I want to move on from them because clearly they’re bothering me. You know, I I’ll walk the dog and it’ll pop into my head and I’m like, oh, I just oh, I hate them.
And I don’t want to hate them. I don’t want to have that information in my head. I want to, you know, eternal sunshine. It was just like it didn’t happen or it did happen. But it doesn’t affect me. It’s just part of my story. So those are the whys behind why I want to understand I have these feelings and why I want to move on from them. Hey, guys, Megan here, just a reminder, I have regular Q&A episodes coming out, so if you want your questions answered, head to Megan Brame Dotcom, ask a question on word and you’ll be able to get your question posted.
And if I feature it, you will get a copy, a free copy of my book, Day one and Practical Guide to Launching Your Business. So again, head to Megan Brame Dotcom. Ask a question and if your question gets featured, I’m sending you a free copy of my book as a thank you.
The next part is work backwards, work backward from what you feel like your life will look like when you have moved past whatever this thing is.
So what will I feel like when I think about getting fired?
Well, I want to feel like I don’t care that I can talk about it without hesitation, without literal hesitation of was fired.
Now I feel bad, you know, like I didn’t want that anymore. And so what does that person look like? What does it look like for a Megan in some alternate universe who is so healthy mentally and physically and emotionally and is just able to think through? That was just a part of my life. Now my life is so much better. What does that look like?
That looks like ABCDE. How do I get to ABCDE. Well I get to a by one, two, three, four or five. I get to be by one, two, three, four or five and so on and so on. All right, so I have this list of ABCDE one, two, three, four or five. What’s the lowest hanging fruit I can do to get to one of those points. I can do that. I can talk about it to more people.
Well, that will give me some that will cross off the one of a one, you know what I mean.
That will cross it off and then I will be able to move on to a two E three, so on and so forth. And once I have all of that, then I feel like I will be in the position to say I have reached this. I’m making something that is intangible, cross off a ball at the same time.
So, you know, normally when you’re working on a goal, you start to you start with the end goal. Right. And then you work backward and then you give yourself a timeline. But when it’s your past and when it is intangible, it’s so much harder to do that. I can’t say, well, I’m going to be the person who’s not afraid to talk about being fired in six months. That’s going to be me, because that’s not how our feelings work, right?
We have we have so many landmines that we have to get past first before we can feel like, OK, I am that person. And I do sincerely feel that way. I’m not lying to myself and I’m not pretending that I don’t still have feelings about this. By giving yourself a timeline. I feel like it puts an unfair pressure on you. So when you’re moving past your past and it’s about feelings you have or it’s about something that isn’t your you know what I’m trying to say about this?
I just don’t feel like you have to give yourself a timeline, but give yourself instead a precise thing that you want to work on about it and give that something to be cross off label. So I want to be able to speak to five people about getting fired. And I don’t want to have a feeling of hesitation or I don’t want to have uncomfortable feelings about it. I just want to be able to feel like I’ve talked to these five people.
I saw that it didn’t affect them. I saw that it didn’t do anything negative to me. Now I can feel better about it. Do I feel better about it? Yeah, I kind of do. OK, well, then I’m going to consider that a crossed off part of this list. What’s a two? The last part of this is to ask for help, and I think this is the most difficult part of all, no matter what it is about your past, if it’s, you know, me getting fired or sexual assault or business failure, the family troubles, if it’s something that is you feel is holding you back, it doesn’t work in it doesn’t work to move past it in a vacuum, you need to get outside help.
And for me, that’s therapy. But for you, that might be something else that might be talking to someone, a loved one or, I don’t know, doing a blog post or a Tumblr does anonymous or just getting your feelings out, journaling, whatever that is. But don’t feel like you have to do it in a vacuum. Asking for help gives you the outside perspective and gives you an opportunity to find new avenues that can help you move forward.
You know, my therapist, Brian, has been through some shit with me and he has I would say that he knows hopefully he feels like he knows me very well and he knows what makes me tick. And so I can go to him and say, I’m having these feelings, I’m having these feelings about getting fired and that I’m afraid to talk about it because it makes me feel like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then we can talk about, well, why is it feeling that way and explore it?
But it’s much more productive for me to explore it with him than it is to explore it in my own head, since it’s more.
It’s just a sounding now what am I trying to say, it’s just a an echo chamber, right?
It’s an echo chamber in my head instead of a sounding board to bounce ideas or things off of. And so when I have somebody else out there to help me figure out what the blocks are that are preventing me from moving on, then I’m able to do that. And then once you have all of this information, the actionable part is to then move on to physically, not physically, to in an actionable way, take that step forward that says I am through this.
And that might not be three months from now. That might be three years from now. That might be 10 years from now. That may be 10 minutes from now. It really depends on how your mind works and how you address the circumstances of your life.
So but there’s like a there’s like a threshold that you feel like you can walk through. And I don’t know if you’ve ever felt that before in any sort of thing where you’ve just felt like I have made such progress. I have made an actual step in this, and I feel like I have walked through some sort of threshold or veil or whatever, and now I’m moving forward. Once you are able to get to that threshold and feel yourself, walk past.
Yeah, sorry. Feel yourself, walk past it. It can help you so much. It is such a feeling of like just like shedding the skin of shit on you and being able to move on. And look, I know this isn’t a self-help podcast or a therapy podcast, but when we’re entrepreneurs, where I was going to say we’re alone a lot, but I guess more that things are on our shoulders so much more.
And the pressure is on entrepreneurs that I feel it’s important to make the cause of addressing blocks in our lives to help us grow our businesses, because when there’s all this pressure, it gets comfortable to be negative and it gets easy to just kind of give in to your negative self emotions instead of saying that I’m gonna do the work and I’m going to do the work because I know it’s going to be better for me and I know it’s going to help grow my business.
And in my head, it’s just so important. And so that’s why I want to talk about it today. You know, we are April 1st, it’s April Fool’s Day, but it’s also spring and things are moving. Things are growing. And I want us to grow, too. I want us to become better at what we do and who we are.
And so that’s what I brought on these next guests that you’re going to hear later on with Casey Jordan and Mike Decker talking about how to set up systems that help you move forward and how to get past toxic entrepreneurship and lean into being authentic in a way that it doesn’t feel.
That doesn’t feel like inauthentic. I guess, you know, I feel like there’s a lot of superficial authenticity in the world, especially in the business world, especially on Instagram. And so that’s why I brought Casey Jordan on next week to talk to you all about that. Mike Decker is going to come on after that. And he’s a serial entrepreneur who talks about how to build systems and how to make it so effective that you can be a serial entrepreneur, too.
But in the meantime, think about taking a good look at what’s going on in your life and thinking about if there’s any kind of baggage you’re dragging and what that baggage might be preventing you from growing from growing into and helpful was helpful.
I would love to hear from you. You can leave a comment on my Instagram or Pinterest wherever you want to go, go for it.
I would love to talk to you. We will talk soon.
All right. Take care of a fantastic week. I will talk to you soon.
