Have you ever wanted to be someone different, or to reinvent yourself?
Still you of course, but with a more interesting and varied life? Maybe even have a better job, look better, be more healthy, or just cooler?
If that is you, then you are not alone. Most of us want to have some or all of that happen in our lives. But the truth is that except for a few brave souls, it remains a dream or a series of items on a wish list. So how do you transform your life or just reinvent yourself in your current life?
It’s not easy, but it can be done. Here are five areas to focus on if you want to reinvent yourself. You will notice that they all involve change. If you are willing to do the work to change then you can have the transformation you desire. If not, then you’ll just have to keep dreaming about it.
1. Change the Outside
In some ways this is the easiest thing to do. Successful entertainers like Lady Gaga develop a public persona that they reinforce over and over again through costume and apparel changes, even during the same event.
They are aiming to be provocative and interesting, forcing people to pay attention, to see what they will do next. You don’t have to wear a sheer body suit to get the same effect in your life, but upgrading your wardrobe is essential if you want to reinvent yourself and attract positive attention.
2. Change How Others See You
Some of us, and this is particularly true of men, get stuck in a “look” that we are comfortable with.
It may be comfortable for you, but it also may be sending out signals that you are less serious than you should be about work, or that despite being ten years out of college you still haven’t quite grown up yet.
All of this may be completely unfair and arbitrary, but whether you like it or not you are being judged on how you look and how you dress, especially at work.
3. Change Your Body
You should also have a look at your body. Unless you have been eating well and exercising regularly, your body is likely not in the most desirable condition.
If you really do want to reinvent yourself and transform your life, then start with the body you are walking around in. Get a physical exam, join the gym, start a diet.
Do what you know you need to do to present not just a different you to the world, but a new and better looking body to start your transformation and your new life.
4. Change Your Inside
In some ways this is the beginning of the hardest part, because this reinvention isn’t easy to see with our own eyes.
We have to relearn and rethink many things that we thought were true, but that we now realize don’t work for us. Most of us have spent all of our lives trying to be a certain person that others wanted us to be, and now we have to get real.
That can be scary, but think about it like the process a butterfly has to go through as an egg, and then a caterpillar, and then a pupa, where it rests and gains strength before it emerges as a beautiful flying creature.
Maybe you are still in that pupa stage, waiting to transform. When you are ready to reinvent yourself, the world will be waiting to see the metamorphosis that has brought them the new you.
5. Change Your Vision
Now comes the fun part. The reason you are going through all of these other changes is so you can have the life you always dreamed about. What does that look like?
Does it mean a new job or career? Does it mean living in another city or country? Does it mean becoming a musician, or artist, or high-powered stockbroker?
Give yourself a little time to imagine the life that you really want, and then make a plan to make it happen. Write it down. Put it on your refrigerator door, on the walls of your office cubicle, on the mirror in your bathroom.
Today could just be the beginning of your brand new life and a brand new you.
As you go through your personal transformation and the hard work of change to reinvent yourself, remember the words of the great mystic and guru Osho, who once said:
“Drop the idea of becoming someone, because you are already a masterpiece. You cannot be improved. You have only to come to it, to know it, to realize it.”
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