Dr. Aziz (speaker) explains why ruminating and self-chastising about past mistakes doesn't produce learning and instead creates a self-protective pattern that reduces risk-taking. He distinguishes learning via natural consequences (punishment/negative feedback) from prolonged rumination, invites listeners to reclaim control of their internal voice, and teases a forthcoming personal philosophy that will make one "immune to regret." The tone is motivational and didactic, aimed at encouraging self-compassion and proactive growth.
Chapters
How do you let go of past mistakes? And you might be experiencing this suffering of things from the past. It could be recent, like, whoa, why did I stay in that relationship? Or why did I date that person in the first place? Or why did I say that at work? Or why didn't I do this thing? Or why didn't I see that? Oh my gosh, how could I have left that there? And oh, right, and. Or way back like, oh, why did I do that when I was in, you know, college or in fourth grade or whatever. Right. And so whether it's recent or a long time ago, a shift is needed because there's kind of a default approach to life that you know, you might have learned growing up. And it's kind of like, yeah, you make mistakes and you regret them. And then you're like, that sucks. And then if you regret it enough and criticize yourself enough, you'll learn and you'll do better. And that's sort of a default programming that actually doesn't really work. That the learning doesn't come from the self chastising and the ruminating and the attacking. The learning actually comes immediately from the sort of the consequence of the experience. So the bad thing happened and you're like, ugh, you know, like you thought it was a great fit and so you got in the relationship and then you're like, or you didn't speak up and then something happened that was even worse and you're like, like that, that sort of. In behavioral conditioning they call that punishment. That means a stimulus that is unpleasant or at least or something you like is taken away. But in this case, you get negative consequence or feedback from life and then you're like, I don't want to do that again. Right. And so you do learn. The learning already occurs. The learning is mostly unconscious and when you're grinding yourself on it for weeks or months or years later, you are not learning. You are engaging in a pattern. This is so important. I want you to listen to this. When you're ruminating on a past mistake, you're not learning. You're engaging in a pattern of self attack designed to scrunch you into a safer, less risk taking position so that you are trying to get through your life without pain. And so it's chastising you. Oh, you should have seen it coming, you should have done this. And it's based upon some illusion that there's this perfect pathway through life where you're not going to feel pain. And if you're just smart enough and you just did it right, you wouldn't feel any pain. And that is a crazy delusion that unless you call it out, we can all fall into. So you got to call it out and say, that's not how life works. Life is all of it. Life. Life is a mixture of pleasure and pain, good outcomes and bad outcomes. The good outcomes I call successes or wins. The quote, bad outcomes I call mistakes or failures. And then the more you freak out about those, you don't get just more good outcomes because you freaked out about your mistakes. You are collapsing. Your nervous system, your energy system, your emotional system, your mind, everything is in place, loading to try to get experience. Fewer discomfort, fewer outcomes. So what we need to do is we need to shift that and say, bring it all on. Yeah, I'm here to do all of it. I'm here to grow. I'm here to test things out. And so a key thing right now is just to like, access power in your body right now and say, I have permission to make mistakes. And you claim that you like, who the hell is owning your reality and lording something over you? Who is that voice in your head that's beating you up? You are in control of that. You are the captain of your fucking ship. And, and if there's this like, oh, but that voice just tells me I'm no good, you're like diluting your, the power of your soul and, and misperceiving who and what you really are, which is a powerful creator who's connected with the creative force. And so as that powerful creator, you can say, wait, no, no, no, no. I don't know who I'm looking at, but I'm looking at that voice that's in my head and I say, no, I don't do that anymore. I'm not going to beat myself up and grind myself on this. And if you want to take one thing steps, one step, one thing further, the best solution to this overall is to adopt a rock solid personal philosophy of your choosing. And when you choose that personal philosophy, that personal philosophy makes you immune to regret and to mistakes. Do you want to know what that is? I'm going to share what that is in the next weekly confidence boost, so stay tuned for that. In the meantime, what I invite you to do is to, when you are grinding on mistakes to take ownership right now and say, that's not how I learn. That's not what I'm going to do anymore. I'm doing something different. I'm going to be on my own side. I'm going to be more forgiving. I'm going to be more loving. I'm going to be more forward thinking. What do I want to do? What do I want to create? What am I here to do? And you take control of that ship. Next weekly confidence boost. I'm going to share a mindset, a personal philosophy that makes you immune to regret and to even feel like things are mistakes. Alright, stay tuned for that until we speak again. May have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level that you're awesome.
