Reinventing Yourself

Reinventing yourself is a dream many people have. Some want to change a few things, some want to change everything. In both cases, the same principles and skills apply.

Starting with the skills, it's important to note a few things:

1. Every skill is learnable. Even the most chaotic person can become organized through effort.
2. They are necessary, but you can start right now. You learn as you go.
3. A lack of skills isn't due to you being unable to learn them, but to not having the right system to learn them.
4. You don't have to master these skills to see results. You don't need to be the perfect human being to make big changes happen.

We are all persons with individual thoughts, emotions, strengths… But all of us can become who we want to be.

Treating yourself as a friend you want to see winning instead of an enemy you try to bully into winning is essential to becoming your best self.

We will cover these principles in the next article. For now, let's take a look at the skills:

Disclaimer: a deep dive into these principles, skills, and techniques will follow. This article solely describes the foundation.

1.Focus

There are many things in life that you can cruise through on autopilot, but reinventing yourself is not one of them. The new being will be your automatic behavior in the future, but getting there is a conscious and focused process.

Types of focus:

1. Short-term=Laser focus on the task at hand, right now
2. Long-term=General focus over an extended period (weeks, years)

You will balance between focusing intensely on the step you take right now and keeping an overview of your long-term goal/progress.

2. Discipline/Drive

Imagine reinventing yourself like driving a car:

You type the address into your navigation system and start driving. If there is gas in the tank, your foot on the gas, your eyes on the road, and you listen to the instructions, you will get there.

It's the same with this journey: Your goal is the address, your drive is the gas in the tank, the discipline keeps the foot on the gas and your focus is simultaneously on the task right now (the road) and the goal you reach by following the instructions.

Actions are an effect of emotions. They are driven by and created from emotions.

Therefore, exercising discipline and cultivating an unstoppable drive is closely tied to regulating your emotions.

3. Self-Talk/Mentality

The art of self-talk is possibly the biggest factor in everything you do, especially reinventing yourself. In unison with your emotional temperament, it creates your character, perspective, sense of self, and worldview.

That's because you will act on your emotions, which are closely tied to your deepest thoughts.

If you keep thinking "I will screw up", chances are you will.

If you keep thinking "I will make it!", chances are you will. 

Even if you don't, your ability to bounce back, try again, and maintain a healthy sense of self will be better in the latter and worse in the former case.

In both cases, your feelings will match what you believe:

1. "I will screw up" leads to feeling like a loser, defeated, helpless, out of control… And lead to actions that screw it up.
2. "I will make it" leads to feeling confident and motivated, believing in and trusting yourself… leading to taking actions that make you succeed, even if it takes a few tries.

This is how people start feeling stuck. Emotions, actions, and thoughts create a nearly perfect feedback loop that seems unbreakable, but it isn't!

Your self-concept and beliefs, the identity you formed, and your perspectives make up the factory that creates the matching products, i.e. your thoughts, emotions, and actions. This factory can be consciously renovated or even torn down and built (mostly) from scratch.

Changing your self-talk from negative and destructive to positive and productive follows simple steps:

1. Awareness: Consciously noticing what you think and how it makes you feel and act. The biggest positive effect can be achieved by focusing on patterns and cycles that repeat themselves. One trigger often leads to a spiral, an automatic sequence of actions, thoughts, and emotions.
2. Vision: Knowing what person you want to be. Asking the right questions produces the right answers: How would your ideal self think, feel, and act? What would your ideal life look like? How would this ideal self handle the problems and obstacles you experience?
3. Collecting proof: Take steps, no matter how small, to prove to yourself that you are serious about the change you want to see. For example, thinking "I want to be a golfer" and then proceeding to buy clubs and go golfing.

The subconscious and conscious engage in a permanent conversation. They constantly send and receive messages, but WE are the sender and receiver.

In that sense, cultivating positive self-talk is about sending the right message.

Here's the trick: Imagine getting a package and having to sign it. It's the same with these mental messages: If you tell yourself you're athletic but never do sports, never exercise, your mind won't believe you. That's where collecting proof comes into play.

The package is the belief/thought/goal, the signature is your action. If you don't sign it, you won't get the package.

Moreover: Everything is a message to yourself. Every thought, emotion, action… You can ignore it, but the effect will still occur. You can't lie to yourself. Your subconscious remembers every detail and is adamant about being true to yourself.

4. Awareness

Awareness is the opposite of lying to yourself. As long as you don't want to face reality, you will not be able to change it. It's the same as in the AA program:

As long as you don't want to admit you have a problem, there's no problem to solve and thus, the problem can't be solved.

It starts with admitting the truth and having the will to change it.

5. Emotional and mental regulation

Everything stands or falls with the ability to exercise control over your mind.

This happens in many ways. e.g. by simply ignoring how you feel, creating the emotions and thoughts you need, listening to them and drawing the right conclusions, etc.

Regulating your inner state is not just tied to discipline, it's the essence of discipline.

If you feel like you have no control over yourself, it can seem like an unachievable skill, often leading to defeat:

"That's just not me" / "I will never become better".

It's surprisingly easy to learn the art of discipline if you know how, although the way to get there will feel anything but easy.

You can start with a simple daily exercise:

Pick one thing you don't like to do, like doing the dishes. You put it off until it is unbearable to have a full sink and an empty cupboard.

That is good! Because it's the perfect opportunity to learn how to be disciplined.

Start with doing 1 dish a day. If you feel like crap, if your world fell apart, no matter what. You clean one plate a day.

It won't take long to clean 2 plates a day, now that you do it anyway… You will experience bursts of doing all the dishes, followed by a day or two where you don't even clean that one plate. Don't despair! Just get back to cleaning one plate a day.

You can do this with everything, be it exercising, cleaning,… 

It will teach you a lot about how you, with your unique character, can learn discipline, regulate your emotions, thoughts, and do what needs to be done. It will also teach you a lot about yourself and the status quo of your character.

The truth and the solution are always hidden in plain sight. The signs are everywhere, in every second of our lives… We simply pay no attention to them.

Want to start exercising and lose weight? Don't go from "never exercising" to "losing 30 pounds". Start with one push-up a day, a 5-minute walk around the block… It's all about 2 important points:

1. It's such an easy and short task that it is almost impossible to make an excuse. If you do find an excuse, you will feel bad about yourself. Your mind will be disappointed. That is good because it will eventually get you to clean that one plate a day.
2. You built the habit of showing up, regardless of your inner state or outer circumstances. To your mind, there is not much difference between doing something for 5 minutes or 5 hours when you build a new habit. Simply starting is always the biggest obstacle. You learn to do that easily by starting small.

From these baby steps and small beginnings, you can gradually increase the load.

In the next article, we will cover the 5 basic principles of reinventing yourself.

Thank you for reading and have a nice day!

This is Chapter 1 of the "Lazy Hustler" Series, focusing on mental and emotional skills that provide a chance to become who you want to be.