When I reinvent myself in the most exciting and beneficial way, I don't change from an inferior personality into a superior one. I change from a noun to a verb.
I reinvent from static fascination with my past and its patterns into joyful action. My world changes from trying to improve myself to learning to leave myself behind.
A really good reinvention in my own life (with the help of my own business/life coach) had me converting from being a money-fearing loser (noun) into making a difference, creating and joyfully serving others as the natural outpouring of God-given energy and self-expression. A series of verbs.
These ten ideas tell how I did it and how my clients are doing it in terms of the verbs they can be instead of the nouns they misunderstand themselves to be.
1. Stop winning friends and influencing people.
This entire orientation to life and society and community (winning people over) is a hangover from childhood when the grownups had all the power and all the money. They needed to be charmed and manipulated for us to get what we wanted. We learned to do that. It became second nature.
But carrying that into adulthood leads to mediocrity and misery.
We want to switch from trying to make an impression to trying to make a difference.
2. Change your relationship to life.
If you see life as something outside of you, pushing in on you, then you will reveal that by saying things like, "That's life!" when things go wrong, or, "Life is difficult" when you feel the need to sound disconsolate and wise.
But when you reconsider your relationship to life and change "life" from being outside pressing in to being inside as a source of energy, everything gets fun again (as it was when you were young and just knew intuitively that life bloomed and blossomed from the inside out.)
3. Use the language of intention.
People whose repeated self-told stories cast themselves as victims continuously use the language of obligation. There are so many things they "should" do and "have to" do.
Reinvented people convert to the language of intention. They do things because they intend to...because they want to.... because they choose to. This is more powerful because it is closer to the truth. It is not a sugary affirmation. It is truth that will set you free. Once you see that you are choosing to go to work today, you'll never have to lie to yourself and your children again by saying, "Sorry but I have to go to work." Those kinds of lies take a toll. They drive self-esteem and love-of-life out of existence. When you reinvent yourself, you start by changing your relationship to the very truth that will set you free.
4. Give up your personality.
This false persona (the Greek word for mask) is something that went through its final edit in junior high school. It is not real. It is not you.
To truly reinvent from noun to verb, you need to replace personality with purpose. Then you can be whoever you need to be based on what you are creating right now.
5. Learn to be the problem.
One way to get centered in the locus of true power is to say, when a problem arises, "If there's a problem, I'm the problem." Now you can do something about it! Because if you're the problem, you're the solution. This is not about self-blame and guilt. It's about always becoming the solution.
6. Convert the "How to" into the "Want to."
People think that they aren't doing things that would benefit their lives because they don't know how to. They are deceiving themselves. The real bottleneck is that they don't (yet) want to.
The "how to" is everywhere. You can look it up. If you know "how to" use Google, you can find out how to do anything. The "how to" is never what's really missing.
Yet we say it is. Then once we say it is, that story becomes "the truth" and we are stuck.
7. Change your definition of optimism.
Optimism is courageous and tough-minded.
Pessimism is a weak little tantrum.
Optimism fearlessly opens the mind to possible solutions.
Pessimism is the attitude that closes the mind.
Once you see the vital usefulness of optimism you will bring it to every party...to every so-called "problem."
8. Convert reacting to creating.
You can use your marvelous bio-computer (your brain) two ways: one way is to react to things...the other (more powerful way) is to create things.
At any moment, in any situation, you can step back and breathe and notice. Just witness: are you using your brain for creating right now, or are you using it for reacting?
When you shift (up) from reacting to creating, you are now using more of your brain...higher levels of full capacity brain power...imagination, innovation and creativity are now yours to access....energy is improved.
9. Stop deciding---start choosing.
People who are not yet reinvented waste so much life and heart and nerve power trying to decide things. Most all of this time and frustrated effort comes to nothing. In this class we will eliminate all of that trying to decide time and replace it with the practice of simply CHOOSING.
10. Learn to rise up.
The linear left brain life of trudging along the horizontal line from birth to death doing "one damn thing after another" is hardly fulfilling. Hardly joyful. Hardly even productive.
We want to rise up. Leave the past behind (for it is truly non existent)...rise up in this precious present opportune moment. We want to go vertical. You can fly like an eagle, ever upward, or you can be a worm (horizontal, linear, birth to death).
For this we use the metaphor and visual teaching tool known as The Ladder. Where are you on your ladder right now? High up there with spirit and humor and creativity? Or down low with fear and resentment? We shall learn to rise up.
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