If you’re wondering how to completely reinvent yourself, perhaps it’s because you’re fed up of being you? Who would you like to become instead? Have you lost your mojo and fallen into habits of laziness and apathy?
Do you at times feel less enthused than you should? Is your life slowly ticking away and you feel as though someone else is helming the rudder of your ‘ship’? Have you considered that the missing piece of your life is another version of yourself?
If you feel like your life has come to an undramatic climax, in which nothing exciting or good happens anymore, then consider what needs to change….you. So here’s a few ideas how to completely reinvent yourself from scratch.
How To Completely Reinvent Yourself
My life was hurtling towards stardom and world fame (so I thought) when I realised I was a sad, lonely man sitting in his pants! When this truth dawned on me, I realised I had to do something to realise my dreams again and step up and out of my comfort zones which were slowly eating me up. Life was ticking away and I realised I wasn’t living up to my potential. Although my choices had allowed me to live comfortably and in many ways the life of Riley, I felt unfulfilled. I had a constant niggle that life had more to offer and that I was missing out on it.
I realised I needed to learn how to completely reinvent myself by changing my thinking. The things that had motivated me in the past no longer seemed interesting to me. The goals I had achieved, no longer held any fascination for me either. I had completely lost sight of who I thought I was becoming. My mind was filled with thoughts of inadequacy and disappointment. I was truly lost.
How To Completely Reinvent Yourself
I found a book called psycho-cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz. I was always interested in self help books from an early age. But this book signalled a turning point for me. In it, Maxwell Maltz points out that the controlling factor in all behaviour is the self image. Even with a cast iron will to change your life, your self image will control you. If your inner mind sees you as a failure, no amount of actual effort and good intentions will surmount this controlling factor of behaviour. So, if you want to know how to completely reinvent yourself, self image is a good place to start.
Maltz was working as a plastic surgeon and he realised that many clients went away as depressed as they came in, even after corrective surgery gave them the “look” they wanted. So he investigated methods of changing self perception with some great results. Many clients changed so dramatically they decided that a physical procedure wasn’t needed. They had learned how to completely reinvent yourself from the inside.
It was while building an online business that I came across this book. I started changing some small things about my life such as the clothes I wore and the things I would buy for myself. This had a limited effect because ultimately it was the constant rhetorical thinking process which was ‘driving my ship’. Many of my deeper insecurities were holding me back in life so I sought advice and help from councillors and healers. One such meeting let me to find a deep seated pain I had been living with for the whole of my life.
I’ll come back to this later on.
How To Completely Reinvent Yourself – Looking Within
So, I digressed a little. Let’s get back to how to completely reinvent yourself. If you feel you have been running an old program which holds you back in life, I highly recommend seeking out someone who can help you resolve and overcome your limiting beliefs, or past pains and inner demons. There’s only so much you can do by yourself.
However, that being said, you can do a lot by yourself too. One of the best strategies I have found is simple exercise. Many people forget to value what they already have in life and instead focus on things out of their reach. They look at people who are more talented than they are and always overlook their own talents and abilities. I was in this place too. The cure for this is to start valuing yourself and that means taking care of yourself. Proper exercise, diet and food for your mind are vital keys to your mental, physical and spiritual health.
Thinking well of yourself doesn’t always come easily. However, it’s a major strategy which actually works when taking charge of your life from the inside. Most people want to change all the things on the outside first instead of addressing the major cause of all their troubles and anxieties – themselves. Or, rather their inner programming. Self image is what to build your life on. If you have a good self image, you’re life will follow. This starts with valuing yourself which means looking after your body and mind.
What’s Your Story? Self Image
To find your inner issues begin with your story. What the first thing you tell people about yourself when you get to know someone? Do you talk about how wonderful your life has been or how hard? How about relationships? Do you mention all the wonderful people in your life or how so many have hurt you? What’s the key rhetoric which you are continually babbling about? Pain, Joy, Love, Heartache, Misery, Wealth, Being right?
Listening to yourself talk isn’t easy. Not with any level of detachment. But this is the key to changing and transforming yourself. You’re going to change your story which you tell about yourself. This is a major key if you want to learn how to completely reinvent yourself.Â
Instead of your usual story, you’re going to “change the record”. Think about a hero of yours who you’d like to emulate. What do they do? How can you begin to change your story so that you can become more like them? If you can’t think of your story, just notice how you talk about yourself to someone you’ve just met. Are you passionate or low key? Do you talk about yourself or do you listen?
Pay attention to your self talk whenever you are in a social situation and also by yourself (self talk). It can give you some major clues to your inner world and self image. If you’re particularly self critical, this is something to change to create a better self image. If you want to learn how to completely reinvent yourself, a good start is to change your inner critic to a more helpful and caring inner voice.
Are You A Failure? – In Any Sense?
Everyone has failed at something in life, unless they’ve never tried anything. But do you see yourself as a ‘failure’? How you see yourself is very important if you want to learn how to completely reinvent yourself. Those inner voices are the deep seated beliefs which drive ideas in your mind. From ideas you act and so the deeper beliefs are what you need to find if you are to make real and lasting changes in your life.
How do you find those beliefs? Chances are good that those beliefs are holding you in the life you so desperately want to break free of. What do you tell yourself to justify your life the way it currently is? What are the conversations you have with yourself? Whether you believe you are a success of a failure in life is only the start point of where you are going. So getting clear on how you currently see yourself in your minds eye, is very relevant to where you will be in 5-10 years.
“Whether you believe you believe you can or you can’t, you’re right” – Henry Ford.
Healing Old Wounds – My Story
So back to my story. I got some help revisiting some old demons which were holding me back in life. I lost my brother when I was 10 years old. It was a big pain point for me in life and something I always wanted to talk about to anyone I wanted to get to know. I wanted them to know me, and, at the time, “me” was someone in a lot of pain.
Revisiting some old wounds and past traumas with a professional healer helped me let go of some of the pain I was still carrying around, even in my 40’s. I don’t think losing a close family member even really goes away fully. You’re never the same afterwards. However, I was still clinging to some aspects of how the event made me feel, how I felt growing up and some deep seated issues around my personality.
Letting go of things like this is really cathartic. It helped me a lot and I didn’t even realise that I was holding on to deeper aspects of my personality through past trauma. So I’d definitely recommend finding someone who can help you with this.
Clearing Old Baggage
This article is titled “How To Completely Reinvent Yourself”. I don’t think you can do this unless you have cleared a lot of your “baggage” from your childhood which is often what you’re basing your current circumstances on. If your current ‘story’ that you’re telling yourself is really based on childhood trauma, and beliefs you’ve picked up from your parents, you’ll need to make those more conscious in order to see the truth of your situation. When you can see your circumstances as a reflection of your deeper beliefs, you’ll be on the path to making more conscious choices.
For example, many people struggle with financial difficulties and when they look deeply they see they have inherited many beliefs from their upbringing which make them act and make decisions in a certain way. When they see the truth of their beliefs, they can overcome limiting ideas which hold them back in life by altering their beliefs about themselves. Once core beliefs have shifted, making progress in an area of life becomes much easier. See affirmations, mantras and positive intention.
So What’s Your Current Situation Which You’d Like To Change?
Often people want to reinvent themselves when they’re not having such a great time. Why do you want to know how to completely reinvent yourself? After all, if you’re looking for answers, and “how to completely reinvent yourself”, chances are good that life isn’t so good. Otherwise, why would you bother!? Just carry on enjoying yourself in your wonderful, satisfying life!
But that’s maybe not the case. Why not? Because you’re living in the past! Your belief system is holding you from the life you should be living. This is a painful experience in which you never feel fully satisfied in life.
Start with what you would like to change about yourself. So what vexes you the most? Is it your partner, yourself, your lack of appetite for life, your job, your income, your situation or simply your frustration?
What Vexes You The Most?
For many people this is income. One of my pain points was income and purpose. I felt unappreciated and undervalued, I never had any money and life seemed tough all the time: never going on holiday and always being broke. My time was spent on my passions and interests and I never had a steady job. So I looked into my relationship with money which stemmed from a poor self image and a negative belief system around money and life being a “struggle”.
By changing a few habits and ideas I managed to turn my hobbies into jobs and things slowly began to change for me.
What are your top 5 complaints about your life right now?
The areas of your life you’d most like to change can often point to inner problems and beliefs which need dealing with.
Love life? Money? Job Security? Passion? Motivation? Holidays? People? Relationships?
Once you’ve got your 5, list your beliefs about why those things don’t stack up well in your life. What’s missing? Write down your excuses, (I mean reasons) next to each one.
- Feeling like I don’t matter – low self esteem
- Not getting paid enough or having a more interesting life – low self esteem/not doing enough
- I don’t feel like people ‘get’ me – wrong social crowd
- Not loving life – feeling unmotivated
- Feel out of purpose/lonely – Need something “else” in life
Then write down some solutions to your problems next to each one of them. What can you actually do in the next 10 days to make you feel more:
- On purpose – If you knew your purpose what would it be? What lights you up in life?
- More loved – how can you love yourself more/ how can you change your thinking to be more self loving and less self critical?
- How can I reach out to someone who I would like to get to know?
- What else can I do in life to to help me feel more fulfilled?
Change Your Thinking Change Your Life
Have you ever thought that maybe it is your thinking which creates problems for you in life? Often forgetting about your problems for just a moment helps remove them. It was the very act of focusing on your problems which brought them to your attention and made you feel unfulfilled.
When you change your thinking about your problems, it can actually change the nature of your problems. All problems are man made. So they can be solved. If you want to completely reinvent yourself, you must change your thinking. Otherwise, you’ll likely have the same ideas about the issues in your life.
Meditation
Meditation is a great way to alter your state of consciousness and alleviate your problems for the duration of your meditation. After you come out of your meditative state, you can see more clearly. Your thoughts don’t control you as mush and you instantly feel ‘lighter’ in mood.
This just shows that over thinking can be a cause of our problems. Being aware of our thinking processes is important if you want to learn how to completely reinvent yourself. Think about this: what if the way you perceive yourself is entirely made up? (Which it is). It means that you can let go of your old self and invent a new ‘character’ for your to live through.
How To Completely Reinvent Yourself – Choose a New Character
If you’re a movie fan like I am, you’ll probably have a favourite actor who you’d like to emulate. Or, perhaps you have a favourite motivational speaker? Choose someone you would like to emulate and become more like in life. Then, go out of your way to find images/videos/ films/audio which you can watch or listen to which inspire you!
Listen to new material on audio which inspires you and it is very much like having new and inspiring friends.
You Are The Average Of Your 10 Closest Friends
Have you heard the saying that you become the average of your 10 closest friends? Your income can be determined too by that of the people you hang around with. Divide the income of your 5-10 closest friends by the number of them and you’ll be very close to your own income. That’s because the saying “birds of a feather stick together”. It’s very hard to reinvent yourself if you continue to hang around with people who are continually reaffirming who you are back to you. People like to ‘label’ you as “this” or “that”. It’s much harder to become a new “you” if you have a small group of people who are not on the same path as you are.
You can change this over time by either moving away from those people who don’t share your values and goals, or by seeking out people who are looking for the same things in life that you want. I recently joined an online business community and have found a whole bunch of new people who are inspiring and open minded. Check out the community in this free video series.
Watch Your Thoughts – How To Completely Reinvent Yourself
Napoleon Hill states in his famous self help book Think and Grow Rich:
“Remember what has been said about the subconscious mind resembling a fertile garden spot, in which weeds will grow in abundance, if seeds of a more desirable nature are not sewn therein”
Your conscious thoughts are being listened to by your unconscious mind. Your unconscious mind is doing whatever it can to deliver the fruits of those thoughts. If you want to learn how to completely reinvent yourself, this is a good strategy to follow. Think about what thoughts you allow to remain in the conscious mind.
Are they thoughts you believe will deliver fruits of happiness health and wealth. Or are those thoughts the seeds of disappointment, failure and sadness? Be careful with the thoughts you choose to entertain and the words you use most frequently. in particular, pay attention to those thoughts and words which you give most power and emotion to.
If you are powerfully entertaining angry and negative thinking, you’re giving energy to the development of those ideas above others. As you become more conscious of what you are thinking, saying and doing, you are learning to place ‘seeds’ of more desirable ‘crops’ in your subconscious mind.
Becoming The Watcher Of Your Thoughts
Here’s a great exercise I found in this book by Victor Sanchez’s “The Teachings Of Don Carlos”. Set a timer which goes off at intervals throughout the day.
Each time your alarm goes off take out a notebook and write down three things:
- What was I thinking?
- What was I doing?
- Do I want this?
Your alarm should go off at intervals which are hard to predict. An hourly timer isn’t really any good because you can predict it going off and therefore adjust your thinking as you expect the alarm to sound. ideally the alarm should catch you ‘off guard’. So set it for intervals you don’t expect.
This exercise should be carries out throughout your day and for as long as your like. It will show you how you mind gets carried away with thoughts which you perhaps don’t really want to encourage. As you become more conscious of your thinking, you’ll learn not to focus on things you don’t want to manifest, especially with a lot of charge and emotion.
Lern to turn down the emotion involved in things which you don’t want and instead focus on the things you would truly like to have in your life. As you learn this you’ll be becoming a more conscious creator of your own life.
The Shift Wayne Dyer
Wayne Dyer explores the ‘shift’ which he came to understand during the second half of his life where he explains how to alter your perception and realise a new way of living. It’s a life transforming video and well worth a watch.
How To Completely Reinvent Yourself – Compassion and Forgiveness
One of the best ways to change your self image is the notice your inner dialogue you have with yourself. This is the powerful starting point of your self image. As you notice any critical thoughts and ideas which surface, pay close attention. These are possibly the most destructive forces in your life. If you carry around a strong negative view of yourself, the result is low self esteem. If you continually compare yourself to a standard which is impossible to achieve, the result is a low self esteem.
These are the things to start looking at. At first just notice them. If you’ve been criticising yourself for long enough, it will be an ingrained habit. So it’s going to take some time to change. Just be compassionate with your critical thoughts and judgements and look deeply into them. Letting go of thoughts which cause your emotional pain and suffering is a huge factor when learning how to completely reinvent yourself.
It will take some time to notice changes occurring in your life. At first you simply won’t see them. Over time though, you’ll have less time for people who criticise you and find fault because you have learned not to criticise yourself and treat yourself so harshly.
Forgiveness – Letting Go Of The Past
Forgiveness is critical too. Not only of others who you might believe have done you some harm in the past, but also of yourself. Unless you can forgive events and people from the past, they will continue to have an effect on your current life as it is. If you consistently re-live events from the past, and especially if you harshly judge yourself or others for them, you’ll continue to suffer because of those thoughts.
Give up judging and condemning and you’ll be free of many self destructive and painful thoughts. It will give you the space to learn how to completely reinvent yourself. Unless you can let go of patterns from the past, you’ll continue creating life as it has always been, based on your judgements and opinions which you created in the past.