Hi there,
What’s the Story?
Summer is getting closer and I’ve a busy week ahead. I’ve been making a lot of progress with the book (Inner Propaganda) and will soon announce when it will be available in 2026!
Today, we visit a topic that shows up for all of us, sooner or later: letting go of the past. Whether it’s regret, trauma, or just patterns that keep repeating, we often find ourselves carrying baggage we didn’t even pack. So this week, I unpacked it. Enjoy.
Also, you can check out the latest clips I’ve uploaded on my YouTube channel of me in action.
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Letting Go of the Past: 3 Problems That Keep Us Stuck (And How to Unstick Them)
Estimated reading time: 2 minutes 41 seconds
There’s no such thing as “the past.”
The past only lives in our mind, in our memory, and in the way we interpret what happened. So if you want to let go of the past, you don’t have to time travel—you have to change your relationship with it.
Today, let’s explore three key problems that cause us to get stuck: patterning, trauma, and regret.
Let’s break them down.
1. The Problem of Patterning
We all have emotional and behavioral patterns that kick in without permission.
It could be the way we sabotage new relationships because we’ve been hurt before. Or the way we distrust people, not because of who they are, but because of someone else from our past.
And often, we confuse these patterns with intuition.
We say “my gut says no,” when in fact it’s just an old emotional loop dressed up as wisdom.
Ask yourself: What does this feeling remind me of? If it’s linked to an old wound, it’s probably a pattern, not your gut. Your gut is wise, but your patterns wear disguises.
Identify the emotional or behavioral pattern. Then ask:
- What triggers this?
- What do I want to feel or do instead?
- What would I need to believe or think differently to make that shift?
2. The Problem of Trauma
Some experiences aren’t just painful—they get stored in our nervous system.
When the threat detector in the brain, known as the amygdala, kicks in, the fear response hijacks the brain and embeds itself into memory with chemicals such as adrenaline and cortisol. This is how trauma gets “stuck.” We relive the emotional intensity again and again, even when the danger is long gone.
But we can change the meaning and emotion we attach to that memory. That’s the key.
Trauma is not just what happened, it’s how we store and re-activate it. While dealing with trauma should be done with a professional, there are micro-traumas that we experience that can be helped by several strategies:
- Positive State Rewiring: Cultivate a strong, positive emotional state (calm, confident, empowered), then recall the traumatic memory while holding that state. This helps rewire the emotional association.
- The Boredom Technique: Tell the traumatic story over and over in flat, factual detail. Eventually, it gets boring, and when it gets boring, it loses its power.
3. The Problem of Regret
Regret is one of the stickiest emotions because it’s a conversation we keep having with a past that can’t talk back.
We say, “If only…”
But here’s a trick: Replace if only with at least.
“If only” leads to shame and helplessness.
“At least” leads to growth, resilience, and perspective.
Regret becomes powerful when we use it to guide better decisions in the present.
Ask yourself:
- What’s the lesson?
- What will I do differently next time?
- What do I need to forgive myself for?
You can’t undo the past. But you can untangle it.
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The Brain Prompt
Take one experience from your past that still stings.
Now ask yourself:
- What’s the old pattern I’ve been running here?
- What do I want to feel or do differently next time?
- What new story do I need to tell myself about this?
Write it down. Say it out loud. Let the new story begin.
For more actionable insights on storytelling, influence, and psychology, subscribe to Inner Propaganda.
Cheers,
Owen.
