71. Past, Present, and Future You
I recently saw a social media post that said something like, “Depression is what happens when we focus on the past too much and anxiety is what happens when we focus on the future too much.”
And I thought, it’s not just thinking about the past or future too much. It’s thinking about them through the lens of the negativity bias.
(Yes, I realize that sometimes depression and anxiety may also be a chemical thing, but for the sake of this conversation, let’s consider the thought pattern angle.)
When we leave the brain’s built-in negativity bias unchecked, it focuses on all the bad parts of everything.
All the ways we weren’t good enough in the past.
All the ways we’ll likely fail in the future.
All the things that aren’t working now.
And through the lens of negativity bias, the past and future can seem pretty sucky.
They can seem very worth being upset about.
But the negativity bias never shows us the full picture.
It doesn’t mention all the obstacles we’ve overcome.
It doesn’t mention our excellent problem solving skills and our ability to figure shit out even when it’s hard.
It doesn’t mention all the wonderful things that could be possible for us.
If we want to see these things, we have to look for them on purpose.
Which is why this week’s podcast is all about how to view your past and future in a more fun, useful way, even if you’ve also made mistakes (we all have) and aren’t sure what your future holds (none of us are).
Oftentimes, we’re looking around at our lives and careers and we see things aren’t exactly the way we want them to be. That’s ok. It doesn’t mean anything has gone wrong. And it can be a great starting point for building a future that blows your mind.
Join me today and learn all about how you can view your past and future in more fun, useful ways that will help you build a life and career that’s deeply satisfying.
If you want to supercharge your capacity to create a life that blows your mind, I have some one-on-one coaching slots opening up soon. Send me an email and let's talk about it or click here to schedule a call with me and we’ll see if we’re a good fit to start working together!
If there are topics y’all want me to talk about on the podcast, feel free to write in and let me know by clicking here! I’d love to hear from you!
I have a super fun announcement. This July, I’m launching my group coaching program Satisfied as F*ck. It’s one of the coolest things I’ve ever designed in my life, so if you want to come together and be part of a community, build relationships, and figure things out so your life can feel satisfied as f*ck, click here to sign up to the waitlist.
WHAT YOU’LL LEARN FROM THIS EPISODE:
Why worry is a misuse of our imagination.
How to find useful content in your worry or anxiety.
Why we find it so difficult to see the positives when we look to the past or look at our current circumstances.
Why I’m grateful to my past self for things I wouldn’t repeat and that did not feel good.
How to look at your past through a different lens that puts your present into a useful perspective.
Why doing what we’re taught to do culturally or advised to do doesn’t necessarily create safety, and often creates the opposite.
What you can do to cultivate a feeling of safety around your future.
How to take it to the next level and think of your future as full of spectacular possibilities.
LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE:
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FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
This week we’re talking about the past, the present, and the future.
You are listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It, the podcast for ambitious, high-achieving women who are ready to stop feeling stressed about work and kiss burnout goodbye forever. Whether you’re starting a business or staying in your day job, this show will give you the coaching and guidance you need to start loving your work today. Here’s your host, Career Coach, Kori Linn.
Hey, y'all. Happy Wednesday. I'm just over here having a little bit of a laugh with myself because in my head I've been calling this episode The Ghost of Christmas Future. Which obviously is a reference to whatever that famous thing is it's a reference to. What is it a reference to? A Christmas Carol? It's like, you know, I just think of the Muppet version in my head. Anyways, you know what it is a reference to or look it up.
My best friend Monet is a writer. And she writes all these like short stories, essays, poems, and for a lot of them, there's like the actual title and then there's the thing that she and I call it. And usually I can't ever remember the real titles, so that's kind of how I feel about this episode, The Ghost of Christmas Future.
Which that concept of the Ghost of Christmas Future may or may not have anything to do with what I'm talking about. It just has the word future in it and so does this, so my brain is like these go together. So yeah, welcome to life with my brain. That's what it's like here.
Okay, so I wanted to talk to you about this because I saw recently some post about how like, what did it say? I think it said depression is what happens when we focus on the past too much. And anxiety is what happens when we focus on the future too much. And then like, blah, blah, blah, something about the present. I don't remember exactly what it was.
But what I think a lot about is the human brain’s negativity bias and how when we leave the negativity bias unchecked it kind of makes everything feel terrible. And I think that that is what's happening sometimes when we look at our past with regret, and despair, and unhappiness, and disappointment, and shame. And then we look to our future and get anxious and worried about the uncertainty, and super worried that things won't work out the way we want them to.
And it kind of reminds me of this quote, and I don't know who did this quote, “Worry is a misuse of the imagination.” So a quick Google search revealed that this quote is by Dan Zadra. And I have no idea who that is, but I like it as a quote. And I think it ties into all of this together, right? I do think it's a misuse of the imagination because it makes us feel terrible and it keeps us focused on what could go wrong versus what could go right.
But I also want us to have so much gentleness and compassion for the fact that we have a negativity bias and that doesn't make us bad or wrong. That's like a built in function of our brain. And for some people, like doctors and lawyers, they're actually trained to have even more of a negativity bias because their training trains them to focus on all the things that could go terribly wrong and how to plan for them.
And it's interesting because there's something useful to that too, about how to plan for it. But it's so easy, I think, for so many of us to get stuck there. So this kind of brings me to the point where we can review my concept that I call useful content, which is if we're having a lot of worry or catastrophizing about the future or regret and sadness about the past, we can look into that for the useful content for any information that might be available there.
Like information about like, “Oh, I did that, and I wish I hadn't. So maybe I'd like to do something differently in the future.” That could be useful content about the past. Useful content about the future could be like, “Oh, I'm really worried that this thing will happen. Okay, well, are there any safeguards I can set up? Or can I make a plan for if that did happen, what I would do, et cetera, et cetera.”
So it's kind of like not just getting stuck in the oh no energy, right? Not just getting stuck in the negativity bias. Okay, so that's that. That's not even the main part about what I want to talk about, though, today. What I want to talk about is the positive framing, right? So looking to our past to see what we can be grateful for.
And that is not how most people are thinking when they're looking to their past. And I think I actually originally got this idea from Brooke Castillo, who talked about, I think it was maybe on one of her podcasts. I actually don't really know where and I'm not going to go hunt it down because I'm going to walk my talk of being like, we don't have to be perfectionist to do good work.
So somewhere, one time, I believe that Brooke Castillo said that she was grateful to her past self for quitting drinking because in her current life it's not something she has to worry about, or work on, or do anything about, like it's done now. And I found that idea to be so powerful and it's something I wanted to bring to you for you to think about.
So often we're looking around our lives and we're looking at our career and things aren't exactly the way we want them to because even if we've done a bunch of fucking amazing shit, we usually still have goals or things we want to achieve. And the human brain has that, what do you call it? Like the hedonic treadmill, where something that seems really amazing and luxurious, once we get it, we get used to it and then it no longer seems luxurious and amazing. And then our brain is like on to what's the next goalpost? What's the next thing I could work towards?
And all of that can kind of keep us in this state of perpetual dissatisfaction. And then we also, my clients in particular, and me, then we're like, “Well, why am I working so hard? Because I'm always dissatisfied, so what's the point?” And then we're like do-do-do and we wind up in the fuck it effect, which is not a fun place that many of us want to be, right?
So instead, what I want to offer today, what I want to teach you today is this concept of looking to your past first, to see what you did well and what you can be grateful to past you for doing. So often we're looking to past us with this critical gaze where we're like, “Uh, why weren't you perfect?” Which really is kind of just a rude question since past you, like current you, and like future you, is a human.
Past you was never going to be perfect. Current you, never going to be perfect. Future you, unless some really significant changes happen in what it means to be a human being, probably future you is not going to be perfect either.
So when we can just shuck off this expectation that we should ever be perfect, then we can look to past us and go, “Okay, what did you do amazingly well? How did you set current me up for success? What could I be really grateful to you for?” And this isn't so we can gratitude should or gratitude shame ourselves, this is just so we can look at our own past through a different lens.
Okay, so this is where I think examples can be really helpful, right? So I'm a person in the world with a relationship, and a business, and with goals I haven't achieved yet. So I can look at my whole life through the lens of these goals I haven't achieved yet, like business goals, money goals, relationship goals, creativity goals, any kind of goals.
But there are also so many goals I have achieved. And there's so many things past me went through, that now current me doesn't have to do something or deal with it because past me did it already. Okay, so let's look at some really basic examples.
Past me learned how to walk and talk. For most of us, walking and talking is so basic it doesn't even register. But that is something that past me had to do. And if you've ever met children, that shit takes effort. Past me learned how to read.
It's really convenient to current me that I can read, and reading is actually easy, and I can read and walk at the same time. And I can type text messages and walk at the same time, although I don't recommend that. Sometimes you trip and fall down when you do that. But I can do it, right?
I actually use this metaphor with my clients all the time, that when they're trying to learn something new and they're really struggling, I'm like, “Hey, but do you remember what it was like to learn how to drive a car?” Because that shit was terrifying. I remember going 25 miles an hour feeling like this is the scariest thing I've ever done. Now driving a car is easy, so that's another thing I can be grateful to past me for.
Calling up these memories also helps us realize that when we're trying to learn to do new things in our 30s and 40s, and 50s, and 60s, and 20s, and 80s, and whatever age we are, it's totally possible. And if it feels hard, that doesn't mean anything's gone wrong. That's just often what learning feels like.
But sometimes we're so disconnected from what learning feels like because we haven't done it a long time that it can seem like it's like this really impossible thing. It's not, it just takes consistency and some effort. But then later, that consistency and effort can become something that doesn't require consistency or effort at all.
Like if I just didn't write for like months and months, I would still be able to write. My hand might cramp a little, but it's not like I would forget that skill. That is in there now. I have that now. I can be grateful to past me.
So those are like the super basic examples, but here's some other things for me in particular. I'm so grateful to past Kori for leaving her corporate job and starting a business. And that shit, as I've talked about before, not for the faint of heart y'all. That was hard and it was terrifying.
And that past me struggled so much, wept so much, regretted, and questioned her decision so much. And I had to go through so much learning, and growth, and change to go from being her in her business to become being me in my business. And current me benefits so much from the work that she did.
Like I remember early in my business, when I would post on social media, it would take so much effort. It felt so vulnerable. I would get literally nauseous, and I would like write one post and then I would have to like lay down on the couch to recover from the vulnerability of having put myself out there. Now I can post like, I don't post that many actual posts, but I do like a fuck load of stories.
And the other day I did like 13 Instagram stories and that was not effort, that was just like, “Oh, I'm having a thought and I want to share it with people.” Like, “Oh, I saw this cool thing and I want to share it with people and tell them my opinion on it.” It's easy now. It's easy now because past me did that fucking hard work and felt all the vulnerability and fear and developed the courage and developed the muscle, like the emotional muscle to be able to do that.
Okay, what other things has past me done that I'm super grateful for? Past me paid my fucking student loans off. That shit is done now. I don't ever have to worry about that again. And past me did that. Now, it's interesting because back when I had student loans I had so much like aggression, and rage, and despair about having gotten into them. I had so much judgment for the past me that got into those student loans.
So I think this is really interesting and I want to point this out because for one thing, if this is the head space you're in with your past you, there was other stuff I was still able to be grateful to past me about. Not that I was necessarily doing that, I can just see it now from my current vantage point.
But also, even if there's something in your past that you're really upset with yourself about, that can become a symbol of triumph when you overcome it. Now, I personally think people should not be having to have the kind of student loans we have. And I think the cost of higher education should be a lot less expensive and all of that. But it's also a symbol of personal victory that I was able to pay off the student loans that I had.
And let's also just call out my privilege because I had a lot less than other people. So if you haven't paid yours off, do not use my success to make yourself feel shitty. I had help with college and I took out loans, and I was able to pay them off. And part of it is because I was putting really large quantities every month towards that. But that's also because I had the privilege of having a really high paying tech job in Seattle.
So, again, we can find things to be grateful about to our past selves. But with that negativity bias, our brain often will jump to like, “How can I feel shitty about this? How can I hurt my own feelings? How can I make someone else's success mean I should feel bad because I haven't done the thing they've done yet?”
We're not on the same journey, we don't have the same circumstances. But we can all use the tools that I'm teaching to create a life that feels good and works better for us. And then we can also go address systemic oppression and systemic problems and deal with them. Okay, so that was just like a mini rant there.
So here's another example of how I use this, sometimes there are things that I have decided I'm going to do that I do not want to do. I'm going to be vulnerable and honest with y'all and tell you that as much as I love, love, love, love talking to you, five minutes before it's time to record a podcast, I don't ever want to. It's not because I don't like being here and talking to you. Like I just said, I do like being here and talking to you.
Once I'm recording the podcast I'm like, “Yeah.” But right before I'm going to my brain is always like, “Oh no, I don't want to do that, I want to do something else. I want to scroll on Instagram, I want to take a walk in the sun. I want to just lay on this bed.” Right? And I just know that that's part of having a human brain, is that my brain is not going to want to do effort sometimes, even if it's effort I actually do want to do.
So one of the ways that I handle that, and the other thing that this comes up with a lot is grocery shopping. I do almost all the grocery shopping for my household, but I never want to go to the grocery store. And I often don't enjoy it while I’m there. I don't like unenjoy it, it's just kind of like neutral. I'm like, “Okay.”
Sometimes I'm really happy if they have something I really want or I find something fun that I've never tried before to eat or like, I don't know, some new and interesting wine or whatever. But it's not, I don't like live for it. I'm not excited to do it.
But the way I always get myself to grocery shop and the way I get myself to cook a meal when I just don't feel like it in the moment is I think of it as a gift for my future self. So this is an interesting thing, is current Kori can look back at past Kori and select things to be grateful about, and just like not that she was necessarily doing on purpose for me as a gift. But also I, current Kori, can think about what I can set up that's going to be a gift for my future self.
And I'm not always right about that. Sometimes I'm like, “I'm doing this nice thing.” And then future Kori is like, “I don't like that.” Right? Like maybe sometimes I try a new recipe and then she's like, “Well, I don't like this food.” That's okay, it's not going to always work. It's not about hitting it out of the park 100% of the time. It's about developing a friendly, courteous, loving, gentle, kind, grateful, did I say that already, relationship with yourself.
It's kind of just about like being a friend to yourself, right? So instead of looking your past and being like, “You didn't make good decisions and you should have made these better decisions. And I wish you'd done this other thing.” And name calling or that kind of like judgy critical self-talk. It's about going like, “Yeah, you weren't perfect because you're a human, darling, and none of us are ever going to be. But you did some things really, really well.”
And then we can also go together part of like, “And these other things didn't match up to my values, didn't match up to who I want to be as a person. What do I want to do with that information?” But always starting with like, what can I be grateful for? How have you made my life better? What can I give you praise about?
Now, some of y'all might be like, “Why? Why would we do this? Beating my past self up helps me stay focused and helps me keep going.” And to that I would just say, one, does it? Because I coach a lot of people and generally, what I've found is that beating themselves up about the past doesn't create a lot of helpful action now.
It usually just makes them feel like shit and then they want to numb, or avoid, or go pleasure bomb themselves because it's painful to live their life in their head with the thoughts that are there, right, with those self-criticisms. Versus starting with praise and then moving into like, okay, what maybe, is there something we could learn? What would we like to do differently? Et cetera.
I think that helps us be fired up for what's possible, right? It helps us think that it's worth it to do some action. It's worth it to keep going, it's worth it to try to set those gifts up for future us. And we come into this kind and almost, it's like an almost symbiotic relationship with ourselves, but ourselves in the past and future.
And I just also think it's a lot more fun. I don't know about you, but I'd rather be spending my time with people who are friendly and kind. Yeah, they'll still call me on my shit. Current me can call past Kori on her shit. Future me can call current me on my shit. But I can do it in a loving way.
So it's not about lying to myself, it's just also it's about understanding that I'm a complex human being who is doing some things that I'm really pleased with and really proud of, and doing other things that I'm not. And I can have positive regard for myself, even in that. And I can use the things that are going well to help guide myself into being more of who I'd like to be in the world, in my relationships, in my career, fucking everywhere y'all. Anywhere you want to.
So that is the lens of being grateful to our past self. And that is the lens of setting ourselves up to give gifts to our future self that then the future self can be grateful for. Let's also just dip into for a minute, a lot of us when we think about the future, think about it through the lens of worry. We think about it through the lens of anxiety. We think about it through the lens of like, what could go wrong? And how do I keep myself safe?
And how do I keep myself safe isn't necessarily a bad question. But I think it just is really like what's the vibe and mood of how we're asking that? Is it like how do I keep myself safe because if I don't do what everyone else does, then I'll be ostracized and it'll be terrible. And so I have to do all these things I don't want to do.
Because that's how I see a lot of people do it, right? Like when they say safe, what they really mean is I'm going to choose the traditional path. I'm going to do what my mom told me to do. I'm going to do what my dad told me to do. I'm going to do what some other elders told me to do.
I'm going to follow the rules that culture has set out for me as a person who was socialized as a woman or as a person who was socialized as whatever other identity you've been socialized as. Versus thinking about how do I cultivate safety and a life I like at the same time? How do I cultivate safety on my own terms?
Okay, so that's like the very basics is moving from what if the future is this terrible thing that will happen to me, into how do I cultivate safety for myself? How do I be like my own power source and realize that following other people's advice doesn't necessarily create safety. Doing what we are culturally taught to do, doesn't necessarily create safety. And a lot of times it actually creates the exact opposite, especially when we're living in an identity that is marginalized in our culture.
Okay, that's the baseline. But where I really want to take you to is this idea of how do I make my future spectacular? How does current me set future me up to have a spectacular life, both in what I'm doing now and the gifts I'm giving and the effort that I'm willing to do now, so that future me doesn't have to do it? And then also, how do I cultivate this wild vision for what life could be like, right?
Because again, that negativity bias will come in and be like, “Oh no, a bad thing could happen. Oh no, how do I keep myself safe in that, like what I'm going to call the constricting, the how do I keep myself, versus how do I cultivate safety?”
And I think it really constricts what we see as possible for ourselves. It really limits the possible futures we imagine. And we're like, “Well, the best possible case is that I have to do what everyone told me to do. And then I get to retire at 70.” And I don't know, whatever that thing is. Versus like, we're so good at imagining like insane negative outcomes, what if we could practice imagining insane positive outcomes?
Now, here's where I want to be really clear. It's not so we can just fantasize about them and daydream and be like, “Yeah, it'd be so cool if I win the lottery.” That's not what I'm talking about. You're allowed to do that too, but that's not what I'm talking about here.
I'm talking about thinking it through, like if anything were possible for my future, if I didn't have to do things the way that they've been done before. If I didn't have to live my career according to the rules of careers that I grew up hearing about implicitly and explicitly. If anything were possible what would I like to have happen? And how can I actually begin to create that for myself now?
So for me, right, it's like if you think to past me, who used to be current me, who was at Expedia and was like, “I want to quit and launch this coaching business,” right? It was about being like, staying at Expedia felt so safe. It was like the traditional thing, I had the good paycheck, I had the 401k, I had the good health insurance, I had all that. And I was walking away from the known, walking into the unknown.
So I had all those same constricting fears that I'm talking about of like what if I'm making a terrible mistake? I'm walking away from this amazing job, what if I regret this? I'm not following the advice of the culture, which is like get the job and stay in the job. So I had to imagine this other spectacular future for myself.
And I was good at that part, but I was doing it in a fantasy way. I was like, “Yeah, I'm going to make $100,000 in my first 12 months, and it's going to be amazing. And I'm going to love it and it’s going to be so fun. So sometimes it's going to start with fantasy, but then I want you to move from fantasy into imagining in a way that's also about building it, not just about like fantasizing about it, right?
So I had to go into like, “Okay, now I've quit my job, the fantasy of the 100k is fun. But that fantasy wasn't building the business for me.” So then it had to be about imagining this wild future, this insane in a delicious way future. And then figuring out, how do I build that? What can I do that's going to help me build that?
So to recap, when we come to the future, I'm talking about being wildly expansive in what we're willing to imagine for ourselves. And yeah, we're probably going to spend a little time in fantasy and then moving from fantasy into planning, into building, into making it happen.
And all the while continuing to cultivate the belief that it's possible. And that it's not more realistic to spend all our time thinking about the ways that could go wrong than it is to think about the ways that could go right. And then begin to make those things happen for ourselves.
So like I've been saying the whole episode, human brain has that negativity bias. So when we think to the future, negativity bias is like, “Oh, I have a lot of ideas about all the fucked up terrible things that could happen. And I wrote my list and I have it. And I'm going to present this PowerPoint to you about all the terrible things.”
And so it's our job to be like, “Thank you. Thank you, negativity bias, I know you're just here to keep me safe. I appreciate your presentation. I'll pull out any useful content there is. And now I'm also going to want to see a PowerPoint from wild desire. Now I'm going to want to see a PowerPoint from anything's possible. Now I'm going to want to see a PowerPoint from if no one had ever taught you what a career had to look like, what would you like for your career to look like?
If no one had ever taught you what a marriage had to look like, what would you like your marriage to look like? Do you even want a marriage? Maybe you don't. If no one had ever taught you this is what a home looks like, what would you want your home to look like?” In the yummiest, most delicious way possible just like really immersing yourself in the what could go right, what could be amazing, at least as much as we immerse ourselves in what could be terrible, what could go wrong.
And then that final step, not to be discounted, is to take that fantasy, that beautiful vision, that wild desire and think about what's one tiny thing I can do today that's going to move me closer to that? Because that's how we move from it being a fantasy to it being a plan.
And I will say, you know, I've been doing a lot of this for years. And I'm in this really spectacular place that I used to dream of, and in so many ways is also like way beyond what I used to dream of. And it doesn't look exactly like I thought it would, right? So that's also normal and to be expected, that when you have this wild desire and then you begin to actually build it in the real world, it's going to look, and feel, and taste, and smell a little different.
And then you're also going to be honing it and trying things. Maybe you fantasized about this thing and you're like, “I actually don't like that thing now that I've got it. So maybe I'm going to tweak it and do it a little different.” I'm running into that all the time.
I had never built a multiple six-figure business before I built this one so there was a lot I had to learn and a lot I had to unlearn. That doesn't mean anything had gone wrong. It's just what happens along the way. Okay? Okay.
So this is basically what I want you to think about, is when you think about your past, your present, and your future, what shifts when you think about it through a different lens and that negativity bias? What shifts when you think about it through the lens of gratitude for the ways that past you has set you up for success, even if past you didn't set you up for success perfectly?
And this delicious possibility for the future, that is delicious possibility that is like harnessed into taking action towards that. Not just like letting it be a fantasy that comforts us while we change nothing in our lives.
And, as always, if you don't want to do this work alone, you don't fucking have to. You can come do it with me and a group of amazing humans. I am launching the Satisfied As Fuck group coaching mastermind in July, and it's going to be spectacular. And this is exactly the kind of thing we're going to work on. And if you think group is not really your speed, I also have some one on one spots that will be opening up in a few months, so you can come work with me that way too.
I would love to work with you and help you develop so much gratitude and appreciation for past you, while also developing a future that just thrills the fuck out of you. Is that even a thing, thrills the fuck out of you? It just thrills you to bits and pieces, okay? That's what I have for y'all, have an amazing week. I'll talk to you next time. Bye.
Thank you for listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It. We'll have another episode for you next week. And in the meantime, if you're feeling super fired up, head on over to korilinn.com for more guidance and resources.
You are listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It, the podcast for ambitious, high-achieving women who are ready to stop feeling stressed about work and kiss burnout goodbye forever. Whether you’re starting a business or staying in your day job, this show will give you the coaching and guidance you need to start loving your work today. Here’s your host, Career Coach, Kori Linn.
Hey, y'all. Happy Wednesday. I'm just over here having a little bit of a laugh with myself because in my head I've been calling this episode The Ghost of Christmas Future. Which obviously is a reference to whatever that famous thing is it's a reference to. What is it a reference to? A Christmas Carol? It's like, you know, I just think of the Muppet version in my head. Anyways, you know what it is a reference to or look it up.
My best friend Monet is a writer. And she writes all these like short stories, essays, poems, and for a lot of them, there's like the actual title and then there's the thing that she and I call it. And usually I can't ever remember the real titles, so that's kind of how I feel about this episode, The Ghost of Christmas Future.
Which that concept of the Ghost of Christmas Future may or may not have anything to do with what I'm talking about. It just has the word future in it and so does this, so my brain is like these go together. So yeah, welcome to life with my brain. That's what it's like here.
Okay, so I wanted to talk to you about this because I saw recently some post about how like, what did it say? I think it said depression is what happens when we focus on the past too much. And anxiety is what happens when we focus on the future too much. And then like, blah, blah, blah, something about the present. I don't remember exactly what it was.
But what I think a lot about is the human brain’s negativity bias and how when we leave the negativity bias unchecked it kind of makes everything feel terrible. And I think that that is what's happening sometimes when we look at our past with regret, and despair, and unhappiness, and disappointment, and shame. And then we look to our future and get anxious and worried about the uncertainty, and super worried that things won't work out the way we want them to.
And it kind of reminds me of this quote, and I don't know who did this quote, “Worry is a misuse of the imagination.” So a quick Google search revealed that this quote is by Dan Zadra. And I have no idea who that is, but I like it as a quote. And I think it ties into all of this together, right? I do think it's a misuse of the imagination because it makes us feel terrible and it keeps us focused on what could go wrong versus what could go right.
But I also want us to have so much gentleness and compassion for the fact that we have a negativity bias and that doesn't make us bad or wrong. That's like a built in function of our brain. And for some people, like doctors and lawyers, they're actually trained to have even more of a negativity bias because their training trains them to focus on all the things that could go terribly wrong and how to plan for them.
And it's interesting because there's something useful to that too, about how to plan for it. But it's so easy, I think, for so many of us to get stuck there. So this kind of brings me to the point where we can review my concept that I call useful content, which is if we're having a lot of worry or catastrophizing about the future or regret and sadness about the past, we can look into that for the useful content for any information that might be available there.
Like information about like, “Oh, I did that, and I wish I hadn't. So maybe I'd like to do something differently in the future.” That could be useful content about the past. Useful content about the future could be like, “Oh, I'm really worried that this thing will happen. Okay, well, are there any safeguards I can set up? Or can I make a plan for if that did happen, what I would do, et cetera, et cetera.”
So it's kind of like not just getting stuck in the oh no energy, right? Not just getting stuck in the negativity bias. Okay, so that's that. That's not even the main part about what I want to talk about, though, today. What I want to talk about is the positive framing, right? So looking to our past to see what we can be grateful for.
And that is not how most people are thinking when they're looking to their past. And I think I actually originally got this idea from Brooke Castillo, who talked about, I think it was maybe on one of her podcasts. I actually don't really know where and I'm not going to go hunt it down because I'm going to walk my talk of being like, we don't have to be perfectionist to do good work.
So somewhere, one time, I believe that Brooke Castillo said that she was grateful to her past self for quitting drinking because in her current life it's not something she has to worry about, or work on, or do anything about, like it's done now. And I found that idea to be so powerful and it's something I wanted to bring to you for you to think about.
So often we're looking around our lives and we're looking at our career and things aren't exactly the way we want them to because even if we've done a bunch of fucking amazing shit, we usually still have goals or things we want to achieve. And the human brain has that, what do you call it? Like the hedonic treadmill, where something that seems really amazing and luxurious, once we get it, we get used to it and then it no longer seems luxurious and amazing. And then our brain is like on to what's the next goalpost? What's the next thing I could work towards?
And all of that can kind of keep us in this state of perpetual dissatisfaction. And then we also, my clients in particular, and me, then we're like, “Well, why am I working so hard? Because I'm always dissatisfied, so what's the point?” And then we're like do-do-do and we wind up in the fuck it effect, which is not a fun place that many of us want to be, right?
So instead, what I want to offer today, what I want to teach you today is this concept of looking to your past first, to see what you did well and what you can be grateful to past you for doing. So often we're looking to past us with this critical gaze where we're like, “Uh, why weren't you perfect?” Which really is kind of just a rude question since past you, like current you, and like future you, is a human.
Past you was never going to be perfect. Current you, never going to be perfect. Future you, unless some really significant changes happen in what it means to be a human being, probably future you is not going to be perfect either.
So when we can just shuck off this expectation that we should ever be perfect, then we can look to past us and go, “Okay, what did you do amazingly well? How did you set current me up for success? What could I be really grateful to you for?” And this isn't so we can gratitude should or gratitude shame ourselves, this is just so we can look at our own past through a different lens.
Okay, so this is where I think examples can be really helpful, right? So I'm a person in the world with a relationship, and a business, and with goals I haven't achieved yet. So I can look at my whole life through the lens of these goals I haven't achieved yet, like business goals, money goals, relationship goals, creativity goals, any kind of goals.
But there are also so many goals I have achieved. And there's so many things past me went through, that now current me doesn't have to do something or deal with it because past me did it already. Okay, so let's look at some really basic examples.
Past me learned how to walk and talk. For most of us, walking and talking is so basic it doesn't even register. But that is something that past me had to do. And if you've ever met children, that shit takes effort. Past me learned how to read.
It's really convenient to current me that I can read, and reading is actually easy, and I can read and walk at the same time. And I can type text messages and walk at the same time, although I don't recommend that. Sometimes you trip and fall down when you do that. But I can do it, right?
I actually use this metaphor with my clients all the time, that when they're trying to learn something new and they're really struggling, I'm like, “Hey, but do you remember what it was like to learn how to drive a car?” Because that shit was terrifying. I remember going 25 miles an hour feeling like this is the scariest thing I've ever done. Now driving a car is easy, so that's another thing I can be grateful to past me for.
Calling up these memories also helps us realize that when we're trying to learn to do new things in our 30s and 40s, and 50s, and 60s, and 20s, and 80s, and whatever age we are, it's totally possible. And if it feels hard, that doesn't mean anything's gone wrong. That's just often what learning feels like.
But sometimes we're so disconnected from what learning feels like because we haven't done it a long time that it can seem like it's like this really impossible thing. It's not, it just takes consistency and some effort. But then later, that consistency and effort can become something that doesn't require consistency or effort at all.
Like if I just didn't write for like months and months, I would still be able to write. My hand might cramp a little, but it's not like I would forget that skill. That is in there now. I have that now. I can be grateful to past me.
So those are like the super basic examples, but here's some other things for me in particular. I'm so grateful to past Kori for leaving her corporate job and starting a business. And that shit, as I've talked about before, not for the faint of heart y'all. That was hard and it was terrifying.
And that past me struggled so much, wept so much, regretted, and questioned her decision so much. And I had to go through so much learning, and growth, and change to go from being her in her business to become being me in my business. And current me benefits so much from the work that she did.
Like I remember early in my business, when I would post on social media, it would take so much effort. It felt so vulnerable. I would get literally nauseous, and I would like write one post and then I would have to like lay down on the couch to recover from the vulnerability of having put myself out there. Now I can post like, I don't post that many actual posts, but I do like a fuck load of stories.
And the other day I did like 13 Instagram stories and that was not effort, that was just like, “Oh, I'm having a thought and I want to share it with people.” Like, “Oh, I saw this cool thing and I want to share it with people and tell them my opinion on it.” It's easy now. It's easy now because past me did that fucking hard work and felt all the vulnerability and fear and developed the courage and developed the muscle, like the emotional muscle to be able to do that.
Okay, what other things has past me done that I'm super grateful for? Past me paid my fucking student loans off. That shit is done now. I don't ever have to worry about that again. And past me did that. Now, it's interesting because back when I had student loans I had so much like aggression, and rage, and despair about having gotten into them. I had so much judgment for the past me that got into those student loans.
So I think this is really interesting and I want to point this out because for one thing, if this is the head space you're in with your past you, there was other stuff I was still able to be grateful to past me about. Not that I was necessarily doing that, I can just see it now from my current vantage point.
But also, even if there's something in your past that you're really upset with yourself about, that can become a symbol of triumph when you overcome it. Now, I personally think people should not be having to have the kind of student loans we have. And I think the cost of higher education should be a lot less expensive and all of that. But it's also a symbol of personal victory that I was able to pay off the student loans that I had.
And let's also just call out my privilege because I had a lot less than other people. So if you haven't paid yours off, do not use my success to make yourself feel shitty. I had help with college and I took out loans, and I was able to pay them off. And part of it is because I was putting really large quantities every month towards that. But that's also because I had the privilege of having a really high paying tech job in Seattle.
So, again, we can find things to be grateful about to our past selves. But with that negativity bias, our brain often will jump to like, “How can I feel shitty about this? How can I hurt my own feelings? How can I make someone else's success mean I should feel bad because I haven't done the thing they've done yet?”
We're not on the same journey, we don't have the same circumstances. But we can all use the tools that I'm teaching to create a life that feels good and works better for us. And then we can also go address systemic oppression and systemic problems and deal with them. Okay, so that was just like a mini rant there.
So here's another example of how I use this, sometimes there are things that I have decided I'm going to do that I do not want to do. I'm going to be vulnerable and honest with y'all and tell you that as much as I love, love, love, love talking to you, five minutes before it's time to record a podcast, I don't ever want to. It's not because I don't like being here and talking to you. Like I just said, I do like being here and talking to you.
Once I'm recording the podcast I'm like, “Yeah.” But right before I'm going to my brain is always like, “Oh no, I don't want to do that, I want to do something else. I want to scroll on Instagram, I want to take a walk in the sun. I want to just lay on this bed.” Right? And I just know that that's part of having a human brain, is that my brain is not going to want to do effort sometimes, even if it's effort I actually do want to do.
So one of the ways that I handle that, and the other thing that this comes up with a lot is grocery shopping. I do almost all the grocery shopping for my household, but I never want to go to the grocery store. And I often don't enjoy it while I’m there. I don't like unenjoy it, it's just kind of like neutral. I'm like, “Okay.”
Sometimes I'm really happy if they have something I really want or I find something fun that I've never tried before to eat or like, I don't know, some new and interesting wine or whatever. But it's not, I don't like live for it. I'm not excited to do it.
But the way I always get myself to grocery shop and the way I get myself to cook a meal when I just don't feel like it in the moment is I think of it as a gift for my future self. So this is an interesting thing, is current Kori can look back at past Kori and select things to be grateful about, and just like not that she was necessarily doing on purpose for me as a gift. But also I, current Kori, can think about what I can set up that's going to be a gift for my future self.
And I'm not always right about that. Sometimes I'm like, “I'm doing this nice thing.” And then future Kori is like, “I don't like that.” Right? Like maybe sometimes I try a new recipe and then she's like, “Well, I don't like this food.” That's okay, it's not going to always work. It's not about hitting it out of the park 100% of the time. It's about developing a friendly, courteous, loving, gentle, kind, grateful, did I say that already, relationship with yourself.
It's kind of just about like being a friend to yourself, right? So instead of looking your past and being like, “You didn't make good decisions and you should have made these better decisions. And I wish you'd done this other thing.” And name calling or that kind of like judgy critical self-talk. It's about going like, “Yeah, you weren't perfect because you're a human, darling, and none of us are ever going to be. But you did some things really, really well.”
And then we can also go together part of like, “And these other things didn't match up to my values, didn't match up to who I want to be as a person. What do I want to do with that information?” But always starting with like, what can I be grateful for? How have you made my life better? What can I give you praise about?
Now, some of y'all might be like, “Why? Why would we do this? Beating my past self up helps me stay focused and helps me keep going.” And to that I would just say, one, does it? Because I coach a lot of people and generally, what I've found is that beating themselves up about the past doesn't create a lot of helpful action now.
It usually just makes them feel like shit and then they want to numb, or avoid, or go pleasure bomb themselves because it's painful to live their life in their head with the thoughts that are there, right, with those self-criticisms. Versus starting with praise and then moving into like, okay, what maybe, is there something we could learn? What would we like to do differently? Et cetera.
I think that helps us be fired up for what's possible, right? It helps us think that it's worth it to do some action. It's worth it to keep going, it's worth it to try to set those gifts up for future us. And we come into this kind and almost, it's like an almost symbiotic relationship with ourselves, but ourselves in the past and future.
And I just also think it's a lot more fun. I don't know about you, but I'd rather be spending my time with people who are friendly and kind. Yeah, they'll still call me on my shit. Current me can call past Kori on her shit. Future me can call current me on my shit. But I can do it in a loving way.
So it's not about lying to myself, it's just also it's about understanding that I'm a complex human being who is doing some things that I'm really pleased with and really proud of, and doing other things that I'm not. And I can have positive regard for myself, even in that. And I can use the things that are going well to help guide myself into being more of who I'd like to be in the world, in my relationships, in my career, fucking everywhere y'all. Anywhere you want to.
So that is the lens of being grateful to our past self. And that is the lens of setting ourselves up to give gifts to our future self that then the future self can be grateful for. Let's also just dip into for a minute, a lot of us when we think about the future, think about it through the lens of worry. We think about it through the lens of anxiety. We think about it through the lens of like, what could go wrong? And how do I keep myself safe?
And how do I keep myself safe isn't necessarily a bad question. But I think it just is really like what's the vibe and mood of how we're asking that? Is it like how do I keep myself safe because if I don't do what everyone else does, then I'll be ostracized and it'll be terrible. And so I have to do all these things I don't want to do.
Because that's how I see a lot of people do it, right? Like when they say safe, what they really mean is I'm going to choose the traditional path. I'm going to do what my mom told me to do. I'm going to do what my dad told me to do. I'm going to do what some other elders told me to do.
I'm going to follow the rules that culture has set out for me as a person who was socialized as a woman or as a person who was socialized as whatever other identity you've been socialized as. Versus thinking about how do I cultivate safety and a life I like at the same time? How do I cultivate safety on my own terms?
Okay, so that's like the very basics is moving from what if the future is this terrible thing that will happen to me, into how do I cultivate safety for myself? How do I be like my own power source and realize that following other people's advice doesn't necessarily create safety. Doing what we are culturally taught to do, doesn't necessarily create safety. And a lot of times it actually creates the exact opposite, especially when we're living in an identity that is marginalized in our culture.
Okay, that's the baseline. But where I really want to take you to is this idea of how do I make my future spectacular? How does current me set future me up to have a spectacular life, both in what I'm doing now and the gifts I'm giving and the effort that I'm willing to do now, so that future me doesn't have to do it? And then also, how do I cultivate this wild vision for what life could be like, right?
Because again, that negativity bias will come in and be like, “Oh no, a bad thing could happen. Oh no, how do I keep myself safe in that, like what I'm going to call the constricting, the how do I keep myself, versus how do I cultivate safety?”
And I think it really constricts what we see as possible for ourselves. It really limits the possible futures we imagine. And we're like, “Well, the best possible case is that I have to do what everyone told me to do. And then I get to retire at 70.” And I don't know, whatever that thing is. Versus like, we're so good at imagining like insane negative outcomes, what if we could practice imagining insane positive outcomes?
Now, here's where I want to be really clear. It's not so we can just fantasize about them and daydream and be like, “Yeah, it'd be so cool if I win the lottery.” That's not what I'm talking about. You're allowed to do that too, but that's not what I'm talking about here.
I'm talking about thinking it through, like if anything were possible for my future, if I didn't have to do things the way that they've been done before. If I didn't have to live my career according to the rules of careers that I grew up hearing about implicitly and explicitly. If anything were possible what would I like to have happen? And how can I actually begin to create that for myself now?
So for me, right, it's like if you think to past me, who used to be current me, who was at Expedia and was like, “I want to quit and launch this coaching business,” right? It was about being like, staying at Expedia felt so safe. It was like the traditional thing, I had the good paycheck, I had the 401k, I had the good health insurance, I had all that. And I was walking away from the known, walking into the unknown.
So I had all those same constricting fears that I'm talking about of like what if I'm making a terrible mistake? I'm walking away from this amazing job, what if I regret this? I'm not following the advice of the culture, which is like get the job and stay in the job. So I had to imagine this other spectacular future for myself.
And I was good at that part, but I was doing it in a fantasy way. I was like, “Yeah, I'm going to make $100,000 in my first 12 months, and it's going to be amazing. And I'm going to love it and it’s going to be so fun. So sometimes it's going to start with fantasy, but then I want you to move from fantasy into imagining in a way that's also about building it, not just about like fantasizing about it, right?
So I had to go into like, “Okay, now I've quit my job, the fantasy of the 100k is fun. But that fantasy wasn't building the business for me.” So then it had to be about imagining this wild future, this insane in a delicious way future. And then figuring out, how do I build that? What can I do that's going to help me build that?
So to recap, when we come to the future, I'm talking about being wildly expansive in what we're willing to imagine for ourselves. And yeah, we're probably going to spend a little time in fantasy and then moving from fantasy into planning, into building, into making it happen.
And all the while continuing to cultivate the belief that it's possible. And that it's not more realistic to spend all our time thinking about the ways that could go wrong than it is to think about the ways that could go right. And then begin to make those things happen for ourselves.
So like I've been saying the whole episode, human brain has that negativity bias. So when we think to the future, negativity bias is like, “Oh, I have a lot of ideas about all the fucked up terrible things that could happen. And I wrote my list and I have it. And I'm going to present this PowerPoint to you about all the terrible things.”
And so it's our job to be like, “Thank you. Thank you, negativity bias, I know you're just here to keep me safe. I appreciate your presentation. I'll pull out any useful content there is. And now I'm also going to want to see a PowerPoint from wild desire. Now I'm going to want to see a PowerPoint from anything's possible. Now I'm going to want to see a PowerPoint from if no one had ever taught you what a career had to look like, what would you like for your career to look like?
If no one had ever taught you what a marriage had to look like, what would you like your marriage to look like? Do you even want a marriage? Maybe you don't. If no one had ever taught you this is what a home looks like, what would you want your home to look like?” In the yummiest, most delicious way possible just like really immersing yourself in the what could go right, what could be amazing, at least as much as we immerse ourselves in what could be terrible, what could go wrong.
And then that final step, not to be discounted, is to take that fantasy, that beautiful vision, that wild desire and think about what's one tiny thing I can do today that's going to move me closer to that? Because that's how we move from it being a fantasy to it being a plan.
And I will say, you know, I've been doing a lot of this for years. And I'm in this really spectacular place that I used to dream of, and in so many ways is also like way beyond what I used to dream of. And it doesn't look exactly like I thought it would, right? So that's also normal and to be expected, that when you have this wild desire and then you begin to actually build it in the real world, it's going to look, and feel, and taste, and smell a little different.
And then you're also going to be honing it and trying things. Maybe you fantasized about this thing and you're like, “I actually don't like that thing now that I've got it. So maybe I'm going to tweak it and do it a little different.” I'm running into that all the time.
I had never built a multiple six-figure business before I built this one so there was a lot I had to learn and a lot I had to unlearn. That doesn't mean anything had gone wrong. It's just what happens along the way. Okay? Okay.
So this is basically what I want you to think about, is when you think about your past, your present, and your future, what shifts when you think about it through a different lens and that negativity bias? What shifts when you think about it through the lens of gratitude for the ways that past you has set you up for success, even if past you didn't set you up for success perfectly?
And this delicious possibility for the future, that is delicious possibility that is like harnessed into taking action towards that. Not just like letting it be a fantasy that comforts us while we change nothing in our lives.
And, as always, if you don't want to do this work alone, you don't fucking have to. You can come do it with me and a group of amazing humans. I am launching the Satisfied As Fuck group coaching mastermind in July, and it's going to be spectacular. And this is exactly the kind of thing we're going to work on. And if you think group is not really your speed, I also have some one on one spots that will be opening up in a few months, so you can come work with me that way too.
I would love to work with you and help you develop so much gratitude and appreciation for past you, while also developing a future that just thrills the fuck out of you. Is that even a thing, thrills the fuck out of you? It just thrills you to bits and pieces, okay? That's what I have for y'all, have an amazing week. I'll talk to you next time. Bye.
Thank you for listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It. We'll have another episode for you next week. And in the meantime, if you're feeling super fired up, head on over to korilinn.com for more guidance and resources.
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