Reinventing Yourself

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the idea of reinventing yourself. If you’ve done this before, just think back on that great feeling of fulfillment brought about by the process of reinventing yourself. Although it’s not something we do all the time, it can be a huge boost to your life when you do.

Let’s take the physical part of our lives for example. Think about pushing yourself to lose weight and get in great physical shape at age 45, 55, or even 65. Building muscle, staying lean, and gaining flexibility can improve your health to the max. But can it be done?

Sure it can! Is it easy? Of course not. If it was, everyone would do it. But is it worth it? Well, that all depends on you because I’m not saying a super health goal is the only way to go. What goal you have that pushes you to reinvent yourself is up to you. Maybe it’s a whole new career, starting a new company, sailing the South Pacific, or any one of a hundred different things. But whatever you choose, at whatever age, it all can be done and it is so well worth it. And while you reinvent and redefine your life, you will also be reinvigorated, giving so much more life to your, well, life!

Now, reinventing yourself doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time and a lot of effort to redesign your life. It takes setting your mind on your goal and the changes you want to make and sticking with it. But, oh, the results you can gain! The results are a life that is so well worth the wait and all the hard work.

Right now, take a few moments to imagine your own ideal life.

• What does it look like?
• How does it feel?
• Who’s there with you to share and enjoy it?
• Where are you going to live?
• How are you going to vacation?
• What are you going to give back to the world? (You have probably noticed that when your give to others it raises your mood and happiness levels so much.)
• How are you really going to make a real difference in your life?

Now, please know this — you can have all that you just imagined, exactly like you visualized, if, for one, you want it bad enough and, secondly, you are willing to make a plan, write it down, and follow the steps that you outline. I can’t pretend that reinventing yourself is easy, but all the best stuff we do for ourselves in life usually comes from hard work which just makes reaching those goals that much more fulfilling.

It Starts with a Dream

Almost every super successful person I’ve ever heard of or have met began as a dreamer. Without dreams, very little will happen in any of our lives. But with a dream, great and wonderful things can, and most likely will, happen but only if you add two more things – specifics to make it a goal and action to turn the goal into reality. But the dream has to come first! So, let’s talk about that.

I once heard that 75 percent of our life is lived in our minds. That may not be entirely accurate, but I think you would agree that a fair amount of our lives is lived inside our heads and since our minds do indeed have great power, there must be great potential there.

Think of yourself in Chicago or New York in the middle of a cold winter.  You’re watching TV or reading a magazine and you see an advertisement for a trip to Hawaii. You’re attracted to the idea, and suddenly you start to dream about going to Hawaii for the entire month of February. What happens? You start to live the trip in your mind. You may even start to work it out in detail, planning exactly when you will leave, where you’ll stay, what you’ll do while you are there, and so on.

You think about it so much that you eventually decide that you are absolutely going to go and, if you don’t have the money to make it happen, you begin to plan how you are going to save enough to make the trip. And, of course, all of this is part of you living the trip in your mind long before you go.

When you finally make the trip, you have the great time that you had pre-lived in your mind and on the way home, you relive what’s just happened to you. That reliving of your trip in your mind can go on for weeks, months and even years, renewing your enjoyment of it each time.

Pictures can be a huge influence in helping our brains relive the good stuff in our lives.  Years ago, I bought a bunch of digital frames (they cost all $10-$20) and placed them all around the house. This way I can just insert a memory card from my camera (I use a new card for each trip or special event) and the digital frame will rotate through all the photos, allowing me to easily relive those great moments in my life. You should try it too. It’s a small thing but it can really enhance your life.

Just don’t forget, dreaming is not enough. You must also follow through with goals and action if you want to make it more than just a dream. Next week we’ll talk more just how to do that!

 

Magnify Your Getaway Experiences

I just got back from a wonderful, extended getaway on the beautiful island of Kauai. As my wife and I were checking into Delta Airlines to come home, we began chatting with 3 young people with their huge surfboards. They were from Australia, New Zealand and the island of Oahu. They were talking about where they were heading now and of all their travels.

They said they had visited 49 of the states in the US as well as many foreign countries and spoke of how their travels had greatly enhanced their lives. Of course, I had to tell them of my travels to 90 different countries and what those travels had done for my life. Then I went on to tell them about the one little thing I do that greatly magnifies and extends those trips and experiences many fold.

As I am sure you know, getaways are absolutely wonderful and we all need them, but they can be expensive and all too short. The good news is that there really is a simple, easy way to keep enjoying those novel and fun getaways with minimal cost. This simple little trick will allow those trips to continue to enhance your life for a long time to come.

My single little trick, that I highly recommend to all, is to be sure you take a digital camera and take a ton of pictures and videos. But don’t stop there. The real key is to buy a few digital frames, the ones that change the picture on a regular basis. We’ve bought more than a few over the years and have them placed around the house and office. Doing just that simple little extra thing automatically helps you relive and remember all those great trips and places you visited with no additional effort after you set them up. And if you are anything like my wife and I, every time you walk by and see those images of yourself, your friends, and your family in a faraway place, at a party or family gathering, or on a simple hike or walkabout, it will bring a smile to your face and a warm feeling in your heart.

Yes, you will have just relived and experienced those great unique moments and places you’ve been to again and again and your life will be enhanced by this. It sure has worked for me and my family.  Try it and see if you experience those same feelings and thoughts that we have. Plus, for my age group, it does help with the memory in the old brain.

 

Getting Away from It All Should Never Be Forever

I think most of us know that busy lives are usually happy lives. But I think we’ve also been sold a bill of goods with our thinking that if we could only make lots of money then we could quit or retire and sit by the pool drinking Mai Tai’s the rest of our lives and be happy as pigs in slop. I am here to tell you that it just ain’t true!

We think this because when we are working hard and staying busy and then we take a break –going on vacation or a quick getaway–it makes us feel so good and refreshed that we mistakenly believe that if we could just do that all the time we’d have a permanent refreshed and a super great feeling.  But it doesn’t work like that. The fact is, if we don’t do the hard work then it’s really not a break and it doesn’t give us any reward or, at most, very little reward. We must all burn into our brains that the pause or the break should always remain as just that and never become a permanent thing.

Look at the recent London Olympics. Think of the four years of work that lead up to the moment we watched those young people step up on the award platform. Those award ceremonies were their break and their reward and you could see how immensely they enjoyed it. But what would become of those athletes lives if they sat back, doing nothing, trying to make that super reward moment last the rest of their lives without doing any more hard work? We can all imagine it, their lives going quickly downhill because each day there would be nothing to look forward to.

We all need to take a much harder look at our own lives and make sure we don’t ever turn the pause into a permanent state of living.  Passionate, fulfilled lives come from action and staying busy. Push yourself hard then, and only then, take a break and celebrate your hard work and accomplishments.