Hello Listeners!
Welcome to the post-holiday season of my podcast. I hope everyone enjoyed their holidays if you celebrate, because I sure did! I spent time with my wonderful family in Raleigh and Rocky Mount, NC. As always, it was a very special time with plenty of family bonding. I got some great Christmas gifts from my family. My nephew got me a great new podcasting microphone that I would be using right now if I could figure out how to install and use it, so that’s my goal for next week. And my sister got me a book that I wanted called The Art of Extraordinary Confidence by shyness expert, Dr. Aziz Gazipura, so I know that I’m gonna get some good use out of that, and I recommend it already.
I’m now refreshed and recharged and ready to go with the second season of my podcast. So, welcome to 2024!
Now, my first 3 episodes were an introduction to me and to the two signature themes of my podcast: shyness and dynamism. Dynamism, of course, is the word I like to use for the state of being dynamic. This season I’m going to dive deeper a little bit, and really delve into some mindset changes that you need to do to basically improve your life and thus, in a sense, to have a more dynamic life! I’m going to tell you some things that I have learned to do in order to improve my own life!
My first topic in this new and promising year of 2024, is how YOU have the power to change the perception of most things that you’ve done in the past or things that have happened to you or have been done to you in the past, or most especially things you may have done to yourself. And keep in mind, that of course I’m not talking about super traumatic things because that may require a therapist or specialist of some kind.
Sometimes there is a lot of overlap between things that happened to you and things that others did to you because you may have, whether consciously or subconsciously, allowed people to do things to you or to treat you a certain way.
So the point I want to make is:
You can’t change your past, but you can reframe it.
One of my best examples of this from my own life is when in 2016, I made the decision to leave my well-paying job as a data scientist at the Internal Revenue Service, or IRS, in Atlanta to move all the way to Arizona to pursue a degree in atmospheric science, which is the study of weather and climate. So why did I leave my stable well-paying job at the IRS? There were two primary reasons: The job began to become too hectic and stressful, and it just began to frustrate me. Also, I felt like I just no longer wanted to deal with that type of data, i.e. taxpayer data. I kind of wanted to deal with data that directly helped people, and in my thinking at the time, I felt that weather data really helped people because people look to the weather forecast everyday to plan their lives or to avert disaster. I guess that was kind of an early foreshadowing of my subconscious desire to help people in some way, which is what I am trying to do with this podcast.
The second reason I left that job, which was equally important, was because I became frustrated with living in Atlanta. I spoke of Atlanta in my last episode as being a super dynamic city with so much to offer, and it is definitely that. However, with that dynamism comes other problems. There is a kind of pretentiousness about Atlanta. I like to say it thinks it’s the Beverly Hills of the East. I began to feel that I was never gonna be good enough to live there. I didn’t have the confidence to live there honestly. There I saw no hope of finding more friends or finding a life partner, both things I needed and still need in order to have a full life. So I gave up on my job and my life in Atlanta, and started to apply to master’s programs in atmospheric science across the country, and I ended up applying to four schools. I only got into one of those four schools – the University of Arizona, and guess what – I got a full ride (financially) from them, plus a stipend to pay for living expenses! And amazingly, out of the four schools I applied to, the University of Arizona was the only one I really wanted to attend. Talk about putting stuff into the Universe and manifesting your desires, right??
So on the beautiful day of July 31, 2016, I got into my Nissan Juke, along with my best friend that lives in Atlanta who graciously agreed to help me make the long trek across country, and we drove a few thousand miles to Tucson, Arizona. Fast forward, in two years, I successfully completed and graduated from the master’s program in atmospheric science!... a major accomplishment considering I had no prior background in atmospheric science! And guess what else – those were probably the two loneliest years of my entire life!
Overall my Tucson, Arizona adventure was pretty unpleasant. Don’t get me wrong, from an aesthetic standpoint, I enjoyed the heck out of Tucson. I loved the amazing scenery, the mountains, the desert, the saguaro cactus, and the hiking. It was living on another beautiful planet. As I’ve said before, the Arizona landscape is breathtaking and exotic. But for whatever reason, from a social standpoint, I had no ability to make real friends. I do give credit to one friend, who I hung out with every now and then, but that friendship could only develop so far as he was like 20 years younger than me and married and of course he was as busy as I was because he was in the same program. But overall, 99% of the time outside of school, I was completely alone. And dating was a nightmare. I hung out with a guy once or twice and then they bounced, never to be heard from again. The dating culture was way worse than Atlanta.
And guess what else, I ended up kind of hating atmospheric science. It’s like ALL physics, and I absolutely hate physics! It’s the one subject that I did super poorly in while obtaining my earlier undergraduate degree in chemical engineering. If I had known that atmospheric science was all physics, I definitely wouldn’t have pursued that field. And guess what else, the field of atmospheric science didn’t exactly want to pursue me either. I ended up not even getting a job in the field after graduation. I applied to a few roles after graduating, but all the potential employers hated me.
After graduating, I also moved north to Phoenix. I did meet a few local friends there, but those friendships never fully developed or they kinda fizzled out. Also, I did end up dating a few people who hurt me a lot. Granted, some of that was my fault, because there were certain ways that I allowed people to treat me poorly, and I still suffered from social anxiety, and I was afraid to be my most authentic self. As I’ve said before, not being your authentic, confident self leads to not being as successful as you can be in many ways whether professionally or socially.
So moving out West was a complete bust.
Or was it?! Was it really a complete bust? How could I reframe that period in my life?
There are four main questions that I’ve developed to help me reframe past events or past choices in my life. You can call them the Maxx Mitchell reframing questions. Maybe these can help you too:
1) What can you learn from that experience that you can use going forward in life?
2) What positive traits did you exhibit during that experience that you can be proud of? Another way to ask that question is what did you accomplish during that period that was positive?
3) What are you going to do going forward to make up for the time you lost… or the money you lost? And more so, how can you accelerate the timeline to make up for what you’ve lost?
4) What can you be thankful for from that experience? Because gratitude is the key to opening up more doors for you.
So I’ll explore those questions as it relates to my Arizona experience.
1) What could I learn from Arizona that I can use going forward in my life? I learned that I could aim for something amazing and outrageous and I could actually manifest it into my life, with help from God or the Universe of course. There was really no reason for me to believe that I could apply for a program that I had no background in, and actually get in, and even more amazingly, get them to pay ME to do it. But I did believe it. In fact I had one casual friend in Atlanta who actually said to me “Wait, why would they give you money to attend their school??” But I said “Man, I know it’s possible.” And sure enough, for some super gracious reason, the Universe allowed me to have exactly what I wanted. Which gives me faith that the Universe will keep giving me what I want and need, assuming of course that it’s a good thing for me to have. Ask and ye shall receive. So I learned that principle once again. Without this Arizona experience, I might have less faith than I do right now that things will work out positively for me. There is a quote from one of my favorite self-improvement books, You Are a Badass at Making Money by Jen Sincero. The line goes…
“My turnaround started when I realized how much the Universe/God wanted to give me all I wanted.” – from You Are a Badass at Making Money by Jen Sincero
And I learned from my experience with getting into the University of Arizona that that quote is so true and valuable. And I have the power to use that universal truth going forward in my life. Sometimes it even seems that I only get the thing that I want, and that’s how I know it’s for me.
2) What positive traits did I exhibit during that Arizona experience that I can be proud of? Well, I proved my independence once again. I went out there and lived all on my own, far from family and friends. I proved that I was a risk taker in life. I left behind the comfort and security of my job at the time in an attempt to gain other things that I was lacking. But still, it was a big, big risk. I ran the risk of never finding a high-paying job again. But I did. I also ran the risk of going out there and not finding real friends or a partner. Now, this risk mostly did come true. But sometimes you have to go thru a dead zone, thru a fallow period, to get to a better place. Going there first is what led me to here. Also what did I accomplish that was positive? I successfully earned yet another degree in something that was very challenging for me. And personally, I also accomplished my desire to live out West. I didn’t want to always live on this side of the country all my life. And I achieved that! It’s a whole different country out there, and I loved the beauty and interesting-ness of it!
3) What was I going to do going forward to make up for the time I lost… or the money I lost? Did I lose years of a great salary by leaving the IRS? Yes, but what could I do now to make up for that lost time? Don’t dwell on what you lost. I realized that if I was able to manifest the opportunity to attend grad school with a full ride, then what could I manifest now? Hope was not lost. I moved to Tempe, AZ, near Phoenix, and I was able to acquire a temp role at a furniture company, and within a few months, I left that job and I obtained a much higher paying job in the financial sector, and I’m still with that job today! Does that job pay as much as my old IRS job? No, at the time it didn’t, but now it does! And it’s a lot less stressful than my IRS job! Not to mention, my current job allowed me to transfer to Charlotte, a place where I’m close to my family again, and I’m finally happy and satisfied for the first time in decades! It was ultimately a win! It took some time and some detours, but ultimately a huge win! And things are continuing to develop in more positive ways! So God and the Universe delivers every time! It may not happen in the way you expect it, or in the timeline that you want, but it happens! Trust me. Just reframe it and change your mindset!
4) What could I be thankful for from my Arizona experience? Because gratitude is the key to opening up more doors for you. I found that I could be thankful and grateful by assessing what were my original goals and did I achieve them? I got myself out of Atlanta. I got out of a job that I no longer enjoyed. I’m so thankful that I achieved those main goals. I could also be thankful for the opportunity to get a job located close to family where I needed to be and when my family needed me. Truly appreciating my blessings allows me to receive more blessings, such as overcoming my shyness and finding the divine knowledge that allowed me to improve my self-esteem. Being grateful allows me to see the positive in many negative things, which is half the battle right there. That deadzone time, that fallow period in Arizona, allowed me to plant the seeds that grew me into a more dynamic person.
In life, you can certainly have the right to regret your decisions, but how does that serve you? Does it serve you to continue to dwell on how terrible the decision you made was? Or does it serve you to reframe it and think differently, to think more positively about it?
No matter what bad personal decision you have made, you can learn something from it. And you must learn to look for and seek out the lessons from it. If you don’t look for the lesson, you will miss it. Think and meditate about what you learned, and how you can use that experience to improve your life and even others’ lives.
You can have certain regrets about decisions you’ve made, but by looking at the positive things that occurred as a result of those decisions certainly helps you put the negative aspects of those past decisions behind you, and now focus on your life ahead of you.
Another quote from Jen Sincero: “If something negative happens in your life, feel it, learn from it, let it go and get back to focusing on the life you’re EXCITED to live.
– Jen Sincero in her book “You Are a Badass”
Remember that those past decisions are just a memory in your head now, so you can feel free to reframe them however you want.
There is something so thrilling when you succeed after you have sunk low. Victory is so much sweeter after bad times. And victory is so much sweeter after you recover from your quote-unquote “bad decisions”. So in a way, there’s a benefit to going thru some bad experiences and bad decisions, because you grow and improve.
So that’s my topic for today. I have dedicated this episode to the city of Denver, Colorado! This city is ironically a great city to dedicate this particular episode to… because I was able to reframe Denver in my mind! The first time I visited Denver was in 2017, I think. I was not impressed at all! I was expecting something totally different. It seemed in my mind that there was just a small little downtown core, and it seemed that when I drove on certain stretches of highway that it just looked empty and desolate. I went back to Denver during my solo move from Phoenix to Charlotte. And it was like a totally different city in my mind. I saw the gleaming skyscrapers. I saw all the exciting sights of downtown Denver. I saw the cool neighborhoods and restaurants and shops. I love state Capitol buildings, and this was one of the most beautiful, ornate ones that I’ve ever seen! Unlike Phoenix, Denver felt like a real dynamic, cosmopolitan city! I don’t know why I didn’t see all these positive aspects the first time I visited. But I’m glad that I was able to reframe my thoughts of this amazing city… so much so that I would consider living there now if it weren’t so cold in the winter and if I hadn’t already found my happiness and joy here in Charlotte!
So… If you have enjoyed this episode, and you got something valuable or helpful out of this episode, then please give me five stars and write a review. Also please pass this podcast along to your friends or family or acquaintances that you feel could benefit from it as well!
If you like, please contact me at one of the contact options listed in my podcast description such as Facebook or Twitter or Threads, or visit my amazing website! Even if it’s just to ask me a question!
As always, remember to show up and DELIVER for yourself today and create a NEW dynamic version of yourself.
Thanks so much.
Episode 4, the Denver episode, is now done!