 The holiday season is upon us, and as usual, we throw all of our good habits out the window. It’s not just the diet that gets dropped, we fail to exercise, we drink more alcohol, and by the time the new year rolls around we need an overhaul. While you shouldn’t wait for the new year to commit to your wellbeing, it is a good time to hit the restart button. In the spirit of the season, we decided to share five ways you can renew your commitment to your wellbeing. We’re going back to basics.
1. Take a Moment Your mind and body need rest just as much as each other. We are so connected today that even when we rest our body, our mind keeps going. Whether you take a weekend off of technology or you disconnect for a few hours, there are a few other ways you can commit to your wellbeing. Meditation is a great way to reduce your blood pressure, relieve stress, and improve your focus. Your wellbeing will thank you. 2. Forgive You cannot underestimate how powerful forgiveness is. The holiday season can bring up a lot of frustrations and feelings as we sit down to sup with family members, we don’t see eye to eye with. As though the stress of shopping and cooking wasn’t enough, there’s the politics of avoiding politics at the dinner table. Let go of that grudge and when necessary, ask for forgiveness! 3. Community Humans are social beings. We rely on a strong social network to get us through the most difficult times. It makes us less vulnerable to sickness, stress and improves resilience. Loneliness comes with a wide range of health problems so, there is a real danger when you cut yourself off from friends and family. Of course, you need to surround yourself with the right people. Don’t hang out with any old people – choose positive people. It doesn’t matter how busy you are at work, how much running around you do for the family, make time for friends. You need to socialize, it’s crucial to your wellbeing. 4. Give Back Giving truly is good for the soul. So, make sure you find a way to contribute to your community. It may be with your money, but it could be with your time. Whichever you have more of, but preferably the latter. One of the greatest benefits of giving yourself to others is the stress relief that it brings. Of course, it also boosts your self-esteem and makes you happier. There’s a lot of reasons helping does a body good. Why not check out your local community center to find out where you can be of help. It may be helping feed the homeless community, passing out goody bags to people who sleep rough or coaching a kid’s team. 5. Consider the End This isn’t to suggest you should focus on death. What it means is that you should be mindful that life is short. When you consider that, does that change how you look after yourself? It should. The most common causes of death are tied to our lifestyle. So, by committing yourself to your wellbeing should help you reduce your risk factors for these lifestyle diseases. While you’re at it – throw yourself into life because there’s no guarantee of tomorrow. So, love, laugh and truly live your life. You can do that while still looking after your health and wellbeing. There are so many different aspects of life and choices that you make that contribute to your wellbeing. You don’t have to wait for the new year to renew your commitment, but it’s a great place to start.
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 One of the most profound moments in literature is in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. Alice is walking and comes to a fork in the road. She’s not sure which way she should go, so she asks the Cheshire Cat, “Which road should I take?”
The cat asks her in return, “Well where are you going?” “I don’t know” Alice replies. “Then it does not really matter,” the cat tells her, “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.” An indispensable part of life is to know where you are going. If you don’t, you will find yourself wandering down any road that presents itself to you. When you have no clear destination, the decisions along the way don’t matter. This is why the fastest way to reinvent yourself is to establish a destination—or, in other words, to establish a list of personal goals. Personal Goals Give You Direction Moving forward is good; moving in a specific direction is better. Personal goals put a clear direction to your movement. This is why personal goals are vital to any personal reinvention. Most of us are familiar with feeling constantly busy, on the move, and booked with appointments—yet nothing seems to get accomplished. Personal goals give you a way to organize and direct all your movement into a specific direction so that you can accomplish what you want. Personal Goals Put You in The Driver’s Seat The essence of reinventing yourself is taking control of your life. Personal goals allow you to be in the driver’s seat. Goals allow you to take control of your time, energy and effort. Instead of just reacting to things that happen into your life, you take control. You decide where your energy is spent. Nothing will help you reinvent your life like taking ownership of it via your personal goals. Goals Inspire During the Mundane Life is not a movie. We don’t experience a continual stream of magical experiences, one after another. There is a lot of dullness stuffed in-between the highlights of life. That’s OK. This is where our personal goals rise to assist us. Personal goals can inspire us by reminding us of the bigger picture in life. We can compare that to what we are currently engaged in at any point in time. In other words, personal goals help frame how the smaller aspects of life play into the larger mosaic. Reflecting on how your day-to-day life fits in with your overall goals can thereby give you daily inspiration. Having this is pivotal in reinventing yourself Goals Help Organize What Is Important On a day-to-day basis everyone is bombarded with choices. How do you decided when to say yes and when to say no? With personal goals, that decision becomes easy. You can ask yourself: Does this activity align with my personal goals? Does this help me achieve my personal goals? The answer to those questions can help you decide what to invest your time in. It gives you a way to identify what is important to you. Goals Allow Us to Enjoy Life Ultimately, life is to be enjoyed, and nothing is more enjoyable than success. Personal goals not only define what success will look like for you, but also will give you the road map to achieving it. What many people fail to realize is that personal goals will also allow you to enjoy life even when the goals are not accomplished. The ability to learn, progress, and develop yourself when you have not accomplished your goals will bring you an enjoyable personal maturity. These are the many ways that personal goals can bring a greater degree of purpose and fulfillment to your life. Personal goals are a non-negotiable ingredient in any personal reinvention project. Thankfully you can start with something simple. Start your journey by making your first personal goal: A goal to develop a complete list of personal goals. And now you off!  A habit is a regular tendency or practice. You likely have many habits that you are regularly practicing. Many of these habits you perform on a daily basis, maybe unconsciously and a part of your regular routine. Unfortunately, these types of unconscious habits that you have built up over time are typically not the best types of habits.
Good habits, in particular, need to be developed and developed intentionally. Developing good habits can create a new, fresh, and better you. Here is why you should reinvent yourself by starting good habits today. The Benefits Of A Good Habits Habits are small activities that define or create who you are over time. The benefit of developing good habits is that it creates and define good attributes in you over an extended period of time. A good habit is like interest building in a bank. Over time, the interest continues to grow without much effort on your part. Likewise, a good habit continues to develop character and attributes in you, without much concentrated effort. Developing good habits also takes the “work” out of doing the things that you want to do. When something becomes routine or automatic, it no longer becomes work. It is just something you do. Being able to routinely perform activity or tasks without much effort allows you to put your energy and focus into other areas of life. Developing good habits gives you the benefit for accomplishing more with less effort. Repetition And Time Is The Key To Good Habit Forming Developing a good habit may take longer than you think. When developing a new habit, the general rule of thumb has been about 21 days. This time frame was developed from Dr. Maxwell Maltz work in the 1960’s with amputees adjusting to the loss of a limb. However, a more recent study from Lally et al, entitled How are habits formed: Modeling habit formation in the real world, indicates that it takes an average of 66 days for an activity to become “automatic”. The study also indicated that missing a day did not lead to negative effects to developing your habit, but that the more repetitions earlier in your development produced larger effects. Developing good habits is both a marathon and a sprint. Start your habit forming strong with consistent repetitions in those first few weeks. Then turn your eyes to the horizon and settle in for the time that it will take to develop your habit. Good Habits You Should Consider There are lots of good habits that you should develop for yourself. Here are few to consider: 1. Exercise: This is the obvious good habit that you should be developing. The American Heart Association states that you can significantly improve your cardiovascular health with just 30 min of exercises a day. Even if this 30 min is broken into 10 min periods. Developing a habit of a daily walk can significantly impact your health. If you are into dancing, check out Zumba online or in your community. 2. Saving: This habit is not flashy, or exciting, or particularly fun. But it’s absolutely necessary. Start small and save a specific amount each week. Then build to a particular amount each month or a certain percentage each year. Building this habit can have lasting rewards for years to come. 3. Reading: Developing the habit of reading 15 min each day can lead to all kinds of benefits for you. Daily reading can increase memory and vocabulary or decrease stress and anxiety. With only 15 min of reading a day, you can easily read 1-2 books a month or 12-24 books a year. Imagine the benefit of learning new skills for recreations and work, or understanding a new topic, or developing a better imagination, all from 15 min a day. 4. Waking up early: Getting up early in the morning is not natural for everyone, but is a habit that can be developed. Start by setting your alarm 15 min earlier than usual. Every 1-2 weeks move your alarm back another 15 min until you reach your desired wake up time. Waking up early can benefit your health, energy, productivity and motivation. Pay Attention To Your Habits Whatever good habits you decide to develop will be worth the invested time. The important part is to pay attention to the habits that you are developing. Start today, and make a note of all the habits that you find yourself routinely doing throughout the day. Is this habit something you want to keep? If not, start a better habit and begin the process of reinventing yourself.  Do you ever wonder how people who are at the top of their field are able to maintain their high level of achievement? One of the keys to their success is that they are not afraid to reinvent themselves.
Reinvention can take many forms. It can be the refinement of habits or characteristics that should remain in your life but need fine-tuning. Reinvention can also take the form of letting go. Specifically, letting go of bad habits that hinder your success. John Maxwell, an American writer in the field of Leadership, says, “I can predict the long-term outcomes of your success if you show me your daily habits.” Habits matter, and bad habits can cause lack of success and even failure. This is particularly true when it comes to your health. Letting go of bad habits must be a top priority if you want to reinvent yourself. But it’s not as easy as it sounds. It isn’t as simple as “just letting go of a bad habit.” When you let go of a bad habit, you need to replace it with a good habit. So today is the day. No more excuses. No more tomorrow. Below are three bad habits you need to finally let go of if you want to be healthy. Stop Slouching You have probably heard this admonition countless times throughout your life: Sit up straight and stop slouching! Well, as unpleasant at this feedback usually is, it’s right. Poor posture is nothing but a bad habit that has developed over time. Slouching (which is typically defined as a forward head posture and rounded shoulders) causes poor joint alignment, especially in the neck and back. According to the American Physical Therapy Association, poor posture of the spine can contribute to muscle tightness, loss of range of motion, and even pain. It’s very difficult to just “stop slouching.” You can reinvent yourself, however, by replacing the bad habit of slouching with the good habit of setting postural reminders for yourself. For example, if you are a desk worker, you can place a small mirror at the top of your computer screen. When you are in the correct posture, you should see the top of your head in the mirror. Seeing this continuous visual cue as you work will remind you to correct your posture. You can also start the habit of checking your posture each time you send an email or start up your car. These habits ensure that you continually assess and correct your posture, thus breaking you of bad postural habits. Stop Drinking Sugary Drinks Soft drinks and energy drinks are loaded with high amounts of sugar. Such drinks can have between 15-60 grams (or more!) of sugar per serving. The American Heart Association reports that men should limit their intake to 36 grams of sugar per day while women should limit their intake to 25 grams of sugar per day. You can easily consume the entire amount of your day’s allotted sugar with one soft or energy drink. This bad habit can create big problems. The American Diabetic Association states that sugary drinks have been linked to type 2 diabetes. This disease, the ADA states, causes more deaths per year than breast cancer and AIDS combined. That is a serious consequence to a bad habit! Reinvent yourself by kicking your sugary drink habit. Replace it with a water drinking habit. Here are a couple of simple tricks to assist you in breaking this habit. Set several reminders on your phone or computer at various points in the day to alert you to drink a glass of water. A non-technological way to start this new habit is to keep 6-8 coins in your right pocket and to move a coin to your left pocket every time you drink a glass of water. Whenever you reach into your pocket, you will notice the coins. This will cue you to drink another glass of water. Stop Going to Bed Late Th bad habit of going to bed late can be the result of many other bad habits. For instance, it can result from the habit of lying in bed while scrolling through social media—which can make it more difficulty to fall asleep. Or it can result from the habit of falling asleep on a couch or in a recliner, which can make it more difficult to initiate sleep in bed. Many other habits can contribute to the bad habit of going to bed late. This, in turn, can lead to sleep deprivation. The National Institute of Health states that sleep deprivation can increase the risk of high blood pressure, heart disease, obesity, and diabetes. All of a sudden, we can see how this little habit can have big consequences. Reinvent yourself by discontinuing your bad habit of going to bed late. Replace late nights with a routine that leads to a full night of sleep. Here are some helpful nightly routines that can help to break the bad habit of going to bed late:
Letting go of bad habits is a challenging and yet simple way to reinvent yourself. It’s the old adage of “addition by subtraction.” Or better yet, its “addition by subtraction…with a new addition.”  Take a walk into any bookstore and you will quickly get lost in the sea of self-help books at your disposal. You may suddenly find yourself struggling to tread water in this vast body of knowledge attempting to impart the newest and most useful skills to you. Where do you start and where does it end?
Well, what better place to start developing life skills than in the arena of… you! There are some skills that every person should acquire and other skill that everyone needs to have. Life skills that are all about you fall into the need category. Instead of just keeping your head above water, ride the wave of these 5 key life skills that are all about you. 1. Stress Relief Everyone is intimately acquainted with stress. Stress seems to collect as naturally as dust and likewise has an accumulating effect. The National Institute of Health states that chronic stress can lead to suppressed sleep, decreased immune response, headaches, muscle pain, and much more. Stress can have a significant toll on you both physically and mentally. While stress is unavoidable, relieving stress is a skill that can be developed. Identifying what opens the valve of your stress hose is the first step. Stress can be relieved a variety of ways and figuring out what your stress relieving methods are can be fun and exciting. Some stress relieving methods to try can include: exercise, social interaction, reading, music, sleeping, or meditation. Whatever form your stress relief comes in, the key is to understand how that functions in your daily life. Next, develop the ability to detect when your stress levels are reaching their maximum. Being able to sense when the stress tank is getting full and emptying it before it overflows will help you avoid many unnecessary struggles and hardships. This seemingly little, but actually significant skill, will allow you to avoid a lot of clean up. 2. Self-Motivation TED Talks are brief 10-20 min videos of expert speakers discussing a variety of topics from a wide range of industries. These videos are extremely popular due to their motivational and inspiring themes, but these extremal mediums are typically only catalyst for a brief time, while self-motivation is a skill that can be developed and has a substantially longer lasting effect. Self-motivation is a skill that can be developed by identify your strengths and areas of passion. Focusing and putting your efforts into the areas that you are naturally good at and enjoy creates an environment for consistent success. Nothing increases self-motivation like consistent success. And knowing that you have the ability to put yourself in a position to have consistent success increases the self-motivating cycle. 3. Receiving Feedback Feedback is typically from an external source and comes in a variety of forms. Sometimes the feedback is sought, many times it isn’t. Yet the way we receive feedback is a skill that is all about you. There are certain characteristics that come with receiving feedback and it’s these characteristics that can be developed. Characteristics like: being prepared to receive and expecting to receive feedback. Also, being open to and interested in receiving feedback all enhance your ability to benefit from it. Likewise, our perspective on feedback, is a skill that can be further developed. Feedback is simply information. Information that is processed and sorted into helpful or unhelpful categories. Perspective allows us to properly view both the good and the bad. Feedback ultimately is like a pair of shoes. If you think the shoe fits, then wear it. If it doesn’t fit, then don’t wear them. 4. Apologizing “I am sorry,” might be the 3 most difficult words that you will ever have to say. Yet, apologizing is a skill that is all about you. Yes, apologizing helps rectify the situation with the other person, but it not just about them. Apologizing releases you from any emotional burdens you may be holding onto. Developing this skill can have a greater impact on yourself than those around you. 5. Living A Life Of Gratitude This last skill might possibly be the most difficult and yet the most critical life skill that is all about you. This is due to the fact that the soil that gratitude works is internal more than external. In order to develop this skill, it requires that you practice it daily and with intention. Develop this skill by identify 3 specific things that you are thankful for each day. The key here is to be specific. For example, you might be thankful for your job, but what specifically about your job. Maybe it’s the flexible hours, or the type of work that you do, or a specific person that you work with. Being specific about your gratitude makes it real and tangible. Performing it every day makes it a lifestyle. It’s All About You! At times, it may feel uncomfortable to talk about and develop skills that are about you. But there should be no hesitation and difficulty with this because no one is going to put in the work on yourself more than you. So, don’t be hesitant or afraid. But dig-in, achieve, and master the 5 skills that are all about you.  Who doesn’t dream of a better future for themselves? We wish that we could leave our humdrum job and instead sit on a beach to paint. Life would just be better if we could move to the country and live off the land.
The thing is, every one of us has a dream, they’re all different, but one thing many of us share in common is that we bury those dreams. At some point, we decide to take the well-traveled road and put aside our ‘childish dreams.’ We give up a bit of ourselves when we do that. Think of reinvention as a re-brand. It’s something that major companies do. Coca-Cola has changed up their branding, a couple of times in recent years. Just as Richard Branson has reinvented himself over the years to become the businessman he is today. Before Jim Carrey made his acting dreams come true, he wrote himself a massive check. He decided that if he could dream it, then he could also do it. One of the biggest things that hold us back from truly pursuing our dreams and reinventing ourselves is fear. That doesn’t mean that it’s too late to reinvent yourself. The first step in doing that, though, is identifying the fears that have been holding you back and eliminating them. There are three massive fears that often hold us back. 1. The Fear of Failure There is no one on this planet that enjoys failure. No one is into losing, no one sets out to do less than their best and lose. The problem with that mindset, though, is that we are too scared to take risks. While there are adrenaline junkies who pay people to throw them out of a plane, the idea of failure is paralyzing. Unfortunately, a lot of us really care about what others think about us. Failure is only temporary, though. You should think of it as a stepping stone. So, how do you eliminate your fear of failure? Look to the lesson in every failure and learn how to use it to your advantage. You can better yourself through failure. So, instead of seeing it as the end of the world – start seeing it as a learning experience. You might fail more than you succeed, but the more you put yourself out there the greater your chance of increasing success is. 2. The Wrong Mindset What is your inner voice telling you? Is it a positive force in your life? Or, is it whispering negativity in your ear and hating on your every action? That negative voice is fueling the wrong mindset and it’s that mindset that is keeping you tucked safely in your comfort zone. One of the best ways to eliminate this fear is to practice overriding those negative thoughts with positive affirmations. It’s all about drowning out that negativity and replacing it with the right mindset. 3. No Knowledge Sometimes the biggest fear that holds us back is a lack of knowledge. We don’t know what to do or where to go to make our visions a reality. The best way to deal with this fear is to find yourself a mentor. Look for someone who works in the field that you want to be in or does the thing you want to do. You can learn from them. If it’s a specific thing you want to reinvent about yourself, then find someone who is good at it. You can use social media to find people that are outside of your circle and build your network. Or, find a coaching program.  You probably know someone with amazing self-discipline. They’re that person that manages to choke down a kale shake every morning after they went on a 5-mile run before your first alarm went off. They are incredibly efficient, they work hard, and seem to have endless amounts of energy. Then, there’s you.
You play games on your phone and look up at the television in between levels. Somehow, you have successfully managed to scoop snacks into your mouth at the same time. You’re not lazy, you are busy so when you have downtime you want to relax. What about your dreams, though? How will you accomplish them if you have no self-discipline? You can build that self-discipline. It’s crucial to your success, that goes for both your personal and professional life. Here’s how! 1. Acknowledge Weakness You should never let your weaknesses stand in your way, however, you should acknowledge them. It could be that social media is why you procrastinate or that pretzels are your biggest diet weakness. Either way, to improve your self-discipline you need to acknowledge what is most likely to derail you. 2. Plan You don’t wake up and magically find yourself possessed by self-discipline. You need to build a strategy. It doesn’t matter whether you want to build new and good habits or eradicate bad habits. The key is that you create a plan that will outline exactly what steps you need to take to achieve the goal. 3. Remove Temptation It would be nice if we were disciplined enough to resist our greatest temptations. However, if you know you’ve never met a bag of pretzels you didn’t love, then don’t keep them in the house. If it’s social media that messes with your day, remove the app from your phone or tablet. There are plenty of ways you can remove temptation, no matter what it is. Don’t be afraid to turn off the router and go without the internet until you achieve what you need to. 4. Discomfort Humans naturally try to avoid any discomfort or pain. However, this will only make you more unlikely to deal with any distress life throws at you. Resilience is a really important skill to possess and there’s only one way to do this. You can’t dismiss uncomfortable emotions, you have to experience them, whether it’s loneliness, boredom, sadness or frustration. Negative emotions are part of building self-discipline. 5. Visualize Sometimes it’s easier to practice self-discipline when you’re capable of visualizing the long-term rewards that your behavior will bring. If you give in to temptation today you will experience a short-term boost in happiness, but think about the gratification that will come if you resist. Imagine yourself as you meet those goals and gain those rewards. This will help you exercise your self-discipline on a daily basis. 6. Recovery There will be days that you find easier than others. When you experience a slip-up, whether it’s a treat you shouldn’t have had or a workout that you skipped, recovery is key. Don’t beat yourself up if you slip. Recover from your mistakes and keep going. Acknowledge them, but move on. Self-discipline is what is standing between you and achieving your goals. You don’t need to steep in jealousy at the people you know who possess self-discipline, though. You can use the tips above to increase your own self-discipline. Keep practicing and you will improve yourself. When you improve your self-discipline skills you can start to improve your life by pushing hard to achieve your goals. Now all you need to decide is what goals you want to pursue – you’ll need to start with your core values.  We often make our way to the idea of reinvention after experiencing frustration and discontentment with our lives. Sometimes there’s a sense of longing to do something different, to find a new way to live and to be. This kind of reinvention evolves from the human need to grow and to change. Change comes about because there has to be more to human existence than simply existing and most people sense that over time. Sometimes in the early stages of reinvention, we think about what benefits we might receive from building a new self. Perhaps we just want to be free of a stale, confining and suffocating way of life, but that might not seem enough to us right then. Other than liberating yourself from a life with no change and no growth, what other benefits does reinvention offer?
Of course, a huge benefit is a more authentic and fulfilling life. After all, that’s the first purpose of going through this transformation process. More importantly, you learn how to be adaptable in the face of new challenges and that is a life skill that is useful in many ways. You learn how to cope with new problems and new situations. Once you've been through one reinvention cycle, you’ll be ready to do it again when you feel the need. You may never decide to reinvent yourself again, but that’s a matter of choice. You’ll know how to do it. That’s a life-changing benefit all on its own!  People reinvent themselves for as many different reasons as there are different people. However, reinvention is usually driven by a few prominent emotions: boredom, restlessness, dissatisfaction, even fear. Sometimes reinvention rises out of personal crises. If you’re looking for ways to bring about self-renewal, we can help you find them.
Proactive Reinvention: Purposefully Forging A New You There are several kinds of reinvention, but we’re looking at proactive Reinvention. Proactive reinvention can be the toughest of the three. In proactive reinvention, we’re at a place that’s safe and comfortable at that moment. Major life changes aren’t immediately required. We might even be able to keep on coasting just as we are, but that’s not a satisfying place for us anymore. Even though reinvention can be scary, we still have the desire to do it. Reinvention seems better than where we are. Maybe we’re simply tired and unfulfilled in our lives, our work, relationships, etc. Sometimes all three categories cry out for change. Proactive reinvention has the advantage of not being urgent in most cases. You can be deliberate in your choices. 1. Ask Yourself “What do I need in my life now? What do I want? What’s missing?” To answer this question, we must dig deep, and it’s not a quick process in most cases. Proactive reinvention tends to arise out of a sense of dissatisfaction about where we are in life or even who we are. We may only know that we want something different. 2. Identify Your Passions What do you value? What gets your engine running? If you could make a living at a hobby, what would it be? Getting a handle on what you enjoy and what you love to do, how you love to feel, and whom you love to be around lets you set some big, broad goals. In all cases and steps of reinvention, ask yourself questions like:
3. Explore Your Immediate Options Immediate options generally include things like your skill set, your finances, your contacts and social links in life. These can be springboards to the new you. Think of these as assets you already must dedicate to your renewal. 4. Get a teacher, mentor or sounding board If you’ve got a general idea of what you want to do, you can start homing in on sources of information and expertise. Those sources can be people who are knowledgeable or experience with the subject matter, profession, hobby, whatever it is that’s appealing to you. If you know you want to reinvent yourself, but haven’t got a lock on a destination yet, there’s no worry. Many people go through the renewal process without any hint of a fixed destination or end-point in mind when they start off. That said, it’s good to have someone around who can give you ideas, feedback, and support that’s related to your journey. 5. Consider the Unknown The unknown is scary, but it can also lead to some great discoveries. There are two big sources of it, too. There’s the unknown out there in the world external to us, and the unknown inside you. When you change your life, there’s bound to be internal changes that you didn’t plan for. If planning were all it took to reinvent one’s life, it’d be much simpler. Let the possibility of change flourish in you. If you try hard to hang on to everything that you’ve got now, that you are now, nothing will change. 6. Learn to live with fear while always going forward Reinvention requires embracing uncertainty. It means getting comfortable with discomfort. Doing new things, trying new ways to be is scary! Allowing fear to stop us from changing is always the biggest block to proactive reinvention. Always. Unlike reactive reinvention, when you must make big changes or face even worse situations than self-renewal, proactive reinvention seems optional when we get scared, so we have the option to retreat into safety. Safety is great. However, clinging to the safety of the familiar ensures you will never reinvent yourself. Regeneration of the self requires living with fear, too. Consider as an example the situation of leaving one career for another, more ideal career. Common wisdom says you must have another job before leaving your current job. That wisdom in this situation kills any chance of getting that ideal job. It’s very hard, maybe impossible, to prepare for a completely new profession while working a full-time job. A dentist who leaves her job for another job as a dentist has changed locales but has not at all reinvented herself. Making a jump from the known into the unknown safely, with no risks, doesn’t happen. There is always some element of risk. Learning to live with risk in order to get something you dearly want is one of the biggest rewards of reinventing yourself. |
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