Yo yo yo. Welcome back to the Further your Lifestyle podcast conversations on lifestyle passions and hustles. My name's Chris, I'm your host and I'm super excited to be back here having the conversation with you Episode 223, and we're talking about a really, really special topic because I think you know we were chatting about this last week about, you know, you do not know what you do not know, and also that you know we have to be kind to ourselves because if we go back in the past and we realize back then we had no idea, we were so innocent, we were so young or whatever. But now, as we've progressed forward, there's this hindsight confusion around oh, I wish I had done this earlier. Or, you know, imagine if we knew this back then. Right, you need to forgive yourself for what you didn't know. Right, you know better now, but when you know better now, you can do better. Now, right, you learn, you grow and you move forward. But you didn't know it then, and that's okay. And that's what I want to talk about, because I feel like we can kind of sometimes get ourselves boxed into this mentality of like the past when really, well, yeah, sure, you can leverage the past to help us move forward but don't get stuck in the past. So that's what we're talking about today and if you enjoy these conversations, please, like subscribe.

We drop them every Sunday at 9am here in Melbourne, australia, and there's a lot of you listening from all over the different places. Majority of you are Australian, but there's a few internationals. I see you and I thank you. But if you enjoy this and you think someone else needs to have a little bit of a kick to help them further their own lifestyle, then please share it with them. That would mean the absolute world to me. We're going to roll the intro. We're going to get into this. There's a few points here. It's not going to be a long episode, kind of short and sharp. Just been enjoying kind of getting to the point with these and sharing stories as relevant as they need to be. But, you know, just keeping it short and sharp and getting you the information you need to help you further your lifestyle.

Let's get into it. All right, so we'll start with this Past. You was doing the absolute best they could. Now you might look back and think, oh, I was such a loser back then, or how silly of me, or I wish I had done this right. But what is the point of going through that process and beating yourself up, for you do not know what you did not know. You were operating under the basis of the knowledge, the tools and the experience that you had. Now you may have made some stupid decisions, but again at the point in time, it felt like these were the best decisions or the right decisions because of what you understood or knew, your life experience or the people that were influencing you as well. You know, some of us make some pretty poor decisions and we have consequences we have to deal with because of those. But now you know better, right.

So it's unfair to judge a past version of yourself. With your current wisdom, you're a smarty pants. Now You've got it figured out. We're still learning, though, right, and what I mean by that is like we are. We were a lot smarter and hopefully wiser than we were, you know, five years ago, two years ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago, but we still don't have it all figured out.

So that's where you've got to remember it's always going to be this changing mentality. There's going to be an old version of yourself, a current version of yourself, yourself a current version of yourself and your future version of yourself. The future version of yourself today was who you wanted to be back in the past. But you didn't know that because, well, you didn't know, you didn't know what it was going to turn out like, right. But here you are now. You look back and you think, oh, I wish I had done this. But that's why I mean a lot of the time. That's why I share my journey, is because I want to help others not get themselves in a situation which you know maybe isn't good for them. But at the same time, I'm grateful for all the situations I've been through, because if I hadn't gone through them, I wouldn't have experienced them. Therefore, I wouldn't have the knowledge and understanding and the wisdom to be able to apply that application of wisdom today, right? So I think a lot of the time we don't really consider that right, that most mistakes aren't a reflection of who you are, just who you were learning to become.

If you want to be a better version of yourself you know we spoke about it last week you're going to have to look like a clown. You're going to have to start from zero. You're going to have to be willing to be vulnerable. And if you're not willing to do that, well then, yeah, sure, you're going to be in your past self for a very, very long time. So we have to look at this from a perspective of you know, when we have self-compassion for ourselves, it's not a weakness.

If we hold on to regret, it doesn't make you more accountable, it makes you more stuck. Why are you holding on onto something that is pulling you down and something you cannot even control anymore, because it's already something that's occurred. Of course, now it's making sure that you don't do those things again, but the past is the past. The bygones be bygones with your own self. Forgiveness is not letting yourself off the hook, it's getting yourself out of a cage. If you get off a hook, you can run, you can be free, you can go, you can do things. But if you're actually not forgiving yourself, you're actually locking yourself up and it's causing you to not make the next decision because maybe you're too scared or because you haven't been able to trust this new version of yourself, right?

So let's put it this way what if progress is just a gentle replacement of shame with understanding? Right, when we understand full context of situations, we can then empathize with ourselves and understand. Okay, well, I did this on this basis, right. And that's why, like when I'm working with people and they have issues or they're struggling and all these different things, I want to understand the context. I want to understand, well, help me, help you, right, if someone's going to be delayed in delivering something for me, because you know something's come up. If you communicate with me, I can resonate with you, I can empathize with you and I can be saying, okay, that's okay, we can work together on this, right. So it gives me some levels like, okay, we're still going to make progress. There's going to be, you know, a little bit of bumps in the road, but I can be understanding with you. You need to do this with yourself. You need to communicate with yourself and help you understand that. Well, the progress you're making right. It just means that there is going to be some things which were a bit uncomfortable to get you there and be okay with that.

I'm not saying go do silly things and break the law. What I'm talking about is like progress is progress, right, how you got here? Sure, maybe it's not how you're going to do it going forward, but you need to understand that's how you got here. So understand that. Take from it what you need to reflect on the good things, the bad things, and go apply it.

Growth requires grace. It requires us to understand this. You can't fully grow into your next season while punishing yourself for the last one. It's just not going to work. And that's why, like as soon as I hit a milestone, a new achievement that I wanted to unlock, I'm happy, pat myself on the back, but then we start working towards the next thing, because now I know that it's capable, now I know that we can do this. So now, how do I bundle up what we've achieved and make sure that this becomes a new baseline? And then, if you don't reflect so reflection without compassion becomes self-torture right, if you don't know how you got here and you're not willing to understand it because there's going to be good things and bad things of how that got you here what were the reasons of how you ended up where you did right? Some of it you controlled, some maybe you didn't, but they were probably consequences of actions you decided.

So there is this quote from I forget the name, but it goes by when I know better, I will do better. Right Now, this is true. The thing I don't like about it is you can't use it as an excuse to do bad. However, you do need to have the mentality that, well, I can only do what I know now and with that, I will take you know, I will take it into my responsibility to do better when I know how to do better. But you can't use that as an excuse to you know, say, oh, I did it because I didn't know any better. If you didn't know any better, then you know. Why are you blaming that you didn't know any better? It sounds to me you do know better, so just be mindful of that.

There is this also, this mentality and mindset that we tend to get ourselves trapped into, which is the trap of I should have known, you know. This belief assumes that you have the insight that you now have right. Well, yeah, sure, if you had known what you know now, you wouldn't potentially have done that decision. So, again, what is the point of beating yourself up? And even if you were warned and someone else comes out and says I told you so, again, you clearly didn't have all the details, all the facts, all the understanding or, yeah, the understanding of the complexities of why they were right and you were wrong. Now you know right and there's a difference between being told and being ready to receive right.

I can be told things over and over again, but unless I understand it, I'm not going to receive it and be able to apply it, and I think that's why you until you understand it yourself and experience it yourself that's why it's important that you do show up and put in the reps and be willing to go through those experiences, because it makes you a better individual. Like I said, you know I wish I'd started my business years ago, because now I'll be ahead, but if excuse me, if I didn't do the experiences that I've done, I don't think those things would have gotten me to where I am today, which means I wouldn't have been able to achieve or apply myself in the ways that I have, because I've leveraged a lot of that knowledge and expertise and that experience to help launch me into being more confident in doing what I'm doing right. So they're trade-offs. There's things that you're going through trials and tribulations, and you know challenges and you know situations which made you uncomfortable. In the end turned you out to be a better version of yourself, making you ready for where you are now. So you know, it's kind of like the egg to get the chicken you need the egg, but to get the egg you need the chicken, right? Don't dilly-dally on that, just remember like, okay, this is what's happened, this is what I've learned from it. How do we now keep moving forward and keep that process happening?

So there's a couple of questions and challenges I want to leave you with, and we're going to wrap it up there. Nice and short one for you. Number one is what's one decision from your past that you're still beating yourself up over? You've got to work on that. Number two is can you speak to your past self like you would a friend, with compassion instead of criticism? And this is what I was saying. If someone comes to you with context, comes to you with understanding and communicates with them, you can empathize with them. So where's the empathy for yourself? And the number three is what lesson came from that mistake that you now carry with pride? Look, mistakes can be some of the biggest game changers to help us become a best version of ourselves. But we have to embrace it and we, like you know I said earlier, growth requires grace. So if you're not willing to take that on, if you're not willing to understand the lessons you've learned and applying those things, then, yeah sure you won't grow. So the final takeaway is this you're allowed to evolve.

Don't punish the version of you that made this one possible, right? Your old version, the version maybe you didn't like back then, is the version that got you to where you are now, and you feel great, you feel happy, but you're not satisfied. So you're ready to go to the next level, and then this person is going to have to then go through a metamorphosis stage and they're going to have to come out as something bigger and better again. And that's a journey, right, it's an endless cycle. But do not kick yourself to the old version of yourself because it wasn't your standard. Now, of course, it isn't right Because you had to step it up to get to this version of yourself, just like to get to where you want to go. Now you're going to have to step it up.

So remember that perspective. Be kind to yourself, look after yourself. Have a listen to this again, right? If you need to, and, most of all, if you think someone else needs to hear this, please share it with them. It's a bit of a deep conversation, short and sharp, but you know I love the concept of we know better now, right? So how do we make sure we leverage that opportunity? Appreciate you being here. We'll be back here again next week doing it all again. You have a wonderful day, cheers you.