Reinvent Yourself

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: This is Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby, and you’re listening to The Love, Happiness, and Success podcast. 

[Intro Song: Furthest Blue by Eyelids]

Dr. Lisa: The band is Eyelids with the song Furthest Blue. I liked that song for our show today because it’s the idea of creating this idealized future. Somewhere off in the distance but close enough so that we can see, right? I thought that would be a wonderful intro for our time together today because today we are talking about how to reinvent yourself in a very intentional and also meaningful way. That’s the important part.

I think the idea of reinventing oneself, having a fresh start, a new life segment where you get to be different, is so appealing. Because it’s this sense that it’s possible to step from one plane of existence into another and just a different direction, a different trajectory. It almost has a whiff of magic about it. This idea that you could say legitimately, to yourself and to others, I am different now. That was then, this is now. Things have changed. I think that we all want to have that experience in some ways but it’s a lot easier to say that than it is to actually do it. I mean, how does one accomplish a reinvention? 

The accessible parts of reinvention are the ones that we can often buy or do. It’s parts of reinvention that are physically obvious or even circumstantial. We can, you can cut off all your hair, you can quit your job, sell your house and move into a van. You can do the act of reinvention and in some ways, achieve it in the sense that you’re living in a different reality or maybe looking different. But, you can’t quit yourself. You can’t cut off a part of your personality. Unless you know how to do a much more meaningful reinvention process, you’re still going to be the same you. Thinking the same thoughts, harboring the same core beliefs that then become your filter for the world. You’ll have the same reactions to people. You’ll say the same things or do the same things in your relationships and basically show up the same way you always have, just with a capsule wardrobe and short hair and from the driver’s seat of a van. We have to go deeper.

Another aspect of reinventing oneself that I also don’t think gets enough air time, frankly, and that can really create a stumbling block for many people is this. This often, I think unspoken fact, that we are all inhabiting systems in the world that create this almost gravitational force on us. The technical term for this is called homeostasis. It’s something that we’re all susceptible to. It can be really easy to blame yourself for getting into a rut or not being able to change things easily and effortlessly. But the fact is that we’re all interconnected. We’re living in the context of these systems that tend to hold us in place. 

The people around us are behaving in predictable ways, they’re interacting with us in this sort of usual unexpected ways. We then sort of slide into interacting with them in normal and expected ways that they expect from us and that we just do without thinking about it. This is true in our personal relationships. Also even patterns of behaviors with our jobs or our families that we all have these roles and responsibilities. Even routines, like getting out of bed at a certain time. This is what I do in the morning. This is what I have for breakfast. All the systems essentially pull for us to be a certain way which is the way that we have been and then when we try to reinvent ourselves or be different, particularly with people or in the way that we’re approaching our roles that involve other people, the system is trying to push us back into place. 

When we attempt to reinvent ourselves in substantial ways, there can often be this pushback, where people don’t really want us to be different or they’re not ready for us to be different. They’re surprised. They’re trying to interact with us in the same old way which then leads us to slide back into those old patterns. I know that this is very kind of heady stuff. It often happens outside the realm of consciousness. It’s not something that we think about while it’s happening, it’s just something that happens. I really wanted to talk about this as well because if you’re not ready for that and aware of it as a thing, it will in very subtle but yet effective ways to sabotage your reinvention process. I wanted to speak to you about that today as well.

Because this reinvention business is actually much more complicated than it sounds. To create real and lasting change in yourself and in your life. It takes intention, self-awareness, and often quite a bit of applied energy over time. It’s so worth it to do. You don’t have to accept the hand that you got dealt. You are empowered to create your own way. You absolutely get to decide what parts of your life are working well and what parts no longer serve you so that you can reinvent yourself at will. You can do it. On today’s podcast, I’m going to be talking you through a step-by-step process that shows you how to create a personal reinvention plan that is meaningful and authentic, and most important, lasting. That’s our goal for today’s episode. 

If this is your first time listening to the podcast, and you’re wondering what in the heck you have just stumbled into. I am Lisa Marie Bobby. I’m the founder and clinical director of Growing Self Counseling and Coaching. My background, I’m licensed as a marriage and family therapist. I’m a licensed psychologist. I am also a board-certified coach. The Love, Happiness, and Success podcast is all about helping you grow and have better relationships, and achieve your most important personal goals. On every episode, we talk about different aspects of that all for your benefit. 

On today’s episode, I really wanted to talk about reinvention because it felt just so relevant right now. I think this topic is relevant for all of us. As I record this, we’re hopefully, fingers crossed, coming out the other side of this very strange pandemic experience that we’ve all lived through. Also, I think me personally, I think I’m going through the same thing as many of my clients and probably you too. There’s this time and space in life for us to reevaluate, “What have I been doing? Do I want to keep doing that? What do I want to do differently in the future? Who am I?” It’s sort of existential questions. 

If you are one of my regular listeners, you may have noticed that for the last, probably a couple of months, I have been serving up some of my best of episodes for your benefit. There are episodes that I enjoy and was thinking might be helpful for you. But also, I think I’ve been going through my own reinvention podcast process as well as a personal process. One of the things that is so intrinsic to a real reinvention is being able to step out. When you step out, it gives you the opportunity for time and space and clarity, that you can then step back in and do things differently going forward. 

But in the interim, that time that you do step out and give yourself some space, there are things that need to be happening under the surface in order for that to be a meaningful process. That is what we’re talking about today on the show. I hope to give you some very actionable ideas and even assignments. As you listen to this episode, you might want to grab a notebook and write some things down because I have some questions for you. Today’s podcast is going to be experiential in nature. I’m excited to share some of these things with you.

Let’s tackle this. Let’s talk about the process of personal reinvention. As mentioned previously, reinvention can be an outward process. Sometimes you changing something about the way that you look or changing something circumstantial. However, I will also tell you that when these things happen in a real and lasting way, they are always connected to an inner process of change and rebirth. Sometimes I think that reinvention can even seem superficial. Somebody gets a dramatic haircut or something can be the manifestation of an actual inner rebirth. The outward sign is just a physical symbol of that but it’s still very important. 

While it might seem silly to part your hair on the different side or throw out your skinny jeans, or whatever it is, it can actually be attached to very substantial things. But the substantial things still have to be there. I’ll give you an example. My son, he recently turned 13, and he has always been this sweetest, nicest Hufflepuff kid. For years, he had long hair. He had his headband collection. He was rocking this whole Lords of Dogtown thing for years, literally. On the cusp of his 13th birthday, he’s like, “Mom, I want to cut off my hair.” Of course, okay. It’s your hair, we can do it. But he picked out the photos and we made the appointment and he got all his hair cut off. It’s a very short haircut.

In that moment that he came home and now I’m interacting with this child who looks so different. It was like, “Whoa, who are you?” It was like a stranger in my house. But also noticing how substantially his personality has changed, his ways of being have changed, his communication, his ways of thinking, because he’s really has changed from being a child into the stage of early adolescence. His hair, I think for him, was a very meaningful and symbolic representation of his inner change. That was legitimate and important because it was communicating to us in the world, “I’m not who I was last year. I am not a kid. I’m different. I want you to see me as different and treat me as different and interact with me in a different way.” I think none of this was conscious for him but it was also extremely real. This is a different kid and we need to approach him differently. The boundaries are different. Our expectations of him are different. That change in his hairstyle was the manifestation of this inner reality. 

That’s what I’m talking about, is this meaningful reinvention because it’s the same for you and for me. It requires this inner journey. I’m going to be sharing again, some steps for how to do this for yourself. I also want to warn, not sure what you’re expecting here but  I’m going to be coming at this from a coaching perspective, rather than a therapeutic one. I mean, love therapy. I’m a psychologist. I’m a marriage and family therapist. However, for this sort of process, this growth process, I don’t think that a therapeutic model is very helpful for people, not nearly as much as other ways. As a therapist, the goal of therapy is healing. Therapy is for the diagnosis and treatment of mental health conditions. A therapeutic approach would say, “All right, let’s talk about what the problem is. Let’s talk about how you were impacted or perhaps possibly damaged in some way by your life experiences growing up.” Or “What are the hard kind of painful parts that we need to exercise.” 

As a coach, and I think this is why I’m so invested in a coaching model, I think that those ideas are simply not helpful to people who are wanting to do a substantial recreation. I think it holds people in the past. While insight is always helpful, I think that it is negative and self-limiting. I think it can really hold people back. For that reason, I want to walk you through more of a coaching process in order to intentionally cultivate reinvention that I hope feels more positive and more empowering for you

Where we’re going to start with this is exactly from this place. I think many times when people think about reinvention, it starts with this long list of all the things that you don’t like about yourself and all the things that you want to jettison into the past, “I don’t want to do that anymore. I don’t want to be that way anymore.” It’s a moving away of things that you don’t like. This idea, that I can be different, I can change these dramatic things about myself that I think are not really honoring to who and what you really are. They’re also not empowering. They are also, that approach, can be very disempowering because when we don’t honor who and what we really are, we’re trying to force change that is not natural to us. It doesn’t honor our strengths and because of that, it’s often not successful. 

I want to prepare you for that. Reinventing yourself isn’t changing everything about you. It is understanding the best parts of you and intentionally growing those. I will also tell you and just to be radically honest with you, as I always am, that reinvention is also circumstantial in the sense that there are certain life segments that meaningful reinvention is simply much easier to do. It’s often related to opportunities to step out of your old patterns and ways of being so that you can have time and space to achieve perspective.

There’s also this component of pattern disrupt. There’s a catalyst for reinvention. The motivation for why, but also the opportunity to, in a very real way, disrupt the old pattern that you have been in. That goes back to this idea that we were talking about in the beginning of homeostasis. When we are in our same routines and around the same people and having the same interactions, we get sucked into this way of being that’s very, very, very difficult to get out of. A true reinvention requires at least to some degree, the ability to step out of those old patterns for enough time and space to develop a certain objectivity and really get out of that well-worn path that’s very, very easy to fall into.

For example, say that one of the things about your life that you’d like to reinvent is a relationship. If your relationship is feeling difficult and you’re working on yourself, maybe you’ve been working with a coach around like, “Okay, how am I showing up in my relationship? What can I do differently?” And you have decided that you are going to take responsibility for the way that you are communicating with your spouse. They say something snarky to you and instead of doing what you usually do, which is maybe saying something back, you say, in a very gentle and respectful way, “I hear what you’re saying. I’d like to hear more about your perspective. I’m not sure that we totally agree but I’m here to listen to you and to understand you because I love you.” That’s a totally new thing that you’re doing for the first time because of your own personal growth work. Your partner is still thinking about you in the old way. They have had many, many, many, many experiences with you previously, where you have behaved differently. 

Now all of a sudden, you’re doing something new and different and it does not compute for them yet. You say something very gracious and gentle and lovely and they say, “Stop screaming at me. You’re so controlling. I just can’t even take it.” And they storm out of the room. Because they’re hearing what you would have said three months ago, in their mind, even though in reality, you just said something very, very different. That you are different but they have not acclimated yet. They’re still reacting to you in this very old, well-worn way. That’s very normal and that is one of the reasons why people in couples counseling are, “Why this isn’t working?!” Is because even though they’re trying to be different and showing up and doing things differently, their spouse or partner is reacting to them in the same old way and that feels frustrating and it feels disempowering. 

This is that homeostasis that I’m talking about is that even if you are very deliberately reinventing yourself and intentionally being different, the systems that you inhabit are going to react to you as the way that you were previously, not the way that you are now. Because of that, those systems are going to pull you to slip back into that old role. In the example that you say something very kind and gentle to your spouse and they just react with the same old hostility. It’s difficult to not get frustrated and be like, “Darn it! I’ve been trying so hard! How dare you treat me that way?!” All is lost at that point. You’re off to the races. That’s what I’m talking about. It’s how can you step out of that old system for long enough and dramatic enough way so you get perspective. Also, it kind of resets the system. It’s turning your computer all the way off and back on again, it’s like a fresh start. 

Having space can be incredibly important. Not always something that I advise if you’re trying to improve your relationship but something that can be a very dramatic system reset for couples that have been struggling for a long time, is a very intentional separation. Not for the purpose of an off-ramp towards a divorce but a separation where each person has time and space to slow down, reevaluate themselves, and reevaluate the other person. Maybe combined with some really intentional marriage counseling, or even mean relationship coaching, where the clock resets and you’re like, “Okay, we are really legitimately going to give each other a fresh start and a pass and a new chance. I’m going to learn who you are all over again and I’m going to learn who I am all over again because we’re not the same people that we were 10 years ago when we got married. We both changed substantially. Let’s find out who that person is.” Sometimes having that that distance can be super helpful. 

There are other life segments where reinvention is much more possible. There are developmental stages or life transitions that really pull for a natural reinvention process. I mentioned one, my son making that transition, from late childhood or early adolescence. That is very real and that’s a significant transition. Other transitions are moving in with a partner or getting married. Certainly, parenthood can be a very natural new transition for couples and individuals. A new job, moving to a new city, leaving a job, leaving a relationship. It’s like there’s this path kind of opens up in front of you and that old pattern has been disrupted, sometimes smashed to smithereens. Can’t do what you have done in the past, right after you bring a new baby home, right? There’s this whole opportunity to recreate who you are, who you want to be, how you want to handle these situations differently going forward in this natural reset. 

To a degree, I think that the whole COVID pandemic experience has given some people a natural reset in the sense that it disrupted the systems, disrupted the patterns enough to allow people some time and space for that reflection. But not everyone. I mean, I can’t even tell you over the last year, how many more people, I think, who have been busier than they’ve ever been in their lives. They’re overwhelmed and burned out. They haven’t had a moment alone with their thoughts. There’s this myth that everybody in the world has been sitting around baking things and watching Netflix and that is absolutely not true. For many people, I think that the COVID pandemic experience has actually been the opposite, where people have less time and space to be self-reflective. It’s okay. I just I say that out loud because I don’t want you to think that you should have had some kind of experience when it wasn’t actually your reality. Just to honor that. 

Look for ways to break the patterns. If there is a natural life segment that you’re experiencing, a transition into something or out of something, that can be really helpful. I’ve noticed that sometimes even seasons, particularly a transition from summer into fall, can be a very interesting open door for a reinvention and even a thoughtful vacation. Even a staycation can be the opportunity for a reinvention because it allows you to pause and simply stop doing what you have been doing and then when you come back into the space that you had been inhabiting previously, if you allow yourself, you’ll see things a little bit differently. 

How many of you can relate to this very simple example? I remember, once my husband and I, we took a trip with our family that was a pretty substantial trip. When we came home, I walked into my house and I was like, “Man, this place is grubby.” I’ve kind of intellectually known like, “Yeah, we should probably, it’s time to paint.” Before we left but when you’re in the space all day, every day, you don’t really notice it that much but I came home and was like, “This is bad. The walls.” It was the catalyst for finally taking action and getting the house painted. A very minor example. It’s just an illustration of when you re-enter, it’s like, “Oh, yeah. I didn’t really notice that in the same way before.” That can be really powerful. 

Then the other piece of reinvention, aside from breaking the pattern, and getting space is also motivation for change. You have to have that. I think that another thing that can mess people up, if they want to recreate themselves, or some aspect of their life is not getting really clear about their why or what’s at stake. There’s this idea of, “Yeah, kind of nice to do that.” But when it’s not really attached to a very core and powerful thing, we don’t have the anchor of energy and motivation to sustain a true reinvention. Because it takes a lot of energy and a lot of intention over a sustained period of time. 

If you’re thinking about making a change in your life but if you really check in with yourself and like, “How important is this to me?” If the answer is something like, “Yeah. It’d be nice, but only if it was easy.” We can just stop right now because it’s not going to work. That’s not a bad thing. Timing is very, very important when it comes to personal reinvention and you can’t force it. If that is the case for you, you can listen to the rest of this podcast and get the takeaways and tuck it away for later. Just know that in order to really reinvent yourself, you have to feel it or be in the kind of life space where you have to. There’s no other choice. If somebody, if a couple or an individual has a baby, for example, there is no other option except to reevaluate the way you’ve been doing things. Or starting a new job, you’re forced into a situation where you’re gonna have to do things differently. If it’s just a personal preference or something that you want to work on or with yourself, that you have to feel it, you have to connect with a why.

I would like for you to consider, when you think about your reinvention process, “What’s it for? What’s the purpose? What would change for you? What would be different on the other side of this if you were successful? How much do you care about that outcome? Is it valuable to you?” I would also just like to present this idea that sometimes, many times actually, when it comes to a reinvention process, that is one that we generate and do because we want to not because we have to, it is motivated by dark emotions. I think that’s another difference. 

In my perspective, as a coach, I think a just traditionally trained therapist will think of feelings of anxiety or sadness, or resentment or anger, as being negative things that we need to fix and may go away and stop and heal and they’re disordered in some way. As a coach, I look at those and I think, “How does that make sense? Tell me why you’re feeling angry or frustrated, or nervous. Let’s see if we can understand what that is trying to tell you that we should listen to and honor.” There is so much wisdom that comes from our dark and even hard emotions and it’s not bad. It’s very, very good when you listen to them and allow them to influence you and take positive action. That is your emotional intelligence talking to you. I think that our lives are all better for it when we listen to those feelings instead of push them away and try to embrace them. Because at the end of the day, that’s all we have, right? How we feel. That’s our understanding of what is important to us and when we can crack into that, that is often the voice of our motivation. If we can do something constructive with it, of course. 

Those are the two core pieces of genuine and authentic reinvention, is taking a step away, making contact with motivation. I will also say just for the purposes of this podcast because as you know, I like to be comprehensive. There is also such a thing as a sleeper reinvention, as I think of it. There is a reinvention process that people can go through that is less intentional in some ways because they’re not consciously going in as “I am going to be different when I’m on the other side of this.” It’s more of a slow burn that happens through an inner process or by being in a different set of experiences than you have been in the past that changes you in a substantial way that I think of it as molting.

Birds will go through phases where they lose their feathers and they grow in new feathers. It’s a mess while it’s happening but like old ways of being are sort of sloughing off and new ways of being are emerging from underneath. There is a subtle reinvention happening on the inside of you that you don’t even notice until later. For example, say you start a new job that calls for a different skill set or a different way of thinking than you have been in the past. As you get into that, and simply start doing that over six months or nine months, or a year, you will notice that it has changed you by virtue of being in a different system. 

Different relationships can have that impact on us, if we’re around people that pull for us to be differently. Sometimes going to school or moving out, you are forced to acquire this different skill set or way of thinking. Certainly too, being in coaching, even sometimes therapy can create that, where you’re invited to think and feel differently over and over again to the point where it actually does change the way that you think and you feel and you behave. Ideally, that is an intentional process. That’s why I’m making this podcast for you today is how do we make it intentional. But there are also times that we are changed because we go into a different environment over a sustained period of time. Then at some point, we realize that we are different. At that point, sometimes external manifestations of change then occur, where we show the world that we’re different because we’ve already achieved it on the inside.

Again, changing yourself and reinventing yourself is often not just around changing your circumstances, although it can change you over time. Most of the time, when we decide to be different, we do things differently, we try to anyway, or we change our circumstances, and hope that the external systems that we’re attempting will have that impact on us. But the reality is that we take ourselves with us wherever we go. You can sell all of your things and move to India or Tibet and you can go there and you will still be thinking your same thoughts and processing the world through your same inner filter and holding on to your same values. Therefore feeling pretty much the same way as you are right now, even if there’s a different setting around you. 

You bring yourself with you. Although you do have a new opportunity to get much more intentional about what you’re doing because you are no longer in the old system that you were created in. Our systems forge us to some degree which you can certainly think of if you think about your family of origin experience. The way that your parents communicated the expectations that they had a view of all of us. They shape the way we experience the world, the way we think of other people, the way that we communicate. It isn’t until we leave that system that we get to decide who we want to be going forward. 

That’s where we are now, at the cusp of this reinvention process where you get to be different. Particularly, if you are in a transitional life space or feeling motivated or having the opportunity to break free. Here is what to do next in order to dig in and make this genuinely transformational. The next thing that you do, that is the activity that makes the change, is to, first of all, get real serious about self-awareness in a different way. I am going to invite you to do something that you might not expect which is to really think about what it is about yourself and your life currently, as you are right this very second and is your life is right now that you really, really love, and appreciate. What is working?

I know that this may be a little bit surprising because I think, again, when we think about reinvention, it’s this idea of moving away from something that we don’t like. Jettisoning an old identity or way of being that we don’t want to be anymore. Thinking about all the things that you don’t like about yourself and what you want to be different. When we do that, say, “I don’t like all these things about myself. I want to be this aspirational, better version of me, who can do all the things that I’m not currently doing and have this personality that I don’t have and think about the world in this way that I don’t.” That doesn’t work. Humans don’t work that way. 

I have tried, personally. I have worked with a lot of people who come in for help in either therapy or coaching with that as the goal. “I don’t like all these things about myself and I really want to be different. I would like you to help me be different.” Okay. That’s not how this works. You have to use what you have to build something new. What do you have? That’s why authentic self-reinvention starts with taking stock of your strengths, or your strength clusters, I should say because our personality strengths, our traits, show up in clusters. They all go together. 

For example, one of my signature strengths and the things that I like about myself, I am very flexible. Flexibility, I think it goes along with creativity, openness to new ideas. I don’t get attached to outcomes. I mean, that’s just my way of being. It’s easy for me to shift into a different direction. I tend to stay in the present. Those are strengths, all good things. Except, there is also the kernel of recreation within that because there are light and dark aspects to all things. For example, for the flip side of my strengths, I’m flexible, right? I’m like, “Yeah, okay. Let’s do that instead.” That means that I can say yes to things and the moment that I can have the intention to work on something on Wednesday afternoon at two and then something else happens, and I don’t do what I had originally planned to do, and it gets pushed off and the managing time, staying in alignment with structured plans. That is a dark side of my strengths. 

When I want to be the best version of me, and create the reality that I want, I need to be thinking about what my strengths are. Also, what the growth opportunities are and how to use my signature strengths in order to shift the parts that aren’t working for me. I’ll tell you that this is a very different way of thinking about reinvention. I know that and I’ve been there. I mean, I can’t tell you how many times, especially when I was younger, I would try to reinvent myself, be like, “Okay. I’m scattered and disorganized. I’m going to be a super-organized person. I’m going to create this beautiful schedule divided into 15-minute increments of time and I’m going to do this and this and this and this.” That never worked. 

Of course, it never worked because that is not who I am. It is so out of alignment with who I am. It would work for somebody else who had a totally different personality and way of operating in the world. But we have to be reality-based when it comes to who and what we are for reinvention to really be meaningful. But also, I think that reality-based, “Who am I? What aspects of myself can I use to build something different and new?” It’s important. Because if we try to be something or someone that we aren’t, and will never be, that when we try to be that aspirational thing that’s so different, it won’t work and it will make you feel really bad. Your big reinvention plan will fall through and you get mad at yourself and you think, “What is wrong with me? Why can’t I do that? Other people can do that. I’m following the manual of make a schedule, set a timer, do these things. This works.” It doesn’t work for me and that is bad, “Why won’t it work for me?” 

What I’m telling you is that there’s not a cookie-cutter approach to reinvention because you are not a cookie. Your reinvention process needs to be much more authentic and real for you. It starts by saying, “Who am I? What do I love about myself? What am I good at? What are my strengths? What are the things that I appreciate about me? Even more importantly, what are the things in my life that are really working very well for me right now and that I don’t want to change? What do I want to carry forward with me and continue to cultivate and to grow?” 

Because the truth is, there are so many wonderful, legitimate, valid, fantastic ways of being in the world. It’s so easy and tempting to fall into this trap of overvaluing one way of being over another. We can get very judgy and discriminatory even with certain ways of being are better than others. It’s not true and it’s also not helpful. If you want to start with reinvention, let’s start with who you are and what about that is fantastic. 

You can even pause this podcast for a couple of minutes. If you want to take out a notebook or open up a blank screen on whatever device you’re on, and just spend a few minutes really thinking about and writing down. Not the things that you hate and you want to be different, but what are my best qualities? What do other people like about me? What are my favorite things about myself? What can I do that isn’t as easy for other people to do? What is working? What have I done in the past that worked really well and I’m proud of? What would I like to do more of in the future? Take a minute. Write that down. 

As you do, you’ll be uncovering your signature strengths. Once you’ve given yourself the opportunity to really sit with the parts of yourself that are wonderful and strong and that you want to keep. Now, you can also think legitimately and with compassion about some aspects of your current life experience that maybe you’re not in love with. Not in a blistering self-critical, unhelpful way. But if I could have this be different, what would I want it to be instead? It could be a life circumstance, certainly. It could be something about yourself that you are carrying into situations that isn’t working as well as you would like it to. Totally valid. 

And what you would like to have be different? What do you desire? What do you imagine would be different for you? If you had that desired outcome in the future? What’s your Why? You can say, “Well, I want to be happy.” But what does that mean? What does that mean to you? What is happiness according to your definition? If I want to be in a different place or want to have more money or have different friends. Okay, why? The circumstances are never in and of themselves the outcome. It’s what do those circumstances mean. Even, “I want to have a job that pays me more money.” Okay, fine. Why? What does money even mean to you? Is it about security? Is it about having fun? Is it about being able to do more things or being free? Is about showing love to others? I mean what does it mean? You have to find your why. What is your motivation?

Pause me again, and think about that, and write it down. Okay, now we’ve taken stock of your strengths and the things that are going well. We have also taken a realistic look at the things that you would like to have be different. Here is the hard thing. Stay with me. If you imagine that you are standing right now in a stream, okay? You’re in this stream and the stream is flowing in one direction currently. It is flowing in a way that creates the reality that you are currently inhabiting. What you are doing, what you have done, is creating the reality that you’re existing in right now and you want this reality to be a little bit different. If you imagine the direction that this stream of time, energy, effort, who and what would you need to be doing to create this different outcome because that is the core of empowerment. 

It is what do I need to do differently in order to feel differently. To have a different result in my life to create a different circumstance. Because the corollary of this, and this is the hard part, is what am I currently doing that is creating the reality? The parts that I don’t actually like that much. This is a challenging concept. It is the core question of your reinvention. What are you currently doing that is creating or maintaining the parts of your reality that you are not in love with right now. If you’re having a negative reaction to this idea that you have been creating the reality that you’re currently existing in, at least in part, I first want to let you know that that is very, very normal to have a negative reaction to that. It is a sign of disempowerment, that if the core narrative is that you haven’t created it. You are a victim of circumstance. You have, in no way shape, or form, any impact on the creation of your current life space. That is incredibly disempowering.

That right there is the core idea that will blow open the door to your actual reinvention process. It’s this concept that I co-create. The reality that I inhabit through the way I think, the way I feel, and the way I behave. I’m not talking about the power of manifestation or whatever, I mean, I’m not even gonna go there. It is what are you doing every day that is either creating or maintaining the world around you. How are you participating? The reason why this is so important is because as soon as you say, “I am directing the flow of this energy into the direction that it’s currently going.” 

The corollary idea is what is the strength that I can draw upon, that is going to shift what I am doing in the moment, in order to change the direction of this and create this new reality that I would like to have instead. It’s hard to do. Genuine reinvention requires that identification. Because it is not about the haircut, it is not about the capsule wardrobe, or quitting the job and jumping into another job. It is what have I been doing over and over and over again, that has created this, and then which of my strengths can I apply? Something that I’m good at. Something that I already know how to do. Something that I can do more of deliberately and grow in order to change my outcome. That is true recreation and reinvention that will work. It’s not jettisoning at all. It is what am I doing well.

We can see this a lot in relationships. I often see people in relationships who are maybe not feeling good about the relationship. This concept is super difficult for them because when they think about reinvention and how they would like things to be different, it primarily centers on what they would like to have be different about their partner. If only they could do something differently or not do that or change the way they’re doing it. Be nicer to me, be more like me. Our shared lives together would be so much better. They have not a ton of awareness around how they are co-creating the experience of their relationship with their partner. 

Almost no one ever asks, “What is it like for my partner to live with me? How does it feel to be with me? How is the way I am behaving in the relationship, the way I’m communicating the way, I’m showing love and respect, or lack of, and thinking about how they feel or what they would like to have for me right now.” Those are very difficult to wrap your arms around but that is what we do actually have the power to change and to control. That piece of reinvention. That is what is accessible. When you really turn that energy focus back on yourself around, ”What am I doing that maybe isn’t working that well and what are my core strengths? What do I do well? What does work well and how can I do more of that?” You can recreate a relationship or at least you are able to do everything within your power to recreate a relationship or reinvent a relationship. 

The other side will always have free will and systems are powerful but that’s accessible to you. It’s also important, I think, to get clarity around, “What am I maybe not even conscious of that I have been unconsciously or unintentionally doing that is getting in my way, that is getting in the way of the outcome that I want?” I have seen it so many times, I know it’s true for me. It is probably something that is a flip side of one of your core strengths. 

For example, and this is going to be very different for you right, because we all have different strengths, but what I do to get in my own way, is I’m too flexible. I make a list of 500 things and then get distracted by the thing that’s most exciting and go into that direction. It takes me five hours to do something that should take one hour. I mean, that’s when things don’t work for me that well. I need to take stock, again, of what are my core strengths. My reinvention process has to be around what is accessible to me that I can do that is natural for me that maybe I’m not doing enough of right now but that would change my experience if I did. 

For me, it’s creative problem-solving. It’s thinking of new ideas. It’s also because I’m a doer. I think my personality is very amenable to taking chances and trying things and being sort of experimental. I can experiment with doing things differently that maybe I haven’t done before, to see what happens. Many times I do get better outcomes when I do that. But it’s around just reconceptualizing these ideas around. “What do I have to do and all the things that I want to do and maybe I don’t have to do all the things” and creative problem-solving around, figuring out what matters the most for me. 

But for you, it’s going to be different. If your core strengths are, say that you are very structured and you plan things and you’re very organized, you may find that the dark side of that, it’s creating outcomes you don’t like. It can be very difficult to change plans or that can be uncomfortable if you don’t really know with certainty what the outcomes are going to be. Or you may find yourself trying to control different situations. That is difficult to do. It can create a lot of anxiety or there can be a lot of apprehension of paralysis or not making the right decision. These are the flip sides of the same strength. 

In that kind of case, your path to reinvention is to say, “Okay, how can I be very, very deliberate and use my strengths of being thoughtful and being focused and being organized to deliberately shift the parts of this that are getting in my way?”  It could be for you, creating a new routine that helps you step away from getting locked into a direction that’s taking you in the wrong way. It could be planning activities that very deliberately bring a different kind of energy into your life. Because you are structured and organized, you can plan that and stick to it. 

For other people, if your strength is really one of empathy and just having really connected loving relationships, you may find that the dark side and the thing that that does require recreation, is that maybe it’s difficult for you to set boundaries with other people. Maybe you do too much for other people that is not just limiting their growth, but making you feel resentful land exhausted and stuck. You have to take care of people, right? 

When you tap into your core strength of empathy and compassion and generosity and turn that towards yourself, as opposed to outwards towards other people, that reinvention process will change everything for you. Because not only is it addressing the core issue that’s creating the outcome that you don’t like, you are using your strengths to solve that problem. You are intentionally saying, “I want to grow this part of myself that is already working, how can I make it work better? How can I make it work more?” That is the reinvention process that will change all kinds of other things in your life. It’s a much deeper, meaningful, more engaged process that starts on the inside. 

Just to recap, it requires being able to disrupt the pattern. Step out so that you get some objectivity and also so that you get a breather. That you get some space from all the systems that want to suck you back into the old way of being. You need to have that motivation, “Why do I want to do this?” Also the recognition that it’s going to take some time, applied pressure over time. Then getting really clear about what are your strengths? What are the things that are working? Combined with what is your desired outcome. How is that different than what’s currently happening? 

Then once you have those things in place, that really honest reflection around what am I currently doing that is creating the outcome I have and which of my strengths could I intentionally use to shift this current into the direction that I want it to go. Then that is the thing that I’m going to be very, very deliberately, intentionally, and in a focused way, recreating. That is the true seat of my reinvention. If I focus on that, lots of different things will change for me. I will be truly transformed not just on the inside but in the outer expressions of my life, too. 

I know that’s a lot of information but as always, I wanted to give you the honest real deal inside scoop. Hopefully, I’ve presented these ideas in a way that you can make use of. That’s my intention. It’s to be helpful to you and to go deeper. I don’t just want to give you trite things, I want to give you stuff that will really work and be to your benefit. That is why I’m here every week on The Love, Happiness, and Success podcast. 

Thank you so much for spending this time with me today. If you have follow-up questions, come visit me at growingself.com. You can check out the blog, we have all kinds of other not just podcasts, but articles and advice from all of the many talented therapists and coaches I have the privilege of working with. It’s all there for you. Come by any time. Bye. See you next time.

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