Why reinvent yourself?
Personal reinvention is not for everyone. It is just one way of changing the game of life you are currently playing. If you feel you have reached the point in life where you have everything just the way you like it, this is definitely not for you. Your best course of action may be to continue what you are doing, with a few minor course corrections as conditions change.
Just don’t be surprised when your carefully constructed lifestyle capsizes and you find yourself scrambling to put the pieces back together again. Life has a way of smacking us alongside the head when we aren’t watching what is happening around us.
There is no rest point. There is only motion. Things get better when you do the necessary actions to make improvements. Things get worse when you leave them alone and hope for the best. Your body, your house, your occupation, all require constant attention or they will gradually break down and disintegrate.
Whether you are working or retired, you will gradually go downhill unless you are accomplishing something worthwhile. If you are not needed by somebody or lots of somebodies, there is less and less reason to live. This is probably the biggest reason for sudden death immediately after retirement.
Keep your options open. Consider what might happen if you could manage to reinvent yourself.
Signs you are overdue for reinvention
You find yourself complaining how unfair life is
You keep telling people the same stories again and again.
You haven’t had a new idea in several months
You are frustrated by your job, spouse, yourself
There is no magic in your life. Everything is dull and boring.
Other people in your environment seem to be busy and productive and are enjoying themselves
Signs you understand reinvention and practice it effectively
You don’t have time for complaints, either your own or from others
Your attention is on what you are doing, not what you have done in the past.
You tend to enjoy life and find it continually interesting.
Where do you start?
Locate that area of your life which is least optimum. That is the best place to concentrate your talents. Take a long, hard look at the things you have been trying to change. How many of them were efforts to change others?
You have almost no chance of success at making others wrong for what they are currently doing. You have to be extraordinarily skilled to get others to a point where they are willing to change their minds about things they consider important.
Your best approach to almost any hopelessly deadlocked situation is to figure out who you would have to be in order to solve the problem and then take steps to become that person.
Recognizing that you can change and being willing to change are the first steps to reinventing yourself. How to accomplish desirable changes in a way that is right for you will be the subject of a future post.
One observation: blogging may force people to reinvent themselves. When a person writes enough articles about a subject area, they begin to run out of new material. If they aren’t open to reinventing themselves, the blog shuts down due to lack of interest.
How many of you find that you have had to reinvent yourself since you started blogging? How many feel you need reinvention, but don’t know where to start?
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