# Reinventing yourself



## Laila Taylor (Dec 3, 2011)

I went on Facebook today for the first time in four years and saw that all my friends have grown up. The once shy and very modest Kimmy is now a Harvard graduate and looks like a stunning model. Sara has a job and plans to move in with her boyfriend. And Alex is moving up in New York which is a long way from here. I don't even _recognize_ them anymore! As for me, well... I'm still the same ol' adult kid with bushy eyebrows, more to love, and an obsession with collecting animal plushies...living in her parent's house. Heck, I still wear the same clothes as four years ago.

So my question is, how do you reinvent yourself...besides buying new clothes? =P If you've been successful, or are on the right path, I'd love to hear about your stories. Is it as hard as it looks? Does it take ages? I want to become a new person who isn't afraid of people, life, and is fun to be around. A completely different attitude and view of the world. Four years from now, I want to be able to look at a photo of my 23-year old self and say, "Who's _that?_" But right now I'm wondering, _where do I start?_


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## moya (Feb 16, 2012)

Maybe I'm going off tangent, but I think it's more important to accept yourself for who you are and just try to make changes that the current you is comfortable with and just explore life from there. Trying to "reinvent" yourself may set you up for disappointment. Asking too much from yourself, asking yourself to be a person you may not be just to live up to some 'standard' that other live by, y'know?

If you actually LIKE your clothes, keep wearing 'em. And if you love collecting plushies, keep doing it. Consider if either of those things stand in the way of more happiness and if they do, try to them in moderation. 

So yeah, babysteps! I'm your age, 23, and just NOW moving out of my mom's place to another city on the other side of the country. And THAT alone is excitign enough. What happens next is up in the air. So maybe that's something you could do as welll.. move out and just take it from there. Don't overwhelm yourself with too much at once!


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## JenN2791 (Aug 21, 2011)

It's an ongoing process really. I, myself, sometimes cannot help but think that I'll wake up the next day as a new person.. which, in return, disappoints me greatly since I'm not the most patient person in the world. But I try each day to remind myself that I'm a day closer to who I want to become. Not that there's a deadline of some sort... after time, you become a new person without even realizing it until one day, you sit and reminisce back to... a year ago... 5 years ago.. 10 years ago.

I'm not the same person I was a year ago. I think and see things more clearly now than I ever did before. I understand certain things in life better now than I ever did before. And you know what? This will surely carry on for the rest of my life. It doesn't just happen on its own though. YOU have to do SOMETHING for YOURSELF as well. Not sit around and waiting for changes to magically happen out of nowhere. I did that for so long, almost wasting my own time as well as others.

So what are you to do? Well, I'm sure it's different for everyone I would assume. But I'd like to share what I have done, and maybe some of these can give you some ideas on how to go about reinventing yourself.

I had been told for the longest that it's always great to try new things. Try new hobbies... meet new people... etc. I always thought this was lame advice, and thinking back, I have no idea why. But I figured, okay... my life has been so dull with not much going on at all whatsoever, except school. How the hell am I going to spice things up if that's all I have going on in my life? Well, it doesn't have to be that way. So I gradually started crawling out of my comfort zone more. I've had trouble talking to people (small talk, basically) out of nowhere in class and such, and I always felt bitter about it, and blaming OTHERS for not talking to me ("hmph people are so judgmental. They don't know me and they're already avoiding me!"). Someone very close to me once told me that... really, people really DON'T know me. They really don't. At all. Why? Because I never put myself out there. I never started conversations which would may lead to introducing myself to them. I never spoke up in class, have a mind of my own. I never did anything to really reflect who I am to others, so of course nobody is going to know me at all. With the way I was (as in, sitting quietly in the corner of the class hugging my laptop), people will not help but get the impression that I do NOT want to talk to anyone, even though that's not really it.

So last semester, I started talking to people a bit more as time went by. I found that more people liked me than I had thought. Of course, initially, it was poor judgment on my part anyway to think nobody liked me just because nobody talked to me. But in the end, I knew that, most importantly, I had to get myself out there somehow if I wanted 'change.'

So I guess to put it vaguely to sum up what I am trying to say -- go out there and do things. If you're overly anxious about getting out there and doing things you won't normally do, don't be too hard on yourself. Make realistic goals.. small goals. They may be small, but it will take you a long way. You'll find that x, y, and z isn't so bad after all, and it'll make you want to do more of that.. which will then lead you to doing more "daring" things that you normally wouldn't do in the state/condition you are in now.

So far it's worked fairly well for me by spending my alone time productively. That doesn't mean doing homework and going to work all the time though lol. I mean, going places... exercise... walk around at the mall and maybe starting up conversations with the employees (esp if their store is absolutely dead and empty haha). If you go to school, maybe attend some of their events (I see many people go to them alone as well), or maybe join a club (as cliche as it may sound, I'm sure it works. Personally I'm not into joining clubs (no reason at all, I just don't like them), but at least I found other things to do as a replacement lol). If you live near any nature-y places, go on hikes..walk around...meditate.

Basically try to find anything that interests you, and go from there. I used to think the world is so boring, but I guess it's because we live in a society where so many people are SO busy with work and such, and never take the time to really enjoy their downtime + do things they enjoy. I guess it's become something we're used to seeing as well. It's like, those you see around you who are living such successful lives, it seems like it's all plainly work for them, no play. But I feel many successful people in life balance things out, and it's always important to know what your likes are.. what you enjoy doing... what your passions are... and put in time into all that as well. All that makes up who you are as well, not just what you're HAVING to do (i.e. school, work, family). I feel like, dedicating some of your time into actually doing something outside of busy work gradually shapes you. Your personality and whatnot will bleed through all that as well. I think I said that horribly, but ..it sounded better in my head lol.

Sorry for the ridiculously long post. I hope this gives you a bit of an insight on where to start... making a list of things that you enjoy would help. Most importantly, I'm sure there are new hobbies you want to check out as well. It's ok if you try it and don't like it. That's the point of it all -- figuring out yourself. Just be sure to approach everything with a positive mindset though. I've made the mistakes of approaching new things with a negative mindset, like "Ugh this is going to be so dull... oh no, I'm going to mess up and look stupid," etc. Don't do that.

I think this is all I have to say for now. Good luck and enjoy


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## newbornmind (May 6, 2012)

*doable?*

Changing yourself into a "new person" - is it even possible?

I would say, absolutely it's possible. Here's my thoughts on the matter, as someone who's wanted to change a LOT of things about myself for a large part of my life.

**** first off, consider this - who you see yourself as, is nothing more than the thoughts you have, the feelings you have, your attitudes and behaviours, and your physical presence, looks and movements (if you look at identity in this way, broken down - you'll see that all of these things can be modified with practice, and changed, if you are willing to do the work) Doesn't mean it will be easy though - as you'll find out when you start trying to change yourself, all these habituated ways of seeing ourselves are pretty heavily ingrained, so they'll take consistent, faithful reprogramming, and retraining to change.

The good news is - once you have made a change, and really got it down as a habit, your mind/body will automate it with the power of the subconscious mind, so you can then move onto changing the next thing you want to improve/modify

**** work on accepting yourself, and even liking yourself exactly as you are! how can you like the person you are, when it's NOT the person you want to be? well, it's a paradox, you have to like yourself AND make modifications to your behaviour, attitude, etc.

Trying to change yourself from a position of self hatred (or even just not really liking yourself or accepting yourself) is 1) very painful and, 2) very difficult to do at all, and if you do, you'll snap back to who you were before, because there was no positive motivation or reinforcement for the change

punishing yourself to change does not work too well in my own experience. Negative attention to yourself, will only create more negativity, and more of what you don't like

*** *start off with what you do like about yourself, and bring that out into the open even more, flaunt it, and get really good at being able to focus on what you do like about yourself, to the point where you can make yourself feel really good, regardless of whether you were previously bored, apathetic, or whatever in the current moment.

This is using the power of association to move yourself in a positive direction, and create positive momentum, which will give you positive energy and a positive attitude (which is vital when working on yourself to change habituated ways of being) It will also improve your ability to see yourself as a "whole person" with both negatives and positives, instead of using negative bias to beat yourself up with

**** this one is REALLY big - choose 1 change at a time! break things down, the way I did in the first point, don't try to change your whole personality, or all your behaviour in a week, this is unrealistic, impossible, and will only lead to failure and a lowering of your self esteem, happiness, and ability to motivate yourself to make the desired changes.

The best way to find out what changes are most important to you, is to just look at what is most bothering you about yourself, or your life right now, and turn it around.

So for me right now, I'm working on a few things, my lack of taking part in regular social events, and having the # of positive friendships that I desire. I realized I needed to change that area of my life first, pretty easily, because it was bothering the **** out of me, and making me depressed.

So simple solution, do something about it, to move in a positive direction, and focus on just improving at least my ability to take action and get myself out there. For me all this meant was joining some groups on meetup.com, and making plans to do 1-2 nights per week joining groups that had topics of interest to me..

Anyway, this topic is HUGE, so I'm going to leave it there (just look at the hundreds of thousands of self help books, and you can see the myriad upon myriad of different sub topics related here)

I hope those tips have given you some good ideas, and ways to plan improving yourself and your life.

Just want to remind you, DON'T BEAT YOURSELF UP!! think about it rationally, dispproving of yourself achieves absolutely nothing for anybody in the world, not to mention yourself, and all it does is crush your self esteem, and makes you miserable and disconnected from any joy that you could otherwise feel. So just realize this fact, and don't do it!!

That reminds me, check out a book called Psycho cybernetics, by maxwell maltz (pretty sure you can find a free pdf version on google if you try) This book is the **** when it comes to understand behaviour change, and expanding your idea of yourself to become more effective and successful in all areas of life.

Good luck!!

with love,

Nick


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## newbornmind (May 6, 2012)

Bump

would like to see what other's opinions on this are, I find the topic intriguing...


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## warentucker (Jun 25, 2012)

Don't reinvent yourself just add onto the great person you already are. If there's something you wish to do differently make an effort and don't measure yourself against the success of others. You are your own person draw from your own experience and find an area where you have made progress in your life. Just because your situation may not be much different than four years ago chances are you're a more mature person now then you were then weather you realize it or not.


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## jvanb00c (Apr 13, 2012)

Where do you start is a great question with a not so easy answer.

Truth is I'm going to also attempt to reinvent myself, i'll still be me but the less freaked out ALL THE TIME me. Something just clicked in my head today and a lot of my anxiety has gone away. I mean that might just be a feeling right now that goes away in the morning but right now it's like the knob just got switched to a frequency with less fear and worry. I can't keep living like I've been living. It's always been like i'm just waiting around for the next bad thing to happen and worrying myself over it. Now though I think I can put the worries out of my head and just take the bad things as they come instead of just worrying myself sick about all the things that could go wrong for me.


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## Whitney (Oct 2, 2008)

I think the important part is not where do you start, but where do you want to end up? You need a concrete goal. Most likely, this goal will really be multiple goals. You could have goals about your career, your education, your social life, your spiritual life, your health, etc... whatever is most important to you. 

Try not to get daunted by how far you have to go. Accept that it will be a long process, but if you really are disciplined you will get there. Start thinking about the path from where you are to where you want to be, and break it down into smaller goals. Very small goals. Like, if one of your goals is to get your dream job (and you know specifically what that job is already), then think, what can I do towards this *today*? Maybe today you could do some research. Start to figure out what it will take to get that job. Do you need more education, do you need certain experiences? 

Stop and look. You just did some research about your dream job. Guess what, that was the first step! You made progress. It may seem small and insignificant, but it is one step further than you were yesterday.

Overall, I think this is the best way to grow as a person. First you look at the big picture, what you want to achieve. Then you break it down into small steps that don't look so scary.

If you have no idea where it is that you want to end up in 4 years, then now is the time to start figuring that out. There, now you know where to start!


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## Grimsey (Apr 21, 2012)

I urge you to question everything you see on facebook. People "act" on these types of sites to portray themselves in a positive light.


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## awkwardsilent (Jun 14, 2012)

Can you change “Who” you are?

I don’t know, it depends what you mean by that, can you change what your life looks like? 

Then yes, definitely. 

You can change the direction and appearance of your life if that is what you want. 

I think it is both important to have goals (Even small ones) as well as to get out there and start. I don’t have “big goals” I haven’t manage to figure out what I want to do with my life. But I have managed to figure out some of the small things that I want, and worked on getting them. 

This was recently put into perspective by a friend. While I have the same job, live in the same house etc, a friend who has known me for 5 years (while having a long heart to heart) mentioned how much I had changed, or rather come out of my shell. I actually let people see the “real” me more now instead of being constantly quiet and keeping everything to myself. 

So how did I change? I basically dragged myself kicking and screaming out of the house. Now my anxiety issues were probably not as bad as most , I tried a couple of times to get professional help and honestly it ended up making me feel more stressed (I’ve recently considered trying again though) instead I just forced myself to do things slowly if I wanted friends eventually at first I had to learn to interact with people. Even superficially... like saying hi or even smiling at the grocery store. 

I had to say yes to people when invites were extended, I learned not to have expectations regarding specific people though. I am still slow to consider someone a “friend” rather than aquaintance. But I had to make lots of acquaintances before I could make friends taking the pressure off and really just viewing interactions as practice and valuing relationships that ranged from “hi how are you” at the grocery store to people who would only invite you out if “Everyone” was invited out. Made me feel a little better. I still didn’t have close friends, I still wanted close friends but I wasn’t going to try and force anyone to be my close friends. 

Eventually It happened, I had an acquaintance that I got to know, she and I ended up having a heart to heart we were both in the same place of worrying about having friends and it just felt right to be honest. And we both laughed because we thought the other person had it made, because we kept seeing each other at social events talking to lots of people. Talking to our aquaintances. Anyways we became fast friends and through her I met a lot of people that I now would be really sad to lose. 

So that really I didn’t set a time frame on it I just started opening myself up to the possibilities. 

It is something I will always have to work at though, and always work at keeping negative thoughts away they creep back easily for me. I guess that is how I ended up here, sometimes the feelings come back and I needed to put that in perspective. 

I still have social anxiety regarding male/female relationships I am really working on my skills now talking to guys. Not trying to pick them up in a romantic sense, I just miss having friends who are guys. In general guy friends are more chill, seem to be less dramatic and I just miss that different dynamic. And there are a lot of cool people that happen to be guys so I’d like to be able to converse with them without feeling like an idiot constantly!

I am also working on health goals at the moment, I’ve dropped 50lbs over the past 2 years (again with me being slow and steady about trying to change my life) And I try to eat healthier, I walk a lot and I do love to work out now. 

I want to figure out if I want to do anything else with my life. It seems so daunting that I haven’t really taken the steps I need to evaluate if I want a career change. Or if I want to move. I know I’m procrastinating on this because it scares me. Admitting that is a step in the right direction right? 

I’ve worked so hard to build my life here I’m scared to start over again. At the same time I’m starting to get scared that in another 5 years I’ll wish that I had started looking into something now. I am trying to evaluate that. 

I would say while I am not a different person, my life is very different than 5 or 6 years ago. 

Instead of being online all the time I have people to call, I do things on a regular basis. I feel icky if I don’t get physical activity in (maybe I always felt this way but didn’t know what feeling good felt like as a baseline?) . I am a friendly person I’ve had people say I am good at talking to new people. I am not a super social butterly but I am me. 

All that said, I am working on remembering to take care of myself too. I miss music so I bought myself a guitar, I try and make time to play it but I don’t often when I do It helps sooth my anxious feelings. For me music is my soul soother. 

I don’t its a constant process for me. And for me small changes the past 5 years make me someone who has way more of a satisfying life. Nowhere near perfect but not nearly as crushingly lonely as it was 5-6 years ago. I’ll take it...


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## Mithun (Sep 25, 2008)

"Everyone is genius in this world. If you expect a fish to climb a tree then it will lead its entire life thinking that its stupid" - Albert Einstein


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## Smoothie (Feb 14, 2012)

You may become a better version of yourself,but in the end of that day you are still the same girl that likes plushies,there's nothing wrong with that ,I love plushies,but since I'm quite allergic my parents thought it was better to hide my plushies and tell sent them away when I was about 5/6.
And like said before,if you like the clothes you wear,why bother changing? 
Just try to get out of the comfort zone bit by bit 
Hope you the best


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