Put Your Past In The Past: Live Your Best Life and Break Free From The Chains of Your Past with Janelle Bruland - Genius Network Episode #192

I had this critical voice in my head that was always judging me, that was saying I couldn't do this, was beating me up all the time. Until one day I thought, you know what? I'm going to own my mindset. I'm going to set an intent to have a positive, abundant mindset and I'm going to have more noble thoughts than my mind can absolutely hold. I'm going to renew my mind.

If you'd like to join world renowned entrepreneurs at the next Genius Network event or want to learn more about Genius Network, go. Go to www.giusnetwork.com. if you could put your past behind you and stop reliving it, what could happen with your life right now? Your life is not without loss, pain, tragedy and difficulties. The question is, how can you leave those negative experiences behind you? Yes, leave them back in the past and focus on the positive things that you have right now in the present. Janelle is an award winning entrepreneur, best selling author, speaker and high performance coach who inspires her clients to live impactful and successful lives. Her award winning this yellow book right here is the Success five Simple Truths to Overcome, Overwhelm and Achieve Peace of Mind. Success magazine calls it a must read for those seeking success. Since you're here to live a life of significance, it's up to you to discover what that is. Yet in order to do that, you got to understand what's holding you back. Your story may have a lot of drama, even trauma that has left you feeling a myriad of emotions. But your story is not over yet. Janelle will teach us how to create the next chapter in your story with even more intent.

Whether you realize it or not, every day you're late. The story of your life. Everything that's been written up today is part of your story. It's already happened. It's already been written. You can't go back and change that part of your story, even though some of you may want to. But what you can do is you can go forward from today and create this next chapter of your life with more intent. You can live a better story. Think of your life as a timeline from the beginning until now. Take a look at your life decade by decade and think of all the significant events in your life and how they've shaped you. Now you're going to have a lot of positive things. Maybe a wedding, birth of a child, start of a business. But as we talked about this morning, many of you have had challenges as well. Maybe there's been a divorce, maybe significant illness, maybe loss of a loved One, these traumatic events can derail you. They can hold you back from everything that you're called to be. So I have a question for you today. I want you to think about, just for a minute. Is it possible that you're missing out on your best life because of the pain of your past? Is it holding you hostage? Think about that. Your past can get in the way of your best future. We want to stop looking in the rearview mirror. This is not the life that you've been called to. You've been called to this amazing, abundant life. But sometimes you can be held hostage by the things of your past. So what do you need to do? Today we're going to talk about three ways to put your past in the past. You got to uncover the lies. You got to take back your power. And then you choose to live a better story. So you may have this great plan for your life. And then it takes this unexpected turn. It may have happened to you. It happened to me. It was a Monday of a typical work week. That fast paced floor where you look at the clock and you can't believe it's time to get home already. I didn't know then it was going to become a pivotal day. A day now forever ingrained in my memory. While I'd been out all day as founder of a busy facility management company that was growing, I've been in meetings all day. Productive. But I was ready to get home to my family. So I drove home and I arrived in my driveway. I shut off the car, I grabbed my bag out of the backseat and I walked into the house. Used to the ma'.

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It was unusually quiet. I didn't see my husband or my kids. I didn't think anything of it. I walked down the hall into my office and I dropped my bag in the chair by my desk. And then I looked out the window and I could see my two little girls, age 4 and 7, playing out in the swings in the backyard. Brought a smile to my face. I thought to myself, where's their dad? They'd been left in his care that day. Then I remembered I hadn't seen his truck when I came in the driveway just a few minutes before. Well, I went out my office door and down the steps into the backyard. And then the girls saw me and they came running. They threw their arms around me. Don't you love those little kid hugs? Yeah. After our usual hellos, I said to them, girls, where's your daddy? And then my 7 year old somberly looks up at me and says, daddy's not here. He left with a suitcase. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. My four and seven year old home alone for who knows how many hours, my husband was gone. Without any warning, without any notice, he'd intentionally abandoned his family. Well, that began the closing chapter of what had been 18 years, painful years of being married to an addict. And he did never come back. And I became a single mom for many years. And you know, you're a high achieving entrepreneur. You pull it together and you go out and you have this good life anyway. And I had a lot of success, but I kept being held hostage by the pain of my past until I made a decision. I realized something. I realized I had a choice to make. And so do each one of you. You can let the situation completely derail you or you can choose a different perspective. So I decided to pick up the pen and write a new chapter. So if something is still holding you back today, despite the work you've done, what do you need to do? Well, number one, you've got to uncover the lies. Wow. I got good at telling myself lies. Do you do that too? Sometimes. I told myself all of these storylines of everyone was always going to judge me. I was never going to be good enough. My kids certainly were not going to be okay. I was always going to be alone. What storylines do you tell yourself? See if any of these sound familiar to you. I'm a failure. I'll be hurt again. I can't move beyond my past. I can't change. Everyone has it together but me. How many of you relate to one of those? Have told yourself one of those lies and a challenge in your life? Yeah, many of you. But here's the truth. The truth is that you don't have to be victim to the circumstances and the difficulties that will invariably come your way. Instead, these kinds can be teachers and instrumental to your growth. Instrumental. So I have a question for you. Who holds the pen in your story? You do. You hold the pen. So are you ready to create this next chapter of your life with more intent? Put your past in the past. So take back your power when you've had trauma happen. Many of you were talking about this just this morning. Doesn't it make you feel powerless? Yeah. Not powerful. Power. Less. I remember one typically terribly bad day. I was up in my bedroom. I wanted to crawl into this little ball and never get up. And I remember crying out to God that day and said, God, how am I supposed to do this? How am I supposed to be mom and dad to these little Girls, how do I keep running this business? How do I hold this all together? I felt so alone. And you know what? God met me in my bedroom that day, and I realized I wasn't alone. And he was going to give me the strength that I needed to go forward. And then you know what? I realized that I had the power. And you know what? I always had had the power within me. And so do you. You've always had the power, my dear. You just had to learn it for yourself. Choose to live a better story. So you have to accept your pain as part of your story. It's just a chapter, right? It's just a chapter. It's not the end. You can go forward from today. And now you have this blank page to write this completely new chapter of your life to design this beautiful life that you've been called to. So remember, it's not if you're going to face challenges. It's when. Not if, when. But you know what? You can't control the conditions around you. But you know what you can control? You can control yourself. Your attitude and your response. And you can choose a mindset and perspective that's going to lead you forward in the life of significance that you're creating instead of one that holds you back. So choose your mindset to change your story. Wow. This was transformational for me. And it's going to be for you, too. You know what? Those lies that we were talking about, those lies that we tell ourselves, I realized that I had this critical voice in my head that was always judging me, that was saying, I couldn't do this. It was beating me up all the time. Until one day I thought, you know what? I'm going to own my mindset. I'm going to set an intent to have a positive, abundant mindset. I'm going to have more noble thoughts than my mind can absolutely hold. I'm going to renew my mind. And I began to keep track of my mindset throughout the day. When I had positive thoughts, I would make note of that. And then when I had those negative thoughts, I would grab those two. So I started to track my mindset. I encourage you to do the same. In my journal, I gave myself a score every day. A one, two, or a three. A one is I had a positive, optimistic mindset throughout the day. Number two was neutral. I'd had some times I caught myself thinking negatively, sometimes positively. It was back and forth throughout the day. And number three, it was just one of those days. And you know what? Either I had a negative mindset all day or you know what? I didn't even remember. And that's not good either, because you can't own your mindset if you're not present and paying attention. So you know what happens? Those threes become twos and the twos become ones. As you do this, you build this habit. You begin to rewire your mind and your body that's so used to suffering, that's so used to beating yourself up, and it makes such a difference. And all of a sudden, automatically, without even thinking about it, you've built this new habit. And you're exchanging these negative thoughts for positive. And you exchange judgment for understanding, complaining for being grateful, negativity for positivity and scarcity for abund. So start today. Will you start today? So I want you to think about what your mornings look like. Don't you get out of bed every morning joyful and ready to start the day? Oh, come on. No, I don't always either. But you know what you can do is you can choose what kind of day that you're going to have. Every single day, no matter how you wake up, you can choose what kind of day you're going to have. So choose. Decide. Decide that you're going to have a great day. Decide you're going to have an optimistic attitude. Decide that you're going to look forward to your future. Or decide that you're grateful for everything that you have. You gotta put your past in the past. So remember that your life, your story, doesn't have to continue with what it was before. You don't have to continue the way it's been written so far. Because you know what? You have the pen and you have the power to live a better story. So I want you to imagine. I want you to imagine this new chapter that you've created. And you know what you've done. You've identified what's holding you hostage from your past. Even if you've worked on it before and you're still not quite there, you're still finding yourself, fighting that you've identified it. You've done the work. There's people here like Dr. Dawn that can help you. You do the work and then you stop looking in the rear view mirror because it's a new day and you're only just going forward now. And you have a mind and a body that's full of peace, of joy, of purpose. It's just waiting there for you to step into. Are you ready to step into this next chapter of your life with more intent? Put your past in the past.

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