Day 5: 30 Days, 30 Episodes - What Would You Do Differently?

I'm Matt Gilhooly, and this is the Life Shift candid conversations about the pivotal moments that have changed lives forever. Hello. Welcome to day five of my little experiment of 30 days and 30 episodes of the Life Shift podcast.

And so what I am doing is I am trying to address a prompt question, something like that, at random essentially, each day in November of 2024. So here we are, November 5th. Today is election day.

So my mind is all over the place and we don't know anything yet because I am doing these in real time. But I'm going to address a question or a prompt today. And I don't really know. I'm just going to kind of run into this without much preparation.

So this is just going to come straight from the heart. But earlier today, I got a list of little prompts or questions from a coworker. She's actually my boss, and she had some ideas and some.

Some things that I could possibly address. And one of the things that she asked was, what is something you would do differently if you could go back in time? So this is complicated.

And I guess we'll stick to the part that says that I would do differently because there's that little part of me.

If you know my story of my mom dying when I was a young kid, then I guess you would naturally think I would go back to that and make sure that that event didn't happen. But now here I am at 43, and I think back, if that didn't happen, would I be recording this episode right now?

Would I be able to have these conversations with people?

Not to say that one is better than the other, but knowing what I know now and who I am now, it would be really hard to change those things because I wouldn't know the people around me, I wouldn't know this version of me. And so it's really complicated. And it's. Unless you've experienced something like this, it's probably sounds really terrible hearing me say that.

But I think if you've experienced a life shifting moment like I did as a kid, and then experienced all the things afterwards, you might also look back and go, well, yeah, if you change that, then all these things wouldn't have happened. And if you like any part of your existing life, then it makes it really hard to kind of make that decision.

So I think the same thing is true of, like, any of our decisions.

Before I go into my actual choice, one of my favorite movies, I think since it came out and I watched it recently on Netflix or something, it's called Sliding Doors, and it's with Gwyneth Paltrow.

And essentially it shows this Life Shift moment of if she had caught the train versus missing the train and how her life splintered into different paths based on that one moment changing because certain things didn't happen, because she didn't get to a certain place in time, etc, etc. By the end of that movie, I feel like the roads kind of came back together a little bit and.

And she would have kind of found her way to herself in a different avenue, I guess. I don't know if that's true of me or of any of these choices that I've made, either voluntarily or involuntarily. Like, I don't know.

I think so many of my decisions that I've made over my lifetime, big decisions, sometimes have been hasty decisions. I think I have made a lot of choices because it felt easier at the time to make those decisions.

It felt, sure, complicated, but something that I knew I could do. I also think back on some decisions that I've made that just felt like an excuse, for instance, and this is not one that I would change.

But, like, early on in my life, if I wanted to leave a job, like, I felt really like I like the people around me, this is probably true of a job that I had in college. And I liked the people around me and I liked the job itself. I just wasn't moving anywhere in it because it was a small business.

There was no money to really do anything or go any farther in my career. So I decided to, like, move out of state. And that was partially triggered by me not being able to just say, hey, I'm no longer going to work here.

I'm going to go do something else. It was like, whoa, let me blow up everything around me. And the only thing I have to do is just move out of state and figure out my life again.

And that, you know, that's fine. I've. I've done that a few times. But if I look back to it, I think a lot of those decisions were just because I was afraid to let someone down.

And so if I had this bigger excuse of, hey, I'm moving back to Massachusetts to be closer to my family, it didn't feel like I was letting my boss down at that particular time.

I've gotten a little bit better at that, especially now since the Life Shift podcast started, since the pandemic, probably since my grandmother died, things kind of changed a little bit for me in a way that allowed me to stand up for Myself and feel confident in the decisions that I was making or am making at whatever period of time. However, there have been a few slip ups and a few hasty decisions in between. So I guess no one's perfect, right?

But one thing that I think I would do differently, but it's really hard because of the things I know now and the people I know now probably would change because of this decision. But I don't Remember when of 2016, 2017. I lived in Colorado and I lived near Aspen in Glenwood Springs, Colorado. And I had a great time out there.

And I was there for a year and it was kind of like this sabatical or the way I look at it now, was a sabatical of life. Just after my grandmother died, after I took that demotion that I asked for at the school that I worked for, I just needed like an escape.

And the mountains seemed like the most perfect of places. And a very close family friend had an opportunity for me out there. And so I was able to do that.

I got in a toxic relationship and that was not great for me. And I really kind of lost a sense of self. And that ended terribly. And I assumed all of it, which none of it was really my fault.

Well, some of it might have been my fault, but the ending was not my fault. And at the time I was spiraling like I didn't know what to do. And the only thing I could think of was run, get out, run.

I wasn't in danger or anything, but I felt like I was like. I felt like my emotions were like, you need to find stability, you need to find this solid ground again.

So I very hastily made the decision to move back to Orlando from Colorado, like within a couple weeks.

I was already making the plans and I had already decided to sell everything that I had purchased while I was out there and then come back without a job. Happened to find a job pretty quickly when I got back here.

Happened to be one that I quit a couple months later because it was a really toxic environment as well. But I think if I could go back, first of all, knowing now I would know how to address my emotions and feelings a little bit better.

I think I would be able to kind of find the stability within myself at that moment in time.

And maybe I would have stayed in the mountains, but if I did feel like I needed to move, I think I would have chosen to move to another city, perhaps to Denver or perhaps to just a different city that I never lived in. Orlando always felt safe. It always just feels like I can come Back here because I know everything around here.

I know the people, the environment, what it's like, the everything about it. Whereas moving to a new city would have been so brand new and maybe scary and maybe that's what I needed at the time.

So I think that's one thing I think about every once in a while is like, what if I had moved to a different city. But that being said, I wouldn't be in relationship that I am now. I wouldn't have the family of friends around me in the way that I do.

I wouldn't have a amazing. This particular house. You know, like all these things would be so different now, and so I wouldn't change it.

But I do wonder where that path would have taken me had I not come directly back to Orlando.

Because really what happened is when I came back to Orlando, I essentially, I mean, I took some time off and I didn't work for a little bit because I wanted a little bit of exploration.

Went to Thailand, did a couple things like that, like, like I mentioned in an earlier, one of these 30 day episodes, or one of these episodes of the 30 days. But eventually I just took the easy way and I went back to the school that I had worked at before.

Just because it was easy, wasn't because it was challenging, wasn't because of any of these things. And I kind of just fell into this pattern again.

And really what shook up things was the pandemic when I just realized like, wow, I'm really bored and my brain is not functioning now because the job I'm doing is not really challenging or I'm not doing anything new. And so, you know, I, I'm glad I made that decision to go back to school because going back to school helped me find this podcast, right?

Helped me create this podcast. But really, I call it finding it because it was probably always there, this, having these conversations in me.

Just needed a platform or a medium or something that made it possible.

But also the person that inspired this question actually was a classmate of mine and she encouraged me to apply for a job in her department and went through that whole interview process and did all those things and, you know, things just kind of like worked out in this way that I never could have predicted.

So had I not moved back to Orlando, made those decisions that I made, fell into some old habits of like, where I worked and the things that I was doing or not doing had I not chosen to get another degree, all these things kind of make, you know, life happen.

And so I don't think there's A lot of worthwhile energy to think back on these, like, well, I should have done this or I probably would have made this decision. Apparently I made those decisions for a reason.

And I made those decisions whether they were out of safety, whether they were out of, you know, that protection for myself, whether they. I just needed something easy at the time I made the decisions. Those are the decisions I made.

And I'm happy with where I am now and the people in my life. And so I guess thank you to the universe for pushing me in the directions that I needed to go. But I think it was a good question.

I think that thinking back on, like, what could I change? That's really one that sticks out, like, why, why didn't I do that? But I guess I just needed the safety of coming back to Orlando.

So that's a little bit about a choice that I made that maybe was a little hasty, but it all worked out in the end. So don't play sliding doors too many times in your life. If you haven't seen the movie though, check out the movie.

It's, it's just a really great 90s movie and, you know, a little surface level, not too deep. But it is a fun experiment to see how life could potentially be different based on one decision or one miss of a train.

But with that, I will end day five of this little experiment. That is 30 days, 30 episodes of the Life Shift podcast.

I found out today that I might be traveling for work next week, which means the background might be different, I might have to bring a different microphone. But my goal is to do one of these episodes every single day on the day that it is coming out so that I am not pre recording or anything like that.

So we'll see if we make it to November 30th. If you've listened to all the episodes so far. Thank you. If you listen to the Life Shift podcast, there are two episodes out today on election day.

Take a listen to those. There are 153 other episodes that you could listen to with amazing stories. If you need a suggestion, reach out to me on social media.

And with that, I'm going to say goodbye before I sneeze. So have a good night. I hope you enjoy the election results and I will talk to you tomorrow.

For more information, please visit www.thelifeshiftpodcast.com.