September 9, 2025 • 31 mins
Episode 109: Release the Past, Redesign Your Future
In this episode, Kimen Petersen explores the universal challenge of letting go of the past to step fully into the future. Through personal stories, powerful metaphors, and practical exercises, Kimen guides listeners on how to acknowledge, learn from, and release what no longer serves them.
Key Highlights:
- The weight of the past: Why dragging old regrets and pain holds us back.
- The illusion of memory: How our perspective colors our recollection of events.
- Personal stories of overcoming disappointment, injury, and childhood trauma.
- The power of reframing: Turning pain and rejection into growth and compassion.
- Practical steps for letting go: Acknowledge, learn, and release.
- Exercises for living in the present and creating a future by design.
- Inspirational quotes and reflections on resilience, empathy, and self-advocacy.
Actionable Takeaways:
- Treat the past as a teacher, not a prison.
- Reframe setbacks as opportunities for growth.
- Practice presence through mindful exercises.
- Write down what you’re ready to let go of, and outline steps to move forward.
Timeline Summary
- 0:00 – Introduction to the podcast and today’s theme: letting go of the past.
- 0:40 – The metaphor of the past as a heavy burden; why we must bury it.
- 1:45 – The illusion of memory and how perspective shapes our stories.
- 2:55 – Kimen’s half marathon story: disappointment vs. outside admiration.
- 4:30 – Childhood trauma and the long-term impact of early experiences.
- 8:00 – Injury and recovery: lessons in patience and self-compassion.
- 11:30 – The three steps to handling the past: acknowledge, learn, release.
- 14:00 – Reframing pain and rejection; stories of Walt Disney and Oprah.
- 16:00 – The power of the present moment; exercises for grounding.
- 18:00 – The future as a blank canvas; setting new goals.
- 20:00 – The hard work of letting go and reframing meaning.
- 22:00 – Visualization exercise: dropping the weight of the past.
- 24:00 – Final reflections, challenges for listeners, and closing thoughts.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:02):
Welcome to Your Inner Advocate,a podcast by Kimen Petersen,
formerly Conversations with Kimen.
This podcast is a space forinspiration, soulful insights,
and meaningful life lessons.
Your host, Kimen Petersen drawsfrom personal stories and powerful
conversations with remarkablepeople to help illuminate your path.
These episodes reflect his livedexperiences and thoughtful perspectives,
(00:25):
all aimed at encouraging you to live lifewith greater authenticity, joy, and ease.
Your inner advocate is here tohelp you tune in, trust your inner
wisdom, and move through life withmore clarity, flow, and fulfillment.
You can't step into your future if you'restill dragging the weight of your past.
(00:49):
Hello everyone.
Welcome back to Your Inner Advocate.
Today I want to talk about somethingthat every single one of us
wrestles with, and that's the past.
Now here's the truth.
We all have one.
We've all made mistakes.
We've all faced heartbreaks.
(01:10):
We've all experienced moments where wewish we could rewind the clock and do it
differently, but the reality is you can't.
The past is gone,
and yet so many of us drag it aroundlike a backpack full of rocks.
(01:33):
And here's the metaphor Iwant you to carry today.
The past is like a corpse.
If you keep on dragging around,it's gonna stink up the place.
It doesn't belong in your arms,it belongs under the ground.
This episode is about bearing the dead,bearing the past, not denying the past,
(01:58):
not pretending like it never happened, butlearning what you can and then let it go.
So you can step fully into your future.
Free and strong.
Now, here's something mind bending.
This is the illusion of the past.
(02:20):
The past does not actually exist anymore.
It's gone.
All that you carry is a memory,a shadow of what happened, and
the shadow is not objective.
It's filtered through yourperspective, through your emotions,
even your state of mind at the time,
(02:42):
and two people can experience the exactsame moment, the exact same event,
and tell two wildly different stories.
You know, recently I finishedmy first half marathon and.
(03:02):
I, I crossed the line feeling,you know, quite exhausted.
And although I just barely made mygoal, I was a little bit disappointed.
And I, I mean, there was a couple things,like I didn't perform in certain areas
(03:23):
where the way I wished I would've, and.
I mean, it was harder than I thought.
And the truth is like the end ofthe line, I was, it was just me.
(03:44):
You know?
I was talking to a, a few of the peoplewho were cheering for the sidelines
later that day, and they, they said,they were amazed by how strong I looked.
And they saw me pushing up a hill
and obviously I really wanted to quitat the time, but they were impressed.
(04:09):
Same race, you know, same moment, buttwo di completely different stories.
One, from my perspective, coloredby a bit of disappointment.
Others by theirs, coloredby a, a animation.
Admiration, I guess.
And that's the danger of the past.
(04:35):
It's not the truth,
it's just one perspective.
And if we biased, if we let the biasedshadow define us, we stay stuck.
You know, there's a quote.
We don't see things as they are.
(04:58):
We see them as we are
now.
You could kind of change it and createthe past as a teacher, not a prison.
(05:18):
The past is supposed to be ateacher that gives you wings, not
an anchor that holds you down.
You know, I, I think back to,
(05:39):
you know, some traumaticstuff that happened as a child
and how.
It created this sense in me thatI wasn't strong enough because I
couldn't stop it hap from happeningbecause it was a bigger person
and I spent a lifetime of feeling likeI'm not strong enough, like I'm weak.
(06:06):
And if you ever met me, you'd noticeI'm actually a pretty big guy.
And I think if you look through my life.
Uh, when I was, say, when I was a kid,when I was packing wood, I would, I,
I was limited not by the weight of thewood, but by the, the strength or the
length of my arms in carrying wood.
(06:30):
And people I worked with over the years.
I remember I was working at a, ata college as a maintenance guy, and
I got called down to help move thispiece of machinery onto a pallet.
And I got down there and the guysweren't there, so I just lifted
up and put on the pallet and theycame down like, you move that.
I'm like, well, yeah, I just lifted it.
(06:54):
It, it's funny how.
My experience of life of not being ableto strong enough to fight off an attack,
create when the person wastwice my size as a child,
created this thought that I wasweak because that's not reality,
(07:18):
you know?
And for many years, I, I focusedon the pain of the circumstance.
Until one day, I realizethere's a lesson in life
that if you understand to a deeplevel what it means to be hurt,
(07:43):
that when you see another humanbeing, like when you get to the
point where you understand thatthat's what builds compassion.
That what?
That's what builds care.
That's what builds empathy.
And later on in life when yousee another person hurting,
(08:03):
you want to support them not, not in spiteof what happened, because you understand
what it feels like to be in pain.
And then you can relate as a childto what it felt like to be in pain.
And when you see another humanbeing going through that, you don't
want them to go through alone.
So you show up.
(08:24):
See, that's compassion and empathy,and that's what you can take
from the past.
And when you really let that go,you'll just show up as you're
supposed to be in this life.
And then recently, of course,
(08:48):
feeling a little bit too tired.
Coming back to running way toofast, pushing way too hard,
not listening to the cues.
I tripped and I tore my hamstring
and
(09:08):
you know, I could barely walk.
And here I am thinking,oh, how am I gonna work?
How am I gonna.
You know what happens toall my dreams, my goals?
'cause I had a whole big listof things that I wanted to do,
(09:32):
but the circumstanceshelped me in a few ways.
It's helped me be a littlebit more patient with myself.
It's taught me that comingback from a big race.
I'm gonna need a little bit more rest,and then when I do come back, I'm
gonna need to really pay attentionto my body and adjust things as I go,
(09:52):
because if I get in too much of a rushand there's a possibility of doing the
same thing again, and I really don'twant to cycle through the same thing,
it is also taught me the kind of timeit takes to rehab a hamstring, which
is gonna help me in my profession.
And the approach, likethe really good approach.
(10:16):
So there's a few things that'llcome out of this that'll be good.
And I've readjusted my goals.
I'll be running a marathon in May of nextyear, but right now there's no other goals
on the plate because I don't wanna rush.
I am gonna keep on goingthrough the process.
(10:37):
Like yesterday, my run wasn't great.
I was very stiff.
And I couldn't move, uh, the wayI wanted to move, but then even
at the end of the run, I was onlylike seven seconds per kilometer
slower than I was the day before.
So
(10:57):
it's really not that bad.
I,
you know, if I hadn't gonethrough the hamstring injury.
I would've never built the understanding.
So now I have a foundation forsmarter and stronger training.
(11:22):
And the same is true in life.
If you treat your past like a prisonsentence, you'll stay locked up in it.
But if you treat it as a teacher, you'llwalk away stronger, wiser, and freer.
There's a quote by Chuck Penick.
(11:44):
Your past is just a story and once yourealize that it has no power of you.
So if you want to go, let go of the past.
Um, here, here's a littleroutine you could use.
(12:06):
There are literally threesteps in handling the past.
First off, if you need to acknowledge it,
then you need to learn from it,and then you need to release it.
I, so in acknowledging,acknowledging doesn't mean you're
(12:26):
pretending it didn't happen.
That doesn't work.
You can't shove it into thecloset and hope it disappears.
You have to face it, and you have tofeel what you feel when you're feeling
it, and you have to feel your wayall the way through it right to the
end because the freedom in the pastfrom the past happens in the feeling
(12:54):
and the truth is you'll onlyever get to know yourself.
At the top as much as you canbe with yourself at the bottom.
So you gotta acknowledge it, notacknowledge the story about what happened,
(13:17):
because we tend to create a story.
Just what's so this happened?
This is how I feel about it.
I'm gonna feel all that.
Then I'm gonna move on to the next.
Second.
Second thing you gotta realize, you needto learn from the things, the big things.
(13:37):
You need to learn them becausethey say the cycle will continue
until the lesson is learned.
So if you don't learn, you're gonna gothrough this cycle over and over again.
And you've seen that.
I've seen that in my life.
I think we all have, and sometimeswe see it in friends, say like
especially in relationship, right?
(13:58):
Somebody keeps on going through thesame cycle of relationship with the same
people over and over and over again.
And then one day, maybesomeday, somehow they learn the
lesson, they break the cycle.
So you need to look for the lessonand if you, if you can use this little
(14:18):
reframe, it might really help becausethe kind of the victim stand PO
standpoint is life is happening to me
and the powerful standpointis life is happening for me.
(14:38):
So think about that.
Is your contacts life is happening to me,or is it actually a more powerful looking
for the lesson life is happening for me.
That's a really great reframe becausethen rather than we look at how hard
done by we are, we start looking for why.
Why is this happening?
(14:59):
What is this trying to teach me?
I wanna learn this as fast as I can so Idon't have to continue this crazy cycle.
What did it teach you?
And what strength did it unlock?
Think about my story.
Empathy and compassion, right?
Sometimes it's in the overcoming thatwe, we create strength resilience.
(15:26):
Now, finally
it's like you take that story, takethat whole thing, not the lessons.
But you take the rest of it and youclose the book and you put it aside.
Set it down, kinda like carryinga backpack full of rocks.
(15:51):
You can't climb mountainsby adding more weight.
Here's a little reflection exercise for.
Right now, I want you to pause.
Think of one moment from yourpast that still weighs on you.
(16:13):
Could have been a failure,a mistake, or regret?
Hold it in your mind
now.
Say to yourself, I acknowledge you
and I thank you for what you've taughtme, but now I have to release you.
(16:37):
You will no longer travel with me.
You know, I've worked with many runners
and sometimes you see them beit stress, anger, frustration.
(16:57):
They have a big race that doesn't go well.
And they have a tendency tocarry that failure for months and
replay it over and over again.
So one time I was talkingto them about forgiveness,
(17:18):
about letting themselves off the hook,
and they decided to look for the gold.
You know, acknowledge what so, butfind one piece of gold in that race.
(17:39):
Something you learn, somethingthat will help you in the future.
Something that can teach you,
you know, if you come from thatcontext, you're gonna see a
lot of your races go better.
Just a thought.
(17:59):
Reframing rejection and pain.
Hey, we all experience rejection,failure, pain, and it does hurt,
but a lot of timesrejection is a redirection.
(18:20):
Think about Walt Disney who was fired.
Because he lacked imagination.
Oprah being told she wasunfit for television.
Imagine if these people kept thesemoments as permanent identities.
Imagine if Disney believed hewasn't creative, or Oprah didn't
(18:44):
believe that she belonged on tv.
Yeah, Napoleon Hill said, everyadversity, every failure, every
heartache carries with it all theseed of an equal or greater benefit,
(19:10):
the power of now and choice.
Here's the truth, the past has no power.
It's right now in the present.
That's where all your power lives.
Gandhi said the futuredepends on what you do today.
(19:39):
See, all we have is now
the past is a shadow.
Which is colored by theway we looked at things.
The future is a PO, possiblyor a potential, but it doesn't
actually exist right now.
(20:00):
All we have is now all we haveis what we can do right now.
There's, here's a little exerciseinto becoming in the present,
but first I'll, I'll remindyou of something I've said
(20:22):
before, is if you think about ithonestly, fear, anxiety, worry.
All these things live inthe past or in the future
right now, in this moment,right at this very moment.
(20:46):
Think about it.
You are whole and complete right now.
You are lacking nothingin this present moment.
You're safe, you're clothed, you're housed
in the present moment.
You are not lacking, you onlylack in the past or in the future.
(21:08):
And how do we come intothe present moment?
I, I find the easiest way is if you'rejust, if you're sitting or you're
standing, start pressing your, yourfeet into the ground, your toes in
the ground until such a time as youcan feel the bottom of your feet.
At the same time, take a nice breath inand breath out and focus on the breath,
(21:33):
and at the same time, focus on your feet.
And now you're in the present moment.
It's as simple as that,
(21:53):
the blank slate of the future.
Now, I definitely love this metaphorof the future as a canvas, and
every single day is a brushstroke.
You don't have to paint the wholepicture in one day, but every
single stroke adds to the picture.
(22:15):
Every choice adds color,depth and meaning.
Though no one can go back andmake a brand new start anywhere.
Anyone can start now andmake a brand new ending.
Carl Bard,
(22:43):
if you.
It can get the past out of yourway if you can let go of all
the things that held you back.
Because one of the things we dois we, we have this bad habit of
putting the past into the future.
Say if something's been going wrongfor quite some time, or we've gotten
(23:06):
injury injured over and over again.
So we start, we start.
Painting in the future that things aregonna, things are gonna go wrong, and
that's where an anxiety comes from.
And then we start painting in ourfuture injury and lack of making it,
or races that just don't go well, ordon't quite make it, or not having
(23:29):
the financial abundance we want.
We're having the relationship we wantand we keep on taking all these fears
from the past and we start paintingthem into the canvas of the future.
And what you need to do, I mean, if youcould, like, if you could close your eyes
and imagine a whiteboard and that you'vetaken markers and you've written all this
(23:51):
stuff into your future, and then taken aeraser and just erased the whole thing,
and then maybe put a listof goals, things you want.
'cause the universe hates a void, so youmight want to fill it up with some stuff.
And maybe, maybe declare themas on or before XI have Y
(24:22):
on or before X, I am
standing on the line at LA
at the Olympic Games
on or before x. I walk into mynew home that I just purchased,
(24:43):
and then start creating actionsthat are aligned with getting there.
And just continuously stack the days,
create your, your blank whiteboard,write your goals on top, and
start drawing the picture.
(25:08):
The hard work of letting go.
It ain't easy.
No.
Let's, let's be real.
Letting go isn't easy,
and sometimes it might feellike betrayal, like if I let go.
I'm saying it didn'tmatter, but it's not true.
(25:31):
Letting go does not erase the past.
It just refuses to letthe past change you.
And most of what that is, is like lettinggo of the story about the past, like
human beings are meaning making machines.
(25:53):
If we have four or five or 10 bad races,we start drawing this picture of the
past that I'm just not gonna make it.
Or I'm just gonna haveanother bad PA race.
And that creates anxietyand worry and fear.
See, letting go of the past could be assimple as reframing it as, I'm not letting
(26:18):
go of the fact that some racists didn'tgo well, but I'm gonna look at them and
see what can I do to make them betterfirst acknowledge that they went bad.
What can I do to make them better?
And then letting go of any storyyou came up with because of whatev
what's so like all that is what sois I had some bad races and so what?
(26:43):
It doesn't mean anything.
That's the reframe is nothinginherently means anything
until we place a meaning on it.
And then what we normally do is we'llplace a meaning on something and then
we'll draw that into our future, andthat's the future we'll live into.
(27:07):
But if you could reframe it, thennothing inherently means anything
that didn't go well,
but it doesn't mean anything.
And there's something I canlearn for it from this or not.
And then I'm gonna getback up and do it again.
(27:30):
Stepping into the future.
So the challenge, the absolutechallenge here to step in the future.
You gotta stop carryingwhat no longer serves you.
(27:51):
Close your eyes for a second.
If it's safe to do so,
picture of yourself carrying a heavybag and inside it are all your regrets,
mistakes, heartaches, failures, everythingthat is weighing you down from the past.
(28:21):
Now imagine.
As you walk, you choose onething and you toss it to the curb
and a little further, you drop anotherone, and then you drop a big, heavy
one, and every time you let go of one,
you start feeling this weight liftingoff your shoulder, off your legs.
(28:47):
You're stepping forward, freer, lighter.
The past is a place of reference,not a place of residence.
(29:08):
So let's regret first off.
Past doesn't exist.
It's just a memory.
Bury the dead.
The past is meant to teach not to trap.
Learn,
(29:29):
acknowledge and learn
the presence right here, right now.
This is where your power is.
The present is what shapes your future.
Just don't keep on puttingthe past into the future.
(29:49):
And the truth is when you take thatwhiteboard and you erase everything and
you put on the things that you really wantto create, then your future is a blank.
Canvas is
the past is gone,
(30:09):
the future is yours to build.
So my challenge to you this week,write down one thing, just one.
Or if you're a keener, a wholebunch, but at least one, one thing
you're finally ready to bury.
And then write down step bystep how you'll take it forward
(30:36):
and what you will create in that space.
Until next time, keep stepping forward
free.
Keep building the future.
And remember, you'restronger than you think,
and your best days are ahead of you.
Keep building your own inner advocate.
(31:05):
Thank you for listening to this episodeof Your Inner Advocate, a podcast by
Kimen Petersen, formerly Conversationswith Kimen if you found value in
today's episode, please follow likeand share the podcast with someone
who you think may benefit from it.
You can listen on Apple Podcast.
Spotify, Podbean, and connect onInstagram @ your inner advocate.
(31:29):
Until next time, keep listening toand developing your inner advocate.
Welcome to Your Inner Advocate,a podcast by Kimen Petersen,
formerly Conversations with Kimen.
This podcast is a space forinspiration, soulful insights,
and meaningful life lessons.
Your host, Kimen Petersen drawsfrom personal stories and powerful
conversations with remarkablepeople to help illuminate your path.
These episodes reflect his livedexperiences and thoughtful perspectives,
(00:25):
all aimed at encouraging you to live lifewith greater authenticity, joy, and ease.
Your inner advocate is here tohelp you tune in, trust your inner
wisdom, and move through life withmore clarity, flow, and fulfillment.
You can't step into your future if you'restill dragging the weight of your past.
(00:49):
Hello everyone.
Welcome back to Your Inner Advocate.
Today I want to talk about somethingthat every single one of us
wrestles with, and that's the past.
Now here's the truth.
We all have one.
We've all made mistakes.
We've all faced heartbreaks.
(01:10):
We've all experienced moments where wewish we could rewind the clock and do it
differently, but the reality is you can't.
The past is gone,
and yet so many of us drag it aroundlike a backpack full of rocks.
(01:33):
And here's the metaphor Iwant you to carry today.
The past is like a corpse.
If you keep on dragging around,it's gonna stink up the place.
It doesn't belong in your arms,it belongs under the ground.
This episode is about bearing the dead,bearing the past, not denying the past,
(01:58):
not pretending like it never happened, butlearning what you can and then let it go.
So you can step fully into your future.
Free and strong.
Now, here's something mind bending.
This is the illusion of the past.
(02:20):
The past does not actually exist anymore.
It's gone.
All that you carry is a memory,a shadow of what happened, and
the shadow is not objective.
It's filtered through yourperspective, through your emotions,
even your state of mind at the time,
(02:42):
and two people can experience the exactsame moment, the exact same event,
and tell two wildly different stories.
You know, recently I finishedmy first half marathon and.
(03:02):
I, I crossed the line feeling,you know, quite exhausted.
And although I just barely made mygoal, I was a little bit disappointed.
And I, I mean, there was a couple things,like I didn't perform in certain areas
(03:23):
where the way I wished I would've, and.
I mean, it was harder than I thought.
And the truth is like the end ofthe line, I was, it was just me.
(03:44):
You know?
I was talking to a, a few of the peoplewho were cheering for the sidelines
later that day, and they, they said,they were amazed by how strong I looked.
And they saw me pushing up a hill
and obviously I really wanted to quitat the time, but they were impressed.
(04:09):
Same race, you know, same moment, buttwo di completely different stories.
One, from my perspective, coloredby a bit of disappointment.
Others by theirs, coloredby a, a animation.
Admiration, I guess.
And that's the danger of the past.
(04:35):
It's not the truth,
it's just one perspective.
And if we biased, if we let the biasedshadow define us, we stay stuck.
You know, there's a quote.
We don't see things as they are.
(04:58):
We see them as we are
now.
You could kind of change it and createthe past as a teacher, not a prison.
(05:18):
The past is supposed to be ateacher that gives you wings, not
an anchor that holds you down.
You know, I, I think back to,
(05:39):
you know, some traumaticstuff that happened as a child
and how.
It created this sense in me thatI wasn't strong enough because I
couldn't stop it hap from happeningbecause it was a bigger person
and I spent a lifetime of feeling likeI'm not strong enough, like I'm weak.
(06:06):
And if you ever met me, you'd noticeI'm actually a pretty big guy.
And I think if you look through my life.
Uh, when I was, say, when I was a kid,when I was packing wood, I would, I,
I was limited not by the weight of thewood, but by the, the strength or the
length of my arms in carrying wood.
(06:30):
And people I worked with over the years.
I remember I was working at a, ata college as a maintenance guy, and
I got called down to help move thispiece of machinery onto a pallet.
And I got down there and the guysweren't there, so I just lifted
up and put on the pallet and theycame down like, you move that.
I'm like, well, yeah, I just lifted it.
(06:54):
It, it's funny how.
My experience of life of not being ableto strong enough to fight off an attack,
create when the person wastwice my size as a child,
created this thought that I wasweak because that's not reality,
(07:18):
you know?
And for many years, I, I focusedon the pain of the circumstance.
Until one day, I realizethere's a lesson in life
that if you understand to a deeplevel what it means to be hurt,
(07:43):
that when you see another humanbeing, like when you get to the
point where you understand thatthat's what builds compassion.
That what?
That's what builds care.
That's what builds empathy.
And later on in life when yousee another person hurting,
(08:03):
you want to support them not, not in spiteof what happened, because you understand
what it feels like to be in pain.
And then you can relate as a childto what it felt like to be in pain.
And when you see another humanbeing going through that, you don't
want them to go through alone.
So you show up.
(08:24):
See, that's compassion and empathy,and that's what you can take
from the past.
And when you really let that go,you'll just show up as you're
supposed to be in this life.
And then recently, of course,
(08:48):
feeling a little bit too tired.
Coming back to running way toofast, pushing way too hard,
not listening to the cues.
I tripped and I tore my hamstring
and
(09:08):
you know, I could barely walk.
And here I am thinking,oh, how am I gonna work?
How am I gonna.
You know what happens toall my dreams, my goals?
'cause I had a whole big listof things that I wanted to do,
(09:32):
but the circumstanceshelped me in a few ways.
It's helped me be a littlebit more patient with myself.
It's taught me that comingback from a big race.
I'm gonna need a little bit more rest,and then when I do come back, I'm
gonna need to really pay attentionto my body and adjust things as I go,
(09:52):
because if I get in too much of a rushand there's a possibility of doing the
same thing again, and I really don'twant to cycle through the same thing,
it is also taught me the kind of timeit takes to rehab a hamstring, which
is gonna help me in my profession.
And the approach, likethe really good approach.
(10:16):
So there's a few things that'llcome out of this that'll be good.
And I've readjusted my goals.
I'll be running a marathon in May of nextyear, but right now there's no other goals
on the plate because I don't wanna rush.
I am gonna keep on goingthrough the process.
(10:37):
Like yesterday, my run wasn't great.
I was very stiff.
And I couldn't move, uh, the wayI wanted to move, but then even
at the end of the run, I was onlylike seven seconds per kilometer
slower than I was the day before.
So
(10:57):
it's really not that bad.
I,
you know, if I hadn't gonethrough the hamstring injury.
I would've never built the understanding.
So now I have a foundation forsmarter and stronger training.
(11:22):
And the same is true in life.
If you treat your past like a prisonsentence, you'll stay locked up in it.
But if you treat it as a teacher, you'llwalk away stronger, wiser, and freer.
There's a quote by Chuck Penick.
(11:44):
Your past is just a story and once yourealize that it has no power of you.
So if you want to go, let go of the past.
Um, here, here's a littleroutine you could use.
(12:06):
There are literally threesteps in handling the past.
First off, if you need to acknowledge it,
then you need to learn from it,and then you need to release it.
I, so in acknowledging,acknowledging doesn't mean you're
(12:26):
pretending it didn't happen.
That doesn't work.
You can't shove it into thecloset and hope it disappears.
You have to face it, and you have tofeel what you feel when you're feeling
it, and you have to feel your wayall the way through it right to the
end because the freedom in the pastfrom the past happens in the feeling
(12:54):
and the truth is you'll onlyever get to know yourself.
At the top as much as you canbe with yourself at the bottom.
So you gotta acknowledge it, notacknowledge the story about what happened,
(13:17):
because we tend to create a story.
Just what's so this happened?
This is how I feel about it.
I'm gonna feel all that.
Then I'm gonna move on to the next.
Second.
Second thing you gotta realize, you needto learn from the things, the big things.
(13:37):
You need to learn them becausethey say the cycle will continue
until the lesson is learned.
So if you don't learn, you're gonna gothrough this cycle over and over again.
And you've seen that.
I've seen that in my life.
I think we all have, and sometimeswe see it in friends, say like
especially in relationship, right?
(13:58):
Somebody keeps on going through thesame cycle of relationship with the same
people over and over and over again.
And then one day, maybesomeday, somehow they learn the
lesson, they break the cycle.
So you need to look for the lessonand if you, if you can use this little
(14:18):
reframe, it might really help becausethe kind of the victim stand PO
standpoint is life is happening to me
and the powerful standpointis life is happening for me.
(14:38):
So think about that.
Is your contacts life is happening to me,or is it actually a more powerful looking
for the lesson life is happening for me.
That's a really great reframe becausethen rather than we look at how hard
done by we are, we start looking for why.
Why is this happening?
(14:59):
What is this trying to teach me?
I wanna learn this as fast as I can so Idon't have to continue this crazy cycle.
What did it teach you?
And what strength did it unlock?
Think about my story.
Empathy and compassion, right?
Sometimes it's in the overcoming thatwe, we create strength resilience.
(15:26):
Now, finally
it's like you take that story, takethat whole thing, not the lessons.
But you take the rest of it and youclose the book and you put it aside.
Set it down, kinda like carryinga backpack full of rocks.
(15:51):
You can't climb mountainsby adding more weight.
Here's a little reflection exercise for.
Right now, I want you to pause.
Think of one moment from yourpast that still weighs on you.
(16:13):
Could have been a failure,a mistake, or regret?
Hold it in your mind
now.
Say to yourself, I acknowledge you
and I thank you for what you've taughtme, but now I have to release you.
(16:37):
You will no longer travel with me.
You know, I've worked with many runners
and sometimes you see them beit stress, anger, frustration.
(16:57):
They have a big race that doesn't go well.
And they have a tendency tocarry that failure for months and
replay it over and over again.
So one time I was talkingto them about forgiveness,
(17:18):
about letting themselves off the hook,
and they decided to look for the gold.
You know, acknowledge what so, butfind one piece of gold in that race.
(17:39):
Something you learn, somethingthat will help you in the future.
Something that can teach you,
you know, if you come from thatcontext, you're gonna see a
lot of your races go better.
Just a thought.
(17:59):
Reframing rejection and pain.
Hey, we all experience rejection,failure, pain, and it does hurt,
but a lot of timesrejection is a redirection.
(18:20):
Think about Walt Disney who was fired.
Because he lacked imagination.
Oprah being told she wasunfit for television.
Imagine if these people kept thesemoments as permanent identities.
Imagine if Disney believed hewasn't creative, or Oprah didn't
(18:44):
believe that she belonged on tv.
Yeah, Napoleon Hill said, everyadversity, every failure, every
heartache carries with it all theseed of an equal or greater benefit,
(19:10):
the power of now and choice.
Here's the truth, the past has no power.
It's right now in the present.
That's where all your power lives.
Gandhi said the futuredepends on what you do today.
(19:39):
See, all we have is now
the past is a shadow.
Which is colored by theway we looked at things.
The future is a PO, possiblyor a potential, but it doesn't
actually exist right now.
(20:00):
All we have is now all we haveis what we can do right now.
There's, here's a little exerciseinto becoming in the present,
but first I'll, I'll remindyou of something I've said
(20:22):
before, is if you think about ithonestly, fear, anxiety, worry.
All these things live inthe past or in the future
right now, in this moment,right at this very moment.
(20:46):
Think about it.
You are whole and complete right now.
You are lacking nothingin this present moment.
You're safe, you're clothed, you're housed
in the present moment.
You are not lacking, you onlylack in the past or in the future.
(21:08):
And how do we come intothe present moment?
I, I find the easiest way is if you'rejust, if you're sitting or you're
standing, start pressing your, yourfeet into the ground, your toes in
the ground until such a time as youcan feel the bottom of your feet.
At the same time, take a nice breath inand breath out and focus on the breath,
(21:33):
and at the same time, focus on your feet.
And now you're in the present moment.
It's as simple as that,
(21:53):
the blank slate of the future.
Now, I definitely love this metaphorof the future as a canvas, and
every single day is a brushstroke.
You don't have to paint the wholepicture in one day, but every
single stroke adds to the picture.
(22:15):
Every choice adds color,depth and meaning.
Though no one can go back andmake a brand new start anywhere.
Anyone can start now andmake a brand new ending.
Carl Bard,
(22:43):
if you.
It can get the past out of yourway if you can let go of all
the things that held you back.
Because one of the things we dois we, we have this bad habit of
putting the past into the future.
Say if something's been going wrongfor quite some time, or we've gotten
(23:06):
injury injured over and over again.
So we start, we start.
Painting in the future that things aregonna, things are gonna go wrong, and
that's where an anxiety comes from.
And then we start painting in ourfuture injury and lack of making it,
or races that just don't go well, ordon't quite make it, or not having
(23:29):
the financial abundance we want.
We're having the relationship we wantand we keep on taking all these fears
from the past and we start paintingthem into the canvas of the future.
And what you need to do, I mean, if youcould, like, if you could close your eyes
and imagine a whiteboard and that you'vetaken markers and you've written all this
(23:51):
stuff into your future, and then taken aeraser and just erased the whole thing,
and then maybe put a listof goals, things you want.
'cause the universe hates a void, so youmight want to fill it up with some stuff.
And maybe, maybe declare themas on or before XI have Y
(24:22):
on or before X, I am
standing on the line at LA
at the Olympic Games
on or before x. I walk into mynew home that I just purchased,
(24:43):
and then start creating actionsthat are aligned with getting there.
And just continuously stack the days,
create your, your blank whiteboard,write your goals on top, and
start drawing the picture.
(25:08):
The hard work of letting go.
It ain't easy.
No.
Let's, let's be real.
Letting go isn't easy,
and sometimes it might feellike betrayal, like if I let go.
I'm saying it didn'tmatter, but it's not true.
(25:31):
Letting go does not erase the past.
It just refuses to letthe past change you.
And most of what that is, is like lettinggo of the story about the past, like
human beings are meaning making machines.
(25:53):
If we have four or five or 10 bad races,we start drawing this picture of the
past that I'm just not gonna make it.
Or I'm just gonna haveanother bad PA race.
And that creates anxietyand worry and fear.
See, letting go of the past could be assimple as reframing it as, I'm not letting
(26:18):
go of the fact that some racists didn'tgo well, but I'm gonna look at them and
see what can I do to make them betterfirst acknowledge that they went bad.
What can I do to make them better?
And then letting go of any storyyou came up with because of whatev
what's so like all that is what sois I had some bad races and so what?
(26:43):
It doesn't mean anything.
That's the reframe is nothinginherently means anything
until we place a meaning on it.
And then what we normally do is we'llplace a meaning on something and then
we'll draw that into our future, andthat's the future we'll live into.
(27:07):
But if you could reframe it, thennothing inherently means anything
that didn't go well,
but it doesn't mean anything.
And there's something I canlearn for it from this or not.
And then I'm gonna getback up and do it again.
(27:30):
Stepping into the future.
So the challenge, the absolutechallenge here to step in the future.
You gotta stop carryingwhat no longer serves you.
(27:51):
Close your eyes for a second.
If it's safe to do so,
picture of yourself carrying a heavybag and inside it are all your regrets,
mistakes, heartaches, failures, everythingthat is weighing you down from the past.
(28:21):
Now imagine.
As you walk, you choose onething and you toss it to the curb
and a little further, you drop anotherone, and then you drop a big, heavy
one, and every time you let go of one,
you start feeling this weight liftingoff your shoulder, off your legs.
(28:47):
You're stepping forward, freer, lighter.
The past is a place of reference,not a place of residence.
(29:08):
So let's regret first off.
Past doesn't exist.
It's just a memory.
Bury the dead.
The past is meant to teach not to trap.
Learn,
(29:29):
acknowledge and learn
the presence right here, right now.
This is where your power is.
The present is what shapes your future.
Just don't keep on puttingthe past into the future.
(29:49):
And the truth is when you take thatwhiteboard and you erase everything and
you put on the things that you really wantto create, then your future is a blank.
Canvas is
the past is gone,
(30:09):
the future is yours to build.
So my challenge to you this week,write down one thing, just one.
Or if you're a keener, a wholebunch, but at least one, one thing
you're finally ready to bury.
And then write down step bystep how you'll take it forward
(30:36):
and what you will create in that space.
Until next time, keep stepping forward
free.
Keep building the future.
And remember, you'restronger than you think,
and your best days are ahead of you.
Keep building your own inner advocate.
(31:05):
Thank you for listening to this episodeof Your Inner Advocate, a podcast by
Kimen Petersen, formerly Conversationswith Kimen if you found value in
today's episode, please follow likeand share the podcast with someone
who you think may benefit from it.
You can listen on Apple Podcast.
Spotify, Podbean, and connect onInstagram @ your inner advocate.
(31:29):
Until next time, keep listening toand developing your inner advocate.
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