How to Rewrite Your Mindset: Stop Letting Your Past Control Your Present

Most people treat their identity like concrete that dried when they turned eighteen. They look at their flaws, their tempers, or their anxieties and point backwards—blaming childhood trauma, their parents, or their environment. But using your history as a shield against your current potential is a suicide pact for your future. Your past is an explanation for where you started; it is absolutely not an excuse for where you finish.

In this episode of The Long Game, we break down the psychology of personal accountability and dismantle the "Bad Faith" alibi we use to escape the terrifying freedom of taking the wheel today. We explore how your brain attempts to download a stale, memory-based script of "Yesterday's You" every single morning, and how true autonomy requires consciously interrupting that download to re-create yourself in the present moment.

We dive deep into:

• The Nature vs. Nurture Trap: Why relying on genetics or your ZIP code to explain your limitations is a psychological cop-out that kills personal growth.
• The Ghost Driver Analogy: How staring exclusively at the rearview mirror ensures you keep running your life using an old, broken blueprint.
• Target Fixation & The Psychology of the Tree: The counter-intuitive skiing phenomenon that explains why obsessing over what you want to avoid causes you to steer directly into it.
• The Reactive Rebel: Why building an identity solely to prove your past wrong means you are still a prisoner to it.

Stop asking your history for permission to change. If you refuse to step into radical self-ownership, you will pay the ultimate tax: becoming a carbon copy of the exact environment you claim to despise. Your life doesn't change by running away from where you’ve been; it changes when you realize the keys have never left your pocket. It's time to stop defending the mold, put your hands on the wheel, and drive.

Listener Notice: We are hosting our second-ever The Long Game Q&A in an upcoming episode! If you want direct mindset coaching or advice on overcoming self-limiting beliefs, habit formation, or mental conditioning, submit your questions now to be answered live on the podcast.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome back to the show. It is a beautiful morning after the night of Florida thunderstorms. And as the world wakes up, I have a little request to ask of you the listeners. So last time we did this, it was an awesome episode, and I think I want to do it again. So in a few episodes' time, I'm going to be doing the second ever long game Q ⁇ A with your questions, your hot topics, and it could be something we've discussed earlier or something in life that you want advice on. Whatever it is, we want to hear it. So I will be going through them and ask answering them live on the pod. So that episode's going to air in a couple of weeks when I do it. So I'd love for it if you could send them those in. Like I said, whatever is on your mind, whatever you're thinking about, whatever topics you want to talk about, that's what I want to discuss. Because like I said, I thought the last time we did that, it really opened up some really good conversations. I had some really good conversations off the pod talking about these things. So I'd love to dive into them. So click the send in your fan mail, hit the review button, whatever you want to do, just drop them in and we'll uh we'll get to them on the show. And like I said, I think I like I said I did it once before, and I think they're fast becoming some of my favourite episodes. I said to you before how I want this podcast to develop over time is which I start to bring people onto the show and I start to do interviews and have those discussions. And yeah, I think it was uh it was uh almost a little bit of a way into that, a little bit of a foresight into it for me as I'm doing this, is to see what that might look like of to be able to be able to answer those questions and to to dig in deeper to things. And yeah, like I said, I think uh I'm very much looking forward to the phase when that all lines up and we kick off into that era of the show because I think that's when it'll really really take off. Because again, like like talking like this is is great, and and I've said this definitely I've said it on the show, but I wonder if I've actually said it in person, but it's almost become a little bit therapeutic and a little bit of a a place where I can just let my thoughts run and kind of just look through ideas and talk about certain topics and and even sometimes question my own judgment on things and question my own thought process on things as I talk through ideas and as I talk through concepts and really just start to think about my own personal life as I talk about this stuff and other people's lives as I've been a part of those and and questions they've asked me and what they've gone through, has kind of come like some self-inner reflective kind of piece for me to do. So it's been really cool, and I'm very much looking forward to the time when I get to do that with more people, and I get to do that with their version of life and what they've gone through and their experiences. It's one of my favourite things to do, is genuinely is over my lifetime, as I suppose I've progressed from a young 20-year-old who used to love talking about sports, and don't get me wrong, I still do, but I also really enjoy the psychology side of things and and life side side of things and and how people are making decisions and progressing through life and what that looks like, and yeah, just really just understanding life, I think, is a is a big part of what interests me now these days. So, again, all that to say, yeah, send in your questions, make sure you're popping in reviews and letting us know what you think of the podcast. It's always amazing to hear what you think, both positive and negative. And uh, yeah, just let me know what's what's going on in your world. So we'll get to today's episode and we're gonna look at essentially nature nurture, right? A long-standing idea, and I think I sit in the middle of that conversation of nature nurture, which one is it that drives our life most? I think that there's a probably a third answer that isn't really discussed as much as you might you might imagine. I think it's a very A or B question that really needs a C answer. So the episode is gonna be a fun one, and let's start digging into it, right? So you love to well, I say you, we love to blame the mold. We love uh to look at our flaws, look at our tempers, our anxieties, and we say things like, Well, look at my parents, look at where I grew up, or look what happened to me, and we treat our identity like concrete that dried when we were 18, right? And I don't think it would be far removed to say that that's probably many of us, right? And I mean, myself included in that. I think in the early phases of life, it's very easy to get into this nature nurture idea and which one it is that truly kind of leads our life. So nature is essentially the predisposition, our genetic code, and we were always meant to be this way. Nurture says things that are were an empty cup but filled up by things like trauma or where we live or our location or how much money our family had. And I think all of us are very easy to jump into that A or B bracket of which one it is. And like I said, myself included, I think if you'd have probably asked me this question some circa 20 years ago when I was 14 to 16 years old, I'd have probably put myself in in if you'd have asked me a very binary question like that, I'd have probably looked at either one. And I mean, look, right? Grew up in the north of England, very, very, I would say like privileged life in any which way, shape, or form in terms of monetary values, but privileged in the fact that I had a family that loved me and cared for me and want me, wanted the absolute best for me, and did everything they could to provide for me. I grew up with electricity, I grew up with water, I grew up with the nice things in life, you know, decent weather and a house over my head. Like so, in that regard, I was privileged. Was I born into a millionaire family? No, I wasn't, right? So, in that regard, if you put those two things together, I wasn't privileged in that regard, and someone else is more privileged than me. And I had this conversation the other day with Sarah about this of where privilege lies and in the grand concept of it. I think when you start to look at the idea of privilege, I think it's very easy to say that someone is privileged these days and forget about the scale that is used for the word privilege. And again, I'm not privileged in the grand scheme to let's say Jeff Bezos' kids, right? I'm not privileged in that because I don't come from the amount of wealth that that guy has. But in the same breadth, I'm more privileged than unfortunate Sudanese kids, right, who grew up in drought and no food, etc. So so the scale is is very much a sliding one, and I think in the in the concept of things it probably requires a deeper conversation. But like I said, I think all of us are in that that bracket where we probably have sat there in nature nurture, and and as always with this podcast, the idea is not to give answers as such, but to kind of expose, I suppose, a little bit of perhaps a little bit of a different way of thinking sometimes, and also to consider is it really the binary choices that we have in life that are presented to us? Are those really what we should be looking at, or is there a third option, a fourth option that we're not really looking at? And I think today that's what I'm gonna dig into. So we are effectively right living in a world with nature versus nurture, and which is a lie essentially that is wrapped in comfort, right? And the reality of the lie is the lie is very nice and it's comfortable. It's like waking up in a fresh bed of this morning and you don't want to get out of it. The truth is far more confrontational. The truth is the thing that says go to the gym at 5 a.m. That feeling, right? And you're not a product of your environment and you're not a casualty of your nurture, you are an ongoing, deliberate creation. Every day, our thoughts and actions determine how we proceed in life. Every day you wake up, you decide what is going to happen to you, right? Now, within the grand scheme of things, even if it goes and decides to rain outside, you have the ability to go and change it, right? You can still go and do everything, it might just not be that nice. I apologize. Apparently, I'm getting a cold in the height of uh somewhere in Florida, apparently, so so it so it be. Our thoughts and actions, yeah, again, right, every day are the things that drive this thing. So you think about this, right? The person who wakes up in the morning and says, Oh, I'm, you know, it's it's nature or it's you know, I'm pre predispositioned to be bigger or overweight, right? Because of my whole family is. But the difference was is that your thoughts and actions every morning are deciding that because at 5 a.m. in the morning, and and I use 5am as a deliberate example, right? But more of an extreme example as well. Because at 5 a.m. every morning, that person, if they went to the gym and they did certain things, then they wouldn't be of a bigger nature and they wouldn't be overweight, right? So it can't possibly be nature at that point. And nurture, yes, absolutely, right, has it predetermined as a child because you are being programmed, right? Ultimately, but that doesn't mean that you can't then update the software or update the programme, right? Because nurture says that you were basically an empty cup that was born into a family that was bigger and that had bad eating habits and that didn't exercise and that didn't go out and do these things. So you go again, get to wake up on a random Tuesday morning and basically say, No, that's not me, and that's not what I'm gonna be doing. And the reality of that is you absolutely have the decision to change. So ultimately, it comes a question between what do we confront and what do we allow in our life, and how do we harvest the energy of that and that of others to get us to that next phase of our life and and that creation. Again, I give you my example, right? So I went through, I mean, look, right? Look, when I was 21, 2021, right? I was I was graduating from university at the time, and there's a very wonderful picture of me at my graduation from uni, and I will jokingly say, and it was never this bad, right? But I will jokingly say that it looks like I've eaten another human, right? Because I was a big guy, but the reality of it was, right, I'd gone through a bit of a bad situation, reacted to it badly, and decided to use it as an excuse to basically just go out, party, drink, eat bad, not look after myself, do all of the bad shit that I could effectively decide to do, right? That's the that's the cold hard truth of it. Is I basically did every negative aspect of how could you how could you handle a situation, Luke. Luke basically decided to be collect all of the negative things and say, do that, right? Now, maybe in the first week it was wise to do it because again you want to let off some steam and you want to do whatever, but to then do it for several months later was definitely not the pathways, as again, the more mature Luke and future Luke has has come to understand is definitely not the best way to move forward, right? But I decided to do that ultimately. Nothing in me decided to do that. There was no nature, there was no nurture, it was just how I harvested the energy of that situation and of those people around me to basically allow myself to get into that. I then had to make a decision of what do I confront and what do I allow. And there came a point where I started to go, this isn't me. I'm not happy with the way that I look, I'm not happy with the way that I'm living. And I decided decided then to wake up that next morning and go, something's changing. So I then went to the gym, I started playing football four times a week, I started looking after my diet, and lo and behold, within the next several months, I went from being the biggest I ever was, I was around 18 and a half stone at the point, to then getting back down to where I was and in a good shape and happy with myself. So the reality of it was was it wasn't nurture, right? And it also definitely wasn't nature. I could change both of those scenarios how I decided to wake up that morning. Now that's a choice. That's a choice. So before we dig into the next part of this, right, is the reality of all of this is to say is you didn't choose the road that you started on, but you have always been at the steering wheel of your own life, and that's what we're gonna talk about today. Something called the sovereign soul. You have always been the steering wheel, or at the steering wheel, should I say, to your life. You cannot possibly let the ghost in your rear view mirror drive your life, and if you do, again, I have take this the right way when I say this, I have no sympathy for it, right? And I mean that respectfully, because every day every one of us has a choice to make. Every day we have a decision to make. Now, unless you have something like starvation that is literally stopping you from doing something something, or malnutrition that is physically stopping your human body to be able to do it, then I'm sorry, but you have a choice, you always have had a choice. Now, again, there are situations and scenarios where you don't have a choice, I get that. But in this case, and what I'm talking about, the Western world, majority of us, 95% of us, have a choice to make every morning when we wake up, when we go through our days of what do we decide to confront, what do we allow, and what do we change, and how do we harvest the energy of everything around us to move to the next phase of life? You right now may have gone through some bad scenarios with your health, you may have some injuries, but the reality is if you wake up today and you decide that you're gonna do something different, you can make some small, meaningful, actionable steps. Probably diverting to some previous episodes here. But most of us seem to want the 100 version of ourselves without ever considering what zero or one looks like. You might have an injury, you might have be overweight, you might not be able to lift the biggest weights, you might not be the smartest person in the room, you might not be able to get the biggest promotion in the world, you might not have all of the salaries that you want in the world of the biggest bonuses, but you can start today making choices to move in the right direction towards that. And again, very few of us look at that and think, what do I have to do in the front end to actually get it? Usually that's where they stop. Once they actually finally answer that question, usually they stop at that point because the lie and the comfort that comes from that lie is much nicer for us to live in than is the inconvenient truth that is what is going to get us to the next next part of that. So let's dig in, right? It is absolutely terrifying to realise that you are free. It is possibly one of the scariest things for most people in this world to realize that you are actually free. Because if you are a product of your environment, then your failures aren't your fault, and they're your parents' fault, or they're the economy's fault, or they're your trauma's fault, and ultimately that feels safe. True autonomy ultimately means that if things are broken, then you have to look in the mirror. And most people, and I say, most people, choose the prison of a familiar past over the terrifying freedom of an unwritten present, and they want the alibi more than they want the growth. So the alibi is essentially the fear of freedom, and the alibi allows you to essentially say, This isn't my fault, it was pushed upon me, it was caused, and you basically build up this wall or these worlds around you that don't allow you to confront the truth, which is effectively that I will say something awful here, it's all your fault. It is all your fault, and I have said this on a podcast before when you live from a world that everything is your fault, then you ultimately have every choice and ultimate control to change everything that happens. I will never I don't think I'll ever disregard that viewpoint in my life that everything is my fault, and I wholeheartedly mean it from the bottom of my heart. I live in a world where everything I everything I do and everything that happens to me in my life is my fault. Because ultimately, at some point, I can go all the way back to trace it to a choice, and there's probably a thousand choices that led me to whatever point I am up to this day. Good and bad, by the way. I got use it. That's my when I say it's my fault, I use that for both good and bad perspectives. Probably you probably um use the phrase, it's my choices that got me here when it's good, and it's my fault when it's bad. Ultimately, I choose. And the difference that I see, and again, I've not always been in that space. It's wasn't like I was in my twenties when I was going through that bad time that I used this lens to look through my life. But again, there's a there's a comfort of being a victim to your own life that therefore means that you don't have to do anything, or that you can blame other scenarios, other situations to get you to the to the next point, or to kind of stop you from ever having to make a decision or confront what you have chosen for this. You see, I I would consider that we are literally the freest species on this planet, and you might think, well, Luke, what the hell are you talking about? Because we have taxes and we have jobs and we have bills to pay, and we've got all these interpersonal relationships that we have to suffice of parents and girlfriends and boyfriends, and husbands and wives, and friends, and family, and there's all these boundaries and these ties because we're social creatures as human beings, and Luke, you don't understand, you know, a bird is far freer than us, or X, Y, or Z is far freer than us. We live in a world of abundance where most of the things that we'll ever need in life are always uh within a press of a button these days to give us. We have never been more free than we ever will be. We are not a species that has to live on hunting for our food anymore, or that we have to worry about warmth, or that we have to worry about cover at night. Every other animal, every other species has to worry about all of these things, not us. The only thing we have to do is choose what we do with all of this freedom, and that is where we get caught up. So let me give you a little bit of analogy, and I alluded to this earlier. You cannot steer a car forward by staring exclusively in the rear view mirror. And I please, this is not legal advice, and also do not try it. If you're still defining your choices today by what someone did to you at 10, 15, 25, you are voluntarily letting a ghost drive your life. That is ultimately what you'll do. So if someone broke your trust years ago and you refuse to build deep relationships today, they aren't doing that to you right now. And you are actively doing it to yourself every morning by using their old broken blueprint that they enforced on you, and you've locked yourself in a cell where the door is wide open, right? The door is right there. You're I I can't I can't get out of this, Luke. You don't understand me. Like when literally all you need to do is step out. Now, caveat to that. Is it uncomfortable? Yes. Will it feel some which way because of how you've created this these boundaries for yourself? Yes. Will it take some time to step through that door continuously and keep making the necessary efforts? Because it ain't going to be just tomorrow and everything's fixed. Absolutely it will. But you still have a choice. You still ultimately have a choice. And every time you keep looking in that rear view mirror, you are keeping yourself bound to a version of you in the past that didn't get you to where you wanted to be. Can you learn the lessons? Absolutely, but leave them there, right? Learn the lesson, leave the old shit behind, and move on with your life. That's not to say that you're naive and you go and make the same mistakes again, right? That those lessons taught you. But it is to say that you let go of those emotions and you let go of that fear and those feelings behind you, because otherwise you'll never see what the opportunity is and everything that happens in front of you. You will never ever be able to live a life to your fullest, to everything that you could have been, because you're constantly locked into this idea of what happened in the past. And just because one person hurt you doesn't mean that everyone else is. And just because you had a couple of bad days on a diet doesn't mean that that defines you as someone with a bad diet. And just because you don't go at the gym for a few days doesn't mean that you're unhealthy and you don't exercise. Again, there's so many little simple ideas that again, once you build good habits towards them, you realize you're just ultimately at every turn locking yourself in this cell where you have so many opportunities to get out. You just choose not to. And again, that's going to be hard for some people here, and some people are going to be sat there saying, Luke, you don't understand trauma's a real thing. You're right, it is. It doesn't mean you can't get past it. Famine is a real thing. Doesn't mean we can't work through it to make sure that we never have to go through famine again. Having a lack of electricity or water is a is a is absolutely a thing. It doesn't mean that we didn't work out a way to move past it. Every time this every time you look at human society, by the way, and this is why controversial take here, right? Global warming. Is it a thing? Yes. Do I believe it's as bad as everyone says? No. Why? This is why I look at it, right? And maybe I'm being blind. And again, watch this episode back in several years and maybe I'm being maybe I'm stupid and call me out on this if that's the case. There has never been a scenario in this world or in 2000 plus years, right? And many, many years I've After that, humanity hasn't worked it out. One of our greatest skill sets in life is to be able to work things out. It was never because we were the strongest species or the fastest. It has typically come down because we are the most intelligent. We are the most intelligent and we have a way of solving problems. And we can then come together as a group and solve these problems as well. Whereas most other species, I think there's very few that can actually mobilize and come together as a group. There's a group of monkeys that actually do it, one of our closest species, right? And even then, when they do it, they only come together for a short period of time before going back to their own groups. So they'll only do it when there's a common cause and they feel I think it's a they feel defensive, and they come together. Outside of that, they'll then separate back to their groups again. Let that sink in for a second. Just think what I've just said. We've never, ever, in 2,000 years, ever not been able to solve a problem. Doesn't matter what it is, we've solved it at some point. It might not have been easy to get through it. We might have gone through some hard yards to get to it, but we've managed to solve it. And the worst bit is, right? Let's get back to human beings, let's get back to ourselves and what we're doing here, right? Is all you're ever doing is you're proving your past right or wrong. You see, a lot of people think that they've achieved autonomy because they become the exact opposite of their parents or the hometown, right? So think about this idea of nurture of what we're brought through in life, right? They think because they become the exact opposite and they rebel of their parents or their hometown, and but if you live your life choices as a knee-jerk reaction to prove your past wrong, then you're still not free, right? Because you're still letting that environment dictate everything that happens moving forward, because you're making decisions based on that environment, not what you want. Get the difference yet? I'm trying I'm trying to get the point across here is that you're free to choose whatever you want. Shit happens in your life, past happens in your life, trauma happens in your life, bad situations are put on you, absolutely, but you get to choose what happens next. And if you do it just to if you literally do it just in the face of your parents' behavior or what they want from you doing, all you're doing is actually using their choices as a reason to do something else. But are you actually truly happy in doing that? You see, true sovereignty isn't about running away from the past or fighting, it's in integrating it as data, right? And putting it in the backseat and choosing your next move based entirely on where you want the car to go. Cool, this thing happened, I know it happened, was it ideal? No. Would I choose it for someone else? Absolutely not. Would I want it to happen to my kids? And I'll get into this in a in a moment. No, absolutely not. But if I let it dictate my life for every move, then I'm still letting it drive the car. But if I use it as data and put it in the backseat of the car, and I still keep hold of the steering wheel and I keep looking forward and I use it, then absolutely the next move is based entirely on where you want it to go, not some predisposition or predetermination based on your parents, based on friends, based on family, based on a past relationship. So every single morning you wake up, your brain is trying to reassemble an old identity based on your memories, right? So it's going to loop through all your old resentments, your current fatigue, and your historical limitation. It essentially is downloading yesterday's you, right? Now, I say yesterday's you and it sounds very 24 hours. It sounds very like this one-off instance. Yesterday's you, though, is a lot of yesterday's you, right? Over a period of time. And yesterday's you becomes yesterday's month, and yesterday's six months, and yesterday's life. The further you go down this pathway, the harder it is to change. Doesn't mean you can't, it just makes more effort to get to that point. See, how many of you have spent time when you've woken up on a morning and that same gut feeling kind of sits back, right? So again, if you've if you've I'm sure many people have, right? You've been through a breakup, been through a bad scenario, and you wake up the next morning and ultimately you get up and that same sink and feeling lasts, and that's oh my god, it's so awful, right? And then there's other mornings that you wake up and you forget all about it, and you just wake up and you go back, and then all of a sudden a memory or a situation happens that pulls you back in and you get that same sink and feeling. The difference is it came maybe later in the day, right? Before you've had these before you had this identity and this kind of old resentment kind of kick back into action where you start to fight it. Now, again, the more choices you make every morning to fight against that, the further away those things get pushed away. And then all of a sudden it starts happening every other day, now it's every other week, now it's every other month. So you get so far down the line, you never think about it again. Or in actual fact, and again, if you can get into the again, most zen state in the world for this, what you do actually is you get into the fact of going, Oh, I remember when that thing happened, and you talk very openly about it because no longer have you attached the feelings to it, or have you attached the version of you that was when you were going through it to it. Now it's just a life lesson. Now it's just a like again, go back to it, it's a bit of data to understand and know that the next time it happens, okay, cool. I have said this countless times now, right? But again, my many my many of my life scenarios have led me to a point now where I get to view situations through a lens after 34 years and start to recognize situations again so I know how to handle them better, to be the best version of me, or let's rephrase that, a better version of me. Because again, I think we're still growing, we're still learning. The moment that you think that you've solved it and you've completed it, then good luck. But I think definitely, am I a better version of me than I was last year? Absolutely. Am I a better version of me than I was five years ago? Absolutely. Now, go and ask someone else, they might have a different opinion of that, but ultimately I don't let their dis their feelings towards me or how they perceive me drive me as a human being, right? I allow myself to make that decision. So recreation means waking up, right, and consciously choosing and interrupting that download. So we get the idea of data. Well, stop interrupting or start to interrupt that download and look at the blank slate of the day. That was the script yesterday. What's the script right now? You have the you have to actively outlearn your own memory. You have to constantly actively outlearn your own memory, because if not, your own memory will take you to where you think you should go versus where you need to go. And ultimately, the cost of missing it. I mean, I think if you refuse to take the will, you're gonna pay the ultimate price or the ultimate tax or however you want to phrase it, right? Because you're gonna become a carbon copy of the variant environment that you claim to despise. You are ultimately going to be the exact thing that you said that you never wanted to become because you you're gonna take those resentments on board and you're gonna take those thoughts and feelings in every decision you ever make, and you become that. You get to shut off, by the way. You get to change what happens next. I've had a few conversations where you look at parenthood and you look at as a child how you come through as a as a member of that family, and you start to then look at it and say, like, what was good and what was bad about it? And where do you think there was things that you want to take forward, and where's the things that you that version of your parents that you don't want to take forward? Again, that's the argument of nature versus nurture. Well, my parents always did this, so therefore, that must be what I'm I must do to treat my kids, right? And then there's some stuff that you go, Well, no, that's absolutely categorically wrong. That that shouldn't be happening, and that's not how we should be doing things. So you get to choose that. So I want to bring you into a concept and a psychology of the tree, essentially, right? It's it's wonderful version of like understanding this whole episode. So I was building the idea of this and and talking through this episode with myself, as lonely as that sounds, by the way. This was on a podcast countless years ago that has always stuck with me. It is, it's absolutely brilliant, right? So this isn't my own thing. This is generally I've heard this before, but it stuck with me to just describe this exact episode that I'm talking about today, right? So in skiing, and I've never been skiing, it's one of my things that is on my list to do, and I cannot wait to be able to do it. In skiing, there is this thing called the psychology of the tree, and it highlights a well-known phenomenon. What you focus on, you hit. And if a skier panics and thinks, don't hit a tree, then the brain hyperfixates on the obstacle because the body naturally moves towards where the eyes are looking. And this fixation can cause the skier to steer directly into the very thing that they are trying to avoid. I was also taught this lesson before in a simpler version of running up the stairs. So again, don't I say don't try this, but obviously you're gonna try this, right? So let's do this. Just put some safety parameters in place, right? And don't do this alone. Next time you're going upstairs, try and do this. Do not look at the stairs and just walk up, right? Without ever looking at the stairs, and you'll realize how hard it is, right, to take the stairs. Of course it is. But when you actually look down at the steps, right, without actually thinking about climbing stairs, if you just look at the steps, your feet will naturally place exactly where you look. That's your brain hyperfixating on those things. The skier is the same thing. Don't hit the tree. You're literally telling it to hit the tree, right? Because it's going to hit hit on the obstacles. And so in this example, in psychology, this is known as target fixation, and it's an attentional phenomena that where the brain becomes so obsessed with an observed object that the body unknowingly follows it. The tree suddenly seems to jump right into the skier's path because their peripheral vision was drawn entirely to it, causing them to panic and overcompensate their steering. You've probably experienced this while driving at some point. So to survive a tree run, skiers must practice counterintuitive thinking. They must look for the open snow, not the obstacles. Experienced skiers quickly scan the environment to identify hazards, but then immediately lock their visual focus and mental energy on the path between the trees, and by concentrating on the affirmative where they want to go rather than where they don't want to go, they guide their skis through the openings with confidence. Where's the lesson in that for you? Where's the lesson in that for all of us? That's not to say that you do not be cognizant of hazards and negative things and bad people and negative emotions. That's not to say that you're not cognizant of them. What it does tell you though is to understand and know that they are there, but focus on the positives and the way through. Focus on the choices which actively take you to the next stage, actively take you to the next phase of your life that is going to fundamentally benefit you rather than focusing on these negatives. So again, know that the negatives are there, be aware of them, conscious awareness to know that they are there. But focus 99% of your energies and efforts on the positive choices and directions that will get you through life. So let's start to wrap this episode up, right? If you don't do any of this stuff that we've talked about today, and I kind of alluded to this earlier, you pass the unexamined patterns down to kids, right? All your business, all your relationships, or friends, families, wives, husbands, girlfriends, partners, and you spend your entire life acting out a script written by dead ancestors and old bullies, all while holding the keys in your pocket. Blaming everyone else, saying that it was forced upon me, it was completely against my will that I had to do this, all while you had all of the keys and all of the answers in your pocket. This wonderful thing called life, you have the ultimate answer to, and it's between your ears, and it is all based on choices. So look at the areas in your life where you're currently saying, That's just how I am. I'm the kind of person who, and start to realize who told you that. And was it written in the stars, or was it just a survival habit you picked up to get through a winter that ended 10 years ago? The past is gone ultimately, and it has no power over this exact breath unless you invite it back in. Stop asking permission from your history, put your hands on the wheel, and start to drive.