Harnessing the Power of Internal Dialogue: Breaking Free from a Negative Past

Feeling trapped by a negative past? Discover how to break free in this empowering episode. Join us as we delve into the story of a sensitive young man grappling with life's injustices and learn how his experiences offer profound lessons on resilience and hope. We explore the importance of creating a vision for your future self, inspired by powerful narratives like Viktor Frankl's survival insights and Helen Keller's wisdom.

Key takeaways include:
- The impact of mindset on overcoming adversity
- Techniques for fostering hope through visioning
- Understanding neuroplasticity’s role in personal growth

Tune in to uncover strategies that will help you transform your past challenges into stepping stones toward a brighter future!

In this podcast, I want to talk about breaking free of a negative past. Our past does not need to predict our future. As we all go through life, we are confronted with tons of negative experiences. I'm thinking of just a beautiful young man. One of the sweetest, most sensitive, kindest individuals in the world who has lost hope in the future because of some bad experiences in the past.

He's he's seen he's very, very sensitive and struggles with black and white thinking, all or nothing thinking. And so he's just seen a lot of injustices in the world, and it troubles him deeply. You know? And he would he was working as he describes working. He was working at a retail outlet, and he looked up to his manager.

But he he would report to me. He says, the manager just takes advantage of us. She doesn't come to work when she's supposed to be there. She doesn't lead by example. She puts her responsibilities on us, and then she's making the big bucks when she's off taking an extra day off or lying about this on a report or that really, really troubles him.

And he and he had a very difficult time. And so he'd go to the next experience and the next experience, and and he would see and experience these things in the world. Yes. The world is not fair. Yes.

There are those who will take advantage of you. But, anyway so so he's gone through a number of experiences like that, and then he he kinda hit rock bottom. And then through a series of friends and stuff, tried to tried to help get him hope again. Family members reach come on. Come on.

Life is okay. And picked up. And then then then he had some other experiences where he says, alright. I'll try again. I saw I saw him as he was working trying to find hope in the future.

Being very, very sensitive and didn't really was trying to create a belief that things could work out. And so he had another example of had never been online, never been on eBay trading things. And so he he had collected and family members had collected, like, sports cards, baseball cards, Pokemon cards, stuff like that. He says, alright. I'll go through some of these and see if I can find a way to earn some income and because there were a ton of cards.

And so we actually he actually had a Michael Jordan jersey basketball card, a little piece of a jersey and and and put it out there to sell and and got someone interested in that and started dialoguing with someone online. And and, anyway, long story short, through a series of manipulations and in his innocence of not believing that someone would really scam to that extent. Anyway, long story short, got taken. He got taken for $500 on an online scam and lost his baseball card. So he's put or a basketball card, put that card out there, and someone got someone got his card.

Plus, he paid $500 because there was a sob story that said, all we need to do, if you can just do this, and then I'll be able to get that because my son's in trouble. You know? Anyway, it was it was a total and complete scam. But because he's so innocent, so beautiful, so trusting that he couldn't believe someone would actually actually do that. And so when he realized what had happened, it just devastated him even more.

And so he's in this state of of hopelessness right now. And as we're I'm working with him in therapy, it's beautiful. If you were to see him, you would say, man, this guy has everything in the world going from for him. But in his mind, he has lost hope. It has crushed him.

And so he's looking at his past and focusing on the past as if it's going to predict his future. And that's the idea I want to confront. Our past does not need to predict our future. We learn from our past experiences. Yep.

There are those type of people out there that will take advantage, that will steal from others, that will that will lie. It's all around us. We see that. But at the end of the day, every single one of us are going to die. And I'm thinking of a scripture in the New Testament.

And I'm thinking of those people. There's so much going on right now in the world. And, you know, and I and, again, I live in America, and we're right in a really critical time of an of of a presidential election that's gonna take place next week. And we see one of the the parties and their people in congress that the reports are that they are they've taken advantage of the situation and and they're they become masters of insider trading. All these people who are lying, using the system to gain advantage in an unfair way to gain money, 1,000,000 of dollars on insider trading.

And I think of the scripture in the new new testament. It says, what does it profit a man though he gained the whole world and lose his own soul? Anyway, I just it's so frustrating to see that. And then there's others that come online that say, well, you know, all all of what these insider traders are doing, you can look at their track record. And if you see they're jumping online and purchasing this stock, you can get on and do it also.

And you you can gain the same rewards. And then I'm going, I don't wanna do that. I'm not gonna do that because then I become like them. Taking advantage of the situation, taking advantage of the lies that they are they are perpetrating for themselves and their own gain that I'm gonna jump on their coattails and get the same thing. Anyway, I'm not doing that.

It doesn't all those things don't matter, guys. I'm telling you. At the end of the day, none of us are getting out of this world alive, and we need to ask ourselves the question, is there a deeper purpose for life? And it's and it's, where I come from, I believe that there is. And it has to do with integrity, with honor, with fighting for your mental health, finding hope in your future, working on constantly working on your self identity.

That although there are others that will take advantage of you, you still can stand up and learn from the experiences and find strength within yourself to pick up and move forward to help protect others that might be taken advantage of. When our purpose is taken from us, we lose all motivation in life, and I've seen that. And so my work with this one individual, it's one of the most challenging things that I've ever come across as a mental health therapist is to help this one beautiful young man find hope again in the future, Find purpose in life. And it reminds me of the stories of Viktor Frankl, the survivor of the German concentration camps. And in his book, man's search for meaning, he talks about experiences that when someone lost hope in those horrible situations, he could very well predict when they would actually die.

Because when you lose hope, your immune system falters, and and and you fall prey to disease. Our thoughts are so powerful. Believe in yourself. Believe in your capacity to change. There is a positive powerful force in the universe that makes makes it possible for us to to resurrect hope, notwithstanding all the difficult things that we go through.

One of the one of the challenges is it is, the way that our brains are function and the limbic part of the brain, the neural networks and neuroplasticity, when we have negative experiences, we can get stuck there, and we lose hope in the future. But it is possible when you understand how this limbic part of the brain works. It's just doing what it can to try to protect itself. Remember the 3 prime directives that I talk about so often in these podcasts? Three prime directives of the limbic system survive by avoiding pain seeking pleasure.

So when we have terrible negative experiences we're taking advantage of, then our system says we can't trust, so we're not gonna do anything. I'm not even gonna try anymore because it's too hurtful. Then I'm thinking of that amazing story of Helen Keller. You know, the anyway, when she makes this statement. So in the limbic system, we're searching for security, but if we can keep the pre keep the prefrontal cortex online, she says security does not exist in nature nor do the bulk of the children of men ever experience that security.

You know, life is either a daring adventure or nothing. So so trying to resurrect hope, belief that no matter what we have been through, no matter what trauma, there is purpose, there is hope that we can continue to move forward and find strength, but that begins by creating a vision of the future self you want to be. Without that picture in your mind's eye, it's it's really impossible to find motivation to move forward. So I would encourage you to picture, ignite that imaginary part of you, the all powerful part. There is a part in yourself that is more powerful than all the negative things that have happened in the past, And that's the powerful eternal spirit intelligence that's within you that can look in the future in your mind's eye and create a picture of yourself a year from now, 5 years from now, 10 years from now as a mighty powerful force for good.

And as you you anchor that picture in your mind's eye, then you let that picture pull you forward day by day. Then that picture will help you choose the actions that you are participating in today. If there's anything you're doing today that is not in alignment with this amazing picture of yourself in the future, then you will be able to allow that picture to pull you and say, oh, I'm not gonna do that. Whether it's drugs, alcohol, or just a waste of time on inappropriate material online that grabs your mind or anything that is that that is deceitful or lying and taking advantage of other people. And I think the the the most important question in life is integrity, honor, courage, continuing to move forward, finding purpose in your life.

So, anyway, just want want to leave you with those thoughts. Notwithstanding what you have been through in your past, the negative experiences, it does not need to predict your future. There is something with inside of you that can supersede. It's the all powerful part in you. It's in your mind's eye that you can change whatever, wherever you're at by creating a picture in the future of yourself that you desire to become and it is absolutely 100% possible to reach that.