Why You Always Fail to Reinvent Yourself
“What do I want to do with my life?” — I asked myself, staring outside the window.
“Will I have to live on like this until my final day comes and I’ll look back with guilt and remorse at a life I knew I could’ve truly lived?”
The darkest days of one's life are when one questions everything he has done up to this moment. Does anything that I’ve done hold any meaning for better or for worse?
I was sorry for myself yet I didn’t want to be a victim.
I wanted to toughen up and do what had to be done. But what actually did I have to do and what did I want to do?
Was it foolish of me to not share my suffering with someone? Emotions have ruined everything in my life. I hated them. I didn’t want to be controlled by them nor show any emotion.
If I were to expose my sufferings, I would be vulnerable: “No, I cannot sabotage myself!”
People cannot be trusted. They are vicious animals who seek any chance to hurt and take advantage of you. If I was vulnerable, I would become just another prey for the bullies of society. I had to keep everything in.
Sometimes I wonder how crazy I am to hold the desire of helping others, yet I am the one in distress.
I seek to save the world yet I can’t save myself from my own damnation.
My own beliefs contradict my actions. I want it to change but I don’t know how. Each time I think I have figured it out, it turns out to be anything but what I wanted.
I run in circles and I cannot seem to stop.
Today as I sat down to write, I realized that writing is the only passion I’ve returned to with a burning desire.
Is this my purpose? Is this what I had to do from the moment of birth? Or am I just deluding myself?
For once in my life, I feel this is the right thing to do. But deep down, no matter how much I cover it up, the fear of losing everything again torments me each night.
Yesterday, I had to drop my 3 years old passion — coding.
I have never been in a relationship but dropping 3 years of my work broke my heart more than anything else.
You feel like a piece of you was ripped out. I dropped coding because I had other passions and not enough time for all of them. The thought of these events repeating once again scares me more than death itself.
It was a beautiful journey, packed with unforgettable memories. I’ll never regret coding for 3 years as that road taught me and helped me become who I am today.
Perhaps the problem lies exactly in that: “Who am I?”.
Underneath all the thoughts and experiences the real I is hidden. It took me 3 years to reveal only a small amount of my true self.
I can’t pretend I have everything figure out. I still struggle to change myself for the better.
Therefore, my words shouldn’t be treated as the ultimate answer you’ve been searching for in the hope it will get you unstuck and move you towards a better life.
But the few lessons I learned along the way might give you — the real you a starting point.
Who is the real I?
I is such a simple and beautiful concept.
One letter to define ourselves — our own existence.
But who is this I? Is it our conscience? Our spirit? Is it all of them?
We never get the chance to think about it, do we? We’re all caught up in the moment trying to figure out our goals, wishes, and dreams.
What if are unable to figure them out because we do it for the wrong person? Instead of seeking what you want, seek what the real you wants.
It’s frustrating when you don’t know what you want. You wish you could pick something and just get started, but what do you pick? There are endless options thanks to the Internet.
You are bombarded from left and right by people who tell you what’s good and what success is.
They aggressively push their values onto us and we blindly accept them.
We have been fed bullshit stories by bullshit people. I know it because I was one of them. I had the arrogance to think I knew what was best for others. Instead of seeking to understand the person and see beyond the surface, I came out as all-knowing and told everyone what a successful life looks like.
Nobody can truly help us rediscover ourselves except ourselves. Underneath the lies we perceive as common truth, hides our real selves.
The biggest cause for our unhappiness and empty days is the lack of self-awareness. You hear about self-awareness all the time, but it tends to seem like a form of spiritual transcendence to some.
I never did understand self-awareness.
For me, the peak of self-awareness meant one big moment of revelation. The dots would finally connect in my mind and everything would fall in place. It is enlightenment in it’s purest form.
But self-awareness will never have a final peak because self-awareness is the discovery of oneself every day ‘till the very last one.
As you’ll see, self-awareness is more than journaling. Self-awareness is the fight of all fights. One in which you have to stand your ground against the entire world and reality itself.
The beliefs we hold
You can’t change yourself until you become the type of person who can achieve that.
One of the biggest roadblocks we face when we try to change is our own mind. Fear is not the only mental roadblock we have to face.
The beliefs we hold shape our view of the world. Regardless of where you picked up those beliefs, I challenge you to confront your beliefs head-on. Write down all the beliefs you’ve been told by others and the ones you tell yourself about yourself and the world you live in.
- Money is the root of all evil
- You must go for the most predictable and safe path in life
- Only people with a high IQ will generate success
- I am not good enough
These are a handful of the beliefs I used to hold.
Writing them down is only half of the process. You need to know why these beliefs are a roadblock for you. Next or underneath them, write down a counter-argument for each of your beliefs.
- Money isn’t the root of all evil because money is just paper; it’s neutral. It’s a tool that amplifies one’s evil or good.
- There is no predictable or safe path in life. The universe itself is built on uncertainty.
- IQ is just a form of intelligence and even then it doesn’t guarantee success. It all resides in one’s action to improve and seek opportunities.
- I always have been enough. I can only strive to stack on top layers of improvement to unleash more of my potential.
A nail is driven out by another nail. Habit is overcome by habit. — Erasmus
The process of removing beliefs which sabotage us is similar to removing negative habits.
You can’t simply remove a smoking habit. You need to replace that habit with a positive one. For each of those negative beliefs, you need a positive one to balance it out.
- Money allows me to extend the good I do beyond my physical reach
- There is uncertainty everywhere. The world is full of opportunities which can lead me to amazing discoveries.
- As long as I have the desire to learn, I can increase my odds of success.
- Within me, there has always been potential. With time, I can release more and more of it.
Action is derived from belief
Psychology is one big field which is concerned with the study of the behavior of an organism.
It appears that psychology has been divided into schools who hold different views on what psychology should study. Some say we could only study the behavior and not the mind because the mind isn’t observable.
But one of the most interesting viewpoints of psychology is the learning viewpoint.
John Locke who was a philosopher and physician who talked about the theory of tabula rasa in “Essay Concerning Human Understanding”. His interpretation of tabula rasa was that at birth, the human mind was a blank slate.
Therefore, because we are born without any idea and we are unable to process data at first it is considered that most of our behavior, good or bad, is learned.
But both you and I know it has never been easy.
To change is to go against the tide of resistance, fear, and uncertainty. It is not simply a matter of analyzing your own thoughts and discarding those who serve you no real purpose. If our behavior is learned, our actions will inevitably shape our mind.
When you can’t seem to change your habits and your beliefs to become a better you, it might be time to also look outward.
Who are the people you’re surrounding yourself?
For harmony to be permanent, you need to balance both inside and outside of you.
You don’t want to cut ties with your friends. They are good people. You spent memorable moments with them. But you have to be honest with yourself: Are these the people you want to spend the rest of your time with?
It isn’t a matter of liking or disliking someone for being who they are, but of what they are.
If you have a different vision for your life and you hold a set of values that don’t align with the people you surround yourself with, reinvention won’t be complete.
I can’t tell you who you should spend your time with. Only you know what kind of people you wish to be friends with.
The bottom line is you have to realize your environment can put barriers against your reinvention process.
The strength to change
I never knew what my strengths are.
I thought they were overrated. That was until I realized knowing your strengths is part of reinventing yourself.
Much of our frustration in life comes from not knowing what we want. We are always looking for the next thing which can make us happy. I propose you do the reverse.
What if you should not strive for happiness but instead focus on how to be less frustrated?
Think of frustration as a giant door with only a small crack in the middle of it which allows a bit of happiness to enter from time to time. No matter how much happiness you throw against the door, you will still receive the same amount. The door is too strong to be broken down from the outside. You need to blow it to pieces from the inside.
But how could you achieve this task in your current state? You don’t have the necessary strength to do that.
The Internet is full of character strength survey.
For the sake of this article, I’ve tried two different ones and here are the results for my top five strengths:
While the order slightly differs they show the same strengths which made me question whether they were true or no.
It is hard to realize what your strengths are because they unconsciously manifest themselves. I suggest you think for each strength of a story or event in which your strength revealed itself.
Do not necessarily take these survey results as definitive truth.
You might need to dig more and find out the strengths which are true to yourself.
But knowing your strengths isn’t close enough to what is needed to change yourself. You have to live by those strengths. They must be part of who you are and what you do. Let’s look at a few examples of how you can achieve that:
- Curiosity — seek to explore the unknown regarding your favorite subjects
- Gratitude — express your gratitude towards someone or something
- Love of learning — watch documentaries
The best way to use your strengths is to find daily activities where you can put them to good use.
Out of all the 24 character strengths, you’ll undoubtedly have different results. Think of how you can integrate these strengths into your day to day life.
Conclusion
Finding your character strengths, removing the barriers against change and shifting your beliefs is only the beginning of a life-long journey.
I’m not here to tell you how your life should look like.
I don’t care if you choose to work a 9–5 job or run a seven-figure business. It’s your own call to make, not mine nor anybody’s else. The least I can do is share my experiences and what I’ve learned in the hope it will help you too.
Take everything I say with a grain of salt.
Pick the advice from me or anyone else that feels right to you, use it and change your life according to your desire.
