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The power of your past, the power of your future, and how it's going to collide right in today. That's what we're talking about. Welcome to the Upside Podcast, where we help you get unstuck in life and business by elevating your thinking and provoking meaningful change from the inside out. I'm your host, Teresa Flood, and I just want to take just a moment. If this is your first time listening, thank you so much for tuning in. But if you are a regular Upside listener, I just want to say thank you. Thank you so much. There are so many amazing podcasts to choose from, and I'm just so honored that you would put me as part of your lineup. That you would be an upsider. That you join me on this personal growth and leadership journey means so much to me. And so I just wanted to take a moment and thank all my faithful friends and listeners and everything. So today, though, what's really funny is I was telling Tommy on my way over here to Studio USA what I was recording this episode on, and he just started chuckling, and I we're on the phone, but I know he was rolling his eyes and he said, teresa, you know, the first time we talked about that concept was when I came in and recorded the 2025 books in review episode. Some of you maybe had watched that one. It was back in the fall, and he had read a book called Science of scaling by Dr. Benjamin Hardy. It's a great book. At the time, though, I hadn't read it. And so he brought up the concept of linear versus holistic time. And when we're sitting here recording the episode, he started talking about it and I said something. I didn't go back and look at exactly what my quote was to him, but I think I said something to him. Like, I literally don't even know what you're talking about right now. This is totally over my head or totally above my pay grade or something like that. Well, I've since read the book, and I have spent some time just kind of pondering this idea of linear versus holistic time. And I think it's such a powerful concept that I'm going to bring you an entire episode on it today. So stick with me for just a minute as I explain this concept to you, and then I promise you, if you will just stick with me, this is gonna be a short episode. We're gonna get straight to the point, but I do believe it's gonna have some powerful impact into your present moment. So. But bear with me for just a Minute. So the idea of linear time is really how we typically think of time. We think of time in chronological order. It goes from start to finish. I kind of view time as you will, almost like a domino, right? Yesterday affects today, which affects tomorrow. But we think about it from past to the future as if it's happening in a line in kind of way. Excuse me. The idea of holistic time is that the past and the future and the present are happening simultaneously. Okay? And when that's when I heard that, I was like, that's ridiculous. I don't even know what that means. That's hairy fairy. Okay? But really it's not that they're actually happening at the same time per se. It's that the power of the past and the power of the future all have immediate effect and control and direction over what's happening in our present, meaning they're not separate from one another. And actually our past does influence our present and influence our future, but also our future influences our present as well. And sometimes our future influencing our present can even be more powerful and than our past. And so that's what I want to explain to you and drive this all home. So let's talk for just a moment about our past. And no, we don't have to drum up all of the memories of the past that we don't want to remember. But here's the facts. All of us have a past. We have a past that's filled with great memories and we have a past that's filled with not so great memories. Our past though, is filled not just with facts. Our past is filled with stories. When you think back to your childhood, you don't think about a list of factual things. I was born in 1980 in Minneapolis, Minnesota to a two parent family. You don't think of it that way. You think about it in stories. You remember back memories and pictures of things that happened to you all throughout your life. I walked into Clark High School for the first time since I was there in, I don't know when I was 1995, 1996. My girls are going to be going there next year, which is insane saying to me, and I'm going to be honest, I didn't have a lot of great memories from Clark and Jet was laughing at me because I was just kind of wandering around the school going back in time. But what I thought about in those moments was not a list of facts. I thought about some of the stories that happened in those hallways and some of the stories that happened in those caf in the Cafeteria. So our past, though, is incredibly powerful. Our past is where shame and guilt live, and our past is where our stories live. But here's the truth. The stories of our past, the power that we have. We can't go change what has happened. What has happened has happened. It's done. There is nothing we can do to change the past. However, we do have the power to change what those stories mean. So you can have two individuals who come from the very same background. You could have a child who grows up with an alcoholic parent, and they follow the same patterns of behavior, the same learned principles, and they walk the very same shoes that their parent walked. Or you could have someone who had an alcoholic father who says, I will never be that way. And they choose to make a totally different life choice. Why? Because they choose to make that story mean something different. You can have two people that go through a traumatic event. One makes them incredibly bitter and hate hating life, right? And you could have another that they use that traumatic event to go out there and change the world. Why? Because the facts are not what is powerful in our past. It is the meaning that we give it. So the past is our ability to learn. It gives us perspective. It gives us awareness of patterns. We can't change the past, but we do have the ability to change the meaning that we give it. So we typically put a lot of heavy weight, though, on our past to dictate our future meaning. We typically tell ourselves, because I did X, Y, and Z in the past, it's going to enable me to do X, Y, and Z in the future. If I failed in the past, and we have a belief that I'm going to fail in the future if I succeeded in the past, and I believe I'm going to succeed in the future. But this is where the power of future comes in. So what is future? Future? I mean, future is where anxiety and worry live, right? Those are the stories that we're telling ourselves about what could happen. But the future is also the most powerful thing to dictate what we do today. It is actually even more powerful than our past. And let me tell you why. One of the reasons why goals are so important is because when we set a goal, when we say, in one year, I want to accomplish X, in five years, I want to be a person who does X, Y, and Z. What we're doing is we're saying, I want to pull the future self into today. And so we show up, right? We have a goal for our business, and we show up today and say, what are the Daily activities. What are the habits that I need to do today to. To make that future take place, that future happen. So when we look at future in a holistic way, we realize that. Because I have an understanding of the goals that I have for my life, because I have an understanding of the vision that I want to see happen, and because I have an understanding of who I want to become in the future, it becomes the roadmap then for how I show up today. Not just what the past dictates, but my future is actually the, the. The. The primary influencer for what I'm going to be doing in the present. So we don't change the past, we can't control the past and we can't control the future. What we can control is today. Today, what I choose to do today. The most important moment of your life is right now, is right now in this very moment. Because it is the cumulation of what stories you have, have told yourself from your past and what vision you have for your future, all coming together in one powerful moment of right now. And we get to make that decision right now of who do we want to become? Of what are we going to do today? You know, sometimes we think about our lives and we think, you know, do we, do we love our life? Well, do you love the moment you're in right now? Because right now is your life. It's not about the past and it's not about the future. It's about how those things determine how you're going to show up right here in this moment. We spend a lot of time focusing on things we can't control in our lives. I ask myself that question all of the time. When I start to have stress or worry, I say, can I control this? And if I can't, I know I need to get back into that place of putting my energies in the things that I control. What do you control? You control right now. The moment that you have in front of you, your next step, your next choice, your next thought, your next decision, your next attitude, your next move. All of that is in your power for today. Don't underestimate the power of the moment of now. The past should give us lessons, it should give us history, it should give its perspective. And we get to choose what those stories mean. The future should show us who we want to become so that we can step into that, and it should guide the decisions that we're making today. So here's why I want to challenge you, is I want to give you three kind of questions to ask yourself regarding your past, your present, and your future. I want you to look back on your past and I want you to think a couple of dominant stories of your life. And I want you to ask yourself, what did I make this mean? And if what you made this mean isn't something that's serving you to become the person that you want to become in the future, I want you to search for a bigger meaning. I want you to reevaluate what that story means in your life. I want you to think about your future and get clarity on what you really want you if you're not sure what you're supposed to be doing today, it's because we don't have enough clarity on who we want to be in the future. Spend time, slow down, and really, really think about the vision of who you want to become in your life. And then ask yourself, what is the one thing I need to do today? Not the hundred things. None of us can do a hundred things today. We could do one thing today to move us forward to becoming the person that we want to become. So remember, life is not built someday, it is built today. You are taking a step every single day to invest in who you want to be. To invest in a life worth living. I just want to thank you for joining me today. Be sure you're subscribed@teresaflam.com as always, when you invest in your personal growth every single day, it will yield you great returns. Living on the upside.