Reinvention

To help ring in 2014, let’s think about what reinvention means, and how we can effect real, lasting change in our lives. We’ll use three videos about reinventing yourself in order to do it:

Barriers to reinvention

According to Angela Mondou, reinvention is “the skill of the decade.” Reinvention is about

• driving your destiny
• asking for what you want
• being willing to step out of your comfort zone
• changing your identity

Reinvention is profound. On the one hand, reinvention is about power and potential. Who doesn’t want to determine their destiny and get what they want? So what is holding people back? One of the biggest obstacles is fear and anxiety. In order to reinvent ourselves, we have to be vulnerable; we have to be willing to step out of our comfort zone and to change our very identity. Mondou says, “The more you recognize you’re going to be facing fear and really having to be bold, the better it is.”

Wesley Goo identifies five major negative patterns that act as barriers to reinvention.

1. Poverty pattern: Thinking we never have enough
   • Instead: tap into your resourcefulness
2. Busyness pattern: Thinking we are too busy
   • Instead: prioritize and commit
3. Blame pattern: Always blaming others
   • Instead: cultivate leadership
4. Procrastination pattern: Never getting started
   • Instead: take action
5. Delusion pattern: Thinking you are working on something when you aren’t
   • Instead: be totally honest and accountable

Drivers of reinvention

Despite negative patterns, and fear and anxiety, we are still driven to dream and invent. While working on diminishing these barriers, we also need to tap into our drive. Why do we want to change for the better?

For Mario Alonso Puig, unleashing our true potential is about listening to your heart. We must tap into our emotions and use them to transform ourselves into the people we truly want to be. Ask yourself: What inspires you? What really moves you? This is how you will discover your true purpose and meaning. This is the “why” of reinvention.

Spend time dreaming. What is the possibility that will transform my own life? … Do not hesitate to allow that possibility to touch your heart. Because at the level of your heart is where your true talents and capacities are hidden.

- MARIO ALONSO PUIG

Let us allow this to be another driver: Although it is hard to leave our comfort zone, our (limited) space of security and stability, our brain will support us. Our biography is not our destiny; neurons connect better when you leave your comfort zone. Puig says, “When you dare, stem cells migrate… your brain can be rewired.” For Puig, crossing that threshold is the “hero’s journey,” and that we “need faith in ourselves; when we jump, we find our wings.”

Courage and daring is not something you have; they are things you must do.

One step at a time

To reinvent ourselves, we must break down the barriers, and connect meaningfully with what drives us. And it doesn’t hurt to have a few tips for how to proceed.

Mondou’s steps for reinvention:

1. Gather information
   • Find people who have been there and done that.
2. Understand the skills you will need
   • What skills will you need? How do your skills transfer (and they will)?
3. Come up with a plan
   • What are the first 3 things you need to move in this new direction?
   • Make a timeline to head in your new direction.
4. Tell people
   • Verbally commit and build momentum.

…now take the first step

Puig says, “You need to make possibility a priority.” Reinvention means being willing to be vulnerable. Reinvention is about taking risks. It is about listening to your heart. It is about making plans and inventing your future.

Reinvention can be magnificent. But it is not just about outcomes. Reinvention is a skill. You have to do it in order to live out the results. You have to take steps now, no matter how small.

So here are two questions to ask your whole being:

1. What would you dare to do if you knew that you could not fail?
2. What is the smallest step that you dare to take?