What if figuring out who you want to be doesn't start with imagining your future self — it starts with looking at your past one? In this minisode, Maricella walks through a deceptively simple exercise: scrolling through last year's photos to find the one where you look exactly how you want to feel. What she found was more layered, and more useful, than she expected.

From a trip to Greece to a random Tuesday alone in her apartment, this episode gets into how the feeling behind a photo, the memory it holds, and the moment you're in right now are three completely different things. Plus what nostalgia actually is scientifically, why play keeps showing up as the answer, and how to use your past self as an emotional anchor for the person you're becoming.

Show Notes:

(00:00) Intro

(00:38) No Resolutions

(01:42) Why Feelings Make For Bad Goals

(03:03) Future Self and Manifesting

(06:02) The Photos Exercise

(07:57) Three Layers in Every Photo

(09:54) Greece Trip and Disconnection

(12:38) Cat Costume Joy and Buckets

(15:22) Oven Broke but I Persisted

(18:40) The Through Line Is Play

(21:37) Nostalgia and Self Continuity

(24:59) Closing the Gap to Future You

(26:47) Try It and Final Goodbye

(27:59) Outro Subscribe and Connect

Takeaways:

• Go through your photos from the past year and find the one where you look exactly how you want to feel. How you feel right now looking at it is data too.
• Every photo has three layers: how you look in it, how you feel seeing it now, and how you felt when it was taken. They're not always the same thing.
• Play isn't just about fun. The moments that light you up are telling you something about what you need more of.
• Nostalgia isn't only backward-looking. Research suggests it's your brain connecting past you to present you in order to push you toward future you.
• You don't have to picture an abstract future self. Start with a real past feeling and use it as the anchor.

Links:

• Em on the Brain (Emily McDonald) — Planet Em podcast on Spotify / Apple Podcasts
• Emily McDonald on What Now? with Trevor Noah — "Can You Rewire Your Brain?"
• What a Broken Oven Taught Me About Myself — Substack

Find Maricella:

• Substack: https://maricellaherrera.substack.com/
• Instagram: @quitmyjobpod
• quitmyjobpod.com

Have you ever felt like the script you're

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following doesn't quite fit anymore?

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Then you're in the right place.

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I'm Maricella Herrera and I started.

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Shit I just quit my job after walking

away from a job I thought to find me?

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Forget the highlight reels.

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Here.

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We talk about the messy middle, the

doubts, the detours, and the chaos

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that come with rethinking who we are.

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Because the truth is, it was

never just about quitting a job.

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It was about questioning

everything I thought I knew.

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Hi, lovely people.

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Thanks for joining me.

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It's just me today, another one

of my minisodes and I will do my

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best to keep it mini this time.

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I'm not very good at that, but I.

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I will, I will try.

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it's been a while since I wanted

to talk about this exercise.

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It's April, and this is something

that a friend of mine does

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at the beginning of the year.

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And let me tell you about

my beginning of the year.

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I'm not a person who does resolutions.

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I'm not a person who does goals.

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I mean, I have goals, but like,

you know, like this is what

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I'm gonna accomplish this year.

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Maybe sometimes.

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Usually my goals are around

running or milestones of the sort.

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But a long time ago I stopped

making resolutions because I'm

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already hard enough on myself

as it is, as to add something

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that is just gonna make me feel worse.

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And the reason I say that is because

I cannot do anything fucking simple.

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So if I'm gonna start doing resolutions,

I'm gonna do like 10 of them.

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And that's what usually happened.

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for the last few years, the only

thing I've wanted is to feel

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better, to feel more me, more

free, happier, more confident.

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And those are hard

things to put a goal to.

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how do you quantify?

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if I'm gonna say a goal, I'm gonna say

I'm gonna run the New York City Marathon,

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and that's something that's a yes no,

but I know that I did it, I can quantify

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it, or I can set a goal that it's in

time, but I wanna feel more confident.

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That's a hard one to quantify,

especially because our feelings changed.

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I notice when I feel

confident and when I don't.

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But it's not a constant and

it's not something I can measure

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as it compares to last year.

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Same goes with being more me.

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Like, what the fuck does that even mean?

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How do I know that I feel more me?

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what is more me?

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So in that vein, I stopped doing

resolutions long time ago, just as

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much as I stopped doing personal

five-year plans a long time ago because

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it stresses me out.

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So to quote Phoebe Buffet,

I don't even have a plot.

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And I was thinking about that,

the five-year planning stuff,

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particularly because I was.

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Trying to picture myself, like,

where would I be in five years?

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Where would I, who would I wanna be?

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Not even, where would I be?

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Like who would I wanna be?

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Like if I wanna be the best version

of myself and I wanna start working

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on that, what does that version of

myself look like five years from now?

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And this came from a podcast that,

Em on the Brain, she's really cool.

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She's really smart.

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She was on the Trevor Noah podcast

she talks about like neuroscience and

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makes it very simple to understand.

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And she also like, combines

it with spirituality.

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So very much up my alley.

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And she was talking about how she

changed her own life by noticing that

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there was a gap between who she was

now and the best version of herself

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that she wanted to be in the future.

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And so to get closer to that, she

had to imagine herself, what is

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that version of me that I wanna be?

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And how do I stop doing the things that

are preventing me from getting there?

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Or closing that gap a little bit more and

a little bit more, and a little bit more.

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But it starts with, what

is that version, right?

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And I've heard this before, that

it's really important to try to

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imagine yourself, visualize it.

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And it's kind of the

manifesting idea, right?

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Like you're visualizing what's

gonna happen or what you want

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and you're manifesting it.

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But the reality with manifesting is

yes, I believe that the energy matters.

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That the energy that you're putting

out there in the universe matters

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because everything is energy.

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if you break everything to the most teeny,

tiny particle, you realize it's energy.

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And so I do believe that it's important.

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But the other thing with manifesting is if

I'm seeing myself in the future as someone

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who, let's say the best version of myself

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is really strong and I'm not doing

anything right now, I'm not lifting

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weights, I'm not like exercising.

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I'm not doing anything to become strong.

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If I'm seeing myself as like that

version now I will have to do the

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things to get me to that version.

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It's like it's just gonna get into

your head to the point that you are

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gonna start doing it because you

are identifying with that version.

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And so thinking about that, I had

noticed a while ago that even trying

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to imagine who the best version

of me in five years, who that

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person was, who I wanted it to be.

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It wasn't clear.

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It was very foggy.

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I couldn't clearly picture her.

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I've gotten better at it.

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I've been working on it these last few

months, but the way I started to work on

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it was doing it a little bit in reverse.

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I have a friend who a long time ago, had

told me about this exercise she does at

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the beginning of the year, either at the

end of the year or the beginning of the

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year, but like going into a new year.

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I don't know if this is her

exercise, her idea, I think

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she got it from somewhere else.

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So I don't, I'm not gonna, attribute it

to anyone, but I learned it from her.

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And what she does is she goes

through all of her pictures on

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her phone from the year before.

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She looks through them, she looks

at her face, she looks at everything

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and she tries to find the one

picture where she says, that's

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the way I wanna feel this year.

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That's the person I wanna be this year.

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So as I was trying to imagine my

like future self, my like ideal five

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years from now self, I thought I.

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Maybe I should try this.

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I actually highly recommend this

exercise, but I recommend you do it,

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really paying attention because what

you can find can be very illuminating.

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I think you'll see things that

you know are true, but you'll

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see them in a different way.

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You're almost gonna be seeing them

as proof, which if you're like me,

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I do like, I do like me some proof,

So as I was looking at the pictures,

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I was like, this photo might be

it and this photo might be it.

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the pictures I'm selecting in this

preliminary selection, as you can

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imagine, are mostly photos of me

looking happy, that makes sense, right?

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Like I would want to be happy

and I want to feel happy.

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So those are the pictures

that I'm selecting.

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But the simple exercise isn't that

simple because what I started to realize

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is that there's three layers to every

single one of the pictures I'm selecting.

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There's how I look in the picture that

really, in my mind, equates to this

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is what I think I wanna feel like.

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Like I look happy.

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Therefore, I think I wanna feel like that.

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But there's also the way I feel

when I look at that picture,

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the way I feel right now.

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There are some where I look at them

and feel like just warmth and joy I'm

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noticing these feelings as I'm seeing

them, especially because I see some

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pictures where I look incredibly happy.

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I am in a beautiful

setting with people I love,

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but the feeling I have as I'm

looking at some of those pictures,

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is not joy or calm or peace.

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It's not warmth.

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It's.

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A very subtle tightening in

my stomach and in my chest.

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So I think I wanna feel like what I

look in the picture, but really what

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I'm feeling right now as I see that

picture is not what I wanna feel.

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And it made me think about

why I'm feeling that way.

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And I know this sounds really meta, but

then it's the way I look in the picture,

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the way I feel as I'm looking the picture,

And the third layer, the way I felt when

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the picture was taken, that either warmth

or tightening comes from that feeling.

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From the feeling when

that picture was taken.

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an example, some of the pictures I was

like pre-selecting were pictures from

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my summer trip to Greece with my family.

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When I say it was a beautiful setting,

it was the most beautiful setting ever.

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I was also with the people I love

the most, bar my like partner who

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wasn't there, but I was with the

people I love the most in this world.

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My nephew, my niece, my mom, my brother.

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Like

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that's my pack.

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And the pictures are

beautiful and I look happy.

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I like actually really do look happy.

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But I know, I remember that during that

trip there were moments where I just

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didn't feel like I was fully there.

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I wasn't fully present because

my mind was in the future.

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My mind was like thinking

of what I was gonna do.

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When I got back to New York, my

mind was thinking about the past.

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It was, oh, I'm a failure

because X, Y, or Z.

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My inner critic was screaming at me.

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Because

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as it happens, many times I was comparing

myself to my brother, which is terrible

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because we're completely different people,

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but I can't help doing it.

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I think it's a human response.

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So I, I look happy and I

probably was happy, but there

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was a slight separation that was

disconnecting me from that moment.

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and that's not how I wanna feel.

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So.

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Those pictures went out of the running.

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And it turns out that research

actually backs up this idea that, I

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mean, they don't call it layers, but

that this idea of the feelings I was

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having, not necessarily like my, my,

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my understanding of the disconnection,

but the feelings that I was having.

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'cause that's how.

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Memory works.

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so the photo is not a memory, right?

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Like it's a cue that activates

our emotional response, our

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emotional associations, and

therefore the memory is more than

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just the image, it's the feeling.

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It's like when you see something and you

can smell it, you know where you see a

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picture of a place that you've been at

and you can smell it like those memories.

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Go so much further beyond just

what you're seeing in the picture.

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I did not get to one picture where

I'm like, that's how I wanna feel.

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Although as I'm saying this right

now, there is a picture that is like

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popping up in my head repeatedly.

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So maybe that is the picture

that is screaming at me.

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This is the way you wanna feel.

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And it's very interesting because it's

a picture where I'm dressed as a cat.

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Maybe I just wanna be a cat.

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I lie, no, it is a picture

where I'm dressed as cat.

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I'm wearing cat ears, but

I'm also wearing like a gown.

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And I'm also carrying a boatload of

shots that were poured into syringes.

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And I know all of that

sounds really weird.

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But the picture was from last

year's Oscar's party I hosted.

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And if you remember last

year's Oscar's nominations,

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the substance was a big movie.

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And in it, this is the Demi Moore movie.

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In it, she injects herself with a

substance And it's this like bright

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green, like yellow, green color.

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And so my partner made some like

lemon cello and some other, I

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don't really know what else.

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It had shots.

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And we put them in these big plastic

syringes that are just like party

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favors, like not real syringes.

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And so I was carrying that

I'll post a picture, but

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I look so happy.

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And the feeling I get

even now as I'm like.

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Remembering the picture, which is another

meta level of this, how memory works.

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The only way I can describe the

feeling I'm getting right now is joy.

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It's joy,

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and I am not surprised.

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That's a picture that's popping into my

head because the pictures that I ended

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up with in my like preliminary kind of

thing fell into three buckets, four maybe

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pictures of me with my niece and my

nephew playing Pictures of me at a

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race or having just finished a race or

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mostly celebrating after the race.

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and pictures of me at these

ridiculous parties I throw

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some were the Oscars party.

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Some others were this eighties prom

night murder mystery party that I did.

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There was some other pictures of me and

my mom and me and my partner, but mostly.

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I would say the big categories were

these three, my nephew and my niece

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running particularly races like after

the marathon and things like that.

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And my really silly parties, if you

subscribe to My Substack, you would've

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read an article I posted last week about

what a broken oven taught me about myself.

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I'm not gonna repeat it 'cause if

you wanna read it, it's on Substack.

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I talks about the Oscars

party I threw this year.

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And how I get really into these

parties, It's like a whole thing.

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I like go nuts, creating, themed food

all puns of nominated movies, and,

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decorating and like even costumes

that are inspired in the movies.

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A bunch of shenanigans basically.

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But I go really crazy and the food is

one of the biggest things for the Oscars

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for me, because I really do love a pun.

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So for example, we had Hamnet this year

as one of the big nominated movies, right?

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And so I literally made a ham pie.

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It was like a pie, but

it had a lattice on top.

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Get it?

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Ham Nut.

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It's like a slab pie.

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we had Sinner-mon Rolls Formula One-tons

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I could keep going, but

point being, I go crazy.

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I love these parties.

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And my oven broke.

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So the Oscars were on Sunday and

my oven broke on Thursday night.

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If you wanna go through it,

just read the Substack post.

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But

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what I realized from that experience

was that normally I maybe would've

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gotten really upset and really

like, why is this happening to me?

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And everything always goes wrong.

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me three years ago,

totally would've done that.

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Me now was like, okay, what do we do?

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What are my options?

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How can I do this?

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My partner on the other

hand was like, no one cares.

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Just change the menu.

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And I'm like, no, that's not the point.

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I care.

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and I was trying to think why I was

so determined to not let it go and get

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it done and figure it out for a party.

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But sometimes when it gets

really hard or when things don't

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go my way, when it is around.

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Work or things that quote

unquote should be more important.

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I don't feel that.

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I don't feel that necessity.

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I don't feel that need.

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And a couple of things came to mind

and I promise I'm coming back to

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the exercise and the pictures, that

what came to mind is something that

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I had noticed also in this exercise

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because if you think about it,

I didn't quit at that party.

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I don't quit when I'm doing a race

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and all my niece and my nephew

that okay, I will never quit them.

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I love them with all

my freaking heart, but.

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I don't think it's a coincidence

that two of the big buckets of things

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that I was seeing myself as the

happiest were also things that I was

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really invested in and don't quit.

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And I don't know if it's the happiness

that brings the resilience of not quitting

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or the resilience of not quitting that

brings the happiness, but I certainly

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do know that there's a correlation.

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And so it got me thinking like, what

are the through lines in these things?

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And really the biggest through

line, there's two, but the

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biggest one is that it's play.

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I was playing.

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The party.

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To me, it's just a big game.

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It's play.

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I get really into the process, and

it's not that the party is the party,

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the process is the party for me.

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Like I'm having fun.

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As I'm planning this, I'm creating this.

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I'm just using my creativity and

my wits to do something, and I'm

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doing it also to do something for

some other people that I love.

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So the two big through lines were

I'm playing and it's not just me.

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It's not just for me.

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There's people around that are counting

on me or that are waiting for me.

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Like in the case of a race, I

know there's people waiting for

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me and they're cheering me on.

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In the case of my ne niece and my

nephew and PE with people I love and

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we're playing, we're freaking playing.

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All of those three categories are play

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and it shouldn't be.

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So like, wow, mind blowing moment

of yes, play is what makes me happy,

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but play is what makes me happy.

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And

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when I'm playing I keep going.

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I knew this.

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I think there, there's so much

research around the importance of

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play with resilience, the importance

of play when it comes to change.

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But like I said, when I was

talking about this exercise at

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the beginning, it was proof.

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It was proof.

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Like the proof was in the pictures.

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I think if I wanna look, if I wanna

feel the way I look in those pictures.

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I need to find a way to bring

play into most of my life.

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And that sounds like a lot, but

I'm not talking about play as

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I have to play a board game.

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Like I'm talking about play as like

dancing, as, doing something for the

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sake of doing it as doing serious things

but not taking them so damn seriously.

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Writing is play for me

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but I sometimes take it so

seriously that I avoid doing it.

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Solving problems is sometimes play for me.

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I actually enjoy it and that sounds

like work, but I actually enjoy it.

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How do I bring that playful element

to the things that I'm doing, to

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the things that are in those quote

unquote should be doing, or should

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be more important, that feeling of

a party, even when it's not a party.

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I'm honestly not sure, but I think

if I start noticing it more, I might

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be able to infuse a little bit of

that into a random Tuesday afternoon.

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And one more thing about this exercise,

looking through old photos, you know

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how I was saying about the fact that it

evokes memories, and the feelings that

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are associated with those memories.

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It also evokes.

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A feeling of nostalgia.

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And granted these were pictures from

a year ago, but when I'm looking at my

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nephew, for example, or my niece who are

tiny kids, I actually do feel nostalgia

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for the version of them that I was with

last summer, because the version of them

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that I saw afterwards in December, it

was a complete different version of them.

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So with kids, you see that timeline

a little bit more compressed.

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But regardless, the feeling of

nostalgia, I started looking into it a

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lot of studies find that nostalgia is

usually more linked to negative states.

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Like it's triggered by negative states.

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Like you get nostalgic when you feel

lonely, when something makes you like,

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feel stuck when you're feeling like

there's no meaning anywhere because

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you're drawn to that other version of

the past that you think was better.

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And it has to do with something called

self continuity, which basically

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is your brain is trying to connect

your past self to your present self.

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So by doing that, it's

trying to make you motivated.

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It's trying to make you feel better,

trying to make you even make sense of

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who you are right now by showing you that

feeling from those memories of the past.

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And that when I read

that, it got me thinking.

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About manifestation again, because

if my brain, if nostalgia is my brain

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trying to link the person I am today

to the person I am in the past, then

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visualization is that my brain trying

to link the person I am in the present

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to the person I wanna be in the future.

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It's all self continuity And here's

the thing, I wasn't that off because

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actually researchers have found that

nostalgia isn't just backward looking.

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There's some studies and I can't claim

to the legitimacy of these studies.

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I did not look into it that much.

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But some people argue that

nostalgia is actually future

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oriented and it does make sense.

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Because if your brain is trying to

get present, you to connect with past

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you in order to motivate you and to

make you feel happier, it's really

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about pushing you to future you.

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So it's not just, oh, I miss that,

but it's like, oh, I miss that.

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And similar to my exercise.

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Now, how do I get that today?

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How do I get that feeling?

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What do I do?

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It's using my past to orient me

to the future, which is what this

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freaking exercise was all about.

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There is a connection between your

past, your present, and your future.

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You, So this exercise is kind of

time travel in both directions,

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looking who I was in the last

year and what I wanna feel like.

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So that feeling today as I am looking at

those and noticing how I'm feeling so I

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can emulate that feeling, do something

in my life to change that feeling,

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to make that feeling, to bring that

feeling into my life in the future.

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I'm closing the gap, right?

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I'm closing the gap from my

past self to my future self.

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So it's not as hard to picture myself.

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In the next five years as this

ideal version of myself, because I'm

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already using this example for my

past, at least for the next year.

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this.

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I can get behind.

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It's not manifesting in the woo woo sense.

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It's really closing a loop, closing

that gap, and using an emotional,

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real emotional anchor to make

my future self feel a little bit

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less like a stranger, a little bit

closer, because I felt that right?

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Like I felt happy so I can be happy.

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So again, I don't know how I'm

gonna get that feeling on a random

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weekday like today where I'm

alone in my room taping a podcast.

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And I will say I kind of do have

that feeling right now because

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I'm doing something I love.

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This is play for me, so I'm I am playing,

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but how will I get those

feelings when I'm not playing?

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I think it starts with noticing

all the little moments where I

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feel that spark and more of that,

please, more of that, please.

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so dear listeners, I ask

you how do you wanna feel?

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What does your future, you, the best

version of your future you look like?

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And I know some of you have that

very well crafted, but to those

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of you who are a little bit more

like me, maybe start with past you.

408

I really do invite you

to do this exercise.

409

It's really a good one.

410

think of it as an actual productive

scrolling scroll on your phone.

411

But in this moment, it's productive.

412

You're gonna get a lot

of information from it.

413

I can guarantee it.

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Thank you for sticking

around and listening to me go

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through all of these ideas.

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I can't tell you how

much I love doing this.

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I really, really do.

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Dammit.

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This is how I wanna feel.

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Thanks for listening.

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I hope you get some time to

revisit your past so you can

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more clearly see your future.

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Sending you lots of love.

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I'll see you next time.

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Bye.

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That's it for today.

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Thanks for listening.

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If you like this episode, hit follow or

subscribe so you don't miss the next one.

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And if it made you think, feel

something or yell, same out loud,

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leave a quick rating or review.

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It really helps.

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If you didn't like it, just

pretend this never happened.

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You can also subscribe on

Substack for updates and extras.

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I'd love to hear from you.

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Comes say hi on Instagram at

Quit my job pod, or email me

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at quit my job pod@gmail.com.

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See you next time.