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Stop Cheating on Your Future

• Terri Wilson

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Have you ever caught yourself replaying past mistakes in your mind, over and over again, like a cow ruminating on its cud? That mental habit might be more dangerous than you realize—you're literally cheating on your future with your past.

This episode explores the powerful concept that most of us are cheaters, not of relationships, but of our own potential. When we remain fixated on yesterday's failures, embarrassments, and wounds, we rob ourselves of the energy needed to create tomorrow's possibilities. Through a personal story about a friend who bluntly commanded "Stop it!" when conversations veered toward the past, we examine how these wake-up calls can jolt us into awareness of our self-sabotaging patterns.

The journey takes us through several transformative lessons: trusting our intuition even when it feels uncomfortable, speaking our truth regardless of how others might perceive us, and finding the delicate balance between honoring our past experiences and living fully in the present moment. Using the metaphor of a figure eight, we explore how true power exists at the intersection of past and future—that sweet spot of presence where real change becomes possible.

What makes this conversation especially meaningful is the recognition that while our past experiences aren't meant to be dwelling places, they can serve as powerful tools to help others when we've processed and integrated their lessons. Your challenges might be exactly what someone else needs to hear about to find their own path forward.

Ready to break free from the cul-de-sac of rumination? Tune in, take a deep breath, and discover how to stop cheating yourself out of the vibrant future that awaits when you release the grip of yesterday's stories. Your journey to authentic freedom starts with this simple question: where are you on the spectrum today?

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Speaker 1:

Are you a cheater? Are you disloyal? Do you cause paranoia thoughts in yourself or others? No, no, no, you say. Well, I'm here to tell you that you probably are a cheater. Don't believe me? Well, come along for the ride and let's just see what the cards deal us.

Speaker 1:

Today shall we Welcome back to Free to Just Be that podcast empowering humanity to courageously step out of old patterns and programs and give a big old hug to new ways of being. And I hope this finds you in the greatest health, with vibrant energy today, because you have chosen to accept full responsibility for your body, mind and soul, here, with Teresa Marie, your traveling ambassador of Chi. Together, we'll inspire each other to truly be who we came here to be, to truly be who we came here to be authentic, free and align with our highest potentials. So join me on this transformative journey to rewrite our narratives and live lives of purpose and passion. Hello, hello, hello on a beautiful Tuesday morning. And, yes, I am back in Tennessee. Tennessee, there ain't no place. I'd rather be, oh, but I know you're waiting to see why I would call you out, humanity. Call you out for being a cheater, because you know what.

Speaker 1:

I happen to believe that all of us, all of us are cheaters to a certain extent. And how are we cheaters? Well, the biggest person we cheat folks is ourselves. And how do we do that? Well, let me just ask you this have you ever thought about something that you did? Oh, maybe it's something that hurt somebody, or maybe you made a mistake, or you missed an opportunity, or you said the wrong thing. All right, now I know you're all tracking with me now because we've all done that shit right. Okay, but have you ever taken that particular situation or incident or mistake and thought about it incessantly, over and over again, kind of like the cow ruminating on her cud? Oh, why did I do that? And what did they think? And what's going to happen now? And, oh my gosh, why do I always keep doing this? And I got to find out the cause of this. And I'm such a jerk. And, oh, you're not a cheater. Well, I think we all are. And what we do is we cheat on ourselves. We cheat on our futures with our past. We cannot move forward oftentimes because we are running those tapes, running those tapes and we're cheating on our very own futures with our past. It's over, folks, it's absolutely over, and it's time to let the past go. But you know what this whole little beginning of today's podcast has? A whole bunch of little arms and legs that come out of it, and I'm going to open with a story and we're going to name this story. Stop it.

Speaker 1:

So when I originally left my life in Tennessee, when I blew it up, when I walked out on my husband and I decided that I needed to go solo, one of the first trips that I took was my first quote unquote solo trip to go spend the night with a dear friend of mine that lived about two hours from me up in the Johnson City area, and I was pretty excited. It was about a three hour trip and I had planned on staying for two or three days with this dear girlfriend of mine. And I got there and this was my first. This was kind of out of my comfort zone because I knew her. I had gone to a couple of events with her and saw her online frequently, but I'd never really been in a space of concentrated time with just her. And not only that, I was leaving my comfort zones to go into her territory, and you know what it's like.

Speaker 1:

Just track with me here for a minute. Don't we all feel more comfortable having people come to our home? Don't we feel more comfortable when we're in our place of refuge or our place of power, where we feel the most yes, powerful, most, yes, powerful in control? We feel less of that when we go to somebody else's arena. Why? Because they're in their place of power, right, it's just a normal human concept. You feel better and more at ease and more confident when you're in your place of confidence, right?

Speaker 1:

So, and I knew this, I knew that, you know, dude, I don't know, this is going to be kind of weird, but oh, I'm an adventurer, I'm a pioneer, I'm going to go do this, right? So I'm all excited and I drive, and I take this trip, and I get there and she has this beautiful secluded place of refuge in the country, beautiful views of the mountains, just a place of serenity, right. And I get there and, you know, after the initial highs, and she shows me around, and she shows me her property, and you know, I'm feeling really great to be there, and so we go into her house and I don't know, I think she made us a cup of tea or what have you. But we began to talk, and I'm a big talker, if you haven't picked that up yet and I am trying to ascertain a more deeper level of connection with this dear one, right?

Speaker 1:

So I start talking about myself, because all of us are really good at talking about ourselves, and if you ever really want to become a really great listener, just ask someone that you're trying to go on a deeper level with about themselves, because people love to talk about themselves. It's the easiest topic to talk about because they're very familiar with it. You know, you don't go into a conversation and talk about quantum physics with somebody that failed a science class, for example, right? But you know, if you say to them man, what'd you think of the weather yesterday, you know, did it affect your day? And then that person can take that question and run with it and talk about how. You know oh, my gosh, I was out in the rain. I hate driving in the rain, and on and on and on. You see what I'm saying, right?

Speaker 1:

So this is what I was attempting to do. I was attempting to open up this person that I wanted to get to know better. So I was. You know I can't remember what particular thing I said about myself, but I said, you know, I remember back in the day, blah, blah, blah. I remember back in the day, blah, blah, blah. What about you? Who are you, where did you come from?

Speaker 1:

And she didn't take the bait, and so, you know, a couple of more pieces of small talk, and then I went at it again. You know, I'm baiting the hook, I'm trying to get her to open up a little bit and I said something along the lines of you know, do you have siblings? You know, where do you sit in your family? You know, I'd like to know a little bit more about you. And this kind of went on for five or 10 minutes and all of a sudden now, mind you, I'm three and a half hours from home and I'm in somebody else's house and I'm planning on staying there for two nights, right, and I was tired from the prep and the drive, and we're conversating which, by the way, I was told early on in the conversation.

Speaker 1:

You know, there's no such word as conversate, you know, and I begged to differ internally, but I thought, oh, okay, well, you remind me of my mom who used to correct me all my grammar and I would write her letters and she would return them with circles around my grammatically incorrect English, right? So I'm thinking okay, so she's a little bit like my mother, right? Whatever? So I'm still continuing to develop this relationship by trying to delve into the past, by telling stories of my past, when suddenly she said stop it. Just like that, like right in my face, and I was like whoa, okay.

Speaker 1:

And so I veered the conversation into another direction. But conversation into another direction, but inevitably I, you know, I have always thought that the way that you get to know a person is you find out what their journey was, who they came from, where they lived, how many kids were in their family, you know what kind of work they did, that type of stuff, right? So again I'm prodding, I'm trying to talk about stories of my past in order to get her to give me some of her past, right? And again I'm in the middle of one of my past stories and this time it's vehement Stop it.

Speaker 1:

And now I'm thinking okay, what the heck is going on here? Now it's jumped all over me. I'm like what in the freak is going on? I drive three and a half hours and you're going to get in my face and tell me to stop it. And I'm like what, what am I doing? And she said stop talking about your past. I don't want to talk about my past, I would rather stay in the present. Let's talk about what's happening right now, shall we? And I was thinking, wow, okay, whoa, wow, do I really want to stay in this space for two nights, you know? So it really threw me and everything in me was saying get out, get out, leave, leave. You don't want to be here. But I thought, no, I I am going to stay right here and I'm going to observe and absorb whatever lessons I need to learn here through this woman, because this woman is very wise, she's um lot of holistic knowledge, she's got a very confident spirit. There was a lot of things about this new and developing friendship that I wanted to pursue, and I didn't come all this way to run. In fact, I think that was really the beginning of when I decided I didn't want to run away from anything anymore. Right, so I stayed.

Speaker 1:

And then the conversation turned and she said you know you use a lot of energy and you talk a lot about your past, but you do know that you're not your past right Now. I knew that in logic. I knew that in the development of my ascension journey, my awakening, I knew that we're not any of that. We're not our past emotions, we're not our thoughts, it's all energy. I was aware of that but she was so vehement about. You know that's a negative energy and why do you want to bring that in and poison it? And you know so I said you know you got a point. I do talk a lot about my past and in retrospect now. So this all occurred. That is the opening of the story that I want to tell you about that I learned so much from.

Speaker 1:

So that was the entry level, and then we went on that weekend. We had many conversations about many things, but I also had another lesson while I was with this woman, excuse me, and that is energies and intuition. So we had a great visit. I spent the night, the first night, and we talked about a lot of things, not anything more about our past. Then the next day arrived and it again came up and I was sharing with her. Well, you know, I chose a lot of these lessons, and what do you mean? Well, then I talked to her about well, what do you think about reincarnation? And we, of course, she was tracking there and I was like no, I know that, I know that I chose to come in here and I asked to do all of these lessons. So see, I believe that the things that I walked through were all things that I chose because I needed to learn those lessons and then take those lessons forward, yeah, but you know.

Speaker 1:

So there was kind of this, this little bit bit of difference between us. Then the next lesson came in, um, as the day went on and it had nothing to do with her, but something in my gut. Now we've talked about always listening to your gut, always listening to your inner, knowing your spidey sense, your intuition. Right Now I was learning that lesson. It was a big lesson for me that day and everything in me, my whole body language.

Speaker 1:

You know when you know yourself. You know when all of a sudden you're tense, you know when all of a sudden you feel like. You know when all of a sudden you feel like something's off right. And that's how I was increasingly feeling. And I knew right then that I wasn't to spend the second night with her. But now we had arranged that we were going to stay and I kept thinking to myself now I need to stay, but everything in me was going no, you're going home and I, you know I'm. So I'm having this battle in my head, yeah, but I I told her that I was going to stay and she's going to think that I'm running away and she's going to assume that because of what happened yesterday, because she got in my face and I reacted that I just don't like her anymore. And so I'm having this big argument in my head. But my body not only was becoming more tense, but now I had this weird ass headache at the base of my skull.

Speaker 1:

And I know now and maybe you have certain symptoms when you know that you know that something is off there might be a physical manifestation in your body that tells you warning, warning, flashing yellow light. Or, if it gets really loud, it may be a flashing red light, right? So that was happening to me and I kept, you know, asking in my head yes, believe it or not, you can have conversations in your head with your higher self, with the universe, with God, right in the midst of conversating with somebody else, conversating with somebody else. And so I was asking you know what is going on? What? What is this about?

Speaker 1:

And and finally I came to the knowing that I I needed to go. But I also needed to walk through that uncomfortability moment of sharing with my friend who, by the way, is still a really good friend of mine now, even after we've walked through this a couple of years ago. And I told her. I said, you know? She said well, what do you think we should do for dinner? And I said well, I think I'm going to go. Oh well, why Are you mad at me? Did I do something to offend you? And I said, no, but I'm learning.

Speaker 1:

Here comes lesson number two. I am learning to listen to my inner voice. I said right now, I have this headache at the back of my neck and I have been thinking for hours that I'm supposed to go home. But I've been battling and I literally explained to her what was going on. And she says oh, I understand that. She said sometimes I've had a headache until I choose what my inner knowing wanted me to choose, and then it went away. So she says I know exactly how that feels. So I understand. If that's what's going on, I just didn't want to offend you or, you know, make me be the cause of it. I said no, no, you know this isn't the case and I said I'll come back and visit you again. In fact I'm getting ready to set up a visit with her again in the next month or so, but anyway. So I literally packed up my stuff, headache still raging, but the second I laid that information to her.

Speaker 1:

The truth, oh the truth. And what does the truth do? It sets us free. So lesson two always go with your intuition, no matter how uncomfortable it is. And my second lesson was are you bold enough to actually speak that truth? And I did. And guess what? By the time I got to my car my headache was almost gone. By the time I got home I felt absolutely fine. And then I was able to give her, that witness, that testimony, that I was so glad that you let me work through that process. You didn't judge me, you didn't condemn me for sticking to my truth.

Speaker 1:

What was going on in my body? And then, after a couple of days of processing what occurred in the first lesson, I had a conversation with her and we talked about that and I told her dude, I was ready to fucking leave. I got there and she's laughing. She's just like yeah, sometimes I come on pretty strong. I said, absolutely. She says, well, I wasn't that strong. I said, no, you were like, stop it right in my face. I'm like I will forever think of that moment as stop it. And one day I told her I am going to do a podcast and I'm going to tell people about that incident. She said, well, don't use my name, bring me in and make me look negative. And of course I'm not doing that because it wasn't negative. It is a gem, it is a diamond in my toolbox of lessons, right.

Speaker 1:

But then I went on to tell her you know, I've been thinking so much about what you said about holding on to the past. I said but you know what? And I agree. I agree that we keep ourselves stuck many, many times. And how do we do that? Well, we keep looking back on the past and, no matter what, no matter how many times you think about it, you can't go back and fix it right, you can only go forward. So that becomes an issue when you just hang out there and are stuck right. And the past isn't a dwelling place, it's just a pathway, it's just something that occurred and we do need to make peace with it and we do need to continue to venture into the future Because, really, in the big picture, what is ahead is always greater than what you left behind, because life is all about taking risks, learning from them and then attempting not to replicate the things that didn't work right, and Living in the past. That's when it affects our present right, we're supposed to stay in the present. When we're depressed, we're usually in the past, and when we're anxious, it's usually because we're future chirping. So I got that, but I told her. You know, there's a little different vein that runs through me and it's this Excuse me, I have a frog in my throat today and that is I chose.

Speaker 1:

Now you can go back and, and you know, I I don't remember what episode it is, but I I talked about the lucid dream that I had about standing before the sages and getting ready to choose and having the girl in front of me who was saying well, I'm going to do one lesson. And she was talking like this and I'm behind her, I'm jumping up and down, my hands are both raised. Let's do this, let's do this, I'm going and I'm going to learn all these lessons. Why would you want to do one? That's so stupid, and the sages are behind me going. You know, 3d, the time is really, really crunched together and you want to do all these lessons and I'm like, yes, let's do it, let's do it. And the sages just shook their head.

Speaker 1:

Remember that story, humanity? If you've been following me, you probably remember me telling you that story. So see, I know that I chose all those lessons, but it's taking me 50 plus years to realize that there would come a time in my life bingo, the time has arrived that I was to turn around and use those lessons to give a hand up to somebody coming after me, because I have walked through all these lessons oh, buddy, the Jerry Ringer Springer life right, the runaway, the living on the street, the drugs, the alcohol, the four marriages, the cancers, all these different freaking things that I chose to come through. And I told my friend I will stop talking about my little stories of the past when I drop them in a podcast, when I stand on a stage and I use them as examples to help another one open their can of worms and begin to walk themselves out of the past. But you are right, I was stuck and my future is so bright that everybody around me is going to need sunglasses. But and I also told her and this was funny, we laughed about that and I said, and just for the record, I can talk any way I want, I don't look at butterflies, I look at flutterbys and I made my kids cake pans all through the time that they grew up. And I go on Nick picks. And if you don't like the word conversate, then you won't like the show that I'm going to eventually have on my podcast called let's Conversate, because I like to conversate with people. And if you don't like the word conversate, well then you just go back to your Webster's dictionary, because I have my own dictionary. And we laughed and laughed about that.

Speaker 1:

And I just want to tell you there is a balance in everything. Humanity. A figure eight. And I did.

Speaker 1:

I spent years of my life constantly ruminating over my past. I can remember my husband saying oh my gosh, you are talking about what a terrible mom you were again. When are you going to let that go? You did the best you can with your kids and on and on. You know he would encourage me. Stop it, stop talking about your past. Well, he didn't say it the way she did that. Stop it. It really woke my ass up.

Speaker 1:

And that's what we're called to do. We're called to be the iron that sharpens the iron to each other, and so I understand about being stuck. But can we come to the place where we come into balance and we recognize that the past was the past one side of the eight and the future is the future the other side of the eight? But oh, buddy, the real challenge, the real conundrum, is living on the X, right in the center Picture that seesaw up and down, up and down. That's the roller coaster of life, folks. And even on the roller coaster we have an opportunity to choose. There too, we can hold on, white knuckled to the bar that's supposed to be holding us in as we're going to oh my God, we're going into that valley or we can lift our hands up and say what a freaking exciting ride, right.

Speaker 1:

So where are you on the scale? Are you still ruminating and living in the cycle of depression? It's a cul-de-sac, folks. It's just a cul-de-sac on your ride that sometimes we get trapped in, because maybe we're a little scared of the road ahead, or maybe you're ventured out and you don't know. There's that uncertainty and you're kind of excited, and then maybe you step back because you're a little bit scared. There's that uncertainty, there's that word again oh my gosh, oh my gosh.

Speaker 1:

And then the past comes in, and the past tells you oh, you don't want to go there. Remember when you did that. So see, this is when you got to remember. The past is gone, is gone, but our ego. That is the bank, that is the file cabinet that the ego uses. The ego is nothing more than the remembrance, and the ego is here to protect us and it goes into the file and says, uh-oh, he or she is making a decision again. We need to bring to their remembrance the failure over here, or the time when she put a whole foot instead of just a toe in the water and, oh my gosh, that water was hot and her foot got burned, or whatever it is. The ego is there to say warning, warning, don't go there.

Speaker 1:

And your higher self is on the other side of the bank with her handout saying, hey, guess what? Remember that future that you've dreamt about. Remember seeing yourself helping millions of people. Remember seeing yourself standing on a stage with a microphone. It's this way, it's this way, come on, just give me your hand.

Speaker 1:

And anywhere in between it's the pendulum and eventually you and I are going to learn how to stay in complete and total peace, right in our satsuma. What is our satsuma? Our place of power. Remember folks, never forget we are not separate from the divine. We are literal atoms and cells and sparks of the same love and light.

Speaker 1:

And eventually you and I are going to recognize that and no matter where we are on the scale, we're going to be able to stay right in the center and when things feel like it's pulling us toward the past or to an uncertain future, right in the midst of that we're going to be able to pull it in. How, simply, by doing this, our breath always takes us back right inside and always, always, always. Remember the biggest lie of the matrix is that we are not connected with that source, with that life force. Remember that's the big lie and go out today and figure out where you're at and, as your day unfolds, notice where you are in the spectrum. Am I stuck in the past and thinking all these foreboding thoughts? Am I future tripping, full of anxiety because, oh my gosh, I don't know where my next paycheck is coming from, or I don't know what this conversation that I have to have with somebody is going to look like or breathe. Breathe in, breathe out. I love you, humanity. Go out and have yourself a terrific Tuesday. Peace out.