Is it time for you to begin considering your personal reinvention? Do you feel like you have come up short through your life? As hard as you work, do you seem to get nowhere? Is it common for almost everything to go wrong? Does life seem nothing more than a fight to keep your head above water? Has disaster struck and you find yourself empty and lost?
We’re always so busy. Our time is filled with so many activities, many of which frustrate us and we hate every second we spend on them. Why do we do them? Because we’re obliged to, as part of the job we do, or to keep others happy, more often than not it’s our fight for survival.
Too often we forget to value our time, enjoy the time we have or appreciate how we spend this time. Sometimes we are only woken by personal disaster befalling us.
Life might be pretty good, it might be okay, or it might be downright miserable. Whatever your life looks like right now, there is always hope. After all just like a caterpillar you always have open to you the opportunity to reinvent yourself. No matter how tough things may be you have to believe that the future holds more promise, trusting in your personal reinvention.
Whatever your circumstances and however difficult what I’m about to say may be for you, it’s time for you to stop feeling sorry for yourself. Instead you need to acknowledge, appreciate, celebrate life as it has been so far and keep going. Find one thing of such importance to you it’s going to drive you forward and get yourself out of your current predicament.
If you are not happy with the life you’re living then change it … REINVENT YOURSELF, begin your personal reinvention.
We all have a choice, either to accept regression or to move towards reinvention.
Definition of REGRESSION
: the act or an instance of regressing
: a trend or shift toward a lower or less perfect state:
: reversion to an earlier mental or behavioral level
When you experience regression, you “go back” in some way.
Definition of REINVENTION
: to invent again or anew, especially without knowing that the invention already exists.
: to remake or make over, as in a different form:
: to bring back; revive
: to make major changes or improvements to (something)
: to present (something) in a different or new way
This post has been inspired by tragedy. For the last few months I’ve been worried by my health problems, my loss of vision has really troubled me but difficulties with breathing at times and an abnormality discovered on a chest x-ray has had me even more anxious. At times I confess I have felt down. But someone else’s predicament has shown me that nothing that has happened to me in retrospect should stop me from moving forward.
A text message from an old friend was the wake up call I needed but was one of the most upsetting things I can remember for a very long time. Both he and his brother had been incredibly good friends. In fact his brother had helped me once upon a time get through a personal crises when we were both much younger. He was there for me getting me through and was genuinely one of the nicest guys I’ve ever known. We haven’t really kept in touch, apart from the occasional Facebook message, something I regret, but as I have written before, following my perceived failure, loss of my home, bankruptcy etc I broke most contact with everyone else I knew. Shame is a terrible thing.
Well the news I was told was that his brother’s wife had past away. Another beautiful human being, a mother of three children; his brothers, my friend’s soul mate. I know she had been battling cancer and finally her journey had come to an end. She couldn’t be any older than late 40,’s. My heart feels for all the family. At times life can be so cruel. I can’t even imagine what my friend must be going through.
This dreadful event puts life into perspective. We each only get one chance of life and we owe it to ourselves to live this to the max and enjoy every moment we can. We must never allow circumstances to derail us or stop us in our track. We must always find something to keep us going.
So many people I’ve worked with saw themselves as ready to give up on life. They had forgotten how precious it is. In one case someone who had been excited by starting their own business, worked hard to make it succeed yet had seen it crash and burn and he’d ended up depressed and lost. Another similar to me had owned the home of his dreams his reward for years of hard work but saw it lost, repossessed because he couldn’t pay the monthly mortgage any longer; or the lady whose dancing career had been ended by a car accident that had damaged her legs. All three having been hit by their problems went into meltdown and gave up on trying to get their lives moving forward once again. They chose regression over personal reinvention. Instead of rebuilding they began to lose even more.
This is insanity. Life will be full of failures and disaster but success can be around the corner. We can’t put the clocks back so what’s done is done but we all get second chances and need to make the most of them. No matter how hard it is we have to be prepared to move on. That is what you need to feel to follow the path to personal reinvention.
The only thing that can ever be final is death. The loss of my sister Jan and my mother were the worst things to ever happen to me far more so than any of my other losses. I can’t imagine how painful or debilitating the loss of your soul mate must be. I know that what helped me through was doing certain things. One making sure I remembered there life meant something. As well as recalling all the happy memories I had of them and finally committing myself to setting big goals in their name. My compass for life course was created in my mind the day my mother died and my work began on it the day after her funeral. Every thing I do is to celebrate the life they lived, and I use their memories to empower me not to deflate me. Initially this is hard to do, but do it we must.
Whatever it is that has happened to us and makes us feel down, while we may feel terrible in the immediate aftermath while we are still alive and breathing we still have opportunities and hope. After all life must go on. Please don’t get me wrong, not a day ever goes by where I don’t think of both of my lost loved ones.
The path of personal reinvention is the one that will move us from a life of struggle to one of victory. To enjoy our personal reinvention we have to think and act differently as this is vital to create sustainable change. Today is always a good day to start. People change when they’re ready, and not a moment before.
Going after what you want takes a willingness to be brave. It takes courage to work through the shit that weighs you down. Finding your way is an ongoing process. No matter what kind of change you’re working on, if you focus on it consistently you’ll get results.
Maybe your career is not where you want it to be; you are suffering with poor health; your relationships have fallen apart; money is a problem; nothing seems to be working out right for you; you are bitterly disappointed with how life is for you, but you’ll always have it in you to reinvent yourself.
Negativity seems to surround you, suffocating your dreams and destroying your hope. We get into such a slump that even thinking about making positive changes seems too difficult. But it’s not hopeless you can get started down the road to positive change. It is essential to change direction and start taking control of your life.
You need to get excited. Yes I said excited. If you want to break out of a slump, get yourself excited about a goal and start writing a plan. Use your desire for this goal to get you excited and carry that energy forward to get you going.
What is your magnificent dream? If you don’t have one start asking yourself what may it be.
Now whenever a bad event happens to me instead of allowing myself to feel sorry for myself or give up my fight instead I stop everything. I take time out to reflect.
Taking the time to have talks with myself helps to re-invigorate me, to renew my focus, and encouraged me to continue. I allow myself 5 minutes for negativity to register to think through all the downright awful things that may have happened and their terrible consequences but then inwardly I switch by telling myself this will do me no good. I then decide what one thing that if I did it would reinvigorate me and then I set a goal to achieve this and visualize it down to the most minute detail. … I think of all the reasons I want to accomplish the goal. It is so important to give ourselves permission to go for goals with full-on focus and gusto. I also give myself time to be grateful for everything I have and all the good things that have happened.
How much time every day do you give yourself for reflection and gratitude? If none, isn’t it time you started?
The gift of sight is something so many people take for granted, but when this gift is impaired or taken away life can become so difficult with even every day activities hard to do, such as driving, cooking, cleaning, shaving or reading to name just a few.
Having lost my sight in one eye I gave myself the time to feel sorry for myself and think of all the negative consequences and foresee a worsening situation, but then I said stop this won’t stop you, unless you decide to allow it to do so. My reinvention journey has progressed a long way and I simply refuse to allow this obstacle to derail me. Reinvention has provided me the inner strength to keep going.
What is the one thing you think about that brings you down the most?
Remembering the saying ‘This too shall pass’. Nothing lasts forever, neither the good times, nor the bad, as long as we keep fighting.
I refused to feel sorry for myself or to settle for what fate throws at me accepting defeat. I have dreams and wouldn’t let this prevent them. I then focused on my 2 daughters, granddaughter and the one on his way. They’re my life and they are what give me strength. Something I know that my friend will need to be focusing his energy on. Our children are what get us through . Then there was my dream to be a best-selling author and speaker changing people’s lives. I refused to let my sight put an end to this. This would be my driving force.
What or who is your driving force?
For too long I allowed my troubles to bring me down. Those things that happened to me held my focus and stopped me from looking forward.
My Bankruptcy
My House repossession
My Business failure
My Divorce
My original sight loss
Then I woke up to the fact that while I could still breath, walk and talk and see partially through one eye I could still achieve magnificent dreams. It was at this point I began my personal reinvention journey.
There’s some things we are all hanging on to that we simply need to let go.
What are your greatest limiting beliefs that you need to rid yourself of?
On that day I decided inside of myself that I will move forward, that I would look outward and consciously work towards freeing myself from my troubles and building my life around my deepest purpose of making the difference to the world through my voice whether through written word or speaking. It was time to be brave once again . Each of us holds on deep within of one thing we can do which will not only improve our life but also improve the world in which we live.Once we recognise what this is it will empower us.
What’s your purpose?
What we all know is life can be hard and at times it’s not fair and we will experience despair facing problems that seem to have no answers. We never know what’s coming. Yet whatever we face or the challenges we meet, we must remain conscious of the brilliant opportunities still awaiting us so we can battle through and then thrive and find happiness.
“The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.” – Nelson Mandela
When you make the decision to follow the path of change, lying before you is a brand new road filled with hope, possibilities and new beginnings. We have to get through our tough times but once we do our life will look so different and happiness will return, you just have to believe this when you start the journey.
Do you believe that the best is yet to come for you?
We all get to a point on our life journey where we realise we need to reset our life compass in order to get the most out of our life. The best thing you can do when your life has been thrown upside down is to recognize that everything ahead of you can still be great, and by taking the path of personal reinvention you give yourself the best chance of enjoying it.
Are you ready to start your journey of personal reinvention?
photo credit: freestock.ca ♡ dare to share beauty Swallow Falls – HDR via photopin (license)