What would you say to your past self?

Living is knowing that we will get thrown some hard punches. So it shouldn’t be a surprise when they come. 

If we were to get asked the question, “what advice would you give your past self?”, many of us would go into trying to prevent those hard punches from happening to us. 

But do we realize they are the ones that made us who we are? Haven’t they (hopefully) made us wiser? Because life will continue to throw the lessons at us until we learn them. 

We seek advice from others who have gone on their own transformative journeys. We crave stories of people who have lived the struggle, survived, and changed the course of their lives. 

“How did you do it? What's the secret? What’s your advice? If you lived again what would you change? How can I go through this too?”

We all ask those questions with hopes that the answers we hear will cure us of our struggles or prevent them from happening. 

Rich Roll said on his podcast that we are all on unique journeys and the tough stuff that we go through, will eventually make us better. He said he wouldn’t want to change anything that happened, because his struggles as an addict and later as an overweight person, eventually led him to his athletic career and podcasting. 

He said that it was through the struggle that his own life story was able to form. Had he somehow avoided those struggles, he wouldn’t be who he is today.

“The real test in strength is when everything goes wrong,” said Rich on a Yes Theory podcast. 

It’s not about avoiding the bad things that happen to us. It’s a matter of understanding that difficult times are bound to come our way, but it’s about our perspective on them. How we can use them as fuel?

This isn’t to say we can’t have help along the way. Rich certainly did, and we can too. 

On a recent Yes Theory podcast, Thomas Brag was asked what advice he’d give his childhood self. He replied, “I wouldn’t say anything. I want to let myself figure it out. Advice is good, but I don’t want to give myself any shortcuts. From the lessons I learned, the harder it was to learn them, the deeper they became. So I want to let myself figure it out. It’s good to learn the lessons. The hard way is usually the truest way. And as shitty and uncomfortable it is to not know what’s on the other side, those are the lessons that truly stick with you for the rest of your life.”

The Stoics talked about this too. Their concept of Amor Fati, or love of fate, means loving whatever happens because it makes you better. 

Looking each difficulty in the eye and saying I’m going to make the most of it. I’m not going to let this stop me and I’ll be much better for this having happened. Ryan Holiday says to use whatever happens to you as fuel because it’s the only way that turns the bad things in life into good things. Instead of fighting and resisting what happens to you, accept it and love it all. 

Two thousand years ago Marcus Aurelius wrote “we accept what the doctor prescribes. It may not always be pleasant, but we embrace it–because we want to get well.”

In his Stanford Commencement speech in 2005, Steve Jobs recounted how being fired from Apple had been the best thing that could have happened to him. Being fired from the company he started freed him to start a new company called NeXt and another called Pixar. A few years later Apple bought NeXt, and Jobs returned to Apple. 

 “It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it,” he said.

It’s not about giving in to hardship or accepting it passively. It’s about agreeing to work with it. See hardship as an opportunity, as Ryan Holiday writes. We can turn what happens to us into fuel. 

Don’t become obsessed with preventing every hardship or curing it. You have the wisdom in yourself to know how to turn the difficulty to your advantage. Use it as fuel for your fire. 

“A blazing fire makes flame and brightness out of everything that is thrown into it,” –Marcus Aurelius

So, what would I say to my past self? I’d just tell myself to remember that obstacles are just part of my story and I will always have to face them. But to remember that within me is the faith, courage, and wisdom, to know that despite how uncomfortable they will feel, I will be better for them having happened. As my mentor, Charisse says, “the universe is unfolding as it should.”

Sharing light, love and kindness,

Maria

Song I’m blasting while I ride my bike:

Book I’m reading:
Ender’s Game | Sci-fi written in the 80s yet still hits home today, and will hit home tomorrow. Many of the concepts (like internet and tablets) pre-date it’s time so I kept having to remember these were not even in existance when it was written. It contains evergreen wisdom woven in sentences and concepts that I read and re-read. It’s complex yet easy to read. It’s deep thoughts yet so relatable. (Besides the author’s seemingly non-virtuous personal life), I thought it was an excellent read.

Recent photo: waking up in the Davis Mountains of West Texas