10 Ways to Reinvent Yourself in 2018 – New Year, New You

by Marelisa

Every so often we should reinvent ourselves.

There are many reasons for, and circumstances under which, you may want to reinvent yourself. Here are some examples:

You’ve gone through a bad breakup.
You’ve suffered a big disappointment, such as a career setback, bankruptcy, or you’ve failed to achieve an important goal. Maybe you’ve even lost everything.
At the start of a new year (like now).
At a milestone birthday, such as your 30^th, 40^th, or 50^th
Simply to stay fresh and current. You could choose to make it a rule to reinvent yourself periodically—say, every seven years.
To explore different aspects of yourself.
Because you feel like you’re in a rut, or you’ve grown bored with yourself (it happens).
You’ve been stuck in the waiting place for too long—the place in which you just sit there, waiting for something to happen–, and you can’t seem to find a way out as the current version of yourself.
To make a comeback after you—and everyone else—thought that you were out of the game.

Whatever reason you may have for wanting to reinvent yourself, once you’ve made the decision to make a change, the question then becomes how to do it. Below you’ll find 10 ways to reinvent yourself in 2018 (or whenever you so choose).

1. Reinvent Yourself by Learning a New Skill.

One way to describe yourself is by referring to the things you know how to do. Look at the following:

I’m an entrepreneur – I know how to start and run a profitable business.
I’m a lawyer – I know how to interpret, analyze, and apply the law.
I’m a cook – I know how to cook delicious, healthy meals for myself.

I can become a different person by learning new skills. As an illustration, if I learned to code I’d be a coder. I could do things I don’t have the ability to do right now: I’d be able to talk to other coders about their projects (and be part of the coding community); and I would probably view the world differently than I do now and notice more opportunities and possibilities.

Every time you learn a new skill, you change. You become someone different. Reinvent yourself by learning new skills.

2. Reinvent Yourself by Rebooting an Area of Your Life.

In my post, Reboot Your Life – 10 Ways to Get a Fresh Start, I explain that sometimes there’s one or more areas of your life in which you need to wipe the slate clean and start again. Here are some examples:

Give yourself a reboot by creating a capsule wardrobe for yourself that contains only things you love and look great in. A person who looks chic and well-put together is not the same as a person who wears ill-fitting clothes and suits with buttons missing.
Give yourself a reboot by clearing out your schedule completely. Then, re-create your schedule from scratch by adding back only those activities you absolutely have to do, and the things you really want to do. A person with a well-planned schedule is not the same as a person following a schedule filled with things that are not aligned with their goals and values.

Reinvent yourself by rebooting one or more areas of your life.

3. Reinvent Yourself by Changing Your Personality.

A great way to reinvent yourself is by changing any personality traits that are not serving you well. Although a lot of people think that their personality is set in stone, there are aspects of your personality that you’ve simply constructed. And if you created it, you can modify it.

As I explain in my post, The 20-Point Personality Chart, there’s a study that was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology which suggests that if you change your behavior to match the personality changes you want to make, you can change your personality.

To illustrate, if right now you’re disorganized and constantly late for everything, you may want to become more conscientious. By acting in a conscientious manner, you’ll turn into a conscientious person. That is, you’ll be reinventing yourself into the type of person who is reliable and diligent.

4. Reinvent Yourself by Creating an Alter-Ego.

Creating an alter-ego is similar to the point above of changing your personality, but on steroids. An alter-ego is a persona created by you to help you achieve your goals and live the kind of life you want to live.

In fact, creating an alter-ego is a concept I like so much, I created an entire Udemy course on it. In my course, “How to Create a Powerful Alter-Ego (and why you should)”, I define alter-ego as follows:

An alter-ego is a second-self created by the individual, usually to achieve certain goals, or to live out a better version of themselves.
You can think of an alter-ego as a character, or a way of thinking about yourself, that accentuates or magnifies the authentic you.

Most of the time you can continue to be the old, regular you. But when it comes time to achieve an important goal, or solve a problem that you’re having, you can call on your alter-ego to get the job done. It’s an indirect way of reinventing yourself.

5. Reinvent Yourself by Changing Habits.

Suppose that you have the following habits:

You go to bed at 3:00 a.m.
You smoke.
You stop by a fast food place every day after work and get dinner.

Now suppose that you give up those habits, and adopt new ones. Look at the following:

You start going to bed by 11:00 p.m. every night;
You give up smoking and start exercising;
You stop eating fast food and start cooking yourself healthy meals, instead.

Wouldn’t you turn into a different person by making those habit changes? Yes, you would. You can reinvent yourself by changing your habits.

6. Reinvent Yourself by Changing Your Attitude.

One of the easiest ways to reinvent yourself is by changing your attitude. Although there are several attitude dualities, the most obvious is the duality between having a positive and a negative attitude.

A positive person is very different from a negative, or pessimistic, one. They perceive things differently, they feel different emotions, they react to events and circumstances in a very different way, and they simply show up in the world differently.

Do the following:

Think of someone you know who views the world with a positive attitude.
Now think of someone you know who views the world with a negative attitude.

They’re two completely different people, right? Which one would you rather be like? Probably the positive one. If so, reinvent yourself to be more like them.

7. Reinvent Yourself by Levelling Up.

Gamification—one of the buzzwords of the moment–is applying game elements to non-game situations. One element of gamification is using levels. A level is a phase you arrive at after completing the required action to get there.

A game consists of a certain number of levels, and you “win” when you reach the top level. Choose an area of your life that you want to improve in, and gamify it by deciding what each level looks like. As an illustration, right now you may be at Level 1 when it comes to physical fitness. This means you’re overweight and out of shape.

Identify what Level 2 looks like—maybe you’ve lost ten pounds and your abdomen is more defined—and the action that you need to take to get there. Proceed to do the same for each level from 1 to 10. Then, take the action necessary to level up.

By the time you reach Level 3, you’ll really start to notice a difference. By Level 5 the change will be obvious to everyone, and by the time you reach Levels 8 or 9 you’ll practically be a different person. That is, you’ll have reinvented yourself by levelling up.

8. Reinvent Yourself by Analyzing Your Personal Projects.

As I explain in my post, Flourish or Flounder: Analyze Your Personal Projects, your personal projects are the building blocks of your life. Another word for personal projects are goals. Your personal projects, or goals, can go from tiny to huge. Here are three examples:

Tiny goal: Eat a healthy breakfast every morning.
Medium goal: Start a blog and get it to 5000 subscribers in a year.
Huge goal: Become a doctor.

Do the following:

Make a list of your personal projects.
Evaluate each one. Are they in line with the kind of person you would like to become?
Discard or modify your personal projects based on your evaluation of them.
Come up with new projects that you find meaningful and which will make you happy.

Reinvent yourself by making sure that your personal projects are aligned with the kind of person you want to be.

9. Reinvent Yourself by Using Design Thinking.

Design thinking is an iterative process used to design products and services. However, you can apply design thinking to live a life by design. Do the following:

Ask yourself: How can I create the next version of myself?
Ideate – come up with possibilities or alternatives to begin moving toward this new version of yourself by using idea generation techniques such as brainstorming.
Choose the best ideas you come up with.
Prototype and test – find a quick and cheap way to test out your ideas. Make adjustments based on the outcomes you achieve, and prototype and test again.
Continue prototyping, testing, and making adjustments until you’re happy with the results.

Gradually turn yourself into the next version of yourself—that is, reinventing yourself—by generating ideas on how to move forward, prototype, and test those ideas, and make adjustments until you’ve achieved the desired outcome.

10. Reinvent Yourself by Taking 10 Steps Out of Your Comfort Zone.

Who you are is largely dependent on the current shape of your comfort zone. If your comfort zone is small, then you lead a small, uneventful, and unimpactful life. But if your comfort zone is large, then your life is full, exciting, and impactful.

The farther away you step from your comfort zone, the more you’ll change. If you take one step out of your comfort zone, that’s an improvement, but you’re still basically the same person. Taking two steps is a little better. Taking three steps is better still.

I would estimate that to constitute “reinventing yourself”, you would have to take about ten steps outside of your comfort zone. To help you get started, here are 8 Ways to Break Out of Your Comfort Zone.

Conclusion

Will you be the same person at the end of 2018 that you are at the start? It’s up to you. Should you decide to make a change, you can use any of the ten ways which I enumerate and explain above. Live your best life by reinventing yourself.

Related Posts:

193 Shares

Next post: How to Chunk Down Goals into Manageable Pieces

Previous post: 50 Year-End Reflection Questions to Help You Review 2019