In today’s video, you’ll learn why you can’t blame the you of the (even recent) past for not meeting the bar you’ve set for yourself today.

 If you’ve been wondering how to get your confidence back—the kind that can help you make peace with the decisions of your past as well as change what’s possible for your future—then you can’t miss this week’s discussion.

“After ending a 10 year relationship in 2020 while things ended on good terms and I have no regrets, I’m trying to reconcile with myself why I stayed for three more years than I should have. Matt, how do you get to that core confidence piece again or at all after having gone through this kind of failed investment?” Look, the thing that you have to remember is that you did the best you could with who you were at the time and the information that you had at the time and the stage of your development that you were are in. It’s one of the things that we beat ourselves up for at the end of a process. That process could be in a job that we stayed in for far too long, far longer than we should have. It could be with a family member who we’ve dealt with their stuff for far too long and we didn’t create the distance that we should have at the time that we should have.

It could be in a relationship where we spent so long with someone past the point where we saw the red flags, where we saw the writing on the wall, where we saw the ways that they were going to hurt us, the ways that this relationship wasn’t going to be what we needed. It’s very easy to look back and to beat ourselves up and because most of us are aware that life is short, we look at the time that’s been wasted and we beat ourselves up about that. We don’t just beat ourselves up for not acting. We beat ourselves up for all of the wasted time and the time that we could have been doing something else. We all have different belief systems. My belief system is that every step of the way we do what we were always going to do based on our level of development, what information we had at the time, what resources we had, what our parents taught us growing up, who our role models have been and our are at the time, what someone was telling us, what our fears were, what our level of confidence was at the time, what books we’d read at the time.

Meng, maybe if you and I had come across each other at that time, maybe you would’ve made a decision a year earlier, or six months earlier, or three years earlier, we’ll never know, but guess what? You can’t beat yourself up about that because we didn’t. You and I didn’t meet then. We met today. So you can’t beat yourself up about information you didn’t have or you may say, “But I did have the information, Matt. I read your book before that. I was following your advice or I should have done because I knew what it was and I knew the red flags because I’d already been through them with this guy. I knew what was going to go wrong. I saw it all. I had all the information.”

Okay, but then you weren’t ready. You weren’t ready. You weren’t at a place in your life where you’d been through enough of those lessons or enough of that pain in order to change. So you have to say to yourself, “I’m going to show compassion towards that me from three years ago who was doing the best she could at the time. And her best is different from what my best is today. Me, Meng today, my best is different from her best.” Your best might be different, by the way, because you’re now on this call and you’re having all of these new realizations and your brain is making new connections. And as a result, you’re evolving into a different person right now.

So you can’t compare the you that you are today with the you that you were then. This is a new best. So don’t blame the old you for not being able to do your new best. Be grateful that you have a new best and you get to benefit from it now because some people die before ever reaching that moment. Some people never get there. You’re still here. You’re still breathing. You know when people say, “If only I knew then what I know now,” I always think, the fact that you’re saying that to me means you know it now. It means you’re still alive. It means you can still benefit from it. You know now. So don’t worry about the then. You’re still breathing. I’m not talking to a corpse who’s saying, “If only I knew while I was still alive what I know today.” No, you know it today and you’re breathing right now and you’re saying it to me, which means you know it now, which means it can create whole different life for you now.

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I really love this concept because I have spent a lot of time in my life, beating myself up for things that I wish I had done differently. And the thing that has given me, I suppose, self-forgiveness, a huge part of that has been realizing that at the time I really did my best with the resources that I had. What’s exciting is that when we get a new input into our lives, we can suddenly open up whole new worlds in terms of what’s possible. The fact that you are watching this video now is a new input into your life, which is going to completely change what’s possible for you. People often wonder, “Well, how do I stop myself repeating the mistakes of the past?” When we get new information, new input, whether it’s in the form of advice, a new mentor, new information, new skillsets, that is the key to not repeating the mistakes of the past because we’re becoming a different person by what we input into our brain. I would love if it wasn’t just this video that did that for you at this point in your life.

I’d love if it was something bigger. And I have something bigger coming up right now. This month we are hosting my Virtual Retreat. If you don’t know about it by now, I don’t know where you’ve been. We’ve been talking about it non-bloody stop. Those of you who have been watching every video are probably sick of it. But here we are. If you don’t know by now, my Virtual Retreat is coming up from the 24th to the 26th of September and registration closes on the 19th. This is a three day immersion program with me as your coach guiding you through the biggest challenges and opportunities in your life right now. So I’m telling you now as a last call, if you want to come and join us this month on a bigger journey with me, three days of immersion coaching for your entire life, your internal growth and your external growth in reshaping your life to be what you want it to be in every area, come join us. Registration closes tomorrow. Go to MHVirtualRetreat.com to learn more and I’ll see you over there. I really hope you come. I’ll see you soon.