3 Ways to Stop Letting Your Past Control Your Life

SPEAKER_1 (0:02)

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Arthur Brooks (0:30)

This show today is dedicated to something that's actually kind of painful. A negative kind of experience that's sort of ongoing for a lot of people, and that's bad memories. That's painful experiences. That's regret. There's probably something that you do in your life, something that's making you avoid people, places, activities. You can't really avoid bad memories and regret. By going someplace, not talking to somebody, because they're going to keep haunting and haunting. You can change your perception. You can even rewrite some of these memories. They take bitter old memories and make them not so bitter. So I want to tell you three ways to reconstruct your past that maintains the core knowledge, truth, and facts, but that shades it in a particular way, that it can help you learn and grow and become a happier person.

Hey, friends, welcome to Office Hours. I'm Arthur Brooks. This is your show about the science of love and happiness and how you can use it. How you can be a happiness teacher and join me in the movement of lifting people up and bringing them together in bonds of happiness and love using the podcast that has been thought and said in science, philosophy, wisdom, literatures, and everything else in between. Thank you so much for joining me. I'm delighted. I hope you're a subscriber to this podcast. If you've been watching this for a little while, if you're not, please do hit the subscribe button and the like button that really helps the algorithm, but it also helps to get the show directly to you so you don't have to look at it. And if this is your first time, well, welcome. I'm glad you're here.

Somebody probably recommended it to you or who knows, maybe YouTube or Spotify recommended it to you. I hope you like it as much as the algorithm thought you might. This show today is dedicated to something that's actually kind of painful for a number of people, but it has the philosophy that we always bring to Office Hours, which is that hard things are actually opportunities, that struggle is actually an opportunity for us to learn and grow. We know that that is absolutely the case. I've talked again and again on this program about how important it is that we have negative emotions for our ability to assess threats and avoid these threats, how important it is for us to live through negative experiences and interactions that are negative with people because that's how we learn and grow. The whole point is that we need an entrepreneurial mindset to our own lives. When everybody else says, oh, that's terrible, we should have the attitude of, you know, I think that's actually an opportunity for me to be a better person, for me to be a happier person. Well, today, I want to talk about a negative kind of experience that's sort of ongoing for a lot of people. And that's baggage. That's bad memories. That's painful experiences. That's regret. If I do my job in this episode, I am going to convince you that there are tangible ways that you can rewrite your memories. You can actually take negative things that have happened to you and memories that you have that you don't like. And maybe you're trying desperately to avoid and turn those into a source of growth, those into a source of happiness and teach these ideas to other people as well. This is an incredible way for you to make your life more generative and much, much happier. Okay. We're not quite there yet. I do want to ask you a couple of other favors before I go on to the episode. If you have anything to feedback on this episode or any other set of ideas, what do you wish I were talking about in the show? Please do write to me at the email address is officehours.arthurbrooks.com or just put it in the comments below, whether you're on Spotify or Apple podcasts or on YouTube, wherever you're looking at this. Also, don't forget to leave a review, whether you like it or not. Please do leave a review. It's important to us to know because this is not all about you telling me I'm great. If you don't think the show is good, it's all about me hearing what you like and what you don't like so we can make it better. Now, if you like these ideas and you want a written form in a different day of the week, please subscribe to my newsletter. That's not exactly like a show. It's three to 500 words with ideas that you can actually use. It usually starts off with a couple of stupid jokes by me as well. So you can get that completely free by going to the website, arthurbrooks.com/newsletter. If you want to think a little bit about getting together with other people in this community, maybe even doing a happiness retreat, you can find out where those are going on because we have a lot of in-person stuff going out in our world by going to retreats.arthurbrooks.com. Right now, you're like Neo in The Matrix. You can keep scrolling, experiencing a simulation of life, or you can wake up to how your attention is being harvested for profit. It's happening to people all over the world right now. You don't want to be productized like this anymore, but it's hard. Tech addiction is so potent because it's been designed to tap into your dopamine system. Just like heroin, porn, gambling, you've got the cravings, you're addicted. You don't like it, and I don't either. But I can't just tell you to stop doing it. That's hard. If you want to break free from the system, you need an incentive. Here's one. Why don't you join a phone company that pays you not to use your phone? If you want to reduce brain rot, get Noble Mobile. It pays you to use less data. It gives you an incentive to unplug. Noble Mobile is the phone plan that finally aligns incentives with what's good for you. Use less data, earn money back. And when you do, you'll be living once again in real life, and you're going to like how it feels. Let's move on now to the topic of today to talk about our toughest memories. There's probably something that you do in your life, something that's making you avoid people, places, activities. Some of you are really, really hesitant to go home.