The Dangerous Power of Old Stories You Keep Replaying

0:00So, Hey guys, listen, we're all trying to get more productive. And the question is, how do you find a way to get an edge? I'm a big believer that if you're getting mentoring or you're in an environment that causes growth, a growth-based environment, that you're much more likely to grow and you're going to grow faster. And that's why I love Growth Day. Growth Day is an app that my friend Brendan Burchard has created that I'm a big fan of. Write this down, growthday.com forward slash ed. So if you want to be more productive, by the way, he's asked me. I post videos in there every single Monday that gets your day off to the right start.

0:28He's got about$5 ,000,$10 ,000 worth of courses that are in there that come with the app. Also, some of the top influencers in the world are all posting content in there on a regular basis, like having the Avengers of personal development and business in one app. And I'm honored that he asked me to be a part of it as well and contribute on a weekly basis, and I do. So go over there and get signed up. You're going to get a free tuition-free voucher to go to an event with Brendan and myself and a bunch of other influencers as well. So you get a free event out of it also. So go to growthday.com forward slash ed.

0:56That's growthday.com forward slash ed.

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1:49This is The Ed Myeret Show. All right, welcome back to the show, everybody. So this week's show is very important to me. I really want you to lean in and consider some of the things I'm going to talk about today. I'm going to challenge some of your conventional thinking as well. But if you buy into what we're talking about here today, I think it can really impact your life in a positive way. So let me ask you a question. Have you ever had the thought, you know, I thought I'd be further along by now? Have you ever had that thought? Like you just kind of think, I thought I'd be further along. I thought I'd be more successful.

2:20I thought I'd be happier. I thought I'd be richer. I thought I'd have a better relationship. No matter how old you are, you could be 18 listening to this or you could be 78. You ever had that thought? Because I have. In fact, a few weeks ago, I was really ruminating on, I thought I would have helped more people by now. and it's a really debilitating thought because comparison is the thief of joy. Maybe you've heard that before and we compare to other people. We compare to certain situations, but two of the most insidious types of comparison that are never talked about is comparing to your past or comparing to what you think is possible.

2:58And so today we're going to talk about the weight of yesterday. And that's really what I'm calling the podcast, the weight of yesterday, meaning the weight of comparing to a previous time in your life, a previous relationship, a previous career, a previous level of bliss or happiness in your life. You could be in a relationship with somebody and you're comparing it to a previous time in your relationship, like when you first started dating. And that will steal your joy. And one of the biggest weights is comparing it to the ideas you had in your life in the past of where you would be by this point.

3:31I've never heard anybody talk about that before. And I want to talk about it with you today because it's a debilitating thought and it can be one of the things that's holding you back. If you have this unconscious thought, I thought I'd be further along. You're really not present. It certainly isn't good for your self-confidence. It's not good for your identity, but just the very thought of, I thought I'd be further along by now, takes you to the past of thoughts you had about this time and takes you out of the current moment and it certainly takes you out of the future. And so let me hit you with something really wild.

4:00You ready for this? This is the part that's going to challenge your thinking. Most of the memories we hold on to, the ones that keep us up at night or shape how we see ourselves, they're not even accurate. And I know that sounds dramatic, but it's actually true. Our brains, they really don't work like videos. Our brains work more like kind of an editor of a video. And so what they do when we have a memory is they sort of create a video or a thought in our mind that's not even accurate. So it kind of remixes a little bit. It rewrites things. It cuts it because it's also comparing that video to previous times in your life.

4:37So this may sound crazy, but many of your memories aren't accurate. They're within a ratio of accuracy, but they're not completely accurate. And so if those aren't accurate, neither were these delusions or dreams you had at one point of where you'd be by now. Now, what if the truth of the matter is you're exactly where you're supposed to be in this moment right now? And that really the things that you remember about your past, although I know you're sure it happened exactly the way that you think it did, I can tell you that all of the data, psychologists, neuroscientists, et cetera, will tell you that our memories are not completely accurate.

5:10And I know that's crazy, especially when you argue with somebody about something that happened. You're like, you're completely sure. But I'm telling you, it gets edited. It gets remixed. And so if that's not accurate, neither is the idea that you'd be further along by now. You're right where you're supposed to be. The question isn't that you'd be further along by now or in your happiness or your relationships or your finances. The question is truly, can you learn from the past and make it more accurate? And can you create a compelling future from here? But if you ruminate all the time, I thought I'd be further along.

5:43I thought I'd be happier. Or you're holding on to these memories and replaying these videos of this happened to me, this situation of the past. It creates an impossible situation to create abundance in your life going forward. And so I think one of the invisible things that's holding many people back is exactly this. It's holding on to a comparison of a previous time in your life or comparing to where you thought you'd be by now. There's a psychologist named Elizabeth Loethis, and she's very interesting. She spent decades proving memory is reconstructive. She showed that with just a little bit of suggestion, people can be convinced that they remember things that really never happened or didn't happen exactly the way they think they did.

6:23I was talking with my sisters not too long ago about a couple of situations that had happened in our home. And I have three sisters. There's four of us total, but three of us are around the same age, and then I have a younger sister. and the three of us that are around the same age, we have completely different memory of the exact same scenario and the details of them as well. Yet somewhere in between what the three of us think happened, we're all a hundred percent sure our version of it's were true. And this happened in multiple different scenarios that we went through. It was fascinating. And so it is true that you've edited the video a little bit.

6:56And the fact of the matter is it's irrelevant because it's in the past. And if you keep ruminating on it, you're going to end up five years from now going, I thought I'd be further along by now. And so she showed that with a little bit of suggestion, people edit the video. In one study, over 70 % of participants believed a totally different made up memory about being lost in a mall as a kid. Can you imagine this? And it's not just dramatic stuff, even emotionally charged memories, like where you were during a big event, change over time. I literally the other day said, I know where I was during a 9-11.

7:29I was sitting in front of my TV and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I know what the TV looked like. And then a little while later, I actually realized, actually, that was where I was watching the OJ chase. I conflated two totally different events. One, the most dramatic, tragic event in the history of our country and the other, just a crazy scenario with a guy who probably killed somebody. Right. I literally was sure it was that TV in that room. And it wasn't. And people will swear, remember every detail of where they were during something like 9-11. But when researchers checked out a year later, the stories behind it had shifted.

8:05The confidence stays high, but the facts totally off. Now, I know this is hard to accept, and I'm not saying all of your memories are inaccurate. That's not what I'm saying at all. In fact, I think the majority of them are accurate, but I believe there's been editing, and I believe there's remixing, and I believe that there is nuance that's missing, and context, and sometimes they get bigger and worse and worse and worse, and sometimes we manipulate details of them to soften the blow. But basically, here's what we do. All the data says this, and I'm going to give you more data. Basically, we rewrite our past to make it match who we are now.

8:38So if we look at right now, this is what's profound. I thought I'd be further along by now. Then what we do is we look back at a story, and the story is edited to justify why we're where we are. And that's why the editing and remixing takes place. You go, no way, Ed. I'm telling you, it happened the way it is, and that's where I'm at. But the fact of the matter is you are where you're at because of the decisions and choices you've made in your life. You are responsible for it. And if you end up alleviating yourself of the responsibility of where you are in your life, you now have lost total control over your life.

9:11If you buy into the idea that because this situation that's probably not even accurate in my memory happened, that explains why I'm where I am. That means you are out of control, that you have no sense of control over your life, and that you are basically left to the whims of other people's choices and behaviors for your happiness, wealth, success, and progress. You couldn't be telling yourself a bigger lie. And so as a friend, I'm telling you, stop the crap. First off, the story you're telling yourself isn't completely accurate. I'm going to give you more data to prove it. I say this out of love because I want you to be happy.

9:43I want you to be more successful. And even if it were true, so what? so what win anyway but the confidence stays high in these stories and they can be completely off and i say this to you with with compassion because i'm talking to myself the fact of the matter is it doesn't matter you're where you are and i'm where i am because of the choices i've made and i'm not going to compare any longer in my life where i thought i'd be and then create a story or use a story and manipulate it just a little bit without even knowing I'm doing it, by the way, to justify where I am. And so I'm not saying you've made the story up.

10:25Not at all. What I'm saying is some of the alterations have been made to justify your current existence. And I'm challenging you to stop the comparison anyway. If you don't believe anything I'm saying, then I would just say, surrender that story and let's take some responsibility for where we are and let's make some new choices and decisions and get out of this pattern and this loop. Because you ruminating on this story or you ruminating on I thought I'd be further along is creating a pattern and a loop in your thinking. And what's creating it inside of you is basically a neuro biochemistry that is replicating the same situation, same feelings, same emotions, same general outcomes over and over again.

11:01So I can just tell you, if you're confident today, you'll probably remember yourself being more confident in the past than you really were. Or if you feel stuck today, you might overplay the mistakes or the losses from your past, even if they weren't actually that bad at the time. So here's the big takeaway. If your past is weighing you down, and you should really evaluate whether it is even a little bit, just know there's a good chance you're not even remembering it right. And if it's true, maybe you don't need to keep carrying that around anymore. The past can be a reference point, absolutely.

11:32But it shouldn't be a prison. You shouldn't be living in this cage you created around you of justifications and explanations and excuses any longer. The challenge with this is that a lot of the research says that almost 40 to 60 percent of the story we tell ourselves is not accurate, that you're actually reliving a story from the past that isn't true, but you believe it's accurate. So by believing and allowing something that didn't even happen the way you think it happened to completely dictate the terms of your life is crazy. Think about this. you're allowing something that didn't probably really even happen exactly the way you think it happened that's what all the data tells us to totally dictate the terms of your current life and i know you're saying no look i know exactly what happened the way it did i know how i felt i get all that i'm saying that there's a reference point to now and you're really missing the nuance therefore you've missed the entire lesson so even if it's 90 true god didn't intend you to live this way.

12:33He intended you to live in bliss and peace and contribution. Most people can really tell you a lot of details about a story and it's not even really there. We don't replay memories like a video. We reconstruct them each time we recall them. So Loftus actually famously showed that memories can be easily manipulated or implanted with false details. If you want to know this, you can look up Lost in the Mall. It's an experiment. Google it. Memory is not like a recording device, you said it's malleable. Then we replay this recording over and over and it becomes familiar. And then we try to stay consistent with it because we're always trying to stay consistent with who we believe we are and what we believe has happened to us.

13:12So now what happens is we begin to condition ourselves to be exactly like the story we're telling ourself. And over time, your mind complies, your unconscious mind complies. And so you begin to evaluate circumstances based on your previous memories. You begin to respond or reply in certain ways based on patterns you've created based on this memory you have that may not even be accurate. And so if you're trying to change yourself, but you're still replaying a story, it's very difficult to change. People are stories and those, when those stories become familiar, we create patterns and we repetitively come back to this same exact location in our life.

13:52It's much like the thermostat analogy that I teach all the time. Once you've got these memories, you lock in your temperature at 75 degrees. When you start heating your life up, oh my gosh, I'm so happy. I'm at 85, 90, 100. You subconsciously and unconsciously turn the air conditioner on of your life and cool it back down with a wrong conversation or a mistake. and wealth. You know, you're comfortable at 75 degrees and all of a sudden, oh my gosh, business is good. I'm at 80. I've saved money, 90. And then you turn the air conditioners on and make a purchase you shouldn't or make an investment that doesn't go the right way.

14:22And you get your life cooled back down. You turn the air conditioners on unconsciously and you get your back life right back to what you believe you deserve. You do it in your relationships, in love. You do it in happiness. You do it at work. You do it in bliss. You do it in your body. You ever seen somebody who thinks, ah, I'm like 75 degrees of fitness. Maybe they're 15 pounds overweight. You see them six months later and they've lost all the weight. They look amazing. You go, my gosh, what are you doing? Oh, I'm on this. I'm on that. I'm doing, they look amazing. Then you run into them in a year and they put it all back on again.

14:49Why'd they put the weight back on? Because they don't really believe they're that fit person. So they turn the air conditioners on, start, stop eating. Maybe they manifest an injury. Maybe they stop training and bam, back to 75 degrees. Happens in every area of our lives. We think it's circumstantial. We think it's coincidental. We think it's because of this, but here's what it is. It's previous stories you're telling yourself or comparing that you thought you'd be further along and you creating patterns and thoughts to stay consistent with that story. So if the story you're telling yourself isn't a hundred percent true, then maybe you're not even bound to it.

15:21Like you think you are. Maybe you're not stuck to the story. Maybe you are not stuck to the story anymore. Maybe just knowing perhaps some of the details are murky or inaccurate or wrong can allow you to loosen the grip it has on you. And so at any time you can rewrite the story, rewrite the narrative, not, you don't like let go of what happened or ignore it altogether, but you do get to choose what it means, how it impacts you. My dad's drinking is a perfect example. I grew up with an alcoholic father. I could have chosen, and by the way, there's alcoholics and drug addicts all over my family.

16:00I could have chosen to believe that that's what I come from. I wasn't paid attention to by my dad. I didn't have a lot of self-confidence as a little boy. I could have decided to tell a story that I'm not worth it. And I did do that for a while. I watched my dad operate out of anger. And so I thought that's how a man acts. He operates out of anger. So these observations we make, and I know even in the stories I hold true to be about my dad, I've accepted probably 20, 30 % of it. I've edited and I've lost some of this nuance and it's not even accurate, but about 70, 80 % of it's accurate. But because I know it's not all accurate, it's lost its grip on me.

16:39And what I did is I changed what it meant. I learned a lot of things from my dad of what I want to be. And I learned some things in life and lessons from watching him that were hard on him and have made my life easier because I took the right meaning from watching the mistakes he made. And then I watched them change into this incredible man who became my hero and the lessons of how someone can change. I am literally in the business of helping you change your life because I don't think you can. I know you can. And the reason I know you can is I watched my father do it because I watched my father change from somebody who was aggressive and I was afraid of and was an intimidating person and very self-centered and not always honest to the most honest, gentle, kind, strong, giving, beautiful man who helped thousands of other people with their sobriety.

17:26Because what I learned from my dad is I know you can change your life. And I saw the steps he did and it was hard work. And I also know that the reason he could help so many people with their sobriety is because you're most qualified to help those in life that you used to be. And so that change you make about that story you tell isn't for you only. It's for all the people you're going to be able to help who are telling themselves a similar story or went through something similar to what you did. So you can recondition yourself. We don't always get to choose what happened to us, but we do get to choose the weight we will give it moving forward.

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20:01Here are a few things that might help. What I call mindful awareness. Start noticing when your mind drifts into the past. This is number one. Ask yourself, is this useful? Is this helping me grow? If the answer is no, interrupt that pattern and gently bring your focus back to the now. So just being aware when you're slipping into these thoughts, and I do it often. I have this pattern of thousands of thoughts of I thought I'd be further along by now. I am aware of it. Is this really helping me grow? Is this serving me right now? Is this putting me in a productive state? If it's not, pattern interrupt the awareness.

20:34If the answer is no, I gently refocus myself onto a dream, onto my present state, onto something beautiful or something I'm grateful for in the moment. Number two, future-focused journaling. I've never been a writer. I've never been a journaler. If you've read any of my two books, you know I'm not a great writer. But I've started a future-focused journal. So instead of asking, why did I do that? Try asking, what kind of person do I want to be now? Write your future self like you're rooting for them. not dragging them down. So I write about my future me, who I'm going to be, how I'm going to give, what I'm going to look like.

21:10And I actually write it as a fan of me. So not to drag myself down. Every time I replay these memories of past or where I thought I'd be, I'm not being my own biggest advocate. Can you imagine if you're a Christian like myself and Jesus is your savior or whatever your God is, you imagine God saying to you, I think you should keep replaying this past, even though we both know this past is only 70 % accurate. And you know what? I'm really disappointed. I thought you'd be further along by now. None of those thoughts are from God. That's all the enemy. Whatever your belief is, none of that is high frequency.

21:46It's low frequency thinking. You can't create something great from low frequency vibration. You have to have high frequency vibration. For me, all of the great things I've created are when the Holy Spirit is present. And the Holy Spirit's not going to be present if I'm letting the enemy infiltrate my mind constantly. Future-focused journaling. Number three, small wins are greater than perfect pasts. Your past doesn't define your trajectory. Your next step does. Focus on something you can do today that moves you forward, even if it's small. Momentum beats memory. How good is that? Small wins are greater than perfect pasts.

22:24Your past does not define you. Momentum is created by creating small steps, small successes, momentum beats memory. It's what beats it. You got to generate momentum. It's a small win. It's I said, I was going to get up at a certain time. I did it. I said, I was going to do 10 reps in the gym. I did. I said, I was going to make 10 contacts. I did it. I said, I was going to do X, Y, Z. I did it. One of the reasons I think things are going, you know, really well in my life right now is I took control of my body about 60 days ago. And I made commitments about what I was going to eat, what I was going to drink, what I wasn't going to eat, what I wasn't going to drink, when I was going to train and how I was going to train.

23:00And I've delivered on those things because they're within my control. And now I'm watching that momentum affect every other area of my life positively. Momentum beats memory. Number four, talk it out, but don't loop it. It's okay to process the past, especially with a friend, like I did with my sisters, therapist or a coach, but there's a difference between processing and replaying. You'll feel it when you're just reliving old pain instead of learning from it. Processing means where's the lesson in here? Is any of this my responsibility? In some cases, none of it is. And then what can I learn from this?