Leveraging Your Past
How amazing is it to recognize how resilient you are!!!
Look at how much you’ve gone through and gotten through in these past six months. We’ve all been giving great opportunities to live into a different way of life. Certainly, it’s not without stress. It’s pressure that shows us who we can be.
You are resilient.
You have courage.
And there’s a bunch of “stuff” from your past that it’s time to unpack and let go of. If you look at how you’ve reacted or responded this year, you’ll notice that some things just got handled. Other things seemed like a struggle.
Old rules that were imposed from your youth seemed to have surfaced. “You can’t do that. What will other people think?” Anything echoing in your head that sounds like judgment is someone else’s voice. You need to assess whether it still serves you.
Leverage, don't live there. It was foundational and much must be let go of.
Bruce Lee was famous for his “Way of No Way.” That is, he recognized that there were lessons that could be learned from anything, and also that not every teaching or every style was good, universally, for every style.
One of my favorite quotes of his is:
Absorb What Is Useful
~ Bruce Lee
Leveraging your past means that you now CHOOSE what to hold onto and what to let go of. Yes, choose to let go of the things that are no longer useful. What got you here may or may not get you to your next.
Emotions, memories, and what you were taught don’t need to show up in your mind’s TV show called “Mental Hoarders.” You need to be able to have room to move around and to take on new concepts. Holding onto what was doesn’t serve you.
We have memory books and museums that are lovely to visit. And we don’t live there. The instruction manual to the old flip phone won’t serve you. Neither will the instructions you got when you were a pre-teenager. Before you were thinking for yourself, you were given guidance. Now, you need to decide if the voices that follow you still serve you.
They did.
Do they still?
Your past is foundational.
It is the springboard to your future. You can’t springboard forward if you’re taking the anchors of the past with you.
Leverage the lessons of the past judiciously.
How about this – you know that I’m on the path to some pretty big stages. One of my teachers from 7th grade taught us that there are two types of audience: those waiting for you to mess up, and those who hope you’ll fail.
How useful is that for me to carry with me on my way to big stages?
Not so much. Yet, I remember the lesson. The words stick with me. The man’s face is etched upon my memory. I have to believe he meant well to tell that to his class. He wanted us to get past the fear of performing.
I prefer a recent lesson taught to me by my vocal coach, Roger Love: “Assume the audience already loves you. Then let your voice carry the intended emotion of the message.”
Leveraging the past means choosing the lessons you allow to stay with you.
Challenge them.
Redefine them.
Create anew. That’s the way to get to your next big next.
Understand what lessons served you.
Understand that they may no longer.
Seek – actively seek – new lessons to replace or augment the old. New voices replace the old voices. New perspectives help you climb to new heights; heights you may have only been able to glimpse.
It’s your time to clean your mental house, seek new furnishings, and uplevel your life.
It’s time.
~ Dr P ~
Interested in being one of the few at a select roundtable with me?
Seriously, just a few who are ready to make some big moves.
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Fewer than five seats remain for this exclusive meeting on October 16th and 17th in Hollywood. Priced affordably. Are you in?