Cover Photo by Vivek Doshi from Pexels
Your Essential Guide
So you think you can’t change? Think again!
I assure you the two photos from above are of me. But beyond that, if you knew me in February 2018, you know a different person than people who know me now, at least to some important degree.
The people who knew me in high school, Cegep, university, at my first startup, or when I lived in Montreal, Toronto, Cambodia, Spain, India, and Colombia all know a different version of myself.
Can you reinvent yourself at 40? Yup! 50? Certainly! 60? You bet!
Nowadays, reinvention is a lot more frequent than it used to be. Babyboomers waited for their mid-life to make it happen. They called it the mid-life crisis.
In this age of globalization, more and more people live and work aboard. More and more people jump from one job to the next, or bypass the job market entirely and go freelance.
Is that reinvention in of itself?
Not exactly, but the experience can lead to reinvention.
What is reinvention?
“to remake or make over, as in a different form” — Dictionary.com
For me, reinvention is about vastly changing at least one of the following:
1. Your health
Are you healthier? Are you less healthy?
Are you more fit? Less fit?
Did you suffer bodily injury?
Did you contract a disease?
2. Your appearance
Has your style changed?
Did you put on or lose a lot of weight?
Do you dress differently?
Did you change sex?
3. Your love
Did you change partners?
Did you change relationship status?
Did you change your relationship style (open, not open, etc.)?
Did you change sexual orientation?
Has your approach on how you love your partner changed?
Have you started caring more or less for friends and family?
4. Your wealth
Have your revenue sources changed?
Has the amount of money you get increased or decreased?
Have you started caring more or less about money?
Has your investment strategy changed?
Did you start giving some of your earnings to people/causes you care about?
5. Your life purpose
Have your core values changed?
Did you find yourself a new “why”?
Have your life priorities changed?
6. Your faith and beliefs
Do you believe in something new?
Have you stopped believing in something?
Did you change religious faith?
How can I positively reinvent myself?
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I bet you answered “yes” to many of the questions above, no matter what your current age is. If you were to trace a timeline of your life, you would likely note a few important changes in your life every year.
See Appendix A for a personal example and Appendix B for how I reinvent myself every 6 months.
There are millions of ways to reinvent yourself. If you look at the questions above, I bet you can think of many ways to vastly change your life. What I want to go through here is what is the least amount of effort that can most positively impact your life.
1. Start with why
Your life purpose is the start of everything. Surprisingly, most people don’t know what their purpose in life is. It’s not their fault, they were given the mold early on in life:
Go to school -> Find a job -> Buy a house -> Have kids -> Raise them -> Retire -> Enjoy life?
Are you in that mold?
At least once a year, revisit what your chief aim in life is. Read Simon Sinek’s Start With Why and Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich.
Knowing your why is the catalyst to change. Isn’t it much easier to get to your destination when you have a GPS? But how useful is a GPS without a destination? Your why is your destination.
No tool in the world can guide you anywhere unless you know where you’re going!
2. Change your habits
Our habits make or break us.
But I bet you knew that already, don’t you?
In The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg digs into the science of habits. In the end, you are very much creatures of habits. You do millions of things every day without noticing that you are actually doing them. This comes from having done them repeatedly for a certain period of time.
Without your habits, you’d have no personality.
Are you out of shape? Check your habits.
Are your relationships toxic? Check your habits.
Are you poor? Check your habits.
Are you unlucky? Check your habits.
It’s no surprise that we see so many articles and books talking about the habits of successful people.
Successful people do productive things without even having to think about it. How powerful is that!
3. Ditch comfort
Comfort is the enemy of adaptability. And according to Charles Darwin, adaptability is what made humans thrive over other species. The more willing you are to adapt to new situations, the more easily reinvention will be for you.
Dare move to a different neighbourhood, city, or *gasp*, country!
Dare travel to the unknown. Dare learn a new language. Dare, dare, dare!
Can you change your bad situation by watching Netflix and scrolling through social media every night? No, right?
As much as we’re creatures of habit, we’re also creatures of comfort. Our genetic baggage favours safety over new experiences. My advice here is to raise your courage, one of the 6 habits in High Performance Habits, by Brendon Burchard. For me, raising courage came from point #4 below.
“Successful people do what unsuccessful people are willing to do.” — Darren Hardy
4. Skill up
No single habit has been more valuable in my life than learning 3 new skills every month.
In a podcast interview I did, the host made me realize how setting myself up for failure every single month taught me how to (1) raise courage and (2) removed any fear I had of change because whatever happens, I know I can adapt.
My friend Rafael Sarandeses went from being a professional car racer to being a financial advisor, an entrepreneur, a professor, and a coach. All that through teaching himself new skills.
My friend John Mashni is a lawyer who produces movies (not about law) and is a master martial artist. Like Rafa, he’s a master at reinvention through skill learning.
You hate your job? You want to change your life? There’s zero downside to learning new skills.
The more skills you learn, the easier and faster it gets.
5. Be accountable
This is not talked about enough in the self-help business. Without being accountable, you procrastinate. Isn’t that true?
You can’t reinvent yourself without taking action, and one of the best ways to push you to action is to be accountable for what you commit to.
Find yourself an accountability buddy/group. Make your goals public. And by public, I don’t necessarily mean for the whole world to see, but at least to a group of people you trust.
I personally use my writing and my newsletter to keep myself accountable. If I mention something I will do in my articles or newsletter, then I need to follow through otherwise people will lose trust in me. I will lose my integrity. The keyword here is “need”.
Sharing your goals with someone makes you accountable and you need to accomplish them to keep your integrity.
When something is a need, you can’t procrastinate doing it.
Conclusion
Trust me, you can reinvent yourself. You can change your life for the better. Ask yourself the questions above. Do it for this year, last year, and a few years ago. Refer to my example in Appendix A.
Start with knowing your why, change your habits (especially the bad ones), ditch comfort, skill up, and be accountable. That is a recipe for a successful reinvention.
You tried before and failed? I don’t want to hear your excuses.
Pick yourself up and try harder. Others have done it before you. No one said it was going to be easy. Change your mindset and you’ll see it’s possible.
You can do this!
Ready to Skill Up?
If you want to lead a more skillful life and crush tomorrow like never before, check out SkillUp Academy.
Appendix A
Here’s a personal example of how different I was in 2017 than I am now:
2017
Health: I was skinny picky eater who couldn’t care less about eating “right”.
Appearance: I started looking like a Viking (albeit a skinny one :)).
Love: My wife and I were in a long-distance relationship.
Wealth: I went from having a salary to not making any money as an entrepreneur.
Purpose: Travel the world and release a successful video game.
Faith: Nothing important to note here.
2019
Health: I put on 15 pounds of muscles (that came in 2018 but I maintained most of it). I’m generally more conscious about cooking healthy food. Also, and most importantly, I can now eat onions (I had been averse to them for 15 years)!
Appearance: I have extremely short hair and a much more trimmed beard. And I have my first two tattoos!
Love: My wife and I are back to living together in Montreal.
Wealth: I grew to have many sources of revenues, most of which comes from writing (which I had never done prior to January 2018).
Purpose: Help people grow in a better world. Most of that through education disruption. Still on to release that game!
Faith: No change that I can think of.