How to Reinvent Yourself: A Guide to Personal Transformation
Emotionally / Mentally / Spiritually / Physically
Introduction/Disclaimer
I don’t take writing an article on this topic lightly. It is a mammoth topic, with huge responsibility attached to any advice on helping people change their lives. So while I can only write this from my personal experience, I want to reassure the reader that the content you are about to read is based on my own personal reinvention, which included a myriad of transformations (and the shitloads of pain which accompany them).
No Google searches were made before writing this, no chatGPT — just pure lived experience and 2nd hand advice from some of the wise individuals who guided me along the way…
Internal shifts are significantly harder than external shifts.
Before we begin let us differentiate the types of personal reinventions possible; External reinventions may be a career transition, and I would even go so far as to include physical transformations as external. Not that they do not take significant internal discipline, but the formulas for going about these are quite clearly laid out, and the results are recognized and praised because they are externally visible. Whereas, for example, if you attempt to heal your emotional baggage and build emotional maturity — very few people will see the process, know the process, or praise it.
You will need to rely on internal recognition as a motivator much more heavily. The good news is that internal shifts have much further positive-reaching impacts on your life than external ones. One of the reasons I am so passionately focused on mindset work is that mental and emotional work leads to improvements in almost every area of your life as I will further elaborate later on.
“Growth is painful. Change is painful. But nothing is as painful as staying stuck somewhere you don’t belong.” — Mandy Hale
My process for personal change
Note: Seeing as part of this is my 1 on 1 work with coaching clients and workshops, I will leave the process section high level and if you want my full guide I will try and eventually put it into a purchasable e-book.
Most people underestimate the time it takes, and the consistent effort required to reinvent a single part of themselves, never mind a full-scale reinvention like the kind I undertook. This is where most people drop off. The fewer results they see, the less effort they commit. But like anything worthwhile in life — the most rewarding things take the longest time to achieve. The good news is, that our reinvention takes a lot shorter than the amount of time it took to mould us into the person we were prior to our transformation. So if you begin at 35 for example, and it takes about 2 years to transform yourself — that is less than 6% of the time it took to make you who you are. Not a bad investment when you think about it like that.
There is hoards of research on the topic of habit formation and many people have written books on how to change your bad habits, whether it be in 21 days, in 7 days, or in 3 easy steps. Let me just say, that shit doesn’t apply here (and hardly works for sustainable habit change). While reinventing oneself will include changing habits, it is incomparable to the task of personal transformation. Like all roads in life, there are many shortcuts advertised to get there, and the subsequent ‘results’ are cut- short by choosing to go down the short-cut road (well done, great pun Bency).
“The truth will set you free — but it may piss you off in the process” -Unknown
Step 0: The ability to get uncomfortably honest with oneself.
This step is not to be underestimated and one that most people have the hardest part getting through as it requires an internal shattering of one’s ego (not a lovely experience). The extent to which one can get honest with themselves — equates to the extent of growth possible. This is why employing a (brutally honest) therapist or coach (The difference between coaching and therapy) will drastically increase your probability of success since you get an objective 3rd party who not only cares for your success, but will push you to get real honest with yourself throughout the process.
Step 1: Determine the person you want to become
Now, although this may seem as obvious as daylight, you’d be surprised how tricky this part of the process can be, especially as our thinking may be blurred at this stage, and there is likely a lot of fear present which creates (false) limitations for what is possible ahead. However, at this point, it is important to paint a picture of our future selves that is believable and attainable (the goalposts can always be moved further).
For me personally, it was very difficult to imagine certain parts of my future (healthy) life because, a) they were so foreign from how I saw myself and, b) I didn’t want to let go of those parts of myself/lifestyle that I was so attached to and that gave me ‘comfort’.
What I did that I found helpful was this — I took a piece of paper and drew two figures, one of ‘old me’ on one side, and one of ‘new me’ on the other side, and I wrote as many representative adjectives as I could think of next to each. I then stuck it on my wall for the next 12 months as a guide. So I knew exactly what behaviours, thoughts, patterns, and most importantly actions, this person (ideal me) would adopt. It would also serve as a guide to show me when I am falling back into ‘old me’ patterns and behaviours.
(It’s important to note that there exists within us each part of the ‘new me’ already, otherwise it would not be possible for you to imagine it in your future vision of yourself. We must also understand that we will often fall back into old patterns and we ought to have compassion for ourselves each time as this is to be expected)
Diagram Example
Step 2: What steps need to happen (and not happen) for to you become that person
Every goal needs a plan, and reinventing oneself is no different than a large goal one may set. The steps in step 2 are both practical and abstract. Practical steps involve an easily described action, and abstract steps are more difficult to describe and may include moments of physical or emotional ‘releases’ that cannot be planned. Do not underestimate the significance of these unplanned milestones.
For some reinventions, you may not need a coach, although having one would be much more effective. However, there are many contributing parts to an individual (mental, emotional, physical, spiritual) — and when it comes to significant personal change they are all somehow affected. It is very unlikely that one can achieve this holistic alignment alone. Thus, finding guides who understand the holistic individual beyond the conscious mind is a crucial part of personal transformation. I know it sounds like I’m selling myself or my colleagues here, but trust me, I have undergone transformations both with and without a coach - and the difference in effectiveness is incomparable. (so much so that it inspired me to become a coach myself).
“The soul always knows what to do to heal itself. The challenge is to silence the mind.” — Caroline Myss
Step 3: The Process
So we’ve identified the first two steps; one, understand very clearly and very deeply who it is you want to become and what that entails. Step two, understand very clearly, and very deeply, what you need to do in order to become that person (and what might get in the way).
And now step three: Once you have the goal, you have the picture, you have the plan, it’s time for what? Yep, you guessed it; Step three is consistent action. Intrinsically-motivated action.
What do I mean by intrinsically motivated?
The fact that you take the action is the reward, not the reward itself (even if you may be taking the action to get the reward). I find that many people delay getting started with the excuse that they need to learn/read/explore more first. Now although I’m a huge advocate for books, and they have taught me an immense amount — I’ve also learned that nothing replaces action. So if the choice is to read or do, pick ‘do’.
- A word on timing; it doesn’t belong to you. That is all. Leave the timing to God / The Universe / Source. See ‘the million dollar question’ below.
- Self-compassion; I never mentioned that this will be a lonely process as no one but you can do the work, feel the pain, and come out the other side. Be kind to yourself, and become your greatest ally — you will need him/her. (find community if you can! Don’t be a hero and go solo)
- Mind the haters; Those who believe in you, and those who want the best for you will never get in the way of you becoming the best possible version of yourself. But be prepared for potential ridiculing as you go about becoming a different person, and of course drama from those who are still unhealthy trying to pull you back in.
- A word on pain: please expect it. This is when many of my clients need me the most — to get through it, feel it and overcome it. But we always welcome and embrace it — because delaying it is only postponing it. As the poet Robert Frost aptly said, “The best way out is always through.”
“Your Conscious desires and your Subconscious intention must be in alignment. If your Conscious Mind wants one thing and your Subconscious Mind wants something else (counter-intention) it is impossible to create what you truly want.” — Robert Anthony
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One transformation usually leads into the other (mental<>emotional<>physical<>spiritual)
The good news is that if you decide to take the long (sustainable) road to personal transformation, the results usually compound. Meaning, a successful attempt in one area of your life, will spill into other areas of your life. For example, when you start prioritizing your mental or emotional health, you will inevitably start prioritizing your physical health. For some, once they reach their ‘peak’ physical health, they may pursue neglected areas of their spiritual health.
Perhaps the reason for this is that the common denominator remains the same: proving to yourself that you have the capacity for change. And once you stick it out and start seeing the results — your world of possibility in all realms of your life starts to open up.
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The long-term benefits of personal transformation
I’m a big believer that no suffering is meaningless, provided of course that you make meaning from the suffering.
- Generational impact; the work you do on bettering yourself, is not going to be felt by those you interact with in this generation alone — your children will be raised by a more healthy parent, thus becoming healthier people themselves, and raising their children in a more healthy way. The power of compound interest never ceases to amaze me.
- Every person you touch; whether it is an emotional, mental or spiritual transformation you embark on, every individual you touch going forward will be impacted more positively than they would have prior to your transformation. That’s a powerful thought. And you never know the huge impact you can have on people from one seemingly insignificant positive interaction.
- Building discipline; an essential part of the process. This is an internal resource which is undoubtedly the most valuable in attaining what you want in life and now you have more of it!
- Pain tolerance increases; along with discipline, your capacity for pain will determine what you can achieve in life.
The Million-dollar question.
How long does it actually take to reinvent oneself?
To this, I would say a few things, aside from what it is specifically about yourself you are attempting to reinvent;
a) it depends on your starting point and your history (including what stories you’ve been telling yourself all your life). If you think of it like a rehabilitation from physical injury — the question of how quickly it will take you to recover back to full strength, depends almost entirely on the severity of the injury. The rest is up to your consistent recovery efforts and mental narrative. No two people take the same length of time to recover from the same injury. I will say however the amount of trauma (or baggage) one has, the more work will need to be done to excavate before you can rebuild.
b) it depends on how much time/capacity you have to focus on this. Now, there is a limit to this, you can’t just dedicate 4 hours a day instead of 2 hours and expect to halve the time it takes. One of the reasons for this is that there is something called ‘internal capacity’ which cannot be physically seen or evaluated on paper and thus the only way to determine how much we have for something is to actually test it out. You may know when your limit is reached by physical and/or emotional exhaustion or by simply arriving at a block that again can only be felt and not understood logically.
In addition, the transformation process needs to be undergone in the right time — I’m aware this answer is abstract and annoying, but I learned this the hard way from trying to fast-track the process. Now I understand that the are certain universal laws to the psyche, the spirit, the soul — whatever you want to call it. In the same way you can’t force someone to change, they have to be ready — each stage of the transformation process has an allocated amount of time that we simply cannot know until we commence the process day in and day out.
I wish you strength, peace and a beautifully painful journey ahead my friend! 💙
